“So you should provide us with resources to learn flight,” I said, looking down at my list. I was almost finished going over it. “Lessons at the schoolhouse, perhaps.”

“Flight requires even more capability than danmaku,” said Yukari. “This is at odds with your proposal to fence in the village.”

“The fence would be so people knew, not to prevent them from leaving.” For a youkai who had power over boundaries, Yukari sure hated marking any.

“A pity. I was considering it, otherwise.”

“While we’re on the subject, would you be willing to teach me how to fly?”

“If I took on disciples, you’d be first in line for flight.” Yukari smiled. “Unfortunately, I do not.”

“Reika said that you’d taught her danmaku.” The bathhouse attendant wasn’t helping us with danmaku herself, anymore, but she sometimes accompanied us to Rinnosuke’s shop, or chatted with us when we ran into her at the bathhouse.

“Did she? Well, that was long ago. Our lessons ended when she decided that she no longer wished to leave the human village.”

“Long ago? How old is Reika?” What did ‘long ago’ even mean to Yukari, who was thousands of years old?

“I would never reveal something like that about a woman.” Yukari fluttered her fan. “This feedback session is losing focus, wouldn’t you say?”

“I already know that people don’t age as fast in Gensokyo.” Reimu’s canon age was sixteen, and she would have been sixteen for like forty years if she’d remained the same since the first game’s release. She looked to be in her twenties, instead, but I hadn’t been brave enough to ask her directly. “Does time pass at a different rate here, than in the Outside World?”

Yukari smiled. “General relativity tells us that time passes differently depending on a lot of things. For example, Youkai Mountain slows time with its mass.”

“That’s not an answer to my question.”

“Mister Thorne, I believe you have misapprehended the purpose of this meeting.”

“Oh?” She was only telling me at the end.

“It is for you, personally,” she said. “How could things be going better for Jake Thorne, in Gensokyo?”

I opened my mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “Same thing. I could be learning how to fly. Also, you could bring coffee to Gensokyo.” I hadn’t forgotten Sasha’s needs.

She nodded. “Coffee is on the schedule. And now we’ve achieved the purpose of this meeting. With that I’ll bid you–”

“Can you at least guide me toward someone who can teach me to fly?” Sekibanki, Keine, Reimu, and Patchouli had all refused. I was running out of people who could fly that I might ask; Rinnosuke and Reika supposedly didn’t know how. I might try Marisa, Youmu, Alice, the Myouren Temple or the Moirya Shrine, but I didn’t have any way to connect with those people without risking my life, or groveling, or both.

What Yukari said surprised me.

“You could ask one of my assistants.” She was referring to Yakumo Ran, the kitsune, or Chen, the bakeneko. Yukari’s personal assistant was Ran, Ran’s personal assistant was Chen. They were both shikigami, also known as summoned spirits.

Yukari was so powerful that she had a tree of summoned underlings. Alternatively, Gensokyo was a really flat organization, with only three or four layers of managerial depth. Yakumo Yukari on top only two layers removed from a monstrous cat and three layers removed from the human workers, at the very bottom, right next to the fairies.

Disregarding all that, I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Yukari’s underlings.

“Where are they?” I asked.

“Oh, they’re on loan right now,” she said.

“But–”

“For that reason now is a great time to bother them! Try going to the Palace of Earth Spirits, or the Scarlet Devil Mansion.”

“I see,” I said. “I’m going to do whatever it takes to learn how to fly, even if it means going into a nest of vampires or… “ traipsing past a horde of rowdy, bathing oni into the den of a mind-reader who would instantly gain my deadly secret, “going deep underground.”

“What a boast!” Yukari fluttered her fan, and glanced at the manacles on the wall. “Just make sure some of you makes it back out again, Mister Thorne. And don’t forget that you’ll have to defeat them at danmaku.”

“Thanks,” I said, keeping in the ‘for nothing.’ If I had to defeat Chen or Ran at danmaku to learn to fly, I would be pretty screwed.

Actually, I didn’t think I could beat any of the flying youkai or humans at danmaku, nevermind the ones that would be any good at teaching. It was a catch-22. To get good at danmaku, I needed to learn to fly so that I could dodge better, but to make anyone teach me to fly I had to be good at danmaku.

I had the thought that the sole reason that the native humans in the village were so negative on danmaku was that they hadn’t realized that flight was a required secondary skill. All the youkai and humans that battled could fly. It wasn’t a coincidence!

All of them were also women, but I was choosing to ignore that part.

I looked down at my list. We’d talked about item duplication (she had denied having the ability, but she said I could try it myself if I wanted), we’d talked about teaching the fairies to read (she’d said it wasn’t worth her time, but I could try it myself if I wanted), and we’d talked about expanding the safe zone to roads and landmarks (she’d said it was flatly impossible, but I could try it myself if I wanted). Most of my complaints had been politely ignored, as expected, but at least I’d had more luck with questions this time around. I was vaguely surprised that she’d bothered to listen to me this entire time.

In fact, it was suspicious as hell.

“So, there’s one other thing I don’t quite get.”

“Only one?” she asked.

“Are you paying special attention to my group, in particular?”

“Of course, Mister Thorne.”

“Why–”

“I am giving every group my special attention, yours included. You humans are very special to me.”

“No, that’s–look. There are five hundred people in the village, or more, but even if we grant that there are only four hundred or so transplants, you can’t possibly be watching all of us all the time! Even one-inch gaps would fill an entire room!” Wiki had complained that sound should be coming out of her spying gaps, as well as going into them, and we should be hearing the din of a hundred conversations.

The only gap I could see in the jail was the one she was sitting in.

“Eh,” she said. “My gaps are full of eyes. It’s bold of you to assume I need to look at one, to see out of one, or to hear out of one, because I can hear with whatever organs I darn well please.”

“Alright,” I said. “But still. We’ve been in this meeting for, what, twenty minutes? Are you booting everyone else out after ten seconds or something?”

She smiled. “I give every immigrant the attention they need, and no more. I certainly do not drop them early. It is at least five minutes each.”

“How can you have four hundred five minute meetings in one day? That’s over thirty hours!”

Yukari blinked. “So it is. No wonder I’m so tired.”

“Can you duplicate yourself?”

“This is why it’s so perilous to loan out my computer,” she said. “Math, my true nemesis. That’s the last question I’ll tolerate, Mister Thorne, so if you’d please–”

“Can you control time?”

“He knows,” said a voice from behind me, causing me to yelp. I scrambled toward the wall and looked right behind where I’d been standing.

There was a refined-looking maid there. She wore a blue and white dress that clashed a bit with her silver hair and glowing red eyes. The maid idly twirled a knife through her fingers. She was someone I recognized: a woman with the power to control time itself.

It was Izayoi Sakuya, the Head Maid of the Scarlet Devil Mansion.

“So, it was you,” I said, trying to regain my composure or at least pretend that I had ever been composed. “Hello, Miss Izayoi.”

“Hello, Mister Thorne.”

“Just standing right behind me that whole time, huh?” She probably did that for Remilia, and probably had a lot of practice.

“Yes,” she said. “I’ve been standing around all day, in fact! For multiple subjective days! Because Lady Yakumo lost track!”

“Standing in the shadows, and somehow still revealing secrets,” said Yukari, tut-tutting.

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“I’ve been wasting my time, while my Mistress fails to hire more staff to compensate for my absence.”

“Wait, is Miss Yakumo paying you too?” I asked. She’d hired Satori, so it stood to reason. Satori had wanted money for food for her pets.

“Of course,” said Sakuya. “And my services are not cheap.”

“Does she pay you in cash?”

“No comment,” said the maid.

“Miss Komeiji did the same thing,” said Yukari, as though we hadn’t been talking. “How curious. Do surreptitious people always volunteer things to you, Mister Thorne?”

“I… I guess?”

“Lady Yakumo,” said Sakuya, “I should be helping my Mistress.”

“You made a solemn vow to assist with the check-ins–”

“That was before you moved up the schedule!”

“Yes, well–”

“If we don’t get more staff I really won’t be able to continue assisting you. You should have pushed these check-ins back a day, at least.” Sakuya is the only person I’d ever seen who would dare interrupt Yukari so many times in a row. Damn, she was impatient.

“I moved up the schedule so that you could acquire staff,” said Yukari. She fluttered her fan. “How unlike Miss Izayoi, to put something off for even a second.”

“And unlike Miss Yakumo, to adhere to a schedule shorter than a century.”

“I haven’t been!” she said, proudly. Yukari turned to me and raised her hand. “Our meeting is just about over, Mister Thorne.”

“Wait,” said Sakuya, and to my utter amazement, Yukari waited again. Sakuya turned to me. “I will teach you to fly, personally, if you do me one favor.”

“What’s that?” I hated both cleaning and getting stabbed, even if it was with danmaku. I expected her to ask me to defeat Flandre, or something equally absurd, and she did not disappoint.

“Teach a fairy maid how to read.” Sakuya walked over to me, putting her knife away. She didn’t so much sheathe her knife as make it disappear instantly. I had no idea where it went.

“...uh…”

“The fairies have more potential than anyone seems to realize,” she went on. “I’d hoped that we could make better use of them, but they are too intimidated by myself or Patchouli for any lesson to land. No-one else has the patience to attempt to teach them.”

“And what makes you think I’ll do any better? No offense, but everything I know about the fairies suggests they would make terrible students.” They were rowdy, violent, easily-distracted, lazy, forgetful, and unmotivated. Also they were nature spirits or something; reading wasn’t what they were.

“You talked to Yukari for an entire twenty minutes, and you are a powerless human.”

“That’s–”

“A truly inhuman patience combined with being no threat whatsoever.” No threat? It was like Sakuya had stabbed me. “You only have to teach one.”

“What–what good is a single fairy who can read, anyway?”

“Mister Thorne, the thing you have to understand is that fairies are competitive and jealous creatures.”

“So?”

“So, if you teach one of them to read and we offer that fairy any sort of raise–an extra pastry on Fridays, for example–the rest of them will learn how to read immediately, as a matter of course.”

“But what good are fairies that can read?” I insisted.

“No comment.”

“Huh,” I said.

“Just know that if you can teach even one of them to read, I will help you learn to fly. No matter how long it takes.” She pulled out a pocket watch and clicked it, her eyes never leaving my own.

Color rushed back to the world. The utterly silent jail gained an ominous quality. I heard water dripping and the skittering of… something, in the darkness. Sakuya’s red eyes had turned blue.

She clicked her watch and time stopped once more. Her eyes were glowing red, again.

Sakuya could stop time. She could spend… an unknowable amount of time teaching me. I might be able to learn to fly in a day, from the outside perspective, even if it took weeks subjectively. Or decades, even; rumor was that Sakuya herself was far from human.

She was powerful enough to make Yukari wait, and was offering me an alliance.

“Deal,” I said. Sakuya smiled and stuck out her hand for me to shake.

“I’ll see you at the Mansion, then.” After we shook, Yukari gapped me back to the village green.

–

In the ten real-time seconds that I’d been gone, Wiki and Arnold had already had a fight. They ran off in different directions. Arnold had said Remilia was being nice by saying anything at all, and Wiki had stomped away. Sasha explained this to me with her usual amount of patience.

“I was thinking I’d go to the bathhouse,” said Sasha. “Let those ninnies cool their heads.”

“That’s probably wisest,” I said. “I’ll follow you there.”

“Nuh-uh, dude. Today is the last day for the haunted house. You’ve got to go there.” Sasha had been cajoling me for weeks, and I’d been putting it off because I don’t actually like being scared. They were probably canceling it because the rest of the entire village had already been through it at some point or another.

Every time it had come up, I’d been assured it was terrifying. However, even Wiki was unwilling to divulge details, not wanting to ‘ruin the surprise.’

“Fine,” I said. I was distracted by thoughts of our group fragmenting.

“I’ll take you to it. And you can go to the bathhouse after, so you can get your pants cleaned.”

—

The haunted house was actually a tent. There was no line, which was good. A sign at the entrance said ‘one at a time.’

“Good luck, pussy,” said Sasha. “If you live I’ll see you back at the dorm.”

“That’s not funny,” I said. I kicked the grass.

She stared at me while wearing a shit-eating grin. I should have known that Sasha wouldn’t walk off until she’d seen that I’d entered the tent.

“You know, I still don’t have to,” I said.

“It’s fine, I have so little respect for you that losing the rest won’t make much of a difference.”

I sighed. “You’re a real bitch, you know?”

“Yeah, and you are a coward.”

“You’re wrong.” I didn’t wait for a response.

The entrance of the tent was a fabric airlock of sorts, with multiple layers of flaps separating the inside from the outside. The full light of the village quickly diminished. A short woman handed me a lantern. I thanked her. She was wearing a wide hat, but so was I, so that wasn’t unusual.

The lantern was battery-powered, which surprised me. After a moment it made sense. I could drop this without setting the place ablaze. The lantern had a paper sheath with the image of an eye on it.

I walked forward along a curved path, wondering if this lantern was rechargeable and how much Rinnosuke would charge for a solar panel. Some light was sneaking in under the edge of the tent. I walked in a circle, a spiral inward. The grass here had been trampled. There was a figure ahead, so I held up the lantern.

In front of me was a cutout of a monstrous ape, covered in wrinkles. It held up a clawed hand and arm as though to block the light of the lantern. I reflexively lowered it–no sense offending a youkai–but of course the ape didn’t react. It was a wooden cutout.

“This isn’t as scary as I expected,” I said. The woman, who was following me, nodded in agreement. We continued. I became conscious of a clicking sound.

When we rounded a corner I was met with a reflective, flaming tiger leaping at my face, paws wide. I flinched. The tiger had a ring of fire–actually reflective copper paper–blossoming around it. It was also a cutout.

“Okay, that’s a bit more scary.” My companion shook her head, so I turned to her. “You disagree?”

She reached out a green-sleeved hand and ran a finger along the paw of the cutout, tracing each of the great cat’s fingers. I didn’t get it at first, until she made claws of her hands at me, then opened her arms wide.

“Leaping without its claws extended doesn’t mean it wants a hug!” She laughed and told me I was wrong. After a moment she gestured for me to continue.

I went through another airlock and up onto a platform. The darkness became more complete. I was in the center of the tent. The walls here were gray, like concrete. In fact, they were concrete, or at least coated in some sort of cement.

The clicking was coming from the very center of the darkness. I walked toward the source of the noise. It was a small device on the ground, sitting on a bubble hatch in the platform. I leaned in.

It was a radiometer, and it was going crazy. The hatch below had a nuclear symbol painted on it. I hoped it was fake, or else all the humans in Gensokyo would be infertile.

“Yep, that’s the most terrifying thing of all,” I said. My companion did not respond. She was gone. I held up the lantern.

The entryway had disappeared, and instead there was a sign that said “The only way out is through.” That wasn’t all I saw. I’d been so focused on the ticking that I hadn’t noticed I was surrounded.

All around me were cutouts of a woman–yes, it was all the same anime-style woman–but something was wrong with her. I couldn’t make out her face. I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing. All the cutouts wore expressions; curiosity, horror, playful joy, all made alien by my brain’s inability to comprehend the facial structure. My heart began to pound. Was the radiation affecting my brain? Or was it magic?

What sort of magic could they use when painting these? The anime style only made it worse, some part of me knew the artist had talent. If they’d come from the outside world, it had been a powerful and illegal image generator.

The more I looked around, the less comfortable I became.

I gulped and looked at the hatch. It had a round handle I could twist. My course had been laid for me, but surely only grass could be beneath this platform…. unless they’d dug a deep tunnel? A bunker? Or maybe Yukari was in on it and there’d be an eye-filled gap? The radiometer continued chattering, making me wonder if I was running out of time.

If it were radiation, wasting time would kill me.

Instead of thinking about it anymore, I decided to just open the hatch and get it over with. At least I’d be able to get out from under the gaze of the incomprehensible cutouts. I quickly turned the handle until the hatch came loose. I looked in.

“Boo!” said a crow-faced person, causing me to yelp and jump back. Two sets of arms caught me before I could fall off the platform as the guffawing, masked woman came out of the hatch. She banged a metallic, hexagonal arm on the metal as she pulled off her mask.

“Y-You!” I said. Reiuji Utsuho, one of Satori’s pets, the hell raven that had absorbed the sun god Yattagarasu. She was tall, with long black hair and unfurling black feathery wings. Her cape was covered in stars. She was also laughing uproariously.

“That never gets old!” she said with a voice that was surprisingly deep, for a bird.

“Maybe for you,” said the person to my right. She had cat ears and two red braids. It was Kaenbyou Rin, Satori’s other famous pet. The cat woman looked a bit resigned, but when she saw I was looking at her she smiled and released my arm. “You did good. If they don’t open the hatch, I grab ‘em. You actually won a prize.” I tried to smile back.

My companion from before said something. I realized that the numerous cutouts were her, and I couldn’t make sense of her face, either. My weak smile faltered.

“Koishi says you want a hug,” said Rin, “But you’ll have to settle for taking one of the cutouts.”

“Er… okay,” I said. “...who?”

“Koishi for both,” said Utsuho, the bird.

“Be of good cheer,” said Rin, the hellcat. “Even after a month, only four people were brave enough to open it!”

“You’re either really smart or really stupid,” added Utsuho. “Thanks for letting me out, anyway!”

“Also, no matter what Sasha says, you aren’t a coward,” said Satori Komeiji, the brains of the operation. She walked up from the darkness, from where she’d uncovered the entrance/exit to the room. She’d pulled a rolling screen aside.

Her third eye was looking right at me. It was bigger than the eyes in her head, like an octopus with long, thin limbs. Satori smiled, even as her extra eye glared.

These were her pets and her family; of course this was her haunted house. Satori offered me a wink.

“Your fear was oddly tempered, barely even a meal for my pets. We’ll need something new for the festival, I think.”

“A meal…” I said. I thought of Sekibanki, who also ate fear, and who I definitely shouldn’t think about in this circumstance.

Satori’s smile became a frown.