Because I'm Home - Part One

I'm walking down a path that snakes its way along this ridge in the side of Youkai Mountain. I like to come here when I can't take it at the shrine anymore. When I need to breathe, and be by myself.

I never asked to come here. I was perfectly happy sweeping the front walk of a shrine hardly anyone ever visited. I didn't care that people believed more in weather forecasts assembled by satellite and using chemicals to make their crops stronger than they did in making offerings to the gods. People change. Their needs change with their technology. Let them have the modern world, I told Kanako. So what if fewer people believe? The numbers might be fewer but their faith is stronger than ever in the face of this modern world.

But it wasn't enough. She had to have more. She had to move. And I am loyal to my Lady, so I went with her. I said goodbye to everything I knew. And I told myself this is the life I chose. I will get used to it, I decided, as I stepped across the Hakurei Border. This new world will be my home.

I'm sitting down by the ridge now, looking down over the mists clinging to the tree tops, the breeze moving over me like a mournful ghost. This beautiful, magical land, where the gods and mythical beings flourish. It's my home now. And I loathe every second I spend here. My hands, resting in my lap, clench into fists. I want to scream so loudly that my body will shatter into a million pieces and be scattered to the ends of the world.

My emerging rage is knocked off balance, tumbling clumsily away, as I hear the distinct whistling rustling of the tengu reporter's wings. I look around, but of course I don't see her coming. She drops down in front of me, from where I have no idea.

I don't know why I dislike this person as much as I do. It's not because she's nosy, sarcastic, a bit arrogant or a bit of a liar. Those are all forgivable. Looking at her standing in front of me now, smiling cheerfully, the pointy ears, the red eyes, the black feathered wings - it's all very Gensokyan, which I thought was what made me dislike her. But looking at her now, I realize why, I realize what it is I'm feeling, when I see the camera in her hand. That camera, so out of place in this country, seems to bear the sad, lonely glow of a lost child. It doesn't belong here. It belongs in the outside world. And I hate her so much for holding that camera in her youkai hands.

"Sanae!," she chirps. "What are you doing out here all by your lonesome? Hm?"

I shrug ambivalently. "I just wanted to be alone."

Naturally, she ignores the hint. "Oh? What's the matter? Everything alright up at the shrine?"

Why should I tell her? What can I say? That Lady Kanako sits there all day brooding about all the youkai who don't visit, that she mumbles to herself, plots and schemes in circles of logic, that Lady Suwako laughs at her behind her back, and gossips to me about how Kanako is losing her touch? Do I unload this weight on my heart, that I'm tired of being between the two of them, being their mutual sounding board, that all I want to do is go back home? Even if I wanted to say all these things, who am I going to tell? And what difference would it make?

"Things at the shrine are the same as they've always been," I say. "Nothing new and exciting to report."

She doesn't believe me. I don't care. She's not going to pry me open. No force of nature would ever break me open here.

"Well," she clears her throat. "That's disappointing. But ... you know, Sanae, you can always talk to me. I know you're young, and you're not from around here, but that doesn't mean you don't belong. Or can't belong. I might understand more than you think."

The sentiment catches me off guard. She sounds sincere, but I don't know if I can trust her. I feel a tiny stone in the bottom of my heart stir, like a pebble in the silt of a riverbed, stirred by a sudden shift in the current. And then she fiddles with that camera again, and the feeling is gone.

"I'll make a note of it," I say, more sarcastically than I intended.

She smiles awkwardly. "Alright then. Well, I'm off!" And in a blast of cool air, the space where she stood is empty again.

And I'm alone again. I'm sitting on this ridge on Youkai Mountain, overlooking this land, this place that's my home now, feeling the reach of the shrine coming down the mountain, sliding its cool hands around my shoulders. And I ache.