I had a nightmare where a frog strangled me to death. It had long claws with bulb-tipped bola fingers that wrapped around my neck like twine. The frog gave me a lecture on the basic transformer architecture, and castigated me for using AI tools before I understood the original invention.

It was a stress dream with no deeper meaning, just a natural reaction to being murdered by something that was close enough to a frog to be uncanny to them. I gasped when I woke up. Someone was pressed against my torso.

“Hey you,” said Suwako. “You’re finally awake.”

I was still in the living room attached to the Moriya Shrine. The goddess’s eyes were very close to mine–the eyes on her hat, anyway. They were crossing to look at my face. Suwako herself had her ear pressed to my chest. Her hat had mostly fallen off.

Was she listening to my heartbeat?

“What are you doing here?” I asked. I remembered the hat becoming a maw, and tried not to scream and kick her off.

“It’s my shrine,” she said. “Well, named after me, at least.”

“No, I mean, why are you on top of me?”

“Oh, I’m checking you over for lingering evil,” she said, sitting up. She straightened her hat out. Suwako was straddling me, and it was distinctly uncomfortable. The couch wasn’t as plush as it could have been, for one thing. “There’s some evil there, but I think it’s garden-variety human evil rather than anything truly nefarious.”

“Couldn’t you have checked while I was awake?” Or by waving a stick, like Sanae did.

“Nope. Humans put up barriers when they are conscious.” She smiled down at me, seemingly content to use me as a seat. The eyes in her face were still gray. “It’s easier to perceive a human soul without all those nasty conscious thoughts in the way. Have you lost something recently?”

I reflexively went to pat my pockets, narrowly avoided touching her leg, and then looked at my stuff that was sitting on the table. Then I realized I was being stupid.

“Yeah,” I said. “I lost my sense of smell.”

“Curious,” she said with a frown. “The sense of smell doesn’t exist by itself in your psyche, you know. For it to be so cleanly removed… hmm.”

“It wasn’t you?” I asked. Suwako shook her head. Then we heard a cheerful voice.

“Hey!” called Sanae from the neighboring room. A door opened. “Breakfast is… ready…”

Kochiya Sanae stared at us. Suwako and I both stared back at her. Then she went back to the kitchen without a word, gently closing the door behind her.

“Anyway,” said Suwako without moving. “No hard feelings about me murdering you?”

“Funny,” I said. “I was going to ask you the same question.”

“I’m not a god of forgiveness,” she said. Then Suwako smiled. “Nor of wrath, lest you worry.”

“I hope that the fact that you got better makes a difference.” I reached for my notebook on the coffee table, and held it between us as I wrote. “You can unmanifest at will, can’t you?”

“A god knows when to make an intervention, and when to stand aside,” she said. I wish she knew to fucking get off me. “Absence can be as powerful as presence.”

“And you can remanifest just as easily?”

“You haven’t said whether you forgive me,” she said, looking not quite at my face.

“I don’t think I could hold a grudge,” I said. “You have me at a disadvantage. For example, if you were to turn to stone right now, I might die. Again.”

“It’s true,” she said.

“Even in the broader scheme of things, I’d rather have you as an ally than an enemy. I want to live.”

“See, that’s the problem with you rational types,” said the goddess as she mercifully dismounted me. She smoothed her skirt. “If you didn’t always calculate everything, your forgiveness wouldn’t seem so calculated.”

“But at least being rational makes me honest and easy to work with.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She seemed upset that I hadn’t reacted positively to being used as a cushion. I didn’t know what she had expected.

Kochiya Sanae was the distant descendant of Moriya Suwako. Therefore, Suwako was one of the very few Touhou characters who was confirmed to have had sex in canon, at least according to Wiki. Although I had no idea what the goddess had been like thousands of years ago, in her current form she looked a lot like a blind child. That put me off–that, and being murdered by her.

“Wow,” said Suwako, turning away. I’d been quiet for too long. “You really hate me, huh? Maybe I should leave the faith gathering to Sanae and Lady Yasaka, after all.” As she faced away I noticed that her leg was in a brace. It had been digging into my side.

“I don’t exactly hate you,” I said. I tried to remember the gut-wrenching worry I’d felt at the prospect of Yukari murdering me, or of my humanity falling away until my friends had to do it themselves. “I’m just a little afraid, because yeah, you did drown me. On the other hand, I am human once more. I am grateful, even if your method was brutal.” She looked at me, or almost, and I tried to let my emotion out like it was danmaku. “Thank you. Deeply.”

“Aww,” she said, pulling down her hat to cover her face. “I feel better about giving you a boon, now.”

“Boon?”

“I have allowed you to keep some of your unearned strength,” said the yellow-haired goddess. “I tasted your emotions. You are worthy even if you are weak. Power does not come from nowhere, but I am magnanimous, so you may borrow some of mine.”

“Yesterday you told me something very different,” I noted. “About power.”

“No,” she said. “I told you that power wasn’t hard to get, not that it came from nowhere.”

“Ah.” Perhaps because I’d been dealing with Remilia Scarlet and Yakumo Yukari for so long, I doubted her motivations. “Is it also true that my use of your power will provide you with faith, as long as I know it comes from you?”

“I did consider that,” she admitted. “And if you tell others, our connection may even empower me instead of weaken me. I’m going to have to ask you to keep this a secret instead.”

That sucked. I’d wanted to have a ready, apparent explanation that I could give to people for my increased strength. I was getting awfully tired of secrets. “Why?” I remembered to ask.

“Because power-seekers make poor pilgrims,” she said. “I don’t want people to come to the Moriya Shrine seeking their own boons.”

I nodded. “Maybe I shouldn’t tell people that being cursed made me more powerful, either.”

“Your wisdom grows, child.” I tried to contain my frown, but she didn’t seem to be trying to contain her shit-eating grin.

“So why are you giving me this boon? If you tell me directly, maybe I can better–”

“Serve my will?” she asked.

“Collaborate with you.” I had no interest in being a puppet.

“Oh. Well, it’s because I’m generous and I recognize your greatness.”

“Suwako… is a… liar…” I pretended to write in my notebook.

“Fine,” she said. “The truth of the matter is simply that I can feel the evil artifact you seek, deep beneath the Earth. I too want it removed, as a deer wants the ticks pecked from her back. Even more than earning faith, that motivates me.” That she’d have a powerful lever to move a human pawn was a coincidence, I supposed.

“I will do my best,” I said, putting my hand to my chest. “Which will be considerably better now, I think. We want the same things.”

“Just know that my blessing will disappear if you ever become cursed again,” she added.

“Good,” I said. “I like those incentives.” I did, and when she didn’t say something like ‘but if you misbehave I’ll take it away’ my trust in her grew just a little bit.

She laughed. “Excellent! And thank you, Mister Thorne, for your forgiveness.”

“No, thank you,” I replied with a bow. Suwako left out the front door almost before I’d straightened.

I went to the kitchen. A bunch of shrine maidens and Sasha were sitting at the table eating pancakes. Yasaka Kanako was at the stove, frying up bacon for her followers. Bacon that I couldn’t even smell.

“You’re the one who wanted to get up early,” complained Sasha.

–

“Man, you guys need to stop having sleepovers without me,” said Arnold.

“Git gud, and we’ll start inviting you,” said Sasha, quoting a meme from a different era.

“So Suwako has a stake in locating the artifact,” said Wiki, “And she gave you magical powers to seek it.”

“And that’s a fucking secret,” I said. I’d learned my lesson about keeping secrets from my friends. I still wanted to stress to them that they had to be discreet with the information.

“Maybe she told you to keep it a secret, because she was lying about her motivations and someone could easily notice,” said Wiki.

“Heh,” said Arnold. “‘It’s not like I like you or anything!’”

“Not the kind of motivation I imagined,” said Wiki. “But I have noticed the trend.”

“I don’t think she likes me,” I told them. “Not in that way, anyway. She seemed to think I might want a… personal boon from her, but I declined and she moved right on.”

“You don’t understand women or youkai,” said Sasha. “If her soul was crushed, she’d never reveal that to you.”

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

“Have you considered that she might have been testing you?” asked Wiki. “If intimate relations with youkai cause one to become corrupted, it makes no sense for her to offer to corrupt you right after curing you.”

I had not considered that. I refused to consider it further, because the alternative to her stress testing my perversion resistance while looking for an excuse to murder me, was that she knew a way to have actual relations without risk. If I thought too much I might attempt to seek that information out. If I went to ask her about it I might get drowned again.

Yep. I definitely didn’t consider it.

“Anything else?” asked Wiki.

“Well, here’s something that’s a bit more concerning,” I said. I flipped back a page in my notebook, and showed him the new note that said Yukari would be back in five thousand years.

“How do you think you know that?” he asked.

“I don’t,” I said. “It just appeared while I was drowning.”

“And yet it is in your handwriting.” He turned it sideways. “It says ‘five thousand’ right? I can’t quite tell.”

“Shut up.”

“This seems different from the mysterious text from before,” he said.

“It hasn’t disappeared yet, for one thing,” I said.

“Was Miss Knowledge able to make heads or tails of the notebook?” asked Wiki.

“No,” I said. “She subjected it to all kinds of tests, but could not ‘evoke any unexpected text’.”

“That is the issue without knowing the cause of a particular effect. If it isn’t repeatable, it can’t be studied.” He handed my notebook back to me.

“Ticket closed: could not reproduce,” I responded. Wiki shuddered. “What’s wrong?”

“I used to work in tech support,” he said.

“Sorry!” Like almost everyone else, he would have been rendered unemployed, but it might have been a relief when the AIs finally took that particular job.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Disregarding that, I think our priorities are getting a hold of a copy of the real Bunbunmaru, and fighting deep enough on expeditions to beg Miss Ushizaki for fish.”

“Urumi comes to the surface to deliver goods to the Moriya Shrine pretty regularly,” I said.

“Sasha?” asked Wiki.

“Absolutely,” she said, giving a salute. “I’ll go there every other day.”

“Good.” He straightened his papers. “Is that all you have to report?” As if I hadn’t just spent an hour telling him things about tengu and kappa and shrines and magic.

“Well, there was something else I wanted to talk to you about,” I said. “Can I come to the next Council meeting?”

“Of course. I was just about to ask you to debrief the rest of the Human Council about the youkai you’ve encountered underground, and how you sent them to us.” His eyebrow went up. “You had the same thought?”

“Er, no.”

–

The next council meeting was on Thursday. That meant I’d have a meeting with Sekibanki first, on Wednesday. But before that, I received a suspicious letter on Tuesday. It was ancient parchment with a seal of blood-red wax. Arnold brought it in and handed it to me.

The most suspicious part about it was the heart shape in the wax. All four of my roommates watched me like hawks, except for Emeff, who watched me like a chicken. I tried to walk past Wiki, but he was standing in the stairwell. When I moved he moved.

“I, uh, prefer to read this upstairs,” I said.

“Who sent you a letter?” he asked.

“It doesn’t say.”

“I think it’s, oh, whatsername,” said Arnold from behind me. “The puppet one.”

“We will not name Jake’s subtle friends,” said Wiki. They still thought that I met with Alice on Wednesdays, rather than Sekibanki, and I wasn’t about to disabuse them of the notion. “I think it’s from the Scarlet Devil Mansion, Remilia specifically. Because she can manipulate fate and letters would appeal to her sense of grandiosity. Also, the heart is associated with blood.”

“Wrong kind of heart,” I said.

“I think it’s from Suwako or some random-ass youkai we’d never expect,” said Sasha.

“That’s cheating,” said Wiki. “‘Suwako, or anybody else’ is too broad a categorization.”

“I’m not overconfident like you two. Open it up, loverboy.”

“It’s my mail,” I said. “I can open it when I please.”

“Our lives are constantly at risk,” said Wiki. “If it contains information we need to know, it’s critical that you share it with us.”

“Well, if it does, I’ll–” Sasha snatched it from my hand before I could finish. “Hey!”

“I wonder what weight we should place on it being a letterbomb?” asked Wiki, who seemed to feel at least a little bad. Sasha tore it open anyway.

“It’s a poem,” she said. “But I was fucking right, it’s from Suwako, and she’s gross.”

“Give me that,” I said.

I spent a thought on my friend,

But the fate of a coin is to be spent again.

It was carelessly tossed in the lake,

How big of a difference did that make?

My friend said she'd need a banana for scale,

Or else she couldn’t say. But when the light failed,

I sent more thoughts to the waterway.

“Aw,” said Arnold. “She’s thinking of you!”

“That banana part seems a bit ribald,” said Wiki.

“Oh,” said Arnold. “So the banana is his–”

“Don’t go to The Divine Lake,” added Wiki as he pushed up his glasses. “This is clearly a trap from someone who witnessed your battle, and thinks you’re idiotic and horny. Or it really is from Suwako, and it’s still a trap and she still thinks the same.”

I nodded. “No way I’m going there.”

“If Suwako wants a clandestine meeting that bad, she can be more direct.”

“I don’t know man,” said Arnold. “At some point Jake’s just gonna have to give in to one of them.”

“Did I mention she looked like a child?” I said, giving both of my roommates a skeptical look.

“Well,” said Wiki. “She’s actually thousands of years–”

“We are not having this conversation,” said Sasha.

“I’m just saying she can probably change her appearance,” said Wiki. “She’s a mother in canon!”

“I don’t give a fuck about canon,” said Sasha. “Trying to seduce people while acting like a child is creepy and gross.”

“Doesn’t matter, I’m not going,” I said. “I recognize a bad idea when I see it.”

I crumpled up the letter to forcefully end the conversation. It hurt a bit. I knew who had really written it, and I wanted to save it. Later that evening I’d carefully uncrumple it and fold it, to hide it under my bed.

–

I snuck out of town on Wednesday evening. I had to be careful: Marisa was on her patrol, and she’d caught me and Sekibanki at our meeting place once before.

The rokurokubi was at the Misty Lake, just as expected. She wasn’t looking in my direction. I had the urge to sneak up on her, and get some payback for the fright she’d given me the week before.

I stomped on that urge. Sneaking up on powerful youkai seemed like a bad idea. Her head rotated to face me as I approached, but her body was still facing the lake.

“I was worried you wouldn’t understand my poem,” she said. Sekibanki began to walk into the trees, and I followed. Being out in the open was a good way to get spotted so we wouldn’t do it for long. Her face remained locked on mine for several seconds, until she stepped over a branch.

“I got the poem right away,” I replied. “I am a bit surprised that Wakasagihime told you I’d offered her a banana.”

“She said it was a euphemism,” said Sekibanki.

“What!”

Sekibanki laughed. “I knew it wasn’t. You would never try to seduce her. You have a vivid imagination, and can count legs.” Wakasagihime didn’t have any, as a mermaid.

“There are many reasons I wouldn’t try to seduce her,” I said.

“Indeed. You guard the fruit of the loom pretty jealously.”

“I don’t recall explaining underwear brands to you,” I replied, trying to ignore the ridiculous turn of phrase or any implications it carried.

“I saw them in Rinnosuke’s shop,” she responded. “I almost bought a pair as a disguise.”

“Heh. They’d make a poor mask.”

“Then I realized I could just borrow yours,” she said, looking at me.

“N-no,” I said. “I only have two pairs!” And I’d paid good money for the second.

“What if I loaned you a pair of mine?” she asked innocently. “I only have one.” I narrowed my eyes at her.

“Why the fuck is everyone acting so sexual?” I asked. I needed to vent my frustration. “Reisen, the Oni, Miss Moriya, Miss Kochiya, Patchouli and her creepy demons!” Sekibanki too, but I didn’t have to say that. “What the fuck is wrong with everyone? Heck, even Urumi might have been flirting with me!”

Sekibanki gave me a concerned stare. “I can’t speak for the others, but I was trying to make you uncomfortable.”

“Well it fucking works!”

There was an awkward silence.

“I think they’re hungry,” she finally said.

“What?” I asked.

“Hungry,” she repeated. “The barrier between Gensokyo and the Outside World is damaged. Emotional energy is flowing out.” She pointed at the hole in the sky. “That thing is like a drain, sucking up all the fear of the humans. They might be looking for… alternatives.”

“I didn’t think there’d be a real explanation,” I said. I rubbed my forehead, just below the brim of my hat. “Wait a fucking minute. Is that why the Gensokyo population skews male? So that we could be… prepared as food in multiple ways?”

Sekibanki laughed. “Perhaps, but if so, that’s Yukari being short-sighted. Most youkai have a preference for the familiar.” I wrote it down: lesbianism was confirmed. She put a hand on her chin, and her head lifted up into the air a bit. “I think Yukari just chose able-bodied people, with big bodies in case we had to eat them.”

I shuddered. “That makes sense. Except, why are youkai mostly female, again?”

She gave me a cool look. “If humans were more willing to believe in male monsters, we wouldn’t have ended up like this.”

“Ah.” I did not apologize.

“Time is being wasted, Jake. Is this really what you wanted to discuss?”

“I suppose not,” I said. “I have a list of questions.”

“So do I. For instance: what happened in the Old Capital?” I explained some of the things Sasha and I had seen in former Hell, but Sekibanki cut me off. “Actually, I meant more about you coercing Parsee and Yamame to work for the humans.”

“I wouldn’t say I coerced them,” I said. “Even Parsee seemed to want to go to the surface, deep down.”

“Nonetheless,” said Sekibanki. “You are inviting a reprisal. Our leader does not appreciate it when others use her pieces.”

“I was hoping that working together would have the opposite connotation,” I said with a frown.

“To some, it has,” she said. “You have sown discontent in the rebellion’s ranks. Now the rebellion is facing a rebellion. Naturally, I’m trying to keep the peace even as the possibility of working with the humans becomes more salient.”

As I considered this, Sekibanki’s head detached and floated close to my ear. She continued in a whisper.

“If you convince one or two more, peace may just win.”

I nodded. Her head rejoined her body. “Thank you,” I said.

“You’re welcome,” she replied. “Now, it’s time for your questions.”

“Can I have a copy of the Bunbunmaru?” I asked. Her face jerked back enough to fall off her neck.

“Whatever for?” she asked as she quickly righted her head.

“Momiji asked me for an autograph,” I said. “Apparently I’ve appeared in the paper?”

“Oh…” said Sekibanki. “Clever. By the way, can I have your autograph?”

“Are you going to trade it to a tengu?” I asked.

“No,” she said, fluttering her eyelashes. “I just didn’t think of it before.”

“Okay,” I said. I signed a blank page of my spare notebook. Wiki had warned me about possibly giving away pieces of my identity, so any autographs would have to come from the spare. I handed it to her. “Am I famous in the tengu village or something?”

“In a manner of speaking,” she said. “You’ve appeared in a sensationalized column of human drama. And trust me, Jake, it is very sensationalized.” I could see her blushing in the moonlight. “It’s not worth reading that drivel.”

“In what ways?”

“Well, it’s inane, false, conjecture, hearsay–”

“I meant, what specifically does it say?”

“I’m not going to give you a copy,” said Sekibanki, ignoring my question. “That’s against the rules.”

“Oh come on,” I said. “Just, leave it on the ground where I’ll find it or something!”

“Nope.”

“If I’m the main character in some dramatization, I deserve to know what lies are being spread about me!”

“Oh, you’re not the main character,” said Sekibanki. “Not even close.”

“What?” I asked. “If not me, then who?”

“Officer Raghav Deshpande,” she replied. “The Hero of Human Town.”