Letting the music play, Renku let the mask slip and buried his face in his hands. Now that he was off the air, he could finally cringe at his mannerisms, despair at his idiocy, basically wallow in self-inflicted embarrassment and anxiety.

A green haired fairy fluttered over, face concerned, but Renku raised his head and smiled weakly, waving her off. Wringing her ponytail ,Daiyousei, the unofficial leader of the Fairies, sighed but backed off, fluttering off to check the correspondences from the fairies.

She really was a great helper, keeping track and organizing the flow of information from all of the Fairies of Gensokyo, but this was something Renku needed to deal with by himself. Just for a bit.

Namely, having a mental breakdown.

He let out a low, drawn out moan. This was such a doomed idea. There were not enough words in any language to describe how stupid this endeavor was. Not even if you combined all of them. By all rights, he should have been escaping, cutting all ties, not… trying to portray themselves as a part of Gensokyo, let alone try and change the status quo out of some misguided fear of losing it all.

Gensokyo wouldn’t disappear. Neither would the Yokai. Even if he himself were to disappear, he would leave behind nothing but a footnote, if even that. Why was he so scared of fantasy dying?

...Oh right, because he lived two lives where fantasy was dead. Renku really needed to stop asking himself questions that he already knew the very depressing answers to.

He had only been here for a year. And what a year it had been! It was a bit rough at the start, but Renku thought he felt happier than he had ever been in all of his lives here. He felt… well, not safe, he didn’t think he’d ever feel safe again, but he felt content. Content in a way that didn’t feel like a trap.

In the end though, they were an just an Outsider who had the strange luck of remembering an old lives. They knew snippets and pieces of the mythology of Gensokyo, scrounged together from stories, games, and music remembered two lives ago and tales told to them in an old book found in the remnants of a Dateless Old Bar.

Also a war, but Renku didn’t like to remember things from that bit.

...And he was doing this crap. This was such a--

A flash of light distracted him, pulling him out of his miserable tailspin. Blinking blearily, Renku smiled fondly at the mirror floating around him, flashing in a worried manner. It was a beautiful mirror with an alabaster back and a clear surface, so clear that it reflected pure white. It was also hovering without anything supporting it.

“Thank you, Shin. I was getting lost in my thoughts,” the Fool sighed, untying the tenugui wrapped around his head. Reaching into the pocket of his hakama, he pulled out a bottle of oil to begin polishing the floating mirror, Shinkagami.

As he did so, he felt a chill at his neck. Renku rolled his eyes, “Yes. Yes, I’ll get you too, Yami.”

The chill died off as a much darker mirror floated around to wait for its turn. Equally as beautiful as its lighter counterpart, its front did not reflect light so much as absorbed it into an inky blackness and had an onyx backing instead.

Renku enjoyed the simple symmetry of his two “familiars”. If he could call them that, he wasn’t a magician, witch, or even wizard after all. Any power he had was what he had built through friendships with these two Spirit Mirrors and the Fairies.

As he switched to polishing Yamikagami, Renku felt nothing but gratefulness for being able to live here in Gensokyo. To be able to treat the fanciful as the mundane. To be amongst friends that trusted him enough to help him on this madcap venture.

Honestly, it was a miracle that they had already befriended the fairies and the spirit mirrors, a miracle twice more that they were all so willing to indulge and help this trainwreck of a shitshow get going, and a miracle thrice more that Yukari Yakumo had not immediately appeared to Gap this entire thing into non-existence.

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

He didn’t remember much about her beyond that she loved Gensokyo first and foremost and would probably, most definitely, absolutely not approve of this little podcast of his. Or his theory on how to alleviate Yokai’s dependency on human belief. Or himself in general.

He may be projecting on that last bit, but fuck it. Go for broke on the depression, eh?

Everything this was founded on was based on rumors. Extensive and informative rumors, but rumors nevertheless. Gods above and devils below knew how the Fool did it, but Renku had built an extensive network of informants and, dare they hope, fairy friends in and throughout Gensokyo this past year, but it couldn’t last. Not in any meaningful fashion.

All in-ning on a half-assed plan with a barely understood hope based on the murkiest recollections of confused attempts to learn the lengthy history of a story that they barely knew to stop a very real fear from happening again. There were so many things wrong with this process of events and thinking that Renku really and truly wished that he could remember what mushrooms it had eaten when deciding that creating a podcast would be a good idea based on this explanation.

The only saving grace was that he had run his own podcast before. In some ways, this was even easier. He didn’t even have to make up any stories, simply tell them as they happen here and now. Bury the past, forget the future, something something, live in the now.

Screw him for not being eloquent, it took hard work being pretentiously murky with meanings and crap.

As the music began winding down to a close, the Fool sucked in a breath before letting it go and motioned to the mirrors. Following his unspoken command, they floated into place, the light mirror and black mirror hovering parallel to one another. Both mirrors flashed at one another, shining beams of black and white energy that merged together to form a holographic layout of gray hardlight, working together to create a magical replica of his old soundboard setup.

An exact replica of the tool he used the most in his second life, Renku marveled at how the two mirrors had perfectly recreated it, scratches and decals and all, but they did and it was amazing, albeit painfully nostalgic. The only thing different was the display, but this display was much better than his old one, so who was he to complain? It even had extra screens so he coil view different scenes occurring across Gensokyo.

Renku really had gotten lucky befriending such amazing spirit mirrors and he prayed that he never forgot how grateful he was, vowing never to take this for granted.

Grabbing the hardlight headset and placing it over his ears, Renku turned knobs and tweaked mixers to test things out. He didn’t really need to do it as everything had been preset, but it helped get the last of the anxiety out.

For better or worse, this was the path he had chosen. The dice were rolled. Hands were tied. The best moment to stop would have been at the start. The second best moment would probably be now, but...

It sure as hell was started now and Renku never did learn how to cut losses quite right. Might as well see it through.

The worst that could happen would be that they would die again. And the Fool already knew what that was like. The Fool also knew what it was like to live a life without meaning, without dreams, without fantasy. He knew that life two times over, and between dying yet again and living a life without those things, the Fool would quite literally rather die again, a thousand and more times again, no matter how painful those deaths were.

It was far more painful to live a listless life of apathy.

And he vehemently, absolutely, heaven as his witness and hell as his signatory, refused to live such a life a third time here in Gensokyo. He refused to let things stay as they are when they could be better. Refused to live a life without impact.

He refused to.

Turning one last switch and tapping the button that flashed to the fairies surrounding him that they were on-air, the Fool spoke once more, feeling a calm descend upon him like madness rumbling forth from regrets long buried

And Gensokyo listened again.

----------------------------------------

Welcome back, dreamers.

The Scarlet Mist has dissipated and the summer sun is shining once again, killing us slowly with its deadly lasers once again. On the bright side, Yuuka’s Flowers will not die because of sunlight deprivation. They will still die as it is the nature of existence to eventually cease, but they will not die for the lack of sun.At least for this day. And I will not die because of Yuuka Kazuma. At least for this day.

Speaking of, friendly reminder, do not TOUCH the flowers.

If you enjoy having the sun shining a deadly laser down daily, please consider donating to the Hakurei Shrine. Hakurei Shrine, keeping the Sun’s death laser upon us.

It turns out the culprit behind the Scarlet Mist was in fact a western vampire named Remilia Scarlet.. I’ll admit that I was speaking of vampires in jest, but evidently, Gensokyo has a strange sense of humor and has, for lack of a better term, kidnapped a vampire and her coterie.

Gensokyo is a land where fantasy and reality meet, the boundaries blur, and something strange happens every day and every night. Logic has its place here, but it is a twisty one that bends and loops. It never breaks though. It cannot break.

A young realm we are, but we all live together and have a history together.

For all the laws are broken and rules undone, there is a logic to this place, forged by ethos and hardened by pathos. The rules were laid down to prevent ancient tragedies from refolding and we are all players in this realm, no matter how small or large we are.

If one is brave enough and one is clever enough and one is kind enough, one can do anything anywhere anytime. Heed the unspoken treaty between mortal and immortal, human and inhuman, permanent and impermanent, and all will be well.

Hopefully.

What do I know? I’m a Fool with a Voice and I plan on using that quite a bit. Thank you for listening.

Come now, dreamer.

It is time to go.

Till next we dream.