That day passed, and we were put to work the next day. Sasha went to the chicken coop again. The rest of us ended up doing farm work.

We dug trenches as a local taught us about irrigation. Then we pulled some weeds. Wiki swore and wiped his brow, and I found myself grateful that I was thinner than him. The two of us gasped, but even Arnold was breathing heavily.

“Exercise is good for the soul,” said Arnold. “Body too, but, y’know.”

“I don’t think he does,” I huffed.

Wiki glared at me. “Let me borrow your ax.” He wanted something to rest on, probably.

We had each been given a spike, some leather gloves, and a hand basket. The farmer had us divided into two groups: one looking for ‘good’ weeds and the other for ‘bad’ weeds. The majority of the weeds were good and would be taken to the livestock, but the few bad ones would be composted instead. There were three carts that we filled as we covered the fields. Every once-and-a-while a cart would get full and be pulled away by hand.

“I wonder how hard it would be to make a tractor,” said Arnold. We were next for cart-pulling duty. “Think we could do it in five minutes?”

“Completely impossible,” said Wiki. “No metals, no supply chains, no oil, no computer aided design, no software, no hardware, no mechanical engineers…?” He looked at Arnold and I with that last question. We both shrugged. I was technically a software engineer, and Arnold had done something with oil. “No paper, no pencils, no desks or chairs, no office building, no energy drinks, no machine shop, no welding–except Nitori maybe–”

“No more,” I said, yanking another weed. “We’ll just pull the cart, like donkeys, no big deal.”

“You need millions of people and decades to make a tractor,” said Wiki.

“Not entirely impossible then,” Arnold said, “If we get started right away.” He made a hip thrusting motion and I laughed.

“Five hundred isn’t very many to start with,” I said. “Better do double-time.”

“It’s worse than that, since we are like four-fifths male,” said Wiki. “The genetic situation here is pretty bad. I would think Yukari brought us for genetic diversity, in particular, except the gender ratios are all wrong.”

“If the youkai also took part…” said Arnold.

“The ratios would still be incorrect, because there are now more weebs in Gensokyo than youkai!”

“That we know about,” said Arnold. “Maybe there are thousands of youkai who just aren’t in the games.”

“Wishful thinking. We are clearly here to be eaten, best accept it now guys.”

“Wouldn’t it make more sense to snatch a few random humans at a time then?” I asked. “The numbers might not even be noticed.”

“I think you’re right,” he acknowledged. Wiki huffed as he stuffed a wad of weeds into his basket. “I wonder if anyone noticed us disappearing.” The thought made me stand up straight. I knew I could disappear without drawing attention, but five hundred did seem like a lot.

“They probably thought it was a cult,” said Arnold. Net cults were the first thing I’d think of, too.

“I bet some AI inferred something from the stats, even if there’s no way they’d guess the real cause.” I swallowed. “I hope they don’t come here.”

“I miss hamburgers,” said Wiki.

“I miss having my needs met without any thinking on my part,” said Arnold.

“You haven’t eaten a real hamburger in years, if you were getting them from the AIs.” I grit my teeth. This could get political if I wasn’t careful.

“I miss fake hamburgers, then. They were superior to the real thing anyway.”

“So you want the AIs to come here?” I couldn’t help myself. I was pretty sure I’d stand by the barrier with a stick and stab any drone, truck, or camera spider that tried to come through, if I had to.

“Of course not,” he said. I nodded, of course not, he was too smart for propaganda… and I took a deep breath. Most people knew the AIs were bad, even if it had somehow become a faux pas to say as much.

“More women would be nice, though,” said Arnold. The conversation went on to different things.

Later we took the weeds to the chicken coop. Dragging the cart wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, although we did have to turn around and push against it to prevent it from rolling down some steeper hills. We met up with Sasha at the coop, and she helped us throw the weeds onto the ground nearby.

“Where are all the chickens?” asked Arnold. I wondered the same. Only a few hens were pecking at the massive pile of weeds we were dropping next to several other massive piles.

“They are let out during the day,” she said.

“I’m jealous,” he said. As we unloaded the cart more and more chickens started coming back. “Think they have a union? Are chickens smarter than fairies?”

“Are they smarter than us?” I asked.

“They threatened a chicken coup,” said Wiki. “Maybe Yukari allows us to take classes just so we are classified as free-range.”

After unloading the cart we shoveled it full of chicken manure. We would take it right back to the fields. The chicken coop had bamboo slats that allowed the feces to accumulate in piles underneath. We used a long rake to reach far enough.

Sasha came back with us, which was a blessing, because the cart was way heavier when loaded with shit.

“Everything’s a cycle,” I grunted. “Too bad we couldn’t just get the chickens to live out here.”

“We will bring them out, though,” said Sasha. “When the bugs get bad.”

“Won’t they eat the crops too?” asked Arnold.

“Not if there are enough bugs. They have preferences.”

“The chickens are smarter than us.”

“Satori didn’t join us today, by the way,” she added.

“That’s fine,” said Wiki.

“It’s not!” I said. “We need more practice. Satori would be super useful for helping us disentangle our emotions!”

“Her entire point in canon is that she wouldn’t be,” countered Wiki. “Satori doesn’t understand emotions, only thoughts. For that you’d want Koishi, or maybe Miko.”

“Can we even get a hold of our landlord?” asked Arnold. “We could also ask her for an air conditioner while we were at it.”

“Let’s be reasonable,” I said. “Only ask her to read our mind, tell us how we are feeling.”

—

That night everybody was snoring loudly–everybody except for me. The hut was hot and my sunburns had begun to peel, so I couldn’t get comfortable. Eventually I just got up and went for a walk to try to cool off a bit.

I found myself by the statue of the warrior. It had a plaque that I couldn’t read in the dim light. I looked closer; it was in Japanese, so I was doubly-sunk. Maybe I’d ask Wiki about it. I sat on the bench. Trying to make danmaku here would be against the rules, but I was half-tempted to say ‘fuck it’ and try anyway. If I knew the difference between being sent home and being murdered, I might test that boundary.

Meditating without making danmaku, however, should be fine. I should have done more of it before we actually went out.

I thought about my fear, my pride, and my desperation. Inevitably, I thought about what had happened in the Outside World. I thought about how I was destined to starve to death, out there, and everybody else was too even if they didn’t know it yet. I thought about how once-upon-a-time I thought I could do something about that. I tried to think of my fate in Gensokyo, and if I could do anything about that. It made me want to pace, but I reigned it in.

My only insight was that I no longer wanted to keep fleeing through the Hakurei Barrier as a backup plan… because starving to death was probably worse than being murdered, if you thought about it. Violently murdered. I considered the AI recyclers murderers in their own right.

“Pardon me,” said a feminine voice, and I jumped into the air. I spun around to look.

A red-headed, red-eyed youkai in a black jacket was standing behind me. She had a bob cut. It was Sekibanki, whose powers were from two or three different Japanese monsters whose names I couldn’t remember at the moment. I did remember that she could detach her head, and that the monsters sucked blood or something like that. She had a black and red cape with a high collar, and a cute dark blue bow in her hair. She was pretty, kind of, although it was a bit hard to tell because her face was half-hidden. Her eyes were pretty in an intense, frightening way.

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I couldn’t see her mouth or neck; the former was covered, and she probably didn’t even have the latter. She was ten feet away. In the games she could launch her head at you.

“Fuck,” I said, backing up. I bumped into the statue. “Crap.”

“You are eloquent, aren’t you? My name is Sekibanki.” She curtsied. “And yours?”

“...Jake,” I said. “Miss Sekibanki–”

“No need for that,” she said. “Just Sekibanki. I don’t have a family name.”

“Sekibanki. Are you… are you here to eat me?”

“No. Not at all. I don’t eat humans.”

“Oh.” I didn’t believe her. “Good.”

“I feed on their fear.” I started to believe her a bit more. She was six inches shorter than me, but I still felt fear.

Sekibanki was a youkai living in the human village, I recalled. She couldn’t very well go around murdering people, could she? I tried to slow my beating heart, and she might have smiled. It was hard to tell when I couldn’t see her mouth.

“... are you eating my fear right now?”

“... A little bit, yeah. But if I were here for that, I’d have brought friends, and we’d make you a lot more afraid.” She tilted her head, and it turned way too far in her cape’s high collar, until it was almost sideways. Just as quickly she turned it back. She took a step forward. I bumped into the statue again. “I guess my way is less direct than theirs. I’m more of a scavenger than a predator. A crow that follows the wolf, you see, because I’m not the one with the teeth.”

I knew the wolf she was talking about–Ima-something Kagerou, a werewolf. If only Wiki were there. I wondered if Kagerou killed humans, and Sekibanki tasted their emotions in the meantime. That’d make Sekibanki the dog at the table, ironically, waiting for scraps.

I looked around. There was nobody else, as far as I could tell.

“What are you here for, then?”

“To ask questions, which is why I have answered yours.” She slowly stepped around the bench and took a seat, then patted the bench beside her. “Please, sit and speak with me.”

“Um.”

“Your fear is tasty indeed, but it is also distracting.” She sighed. “I will tell you a simple secret, if you promise to keep it under your hat?” I was still wearing my sun hat. I wanted it to be protected from danmaku, so I was making it part of myself.

“Sure.”

“You don’t have to be afraid. Lady Tomoe will protect you.”

“Who?”

She pointed up at the statue. “That is a guardian statue, the image of a renowned human warrior. They are a measure set up in the human village, preemptively, by Haniyasushin Keiki, the goddess of human creative striving.” She let her hand fall. “This bench is here for a reason, Jake.”

“And you can’t attack me while I’m near it?”

“I can’t attack you because you are in the human village,” she said. “However, that statue prevents any nearby youkai from moving quickly, as well.”

“What do you mean?”

“If I tried to chase you it would bend my path and throw me to the ground.”

“Ah, that explains everything.”

“Were I cruel, I would have approached you somewhere where you had more disadvantages.” That meant she could attack me, and that they’d set up measures just in case she decided to do it after all. The human village thing was a custom, and this was physics–no, magic–but something that would help me even if Sekibanki decided to start breaking rules.

If she wasn’t lying.

“The village has a lot of these statues,” I said. One next to every bathroom, I recalled, perhaps to prevent people from getting caught with their pants down.

“That is true. They are new additions. It is all very headache-inducing.”

I wondered if someone who ate fear ever had to go to the bathroom. With some care, I sat on the bench next to Sekibanki, and she continued.

“The statues are supposed to make humans impatient and restless, as well. It is odd that you linger near them.” I asked her some questions about it, and she explained that even a gentle compulsion was usually enough to move the unknowing.

“Does it make youkai want to move fast, too?”

“Of course.”

“Huh. It’s kind of a mass spectrometer for youkai, I guess.”

“A what?” She leaned forward, but not far enough that I could see her not-a-neck.

“A device in the Outside World for analyzing chemicals. It prevents charged fragments of chemicals from moving in a straight line.” I had to remind myself that Sekibanki hadn’t gone to high school in the Outside World.

“Do chemicals attack humans?” she asked. I blinked.

“Sometimes, kind of? But that’s not… really what it’s for.”

“This statue is not a Spectre Eater, then,” she said. “I’m not sure what Mass is… something to do with Christianity?”

“You know what, nevermind. Is this what you wanted to talk about?”

“Yes. I’d like you to tell me about the Outside World.”

“It’s a big place. Do you want to know anything in particular?”

“Yes. However, I am not sure how to word my question.”

I hadn’t sat very close to her, and she wasn’t getting closer to me. Her head was slowly bobbing up and down, I noticed, about half a centimeter, like it was trying to get away. I wondered if she had to concentrate to keep it from flying off. I was having to concentrate a bit myself.

“Something’s going wrong, out there,” she said. “I was hoping you’d have insights into the matter.”

I wondered if she could taste my thoughts. Maybe some level of mind reading was common to all youkai.

Then I swallowed and thought about it a bit more. I wasn’t certain what she was talking about. Any of a number of things were going wrong in the Outside World, and perhaps many things I didn’t even know about. There was one really specific area that I was concerned with, but it would be an assumption to think she meant that.

“Can you be specific?” I asked. “Do you have any hints?”

“No,” she said. “It’s just that all the recent arrivals are afraid, to varying degrees, and I don’t know why. Unlike… my associates, I think it is a mystery worth pursuing.”

I blinked. “Hijiri gave a demonstration–”

“Not that,” she said, her head twisting again. “I tasted that, and it was excellent and pure. This is something else. They feel this fear when they talk about the Outside World, which they don’t do very often, which is suspicious in itself.”

“I see.”

“It tastes bad, like meat that has started to rot.”

“Like… a fear that they can’t escape? Something they can’t do anything about?”

“Just so. Do you have any idea about that?”

I swallowed. “I have some theories. You could be thinking about the internet and the twenty-four hour news cycle. On the other hand, I was an alignment researcher before I lost my job, so…”

“What is that?”

“Someone who works to make AIs safer to use,” I said. “There were two kinds: the kind that made them act nice, and the kind that tried to make them less of an existential threat.” The former weren’t really alignment researchers, in my opinion, not any more than doctors of philosophy were medical doctors.

She nodded, slowly, her entire head rotating to make her face go up and down. “I want to know about the A Ice, and what it’s doing in the Outside World. Your fear, now, is starting to taste about right.”

“I don’t…” It took me a second. “AIs, is what I said.”

“Pardon me?”

“‘AI’ is two letters, A and I. It means' artificial intelligence’.”

“I apologize, Jake. I don’t understand–how can intellect be artificial?”

“I’ll try my best to explain.”

As we went along, I kept having to take a step back. At first I thought I had to start with computation, then I thought I had to start with computers, then I thought I had to start with electricity–then I had to start with mathematics, after all! There was a lot she simply didn’t know.

To her credit, she listened patiently and asked good questions.

–

“Rocks have very little intellect in Gensokyo,” she said. “If they are even made of this ‘silicon.’” I’d told her rocks could think, and she’d taken it in stride.

“It’s more about the arrangement of metal within them,” I said. “The point is, you can make a device that does calculations very fast, and with that device, you can do some very interesting things, and we have a lot of those devices in the Outside World. They are called computers.”

“I know of them. This is taking longer than anticipated.” Her head turned completely around, to look up at the stars. I saw a glowing white mist shot through with red where her neck was supposed to be. “The witching hour is almost over. Can we meet here again, at this time, in three days?”

“I suppose,” I said. That would be Sunday night, after the mysterious festival that Yukari had made us promise to attend. “Maybe I can ask you more questions, at that time?”

“Of course,” she said, slowly standing. I saw her head wobble. “That is only fair.”

“One thing, real quick,” I said. “Why did you approach me, of all people?”

“That is simple. You have more of this fear than almost anyone else, and you isolated yourself. That made it easier to approach you.” That my solitude was a factor might be a problem, for the favor I was about to ask.

“So, if I wanted you to teach me and my friends about danmaku–” I started.

“I’m sorry, Jake, but I prefer to keep this a secret. I will answer any of your questions, but please don’t tell your friends about our meeting.” Her head wobbled. “Neither will I tell mine.”

I frowned. “Look, I’m pretty loyal to my friends. They’d want to know, and they definitely want to learn about danmaku.”

“I am also loyal to my friends. However, if my friends knew I was approaching you for answers about the Outside World, they would not approve.” Sekibanki looked away. “I’m undermining the relationship of fear that youkai have with humans. It is a very serious thing, so much so that I must ask you to promise to tell nobody. Already, the humans of the human village are not fearful enough.”

I considered it. Keeping a secret from the others was a bit of a betrayal, but I didn’t want to squander this opportunity. Youkai were valuable contacts, and Sekibanki was one of a very few I might be able to reach. In fact, she was the only youkai that ever said anything about wanting to see me more than once, unless you counted Rinnosuke telling me to buy something.

It was odd that Rinnosuke hadn’t mentioned her as a possibility. I wondered if he even knew about her. From what I remembered of the lore, she kept a low profile. That was another reason she might be a valuable asset.

“Okay,” I said. “Deal. I’ll be helping my friends learn danmaku with your lessons–I just won’t tell them who is teaching me. I’ll act like I figured it out myself.”

“Very well,” she said. “And I will perhaps tell my friends what I’ve overheard about the Outside World, without revealing your existence. I listen to the humans talk. I hear many things.”

Sekibanki walked away. I watched her go, and waited a few extra minutes before I returned to my dorm. The others were still snoring away.

It took me a long time to fall asleep.

I couldn’t decide whether meeting with Sekibanki again would actually be a good idea. I knew I would, even as my stomach tied itself in knots. I just worried that a further meeting could end in my demise. No big deal.

However, I didn’t think to worry about ways I could fail to keep a secret.