“If you do end up outside the village,” I said, “you will need to be prepared!”

Wiki shook his head. “I’d have to leave the village to take the test. That’s an unacceptable risk.”

“What if you went during the middle of the day, surrounded by protection, and came right back in the boundary?”

“Rumia would appear from nowhere and eat me,” he said. “Fate will bend to put me at risk. That’s how Remilia’s power works.”

“If that’s true, it doesn’t matter how hard you try to stay in the village, you’ll get forced out.”

“Accurate,” he said, “But no sense making it easy.”

“Are we sure that it wasn’t just a warning?” asked Arnold. “She didn’t seem to be cursing you…”

“It’s immaterial,” said Wiki. “She knew she could stop it, and refused to do so.”

“What about rising to meet your fate?” I asked. “Look, if you are going to get killed outside the village no-matter-what, you might as well set a policy of going out of the village before you get forced out, so you can have the benefits along with the drawbacks of being cursed.”

“That way lies the self-fulfilling prophecy.” Wiki shook his head. “The very next time I go out of the village could be my last.”

“I’ll try a metaphor,” I said. “If fate was going to force you to drown, would you stop drinking water?”

“That’s a stupid analogy,” said Wiki.

“Of course you wouldn’t, because then fate would just make you drown before thirst killed you! Whereas if you drank water like normal, you might choke to death in ten years!”

“Refusing to leave the village won’t get me killed, though! That’s ass-backwards!”

“Actually, it will. Because if you don’t pass the danmaku test, you won’t be able to dissuade youkai. When you inevitably get forced out of the village anyway, you’ll have no recourse.”

“Jake might be right about this one,” said Sasha, “Even if it pains me to say it. Keine’s been teaching us the rules of engagement, one of which is that if you start a danmaku battle, the youkai have to respond with danmaku.”

“And then they’ll coerce me into letting them kill and eat me,” he said.

“You’ll get a chance to run away,” I said. “Your odds go way up if the youkai knows you are a danmaku user, so demonstrating even weak danmaku provides a benefit.”

“That would explain why all the protagonists are so trigger-happy…” he said, rubbing his chin.

“Yeah, and firing off a danmaku bullet is step four of ten. There’s a whole checklist for surviving a youkai encounter!”

“What’s step one, then?”

“Only going out during the day,” I said. “Step two is sticking to the main roads, and three is running from strangers that you don’t immediately recognize.”

“She taught us a song to remember it,” added Sasha, putting a hand over her face. “It’s a lesson for fairies as well as for humans. The fairies didn’t have to take an exam, though.” Probably because they couldn’t read, I thought.

“Well, I could take the test in the village, then,” Wiki said. Sasha snorted.

“There’s a practical and a written part. You’ve been missing out, egghead.”

“What you could tell me is probably most of the benefit anyway.

“Perhaps,” I admitted, “but step four is danmaku, and a little bit of power goes a long way.”

Wiki seemed to consider it. After a moment, I went on as gently as I could.

“Don’t forget that we’re on your side, Wiki. If you really don’t want to, we’ll respect that.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Sasha. “Oh, I won’t force you or anything, it’s just that I don’t respect you,” she clarified.

“Half-thanks, then,” he said.

“The point is that you should return to Keine’s class,” I said. “You should pass the danmaku escort test. You’ll have to leave the village again, a couple of times, but what you gain will help you far more than what you risk, in terms of options.”

“Fine,” he said. “Let’s say that I accept your logic, that leaving the village a few times won’t make my total risk go up by much, and that it’s worth it to pass the escort test. There’s just one problem. I still can’t produce danmaku!”

I smiled. “That’s why you should go on dates.”

–

“So Lady Remilia told you that it’s dangerous for you outside the village,” said Reika, “but you want to pass this escort test before your unknown fate gets you killed… because if you take the test now it makes it less likely for your fate to come true later? A sort of, I don’t know, advance payment of risk?”

“Yes, exactly,” said Wiki. “Well-said. So what do you think?”

Even after a night’s sleep, Wiki still had misgivings about my plan. He’d said we should ask Reika for advice, in addition to asking her to escort us. We were standing around the lobby of the bathhouse.

“You’re not really selling this day trip,” she said. Reika took a payment from a man covered in dirt. He wordlessly went through the ogre door. “You could have just offered to buy me lunch again.”

“I knew you shouldn’t have told her,” said Sasha. “‘Hur, dur, I’m dangerous to be around, let’s hang out.’”

“I have an obligation to be forthright,” Wiki responded. He turned back to Reika. “If you don’t want to date me anymore, either, I’d understand.”

“We’re dating?!” asked Reika, her eyes going wide.

“W-well, we could be, if you still want to,” said Wiki. “If you ever wanted to. Sorry, I did this out of order. I just thought with the gifts–well, given what Miss Scarlet said I wouldn’t blame you if–”

She frowned at him. “Are you trying to carrot-and-stick me into escorting you outside the village? The carrot being dating and the stick being… well, you’re only sharing a carrot, I guess.”

“Heh,” said Arnold.

“No!” said Wiki. “We can date either way!”

“That’s good, because I can’t condone leaving the village if Miss Scarlet advised you against it. It’s a shame, because I’m pretty sure all the best places to go on a date are outside the village.”

“So we are dating?” he asked, somewhat hopefully.

“Regretfully,” she said, but she gave him a smile. Reika walked around the counter, and embraced Wiki, who returned it somewhat enthusiastically. “Good thing you have me, or you’d get yourself killed in about two seconds.”

“Heartwarming,” said Sasha, “But don’t you want Wiki to become stronger?”

“His strength is his giant brain,” she said. She gave him a squeeze. “That’s enough for me. ‘Dating’ is an Outside World thing, by the way. I don’t know much about it.”

“I’d be glad to teach you what I know,” declared Wiki. “Oof. You’re stronger than you look.”

“He doesn’t know shit,” added Sasha.

“Then we will figure it out together!” Reika said, releasing him and beaming. “My strength is all the scrubbing I have to do.”

“Heh,” said Sasha.

“I’m a bit jealous,” mumbled Arnold. “His brain can’t be that big.”

“Me too, buddy,” I said, patting his back. I spoke louder. “I still think taking the test is the best course of action.”

“Yeah, well,” said Wiki. “I’m going to defer to the local’s advice.” It wasn’t a bad idea. I could ask Sekibanki about it as well. She might know something about how Remilia’s power worked. Any avenue of forestalling Wiki’s fate was worth pursuing.

“Even if you won’t take the test,” I said, “We’ll teach you what we learn.”

“Thanks,” he said.

—

“You want to talk about one of your human associates?” asked Sekibanki, her face plainly disgusted. We sat on the bench together, late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning.

“No,” I said. “Not directly. I’m asking about Remilia’s ability to manipulate fate.” I explained to her that Wiki had been warned that he would meet a violent end, and that he should stay in the village. She nodded impatiently.

“Remilia is fundamentally a manipulator,” she said. “Your friend was safe until she spoke. Then he was doomed.”

I frowned. “Wiki’s right then. She cursed him.”

“Yes. No.” Sekibanki put a hand on her chin, and her entire head lifted up, exposing a white, foggy connection. “If a few words could send him on a path to his demise, he was partially cursed already. Being in Gensokyo is enough for that.”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Well, is there any way at all to get him off the doomed path?”

“No,” she said. “If there were, Remilia wouldn’t have spoken to him in the first place. Unless she was lying, and manipulating him, I suppose, to achieve some other goal with his fate.”

“Oh, that’s super easy to understand! Does she see when peoples’ fate hangs in the balance, like a fog, or something?” I scuffed my shoe on the ground, like I was stepping on a bug. “Her power makes no sense to me.”

Sekibanki shrugged. “That’s by her design. Sensical means predictable, predictable means less frightening. But as to whether Wiki was cursed by her, or whether she merely spoke a truth, or whether she was tricking him to her own ends–it could be any combination or all three. I suspect it is primarily the first two, however.”

“Why is that?”

“Remilia’s arrogance is difficult to explain. She is like a fencer that prides herself on disarming an opponent with the smallest move possible… but she also looks for opponents who are prone to dropping the blade.”

“So she said the least possible to guarantee that Wiki’s own actions would lead to his fate.” Sekibanki dropped her chin and her head resettled as she nodded. “And there’s truly nothing we can do?”

“You can try, and trying will be part of the cause.”

“Frustrating. Have you ever fought her?”

“No. We never cross paths. You may make inferences about my power, and her choice of opponents.” Sekibanki was a stage two boss, whereas Remilia was a final boss. I wasn’t fooled. “Any other questions?”

“So many, but I’m not sure they have answers.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Thanks.”

“For this knowledge, I will exact a terrible price.”

“What’s that?”

“Tell me what Doom is, and why humans are so obsessed with it? What is The Ultimate Doom, Doom; the Nexus of Evil, and Galaxy in Flames?”

“I think they’re videogames?” I offered. I’d been seeing a lot of Galaxy in Flames memes before I abandoned the Outside World. Sekibanki listened to my half-formed explanations with rapt attention, until her head suddenly spun around, making me flinch.

“You’d be a good character for a horror title,” I said. Probably not an open-world third person shoot-em-up AI-extended sandbox, like Galaxy of Flames, but not everybody can be doomguy. I turned to face the same direction, toward the center of the village. “What’s going on over there?”

Her head turned back, making me flinch again. “Someone is having a nightmare. I was distracted. So this Doom thing isn’t literal doom?”

“Not at all,” I said.

“Unfortunate. And yet, people mention it in conjunction with AI.”

“Ah, well, let me tell you about generative AI and arbitrarily-extensible environments…”

—

My first lesson with Maroon was the next day. Once again, I found myself waiting with the meatheads, as I couldn’t help but think of them.

“Where’s Chris?” asked Arnold.

“He’s been disqualified,” said Meiling with a shrug. “He didn’t want to stay on as a servant, either.”

“Oh…” Arnold said, sounding put-out. “Why? He’s such a cool guy!”

“Fond of viking chants,” observed another person who’s name I didn’t know.

“Honestly, he was too short,” said Meiling with an awkward chuckle. There was some spread-out laughter while eleven pairs of eyes each took surreptitious turns to glance at me. “Well. Today’s lesson will be about physical danmaku, and how to manifest it in your fists and your implements.”

“That sounds super useful and interesting,” I said, mostly to Arnold.

“Let’s go,” said Sakuya, from a monochrome world.

Before long we were inside. We wove through the mansion at a clip. Sakuya could walk very fast. I wouldn’t say her heels were excessively high, but I was still impressed. I wondered if she’d gone slower the first day, so I could look around, or whether something was making her impatient.

“I should try to learn the path myself,” I said, quietly. “Your time is valuable.”

“I’m glad you realize it,” she said. “Sure, why not. Go ahead.”

I walked through two rooms and into the great hall. I made a beeline straight toward the library. Sakuya caught my shoulder.

“It's left here, in the storage room.”

“Seems… indirect,” I said. We went into the storage room. Sakuya seemed to be considering her words.

“You aren’t to cross the great hall for any reason,” she finally said.

“What? Why?” I asked.

“Patchouli has built magical defenses into it.”

“That seems like the sort of thing you’d tell someone on the first day,” I said.

She shrugged. “If I told you about every boobytrap we passed, we’d never get to the library.”

This was coming from a lady who could literally stop time. I felt some sweat form on my brow. Did boobytraps still work when time was stopped? Could they read intent, like the cursed book? Did most of them somehow know I wasn’t an enemy?

“Well, maybe tell me about the worst ones?” I offered.

“There’s no point in trying,” said Sakuya. “I only know about… oh, half of them.”

—

Patchouli set Maroon and I up in the library with a wide table and a couple of chairs. There were writing implements of all description; a quill, a fountain pen, a mechanical pencil, and three boxes of half-used crayons. The librarian also provided rolls of parchment and a sheaf of A11 paper. I wondered if the parchment or the paper was more expensive.

“This is a lot,” I said. I yelped when a couple of fairies flew down and dropped armloads of books onto the table in a pile. One of them overturned a sack.

“Disrespectful,” said Patchouli as the fairies cackled and took off toward the vaulted ceiling. “Demon!”

“Yes?” asked a koakuma, who stepped out from around a bookshelf.

“Punish them appropriately.” The demon also took to the air. Patchouli gestured, and the pile of books straightened itself out, stacking the books from largest to smallest. Even creased pages unbent, and for a moment I considered learning that magic instead of flight.

“Is this all… manga?” I asked. I leafed through a volume. It had been translated, I noticed when I was done considering the plausibility of the sex scene in chapter one.

“Substantially, it would appear so,” said Patchouli. “The library is sadly lacking in children's books, although I do see a few among these. I asked Needles and Ally to gather books of appropriate difficulty.” She looked down at another of the volumes, blushed, and turned it over. The back was even worse, so she hid it under another book. “I should have suggested appropriate content as well, it would seem.”

I resisted the urge to ask Patchouli how many human proclivities she possessed as a youkai. From far away I heard two yelps, one of which was a bit louder. A moment later Koakuma–a koakuma, I reminded myself–returned.

“Will that be all?” asked the demon.

“Return any of these books that contain nudity to their proper places,” said Patchouli. The demon picked up a book, flicked through the pages with her thumb, and set it down.

“May I ask for help?”

“Yes.”

I very carefully didn’t move to help the demon, as that was against the rules. Neither did Maroon, who was breaking a mechanical pencil lead into ever-smaller pieces, oblivious to anything transpiring nearby. I saw her put a piece of graphite in her mouth and make a face.

“Help,” said the demon. She was joined by two more red-haired, bat-winged demons in black-and-white bowtied dresses. They weren’t exactly duplicates of each other. They looked more like sisters, or maybe fraternal twins of slightly different heights. The trio of demons began to sort through the manga.

“Well,” I said, sliding Maroon a sheet of paper. “Before we get started, let’s test your knowledge. Why don’t you jot down the characters you already know, if any?”

“Okay! I know lots of characters.” She started drawing a picture of a dog with pointed ears. It had huge, round eyes.

“I meant letters,” I said. Maroon grabbed a green crayon. “Wait, is that Dobby the house elf?”

“Yeah, he’s my favorite! Well, him and Hermione.” She pronounced the name right.

I couldn’t help myself. “If you can’t read, how do you know what Harry Potter is?” Surely she hadn’t seen the reboot!

“Miss Knowledge read it to us! And the demons.” The librarian was cooly turning pages in her chair.

“That’s nice,” I said. I didn’t say it was out of character, but I was pretty confident that Patchouli had done it more for the possibility of fairies learning to read than the desire to make the fairies or demons happy. She confirmed my suspicions a moment later.

“I’m surprised she retained any of it,” said the librarian. “Squabbles kept breaking out, which is a common occurrence when they are bored. I ended up handing it off to an assistant.”

“Ah, so the demons did the reading. I’d thought you’d read to them, too.”

“Why would I do that? Demons can already read.”

“Apparently.” It made me wonder why we were bothering with any of this. What could a fairy do that a demon couldn’t?

“Anyway,” said the librarian, “It would appear you chose well in your disciple. Maroon has an attention span measurable in minutes.” Patchouli sighed; the demons had finished sorting the books, and were carrying back ninety percent of them. On the bright side, the fraction of children’s stories had gone way up.

“Yeah,” said Maroon. “It was so interesting I forgot to fight half the time!” She showed me her finished picture of Dobby. There was a lot of red on the image, several indistinct objects, and a stick-figure with a scarred head, kneeling. Dobby was the only clear part of the image.

“I’m… not sure I would have picked that scene.”

“Making his best friend an omelet?” asked Maroon, quizzically. She looked at the picture again, a frown on her face.

“Too much ketchup, Maroon,” said Patchouli. She raised her purple eyebrows at me. “They stopped at The Chamber of Secrets. Some advice, Mister Thorne; don’t spoil the fairies.”

“My mistake. Maroon, do you know any letters?”

“I don’t get letters…” she said. “Oh! But if I learn to read, maybe people will start sending them!”

“I meant–here, look,” I said, writing A B C on a piece of paper. “These are letters, see. ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’.”

“That’s a short letter,” said Maroon, scribbling a long curly line on her own page. She drew several–a child’s imitation of writing. “I could write a book! A whole shelf–I could have my own library!”

“You could,” said Patchouli, gently. “But you’ve got to work up to that. Listen to Jake, now.” The librarian herself wasn’t paying close attention; she was still reading.

I exhaled. To teach this fairy to read, I’d probably also have to teach her to write.

I tried to help Maroon focus. It quickly became apparent that I’d bitten off more than I could chew. The fairy frowned down at my writing, not like she couldn’t understand it, but like it was an alien species from another dimension and was threatening to crawl up her nose. I saw her eyebrows work up and down.

“It doesn’t want to sit still,” she said, turning her head to look at it from all directions. I put a hand to my head. There were human learning disabilities like dyslexia; I wondered if it was possible that the fairies had that, or something.

“Let’s just look at one at a time. What is this one?” I said, pointing at a letter.

“You called this one an ‘eh’?”

“An ‘A’, yes. Like ‘apple’ or… ‘ally’, or ‘art’.”

“Wut.”

“All those start with the letter ‘a’.”

“Eh?”

“Yes. Look, here, try writing it for yourself.”

I handed her a green crayon. Maroon screwed up her face, staring at my lone letter. Finally, she drew a swirly scribble that had a loop. It looked more like a fish than an ‘a’, but it was a start–at least until she scribbled a plus sign over it, then started to draw other random shapes nearby.

“Stop, stop,” I said. “You almost had it!” We went back, and this time she managed something that approximated an ‘a’. “Here,” I said, drawing a straight line across the page. “Keep writing ‘a’s there for now. Miss Knowledge, do we have lined paper?”

“Not yet, Mister Thorne,” she said, snapping her fingers. “Demon! Draw straight lines on a few of these sheets.”

A koakuma appeared from a direction I hadn’t been looking. She held a mechanical pencil between her fingers, and swiped it across a sheet, making a perfectly straight cut that caused it to fall in half.

“Apologies.”

“Try again with a crayon,” said Patchouli.

In short order, we had practice lines for Maroon. She drew a few of the least letter-like shapes I’d ever seen, but they were going in sort of the right direction. I told her to fill the line.

“Just keep doing that,” I said. “Miss Knowledge, I should have asked this earlier; how did your own efforts go?”

“Much the same, Mister Thorne.” She turned a page. “The fairies can’t focus, and the idea of a letter slips from their mind like a stone beneath the water. I also asked the demons to teach, and they dutifully spent several days boring my more diminutive assistants to tears.” She turned another page; she read very fast indeed. “I thought it best to put a stop to it, before their spirits were irreparably crushed.”

I looked down at Maroon, who seemed to be having fun, at least. She’d filled several lines with increasingly pointy loops, then squares, then little drawings of snails, birds, stars, and all kinds of other things that weren’t letters.

“Alright,” I said. “Let’s try ‘B’ now.”