The first time Reimu sees Sanae, her curls whipping wildly in divine wind and eyes alight with eager righteousness, she feels an urge to grab her by the nape of her neck and toss her right back across the Great Hakurei Barrier.
Later, after she's made peace with Sanae and her goddesses, she takes some time while doing the dishes to ask herself why she reacted so violently, and decides there wasn't anything strange about it. She's territorial and has never pretended to be otherwise. Why wouldn't she be upset to come face to face with a rival shrine maiden? She has no intention of allowing the Moriya Shrine to crowd in on her turf and now that it seems she can't banish the newcomers, she's going to put her all into coming out on top anyway.
And so, Sanae joins her needlessly large circle of acquaintances. Sanae is strange, but she's not a bad person. She's sweet and accommodating with enough backbone to keep her from being a complete pushover, and while her almost manic guilelessness is unsettling, there's a kind of purity to it that Reimu finds hard to dislike. She makes for a good rival, one Reimu can trust to have her back in a pinch. Reimu likes her.
Even so, she can't quite shake the urge to personally throw her out of Gensokyo.
She leans into what she knows. Annoyance is easy to understand. Rivalry is easy to understand. A professional relationship with some friendship blended in is as familiar to her as the feel of the grain of her gohei against her palm.
What isn't easy to understand is why she finds it so difficult to choose her words around Sanae. Why her breath hitches and the back of her neck tingles around her. Why the thought of seeing Sanae makes her both delighted and apprehensive and willing to be even colder and more sarcastic than usual. It would easier if they were genuine enemies. Then there would be no need to worry about any contact that wasn't a fist to a face. But no matter how tangled Reimu's feelings become, they are friends. And so Sanae keeps showing up far more often than the maintenance of the branch shrine strictly requires. And so Reimu keeps imagining unproductive scenarios where Sanae never arrived in Gensokyo.
She isn't stupid. She notices when Sanae's demeanour begins to change. She knows what those long looks she sometimes gives her when she thinks no-one is paying attention mean. She knows a blush when she sees one, and even if she didn't, Marisa's nudges and sly comments leave little room for imagination. Oh, yes. Sanae likes her. A lot.
But that tells her nothing about how she feels about Sanae in turn. It doesn't explain why she wants to both cling onto her and push her away. It keeps it a mystery why her fondness for her is tempered by an irritation that has nothing to do with anything Sanae has actually done.
"It's called a crush," Marisa informs her one evening seemingly out of the blue, glancing towards the distant silhouette of Youkai Mountain with a gleeful smile. "A big one."
She escapes into the night before Reimu can toss all her spell cards at her.
Reimu's left alone to mull over the words as the first stars light up. Aren't crushes supposed happen to teenagers? Aren't they supposed to be wonderful? This is at best awesome in the sense that she can't believe people would rhapsodise over a disease like this. Who could possibly enjoy their mind turning into magnetised iron and becoming a compass directed at a single person whether they want it or not?
She sits on the porch, not caring that she's wrinkling the hem of her skirt. She has no problem admitting she likes Sanae. Not even that she really likes Sanae. But this ever-rising tidal wave of feeling which threatens to sweep her along with it? This is...
Yukari's smile is serpentine. "Then again, that's not something I have ever had to worry about with you."
Reimu massages her temples. The frustration she can deal with, and having a name for what she feels helps. But the rest?
The rest.
It's already cold when she retreats indoors.
On a grey January afternoon, as Sanae alights onto the courtyard, Reimu is prepared.
"Three versus three," she declares, brandishing her chosen spell cards.
Sanae squints at the illustrations, the nods and takes off her scarf, carefully folding it before setting it aside. She takes her time selecting her cards. If she's confused, she doesn't show it. Always so obliging and happy to help.
After several waves of ofuda and radiant pentagrams and awkward lunges across the frosty courtyard, Reimu emerges victorious. Sanae doesn't bear defeat well, but she manages a polite smile in response to Reimu's smirk.
It turns out that no, punching your crush in the face does not in fact make the feeling disappear. And, from how slowly Sanae drapes her scarf back on her shoulders and keeps making excuses to linger, being punched in the face doesn't do the trick either.
The next option on the list is to grin and bear it, and so Reimu makes a begrudging invitation and goes to make tea. Sanae's smile turns sincere.
Whatever is going on can't stay that way forever. That much is obvious. Soon enough, this strange, half-formed blossom will either bloom or wilt. All the same, Reimu allows herself a moment of satisfaction as she watches Sanae breathe in the steam from her teacup and beam at her, a ray of pure sunlight piercing the gloom of the cloudy day.