I told Wiki and Arnold about my failure to save Sasha. After that, I decided to gather more information. Just because the defenders of Human Town had given up on her didn’t mean that I would.

“Tell me about the oni,” I asked Wiki.

He paused to consider his words. I grit my teeth; the hesitancy meant that he was trying to be diplomatic, which meant that he disagreed with me or otherwise thought I couldn’t be reasoned with. It was grating, because he might be right.

Then I let out a breath. Wiki was trying to spare other people’s feelings. He might think my attempts to save Sasha were hopeless or too late or ill-advised, but he’d come far since we’d first met, if he was trying to help me anyway.

“There are four main oni in canon,” Wiki said. “The Big Four of the Mountain. Ibuki Suika is an oni with the power to manipulate density. Hoshiguma Yuugi is an oni of immense strength, who can control ‘unexplainable phenomenon’.”

“That’s the hot one,” said Arnold.

“You’d die,” Wiki reminded him.

“Then stop telling me when they’re hot.”

I raised an eyebrow. Wiki and Arnold had been talking about which characters were hot, and hadn’t included me? I mean, I’d never in a million years admit which ones I thought were attractive, but I still felt excluded. Maybe locker room talk was real and I just never got invited.

“The third oni is Ibaraki Kasen,” said Wiki, moving on. “She disguises herself as a hermit, and is a Sage of Gensokyo.”

“Like Okina and Yukari?” I asked. “She must be powerful, then.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I got reprimanded by Heida no Akyuu for letting that one slip.” Miss Heida was the leader of the information gathering group that Wiki still attended. She was a human Touhou character with a perfect memory. “Her involvement in Gensokyo’s history, and indeed her identity as an oni, were secrets. Miss Ibaraki was pretending to be a once-human hermit. She also has an artificial arm.”

“Can she time travel?” I asked. Full function artificial limbs were still relatively new and expensive, in the Outside World. “Or wait, you mean a metal hook or something old-timey?”

“No, actually it’s a ribbon in the shape of an arm,” he said with a shrug. “She doesn’t live in the underground, so I don’t think you’ll encounter her.”

“That’s good,” I said with a nod. “And who’s the fourth oni?”

“She doesn’t matter,” said Wiki with a sigh. “She’s from a game after Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost, so she might as well not exist.” The games stopped corresponding with the real Gensokyo after that.

We talked a bit more about the oni. Wiki warned me about their super strength and their eagerness to fight. He also mentioned that they were ‘mostly friendly’ to humans, but what he said next gave me some pause.

“Traditional oni are known for cannibalism, and Miss Heida insists that the reputation is accurate,” he said. The information gathering group was about to be disbanded; their last meeting had been scheduled for the next week. Wiki had told them everything he knew about Touhou, I supposed. “She also says that they kidnap humans and eat them. I said that, in canon, they’d never do that.”

“Patchouli said the same thing,” I told him. “As Miss Heida, I mean. She insisted that oni eat human flesh and that if I lost they would eat me.”

“We have no way of knowing for certain,” said Wiki. Fortunately, I knew someone I could ask who would have a better perspective on it than the historian or the librarian, or even Wiki himself.

“Patchouli tried to compel one to help Sasha,” I added, “but it broke the crystal before she could hit it with enough danmaku. We didn’t see what happened to her.”

“They’re also greedy. If the oni was going to eat her, I find it doubtful that it would have hesitated.”

“Oh so that’s why you aren’t worried,” said Arnold. “You think Sasha’s just been partying with the oni.”

He nodded, but his expression became pained. “Or maybe they ate her five minutes later. If that’s the case, there’s nothing we can do about it now.” I realized that my roommate was trying so-very-hard not to get his hopes up, even as his rational side told him to have hope. I put a hand on his shoulder, and he only tensed up a little.

“I’m going to try again tomorrow,” I said. “If Sasha is still there, I’ll rescue her. I promise.”

“There’s one other thing,” said Wiki. “I know you… feel like you’re not advancing fast enough.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What makes you say that?”

“I tried to imagine how I would feel in your situation, and what my priorities would be,” he said. Wiki had imagined another person’s perspective, and it was mine?

“I’m honored,” I said with a chuckle. “I meant, why tell me that now?”

“I just want to say…” Wiki stared out the window. “All the plans made by the Council take into account the most powerful danmaku users among the new arrivals. Right now, that’s pretty much you and Raghav. At some point we want you to teach other humans how to become more powerful in Gensokyo, just like Miss Hakurei and Miss Kamishirasawa are doing with the new group of students. Except, unlike those two, you’ll have ideas about a novice’s struggles. It’s our hope you can better guide students of danmaku, so that we end up with many powerful users and more influence in Gensokyo.”

“Okay.” I said. “I’m pretty busy right now–”

“I know,” he said. “The point is, you are advancing faster than anyone.”

“Not faster than Sasha,” I said. He shrugged.

“You’re valuable to the human resistance. So if you start thinking you aren’t doing enough, or you should try harder at great risk to yourself, please stop.”

“If I can rescue Sasha, you’ll have three would-be teachers.”

“And if you die, I’ll have to convince Raghav to do all the teaching himself,” he said, staring at me. “Don’t die, please.” I had a moment where I wondered why Wiki even thought I could die–shouldn’t he still believe I was under Remilia’s protection?–but he must have inferred that if Remilia wasn’t around to even ask to save Sasha, she wouldn’t be around to save me, either.

“Understood,” I said. “Thanks, Wiki.”

“You’re welcome.” He sighed and shook his head. “We can’t afford to lose anybody who can use danmaku. We can’t even afford to lose ordinary humans. There’s a labor shortage as it is, you know?”

“Yeah,” I said. Human Town was struggling to squeeze a winter store out of the landscape, but Wiki went on to describe other problems like cutting down firewood and running electrical wires.

“Miss Yakumo went so far as to give the houses electrical outlets,” he said, “but she didn’t bother putting in the lines or a generator. She probably ran out of power before getting to them.” He shook his head. “Nitori has a few ad-hoc generators lined up, at least, but hopefully we don’t need things as energy-intensive as refrigerators until spring.”

“Do we really need electricity that bad?” I asked.

“Little-known fact,” he said. “Electrical lights repel youkai.”

“No shit?” asked Arnold.

“Yeah,” he said. “Lighting up the darkness is inimical to fear-feeding youkai, especially. Naturally, we want to light up Human Town as soon as possible.” He turned to me. “You can fly. Do you want to take a day off, and help run some power lines?”

“I could help in the afternoon,” I said. I wouldn’t miss a day of work, especially when Sasha might be dying from cannibalism or alcohol poisoning. Even if the oni hadn’t killed and eaten her, there wasn’t any food down there. The oni had limitless sake containers and little else.

—

That night I spoke with Sekibanki and asked her whether the oni ate human flesh. The youkai’s heads were doing a rotation around the statue near our bench. The hole in the sky was making illusory sunlight that didn’t light anything up, as usual, but clouds periodically blocked it.

“Good question,” she said. “They certainly have that reputation.”

“You don’t know?” I asked. Sekibanki was my inside source for information about youkai in the real Gensokyo. She smiled, showing teeth.

“I do know, but it’s a secret!”

“That you’re going to tell me,” I said with a nod. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have said there was a secret.”

“Humans enjoy suspense, right?” she asked. “I enjoy suspense.”

“And they don’t eat human flesh, do they, because otherwise there’d be no secret?”

She grumbled. “You’re no fun. You are correct.” She did a motion like she was popping her neck, and when it popped I flinched. “They aren’t a part of the youkai rebellion, mind you, so my information on them is limited. The oni disagree with our methods.” With killing, in other words.

I nodded. As former demons of hell, they probably preferred to torture victims instead. When I thought about it too much, my heart started to pound.

“They want to eat human flesh, but their leadership won’t let them for whatever reason,” said Sekibanki. “Don’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t. Why wouldn’t they want to eat humans?”

“What part of ‘for whatever reason’ was ambiguous?” asked the rokurokubi. Her head swapped with one of the spares. “I don’t know. Maybe for the same reason I don’t, despite how delicious you little apes are.”

“Because they don’t want to be run out of town?” The oni had their own town, so that couldn’t be it.

“Because if they ate too many, Reimu would come and exterminate them.” She shrugged and her head wobbled. “I can’t tell you much more than that, but at least Sasha may be alive.”

“Thank you,” I said, as a weight lifted from my chest. “I’m beginning to think that a lot of youkai in Gensokyo are secretly nicer than they let on.” It was a world where perceptions mattered a great deal, so that only made sense. They needed humans to think they were deadly, not to actually be deadly. Actually being deadly carried a cost, and not just to their victims.

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

“You aren’t worried that they’ve changed their policy since the start of the famine?” asked Sekibanki. The youkai of Gensokyo were getting hungrier by the day. Even Sekibanki had a feral and hungry look in her eye. “They retain their power better than most, I hear. Perhaps they’ve started a cruel harvest.”

“I suppose I am a bit worried,” I said. “But I was already going to try my best to save her, even if it was hopeless. Now I have hope.”

“I can tell,” said Sekibanki.

“It probably tastes bad to you,” I said.

“Contrary to what you might think, hope and fear go hand-in-hand. When hope finally gives way to despair it’s as though…” She balled her fists, then spread her fingers suddenly. “A burst. Like popcorn.”

“You’ve eaten popcorn?”

“I’ve tried lots of human foods,” she said.

“It doesn’t normally pop in your mouth.”

“Good point. It’s like, I don’t know, a–”

Sekibanki stopped suddenly. Her eyes had a far away look in them. A taste started growing in my mouth, something that was bitter like soap.

“When I let go of you, run,” she said.

I nodded once. “What’s–” She grabbed me and twisted to press her mouth into mine.

Sekibanki was kissing me. I was too shocked and confused to kiss her back properly. My lips started to move on their own. Her mouth tasted sweet, but also off in a subtle way. Like she’d been licking a penny. Before I could put that thought together there was a shout.

“What are ‘ya doing down there?” It was Marisa. The witch and temporary night guard descended from the sky. Some asshole, probably Raghav, had given her a flashlight. We’d been discovered.

The strategy of hiding a lie behind an embarrassing but harmless secret was valid, clever, and immediately applicable. My face was bright red for obvious but false reasons.

Sekibanki had once told me she’d trick the witch in that situation by pretending to seduce me, but I’d thought she had been fucking with me! (Not literally, obviously). Sekibanki pulled her head back and it turned around a bit too fast and a bit too completely for matching a normal human.

“Feeding,” said Sekibanki. Then she turned back. Her beautiful red eyes were missing. Instead there were blank, black sockets in her face, weeping blood.

I fell backward over the bench and ran away. There might have been some screaming, too.

“That guy’s gonna be scared gay,” cackled Marisa as she laughed uproariously behind me. She said something else to Sekibanki, but I was already too far away to hear.

—

I’d gone halfway back to the dorm before I started to wonder. Why would Marisa be willing to let a youkai feed? Did she already know Sekibanki?

I supposed they’d met during one of the games, and Marisa hadn’t forced her out of the village back then, either. Sekibanki was still living undercover as a human even as the village swelled into Human Town. The powerful humans, Reimu and Marisa and perhaps Youmu, could expose the rokurokubi and exile her, but they didn’t because…

Because she never killed anybody. As far as the protectors of the human village were concerned, that was enough. And it was probably enough for me too. But did she often ‘feed’ by kissing people and scaring the shit out of them? Or worse?

I’d gone all the way back to the dorm before I realized I’d forgotten my crutch.

—

The next day was a big day. Not for me–I failed the expedition at Parsee and Yamame, again–but for Arnold. He would be taking the danmaku exam again for the fourth time that evening.

“I’ve got a good feeling this time,” he said.

“I admire your perseverance,” I replied as I half-sat, half-collapsed onto our bench. I did admire it. I was trying to have perseverance like that myself.

“I’m sorry you didn’t make it,” he said with concern. “Maybe when I pass the exam, I can give it a try?”

“That’s a good idea,” I said, even though it probably wasn’t. Until we got Sasha back it made more sense for the most skilled of the remaining humans to go after her. I wished I could convince Youmu to try again in my place, since I was an inadequate failure. Arnold had even less experience. He’d need some time to get good.

I took off my hat and twirled it on my finger. After a moment I also stuck out my braced leg. The brace was a bit comforting, even though I was ninety percent sure I didn’t need it anymore.

What I needed instead was a cleansing. I’d decided that my line in the sand (as far as becoming a youkai was concerned) was “my leg healed supernaturally fast.” It was important to set one’s boundaries before they were tested, and besides, Sasha had proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that one didn’t need to be a youkai to advance quickly. She’d already been cleansed almost two weeks before. The fact that I was consuming fear and still falling behind her was pathetic. It was also a bad sign about my odds of saving her.

On the other hand, if I leaned into my youkai transformation, maybe–

“Are you alright?” asked Arnold.

“Eh?” I asked. He pointed at my hat, which I had subconsciously rolled up and twisted. I released it. The straw hadn’t been damaged. “I’m a bit stressed about my inability to save Sasha’s life. That’s all.”

“Wiki said she’d be okay.” He took Emeff out of her cage. He was taking care of the chicken until Sasha returned. It rubbed its head against his wrist. I was glad that Arnold could impress at least one lady.

“You can’t count on problems to solve themselves,” I said. “Ninety-nine percent of humanity’s problems are things they ignored until it was too late.”

“I think that’s, um, sampling bias,” said Arnold.

“Huh?”

“Most of humanity’s problems are dealt with before anyone agonizes over them, right?”

“Absolutely not,” I said. “Have you read the poem The Sons of Martha?”

“Nope!” he said. “A biblical reference, sounds like?”

“Yeah. It’s about the people who make everything actually work. You know, engineers, laborers, scientists. They try to preempt bad things while everyone else is off acting like they are righteous and above it all, and it’s only because of the Sons of Martha that humanity has it so good.” I reached for my phone to look it up for him before I remembered. I hadn’t made that mistake in a long time.

“Does humanity actually have it good?” he asked.

“Better than the alternative,” I said. “The point is, that you can’t solve anything by just praying or hoping or waiting around.”

“Okay,” he said. “They sound like Wiki and the Human Council.”

I opened my mouth to argue, then closed it, because he was right. I was doing Yukari’s bidding, not, you know, actually saving humans or achieving anything that mattered to me. Well, Maroon and Sasha did matter to me, and at least one of them was a human, so I was at least failing at something I nominally cared about.

At that point, I recognized negative self-talk. I tried to resist it.

“Have you tried asking Wiki for help?” asked Arnold.

“I did. Yesterday. You were there.”

“No, I don’t mean about the oni. I mean about your own power. That’s what you’re really worried about, right? That you aren’t strong enough?”

“I suppose so.” What could Arnold possibly know about not being strong, I thought. Even with our limited diets he seemed as muscular as ever. Except, he did know a thing or two about failure, because he really was about to try the danmaku exam for the fourth time.

“Wiki gave me some advice about my emotions,” said Arnold. The direction of that interaction blew my mind. “He said that maybe my lust for youkai was just part of a bigger desire, one with many facets. We were talking about which youkai would be best to have sex with–” my mind was blown again “–and I realized that I only like strong youkai, because I want a youkai who values the same things as me, because I want acceptance and approval.” Geeze, while I was off practicing danmaku, my other roommates were back home studying their souls or something.

“Arnold, you are the calmest, most self-confident man I have ever met. I wouldn’t think that you needed the approval of anyone.”

“You don’t become a friendly guy without trying,” he said. “I try not to worry about what others think about me, too much, but the things I won’t let myself worry about are the ones I’m most likely to be screwing up, yeah?” He smiled at me. “So that’s why I think I’ll pass the danmaku exam this evening. I’m not going to try to fuck transformed Keine, this time, I’m just going to get her to admit that I’m super fuckable–and thus worthy.”

“Oh,” I said.

“You see, it doesn’t matter whether I get to fuck a youkai, it just matters whether I feel like I deserve to fuck a youkai. And I super duper do, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Of course. More than any of us, probably.”

This time he raised an eyebrow. “Are there any you have your eyes on?”

“No,” I lied. So much for telling the truth.

“Anyway, I hope that helps a little bit.”

“It kind of does,” I said. “Thank you.”

Maybe I was spending too much time worrying about whether I was able to save Sasha, instead of just going to save her? But that didn’t feel quite right, either. I was always just buckling down and doing the unpalatable work to make something happen. I’d never hesitated to try to make my friends or humanity survive. There was an overwhelming mountain of things I couldn’t do to save humans, but I was doing everything I could and more.

“I think I will ask Wiki for advice,” I said. “More perspectives will help.”

–

“Explain to me exactly what your strategy is,” said Wiki.

I did, and he interrupted me after two sentences. I shouldn’t have been surprised.

“Oh, there’s your problem,” he said. “You’ve got to fight as many enemies as possible.”

“Won’t that just tire me out?” I said.

“No, you’ll get drops, and thus more damage output,” said Wiki. “Don’t forget to graze, too.” He spent a few minutes telling me (in excruciating detail) about how the older games rewarded high scores with more damage, whereas the newer ones increased your damage output as you collected powerup items. “So graze and fight as many low-level baddies as you can.”

“You’re saying that hurrying past the fairies is a mistake?”

“Yes.”

“Even though I’ve literally never seen a ‘drop’ and there isn’t a scoreboard?” There wasn’t a scoreboard that I could see, anyway. Perhaps I was the character and not the player. Maybe some crazy god had her fingers on the arrow keys, controlling me every time I fought. “Even though it risks me being hit?”

“Look, I didn’t program the games.”

“Neither did anybody,” I said.

“Well, perhaps I’m wrong. However, you said that grazing was a real thing?”

I nodded. I’d learned that peripheral strikes could motivate me, rather than compel me to do the youkai’s bidding. I hadn’t thought of it as getting more powerful, which in retrospect was incredibly stupid. Danmaku was all about motivation.

“Lately I’ve been dodging everything really well,” I said. “Maybe that is part of it. Maybe I’m too good?”

“It’s worth considering as a possibility,” he said, diplomatically. “Any other questions?”

“Which youkai would you want to fu–have sex with?”

His face darkened. “I’ve got a list,” he said. “A purely hypothetical list. The answer is ‘none of them’ but with some effort I could rank them from ‘bad’ to ‘absolutely fucking awful.’” He spoke with an intensity that made me realize I’d somehow hurt his feelings.

“Sorry,” I said. “It was a joke in poor taste, since you’re ace.”

“Why does everybody think that?” he asked. “Because I won’t fuck with monsters?” Monsters that he was obsessive about, I almost told him.

Instead I said that Sasha had told me, and had heard it from Reika, his girlfriend. Unlike others who had mentioned it I lacked the tact necessary to know I shouldn’t explain how I knew. I kind of threw Sasha and Reika under the bus without even thinking about it.

“So that’s how it is,” he said. “I refused to have sex with her, yeah. But not because I’m asexual. I refused because having a child in this world would be immoral, not least because Reika herself has a significant chance of dying in the process!”

“Oh,” I said. You could count on Wiki not to neglect consequences. Some humans would have to have kids for humanity’s sake, but I could appreciate worrying about the fate of children in the land of monsters. I sensed that it’d be a bad time to argue with Wiki about it. “That’s very responsible and compassionate of you.”

“Thank you.”

“You know, Doctor Yagokoro might–”

“She does, but Reika isn’t interested in contraception,” said Wiki.

“I see,” I said. That certainly painted a picture of Reika’s goals in dating someone.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Not agreeing about sex and children seems like a pretty big dealbreaker,” I said.

“We actually broke up a few days ago,” he said, putting his head in his hands. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. Sasha went missing the same day, so…”

“Don’t worry about that! Man, that’s–that’s awful!”

“I haven’t been spending much time with her, recently, because of all of the Council duties… so it’s not unexpected or anything…” Wiki was crying, and was trying to hide it from me. “We kept dating for awhile, but we don’t have much to talk about anymore.”

I gave him a hug, which he returned. “It’ll be okay,” I said.

“Let’s talk about logistics or something else instead,” said Wiki. “Reimu found a cache of materials near the Hakurei Barrier. Lots of electrical cable–did I tell you about it?”

“That’s good news,” I said.

We talked about how much effort it would take to run electricity through Human Town now that we had the materials (the answer was shitloads) and he seemed to recover some of his composure.

On Friday I would go to rescue Sasha, but it was Thursday. I could spend the time helping Wiki, instead. And it would turn out that helping Wiki was central to me solving my own problems after all.