image [https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/AP1GczO2AtQbVc6AEK92Jq3x4MRz6VklAP0hU1qiULfGLAhuRmb6qcDTIVxHLYi5u1A6yJH-lAAFxUlrGjBl6d855v3CT7GmYpN2XVaiPsDWAWmrpe9IeCSVxbB0AX0aOamA9qe9M0iEqXh8TSyelcr3NoMS=w856-h300-s-no?authuser=0]
Little umbrellas
Work diligently in the light
Going ta-ta and ra!
Work and drudgery could mayhaps be the only true constant in human existence. Children work at school, adults work at work, and the elderly work at empty chatter. From those poor souls who carried the stones of the pyramids to those poorer souls who have to stamp lovely little rubber stamps every night, the nature of work changes yet it stays the same in its reality.
Cool, that’s a whole bunch of empty philosophizing, thought Licorice as she continued her insignificant life. The bushes don’t care about my thoughts now, do they? She was battling with an army of hedges in the garden, all lined up as if they were about to all unleash a volley of musket fire on our poor heroine. Thankfully, hedges aren’t often known for bearing arms, and the hedges of the Scarlet Devil Mansion were no exception. What these bushes had were long and thick branches, the hellish kind that you had to exert all your power to cut down.
Snip! “What was that noise… Aj siktir!”
Licorice had only gotten to her first line of hedges when her pair of oversized garden scissors passed away at the tender age of 571. These legendary scissors, which had lived from the famous reign of Dracula to the infamous reign of (insert contemporary politician that you dislike here) had finally cracked under the oppressive rule of our heroine’s hands. What wasn’t important was the historicity of these scissors; what was important was the fact that our heroine was left with no functioning scissors to hedge herself from chiding by the head maid for a job not well done.
Do I just go and admit I broke these scissors, or… Licorice was beset by doubt, and she ended staring deeply into the broken pair of scissors as if they would reveal an answer (they did not).
“Hello Miss Licorice, could I-AUGH?!” Once again Licorice had an unexpected visitor jump in, this time from inside the hedge. Unfortunately for her guest, our heroine was armed to the teeth with a broken face of scissors which ended up going right through the intruder’s face.
“Good- Po djavolite, what are you doing here Kogasa?” Licorice relaxed her stance once she saw that her intruder was a familiar one.
“I was- I- ” Kogasa took hold of the scissor in Licorice’s hand. “It’s a- bit hard to talk when someone is holding a scissor inside my head.”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Our heroine had ended up forgetting to draw the scissor back out of shock. She promptly complied with Kogasa’s polite request to not be shanked. The lost umbrella took a deep breath once she was safe. Thankfully there were no marks left on her face due to the unexpected brain surgery; youkai were truly resilient. “I actually didn’t mean to scare you this time…” She looked suddenly a whole lot sullen. “Ah, am I so useless that I’m only able to scare this one human?”
“It’s more that you always end up getting your timing right when you approach me.” Licorice was unsure whether she should apologize for stabbing Kogasa. She decided it’d be much better to move the conversation forward and let bygones be bygones. “You can scare anyone if you approach them while they’re distracted.”
Kogasa suddenly returned to her cheerful self. “Really?” It looked like this simple thought hadn’t crossed her mind. “I wonder if I could scare even Sakuya using this method? Yes, I’ll get revenge…” Then she laughed in an evil manner most incongruous with her previously cheerful tone.
“I’m afraid that doing that might end up with you saying goodbye to your head.” Clearly there was something that added extra strength to the head maid’s attacks, but our heroine hadn’t cared enough to ever investigate. “So? If you didn’t want to scare me, why did you come here?”
“Right! Right, it’s time for me to be useful once more! The scissors, please.” Kogasa took hold of the broken scissors without much objection from our heroine. Licorice was curious as to what this errant umbrella would pull off, and pull off Kogasa did.
image [https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/AP1GczNl7hnlprxDVNlcrthAYrjuprdXnbO17C8e5JOTs1Y3424koMJ6txEvad58RjnC7a-mmuJExXWr9S8mcun6whsLzqd2_VZPQN1kG3KSQHqdIfbXii8W-2KHvj16w8CTz7zzyYiXy5n_MSVsYV0wCLpM=w885-h955-s-no?authuser=0]
A hammer from Yukari-knows-where in her dress, a pair of tongs and an apron for herself. Licorice couldn’t exactly follow or describe what happened afterwards, youkai-blacksmithing gets a bit chaotic at times, but she could follow the end result: a fully-functional pair of scissors. “Phew! There, Miss Licorice.” Kogasa snuck everything back into her hammerspace, handing the refurbished scissors to Licorice. She swung her arm around and moved around as if she was warming up for an exercise. “It’s been a while since I did some actual work!” She took out a towel, again from Yukari-knows-where, and wiped sweat off her forehead.
“Uh… Thank you?” Licorice wasn’t sure why she had been helped, for all she knew this was some weird youkai plot to lull her into a false sense of security. No matter the reason, she had work to do and work she would. Our heroine began trimming the hedges again, only to notice something odd. “Huh, how are these snipping cleanly through the hedges?”
Kogasa scratched her head with obviously faked bashfulness. “Well, you see, I did a wee bit of upgrades here and there.” She pointed at seemingly random points of the scissors she had upgraded. “Your fear has been feeding me well, so I thought I’d do Miss Licorice a little favor.”
“Mersí?” Licorice didn’t care to delve deeper into the implication that Kogasa had been following her around while she was being scared. It was not like our heroine had much she could do against a living umbrella following her around.
With the upgraded scissors, Licorice managed to achieve a first by not being chastised by Sakuya for how she failed after a marginally comedic accident. As a reward she was given regular hedge-trimming work in the garden in addition to her previous path-sweeping work.