Chapter 97: Surface-Level Sisters at Best.
....
"—PFFT!! Cough — cough cough—!!"
"Whoa!!" Marisa nearly toppled backward off her broom dodging what had effectively become a high-pressure tea cannon. She straightened up and leveled an aggrieved look at Reimu. "Were you trying to scald me?!"
"No. My nose itched and I inhaled wrong."
Reimu rubbed her nose with complete composure, took a measured sip from her cup, and released the contented low sound of someone whose tea was at exactly the right temperature. "Another peaceful day in Gensokyo~"
"Tch. Too peaceful, if you ask me.
Something weird is probably happening right now that we just can't see yet."
Marisa drained her cup in several enthusiastic gulps, set it down on the saucer with a decisive clack, and leaned forward with the energy of someone about to share excellent news.
"Oh, right! I finally managed to dose Kihara's vegetables. Should be a few more days before the effects kick in — I can't wait to see the fallout."
"Oh~?"
Reimu's smile acquired a specific quality. She set her own cup down, reached over, and placed her hand on Marisa's shoulder. The pressure increased. Incrementally. With intent.
"I seem to remember," Reimu said, in the pleasant tone of someone reviewing a contract, "that any revenge operations targeting him require advance payment to me. And that your previous paid opportunity has already been used." The pressure continued its upward trajectory. "So. Unless you'd like to hand over one hundred and fifty thousand yen right now, I'm going to have to classify this as an unsanctioned anomaly and resolve it accordingly."
"That's extortion!!"
"Kihara says I'm Gensokyo's zoning enforcement officer. My jurisdiction specifically covers individuals who create problems for the general population." Reimu tilted her head pleasantly. "So — option one: you pay and we forget this happened. Option two: I resolve you as an anomaly right now and report it to him as a performance metric."
"Ugh—!!"
Marisa's expression cycled through several stages of financial grief. She opened her wallet. She removed one hundred and fifty thousand yen. She handed it over with the physical suffering of someone parting with a piece of themselves.
"I came over for tea." She mounted her broom. "I came over for one cup of tea and now I'm destitute."
"You left before I could charge you the five hundred yen tea fee."
"YOU'RE TERRIBLE!!"
She was gone before Reimu finished the sentence, moving at the speed of someone who had realized that staying presented additional financial risk.
Reimu watched her go.
"...Lost five hundred yen on that one."
Having suffered an unexpected economic event, Marisa consoled herself by heading back to the Forest of Magic to gather mushrooms, muttering as she flew.
"A hundred and fifty thousand. That's at least two mushroom sales to Kihara just to break even."
"WHAT?! Marisa is selling her bottom to Kihara-kun?!"
Aya Shameimaru erupted from the foliage of a nearby tree like someone who had been waiting years for exactly this moment. She had felt her gossip radar activate somewhere in the vicinity — she'd known something was in the area — but she hadn't dared hope it would be this.
She had, in the span of approximately four seconds, already composed the headline:
[THE BLACK-WHITE BANDIT IN FINANCIAL RUIN — FORCED TO SELL BOTTOM TO KIHARA-KUN NIGHTLY TO MAKE ENDS MEET]
Aya urges all youkai of good conscience: unregulated bottom-selling is dangerous — you'll be walking funny for a week! Those wishing to support Marisa may mail charitable donations to [ADDRESS], where Aya will personally deliver restorative medicine from Eientei on her behalf!
"Hm~ Not bad, if I do say so myself." She reviewed her mental draft with professional satisfaction. "Knocked that out in under a minute. Marisa will surely weep with gratitude when she reads it."
The morning had been Kibougahama — a date with "Akane," cherry blossoms and bubble tea and a park bench.
The afternoon brought Ryuu.
She didn't say anything about the effort she'd put into today. She didn't need to — it was visible. The elven archer's usual sharp-edged precision had been set aside in favor of a pale yellow knit sweater and a black pleated skirt, the combination softening her entire silhouette into something that looked less like a blade drawn from its scabbard and considerably more like someone who was trying.
The hair was the other detail — Ryuu's natural color was gold, but she'd been dyeing it green for years as a disguise during the period when the guild had a bounty on her head. With her name cleared and the warrant withdrawn, she'd stopped. The current result was a gradient, green fading into gold from roots to ends, like a forest giving way to autumn. Another month or two and it would be fully gold again.
Kihara looked at her standing in his doorway, already slightly pink around the ears, and felt the familiar fond amusement settle in.
"Good afternoon, Ryuu."
"Mn. G-good afternoon."
"You've been on dates with me before. You're still this nervous?"
He crossed to her, took her hand — the soft, smaller hand that was Maidena's, wearing Ryuu's sleeve — and gave it a deliberate squeeze. Three times.
The expected response: full-body paralysis, the usual stiffness that overtook Ryuu whenever proximity exceeded her comfort zone.
What actually happened: faint pink in the cheeks, head lowered, mouth working without producing words.
Because Maidena's brain, which had spent the past two days processing approximately half of Ryuu's date manual collection at temperatures it was not designed to sustain, had just received a three-squeeze input and was now running it through the new interpretive framework it had installed.
He squeezed three times. Three. That's definitely a signal. That means he wants to — at three in the morning — behind the —
"You've improved," Kihara observed, with the easy approval of a teacher noting progress. "You didn't go completely rigid this time."
Maidena said nothing. The pink steam continued its patient emission from between her gradient-colored strands.
"Ryuu, where do you want to go today?"
"...To see Kaguya. I heard she has things there you can't find anywhere else in Gensokyo."
"That's not really a date."
"It — it doesn't matter." She found a sentence, finally, and delivered it to the general vicinity of the ground. "As long as I'm with you... anything counts as a date."
"Fair enough."
Maidena exhaled quietly. Ryuu's backup plan had been to suggest visiting Kaguya — the two of them were apparently on decent terms, and Kaguya would recognize that the "Ryuu" in front of her wasn't the real one while being diplomatically unlikely to say so.
The pink date manuals had come from Kaguya in the first place.
The Bamboo Forest of the Lost was exactly what it advertised itself as — dense, directionless, the kind of place that looked the same from every angle and swallowed your sense of orientation the moment you stepped in. Kihara led the way without hesitation, Maidena-as-Ryuu trailing behind him trailing pink steam, her newly acquired literary education causing her to interpret the aesthetic of narrow bamboo paths filtered through afternoon light in ways that Ryuu's actual personality would probably not have endorsed.
This is the ideal location for a —
She pressed both hands briefly to her face and kept walking.
Kihara paused at the entrance to Eientei's grounds. Something flickered across his expression — not fear, but a specific tactical hesitation.
If Reisen came out and happened to be visibly... expecting... he was going to spend the next unspecified period of time in Kaguya's basement with the lights off.
He steeled himself and pushed the gate.
Reisen appeared.
She was not visibly expecting anything. She was, however, making an expression that communicated a great deal about her recent experience — the specific look of someone who has been subjected to experimental pharmaceutical regimens and would like the person responsible to be aware of this fact.
"Oh... hey. Reisen. How have you been?"
"Not well." Her ears were flat. Her eyes carried the reproachful weight of someone who had been waiting to use that word on a specific person. "Master developed fourteen new compounds after the last time. I've been the test subject for all of them. My tail is molting."
"...I'm sorry. That's a lot. I'll come find you properly next time."
He wanted to offer a head-pat as comfort, and remembered his current height made this geometrically challenging. Reisen, reading the situation, solved it by crouching down and presenting the top of her head with the dignified resignation of someone who had decided to accept comfort on available terms.
He patted. The expression of long-suffering resentment softened, by degrees, into something approaching peace.
Maidena noticed none of this. The bamboo forest had done something to her imagination and it had not yet fully recovered.
Kaguya's room. Kihara pushed the door without knocking.
"NEET. Ryuu and I are here. What've you got?"
Ais-as-Kaguya looked up from the computer monitor with the unhurried, three-no composure of the Sword Princess operating inside Kaguya's default expression, which happened to be completely compatible with it. She tilted her head at the figure beside Kihara.
"Ryuu?" Something moved in the flat red eyes — genuine uncertainty about the right response to this situation. "I only have two-player games here. Should Ryuu maybe... go home?"
Maidena's jaw dropped.
This is the person who was supposedly on good terms with Ryuu. She stared at the figure behind the monitor. The one whose books she borrowed. The backup plan. The diplomatic option.
"Should Ryuu maybe go home."
Surface-level sisters. That's all they ever were.
....
Thank you for reading.