"Very well. This is how the story goes."
Parsee attempted to lean back. Upon discovering that she still couldn't, she simply began her story. "Once upon a time, there was a woodsman in love with a local fisherman. The woodsman's body was swathed in deep scars from her work, and she was desperate to hide them. And so, she never dared to grow closer to the fisherman and instead writhed in quiet envy as the fisherman spoke of love for another. It wasn't long until the woodman's jealousy tore their friendship apart and they never spoke to each other again."
Yamame paused to wait for a continuation that didn't follow. She sighed, coiling a long string of web as she did so. "That's not much of a story."
"Very well. This is how the story goes. Once upon a time, there was a pair of friends who lived on two sides of a vast ocean of ice. Their only means of communication was letters delivered by a dove. As time went on, their letters grew shorter and shorter as their lives diverged from one another's. One of the friends grew more morose by the day, certain her friend had never cared for her at all. Finally, the dove returned with no letter at all. Heartbroken, the friend killed the bird, determined that if it wouldn't fly to her with good tidings, it wouldn't fly at all."
"That's not much of a story either. Anyway, if you don't want to play, that's fine. This'll take less time that way."
"Very well. This is how the story goes. Once upon a time, there was a famous beauty who lived a carefree life. Only one thing clouded the bright skies of her life: her love for a local official. Due to the circumstances of their births, she never thought to speak of her feelings and instead toyed with those of others, entertaining their hopes before casting them aside."
Yamame frowned at a particularly stubborn tangle. "What happened next?"
"They both grew old and died alone."
This elicited a flicker of a smile. "Of course."
"Very well. This is how the story goes. Once upon a time, a priest fell in love with a princess. For years, she stood by the princess' side as their bond grew stronger, refusing to admit her feelings even to herself. But on the eve of a great battle almost certain to lead to the priest's death, she finally professed her love to the princess. But although the princess loved her back more dearly than she loved her own life, she told the priest that she never had and never would love her back. In a fit of jealous rage, the priest engineered the princess' death. And so they both perished the following day."
Yamame frowned. "But you just said that she loved her too. Why would she lie?"
"Very well. This is how the story goes. Once upon a time, there was a princess who—"
"Okay, stop." Yamame's eyes flashed with the sudden realisation of a predator about to be cornered and turned into prey. "I've heard enough. Quit fidgeting so I can get you out faster."
Parsee smiled her most pleasant smile. The web she hanged in bruised her in a dozen different places where it had all but become enmeshed with her flesh, but she barely felt it now. "Very well. This is how the story goes."
"I told you that's enough."
"Once upon a time, there was a Persian girl who was so shy she barely dared to whisper. However, each time she did summon up her courage to speak, she offered up her entire heart on a silver platter. Usually, her efforts were in vain, and she took every rejection as a life-ending blow. To shield her shredded heart, she curled up around herself, refusing to reach out to anyone, scorning every hand reaching out for her as a deception meant to hurt her further. But after it had been closed off from the world, her heart began to change. As her solitude turned into crushing loneliness, she began to envy all those who could enjoy sunlight and the company of others, those who dared to bare their hearts and those who could face indifference without crumbling. She began to wish them harm and prayed they would suffer injury or worse. In no time at all, she had become a youkai, driving all those who dared to approach her into long fits of uncontrollable jealousy."
Yamame paused in her toil to stare at Parsee.
Parsee tried once again to lean back, gripping onto the strings closest to her fingers as though they were ropes on a swing. "Do you pity her? I'm jealous of her ignorance. She couldn't see how her inadequacies and hatefulness drove everyone away. If someone had in fact loved her, do you think she would have been satisfied? She wanted everyone's admiration, everyone's unwavering regard, to have every word that fell from her lips to be seen as a pearl of wisdom." She chuckled. "Do you think she ever noticed the lives of those around her? Do you think she really paid attention to their hardships, their vulnerabilities, to the fact that some were even weaker than she was? She thought she saw it all, but in truth she was blinded by jealousy long before it consumed her."
"I see." Yamame's tone was cool, but not entirely hostile. Bizarrely enough, Parsee thought she heard a hint of respect. "A heart like that would have been primed to belong to a hateful youkai."
"How clearly you are able to cut to the heart of the matter. I'm—"
"I get it. You're jealous." Yamame shook her head and hurried back to her task. She was very efficient at loosening the sticky ropes, never once entangling herself in the process. Even so, with Parsee so firmly trapped, she was at best a tenth of the way through.
"Very well. This is how the story goes."
Yamame glared, but said nothing. She kept working.
"Once upon a time, there was a spider. A loathsome spider, capable of spreading disease and more than happy to do so. She lived all alone in a miserable hole in the ground to which all the most reviled youkai had been consigned. At first, she pretended she didn't mind, that she was in fact pleased with her horrible reputation. But as time went on, she grew jealous of those who had the respect of their peers, those who could live happy lives under starlight. Year after year, she hung alone and despised in her web, shrinking with each passing season that she never saw until she was no larger than a mote of dust."
Yamame halted once again, wrinkling her nose. "What was that supposed to do? Make me cry? It's like you don't know me at all."
Parsee kept smiling.
"Seriously, cut it out. If you keep stalling like this, I'll start to think this wasn't an accident." Yamame hesitated before her eyes hardened. "Do you think you're somehow safe from disease just because you're a youkai?"
"Of course not." Parsee chuckled even as bile rose up to clog her throat. "How I envy you your ability to control it."
Yamame's eyes widened at the edges and she returned to work. Her movements were as controlled and precise as the strokes of a swordmaster, only touching what they meant to. Undoubtedly she could send forth her plagues with the exact same precision. How admirable. How easily hateable when one had no reason to like her.
Parsee tugged at the strings. Still not enough purchase. "Very well. This is how the real story goes. Once upon a time, there was a spider. Although her reputation was the lowest of the low, she nevertheless lived happily in a cave leading to what had once been Hell. She found delight in her craft and in her friendship with a tsurube-otoshi who didn't hate her as others did. Year after year, as seasons passed by in the land above her while nothing changed in the cave, she worked on her webs, amused herself with climbing challenges, and dreamt of a day she would crawl out to see the starlit world and spread disease everywhere. Her life may have been simple and mostly lonely, but it was pleasant all the same."
Yamame's fingers curled up and slowed. She didn't look at Parsee, looked instead at an outcropping of stone close to her head. Still, she was listening.
"One day, a bridge princess who lived nearby fell into the spider's web. The bridge princess in question was an uncontrollable fount of jealousy: no matter who she met and how little she spoke to them, they would soon find themselves in the throes of the same thick envy that ran through her veins."
Yamame's fingers shot back to work. "Liar."
"The strange thing was, although the bridge princess couldn't help despising every single person she met, she could in fact think peaceable thoughts about them both while she was around them and when she was all alone for long enough. As long as her mind was unclouded and her every thought wasn't of jealousy, she could make sure to avoid others as best she could and so prevent her jealousy from spreading further."
Threads were snapping at record speed. The end was nowhere near in sight.
"It was a misstep that brought the bridge princess to the spider's web. Without worrying about the consequences, the spider had expanded her beautiful web into the tunnels close to the bridge. How happy and carefree the spider must have been to have done something so simple and so—"
Yamame tore a tangle of thread apart. "That's enough! It's easy for you to just lie there and yammer on while I have to do all the actual work—"
She halted, realising what she had just said, realising why she had said it. Her face blanched.
"I wonder." Usually, Parsee felt fulfilled while spreading her curse, relishing the grim satisfaction of petty victories above everything else. The sensation was muted now. Perhaps she had hanged in the web for too long. "Who is more despicable: someone who can't help being contagious, or someone who can abstain from spreading an infection but does so anyway."
The earlier consideration had burned away, leaving Yamame's glare pure with acid. "Shut up. We both know you're doing this on purpose."
Parsee smiled. "It's been nice, being able to hold such a long conversation. To think some people get to do this daily..." She let herself go boneless in the web, searching again for a sense of victory and finding only more darkness. "Very well. This is how the story goes. Once upon a time, there was a murderer..."
Yamame snapped her head up. For a long while, she said absolutely nothing, merely stared at Parsee as though she had become see-through. She took hold of the strings just above Parsee's hand and leaned in until her face was mere inches from Parsee's.
"You still want more stories? I'll tell you one." She tore a strand of web from Parsee's hair. "Once upon a time, there was a spider who just wanted to mind her own business. Near to where the spider lived, there lurked a bridge princess who could manipulate jealousy and who was in the habit of making everyone she met suffer afterwards. The spider tried to get along with the bridge princess, but she couldn't help being the bridge princess' target just like everyone else. But do you know what the spider was jealous of?"
There was a brief silence, broken only by a drop of water falling from a stalactite and landing on the web. For the first time in a while, Parsee became cognisant of how the wet weave shimmered in the bioluminescence.
"The bridge princess was pretty and striking and had a weirdly graceful way of moving the spider couldn't imitate even if she tried. She was witty and knowledgeable and great at pretending to be friendly even when she was noxious. She was almost impossible to forget. That was why the spider decided that even though she and the bridge princess could never really be friends, she would think of the bridge princess as one anyway. That way, she could celebrate all those things that stood out about the bridge princess instead of just being jealous of them. As long as the bridge princess stayed far away, the spider could think about her and wish her well."
Although the green bile revolving around Parsee's mind kept most emotions from taking root, one now flared up close to the periphery, so foreign she was certain she hadn't recognised it correctly. Certainly, she had no reason to pity Yamame.
"And then you had to come here and make it impossible again." Yamame was more careful while scraping off the remaining threads from Parsee's hair, but her fingers still tugged at the roots. "The worst thing is, I can't stop thinking about what things might be like between us if you weren't like this."
An icy chuckle echoed from the walls. It was Parsee's, even if she couldn't feel herself laughing. "You imagine what our relationship would be like if I were a completely different person?"
Yamame's eyes were cold and tinged with green. All the same, there was more to her expression than simple hatred and jealousy. Something muddled and conflicted. Something Parsee fully expected to see smothered for good within the next five minutes.
She closed her eyes. "Very well. This is how the story goes."
"It's not. This is how it goes."
It took Parsee several moments to recognise the soft but insistent push against her mouth, more alien even than affection. She parted her lips without thinking about it, but by the time she snapped her eyes open, Yamame was already pulling back, leaving behind only a tingling impression of warm decay.
It wasn't often that Parsee found herself at a loss for words. Now, however, she could only stare.
"Don't misunderstand me." Yamame wiped at her mouth like someone dabbing their lips clean after a meal. "It's the fastest mode of transmission, that's all."
Really, now? But even as Parsee opened her mouth to speak, she found her tongue paralysed.
"This year's strain causes drowsiness. You're going to sleep for a while." Yamame's eyes shone with the cool, satisfied malice that was the closest thing to happiness Parsee herself could feel, but it continued to war with something closer to regret. "No point fighting against it. Keep quiet and sleep peacefully while I cut you loose and get rid of you."
Already the flames of fever arose, spreading forth from the front of Parsee's skull like beams of a dark sun, faster than any mundane disease could ever have seeped into her bones. She would have laughed if her throat hadn't closed up.
Yamame backed away, becoming one with the shadows. Or was it simply Parsee's eyesight that was failing? The spider's words already sounded like they were coming from within stone. "Can you still spread jealousy when you're asleep? Even if you can, at least you won't be able to distract me. So, nighty night."
While what remained of Parsee's vision dwindled to pinpricks of green stars against a canvas of black, only one thought that wasn't about envy towards those who could stand upright edged closer to the centre of her mind.
When you dispose of me, make sure you do it properly.
When she next opened her eyes, she was somewhat miffed to find herself resting in a natural alcove not far from the bridge, feeling groggy and sore but no longer feverish, unsure of how much time had passed but very sure her most recent memories weren't a dream.
As she pushed herself upright, she brought her hand to her lips. They still tingled.
Yamame stepped back. "They should be secure now. Give it a try."
Kisume inspected the web holding her aloft, tapering off into two thick robes attached to stalactites above. She gave the ropes a tentative pull, then nodded. "It works. Bit sticky, though."
"It can't be helped. It's web, after all."
Kisume took a few more practice swings, each sending her flying in a wider arch. She smiled. "It's fun. I didn't think it'd be much compared to jumping from heights, but it's really not bad at all. Where'd you get the idea?"
"Don't worry about it." Yamame sat down on her own swing. Hers was a more permanent construction with a padded seat made from carefully layered web. Now that she knew Kisume enjoyed swinging, she could devise a proper seat for her as well. "Anything new going on in your life?"
"Not much. Someone threw a teapot down the well yesterday. Didn't even come close to hitting me. I have half a mind to crawl up and show them how to really throw things at people."
Yamame smiled. "You could take on disciples and found a—"
A sharp yank pulled her swing askew for an instant before the loops she had made to secure it re-centred the seat. She blinked.
Kisume, whose temporary swing was only connected to Yamame's cave-wide web with a few incidental strands, tilted her head. "What's wrong?"
"Not sure." Yamame thrummed her fingers against the ropes, feeling for the reverberations in the mesh to find out where the problem was. The cause of the disturbance was near the edge of the web in the direction of Former Hell. Already, she had a bad feeling about it. "But I can tell you that something really similar happened just three days ago."
She didn't need to go check it out at once. She could stay where she was and chat with Kisume and amuse herself as best she could, ignoring the insistent pull of her thoughts that would keep tugging at the corner of her mind until she took action.
With a groan, she stood up. "I'll be back soon."
As she traversed the cave, she took a route that would take her to a tunnel above the chamber where she knew the disruption was. She edged along rough-hewn walls and mushrooms flourishing in the damp gloom until she finally came to the end of the tunnel.
Beneath her, practically horizontal just above the cavern floor, hopelessly entangled in the web, lay Parsee. She was still as death, but upon hearing movement she opened her eyes. They gleamed in the dark like fox fire.
Yamame stared down, ignoring the first tendrils of jealously pawing at the edges of her mind. "This isn't how the story goes."
"Very well," said Parsee, as though those had been the very words she had come to hear. Even so, she wouldn't take her eyes off Yamame.
Yamame wasn't sure how long their gazes remained locked. She did know, however, that eventually, she was the one to blink, and sigh, and retreat back into the gloom of the tunnel without looking back.