“If you win, I’ll tell you how to read,” said Cirno. “If I win, I get to eat all that food!”

She didn’t wait for me to agree or disagree, or even clarify that it was Maroon who needed the lesson. Instead, Cirno flew into the air and emitted a burst of blue danmaku, each of which was the size of a football. We scrambled to dodge.

“Form up,” said Arnold, right before a giant icicle shot straight through his head.

“No axing me this time!” cried Cirno. She flew out over the water, and Maroon chased after her.

I checked on my friend. I didn’t see any red; at least the ice fairy had used danmaku. Cirno stopped and turned around over the lake. I jerked reflexively and it saved me. The next barrage had been aimed at my face.

The icicles were damn fast, but I could still see them coming.

“Frosty the snowman was a jolly, happy soul!” Arnold sang as he sauntered over to the lake and disrobed. “With a corncob pipe, and a button nose, and two eyes made out of coal!” He leapt in with a big splash.

“That’s not a nursery rhyme!” I shouted, as I ran to avoid a stream of icicles. They stuck out of the ground like arrows, but came as fast as chaingun fire. Cirno’s aim was lacking.

“What you sing is up to you!” said Maroon. She returned fire in great red bursts, forcing Cirno to take a moment to dodge. “Just like whether you take off your pants!”

“Huh.” I continued to bob and weave. It made some sense; the compulsion was supposedly a general form of obedience, rather than a list of specific actions. It wasn’t like the fairies had compelled each step, or each word out of the martial artists’ mouths. The men had been told to sing and swim, but the specifics weren’t specified.

Compulsions were high level directives, and allowed for some personalization. Or even misinterpretation, probably? Frosty the Snowman wasn’t a nursery rhyme.

I kept dodging bullets as I thought this. I didn’t feel strong enough to fight back; I’d drained myself fighting the smaller fairies. The other martial artists tried to come out of the lake to join the fight, but as they did Cirno shot them down. They couldn’t dodge in the water. Not a single one made it back onto land.

Chris swam to Cirno’s position, but she got him too. She wasn’t in the water; she was in the air. He joined the other men, who were singing various songs.

If all the martial artists had sung nursery rhymes, it was their own expectations more than anything. It must have been because Chris had started with a nursery rhyme.

“Take this!” said Maroon, hitting Cirno with a burst. Cirno wasn’t looking at me anymore; it was the perfect time to strike. I went for weak but inexpensive omnidirectional fire.

I emitted a burst of red danmaku, fifteen bullets or so. Some of them went in Cirno’s general direction, but her attention didn’t leave Maroon. I burst again; eleven bullets, that time. If only she were closer. The men continued their singing, sitting on the edge of the lake. The bank was deep enough that they could paddle their legs and splash as they rocked back and forth.

Cirno might not even be compelling us to do anything more than ‘lose,’ but if we all currently thought that losing meant jumping in the lake and singing, we would. As I thought this, I watched the two other martial artists left on land hide behind a boulder and a tree.

Hiding was prudent. Bruno couldn’t swim, but beyond that they could do nothing; Cirno was flying high over the water, and they only had physical danmaku.

“You’re cleverer than you look…” I mumbled. I dove under a bush, for all the good it would do me. I realized I recognized it. I had hid in it before.

“Hold still!” said Cirno to Maroon, who was evading in very obvious figure eights.

“No!” called back the red fairy. She burst again. “Sorry…!”

“Hold still… cutie pie!” said Cirno.

“Eh?” Maroon halted midair, her face reddening, and I could have sworn that the fairy experienced a segfault. She was blasted with a stream of icicles.

“Hah! Works every other time!”

“But…” said Maroon, shivering. Her breath came out foggy. She wasn’t down yet–youkai had the ability to take multiple hits–but Cirno swept her again, and she started to descend toward the water. “That’s… so… mean!”

We three humans were hiding, treating this like a game of paintball. That wasn’t appropriate for danmaku. Maroon took another hit while we cowered.

I had to do something, or she would lose. The fairy was fighting so she could learn to read! I was supposed to be her teacher! Well, I’d better set an example, I thought. Cirno was using direct attacks. If she switched, Maroon would get a reprieve.

“Rude!” I shouted, standing up from under the bush. I shot three vectors straight at my enemy, and all three pierced her. Danmaku was supernaturally-easy to aim, I thought. “Don’t be mean just to win a fight!”

“Is it mean to call her cute?” asked Cirno. She frowned, looked around at all her defeated enemies, then back toward me. She switched to bursts. Technically, I was the one being rude; I’d switched to direct fire inappropriately.

I calmly stepped to the right to avoid a bullet, then ducked another. I was breathing heavily, but I could deal with this. The burst fire was easier to dodge, in some ways.

“It’s rude to lie about your feelings to win!” I hit her with two more vectors. It felt like I was scraping the bottom of an empty jar. Cirno drifted closer, and I jerked myself to the side to dodge another bullet. I began to back up. “Maroon likes you!”

“Eek,” said the red fairy. She turned away in the open air, her face burning.

“How dare you play with her feelings!” I shouted.

“I didn’t lie!” said Cirno. “She’s cute as heck, get her a pair of glasses and I’d probably wanna be her friend!”

“Argh!” said Maroon. Her face was covered by her hands. Then a line of red danmaku telescoped from her toward Cirno’s location. It missed, but Maroon turned, causing the line to move with her. When the danmaku retracted the majority of them hit the ice fairy.

Her bullets went back and forth like a saw, or a fluttering heartbeat. I belatedly noticed the bullets were heart shaped. In my defense, I hadn’t seen direct fire from Maroon before.

“Are you a fairy of… being embarrassed?” I asked. And her feelings about Cirno were enough to become their own danmaku!

“Only one person can talk at a time!” said Cirno. She switched back to direct fire herself and pelted Maroon with ice. The lesser fairy squeaked and fell into the lake. “And you walked backward, while shooting right at me! A bunch’a cheaters, here!”

“Says the lady hiding over the lake!”

“I’m hiding?” Cirno flew to the land and around a tree, hitting the second-to-last martial artist. He started belting out a Christmas song–Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer–and made his way to the water. That meant it was just Bruno and I left to fight her.

Bruno, who couldn’t swim. Bruno, who was pretending to be a bug on the side of the rock he hid behind. Bruno, who would drown if he had to jump in the lake, even if it was only six feet deep or so.

I had to protect him.

“You waited until we were tired!” I shouted. I held up my hand and sent out a weaving barrage of danmaku. “Letting the lesser fairies tire us out! A weakling’s strategy!” Half the vectors wove while the other half were straight shots. As ten bullets turned into twenty, I felt my confidence swell.

I wasn’t juiced after all. And I realized that I shouldn’t have thought that in the first place.

The player characters of Touhou could produce direct fire for six stages, continuously. It was bombs that drained them. Direct fire was easy; indirect was costly. That was the opposite of what Keine taught us–she had said that direct fire cost more energy and I’d believed her, because she was the teacher–but what did she know? She had the mindset of a youkai.

Except, there were player characters who were youkai or half youkai. The idea that being focused was exhausting was the mindset… of a non player character, who was there to be defeated. NPCs had an easy time just, emitting nonsense in any direction.

But I…!

I was a fucking player character. My bullets kept flowing, as long as I was trying to accomplish something! The world would bend to my will, I was the one who drove this!

I could make direct fire all damn day as long as I believed in my mission!

“Stop it,” said Cirno. She only dodged left and right; I was predicting her motions automatically, and my weaving ray of arrows had some width to it anyway.

The ice fairy sent another stream of icicles. I stepped to the side, but not far enough; my shoulder was pierced. It hurt a lot despite not injuring me, like a frothing drop of liquid nitrogen had landed on my shoulder.

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

But as far as winning was concerned, it didn’t affect me at all. I only felt stronger. I still had to protect Bruno.

Cirno switched back to bursts and flew back out over the lake. Blue bullets, rather than icicles, began to fly around her in a storm. I stepped forward and back, dodging all but one. My leg was hit by the danmaku, making my shin ache.

It had grazed me. I had a small hitbox, because I was a fucking PC.

I doubled my rate of fire. Cirno was starting to panic; more and more of my bullets struck her.

“I’m going to defeat you, help Maroon learn to read, save Bruno, and be a god-damned hero!” I shouted. “I’ll probably even share food with you! I’m a nice guy!”

“Freeze sign!” shouted Cirno. “Perfect freeze!”

“What?”

It was a spell card. The first I’d seen, or at least, the first I’d heard called out. I remembered it vaguely from the games. It had some sort of gimmick.

A thousand bullets of every color shot from her in every direction. I hit the ground. The rainbow barrage went out hundreds of feet, surrounding me and everyone else. Then the bullets stopped mid-air and faded to white as they froze.

I decided to avoid touching them. The frozen bullets were like landmines.

Cirno sent a barrage of blue bullets straight at me, and I hastened to dodge. It was the simplest distraction possible. While I moved the frozen bullets around me unfroze and started moving again, perpendicular to my attention. Just like Cirno, I wasn’t ready for it.

One of them struck me in my chest. My danmaku cut out. My feet began to move.

“No,” I said. But my legs dragged me forward. “I can’t lose.” But I could, and I had.

Bruno had also been hit, and he was closer to the water. I heard him shouting. He fell, fighting a compulsion that would kill him. Then he kept crawling toward the water anyway.

“You lost, Bruno, but you don’t have to swim!” I shouted. The compulsion was to lose–that was it–he didn’t have to die. “Look, I’m not singing! You’re not singing! Just–just stop!”

But we kept moving.

“I lost!” I screamed, so that the compulsion would end. It didn’t work. Losing meant jumping in the lake. I knew it like I knew my name. Behind me, Cirno fluttered to the crate. I turned around and was forced to keep walking backwards.

“He’s going to drown!” I called out to her. I heard a splash and a stifled yell. “Do something!”

“He can just fly out?” she said. The splashing continued; Bruno was flailing, and in some ways so was I. “I can’t swim, either, who cares.”

I fell down, then just as quickly got back to my feet and continued to march, turning back around. Bruno’s panicked thrashing was before me. He was going to die. All of his friends kept singing, while he was drowning a dozen feet away. Where the fuck was Meiling?

Losing was losing Bruno. I knew it, and so it was my compulsion.

“Save him!” I screamed. I tried to make danmaku to shoot back at her, but while under compulsion it was impossible. I needed to communicate. “He can’t fly or swim!”

“What?” said Cirno, through a mouthful of apple. “That’s idiotic! Why would he jump in the lake, then?”

“FUCKING SAVE HIM!”

“I’m sorry!” She swallowed the rest of the apple in one gulp and took to the air.

The ice fairy shot past me. She flew forward and tried to grab Bruno’s frantic arm, and he yanked her down into the water. Now they both needed help.

My only shot was to lose quickly. I ran to the water and jumped in. The cold water, and perhaps seeing Cirno take some action herself, allowed me to break free of the compulsion. I swam to Bruno, my clothes weighing me down. The only thing I’d thrown off was my hat.

He grabbed me and dragged me under. He was bigger than Cirno, and he was bigger than me.

–

I stopped fighting when I realized I couldn’t win. I’d have to wait for Bruno to get weak enough to stop thrashing. Unfortunately, he was an athlete, and by the time he was ready to give up I was almost at my own limit just from holding my breath and letting him accidently punch me.

I hit him with danmaku, but it wasn’t enough. Keine had spoken about how overcoming a compulsion with a new compulsion took extraordinary effort.

Bruno finally let me go. I opened my eyes and tried to look around; we’d stirred up muck, so I had no idea which way was up, or where he’d gone. I swam in a direction and hit the ground, but with the ground identified I could push up toward the surface.

I gasped for air and treaded water. Bruno was nowhere to be seen. The other martial artists were standing in a wet crowd at the shore. Before I could get a good look, or capture my breath, there was a splash right in front of me.

I met the gaze of a youkai with blue hair, dark blue eyes, and fins for ears. Her kimono was green and her skin was pale.

“Hey,” said Wakasagihime, with placid curiosity. “Need some help?”

“Bruno–” gasp “–him first–”

“I helped him already,” said the freshwater mermaid. She glanced back to the crowd of men on the shore. I realized they were standing around someone on the ground. “He seemed to need it more.”

She only pulled her mouth out of the water long enough to speak before dipping her head back down. I was left staring at those large dark eyes. I paddled hard, fighting the weight of my wet robes.

“Yeah… I could use… help.”

She swam up to me and wrapped her arms around my torso, high up near my armpits. It took a lot of psychological effort for me to stop paddling. Wakasagihime held us up; I didn’t sink, and in fact, I began to rise out of the water.

“How…”

“I can fly,” she said, lifting us into the air. I put my arms over her shoulders. “It’s pretty useful.”

“You don’t say,” I said, holding her tight even though I’d only fall a few feet into water if I let go.

“I’m glad you’re smaller. I could barely move the other one.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Er, did you save Cirno too?”

“She saved herself. Actually, she’s over there eating all your food, with the other fairy.” That meant Maroon was safe, too. I could stop worrying.

I slumped against the youkai. Winning danmaku, losing danmaku, and drowning were all individually exhausting, and I still had to go talk to Cirno again.

We floated through the air, slowly but steadily. She was holding me tightly, strongly even. I was glad that Wakasagihime had recovered so much. Her face hadn’t looked sallow; it had been round, her cheeks full. I couldn’t see through her tail. She’d even filled out, a little bit.

“Is that a banana in your pants?” she asked.

“Actually, it is!” I said. “Do you want it?” I’d give her anything, she’d saved our lives.

“...no, that’s not really my thing,” she said. “I’m a fish.” She wiggled her fish tail to emphasize the point.

“Fair enough.” She set me on the ground. “Thank you for helping us. I don’t even know–”

“The feeling’s mutual,” she said. The fish youkai flew backward and vanished into the lake with a splash.

It wouldn’t make sense to be offended, I thought. Maybe being out of the water was as uncomfortable for her as holding my breath was, for me. I looked toward Bruno, who was coughing on the ground but otherwise seemed to have survived unscathed. The martial artists were there; Arnold had a hand on his back. They could help him.

A bit further back, Maroon and Cirno were having an argument. I walked to the fairies. Hong Meiling was there, as well, snoring on the ground.

“The fuck,” I said. I almost kicked her–she’d nearly let a student drown–but I thought better of it. Meiling might have passed out after standing too fast, I thought. I looked closer.

She had a fresh bruise on her neck, with two puncture wounds and a tiny bead of dried blood. That explained some things. I’d have to ask her about feeding the vampires, later. Maybe Remilia had demanded payment for the vegetable summoning, or something. For now I’d cut her some slack.

“Please teach me to read,” said Maroon.

“Nope,” said Cirno. “You lost!”

“You said I was cute!”

“You are!” she said. “I know lots of cute fairies!”

Maroon was crying. I patted her back. “Never meet your heroes, kid.”

“I thought you were cool!” said Maroon, to Cirno. “I really really wanna read!”

“I’m as cold as ice!” Cirno was alternating between stuffing her mouth and stuffing the front of her blouse with various plants. “This is good, you want some?”

“Actually–” I was feeling a bit hungry, after all the exertions.

“Too bad, it’s all mine!”

“Ugh. If you answer our questions, I’ll give you a bag to carry some of it,” I said. I pulled out my banana and began to peel it, glad that I grabbed a fruit that came with a wrapper. I had planned on saving it for later, but Cirno was pissing me off, so I decided to eat it in front of her. I shared a piece with Maroon, who's crying began to slow.

“Nope!” said Cirno. “Reading’s hard.”

“I just need to know how you did it.”

“Sorry. S’plaining things to idiots is hard.”

“Don’t I know it,” I said, making Maroon wince. “Not you. I meant Cirno.”

“But I’m a genius!”

“You’re a bitch is what you are,” said Satori Komeiji. “Whoops, sorry! Just reading aloud!”

Satori and Sasha were standing right beside each other. They’d walked up behind us. The mind-reading youkai looked between Sasha, Maroon and I, her third eye matching her gaze.

“Jake’s the most glad to see you, Sasha. Maroon’s a bit scared of your choker, though.”

“And Cirno?” asked Sasha.

“No thoughts, head empty. She chews with her mouth open on purpose, though.”

“No I don’t!” objected Cirno, causing a piece of a carrot to fall out of her full mouth.

“Sorry I’m late,” said Sasha “I had to find an escort.”

“I’m just happy you could make it,” I said.

“He’s upset that you weren’t there to help him beat Cirno in a fight,” said Satori. “Oh yeah, that’s definitely the right idea. Icicle Fall is her favorite move, isn’t it Cirno?”

“What?” I asked.

“I also took it upon myself to talk with Wiki a bit,” said Sasha. She walked up to Cirno and grabbed her arms. “Sorry, he said standing right next to you was the best strat.”

“Wha–”

Sasha glared and blasted the ice fairy with green blade after green blade. Cirno shrieked and sent out tons of bullets, nailing the rest of us, but Sasha was unaffected. The attack went left and right, rather than straight ahead.

I appreciated Sasha’s ability to manifest danmaku without a gesture, and to not flinch as Cirno spat half-chewed food on her. The new compulsion was to leave Cirno alone, so we followed it by silently observing and not laughing at the display. It was over after several seconds, anyway.

“You won,” said Satori, her voice flat. “Good job. You’re lucky that Cirno did Icicle Fall as opposed to any other technique.”

“It’s not my fault, she startled me!” objected Cirno.

Satori winked. “Naming a thing is enough to influence her.”

The fairy grumbled and asked Sasha what she wanted. “You don’t gotta be so… so…”

“Bitchy?” asked Sasha.

“Yeah!”

“Takes one to know one. Satori warned me about you. She said that reasoning with you is like writing with a round rock.”

“Or opening a jar with your elbows!” said Satori. She laughed. “Unfortunate! If we had brought a jar, she’d have tried it. Him, too,” she added, pointing at me.

“Shut up,” said the ice fairy. “What do ya want?”

“Help Jake teach Maroon to read,” said Sasha. The fairy turned to me.

“What’s your problem, then? With reading?”

I asked Cirno how she’d learned to read, and the ice fairy gave me the obvious answer: Keine had taught her. Somehow I’d failed to ask the primary teacher of Gensokyo about teaching people, which was its own oversight. That still didn’t explain the shifting letters and confusion that Maroon felt.

After twenty minutes and a few tests, I'd learned that the main problem was that I’d been an idiot and we didn’t need Cirno’s help at all. Cirno wrote in Japanese rather than English, but she had no problems learning a few new letters.

Neither did Maroon. She learned the first three letters of the English alphabet in about as many minutes, and drew them in the dirt with a stick right alongside Cirno.

We went back to the Scarlet Devil Mansion so I could explain my findings to Patchouli and see if she wanted to do anything about it.