Miss Keine Kamishirasawa of the history school swept around the staff room like a maître d’ moments before a bomb went off in the kitchens. The pageant of her done-up raincoat coming more and more undone by the jiggle would have been more arresting if Miss Keine hadn’t been apologising profusely or, for preference, doing what she was apologising for, which was to say producing from the cabinets of the room ever more pressing paperwork. On the broad, military-style desk by the staff room’s single, rain-greyed window, assignments and typeset fill-in-the-blanks piled up architectonically.

“Thank you once again,” said Miss Keine with rattlesnake speed; “and, once again, I am sorry. This really, really is an emergency. I’ll make this up to you, of course I will. Thank you. And, I’m sorry. This is the last set, promise.”

A thumb-tick file thumped on the desktop, fanning out its immediate neighbours. It looked not unlike a card-riffling accident.

The man behind the desk stared. A faint smile hovered around the outskirts of his lips. It was a smile that met your daughter’s mysterious boyfriend of two weeks. He twirled a fountain pen between his fingers as though contemplating deforestation.

“… It’s,” he said, manfully self-controlled, “fine, Miss Keine. All in the job description, isn’t it… just?”

The flurried teacher gave his odd pause no second guess. She bowed as low as her waist. “I’m so sorry, Taiki!” There was some consternation as her coat popped suddenly half-open, but soon gone. Miss Keine straightened up and smiled in a distracted way. “It is the Kijou; their son is marrying a very conscientious woman next week, and they wanted my eye over the wedding contract. The parents, too, have some qualms, I hear, since they are nobility and the girl hails from priestry; there is the matter of the dowry for that cause, or omitting thereof, religious clauses, landing issues, vows, it’s a right mess…”

Taiki nodded along to the teacher’s bumbling, wearing an expression made from his work. He held his breath like a thrashing fairy.

In the woodchip-scented, under-desk gloom, the fingers which’d hooked under

The sole daughter of her late clan abiding, Taishi Lord’s counsel and cohort, a Tao adherent of not inconsiderate pedigree, Futo of the Mononobe family made a face. Observationally, she rapped her knuckles on her cage’s bars.

This it was. Stout bamboo poles in a lattice, twined together with waxed sinew and tin wire. Yea-tall thing, enough spacious to pace about albeit not to repose. Gaps ample enough to stick a head out and peer down the precipice of the rock shelf and the vertiginous, distant landscape below. Mayhap a shoulder, should she wedge one in sidewise – yet not on her life her chest or her proud hips. Nowise to go in any case except straight up or down the sheer, craggy cliff face of the lofty Youkai Mountain.

Indeed, indeed. It was much, much a cage. And it couldn’t hold her.

To avow so, Futo puffed herself up like a fish and flung a selection of choice taunts at the lone Tengu patrolman left behind to watch her.

The lupine lackey shook his silvern, dog-eared head alongside the pom-poms of his tokin whence he knelt quietly on his overcoat – yet ignored elsewise the likening of his chic ponytail to that of a mangy spaniel’s. He dripped more oil from a bamboo tube onto the waterstone before him and carried on whetting his curved, vicious-looking cavalry sabre. Good job, too. Went to show he cared for his quarries’ comfort, even if said comfort should come in its finality. Scrape-scrape-scrape it went, a clarion call to flee for humans and versant fauna likewise.

Sated – on that front if not others – Futo deflated into silence. Her own impressive hat had been lost someplace in the turbulent circumstance of the previous hour, and her knees were a mite chilly in the upland breeze, but the spry shikaisen kept herself drawn. Smart. An etching-perfect pantomime of a pert, female captive. The sword’s grinding ground away her patience as well, although she knew it for what it was; of this, she was iron-certain. The insides of her confoundedly unremoved clothes piled on the proof. Tension electrified her like one of Tojiko’s bad moods.

Futo

Something was broken in Gyutan, the Oni.

Had to be. It was, at any rate, the only explanation for contemporary happenings Gyutan would drink to. He was not a man or, rather, Oni who took especial pleasure in being brusque and forceful on women. “Good lad” was the term applied to him often by the older Oni, which tended to translate in the younger, streetwise ones’ vernacular as “schmuck.” And a schmuck, rhyme such as it might, did not tend to fuck.

Half-right, they were. Gyutan was by no book definition a fucker, but he did have a girlfriend. They had met in the vast construction yards of the Underworld’s New Capital and, via his aforesaid schmuckery, had leased to her the vantage point of his shoulder and the foghorn of his throat. Her name was Yamame Kurodani, and she was the architect of the (to be) grand (future) city. They’d gotten on like uncles, which was to say they’d spent evening after evening sequestered in Yamame’s workshop – away from everybody else though very much nearby a vat of moonshine that kicked like a horse with a bee up its bunghole. The tiny earth spider could hold her booze like no bottle’s business and, to Gyutan’s thrilled horror, got hopelessly randy when drunk.

Half-right because, owed to her modest persuasion in the spatial area, Yamame could fit at the extreme wettest Gyutan’s middle finger, and not even up to the third knuckle. She’d fitted it, however, with much fervour and almost shameful frequency, in return enlightening the callow, young Oni on why the earth spiders, Yamame included, were fabulously able to swallow a man whole.

And they’d drunk. Oh, how they’d drunk.

They’d drunk their treacherously undulating way into the preliminary years of the New Capital, always arm-in-arm, always sharing a cup and a spot on the floor in the mornings. They’d been silly, in love and, as these things go, inseparable. Up to a point.

Then, the Ministry had called in. The mighty Ministry of Right and Wrong which, having an aeon in the past fled the realm for greener pastures, had let their hounds slip into their whilom estates to find them o

Part of Spooktember >>/gensokyo/16356

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Meekness is no flaw. Capitulation is not defeat... if you know what you’re doing. I know what I’m doing. I’m Kiketsu. When your guard is down, their guard is down, and that’s when you strike.

... I’m going over this in my head to remind myself how impressive I am, and how important my job is. It’s me who has to do it! It’s Yachie-sama’s plan, and I won’t let her down!

Ahem...

“Did we take a wrong turn?” the human... well, half-human that I chose speaks up.

We can’t take wrong turns. There’s no other turning to take. This is the Sanzu River. Without a guide, traveling over it is dicey...

The reception went on.

In the Sun-tower of Old Hell’s New Capital, beneath the suspended mass damper, near on to five score souls had convened around long tables and benches for a grand feast. It was sweltering hot. The air overhead seemed itself to sweat, blue with tobacco smoke and aswirl from cries of “Ho!” and raucous laughter. On the tables, plucked at by hands unconcerned much for hygiene but very much the dibs, greasy roast, vats of mushroom soup, pickled lizard eggs, sheaves of unleavened bread and dried algae were liberally served on wooden and ophite trays. In the gathering hall’s murky heart, over the incandescent firepit, a whole, skinned carcass of a cave bear revolved on an iron spit, looking argumentative about the whole “apex predator” thing.

The feast’s invitees were meat of a different cut. The outcast Oni, if they sobered, filed down their cranial curlicues and generally gave themselves to reformation might – just might – aspire to be somebody’s footstools in New Hell. And, in New Hell, footstools sat around the middle of the food chain. The earth spiders in their droves, the hobgoblins and otherwise assorted, minor youkai playing their horned neighbours’ second fiddle were as good as butt-cushions themselves. The only rational excuse they were here was that the Oni were ill disposed to bear, and somebody else had been brought along to eat it. Here and there, shifty, slitted eyes flitted between it and the untouched algae.

And, there was alcohol everywhere. This comprised pitchers, boxes, decanters, cups, gargling mouths and the floor.

The Kishin chief, Suiki, prime of prime, the daemon of Chikata, lash of New Hell and the hallowed Yama, issued a growl almost of begrudgement at his solitary table. He wasn’t good on small talk or statesmanship or even spearpoint diplomacy. Surreptition, though; now, surreptition was a Kishin’s knife. No hunter of immortals held long onto their head without a dash of eighth circle chicanery. Suiki knew where he was even – and in fact best – when others didn’t.

This was presently of some advantage since, where Suiki was stationed, something rather unthoug

Exhibitionism, emotionless chikan, and quite a lot of sex, perpetrated by a mysteriously innocuous and rather muscular, clockmaking man. Main characters: Shinmyoumaru and Seija, and manipulated somewhat by Matara Okina, but our protagonist is most interested in Eiki-sama. And, really, whichever girls he happens to come across.

Thread 1 >>40336

Current vote:


And so we reach a pier, and step off (Satori awkwardly, as she is still very flustered and has yet to pull back up her panties).

“Man, you guys got intense back there!” Onozuka-san says with a laugh while minding her vessel from the pier. “You gonna have sex?” she asks.

“Would you like to join us?” I ask.

“Hmm...?” Komachi hums, looking me up and down, judging to herself. “You look nice. Sure, I’ll hit your dick.”

Quasi-sequel to: >>41058

Thread 1: >>38360
Thread 2: >>39475

[x] Find a restraint to ambush Shizuha with.

You twist around and look through a nearby crate, finding… belts. A huge pile of belts mixed with thin, wooden blocks and small widgets. You find some of the belts long, some short, some with, wait a second. Some are very short. Far too small for her waist. Too small even for a fairy’s waist.

What on earth…

Shizuha takes her first step up the ladder. Forget the belts, you need-

Those smaller ones might just fit around her wrists. If that’s so…

No time to think. You reach in, scoop out a large handful, and leap toward the ladder. Shizuha flinches as you dump them beside that ladder.

Komano Aunn contended not to moan. Once that fell through, she applied herself to, in the worst event, not be heard by Miss Reimu.

The day was very fine, to Aunn’s good fortune, for such undertakings, as the shrine maiden had taken it to spend around her husband in the Human Village. The wind-chime was tinkling above the shrine’s porch, which eased the matters some; and, omitted though she had to mention when precisely she’d planned her return, Aunn had heeled long enough at Miss Reimu’s side to scent it when the shrine maiden needed most a moment of respite from her duties. The fact of her husband, an able carpenter of some renown, living by necessity among his kin in town, married to Miss Reimu by must manning the faraway Hakurei shrine, presented just so apt an opportunity. The shrine then, by way of course, falling under Aunn’s dogged vigil.

Some gossiped, contingent on whether the fierce Hakurei shrine maiden was nearby or not, that either she or her husband showcased in this fashion the troubledness of their marriage. Aunn knew of nothing farther from the truth. Miss Reimu’s was a pliant soul; distance was its least foe.

“We’ll at least not grow bored of each other soon, yes?” she’d said once when pressed, in that come-what-may attitude she had.

Aunn leaned harder on the ever-empty offertory box, knees wobbling beneath the weight of her own, stuck-out butt. A whine fled her clamped throat, of a like which would’ve made Miss Reimu’s cheeks burn pink and her husband’s knuckles to go white.

Yet she did love the stolid carpenter, did the eremite shrine maiden. She’d loved him enough to have given him a single, precious child; and now, a sea’s worth of water under the bridge, she loved him still enough that she sought his solitary affection on especially fraught weeks.

Which left the remaining two dearest mainstays of Miss Reimu’s life in Aunn’s custody.

Aunn dared a peek over her shoulder. The strapping youth at her back perked up and gave her a perfunctory smile, which was more preoccupied than those seen as a rule on those his age. His head was full of hair: blackish-brown like his mother’s and, while short-ch

The past few months have been... eventful. And that’s before getting spirited away to a magical valley in Japan that I’d describe as charming if it weren’t for the large number of residents with terrifying amounts of power.

But I’d rather not dwell on the past. Arriving in Gensokyo, even unexpectedly, was probably the best thing that’s happened to me since... well, maybe my entire life. I understand that this isn’t the case for most other humans who stumble here, but I had something of a head start.

I had always known that the supernatural was real. I had always been able to see what nobody else could. Before, all it got me was confusion, scorn, and pity, endless appointments with doctors and psychiatrists, and everyone telling me that spirits weren’t real.

Now, here in Gensokyo? They asked me to marry two of them. I said yes, of course.

Eventful doesn’t even begin to describe things.

---

It’s just past dawn on this muted early winter day when I stir awake. Somehow, this small thing still amazes me about my new life. It’s not just waking up early, though that would be unimaginable before. It’s having things I look forward to waking up for.

Two things, in fact, and they’re both still asleep on either side of me. Minoriko and Shizuha Aki: sisters, kami, and my wives.