I knew immediately what had happened, when I came out of the portal outhouse in complete darkness. Rumia had been waiting to ambush me. As I fell blindly onto the grass, fight or flight kicked in.

My reflex was extraordinarily stupid. I jumped back into the portal potty and slammed the door, trying to hide. It was dumb not because Rumia could easily tear through a plastic wall to get at me, not because I’d trapped myself in the only location where I could not fly or run to escape the situation. It was dumb because she was already in there.

“Why are you here?” wheezed the youkai. Good question, I thought.

“Good question,” said Patchouli over the crystal link. “Why aren’t you running?”

“I’m trying!” I hissed. I yanked on the door and it didn’t budge. It was locked.

“Mister Thorne appears to be within a small plastic container, based upon the acoustic curve of the transmission,” said a koakuma through the psychic link. As she spoke I scrabbled to find the latch, thinking that I was about to die stupidly and pointlessly. “He is unable to run. As for why he is here, that is a philosophical matter I feel wholly unqualified to address.”

“You don’t ‘feel’ anything,” said Patchouli. Later, I’d learn that she had given the koakuma standing instructions to help with darkness if I encountered it again. Patchouli was smart enough to think of that right after my first fight with Rumia.

“Apologies; a turn of phrase from my frequent dealings with humans. While you are correct that I don’t have feelings as humans do, I must refuse to speak on philosophy justifying the existence of Mister Thorne or anyone else. Rules 41, 87, and 219.”

Whatever her instructions, the koakuma wasn’t being all that helpful.

On the bright side, none of my allies had been able to see me running back into the outhouse, thanks to the perfect darkness. Maybe they wouldn’t infer it after my death. Maybe it would seem merely tragic, instead of idiotic. I’d get Gensokyo’s equivalent of a purple heart instead of a Darwin award.

I finally found the latch, and a small hand with fingernails like blades was already holding it closed.

“Don’t go,” said the childish voice. She sniffed. “I want to talk to you.” Her conical teeth and black eyes loomed large in the darkness of my imagination. Rumia the human-eating youkai had me trapped, and was speaking lies to get me to stop resisting.

“Okay,” I said. I took a deep breath.

The danmaku rules are purposefully not enumerated. There is no explicit rule that says ‘one must always talk to a youkai before engaging in battle,’ but the tradition carried an immense weight. One of the ways you could set yourself up for a danmaku battle with a youkai was to talk to them instead of fleeing, while acting confident and carrying the intent to battle them. It was the human equivalent of making eye contact and raising one’s fists.

Keine had said that an experienced youkai might be able to tell from posture alone whether a human was a danmaku user. I hoped Rumia was so insightful, and could furthermore see in the dark. Then I recalled Wiki telling me she often flew into trees. Rumia was just as blind as myself.

“What do you want to talk about?” I asked. I didn’t want to give her a chance to decide she wanted to just start dinner already.

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice heavy and sad. “Why’d you run from me?”

I took another deep breath, and decided to address the question head on. “I thought you were going to eat me,” I said. I felt my legs and back tense, waiting for her to answer in the affirmative and take a bite.

I blinked. The darkness was fading. I could see with a faint light coming in through the translucent roof.

“That makes sense,” said Rumia. She’d let go of the latch, and was sitting on the seat. I didn’t make a move. I was still within disemboweling distance. Rumia wiped her eyes. “Can I tell you a secret?”

“Yes,” I said. I pulled out my notebook and held it between us.

“I’m not supposed to eat people,” she said.

I nodded. “I’m a danmaku user, by the way.” I said it in case she had forgotten. She might not be able to tell humans apart.

“No,” she said, her voice wet. “I’m not supposed to eat anyone.”

“Oh,” I said. “I like that. Where, uh, where does that rule come from?”

“The scary old hag told me not to.” I nearly choked. Yukari might arguably be all those things, but I’d never, ever say that about her, even if she hadn’t been manifested for months.

“This youkai is in immense danger,” I heard a koakuma say through the crystal connection. “May I address her to diminish it?”

“No,” said Patchouli. “Quiet.”

“I see,” I told Rumia. I could barely see in the outhouse. Rumia’s hair was covering her face in shadow. She had her hands on her temples, or perhaps over her eyes. “Can I tell you a secret, too?” I said.

“Yes,” said Rumia. Her voice warbled.

“You aren’t supposed to use this outhouse. It’s out of order.” Maybe she’d let me out.

“Not even for crying?” said the youkai. I suddenly understood the wetness in her voice.

“That’s not what I–that’s–well, that’s probably okay,” I said. I frowned at her. “Why have you been crying?”

“It hurts,” she said. “The scary hag lady hasn’t been around. I’m hungry.”

“She used to feed you?”

“Yes,” said Rumia.

It made some sense; Yukari would have paid her for helping with the interviews, but unlike Satori, Yuyuko’s servant Youmu, or Sakuya, Rumia was never seen around Human Town buying things. Money wouldn’t work for her.

My curiosity got the better of me.

“What did you eat?” I asked her. Rumia jolted forward and flew up to my height.

“I can’t remember,” she said. Her giant red eyes were very close to mine. “It was meat. I remember that much. Delicious, fresh meat.”

I nodded. She was getting closer, staring at me cross-eyed.

“I have ideas,” said Rumia. “I think she brought me… the kind I wanted, after all. That old lady just didn’t want me to know I could go get it on my own.”

“Maybe it wasn’t?” I asked, my voice cracking. At least her sclerae were still white. “Maybe it was danmaku?”

She frowned. “I don’t think so? Danmaku isn’t like meat.”

“I mean, it can be vectors and axes and crescents, so why not meat?”

“Mister Thorne is in immense danger,” said the koakuma.

“Silence!” said Patchouli.

“Danmaku does taste good,” said Rumia. “I liked yours. I felt a little better, until you ran away.” She backed off. “It hurts even more, getting only a taste…”

“I’m sorry I left,” I said.

“It’s okay,” she replied.

“Do you want some more?” Against my will my hand went to the latch of the door. She didn’t stop me from opening it.

“Yes, please,” said Rumia as I stumbled back out of the outhouse. I shot her with danmaku, and she began to return fire.

Then we had a danmaku battle. I’d had my will overwhelmed just a few minutes before. Were I struck at all, I would be powerless to resist Rumia’s compulsion to let her eat me, if that’s what she wanted.

I never learned what she would compel. I was not struck, and after a few minutes of fighting Rumia wandered off in a sphere of darkness.

—

“That seems like an extraordinarily foolish thing to compel her to do,” said Wiki. I was debriefing him.

“No, I get it,” said Sasha. “Mind if I explain?”

“Please do,” I said from the tabletop. I was resting my head. My body was heavy with fatigue.

“Jake doesn’t want Rumia to eat anybody,” she said. “Danmaku will keep her fed. So as long as we can defeat her, and she keeps going to the potty port, everybody is safe and happy.”

“That’s exactly my reasoning,” I said. I was happy that Sasha and Arnold got it.

“Do compulsions even last that long?” asked Arnold. I waved a hand.

“Probably not, but if she thinks about returning there for a while, maybe she’ll decide it’s a good idea anyway. Rumia proved… well, not entirely immune to reasoning.” I’d convinced her to eat danmaku instead of my flesh. It counted for a lot, in my book. Literally–I’d underlined it four times.

“Except, all of you will have to fight her every time now,” said Wiki.

“And we’ll gain the graze boost from battle, making our runs stronger,” I said.

“What if you lose?” he asked. “Then she’ll eat you, because your only option for retreat is right back into her clutches.”

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

I waved a hand. “If she’s going to threaten to eat people, we’ve got the best odds to fight her. Better us than anyone else, right?”

Wiki didn’t say anything.

“We’re facing those sorts of risks already,” I continued. “This doesn’t make it any worse.”

“Meh,” said Sasha. “She looked pretty easy to handle.”

“I’m glad you think so,” said Arnold. “I was on the edge of my seat!”

“I’ll go with you to the Fantastic Blowhole,” I told him. “Even if she defeats both of us, I doubt she can eat both of us. We can flip a coin.”

“Unless she can eat as much as she damn well pleases,” said Sasha. “Because she’s magical or something. Hmm.”

“Thanks, buddy,” Arnold said, patting my back. “But we both know she’d eat me first.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“I’m higher in protein than you are.”

“Maybe she likes fat,” said Sasha. We both stared at her, and she looked back at me coolly. “I’m obviously talking about your brain, since the rest of you is skinny as a rail.”

“So you do agree that I’m big brained?” I asked.

“Yeah but it’s not made of neurons.”

I shook my head. “I think I’ll offer her an arm first.”

“Why?” she asked. “You use your arms.”

“Thanks for this delightful series of mental images,” said Wiki, “and for continuing to keep Jake’s ego in check. Let us continue our debrief. Sasha, why couldn’t you make it to the Moriya Shrine?”

As she explained how the white wolf tengu turned her away, I fell asleep on the table.

—

I opened the front door to leave for my rendezvous with Sekibanki, and saw that snow had coated the ground around our dorm. I stared at it, dumbfounded and displaced for a moment. The entire landscape was white, as though we’d been transported to the moon–as though I’d been teleported to a truly alien world where color didn’t exist–as though the animation budget had run out and we’d kept the show running anyway.

It was just snow, but it was uncanny. It had no footprints in it.

I hadn’t often seen snow in the Outside World. I used to live in a city. Our heat plume melted most of the stuff before it hit the ground, but even if it had made it all the way down it wouldn’t have lasted long. The rights to any local precipitation were often traded. Snowfall would mean that illegal water harvesters were about, alongside policing to prevent the same.

I felt a reflex to close the door and just wait for it to be gone, because I needed to hide before a drone rolled out from around a corner to ruin the tranquility of it all and capture me in its two dozen lenses. Illegal water harvesters supposedly didn’t care much about where they got it, and if I were outside I could only be an accomplice or a witness.

All of those thoughts were wordless intuitions that merely made my arm tense when I saw the snow.

There were no drones in Gensokyo. I went back inside to grab my gloves. The others had gone to bed, but I chose not to wake them even if something magical were happening outside. The snow would be even more enchanting in the morning, and I was pretty sure it’d still be there.

I flew to the edge of town to avoid disturbing the stuff. My borrowed power was sufficient for that much. When I finally landed to rest I tried to stand on one foot, fell over, then gave up on the idea of leaving as little evidence as possible.

The sky was grey and the world was quiet. When I rolled onto my back my wings were as immune to the cold as sticks, but some snow got through the gap in my coat and made me shiver as it touched my back. It really was a different world. I was alone. My insensate nose crinkled and I took a deep breath.

Then there was a flying head in a ski mask hovering above me. I saw red eyes through the holes, and the faintest ghostly tether leading away.

“Hey,” I said to Sekibanki’s head. It turned in place.

“Are you okay?” it croaked. Her detached heads were always breathless. “Freezing to death?”

“Not at all,” I said, waving my arms and legs. I made a snow angel. Maybe later passersby would think it was the imprint of a large fairy. “Just enjoying the snow. By the way, are vampires weak to it? It’s pure water, after all.”

“They are,” wheezed the head. I nodded.

“Well, if you see a vampire in armor, we’d better disperse. Remilia threatened me to study at night, then never showed up to make sure I was studying.” I sat up. “I’ll follow you to your body, if that’s alright.”

The dark head nodded, then floated away. I flew after it.

—

“You look warm,” I said. It was half-true.

Sekibanki’s body was wrapped in a huge white puffer jacket. Her extra heads all wore ski masks, except for the one that was almost attached. That one was wrapped so thoroughly in red and blue scarfs that only her eyes and nose poked out. I noticed that one of the spare heads was the blue-haired mannequin head she’d used long before.

“Does the cold bother you?” I asked.

All four heads nodded simultaneously. “You lose half of your body heat through your head,” she said.

“That’s a myth.”

“Not for me, it isn’t. C’mon, I know a place where we can stay warm.”

My heart began to pound. Sekibanki undoubtedly had a base of operations somewhere–she owned clothes, and changed them with some frequency–but she’d very carefully never brought it up. As she led me deeper into the forest, I wondered if I would finally be allowed to see her home.

Would I somehow make it to Sekibanki’s house the very night before I was supposed to visit Patchouli in the library? Of course not. When the rug pull came, I was ready for it.

Instead of taking me to some secret shack in the woods, Sekibanki ducked under a pine tree growing out of the ground over a giant boulder. I followed her under its branches to some surprisingly dry ground. She sat against the trunk and the rock, and her heads snuggled up to her for warmth like so many cats. She opened her coat to let them in. I sat down next to her.

“Will this be warm enough for you?” I asked Sekibanki. She was shivering.

“Yes,” she said.

There would be no cuddling, like I had with Sasha. I wasn’t supposed to share bodily fluids with a youkai, but sharing body heat would have been fine. Probably. There was an awkward silence.

“Is this where you sleep?” I asked. She snorted.

“I have a much better place to rest my heads. Pray I never invite you there, for no human who enters ever leaves again.”

“Ah, thanks for choosing ‘tree’ instead,” I said. I was being polite. At that point, I’d suspect that nobody visited her before I’d suspect that she still murdered people.

“You’re welcome. This place is cozy enough for a meeting, I think.” I saw that two of her tethers were leading away; she was still looking out for threats. “There is much I’d like to discuss.”

“Me too,” I said. I started with reiterating my request for any leads for food for the human village.

“The solution remains the same,” said Sekibanki. “Force Aki Minoriko to make the crops grow.”

“If we push her past her limits and she stops manifesting, we will be in very deep trouble.”

“You are in deep trouble now,” she said with a shrug that sent her main head wobbling.

“Besides, it would be a poor reward for all the help she’s given us.”

“It’s not a matter about rewards or punishments,” said Sekibanki. “It’s survival. Your hesitancy to kill is going to get all the humans killed.”

I didn’t respond. Setting up poor incentives for youkai was just another way we could destroy humanity’s position in Gensokyo. Sekibanki, who was so good at game theory and incentives, should have been able to understand it.

“You know, there is one other youkai with power over plants,” said Sekibanki.

“Kazami Yuuka,” I said. The thought had occurred to me.

“Just so,” she said. “If you were to trade her a human or two–”

“Absolutely not.” I remembered what the sunflower youkai had wanted from humans before. Victims, to send a message, or else danmaku users, to torment until they die.

“Don’t be so quick to dismiss a solution,” said Sekibanki. “Aren’t there a few weak humans that aren’t pulling their weight? Or criminals who deserve punishment?”

“No to both, because Yukari chose carefully.” I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. Even if there were burdensome humans, the mark of civilized societies is that they don’t let their unproductive citizens or criminals be tortured to death. Not even if it would supposedly benefit everyone.” Supposedly, because a ruthless society would be full of ruthless people, and that would be even worse.

“Not even if the survival of the rest of the humans depends upon it?” she asked.

“There’s a story about this,” I said. “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” I briefly explained it to her: it featured a utopian city powered by one person’s suffering. “I always thought it was stupid, because if you can build the perfect society on a single person’s suffering, there’s probably a way to share the burden amongst volunteers, or to get rid of it entirely. Truly heroic people don’t run away from a problem right after hearing about it.”

“Have you actually read the story?” she asked.

“Well, no, but my point stands.”

Sekibanki snapped her fingers. “Actually that’s a great idea! Ask for volunteers. I bet there’d be more than a few.”

I felt myself frowning. That was a memetic threat if I ever heard one. If Yuuka offered to supply the entire human town with food, in exchange for being allowed to torture one person to death–me specifically–would I accept?

I felt incapable of imagining how bad the torture would be, and the more I thought about it the less happy I became, because I remained certain that it would be worth it. I shook my head as though the disturbing line of thought were snow I could shake off.

“Do you have some reason to believe that Yuuka would help us?” I asked. “Is she going to make an offer like that?”

“No,” said Sekibanki. “And if you made such an offer to her, she’d probably refuse.” Thank goodness, I thought. I was safe. “On the other hand, if all the humans starve, that’s bad for the rebellion.”

“We’ll accept donations of food, even from terrorists,” I responded. “Actually, if you have any inroads with the tengu or Ushizaki Urumi, that’d be great.”

“I can’t help you with the birds,” she said. “I’ll see about the ox.”

“Did you know that telling me about the newspaper could have negative repercussions for you?” I asked. She squirmed and looked away.

“I did. After I shared the article with you, I went to the edge of the tengu domain and explained that I showed you your own article to lessen your curiosity.”

I was surprised. “And how did the tengu respond?”

“They are forgiving, if you are upfront with them.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Can you tell me–”

“They told me to never read to you again, and to not give you any information other than ‘they have their eyes on you.’ Sorry, Jake.” She patted my knee, making me flinch.

“It’s okay.” Sekibanki had stopped shivering, but now I was the one who felt cold.

“Oh, they have their eyes on you, by the way.”

I sighed. “Thanks, although I doubt they can actually see us here.” The snow was piling up around the tree and in front of us. Soon it would cover the entrance completely. “It’s probably your turn by now. Is there anything you wanted to talk about?”

“A few things,” she said. “First, why is there a solitary human sleeping by themselves on the edge of town?”

Fuck, I thought. She’d already found the lighthouse, and was bumping up against the first of two secrets I could not tell her.

“I heard that it was a special room for punishing people,” I said. I had heard that they’d considered using criminals as bait. The Council wasn’t as uncivilized as Sekibanki thought humans should be, so they had gone for volunteers in their trap.

The point was that I didn’t have to lie to her, not exactly.

“I see,” she said. “Well, if you want that human to disappear, that’s one way to go about it.”

I swallowed. “Will he be attacked?” I asked. “The point is to scare them, not to kill them.”

“I don’t think so. I’m just trying to imagine what the humans are thinking.” She looked at me, her head turning in place to study my face. “Is he not a political dissident, sent out to be destroyed?”

“No?”

“Oh. Maybe I’ll go by myself. It sounds like there will be plenty of fear to be eaten.” I swallowed. Raghav’s men were watching the house. They might recognize her.

“Sekibanki…” I said. “Please do me a favor, and give that house a wide berth.”

She tilted her head. “Why?”

“I have a bad feeling about it.” This was true.

Sekibanki rubbed her chin. “Normally you are more reasoned about your… reasons.”

I shrugged. She kept rubbing her chin, until her scarves started to stretch as it lifted.

“My second question is about your youkai transformation,” she said. “Have you noticed anything new?” She was two for two on forbidden topics.

“I was cleansed by Sanae,” I said. “It has been halted.”

“That’s a shame,” said Sekibanki, her hand dropping to her side. “You don’t want to be a youkai?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think I’d be able to control my impulses as well as… youkai who have existed for a long time.”

“You are undoubtedly weakened, hindered in your mission, and less healthy overall. Impulses submit to force of will. Weakness does not.”

“I’m doing alright as far as strength is concerned.” I didn’t mention Suwako’s loaned power, or the loss of my sense of smell. Or the strength of overwhelming force of will, clearly one of humanity’s greatest powers and mine in particular.

“Well, if you change your mind, please let me know,” she said. “I can jumpstart your transformation at any time.”

“Oh?” I asked. “How’s that?” If someone could turn me into a youkai without my knowledge, I needed to know about the risk. The obvious method escaped my consideration until her wide eyes met mine, I saw her faint blush, and I remembered that we were in a hidden hollow.

“If you change your mind, I’ll tell you,” said Sekibanki.