The bathhouse was centrally-located in the human village proper, that is, among the buildings that had been there before the influx of immigrants. I could tell just by looking that it had received some pretty major upgrades. The facade was stained hardwood and the building behind it had been knocked down so that it could be expanded in that direction.

The interior was as cozy as a place could be while still reminding you that it was a reception area in a public facility. The floor was polished bamboo. There were two chairs and a receptionist’s counter that was lit by a bright paper lantern. There were also three bamboo plants along one wall. The one nearest the door looked a little yellow, but the other two were fresher. There were two doorways, one on either side of the counter. Each had green curtains hanging in front to cover it.

A young woman was behind the counter. I could tell she was human. She had plain black hair in a bob cut and was wearing a collared uniform, true, but the real reason I knew she was human was that Wiki didn’t elbow me and tell me her name and abilities. We slowly walked up to her.

“Have you ever been to a bathhouse before?” said the woman with a smile that betrayed exactly zero animosity. She stood straight and tall. With her excellent posture she was taller than Wiki, who slouched.

“Yes!” said Wiki. “I’ve been to Japan twice, actually!”

“I was actually asking about bathhouses,” said the woman, her smile enduring. “Do you know how things work here?”

“Well, unless they are substantially different in Gensokyo… we'll drop our things into lockers. Then we’ll shower up, and finally hop in the tub for a soak?”

“Do not jump, skip, or hop while you are here,” she said. The woman went on to explain that we could leave our clothes with her to have them cleaned, and we could get complimentary robes when we left (this one time). She took pains to explain that our clothes would merely be laundered, not repaired.

She accepted Arnold’s ax without a second glance and promised him it’d be there when he returned. We were each given a ticket to put with our laundry.

“Do we have to… pay?” asked Wiki.

“Not today!” she said, gritting her teeth. “I’m told you’ll get your stipends this evening, and be able to pay starting tomorrow.” She marked something in a notebook.

“Yukari told us the same,” he said.

“Miss Yakumo,” she corrected. Wiki’s brow furrowed.

“Well, I hope you guys have warm water. Let’s … huh…” Instead of writing, the two curtains had sewn symbols on them. One looked like a smiley face; the other looked like a frowning oni (or ogre, or demon).

“Aha,” said Arnold. “‘Youkai’ and ‘human,’ my two favorite genders.”

“I’m so sorry,” said the woman. “We haven’t changed our signs to ‘male’ and ‘female,’ yet. We’ve recently reorganized, you see.”

“I’m going to guess that the smiley face means ‘man’, and oni means ‘woman,’” said Wiki, walking toward the curtain.

The receptionist huffed and caught his shoulder. “You are too headstrong, you ogre. It’s the opposite.”

Wiki started to stammer something out about how all the monsters in Gensokyo were women, so wouldn’t that make more sense, but Arnold mercifully dragged him to the demon side of the bathhouse. The lady watched us go with a half-smile.

It was just about as Wiki said, except instead of lockers there were cubbies with no doors on them. They were open on both sides. I glanced through one and saw a narrow, dark, and deserted hallway on the other side. That room would be right behind the receptionist’s counter, I guessed.

“Just like a mailroom,” said Wiki. He was looking through the cubbies at the same wall. “That wall prevents us from seeing the ladies’ side, I think.”

“Heh,” said Arnold. “Male room.”

“If she comes to collect our clothes, she’ll see us,” I said as I pointed through the latticework of wood.

“Lucky her,” said Arnold, who was half-undressed already.

“I’m not comfortable with that,” said Wiki. Neither was I, and I felt relieved and validated to hear about his embarrassment.

“Better hurry then, before she comes by,” said Arnold.

“I should have asked her about finding a youkai to help us leave the village,” Wiki grumbled. He started to undress as well. “She’d probably have gotten the wrong idea though, if I asked for an escort.”

I hastened to keep up. My pants and shredded shirt went into the cubby with the ticket I’d just been given. I felt my face burning. I hadn’t been naked in front of another human being in a very long time. I tried not to look down as I turned around to face the other two.

“Showers then,” said Wiki, who was appreciating the polished bamboo ceiling. His feet slapped as he walked from the bamboo onto a tile floor. As we left the room I glanced back. As far as I could tell, the receptionist hadn’t come in while we were disrobing.

I was mildly surprised to find that the bathhouse had brand new individual showers, each with perfectly opaque wooden doors.

“Not like Japan, then,” said Wiki. “We can shower in privacy.”

“There’s more than one bathhouse in Japan, right?” asked Arnold.

“I’ve no conclusive proof of that,” he said, dourly. “But point taken.”

“I wonder what youkai really look like naked, if they have to shower apart from each other.” Arnold waggled his fingers. “Like cthulhu, probably. Tentacles ‘n stuff.”

“You doofus,” said Wiki. “If that were the case, the changing room would also be private.” He glanced through one of the open shower doorways. “Not that I’m complaining.”

“Maybe they only transform when wet?” said Arnold. I felt an impulse to remind him of Occam's razor, but Arnold probably didn’t use razors, based upon his appearance.

“Like that one anime? Are you going to douse one with a bucket and find out?”

“I’ll just ask one,” said Arnold. “Really nicely, ‘Hey, are you hiding tentacles somewhere?’ Maybe they’ll show me!”

“I doubt any of us will ever see a youkai naked,” I said, instead of ‘oh my God let’s all just get this over with.’ No sooner had I spoken than a silver-haired person with golden eyes and glasses walked through the youkai-labeled door.

It was Morichika Rinnosuke, the only male human-shaped youkai in all of Gensokyo (that I knew of). We stared at him open-mouthed. I saw his bare chest; he was masculine, not just male but built, like Arnold minus the hair, and I immediately thought it was bullshit that even male youkai got to be pretty.

Rinnosuke gave us a quizzical look, one that quickly hardened, and then walked into one of the showers. He stared at us like an owl, his head turning as he walked. Then he closed the door, a single golden eye and arched eyebrow disappearing as it snapped shut.

“Looked pretty average to me,” Arnold finally admitted. “No tentacles, I mean.”

“He wasn’t wet, though,” replied Wiki.

—

I met up with Arnold and Wiki at the entrance to the bathing room several minutes later.

The public bath consisted of six tile-lined pools of water arranged in a circle. They were sunken into the floor with stairs and a bamboo railing for entry and exit. There were no windows, but it was spacious and comfortable. About forty men were hopping in and out of tubs. Despite that, it didn’t feel very crowded. Each tub could hold twenty or thirty on its own, at least if the other bathers were more comfortable with nudity than I was.

That is, if they didn’t hide in a corner on a sunken bench. That was what I was doing. Wiki and Arnold had sat on either side of me, which meant that I was awkwardly looking past them, focusing on the architecture.

If anything, the bathhouse was extravagantly huge for a population of five hundred people. I tried to do some math about how many people were likely to be in the bathhouse at any one time, then forgot about that as I settled into the warm water. Each pool was a different temperature and a different color. This one had pink tiles and was very relaxing.

We predictably ran into Rinnosuke inside of the public bath. He had gone to sit in the ‘cold’ pool, the one with purple tiles, as a dozen or so naked men milled about nearby and tried not to glance at him. He was alone. I could tell whenever someone recognized him. They’d do a double take, just like we had. Rinnosuke’s frown deepened for a moment every time he caught someone looking at him.

I watched as Rinnosuke met someone’s gaze. He stared at them, flat-faced, until they looked away. His expression was stoic and discerning, which is what you call resting bitch face when you’re trying to be nice.

“Well, I’m going to the ‘super hot’ pool,” said Arnold. “The red one, I mean. Think it’s the hot one?”

“We should ask Rinnosuke for help,” I said.

“I think I can find it on my own.”

“No, I mean we still need someone to escort us outside the village.”

Wiki sighed. “He’s never depicted using danmaku. Morichika Rinnosuke might not be that much stronger than a normal human. His power is to know the name and utility of any object, and he’s bad at even that.” Rinnosuke sank in the cold water as we talked, until it was covering his mouth. He was too far away to hear us. “He’s only half-youkai, even.”

“Like Youmu?” asked Arnold.

Wiki’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah, but he doesn’t have a sword. She has at least two.” Across the way, Rinnosuke had started blowing bubbles.

“He knows other youkai, though?” I asked. “And they don’t kill him on sight, even though his store is outside the village?”

“Hmm,” said Wiki.

“He might be able to tell us how to find someone who can help us, even if he can’t.”

“Go ask him, then.”

I stood up in the water, which was mercifully deep enough to keep me covered. I waited for the others to get up and follow me, but they both remained silent. Even Arnold stayed put–so much for going to the red pool.

“Fine,” I said. I walked out of the tub, trying not to look around in embarrassment as I left the water. Nobody seemed to be paying me any mind, but I still felt embarrassed. I walked straight toward Rinnosuke. He stared at me, and as I got closer, quite a few others started to look. I didn’t stop until I touched the water.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

“Yikes!” I said. The water in the purple pool was positively icy. In fact, I was surprised there wasn’t ice floating on it. I touched it again, and yep, it was still frigid.

“Getting cold feet?” called Wiki from the edge of the other pool.

“No,” I called back as I marched down into the freezing tub. I began to shiver before it was past my knees. Then I took a deep breath and plunged in.

It only hurt for a moment. Then for several moments after that. Actually it just kept getting worse, but I was on a mission. My body quaked as I waded toward Rinnosuke, but at least I’d forgotten to be embarrassed, because I was too busy wondering how long it would take for frostbite to set in.

“Impressive,” he said as I sat down next to him.

“It’s c–cold, but I’m strong-willed.”

“I meant that you’d be so rude,” he clarified for me. His voice was even, which was a warmer reception than I had expected. “You are strong willed, I’ll give you that. What do you want?”

“I….” there was a splash. Wiki and Arnold were getting into the pool as well, and despite myself I smiled with chattering teeth. “We want your help, g-getting an escort outside the village.”

“What makes you think I can help with that?”

“You seem like a helpful guy,” offered Arnold, and I noticed that he wasn’t shivering nearly as badly. Wiki could only nod as he hugged his elbows. Having three strange men approach him in the bathhouse didn’t seem to perturb Rinnosuke at all.

“Miss Yakumo t-told us we couldn’t leave the village without an escort,” I bit out, “and th-that we have to practice danmaku outside the village.”

“That does sound like an edict she would issue,” said Rinnosuke. He pushed up his glasses.

“Do you know anyone who could help us?”

“No,” he said. “Good day.” He got up to leave, but Wiki interrupted him.

“Explain, where, to find youkai,” he stammered. “Please.”

“Why should I?”

“We’ll visit your shop. Can’t, without escort.”

“Hmm.”

“We’ll bring friends.” Rinnosuke’s eyebrow went up, so Wiki continued. “We’ll buy something?”

Rinnosuke smiled.

“Very well, then! The first thing you need to know about youkai is that they are capricious. For example, even a half-youkai might force an extended stay in freezing water as he gave you a lecture.”

“Or he might decide to be nice, and pick a warmer pool,” said Arnold, who was starting to shiver more.

“He might,” acknowledged Rinnosuke. “Well, follow me. I’ll explain things as best as I can, it’s in my nature.” He walked out of the pool and we hastened to follow him right back into the pink tub.

And that was how the three of us listened to a midnight lecture from a fully-nude Morichika Rinnosuke about how to find youkai who could be trusted.

–

“We’re boned,” Arnold told Sasha later that evening. Wiki nodded, and I could only frown. “Totally boned, might as well accept it.”

“Damn,” said Sasha.

“He told us to purchase grilled lamprey from Mystia Lorelei,” said Wiki. Mystia was a night sparrow known for having a voice that could bewilder you, or drive you insane, or make you blind, or perhaps all three. “He had things to say about others too–Kawashiro Nitori rebuilt the bathhouse, for example–but he said Mystia is the one who’d be easiest to find, mostly because she’d want to find us.”

“Mystia,” said Sasha. “That makes perfect sense.”

“It does?”

“Of course it doesn’t!” she responded. “Doesn’t Mystia lead you astray with her song and murder you, or something?”

“That’s not quite right,” Wiki said. “She is depicted as running a scam where she uses her singing powers to blind people, and pretends to cure them with food from her grilled lamprey stand.”

“Grilled lamprey,” said Arnold. “That sounds so gross.”

“A night sparrow isn’t going to sell yakitori,” responded Wiki. “That’d be cannibalism.”

“Chickens and sparrows are very different,” said Sasha.

“Where’d she even get the lamprey from?” asked Arnold. “It’s not like you can farm them, right? What the fuck are lampreys, even? Fish?”

“Parasites, actually,” said Wiki. “Parasitic fish. Known for curing night-blindness, hence her scam. However, Mystia Lorelei isn’t in the human village: she is merely nearby. So we’d have to break the rules for a bit to go out and be found by her.” He looked at the ceiling expectantly, but if Yukari was listening, she had nothing to say about us discussing how we might break the rules.

“Wait, who’s she selling lamprey to, then?” asked Arnold.

“Youkai and humans who leave the village,” said Wiki. “The locals are allowed to leave, even if we are not.”

“That sucks,” said Sasha.

“Well, at least Rinnosuke had a lot of advice for finding youkai without getting killed. For example, he told us to stay home at night, and to quit learning danmaku.”

“No,” I said.

“I agree, we have to learn danmaku,” said Wiki.

“Also, I’m going to the restroom.” I stood up. “Not going to hold it ‘til morning.”

Sasha and the others continued brainstorming as I left. I walked out into the cool night air. I was wearing a yukata supplied by the bathhouse. After I’d finished my business, I walked back toward our little paper building, but I stopped short.

The moon was up. The night was beautiful and clean. Most of the dorms were dark, but a few glowed with the faint light of lanterns. As I looked out over the village, I could see stars splashed across the night sky. I looked up and was transfixed.

The night sky was very bright. I wondered if it was another magic, like the translation magic. I didn’t see any satellites which was pretty strong evidence we’d left Earth entirely, or at least some magic was at play.

The stars made me think of danmaku, at first, but they were far too disordered for that. I decided to walk around town for a bit rather than go straight back to the dorm.

I started down the gravel paths in the village. A man passed by going the other way, but he merely nodded, as is appropriate for a nighttime stroll.

Before long I was sitting on a bench under the watchful eye of a statue, another Japanese warrior. This one was female, I was pretty sure, but her accurate armor made it harder to tell. I looked up at the statue’s serene expression and the stars glittered behind her like hidden thoughts.

The human village had no lights, no sound, no people out at night, and no machines or drones plotting to knock down the buildings. Just me, the ungendered stone warrior, and the night sky.

Gensokyo was the land of fantasy, after all.

—

I discovered three things when I checked the mailbox the next morning. First, we had a mailbox.

Second, I’d gotten a bottle of vitamin supplements with my name on it.

“You’ll be more nutritious when they eat you,” said Wiki.

“They didn’t give anyone else vitamins.”

“We are nutritious enough already,” he said. “And point in fact, they did give everyone vitamins.”

“Oh.”

Finally, we’d each gotten our stipend. Inside of a little pouch with my name on it was a bag with ten square-holed coins.

“Fifty rin, whatever the hell that is,” I said. “These coins are small.”

“They could be worth a lot, though,” said Wiki.

They weren’t.

—

I learned what Servitude was that day. A fairy was making us wash our own clothes at the river that ran through the village. We were waist-deep in water, rubbing shirts on washboards. The fairy said her name was Maroon, and Wiki had informed us that she wasn’t a named character from canon.

“Maybe you just don’t remember her,” I said.

“No, I’m fairly certain she’s a nobody. She’s cute, though.”

“Like, cute like a kid?” asked Arnold.

“Of course,” he said. “What did you think I meant?”

“Nothing, man.” We continued to scrub the laundry. I idly wondered about Yukari’s immigration policies.

“It doesn’t mean much that we can’t remember her,” I said. “Koishi can make you forget that she exists.”

“Who?” asked Arnold.

“Maybe Maroon is the same way, except weaker,” I added. “Maybe she’s a very important named character, but nobody can remember that at the moment.”

“No, that’d be the Prismriver sisters,” said Wiki.

“Who?” I asked.

“Exactly,” he said. Then he told us about them in great detail: they were the spirits of instruments that had come to life. It said a lot about Touhou that you could forget about such interesting characters.

“I’m from the Scarlet Devil mansion,” said Maroon in a high-pitched voice, to someone else who was talking to her.

“A fairy maid,” muttered Wiki, “I told you.” He spoke up so Maroon would hear him. “Did you get to go to the moon?” He explained to us that Remilia Scarlet of the Scarlet Devil Mansion had taken only three (unnamed) fairies with her on that particular trip.

“No!” she scowled, her scrubbing becoming a bit more violent. “They always give me the lame chores.”

“Like tending to humans?”

“Yeah!” She was unaware, or unapologetic.

“So ‘servitude’ just means doing chores,” someone asked, sounding very put out.

“What else would it mean?”

“I don’t know, serving God?” That isn’t what I had thought, I thought.

“Wrong place for that!” said someone else.

“Yeah,” said Maroon. “Go to the Moriya shrine, if you want to serve some gods. Everybody knows that.” I recalled that the course list said each of the basic tracks could ‘specialize,’ and realized that probably meant going to some other location in Gensokyo. I had the bizarre thought that humans were only brought to Gensokyo so that various factions could stop having to clean their own buildings and clothes.

All of the clothes we were washing were for humans, and many were damaged, but maybe we’d graduate to better things. There were a lot of factions in Gensokyo.

However, the Moriya shrine was somewhere outside the human village, so it would at least be somewhere we could practice danmaku. I realized that if Reimu took her students to the Hakurei Shrine for Seal Construction, I’d be able to practice danmaku there. What’s more, I’d be near the safest person in Gensokyo.

The only problem was that the first Seal Construction class would have its first session in the coming months, after my deadline. I started to scrub harder.

“What do you do besides laundry?” someone asked Maroon.

“Oh, laundry takes all day,” she said. “That's all I do, that and dishes.

“Fairy maids are lazy,” whispered Wiki. “She probably spends a lot of time goofing off.” The conversation continued while he gave his commentary.

“No I meant…” said the stranger, “I don’t know, don’t you spend some time waving a palm frond for the Mistress of the Mansion?”

“A what?” she asked. It was then that I realized there were no beaches in Gensokyo, and thus no beach episodes. “I almost never see the Mistress, and when I do I wanna run the other way!”

“Solid advice,” said Wiki.

“But the Scarlet Devil Mansion wants new help,” she added, happily. “I’m supposed to tell you how great it is to work there!”

“Is it?” asked Wiki. Her smile faltered.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“We get… to drink a lot of tea?”

“What’s the pay like?” someone asked.

“Well, you get a room, and… “ she looked down at the washing. “We aren’t paid with money, of course. Fairies don’t take money.” A lot of people had something to say about that, talking all at once.

“And like that you’ve lost me.”

“They are slaves! That’s so sad!”

“Yeah, I’d want fucking hazard pay. Working with vampires!”

“That’s the main draw, though, isn’t it?”

“Don’t they at least give you food, as well?”

“Have you thought about forming a union?”

“You get the Mistress’s protection if you work there,” said Maroon. She’d dropped an article of clothing. Maroon fluttered over the water to grab it before it was dragged away by the current. “You get to spend time with friends…”

“Ah, it’s definitely a racket.”

“The vampire mafia.”

“You should demand better conditions!”

“You should organize the fairies into their own coalition!”

“Where is Cerulean?” whined Maroon. “She’d be able to explain it…” The Scarlet Devil Mansion had sent a different fairy to help the women wash the women’s clothing. They were somewhere upriver.

“There there,” said Arnold. He went to pat the fairy’s back, but stopped because her wings were in the way. “Why don’t you tell whoever told you to recruit us that at least one human seemed interested?”

“I don’t like lying,” she replied.

“I meant myself.”

“Really!”

“Yeah!”

“And you’re a big guy, aren’t you?”

“...yes?”

“Miss Izayoi will be so happy!” There was an awkward silence. Izayoi Sakuya was the person who could stop time and who still hadn’t shown up to help teach us danmaku. Wiki swallowed.

“Fairies don’t take money because they are nature spirits, right?” Wiki said, suddenly. “It’s… well, not anathema to you, exactly, but…”

“I can’t count,” said Maroon. “Money makes me sad.”

“Well, I’ll teach you,” said Arnold. “And let your boss know that I’d gladly work for her, just for the chance to safely spend time outside of the human village.”

“Don’t tell her that Arnold is going to teach you to count, though,” said Wiki.

“But can you tell her I’m interested?” added Arnold.

“Absolutely!” Maroon continued with the laundry, and soon everyone was chattering again.

“Who is this ‘is a yaoi’?” asked Arnold. Wiki facepalmed.

“She’s the Head Maid of the Scarlet Devil Mansion,” he answered. “She’s known for throwing knives, stopping time, and acquiring and preparing the food for the vampires.”

“Like, blood?”

“No!” said Wiki. “Not like blood! Like, pastries, and pies, and … well, suspicious red tea, I suppose, but you should be worried about the pies!”

“Why? Pies sound great!”

“Meat pies!”

“Even bet–ah,” said Arnold. “Ah.”

“Yeah!”

“I just want to practice danmaku.”

“At least beat stage one first,” I said. There was a moment of silence.

“I’ll be sure to take my ax.”