I had a dream that someone was undressing me, starting with my legs. My right leg specifically. They ran a cool finger along my skin and caused it to tingle. My ankle was sensitive and cold, and swollen with metallic pain. I moaned in my sleep. The gentle hands wrapped my clothes back around me and I fell into a deeper slumber.

After that someone was shaking me awake. My roommates knew better than to enter my closet; it must have been an emergency!

I gasped and sat up, nearly knocking heads with the moon rabbit Reisen Udongein Inaba. She was still wearing the nurse outfit. Her eyes were faintly aglow.

“Good morning, Mister Thorne,” she said.

“Good morning, Miss… Inaba?”

The rabbit woman smiled. “That’s right.” She grabbed my wrist to check my pulse, which went up a little bit.

“How long have you been in Gensokyo?” What I meant to ask, was how long had I been asleep. Sunlight was streaming in a window.

“Seventy years or so,” she said. “I look good for an old lady, right?”

“Y-Yeah.”

“But just like you, my name order is reversed. I’m a foreigner, after all.”

“We have that in common,” I said. “Strangers in a strange land, I guess.”

“A strange land indeed,” she replied with a nod. She was writing on a clipboard.

I settled into the hospital bed. The sun was rising, and I could hear birds outside. I must have stayed the entire night at the hospital. I couldn’t be blamed; I’d needed ankle surgery.

I still had work, I realized. And no phone to call in.

“Now for a psychological evaluation,” said the moon rabbit. “How do you feel?”

“Surprisingly good, actually,” I said.

“No aches? Not stiff anywhere?”

“Nope. My ankle… hmm.” It hadn’t hurt until I thought about it, but it was letting out a dull ache. “How long until I can leave?”

“You’ll have to talk to the doctor about that one. She’s away right now. You know, Mister Thorne, we don’t have to be strangers in the Land of Fantasy.” Reisen leaned forward. She was still smiling, and her eyes were still red. I noticed that I had been naked the whole time, and that her outfit had been altered in some eye-catching ways.

“What, er, do you mean?” I said.

“I mean that I’d like to get to know you better,” she said, tapping my chest with a long pink fingernail.

The fingernail didn’t make sense: for gun safety, you’d want to keep your nails trimmed. Reisen was famous for using a gun. I mean, true, she was a monster youkai and didn’t bother with things like ear or eye protection, and her gun in canon was more like a megaphone or something… but I’d seen her with a glock!

I didn’t suppose they made earmuffs for rabbit-eared people, but sensitive hearing would only make the problem worse, not better. Then again, she could control wavelengths, so maybe she just prevented the sound from reaching her ears? The fact that she could control wavelengths seemed relevant, just then.

“Why don’t you tell me a bit about your heroic exploits yesterday…?” asked Reisen. “I heard that you… fed… many.” Her hand was on my chest.

I pushed her hand away. I wasn’t saving myself for someone or anything; I just instinctively rejected the notion that a super hot rabbit nurse would wake me up by seducing me. That sort of thing never happened in reality, and if I read it in a doujin I’d be rolling my eyes.

—

I gasped as I woke up again. Reisen actually was standing over me, but in her normal, formal clothes. I sat up. I was wearing my clothes from the day before, and I was still in the surgery bed with the picture of two monkeys hanging above me.

“Good Morning, Mister Thorne,” said Reisen in no-nonsense tones. “Sleep well?”

“Yeah…” I said. “I had a strange dream.”

“Oh?” she said, raising an eyebrow over a glowing eye. “I’ll admit that I’m curious. What was your dream about, Mister Thorne?”

“Hold on a second,” I said. I pinched myself and it didn’t hurt. I pinched harder and it still didn’t feel like anything. “Are you fucking with me right now?”

“I never fuck with people, not literally anyway,” said Reisen. “I sometimes show people an illusion of us fucking, but my illusions have plausibility restrictions not unlike those of the danmaku compulsion, so I could not show that vision to you since you wouldn’t believe it.” She clasped her hands over her mouth, but her voice continued as though she hadn’t. “You believe that I’d be willing to explain my powers, so it’s plausible you’d witness an illusion that features me explaining them. I must use your own mind for generating hallucinations, naturally, because I have limited insight into–”

–

I woke up again. This time I was naked, but Reisen was clothed.

“Sorry about that,” said Resien with a bow. “I could not resist checking the places that your mind would go. I didn’t expect that you’d overcome the hallucination so quickly!”

I pinched myself again, because why wouldn’t I, and it still didn’t hurt. Then I stuck out a hand and attempted to blast the moon rabbit with danmaku. Her eyes were still glowing red.

Red vectors leaped from my hand. I was pleased to see that danmaku worked in a dream just as well as it worked in reality, although the woman herself was really good at dodging.

“Just let me wake up!” I shouted as the rabbit woman morphed into an actual rabbit and ran away. I kept my arm out, and I kept trying to hit her with danmaku as she leapt left and right. She wasn’t getting further away, but she also wasn’t letting me hit her. My arm was strangely heavy. I strained and smacked my hand into something.

–

My eyelids flew open. I was in the same hospital room that Sasha and I had used. My arm was sticking out over the bed, and touching the moon rabbit, who was standing nearby. Unfortunately, in my attempt to hit Reisen with danmaku in my dream, I’d reached out and grabbed her breast instead. Her cheeks were bright red and her eyes were wide. At least she was clothed. I pinched, felt no pain, and decided I was still dreaming.

“Stop that,” I said.

“Y–you first!”

“Serves you right,” said Doctor Yagokoro as she closed the door behind her. “I’ll remind you that it’s against policy to harm our patients.”

“I wasn’t harming him.”

“Debatable,” said the Doctor.

I pinched again, and it still didn’t hurt. I wasn’t pinching myself. Whoops. The doctor went on.

“Please stop subjecting Mister Thorne to hallucinations. Mister Thorne, I’m the one who performs breast cancer screenings around here.” She winked. “I do it non-invasively!”

Reisen snorted. Her eyes were still red, but they didn’t glow. She gently disengaged my hand and walked away.

“Wait, I’m actually awake?” I asked. “Really, actually?” The bed was as comfortable as a sack of rocks, and I was conscious of a dull ache in my ankle. I pinched myself and it did hurt. These were good signs of genuine consciousness. My face was probably glowing red.

I looked around, but nope, my mortified embarrassment was not enough to manifest Maroon this time, either. I tried to imagine explaining to her what had transpired, and failed.

“I’m about to prescribe you antibiotics,” said Doctor Yagokoro as she tossed her hair over her shoulder. “So unless that’s something you often dream about, I’d say you’re awake.” She raised an eyebrow. “You expected to see Reisen’s glowing eyes?”

“Yes…” I said.

“I suppose your injury from Hakuroken never healed.” Youmu’s sword had granted my ghostly sight; I might be resilient to hallucinations for that reason alone. And although I had a kidney where the old kidney used to be, it wasn’t the original. “Are you wondering about something?”

“I… uh…” I said, looking at my hand. I’d been thinking about whether being cut enough by the enlightenment sword would allow me to see through anything, including clothes, but the thought was too complex and a little embarrassing to explain. “Do you screen just Reisen, or… everybody in Gensokyo?” Did Eirin Yagokoro walk around looking at everyone’s insides, like it was no big deal?

“What an odd false dilemma,” said Doctor Yagokoro.

“Oh. So you just screen locals.” Reisen, and presumably Princess Kaguya. I had never met her.

“No, I screen everybody I see, which is just about everybody. Even you little humans. It was a false dilemma regardless.” She was listening to my breathing with her stethoscope. “It helps that I can see through flesh.”

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“I see.”

“No you don’t. Not like I do.”

“Well. Would you apologize to Reisen for me, please?” I’d hurt myself with a pinch after waking up. It had probably hurt when I pinched her.

“Mister Thorne, what kind of youkai do you imagine manifests as a gorgeous bunny woman, then goes around in short skirts and nurse’s outfits? And also subjects unconscious men to hallucinations of her trying to seduce them?”

“...one that would eat me?”

The doctor laughed. “Good answer! Wrong, but insightful nonetheless.” She pulled up my arm and dropped it. I had no idea what the test was for. I really was naked, but that was par for the course at this office. “Either way, no need for apologies. To protect Miss Inaba’s honor I’ll say that she didn’t plan on eating you in a literal sense.”

“Oh. Could you see my… hallucination, or dream, or whatever it was?”

“Nope, but my imagination works just fine. Now let’s take a look at your wound.” She yanked the sheet off me, disregarding my modesty.

“You left my underwear on,” I said as I noticed.

“Did I?” She began undoing my bandages. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’d undone these yourself and inexpertly wrapped them back up.”

When it was finally uncovered, my ankle looked uninjured: like it had regenerated overnight. There were stitches in place around an opening that didn’t exist.

“Very interesting…” she said, poking it. “I did not expect this.”

“I thought it was your doing?” I didn’t even have a scar. “Wait, can’t you see through bandages anyway?”

“True,” she said. “I did not do this… but I have some theories.” She sighed. “I miss Miss Yakumo, because not saying things feels so pointless now. I’ll note that although the surface looks great, your bone is still broken.”

“Yeah, it still hurts a lot.” Every movement caused sharp pain.

“I guess this means we can skip antibiotics!”

“Really?”

“No,” she said, handing me a bottle. “I am going to pull your stitches early, though.”

–

Doctor Yagokoro gave me so many sheets of paper–medical references that outlined wound care, surgical recovery, athletic and activity restrictions, calcium in my diet, exercises, and general advice–that I had to go home with a paper bag full of papers. She also gave me a brace and a crutch to walk with.

“Off road knee scooters are not a thing, sadly,” said Doctor Yagokoro. “The suspension is too finicky. Over the coming months, you’ll begin to appreciate the difficulties of reliable suspension.”

“I can fly,” I said. “I don’t need a scooter.”

“How did you get this injury?” she retorted. “You’ve got to learn to hover before you can learn to soar, Mister Thorne, but before either of those things you’re going to have to learn to walk again.”

I told her I still had work to do, and she told me that if I made my injury worse by being an idiot she wouldn’t help me any more. I said that the wellbeing of Gensokyo might depend on my efforts, and she said that if I felt that way I could defy her with a clear conscious and a fucked up ankle. She may have used much smarter words, but that was the gist of it.

I left the Doctor’s office. When I expanded my wings the crutch became a little redundant, although I could still rest on it from time to time. I was hesitant to fly very far lest the landing go poorly. Even so, I was sure I was improving.

My first stop was my dorm, to drop off my papers. Nobody was there. They’d all gone to work. I left a note so they’d know I hadn’t died, then I went to the mansion and my job.

—

“Late two days in a row,” said Patchouli, shaking her head. “We aren’t off to a great start, are we?”

“I hobbled here as fast as I could,” I said. “Where’s Nazrin?”

“Somewhere in the library. She said to call for her if you made it further this time.” Patchouli looked me up and down. “I don’t think we’ll need her expertise today. Perhaps we should try again later, Mister Thorne?”

“I could use a day off…” I admitted.

“What is the recovery time on your leg?”

“Three to six months.” Patchouli frowned unhappily. She asked me a few more questions about my recovery, and every answer made her expression darken further.

“Hopping around all the time is going to set you back,” she said. “It’s one complication among many; your newness to flight, to danmaku, and to the underground.”

“I’m used to it,” I said. Modern humans never received the luxury of familiarity with their circumstances. AI technologies had been experiencing a revolution once or twice a week when I was last in the Outside World.

“Lady Matara will likely have to hire someone else for this mission.”

“What?” I said. “No–I can fly–”

“You really can’t,” replied the librarian. Patchouli put her book down, a magical feather appearing to mark her place. She stood up and walked toward me. “Especially not with damaged wings.” I’d forgotten about the impact I’d experienced. One of my wingtips was still missing.

“Well, I can fly well enough to walk for now.” Patchouli touched my damaged wingtip, making me flinch.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’ll repair that for you. Demon!” A koakuma crawled out from under her table. Patchouli pulled some scotch tape from her magical pocket and taped a blank sheet of paper to my wing. She then pulled it off. “My mistake. We’ve got to write the sigils, first…”

“Wait, that’s it!” I said. “We can use your bioprinter! Make me a new ankle!”

She shook her head. “Sorry, Mister Thorne. I don’t have the information for your ankle, so I can’t print a reference.”

“Well… can you scan me now?”

“Scanning your already-broken ankle won’t help,” she said.

The implications of her words hit me like I’d hit the ground, the day before. I managed to avoid looking out at the hallway I wasn’t supposed to enter.

She hadn’t had any trouble printing a wrist bone for Arnold after the fact. And, the only difference between me and Arnold (beyond like fifty pounds of muscle and a beautiful beard) was that he had entered the hallway, and I hadn’t. The koakuma had once told me there was a trap there that took information from those who entered it. That must be where Patchouli had gotten the information to print him a reference wrist bone, so she could copy it to his actual wrist and heal his injury immediately.

“I think you’re going to have to sit this one out,” said the purple witch, oblivious to my thoughts.

“Well… what about Maroon?” I asked. “If someone else does it, she is far less likely to come back.”

Patchouli worked silently for several moments. Her voice was soft when she continued. “You are also important, Mister Thorne.”

“Not if I can’t save her,” I said. Patchouli stopped and put a hand on my shoulder.

“Your importance isn’t measured by the number of youkai or humans you save.”

“I know that,” I said. “I’m not trying to save as many as possible! Well, in a sense I guess I am–but not with this mission in particular–well, no, that’s also part of the point.” I rubbed my chin. “What I mean is that I want to help Maroon, and I won’t achieve that if I let someone go in my place.”

“Even so, if you hurt yourself too badly you’ll fail and help nobody.”

“If I can’t do anything anyway, my failure is no big deal.”

“That’s a toxic attitude,” said the librarian with a hardness in her voice.

“Look. I might as well try, and if I get injured and have to give up, at least I succeed in the counterfactual where I didn’t fail. It’s better to try, and possibly fail, than to not try at all.”

“You’re wrong,” she said, her voice slightly loud. “Dying, or ruining your body, isn’t an efficient use of resources. Already I doubt you can work in the village. And yet, they will continue to feed you, and house you, and divert resources for you.” She peered down her nose at me, an impressive feat considering I was several inches taller than her. “If you become catatonic, you’ll be of no use to them at all.”

“If I can’t labor, that’s just another reason for me to do this instead,” I said. She went on before I could say anything about how I had to contribute somehow.

“There’s a price to be paid in saving you, and in caring for you after you are injured. Okina only has the strength to return one person per day!” I hadn’t interpreted it that way, but it made a lot of sense; the Absolute Secret God didn’t have infinite power. “You need to step aside, now, and let someone else try.”

“But I’m the only one who can save Maroon!”

“Maroon is only a single youkai!” yelled Patchouli. “You can’t waste your life trying to save her, even if you are the only person who cares or knows! The mission is more important than some forgotten–” She stopped suddenly, and I could almost see the librarian deflating as the wind left her sails. She continued in quiet, even tones. “You’re acting rashly, here, which is what got us into this mess. Let’s slow down.”

“If I hadn’t gone there yesterday, then Nitori would have died,” I said, trampling her feelings. I regretted it later that evening when I realized what her feelings were, while I was trying to fall asleep.

“Or we would have organized a search effort later that day when she didn’t show up to the meeting about electrification. We would have saved her anyway, because the search party would have known to carry water.” She pulled a cylinder out of her magical breast pocket. It was a water bottle. “By the way, I got you this.”

“... thank you,” I said as I accepted the metal and plastic container. It was already full.

“Let’s approach this with the appropriate caution,” said Patchouli. “You don’t have to give up entirely, but impatience doesn’t serve us in any way.”

“Okay. I suppose not.” I looked down at my leg brace. “So you really think I’ve got no chance at success?”

“I think it’s practically certain that if you went there with a broken ankle, weakened and unable to fly, you’d come back worse. You may not come back at all.”

Patchouli activated her paper sigil and repaired my wing. I thanked her as she went to sit back down. I sat down opposite her. Standing on one leg for very long was difficult.

“What if I could properly fly?” I asked. She waved a hand, and picked her book back up. The magical feather burst into the glowing shape of a bird and flew away, opening her book back to its place.

“That’d be better, but it wouldn’t be good. What you really need is enough power so that you can defeat weak youkai without thinking.” She turned a page. “Maybe you should train with the martial artists?”

“I have a broken ankle,” I reminded her.

“I meant danmaku, of course. It’s a shame, because going into the underground would be excellent training otherwise. That ankle injury is a major setback.” She sighed, and grit her teeth. “I should get this out of the way.”

“Eh?”

“I’m sorry. You should not have jumped into the hole after all.” Seeing Patchouli admit she was wrong was almost as weird as seeing her outside the mansion.

“I told you I was going to do it anyway, right?” She shrugged. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” she said.

“Well, I forgive you either way, if you can forgive me for… making you risk your life.”

“That was a promise I made,” she said. “A deal.”

“Having you at my back was the only reason I thought I could succeed,” I said, “and I happened to be right.” Patchouli’s smile was subtle, and pointed at her book, but I smiled as well. “We should look into other ways to get my ankle healed.”

“We shall,” said Patchouli.

“And you should scan my other bones.”

She frowned. “Disregarding your own efforts to improve, Miss Yakumo gave us a deadline of one hundred and eighty days. Every day you don’t go down there is a day lost.” She turned another page. “We need to send somebody, and as soon as possible. Miss Yakumo did explicitly tell us that we could bring others into it if they were willing.”

“Well… shoot,” I said. “Who are we going to ask? Reimu and Marisa have their hands full defending the village. The same is true for Youmu. Sanae, perhaps? Reisen?”

“You are close friends with all of these witches, warriors, and–shrine maidens?” asked Patchouli.

“Sorry, I meant Miss Hakurei, Miss Kirisame, Miss Konpaku, Miss Kochiya, and Miss Inaba. I’ve talked to… half of them, I suppose?” And Miss Inaba had offered me hallucinatory sex that morning, maybe, or maybe she’d been messing with me and was going to end the encounter the moment I put a hand on her.

Technically, the moon rabbit had done exactly that. If Patchouli noticed my blush, she didn’t say anything.

“I was thinking we’d start with someone close to you instead,” said Patchouli.