I felt along the length of the string I’d drawn. I couldn’t see, so I couldn’t immediately tell if I was the loser–although I imagined that the oni would be as tight-fisted about their own draws as I was about mine, so it’s not like being able to see would have helped. They were crowding in to grab their own strings, and their body odor made me gag. They smelled like natural springwater mixed with sweat and rotten eggs.

“Who’s next?” asked Yuugi after she’d taken her string. Nobody answered, but I heard Sasha walking around the room to distribute the ‘straws’. By squinting I could barely make out the shapes of the people around me. That only made my nausea worse. My vision was still mostly static.

It took a long time, because the oni made a big show of choosing very deliberately even if they couldn’t actually affect the outcome. Some of them narrated their thought process, even.

I ran the string across my hand. It was more of a strip of fabric than a string, perhaps three inches long. I had no idea how long it was compared to anyone else’s. I did some quick math while I waited for the oni to choose.

If there were twenty people there, and I only cared about Sasha, Koishi and myself… nineteen over twenty, times eighteen over nineteen… the numerator and denominators canceled, so there was a seventeen over twenty or eighty-five percent chance that all three of us would be fine. That was suspiciously even.

It made sense; I should have been thinking about the chances that any of us drew the dangerous one, not our chances of drawing a safe one. It would fall to seventy percent if I further cared about Suika, Yuugi, and Red.

But there was a one-hundred-percent chance that someone would lose. Then the feast would begin. With stomach-churning certainty I knew what we would feast upon.

Sudden laughter made me jump.

“You’re supposed to wait until the end to show your ‘straws’,” said Sasha.

“Yeah, well, I’m impatient,” said Suika, her voice deep and low. “Looks like we both got lucky, eh?”

“Yes…” said Yuugi, her voice rumbling. I looked toward her silhouette. I was pretty sure that she was in her muscular, masculine form. Suika had enlarged herself as well. They were preparing for a fight.

I gulped, and jumped again when a hand settled on my shoulder.

“You’re really afraid,” said Koishi, her voice soft.

“Yeah… I guess I am,” I said. When I said it, I realized the sweat stench around the room wasn’t just the stink of the oni, but the scent of their fear.

“Why don’t you run?”

“They’ll catch me,” I said.

“Oh yeah. That’s sad.” Koishi was honest to a fault. “If you lose, are you just going to let them eat you?” I could feel her breath in my ear; she was whispering as the oni bantered.

“… no,” I whispered back, honestly. “I think I’ll fight. And I think I’ll still lose, but I’m not just going to give up.”

I felt my fear lessening. Somehow, just admitting those things made it easier to deal with them. Yeah, this situation was fucked–but once I’d accepted that, I could do my best to deal with it.

“You would die with dishonor?” Koishi asked me. She was standing very close. “Breaking their rules?”

“I’d try to live with dishonor,” I corrected her. “I didn’t really sign up for this anyway. It’s not…”

I almost said it wasn’t right to eat one of the attendees at a dinner party, but that wasn’t quite what I meant. It wouldn’t be right to eat any of the interlopers… but the oni could be nasty to each other if they wanted. Who was I to impose my human sensibilities on them? The oni were just doing what oni do.

Except, I was a human, and I was trapped with them.

“This isn’t my nature,” I said.

“It isn’t mine either,” Koishi replied. “Don’t worry. It will be alright.”

Koishi plucked my string from my hand. Before I could even ask a question, she was shoving it back between my fingers. Some of the oni were arguing with each other. I wondered if they’d already found the short string.

“If you wanted to see it, you could just ask,” I said. I blinked and wished I could see better myself.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’m not used to people paying much attention to me. I guess… like the oni, I just take what I want.”

“You don’t want much,” I said.

“Nope!” she replied. “I'll take it anyway.”

“You aren’t really like them. You’re nicer.”

“Maybe,” said Koishi. She nodded and her hat touched mine. “I like watching them. They are so happy. Not like humans at all.”

Sasha continued around the table. I tried to sit still, but I was too nervous. I pulled my string taught.

“Wait,” I said, but everyone had gotten their strings by then.

“The last one is for me,” said Sasha. “Alright. Hold out your strings.”

“You too, bub,” said Yuugi, elbowing me with an arm like rebar and concrete. I stuck out my hand, dangling my string, and my knuckles bumped against those of several oni. There was a moment of silence.

“Who’s the loser?” asked Yuugi.

“The one with the shortest string,” said Suika.

“Yes but who is she?” responded Yuugi. “Not an oni. Not a human, either.”

“I’m Koishi,” said Koishi. “I… was like my sister, once!”

“Oh yeah,” said Yuugi. “You’re Miss Komeiji’s sister, oh, what’s your name?”

“Koishi!” she said again. I was irritated on her behalf.

“Little Stone!” said Yuugi. She laughed. “Sorry to see you here!”

“She’s so bloody tiny,” said one of the other oni. I couldn't see him clearly, but he obviously had bodybuilder proportions like the rest of them. “Won’t be much of a meal. Nice bikini, though.”

“It’s time we went on a diet anyway,” said Yuugi.

“I didn’t want to play this game,” said Koishi, “So I’m actually going to leave.”

“No you’re not,” said Yuugi, making all of us tense up.

“Won’t Satori go to war with us if we eat her sister?” asked Suika. She didn’t ask it like they were discussing war, but like they were discussing the weather.

“Perhaps,” said Yuugi. Koishi took a step toward the door, but the oni was faster. The smaller youkai eeped as the much larger demon grabbed her. “I can track you when I’m thinking about it,” growled the massive youkai.

“I can see that now!” she said. “I was hoping you’d let me go anyway?”

“That’s not how this game works,” said the oni.

“Please let me go?”

“No.”

“I didn’t eat any of the other oni, though!”

“Yeah, well. You played the game, now it’s time to pay the price. Doesn’t matter if you never took home your winnings.” Yuugi put a massive hand on top of Koishi’s head. The smaller youkai was still wearing her hat, just like me, even if she’d been forced by custom to switch to a swimsuit just like I had. Yuugi gently took it off, and ruffled Koishi’s green hair. “I like you, so I’ll make it quick. Any last words?”

Yuugi was strong enough to break any of us like an egg. I stood up and started to shout, which didn’t really help, but at least I wasn’t the only one. Sasha had a better idea.

“Okina, save Koishi!” yelled Sasha. The smaller youkai disappeared into a portal in her back, and took our ability to escape with her. It even sucked in her hat.

A silence fell around the table. Yuugi licked her lips.

“I’m pretty sure that’s cheating,” said Yuugi. “And you’re awfully afraid for someone with an escape ability.” She popped her knuckles and I could swear that the dishes rattled.

“Let’s just play again,” said Sasha. “Koishi cleary didn’t know what she was getting into, so–”

Yuugi grabbed her. “Do you?”

Sasha sputtered.

“I saw you trying to give the other human a long one. I should eat you for cheating!”

The room filled with the smell of fresh coffee, Sasha’s fear-scent. I looked at the shadows around the room and stood stock still. I needed to be ready to use danmaku. I doubted I could take on twenty oni, when Youmu had failed to do the same on an earlier rescue attempt and she could see, but I was prepared to try. Maybe we could get away, somehow. More likely, we would lose and be compelled to let them eat us.

The only thing I was certain of, was that I agreed with Sasha’s decision one-hundred percent.

“Yuugi,” said Suika. “The human village. Invaders.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said the single-horned oni. “I’ll make you a deal, human. As long as you take a bite of the feast we can just pretend this didn’t happen. But first, we play again, and no cheating this time.”

“Okay,” said Sasha.

“Promise you’ll eat!” she said.

“I promise I’ll take a bite!” said Sasha. Yuugi put her down.

“And you too,” Yuugi told me.

“What?” I asked. “I didn’t cheat!”

“Fine. Drink then.” I drank some water. “Good enough. I can see you wasting away, little humans. Don’t you know your kind has to eat?”

The oni laughed. Sasha gathered up the strips of cloth to distribute them again. Either she shook, or my ruined vision made it seem that way. I was ever-so-slowly overcoming the blinding flash from the vengeful spirits.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

We held out our strings. A piece of fabric in a red hand was a bit shorter than the rest.

“Figures,” said Red. A rotten-egg smell was coming from him. “Goz is like fourth in line, right now.”

“Your friend?” asked Yuugi.

“Yeah,” he said. “We wanted to be here together.”

She nodded. “I’ll tell him you were waiting.”

“Oh, one other thing. They can only do that doorway trick once per day.”

“Damnit Red…” I muttered. He was smarter than I’d realized.

“I’m not sorry,” he told me. “Except that we don’t get to hang out any more. I’m sorry about that.” That made it worse. “Humans with bodies are very interesting. I can see why you want them here.”

The oni didn’t fight, but I tasted his sulfurous fear right up until the point that there was a sickening crunch. I covered my ears to try to avoid the wet sounds that followed, and closed my eyes just in case I might see anything. The oni were ripping and tearing. I smelled burning meat. The nausea became too much and I dry-heaved.

“Do you want some?” asked Suika after I’d been still for a few minutes. “I cooked it for you.” She was hard to understand. Her mouth was full.

“No,” I said, my eyes watering. “Thank you.”

“Suit yourself. Not you, though, you have to try this!”

The coffee scent became strong, then bitter, as Sasha chewed and swallowed whatever it was they handed to her. I felt sick.

I hadn’t jumped up to defend Red.

—

After the feast the oni put Sasha and I in manacles. They weren’t attached to a wall or anything: they were just bindings, like Yuugi’s and Suika’s. Each had a short length of chain attached. To get the cuffs over our hands and feet Suika enlarged them then shrank them back down.

Although the manacles had a lock, the oni apparently didn’t know where the key was. Each binding weighed about ten pounds. It was hard to move in them.

“These are for keeping oni locked up,” said Yuugi. She smiled meanly at me. “If either of you go through your little door, just know you’ll be leaving your arms and legs behind. These manacles are indestructible, and can’t be taken out of the Old Capital.”

“Thanks for warning us,” I said. “How did you break your own bindings?” She was also probably lying about leaving the Old Capital, because Suika and her had left in canon and they still had their chains.

Yuugi leaned over and put her face close to mine.

“I’m even less destructible,” she said.

“I popped them by shrinking and growing them,” said Suika. “They’ll break each other just fine.”

Yuugi growled.“Things like that should be kept secret,” she said.

“Why?” asked Suika. “They should know that the only way they can leave is with my permission!”

“Whatever. Our permission.”

They led us into the courtyard full of outcasts. It felt cooler than the center of Hot Springs Town. The outcast oni looked at us as we passed.

“Are they–” started one blue oni.

“Not yet,” said Yuugi. “But soon.”

“By the way,” said Suika, to Sasha. “Did you use your own identity to make the strings?”

“Yes,” said Sasha after a moment. She was morose.

“Then you misjudged me,” responded the small oni with a hiccup that became a burp.

The two oni led us into a room on the very edge of the courtyard, one that opened into the wall. It was perhaps once the guard’s quarters. When she opened the door, it was frigid inside.

“This is a special punishment chamber,” said Yuugi. “Don’t try to escape. I won’t be here to save your life from the others. Any questions?”

“Yeah, I–”

“Good.” She closed the door behind her. Then the door shrank until it was a few centimeters tall. I heard the sound of laughter as they walked away. I wrote down a note about shrinking doors and expanding walls.

“Fucking bitch must have tried,” muttered Sasha as she sat next to the tiny door with her head in her hands. I spent a few minutes exploring the space by touch, since I still couldn’t see very well. There was a single red lantern hanging in the center of the room. Its dim light wasn’t much to see by.

The walls were thick stone and felt rough to the touch. I yelped when I went to the second corner. The far wall was coated in ice, because the room barely extended into the cold zone caused by all of the vengeful spirits in Hot Springs Town.

There was a bed opposite the door, with a layer of ice in place of sheets. Next to it was an empty bucket. Fortunately, the one wall was still fairly warm. I leaned up against it.

It looked like the main punishment was choosing whether to sleep on a frozen bed or on the warmer but rockier ground. I started to shiver. Both of us were still in swim clothes.

“This is your fucking fault,” said Sasha. She got to her feet. “If you weren’t the kind of person who’d rescue me, I could have escaped.” She paced back and forth in the narrow, less-cold part of the room.

“My fault?” I asked. I started pulling winter clothes out of my backpack. “You could have left at any time!”

“Not without stranding you!”

“Do it early in the morning–wait for me by the Blowhole!”

“Hello? We’re underground! Who fucking knows when it’s morning!”

“Well… you should have tried to fly out of here!”

“And face whatever youkai lurk in the underground at night? Got into trouble and teleported anyway?” She shook her head. “You should have sent Reimu after me instead, you arrogant prick!”

“I fucking tried!” I said, half-shouting. She looked away.

I rubbed my temple in frustration. My hunger had abated during dinner with the fear scents, but my head was pounding.

I wondered if the morsel had done much for Sasha: probably not. She’d persisted down here for four days, growing weaker, to avoid the possibility of stranding me somewhere in the underground. I had the thought I should cut her some slack.

“I tried to send Reimu,” I said. “She wouldn’t go, but Youmu would. Didn’t you hear the fight with Youmu?”

“No,” she said. Sasha sat back down and hugged her knees. She was shivering too. I tossed my coat to her. “Oh, fuck you.”

“I’m not trying to be nice,” I lied. “I’m trying to keep you alive so we can escape.”

“We’ve got no chance of that,” she said as she took the coat. “Thanks anyway.”

“It’s too early to say,” I said. “We should think about it before we just give up.”

I slapped one of my chains against another, but it did absolutely no damage. I did it a few more times just in case. The metal looked and felt like iron, but it was somehow less yielding. Then I puttered around the room looking for things that weren’t nailed down.

The bed was frozen in place. The bucket had mold in it that I didn’t trust. I extended my wings to fly up to the lantern, but it was made of the same metal as the bindings. Flying with them on was like carrying a heavy sack.

After that we sat in shivering silence for a few minutes. Both of us were shaking, even pressed against the warm wall. Eventually Sasha scooted closer to me.

“Don’t get any ideas,” she said, as she wrapped the coat around both of us. “Put your back to mine.”

“I’m glad to have you at my back,” I said as I turned. She was very warm. “Metaphorically, too. What was Suika talking about?”

“Hmm?”

“With the strings?” I asked.

“Oh,” said Sasha. She pulled something out of the front of her swimsuit–the metal spike that was missing from her collar. She’d sharpened it somehow, probably by rubbing it against a rock. “I thought she might make the strings longer with her power. So I cut up some of my clothes to make them. She can’t change the size of other beings with her power, only objects.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because she’s locking us in a room, and not in a fucking lantern.” Sasha tried to scoot closer and pushed me a bit. “They would shrink us down and put us in their refrigerator, if they could.”

“Good point,” I said. “Don’t tell them they could make the lantern bigger.”

“Hah.”

“And your clothes are part of your identity, so they count as you.”

“Yeah,” she said. It was pretty clever, I had to admit, but I hated the five percent chance of death that came with drawing straws. I’d have challenged them to a mathematical game instead. I thought about limited resources for making games.

“Sucks that you had to lose your underwear,” I said.

“Yeah. I lost it when they gave me the swimsuit.” She shifted. “I made the strings out of a sock, you fucking weirdo.”

“My bad,” I said. She must have liked her socks more than her underwear. “We’ll have to figure out what happened to your boots.”

“Yeah.”

“Sasha, I’m sorry that you were trapped here for four days without food. I swear to you that I came here as fast as I could.”

“I believe you,” she replied. Then she sighed. “I know you’re just trying to help. Guh. I’m sorry, Jake. We wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t tried to push so hard.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’ve done the same. And you were right, I tried to come save you every day even though that was ill-advised.” If she’d teleported out, I’d be dead or worse.

“It sucks that you’ve had to rescue me twice.”

“If you think about it, staying here when you knew I’d need the escape ability was rescuing me, right? And you did that twice?”

“Three times.”

“Ah–yeah.

“You didn’t even try on the first day?” she asked.

“I didn’t,” I admitted. “I wanted to give you a chance to escape.” Patchouli had held me back, but I’d eventually listened to her reasoning.

“Dammit.” She sighed. “I wasn’t sure what day it was, when I woke up… dammit!” She hit the ground.

“I’ve been rescued a few times myself,” I reminded her. “Remilia. Patchouli. Heck, even Yukari if you think about it.” I looked at the shadows, but if the gap youkai and master of Gensokyo had chosen that moment to return, she was hiding it. “So don’t feel bad about it.”

“Fine. I’ll try not to.” She turned around and got closer to me. She was still shivering. “This way will be easier.”

Sasha snuggled up to my side. We both leaned back on the stone wall, wrapped up in the coat.

“This is a sisterly and chaste attempt to steal your warmth,” she said.

“Understood,” I said. I put my hand on her head and rubbed her hair. “I tried to save you like a brother would.”

“Heh. My brother really would have done that…” she sighed. “Without thinking, too. You’re stupid, just like him.”

“I bet that’s genetic though.” She motioned to punch my arm, but there was no malice in it.

“He was way into VR dramas,” she said.

That told me a lot about him–superstimulus media had been banned, but television and VR experiences skirted the line. Sasha had smoked cigarettes, and if I had to choose between being addicted to smoking and being addicted to entertainment, I would have chosen smoking. I told her as much. She told me a bit more about her family as we huddled and shivered. Her brother had been a director–not as impressive in the age of AI–before AI directors supplanted human efforts entirely.

We spent a few minutes like that. I was waiting, to make sure the oni weren’t coming back. As I gently rubbed Sasha’s hair I noticed that she had a lump.

“Did you hit your head?” I asked.

“No,” she said. Sasha put her hand to her temple. She leaned away from me and started patting her forehead. “Fuck.”

“What is it?” I asked. She tried to show me, but I couldn’t make anything out.

“I think they’re horns,” she said. “Little tiny ones, starting to sprout.”

“Oh shit!”

“We need to fucking get out of here as soon as possible.”

“I agree,” I said. I pulled my bag toward me. “You don’t think they’re coming back any time soon, right?”

“Probably not?” she said. “At night they usually pair or triple off and pick rooms around the spa.” Sasha looked at the ceiling. “I hope Koishi’s alright.”

“Now’s as good a time as any, then,” I said. I pulled one of my spare communication crystals out of my backpack. It lifted into the air beside me.

“Did you fucking wait until we cuddled on purpose?” asked Sasha with a hiss. She didn’t pull away, though.

“No!” I said. “I just didn’t want them to walk in on us!”

“Don’t talk so loud,” said Patchouli through the device. I heard a telepathic yawn. “It’s quite late. Did you mean to call me? You look busy.”

“Busy dying!” I said.

“I’m not kidding about being quiet. I have instructed the demons to tell me what you are saying, so you can just mouth the words.”

I quietly explained our situation. It took a few minutes. I drank the last of my water as I talked.

“Ah, so it’s actually just cold there. Hmm. Well, I have a solution for breaking your manacles and getting you out of that room.”

“You do?”

“Returning to the surface is a greater issue. I doubt either of you can fly all the way up, or that you’ll be able to battle your way through all the youkai.” After eating so much fear at dinner, I felt like I could probably get close. I didn’t say that, though. Patchouli didn’t know I was partially a youkai.

“Is Nazrin there?” Sasha asked in the faintest whisper.

“She’s sleeping under the table.”

“Well, we don’t have to return to the surface, then,” said Sasha. She explained her idea, and Patchouli agreed with some hesitation.

“It’s still going to be incredibly risky,” she said. Her voice was flat; Patchouli was good at relaying just the facts. “You need to fly and run there as fast as possible.”

“You figured out multi-person telepathy,” I said, the moment I noticed.

“I had to fill the time while waiting for you to contact me. Incidentally, I’d recommend peppering the ground with danmaku to show your status as you go.”

“Won’t that draw youkai to us?” I asked

“They will be drawn either way. Don’t let them engage with you; just flee, but make sure they know you are danmaku users.”

“Understood,” I said. Youkai couldn’t kill us as fast with danmaku, which was the whole point of it.

“Now wait warmly while I prepare to break your manacles. It will take some minutes.” The crystal went silent.

A few moments passed. Sasha sighed, and it turned into a yawn.

“Fine, a little more,” she said as she snuggled up to me.