The snow under my feet should have felt cold.
It had fallen only two days earlier and was already melting, winter relenting for a brief moment before snuffing the life out of autumn. What remained was mostly mush and icy cold water that squished under my bare feet, but as I rushed down the hillside, all I felt was a slight twinge on my soles, nothing like the numbing pain I had expected.
I don't know why my mind fixated on it so much. I knew what was wrong, why the cold didn't register as pain. And I knew that if I stopped to reflect on it, the shrine maiden would catch me.
I stumbled onwards, further away from the paths used by the villagers, further into the wilderness and towards the monsters lurking there. All my life I had been taught to only meet youkai where I could see the lanterns of the village, but there I was, dashing blindly into the night where youkai would find me sooner rather than later.
An open field lay between the forest I was aiming for and the hill I couldn't return to, and I was at the very centre of it. Shrivelled plants waved aimlessly in the wind. The parts of the ground where the snow had melted were coated with what had only weeks earlier been beautiful red maple leaves, but had since been mutated by rain into an indistinct brown sludge, barely visible in the dark.
I had no time to stay and further observe my surroundings. I stumbled ahead into the field, praying to whichever god would listen to me I'd make it to the relative safety of the woods before...
My foot was caught by an errant root, and I fell face-first onto the ground. I tasted mulch, but when I opened my eyes, I saw the leaves I had fallen on were still preserved and retained their colour. In the dark they looked almost like spider lilies blossoming from the void.
A part of me didn't care to get up. Why shouldn't I just lie down on the leaves and wait for what was coming for me? What really waited for me in the woods but a half-life spent in constant fear?
Still, spurred on by my self-preservation instinct, I made an effort to push myself on my knees.
Someone landed softly behind me.
"Yoshiko Christopher."
And just like that, my chances of escaping had melted away. With curious detachment, I turned towards the reaper of a shrine maiden standing behind me.
How does she stay warm, I idly wondered as my eyes brushed over Reimu Hakurei. Despite the freezing wind — or what should have been freezing wind, anyway — the only addition she had made to her usual attire was a long, yellow scarf. It waved behind her in the wind, and she held it down with one hand to keep it away from her mouth as she spoke. Her mouth was a straight line, one that didn't seem too far removed from a smile, but her eyes...it was as if all the chill that was missing from the air had crystallised into her glare.
"It's the end of the line," she said.
Fear set in once more, constricting my breath. I found myself stumbling onto my hands and knees.
"Please, wait." I pressed my forehead against the ground. My teeth chattered now, but it had nothing to do with winter.
Reimu said nothing. She did, however, wait. Her shoulders relaxed ever so slightly, though the rest of her remained rigid.
I swallowed. At most, I had a prayer, but you never knew... they did say that despite her position, the Hakurei Shrine Maiden was a friend of youkai...
"I didn't mean it to happen. I... I only..." I grasped the words, feeling more clumsy by the second. I had never been eloquent, and now I needed a silver tongue more than ever. "I didn't think this could happen," I finished lamely.
Reimu considered me wordlessly. Then, she folded her arms. "You'd better explain."
In other words, I would live for a moment longer. "I..." I looked down. "There isn't much to explain. I was just studying magic on my own. Not because I wanted to become a youkai or anything. Just because..." My eyes were misty, and I hastily wiped them clear. This wasn't the time for tears. Looking pathetic might have granted me mercy from some other exterminator, but based on Reimu's reputation and her piercing gaze, I doubted appealing to emotion would work with her.
Reimu quirked her eyebrow. "Yes?"
I hung my head. "I wanted to learn to make really pretty danmaku, that's all. Like you and Marisa Kirisame and..." I swallowed. "Well, like the youkai. But I didn't want to become one of them! I never studied magic that much! I thought I'd be safe!"
Reimu exhaled loudly, a drown-out breath that sounded like a long sigh. She unfolded her arms.
"I was keeping an eye on you," she admitted. "People like you run a bigger risk of turning into youkai."
"What do you mean, people like—"
"People who are half youkai in the first place," she interrupted.
My blood already ran cold, but now it turned to ice.
"I'm not... I never..." I managed.
"Of course you are," said Reimu. Evidently, she considered the claim perfectly mundane. "It doesn't really show until others your age start growing old, but you definitely have youkai blood. Are you trying to tell me you didn't know?"
I stared at her, my impending doom almost forgotten. Most of my attention was claimed by the new, unpleasant sinking feeling in my stomach.
"My mother..." I mumbled. "When I asked her, my mother always swore I was fully human. She said it was just because she was from the Outside that I was different, why my eyes looked different..."
"That part was probably true." Reimu glanced at them. "They're red now, by the way."
"Of course." I was shocked to find myself responding with even a hint of sarcasm. "I mean..." I shook my head and continued on. "I thought something was wrong, but she swore by heaven and earth I was just as human as everyone else, that my father was the man who worked at the bar during wintertime... and he said so too! ...Of course I wanted to believe them! So I did believe them...that's why I thought it'd be fine..."
"Right." Reimu's grip around her gohei tightened. "Too bad faith only works the other way around."
"Wait." I held my hand up, still my knees. If I'd have to grovel to spare my life, grovel I would. "Please don't exterminate me!"
Reimu said nothing. I chose to take it as a positive sign, if only because I dreaded the alternative.
"I never hurt... I've never hurt anyone," I continued, fully aware I was babbling now. "I haven't even hit anyone, and I never want to eat people, and... I don't want to be a youkai! This wasn't my idea! It was an accident, I swear! If you let me go, I'll stay away forever. Just... please..."
Reimu's gaze was like frost.
"Please..." My voice was little more than a whisper. I was going to die for sure, I saw it now, but I couldn't bring myself to accept it. I didn't feel like a youkai, any more like I had felt like a youkai that morning when I woke up.
But then, if you really were a half youkai, a treacherous voice from the back of my mind said, why would you feel any different? Maybe you always were more youkai than human, and just didn't know it? Maybe that's why those around you avoided you. Isn't that why you wanted to learn to create beautiful danmaku? So that if others wouldn't approach you, they might at least admire you?
I bit my lip. I forced myself to look back up, if only to silence the voice.
Reimu's eyes were no longer cold. She didn't looked pleased, not by a long stretch, but the frost had been replaced by something very similar to pity.
"Go," she said.
I blinked. "Come again?"
"You're free to go. I wasn't going to exterminate you if you hadn't transformed on purpose anyway. You're just going to live like the other half of you from now on out."
Scarcely believing what I was hearing, I stumbled onto my feet. "You're... you're really not going to kill me?"
Reimu raised her eyebrow. What do you think?
"T-thank you," I stuttered, still staring at her.
She shrugged. "What are you thanking me for? My job is to exterminate those youkai who cause problems. You've done nothing so far." She paused. "Just don't think this means you're off the hook for good. I'll come after you if you do anything stupid."
"R-right." Now that it seemed likely I was going to survive, I felt strangely hollow. My life in the Human Village had never been what one might call stellar — mostly it had been daily drudgery first at school and then at the bar my mother worked at, with no-one to call a friend — but now that it lay in tatters, I found myself missing it. "Do you think...I can still visit home?"
"I'd stop calling it home and fast. Don't push your luck."
"Right." I blinked rapidly as the mist made a reappearance. Perhaps the Hakurei shrine maiden wasn't the one I should be asking these questions, but there was no-one else I could turn to. "The Human Village, then." I had spoken the words before, but never before had they felt so alien on my tongue. "Would it be fine if I returned there sometimes, just for an hour or two?"
Reimu gave me a long, appraising look. I could tell the answer from the downward curve of her mouth before she spoke. "No. Not until you've gotten used to living as a youkai. You must never forget that's what you are now."
My heart sank. "How long?"
"Years, probably." She was still giving me the critical eye. "You can better judge it for yourself, but from the look on your face, you don't want to."
I quickly tried to rearrange my expression so that it wouldn't show my emotions. She was right, of course, and even if she hadn't been, I wouldn't dared to have defied her. If I really was a youkai now, it only made sense I would have to live like one, too. Even if I wasn't really sure what that meant.
Even as I understood this, my mind kept drifting back towards home, and towards one person in particular. "...I didn't get to say goodbye to my mother..."
Reimu averted her eyes. I had expected her to give me a tongue-lashing for dwelling on an issue she considered an open-and-shut case, but instead she stared into the distance without a word. She looked almost wistful.
"We don't always get to say goodbye," she said quietly.
I stared at her as a realisation dawned on me. Wasn't it true that Reimu lived at the shrine all by herself?
"Anyway..." Reimu had put her impassive expression back on. "Don't go back. You have to learn to be a full-blooded youkai. We all have our roles, and that's yours."
"Right." I looked at the forest I had meant to hide myself in. "Do I have to live outdoors?"
"You can build yourself a house if you want to. Some youkai do that."
I nodded. How exactly I was meant to build one, especially without supplies, was another thing to itself. Either way, I had time to figure it out. It wasn't like I would freeze to death from sleeping in the snow. Perhaps youkai-hood wouldn't be all bad.
"I'll do that then. Um..."
There wasn't anything else to say: my path ahead was clear enough, if wandering into the wilderness could be called such. Only, as soon as Reimu left, I would be alone with my thoughts, and would have to accept this wasn't some bizarre nightmare, that this was to be my life from now on, that everything from here on out I would have to figure out all by myself, without anyone to lean onto.
Reimu interrupted my bitter musings by crossing her arms and giving me a long look. "Look. If you get really stuck and have no idea what you're supposed to do..." She glanced upwards and gave a disgruntled sigh. "You can come to the shrine. I've been around youkai enough to know how they're supposed to act. I can give you some pointers."
My mouth fell open. "What? Really?"
"Why not?" She smiled ruefully. "After all, visiting the shrine is definitely something youkai do. Only if you can't make it on your own, mind you. I'm not running a charity establishment."
"Then why?"
"Like I said, we all have our roles. Mine's to make sure Gensokyo keeps running smoothly. Just like yours is to figure out what kind of a youkai you want to be."
I stared at her, seeing her as I had never seen her before. In my life, she had always been a distant authority figure, usually spoken of with vague distrust. For the first time, I saw someone else who was alone.
"...I'll do my best."
"Good." Reimu once again turned her eyes skywards. "It's about time I leave. Night's the youkai's time to shine."
Youkai's time. My time, now.
I turned towards the wilderness that was my new home. Fresh snow had slowly began to fall as we spoke, covering the dark leaves with a thin, white coating of icy crystals.
Yes. Now that I knew I had a safety net, the prospect of roaming Gensokyo and finding my new place in the world didn't appear nearly as daunting. Who knew? I might even find my real father.
Youkai probably weren't meant to bow at shrine maidens, but I did so anyway. "Farewell, Miss Hakurei."
Reimu gave me a startled look, then nodded with a muted smile. "Farewell, Yoshiko Christopher."
After that, there was nothing but the dissipating wind and the slow, soft snowfall.