After Hijiri’s outburst we were all sent to our dorms. Hijiri said something about there being less violent ways to get home, but she wouldn’t give details, which I found pretty damning. Making someone drink hemlock might be considered ‘less violent’.

The temporary office was handing out maps and some orientation materials. Satori gave us the documents while telling me to stop worrying about everything so much. My group had been assigned to dorm 12B, so we made our way there. We’d also each been given a bandana with ‘12B’ written on it. People were tying their bandanas around their arms, so I did the same.

“This is odd,” said Wiki. “All of these maps are hand-drawn… and identical?”

“Someone owns a scanner,” I suggested.

“But there are no computers? No, I suspect item duplication.” He folded the stack of papers and shoved it into his pocket. I’d already done as much.

“So we’re not going to talk about Hijiri kicking that guy’s ass?” asked Sasha.

“It was his head,” said Arnold. He was reading the orientation materials as we walked.

“Whatever, you know what I mean.” She took a moment to walk around a statue of a man in armor, a thoughtful frown on her face. “I guess if Hijiri had actually kicked his ass, he’d be in two pieces.”

“He is in two pieces,” said Wiki with a quiet voice. “Probably.”

“I mean, did anyone see where his head went?”

“I think I heard it hit a tree,” I offered. We passed another group, and three of the four strangers watched us closely as we went by. They were group 7C.

Sasha was getting stares, which was frankly ridiculous. There were already human women in the human village. The locals were all wearing traditional Japanese garb, not shorts and boots, but did Sasha’s clothes really warrant stares? Maybe they really were impressed by a female fan? Alternatively, maybe people were trying to figure out which youkai Sasha was?

(I’d have guessed Houraisan Kaguya, except Kaguya was a princess with long black hair, a dress, and deep cultural connotations in Japan. Byakuren Hijiri might have been another guess, because up until the moment she punted that guy’s head off, I might have assumed that she’d try to appear ordinary. However, the simple fact of the matter was that no Touhou characters wore shorts. If any were overweight, they hid it behind a ridiculous amount of fabric.)

“Hijiri was ruthless,” insisted Sasha. “Brutal. Cruel.”

“Why talk about it?” asked Wiki in a dark tone. “Power in Gensokyo is proportional to fighting ability, and Hijiri is powerful enough to destroy any of us.”

“So–”

“So there’s not a damn thing we can do about that.” We walked in silence for a few moments. “Although… if I were Arnold, I’d lose the ax.”

“I’m the only one here who can defeat a youkai,” he said. “I will name my weapon Youkai Killer.”

“Don’t let Hijiri hear you say that.”

“Youkai Disabler. Youkai Persuader.” He looked at the ax, a deep frown crossing his masculine face. “Youkai Tickler.”

“Let’s call it ‘The Red Flag of Requesting that you be Air-Mailed Home,” I said.

“Air-nailed,” said Wiki.

Sasha sighed. “It’s not about… whether we can do anything. I just, I don’t know, feel like we should do something, or something.” I realized that maybe she was traumatized. We probably all were. We’d seen a dude get killed. We might need help. Ideally we’d all get therapy, and not the cheap automated kind, either.

Someone should really ask each of us how we were doing, individually. Instead I decided to change the subject. Before I could think of a new one, Arnold spoke up.

“We should learn danmaku,” he said. He was reading the papers that Satori had given us. “Hijiri can’t kick off our heads if we follow the spell card rules. It says so right here.”

“Does it say what the rules are?” asked Wiki.

“No.”

“Well, without anyone willing to teach us, that isn’t going to happen,” said Wiki.

“What about Cain?” he said. “She’s offering a class, three mornings a week.”

“Do you mean Kamishirasawa Keine?” asked Wiki, saying ‘kay-ee-nay’, not that it mattered all that much. “And wait a second, gimme that.” He snatched the paper from Arnold. His eyes grew wide, then he started to laugh hysterically.

“What’s so funny?” asked Sasha.

“We’ve got to sign up for fucking classes,” he said. “Dorms, and classes! We’re in college again! And just look at this course list!”

—

Me and the others sat around our new dorm’s living room, reading the documentation. I wasn’t sure if ‘living room’ was the right thing to call it, it was more of an ‘everything but sleeping room’. There was a clay oven at the midpoint of the only ‘real’ wall (all the others were paper, or ‘shoji’ as Wiki told me). There was a low table with four places to sit that were just mats on the woven fiber floor. The oven came with a countertop and a shelf; other than that, there was no furniture. There weren’t any outlets or light switches, or gas lines, and of course there was no Wifi.

There were two pairs of bunks in closets with silk bedding. The cloth sheets were the nicest part of the whole arrangement. I would still be sleeping in a closet. My bathroom was in an outhouse that was outside, like what you might find graffitied up at a beach.

(The outhouse had a real concrete septic tank. Gensokyo had a mishmash of technology in actuality as well as in canon, it would seem.)

The outhouse also had one of those handsome statues of a Japanese warrior right next to it. My accommodations in the real world had included a commode, but no statues, so I guess there were some improvements.

I was sitting at the table. Wiki was pacing around in the small room, making it feel even smaller, and Sasha had decided to sit on the unlit oven. Arnold had slid open a paper door opposite the oven to reveal the bunks and was nestled into the lower one on the left like a giant lumberjack caterpillar in its splintery wooden cocoon.

“You idiots didn’t think to read the manual,” said Sasha.

“I did,” said Arnold.

“Sasha totally didn’t, though,” added Wiki. “Hypocrite.”

I ignored their bickering and just read. We were all looking at the course list. It was worse than we’d realized. Every afternoon, and every Tuesday and Thursday, would be dedicated to ‘required courses’. We got to choose a handful of electives, sure, but everyone had the same three ‘classes’ for more than half the week.

The non-negotiable ones were Farming, Maintenance, and Servitude. We’d either be working the land, the infrastructure, or our captors themselves.

“Are we fucking slaves?” asked Sasha.

“We are educated and many of us are overweight,” said Wiki.

“Not slaves for fuckin’, then,” said Arnold.

“That joke is in extremely poor taste,” replied Sasha. Her glare was every-so-slightly softened. A 90% glare, I’d say. She’d already realized that Arnold didn’t have a mean bone in his body. He just said unfortunate things, sometimes.

“Sorry,” he said. Then, much softer, “I’d probably do it for free anyway.”

“What does being overweight have to do with anything?” Sasha asked Wiki. “Or being educated, for that matter?”

“If they wanted slaves, they wouldn’t have chosen actual Touhou nerds to come fill out the village. We want things like running water.” There was a hand-pumped hydrant in the courtyard between us and the other 11 buildings in Complex B. “The youkai would have chosen healthy, young, uneducated…” he glanced at Arnold. “I’m not sure that reasoning about the best way to pick slaves is a good use of my brainpower at this moment. But I don’t think we’re slaves.”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Serfs, then?”

“Maybe,” he said. “They still could have picked better-suited people.”

“Maybe you have to agree to be let in,” I suggested. “Like fairies of legend, or vampires.”

“There are actual vampires in Gensokyo,” he said.

“I know that. The point is, they wanted optimal humans, but got us instead because we were the only people stupid enough to say ‘yes’.”

There was a moment of silence in our dorm.

“That makes a frightening amount of sense,” said Sasha. Wiki was rubbing his chin.

“If I were them, in that situation, the very first thing I’d do is re-educate the population, to make them into better servants.” He looked down at the course list. “Fuck.”

“You guys are looking at this all wrong,” said Arnold. Wiki started talking about some other consideration–about whether skipping class would get us sent home–but I cut him off.

“What do you mean, Arnold?”

“They just took in like, what, four hundred people?” he said. “And there’s obviously no electricity, no refrigerators.”

“No AC,” said Sasha, glumly.

“Yeah. So, they have all these noobs that need to eat and get clothes and whatnot. Who are they going to put to work for all that?”

“They have item duplication!” said Wiki, waving the paper.

“They have written document duplication,” I corrected him, and it felt good to give him a taste of his own medicine. “I think Arnold’s onto something. And look, after three months we are supposed to choose further areas of study.”

“To become more perfect servants.”

“No, you dolt,” I said. Wiki looked surprisingly hurt, and I felt surprisingly bad about it, so I walked it back. “I’m sorry. My point’s just that you don’t let serfs or slaves choose their own course of education.” I thought about Reisen’s medical form. “You also don’t custom-tailor medicine to them.”

“You do that for livestock, though,” he countered.

“You don’t…” I looked around. “Give them tables and ovens?”

“Do we have to chop our own wood?” interjected Arnold.

“You don’t let them learn danmaku three times a week,” suggested Sasha.

“Yeah!” I said. “So we aren’t slaves, per se, we’re just expected to take care of ourselves.”

“And the youkai,” said Sasha. “If ‘Servitude’ means what I think it means.”

“I do wonder what it means,” said Arnold.

“Half the people they chose are going to jump at the chance,” I said. I probably would, too.

“Fine, we’re serfs, then,” said Wiki. “Powerless.”

“Whatever,” said Arnold. “I’m gonna learn danmaku anyway, fightin’ fair is what we need.”

“Me too,” said Wiki. “Obviously.”

“Yep,” I said. “Sasha?”

“Yeah, probably,” she said. “It’s fucking magic.” I wondered if it would be a popular class.

—

I slept awfully. Arnold snored, and Wiki tossed and turned. I stayed up all night agonizing over the problem of the youkai having absolute power over us, and whether there was anything we could do about it.

My three main response strategies could be best summarized as “git gud,” “kiss ass,” and “run like a bitch.”

Git gud had the most appeal to me; who wouldn’t want to be a strong male danmaku user in a land of strong monster women? But I didn’t have enough information to know whether becoming good at danmaku was at all possible for me. I remembered an incident where I tried out for soccer in school, and discovered that I didn’t have the knack when I took a ball to the balls. Hopefully the danmaku lessons wouldn’t be as painful, but there were suspiciously-few male danmaku users… probably for a reason.

Running away also wasn’t currently an option, either. The human village was probably the safest place in Gensokyo, so there was nowhere to retreat to. Running like a bitch in circles wouldn’t accomplish much. I could ask Yukari to nicely portal me home, please, at our first monthly meeting–but that would mean trying to last an entire month, and it would mean counting on Yukari’s mercy.

Also I didn’t want to go home.

That left my final strategy, “kiss ass”. I didn’t think any of the powerful youkai were likely to present their backsides for kissing any time soon, but I could amend the strategy to “play nice.” If I made myself useful, maybe they’d decide to eat me last.

I resolved to take my required core curriculum as seriously as possible. I’d be the best Farmer, Laborer, or Servant that I could be. That may be exactly what Yukari wanted of her human subjects. Regardless, I wanted to live, so that’s what I’d do.

One of the tracks offered on the course curriculum was ‘Boundary Maintenance,’ and I thought that they were referring to the boundary between Gensokyo and the Outside World rather than, say, personal boundaries. It seemed like an essential function that few would necessarily want to assist with–not glamorous–and also a chance to give myself opportunities for escape. If I were still there in three months, I’d sign up for that.

Beyond that, I could always pivot strategies if the opportunity presented itself. I tried to position myself so that any of my three strategies could be made to work. I’d read somewhere that good schemers do that. They don’t make specific things happen, they make specific kinds of things more likely. I would make my survival as likely as I possibly could.

—

Danmaku basics was popular. In fact, it seemed like half the human village showed up to the class the next morning. The crowd around the schoolhouse was stifling and, honestly, a bit rank. I certainly hadn’t gotten up early enough to visit the bathhouse and freshen up.

There were a few local humans in the crowd, too. (It didn’t escape my notice that this was the first time anyone had bothered offering to teach them danmaku).

“Oh no,” said Kamishirasawa Keine when she stepped out of her thirty-person single-room schoolhouse. She was wearing a blue dress and hat with red ribbons, complimenting her white-blue hair and red eyes. She didn’t look like a teacher, nor quite like a cosplayer; she looked like a marble statue that had been repainted by aliens, aliens that only had a vague notion of what colors humans were supposed to be. It worked for her, though.

“She’s a were-hakutaku,” said Wiki to Arnold. Sasha wasn’t with us; she’d left a note saying that she was going to the bathhouse, written with a charcoal pencil on a flat rock. Presumably she was in the crowd, though. “She transforms into a hakutaku during the full moon.”

“What’s a hakutaku?” asked Arnold.

“A bovine creature with an old-man’s face and three horns.” In canon, her monster form was just how she normally looked, plus some horns. Also, she’d change into a green dress for some reason.

“She doesn’t look like a horny old man.”

Wiki laughed. “Nice.”

As we watched, a Chinese or Japanese man was asking questions of Keine. Someone else interjected, and she turned to the new interlocutor with a frown on her face.

“Anyway, she can ‘eat history’ while human,” said Wiki. “There is some debate as to how permanent the effect is.”

“I prefer to eat chemistry, personally,” I said. Neither of those jerks laughed. A lot of people were trying to talk to Keine at once, by then, and she was clearly getting flustered.

“Silence!” shouted Keine, and we all complied. She spoke with the magic of a schoolteacher, perhaps—or perhaps she ‘ate’ all the conversations going on. I’d forgotten what we’d been talking about. “Yukari?” she said to the open air.

“Yes?” said the purple-clad youkai, stepping out from a gap. Yukari had a parasol instead of a fan, this time.

“I need some help,” said Keine. “There’s no way I could teach three hundred students simultaneously.”

“She wouldn’t cut it as a professor,” whispered WIki, and Keine’s gaze cut straight through the crowd toward him, making him jump.

“Ah, but Ms. Kamishirasawa,” said Yukari, “You insisted that all your danmaku classes be ad-hoc, so that students could come and go as they please.” Yukari produced a fan with her other hand, the one not holding her parasol, then began to fan herself. “I tried to prevent this exact outcome, but you said that true education is voluntary and personalized, and that it just wouldn't do to force people to continue pursuing an endeavor for which they may not have the aptitude.”

It was apparent that Yukari would come when called, but especially if it meant she could say ‘I told you so.’

“Yes, Ms. Yakumo, and you said you’d be bringing a few immigrants to Gensokyo.” Keine gestured at the massive crowd. “How much is a few, to you?”

“I have a few ways I could answer that,” she said. “Well, how may I assist?”

“I hadn’t gotten that far,” said Keine. She looked across the crowd, some of whom were starting timid conversations. “Why don’t you wrangle up some assistant teachers for the first session or three?”

No sooner had she finished speaking than Reisen dropped out of a portal in the air. She landed on her feet, her skirt fluttering up only a little bit. She had a consternated look on her face, like maybe she’d been eating breakfast when Yukari had turned her chair into a gap. In fact, she was holding a spoon. I noticed she also had her gun, though.

“I’m going to need more than that,” said Keine.

“I’m asking others,” said Yukari. She turned to the crowd. “Let’s back it up, guys. Give us fifteen feet.”

Half the crowd backed away, immediately. The other half might not have been at the beheading, but they did move. We all gave the youkai some room.

“You only need help for the first few sessions?” Yukari asked Keine.

“Only one in ten humans have the aptitude for danmaku,” Keine said, and I felt my heart sink. “Less, probably. I expect significant attrition.”

“Very well. Anything else?”

“Well, I was going to have them copy the syllabus, but I didn’t bring enough paper or pencils.” She held out a scroll. Yukari took the scroll and threw it through a portal over her shoulder. “I’ll need that back.”

“You’ll have it,” she said. “Any other oversights I need to handle?”

Keine gave her a cool look. “Undoubtedly, but none spring to mind.”

“Ah, help has arrived!” said Yukari as she snapped her fan shut.

Three more portals opened up, dropping three more youkai into our midst–or so I thought. Actually, two-and-a-half of the three were human. There was a collective gasp.

“Player characters,” said Wiki. He was right; they were.

Konpaku Youmu, the swordswoman and half-phantom, had a neutral expression on her face. She was wearing her standard green-and-white dress and standing ramrod straight. She had a sword at her hip and another on her back, and if I wasn’t stunned I’d have asked Wiki which one was the one that cleansed souls.

Kirisame Marisa was the ‘ordinary magician’ and witch of the forest of magic. She wore black and white and a toothy grin. A single yellow braid fell down the left side of her face. She had a broom resting over her shoulder, like it was a baseball bat and she was trying to appear threatening, but I knew her really dangerous artifacts were hidden elsewhere.

And finally–

“Oh, absolutely not,” said Hakurei Reimu, the red-and-white-sleeved protagonist of Touhou. “You said there’d only be a few!”