Chapter Six

“Reimu! Marisa! Can you hear me?”

Yukari’s voice came from the yin-yang orb. Its red-white light pulsed with each emphasis of her voice. I rolled over, knocking Marisa off of me, then got up to my knees. I grabbed the orb with both hands, looked into the glass, expected to see some image of Yukari inside. There was nothing, just flawless white and red.

“Yukari!” I yelled. “We’re here! Can you hear me?”

“Yes!” said Yukari’s voice through the orb. “It worked! I’ve been waiting for you to use this thing.”

“Where are you?” I said. “Are the others with you? Suika, Alice?”

“All six of us are here, and we’re all alive, but I don’t know where this is. I don’t have control of my body. I can’t even open my eyes. It feels like I’m floating in a hot bath, but I can breathe.”

“Did you see anything when you were dragged down?” I said. “Any path or landmarks we can use to find you?”

“All I know is that we passed Jigoku. The rest of it is a blur; it happened too fast. Are you two all right? If you had to use the yin-yang orb, were you in danger?”

“Been in dangers since fox-girls dropped us down heres,” said Marisa. “Ran into spider youkais but she’s gone nows. Orbs got job dones.”

“How are you talking to us?” I said. “Is this like that cell phone thing you showed me once?”

“It can’t communicate as freely as an outworlder’s phone,” said Yukari. “The orb can carry the voice of my mind, and it can carry voices to my mind, and that’s all. I built in this function so you could call for me if you got in trouble.”

“Oh, sure you did,” I said. “It totally wasn’t so you could spy on my personal life, right?”

Yukari didn’t address that. “I’ve been trying to reach you via the orb for... I don’t know how long. Feels like an hour but there’s no way to tell time here. I had to wait until you activated it and gave me something to grab onto. I can’t risk working any bigger spell, because...”

She paused. Marisa and I waited.

“...because there’s... something else down here with us. It’s big and it’s scary, magically speaking.”

“Is that what pulled you down from Gensokyo?” I said.

“It must be, but I don’t know why. It hasn’t spoken to us, and I’m afraid of it trying to. I can’t risk examining it too closely, but it feels similar to that woman who had Phoenix, Mokou Fujiwara.”

My eyes opened wide, and I felt cold all over. My knuckles went white as I gripped the orb.

“What?” I said. “Mokou’s dead! Extremely dead!”

“It’s not Mokou and Phoenix themselves. It’s the same breadth of power, but its nature is different. It’s less like fire reborn from ashes, and more like harsh sunlight on the hottest summer day. I’m not sure yet, but I think it might be Ya-- damn! I have to go!”

The orb fell silent. Its light faded to nothing.

“Yukari?” I yelled. “Hello? Yukari!”

No response came. I lowered the orb into my lap, leaned back and took a breath.

“Must’ve thoughts she’d get noticeds by big-bads,” said Marisa.

“I hope not,” I said. “Or at least, I hope she fled fast enough to not get noticed. I don’t want to think what a being stronger than Yukari might to do them.”

“Come on thens, Reimus.” Marisa stood up and held a hand to me. “If Alices gonna get cookeds, at least wanna be theres with hers.”

---

Creating light is among the simplest magic tricks. Marisa tells me it’s the first spell most novice magicians practice. It’s so easy that craftsmen enchant sparklamps for the rest of us, so we can light our homes without the fire hazard of wax candles or oil lamps.

So I guessed that Yukari would have built a light function into the yin-yang orb. I held the glass ball up in my palm and thought at it: Can you float near me and be my torch?

The orb obliged, lifting from my hand and hovering near my right shoulder. It shone with a half-red half-white glow.

“Hey, look at this.” I pointed the orb out to Marisa. “It’s like I have my own familiar.”

“Good deals. Like Shanghais, but lot less chattys.”

“Yeah, that’s what I have you for. Let’s go.”

Now that we both had our own light sources, we plodded across the cave. We were careful with each footstep so that we didn’t fall into surprise pits. We found only solid ground criss-crossed with a lattice of mossy fungus. Our lights revealed the switchback ramps that led up to the hole in the cave wall where Yamame’s sparks had escaped.

“Did you no- er-hem!” I had to clear a bubble in my throat. “Did you notice Yamame didn’t just dissolve like youkai on the surface do?”

“Caught that toos,” said Marisa. “Bucket-girls said dead youkais go past the oni-citys.”

“This would be so ghoulish, if that’s true – like we’re walking the youkai path of death. Do you remember a few years ago when that one dark youkai tried to trap and eat me?” I stamped one foot on the first ramp. “I might be standing on the same ground her remains passed by, after you blasted her with a Master Spark.”

“It’s not too bads. Remembers, already saw starts of the human path of deaths, and met the nice pink-haired ghosty-girls.”

I shivered. “Visiting Yuyuko’s realm was the most traumatizing thing I’ve ever experienced. I worry poor Alice and Patchouli will have a hard time with this, even if we get them out alive.”

Marisa had no response to that, and I didn’t want to follow that line of thought any further. We walked up the switchbacks in silence. Back and forth, we climbed up most of the cave wall, and came to the porthole where Yamame’s remains had escaped. Our lights showed a pile of webbing on the ground. I nudged the web strands with my foot.

“She must’ve had the exit covered to keep her food from fleeing,” I said.

“Prolly fell aparts without up-keeps, since she’d needs to let onis pass sometimes.”

We headed into this next tunnel, which had a shallow uphill slope. After about fifty paces, I could hear white noise ahead of us.

“Do you hear that?” I glanced back at Marisa. “Running water.”

Marisa nodded, then coughed once. Huchk! She beat a fist on her chest. “Just mees, or air dusty in heres?”

“Doesn’t feel dusty to m—” A surprise cough burst out of me, and I cleared my throat after. Hu-huck! Er-hem! “Okay, maybe it is dusty. I’m getting a tickle in my throat.”

We pushed on. The sound of rushing water grew louder, until it was a steady roar that sounded like a big mountain river. I expected the water to blast of cold air down to us in the tunnel. There was a breeze in our faces, but the air was warm, like a muggy spring afternoon after a rainfall.

Uphill and upwind we went, until the tunnel opened into a larger space. Here we paused, looking up and around.

“This must be the Grand Uphill,” I said. “Or the start of it, at least.”

I could call this new area just another tunnel, but it was far bigger. If you could put a small house on wheels and get Ran to push it uphill, that house could pass through here. Marisa and I stood at the bottom of a path that led up into the distance, farther than I could see. Torches lined the walls, spaced at every hundred feet or so. Each torch glowed with a flame that looked like the orange heart of a sparklamp, but without a glass globe containing it.

“Reimus! Look heres!”

Marisa had walked over to the river, which accounted for most of the floorspace through this chamber. Our upward path was on the river’s right-hand side, and it was a narrow sidewalk in comparison to the water.

My mouth hung open when I saw what Marisa pointed out. This river looked like any other: peaks of white foam, whirling eddies, sediment and smooth stones on the bed – except for one thing.

“Th- the water’s running uphill!”

I looked upstream, which was downhill, and could see the river receding into darkness. There were no torches on the walls there. Marisa got on her knees, leaned over and put one hand into the water.

“Water’s hots!” she said. “Hot like a bathtubs!”

“That’s great. Now get your hand out of there.” I coughed again, cleared my throat. “If we’ve wandered into a weirdo place where rivers run uphill, then who knows what dangers are around. Some salamander youkai might bite you and make your arm rot off.”

---

Walking single-file and keeping the cave wall close on our right, we headed uphill. Our own lights didn’t contribute much to the wall-mounted torches. Our shadows approached from behind us, disappeared beneath us, then grew in front of us again as we approached and passed each of the torches overhead.

We cracked open the supply bags that Ran had given us. There wasn’t much inside: some flavorless hard-tack rice cake, jerky meat, one flask of water each. I ate half of one rice cake but couldn’t handle more than that. The itch in my throat had grown worse. Taking two swigs of water didn’t soothe my throat for long.

Marisa coughed behind me.

“You getting worse too?” I said, then er-hemed myself. “You don’t have a spell that cures sore throats, do you?”

Marisa shook her head. “Not this very-normal witches. If ever sees maid-girls agains, maybe could get hers making chicken-broth ramens.”

“Mmm, that does sound good. I’m jealous of Sakuya’s cooking ability. It’s the best I can do to make a dinner that Suika won’t whine about.”

Marisa snorted. “Alices don’t even let mees do the cookings anymores.”

“Yeah, because you burned down her kitchen!”

Marisa coughed, but it came out like a gravely laugh. Ha! “Artists don’t apologizes for their processes.”

I smiled at that, and we kept hiking.

What had Alice’s and Marisa’s relationship been like behind closed doors? I wondered. Until now, it sounded like nothing I wanted for myself. Just living with Suika was enough domestic companionship. Anything more intimate than that was outside my comfort zone. I would always need my personal space.

Even so, it did seem to make the blonde couple happy. Marisa was first to suggest diving headfirst into a cave system to save her special someone. Maybe there was some value to romantic partnership that I’ve never known.

I shook my head. That isn’t me. Yukari’s bad advice last night must have wormed its way into my mind. I looked aside, meaning to glare at the yin-yang orb – but the orb no longer hovered by my shoulder. I stopped, turned, saw Marisa had snatched the orb out of midair.

“It’s sads.” She held orb in both hands, looking into it like a snow globe she had just shaken. “Wanna be ables make things like this, but so-way fars outta leagues. Not fairs that Yukaris can do this.”

A flash of anger burned at my chest.

“Give me that!” I reached out and yanked the orb away from her. “This thing is my only form of self-defense, so I’d appreciate if you didn’t manhandle it. Besides, you have your hakkero. You’ve always been able to fight off enemies with your giant murder lasers, so just be happy with that. I’ve had to use other people’s spellcards until today.”

Marisa held up both hands and looked away, as if overwhelmed by an angry spouse.

“Fines, yeesh. Wouldn’t hurt to studies when no bad guys arounds, but whatevers.”

I turned and resumed walking up the trail, but kept the orb in hand instead of ordering it to float nearby. Marisa followed me.

“Well, maybe you don’t get to study this one,” I said. “Any hour you that have it is an hour that some fairy can bite me and give me blood poisoning. Besides, it’s not unfair that Yukari can make a magic item like this and you can’t. She’s like, what, a couple thousand years old?”

“Totally unfairs!” said Marisa. “Even with magic-springy body, prolly won’t live that longs. Never get to make somethin’s so complex and neats. You ain’t even a magicians, Reimus. Can’t learn from orbs. Lemme just looks for a few min—”

I felt her hand grasping at mine, trying to take the orb from me. I yanked my hand away, turned and held her in place with my other arm.

“No!” I shouted at her. “Just shut up and count your blessings, Marisa! Maybe you won’t live to Yukari’s age, but at least you’ll live with someone who loves you. All I have is a lazy slob oni who demolishes my groceries.”

“Kiddings?” said Marisa. “Wish lived with oni-girls insteads! All Alices does is tinker with stupid dolls, cares more abouts Shanghais than mees. At least can get drunks with Suikas.”

I was shaking my head, not wanting to hear this. “Stop! If we get out of this alive, I’m telling Alice that you’re an ungrateful little two-faced—”

I couldn’t finish my insult. A new spasm of coughing burst out of me, the worst one yet. I covered my mouth with the crook of my elbow. My lungs and throat hurt like they were buffed by sandpaper. I hacked and sputtered until I could breathe normally again. Pulling my arm away, there were new wet spots soaked into my sleeve. I hoped none of that was blood.

Marisa’s eyes met mine. Her face showed the same shock and shame that I felt. My coughing fit had snapped us out of a pointless argument.

“I’m.... I’m sorry.” My voice was hoarse. “I don’t think I meant anything I just said.”

“Sorry toos, Reimus. Something’s wrong heres. Wasn’t like us at alls.”

“Y-yeah.”

I glanced up the trail again. It was hard to tell from here, but the top of the path might be in sight.

“Let’s keep going, and let’s not talk unless there’s an emergency.”

Marisa nodded.

---

One foot in front of another, each step a little higher than the last. I steeled myself, tried to focus on the trail.

If she grabs at the yin-yang orb again, I’ll slam it clean through her just like I did to Yamame.

Some book I had read years ago mentioned a phenomenon of mind called intrusive thoughts. A mentally unwell person might experience outrageous, uncomfortable ideas of harming one’s self or others, and then feel guilty for it.

She’s prettier than me. We both know it. She has the light-colored hair that’s rare for humans in Gensokyo, and everyone finds it attractive.

That book couldn’t accurately describe what it felt like to have intrusive thoughts. This felt awful. It was like seeing an ugly blemish on your face in the mirror – except the ugliness was inside you, part of your mind and heart, not just showing on your external body.

It’s not just Marisa. It’s all of them. Sakuya is stronger than me, prettier than me, and she’s even a better chef than me. Remilia and Yuyuko are wealthy mistresses who drink wine and boss people around. Yukari and Ran are basically the rulers of Gensokyo, even if they don’t say it. Eirin and Kaguya are immortal, so they never know fear or want.

I kept reminding myself, this isn’t me. This can’t be me. Marisa followed silent behind me, but she must have been struggling with her own mind too. She covered her face to suppress a few coughs.

Hear that? Even her sore throat isn’t as bad as mine. I hate them, all of them. They have everything and I have nothing. I hate them.

Only once before had I been this miserable, when I suffered depression after resurrecting from the netherworld. I spent most of three months doing the bare minimum for survival, preparing meals and bathing only because I had to. Nothing was enjoyable. All I wanted was to lie down and writhe in my own misery.

Things stayed like that until Suika came along. She started the process of healing my mind by literally throwing me into other peoples’ minds. I missed Suika. It was beyond unfair that she was keeping some monster company, rather than being with me.

It was in this loathing stupor that I realized we had reached the end of the uphill tunnel. I stopped, and Marisa almost bumped into me from behind. The rocky floor stood in a sharp incline before us, a near-ninety-degree angle. Here the river transitioned into what would be a waterfall, except that the river flew up the wall into a... waterjump? Waterrise?

The path that Marisa and I had been walking ended here. The only way forward was a bridge that spanned the river to a new path on the water’s left. From here, I could see the lefthand path climbed up beside the waterrise in a sharp stack of switchbacks.

The bridge was ornately-crafted wood and stone, like something Jinri would build over a koi pond to beautify the town. It was wide enough for two people to walk shoulder-to-shoulder, but a woman stood in the middle of the bridge: her arms folded, her feet apart, blocking our passage.

She glared at us with the brightest, most striking emerald eyes I have ever seen.

“You two disgust me,” she said.

Marisa and I stood there, speechless. Not only was I surprised at this new person, but my insides shook with terrible emotion. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to curl up in a ball and weep, or tackle this woman so I could rip out her eyes and keep them for myself.

“Bringing your friendship here, flaunting what you have in front of us who have nothing!”

She walked forward. Her short blonde hair shifted as she moved, showing that she had pointed ears like an elf from a fantasy story. She wore a short-skirted dress of brown, purple, and blue, with red tassels and a white sash wrapping all around.

“You should feel ashamed.” She stepped close, her eyes drilling into mine. “You can’t know how hard things have been for us.”

“Wh- who are you?” I barely forced the words out by raw willpower.

Her eyes narrowed. “And you have the audacity to demand my name before giving yours. You’re so ignorant of your privilege. Parsee Mizuhashi, not that you care. I know why you’re here. You want to stop Okuu from saving us. You just can’t stand the idea of us not starving to death, while you surface humans get drunk and party every day.”

“What?” I said. “I- I don’t—”

Parsee smacked the back of her hand to my mouth. It didn’t hurt as much as a full-force slap, but it shut me up.

“Silence!” she snapped. “You two are so arrogant. I’d love to beat your faces in with my own fists, but I have a better idea.”

Parsee walked back to the middle of the bridge, then twirled to face us again. Her eyes blazed like a pair of green stars falling from the sky.

“One punishment fits your crimes!” she shouted. “Since you came to flaunt your wealth to those who have none, you will both try to destroy the thing you love the most.”

She held up a hand and threw something magical at us, a burst of green and yellow sparks that sprayed over Marisa and me. This didn’t hurt us physically – even where the sparks touched skin, they didn’t burn. Something else happened.

I should have realized before: Parsee was the source of the negative emotions that paralyzed us. It was impossible not to know that now. Miserable jealousy went from the power of a bonfire to that of a forest fire, miles wide and razing everything in sight. I could feel nothing else. It consumed me.

“Now,” Parsee folded her arms again, “let’s see which one of you manages to kill the other.”

---

With no grace, no forethought, nothing but hollow rage, I turned around and threw a punch at Marisa. It was a swipe of careless anger, like a child fighting with her sibling. My fist hit her on the shoulder with a whap. She turned away from the pain, then pulled out her hakkero and aimed it at me.

“Stupid Reimus!” she yelled.

A flash of white came from the reactor. The glare blinded me, and the whole side of my body facing her felt hot. Force from the blast slammed into me like a charging pony, knocking me to the ground. My head hit one of the bridge’s posts.

“Gyah!” I cried out. I tried to blink the after-images out of my eyes, tried to see Marisa so I could shoot the yin-yang orb at her.

Taking a bump to the head had dazed me. I couldn’t get my bearings before Marisa was on top of me. She pinned my hand with the orb under one knee, then planted her other knee on my chest. She grabbed the side of my head with a hard grip, and pressed her hakkero up to my nose.

“Why gotta bees like this, stupid Reimus!” she shouted at my face. “Always tried to be best friends!”

“You’re not my friend.” I wheezed against her weight on my lungs. “You were never my friend.”

Marisa forgot that I could control the orb without touching it. The glass ball levitated from my hand, blazed with red-white light, and clocked her upside the face. I didn’t throw it hard enough to break bone, instead hitting like a solid roundhouse to the cheek. I wanted her alive. She needed to suffer for crossing me.

The orb-punch snapped Marisa’s head to the side. She slumped against the bridge’s railing, lost her grip on her hakkero, which rolled onto the planks of the bridge. I took this chance to push her off of me and scrambled to my feet. She was trying to recover, but only until I kicked her in the stomach. She let out a uuugghrrl grunt as my foot beat the wind out of her.

“I’m so sick of you!” I kicked her a second time, landed on her shin as she curled defensively. “You have everything I never had! You can die here for all I care!”

I reached down and grabbed her by the neck, intending to lift her over the railing and throw her into the river, even though I didn’t have the upper-body strength to do that. Since Marisa didn’t have her foci at hand, she did the thing that any desperate magician would do: cast a spell without a foci.

No control. No elegant weaving of natural energies. Just an explosion of heat and light that hurt both of us, though it hit me harder than it hit her. The blast knocked me down again. Dancing colors flashed in my eyes, and the noise slammed a new ringing into my ears. I frantically patted myself all over, panicking that my clothes might have lit on fire.

“Ha-ha! The spoils of war!” Parsee, who had been watching our fight, skipped over to us. She picked up the yin-yang orb and hakkero from the bridge planks and held them to her breast.

“These are mine now!” she yelled at us. “I’ll give these toys a good home. Now, will one of you two finish the other off? The show isn’t complete without a big finale.”

---

Neither one of us were in a condition to keep fighting, especially without our weapons. We were both dazed and hurt. But what else could I do? Marisa had to die. I had to kill her. There was no other way.

If only I could sit up straight. If only my vision would focus.

“B-bridge-girls,” said Marisa in her pathetic, irritating voice. “That’s my hakkeros. Can’t have its. Give it backs.”

“This?” Parsee held up Marisa’s foci. “What do you mean, I can’t have it? I’m holding it right now. It’s mine.”

“Doesn’t matters. Won’t works. Gotta have the power of loves.”

Parsee threw her head back and laughed. Gah hahahah! A scornful sound, like a warlord gloating over the enemy’s army driven before her.

“The power of love?” she said. “You mouthy little wretch. I should kill you with your own weapon, this... hakkero, you called it?”

“Go aheads, bridge-girls. Rather dies than pal arounds stupid miko-girls anymores. Love Sign: Master Spark. Try and shoots.”

“Oh, I’ll enjoy this.” Parsee held the hakkero at Marisa. “Love Sign: Master Spark!”

---

Right then and there, I experienced a dark moment. At what felt like the deepest core of my heart, I was eager to see Marisa get blasted with her own favorite spell. There could be no more fitting end to this maniac who took everything she had for granted.

There was one crucial thing that neither Parsee or I had noticed, until it was too late.

She held the hakkero backwards.

The projecting face of Marisa’s foci fired a Master Spark straight into Parsee’s hand. The force of the spell overflowed and slammed into her chest, knocking her back over the bridge railing. She didn’t completely tip over, instead draped over the railing like laundry hung out to dry. Her body had gone limp from the impact, causing her to drop the hakkero and yin-yang orb into the river below.

My head had cleared enough to remember how angry I was. For a few seconds, my rage focused on Parsee for losing my property in the river. She would pay.

Still woozy, I grabbed onto the railing to pull myself to my feet. Parsee tried to pull her center of mass back to safety, but I gave her no time. I grabbed both her ankles and yanked up as hard as I could, letting out a roar of exertion, Graaah! She flipped over and dropped heels-over-head into the river.

Parsee shrieked on the short drop, then hit the water. Her hair and dress briefly showed in the roiling foam. The waterrise carried her up, past the bridge, up the rock wall and out of sight. She flailed and sputtered the whole way.