So, uh...
This is a little Touhou fanfic idea I had. It's still incomplete, but I hope to post chapters as I progress. This is a first draft, though, so stuff might seem odd at first. I'd love to hear your thoughts about it.
Enjoy!
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Prologue
Reimu Hakurei held a small-scale flower-viewing party in the spring of the 135th year in the Gensokyo Calendar. Humans and youkai from all areas gathered on that day to chat, have fun, and basically talk about their life and what’s happened to them so far. Everything was perfect, all the way leading up to the nighttime hours. They lit a fire as they ate food and drank saké, staring into the stars and up at the beautiful full moon. Its beauty was mesmerizing, purer than anything on the Earth.
It was also during this day that Reimu drank a little too much and had to retire early, so she returned back into the shrine to lay down and have a nice little rest. She needed a little breather as she absolutely refused to wake up with a throbbing hangover. Setting up her futon, she practically plopped down onto it and wrapped herself in the covers.
Within seconds, with the remainder of the feast ongoing outside at the shrine grounds, Reimu Hakurei of the Hakurei Shrine had already fallen asleep…
This is the story of Reimu Hakurei and Gensokyo, a land of fantasy and the forgotten, the illusions… the Memories of Phantasm.
Chapter 1
The first thing I noticed when I woke up was that some lines seemed to be blurry. Like, everything’s blending together almost. At first, I was confused. Why would my eyes be playing tricks on me like this? I rubbed my eyes. I looked up at the walls and the floor. I blinked a few times, closing them for a good while before eyeing my surroundings, hoping that it was just a trick of the eye. I washed my eyes with water in a nearby bucket to clear my vision, but it was quite obvious now.
I looked out of the window, fully expecting a fuzzy background. There was a fuzzy background indeed, but not in the way I expected. It’s almost as if the trees, mountains, the clouds, even the grass just by the shrine… it was all blurry, like a painting that had been ruined by water. It was almost surreal, to say the least. But that’s not just what I was worried about. Everything felt… lifeless. No fairies, no spirits, no oni in sight. The smell of saké lingered in the shrine, but there was no trace outside.
At first, I thought, maybe it was Yukari. And call out I did.
“Yukari! Are you behind this again?” I yelled out, “This wasn’t funny--”
...wait, something wasn’t right. Did I feel a bit off just now? I shrugged it off, guessing it was probably just a one-off. And judging by the lack of portal, I knew she wasn’t coming. Oh, I’ll show her.
Taking everything in view into consideration, it looked like some things were more faded than others. Strange... most of the ones that remained relatively clear were the Human Village... and that’s about it I think.
The trees near my shrine, near the forests, it was all wrong. Something was very, very wrong, and I wanted to find out. But first...
Looking up into the air, I could feel it. No sign of phantom activity up there. Usually there was an active group of phantoms slipping in and out of Hakugyokurou every once in a while, but it seemed like there was nothing coming out. I was worried that maybe something had happened here, and I was about to head out when all of a sudden, Marisa came crashing at the front of the shrine.
“Mornin’ Reimu,” she said. Her voice seemed slightly more airy than normal. Not enough to be very noticeable, but it still felt wrong. “Say, aren’t ya s’posed to be sweepin’ up the grounds, ze?”
“Well uh…” I started, trying to come up with an explanation. “I… I have a strange feeling something was stirring up, like there’s an Incident going on.” But was it really? I am not sure either.
And this is when I noticed something off about Marisa as well. Not only was her skin paler and more faded, but her silhouette was slightly blurry as well. This wasn’t a good sign, I felt.
“An Incident, you say?” Marisa seemed interested, but her energy… it wasn’t all there. It’s like her normally optimistic air around her was fading as well, becoming stale and slowly disappearing like the morning mist. “Well, I don’t know much about what ya mean,” she continued, “but if you need any help, I’m always available.”
Weird, she didn’t say ‘ze’ here either.
Marisa took notice of my strange behavior right away as my eyes quickly darted from side to side, up and down, and occasionally dead into her fading eyes. “Reimu, hey, what’s going on?” she began to ask, concern becoming evident with her speech. “Do I look funny or something?”
I honestly don’t know what to reply with. Something about her was not right, but I can’t put a finger into it. I replied nonetheless. “Well, you don’t look too bad, I guess. Did you brush your hair or something?”
“What? No, what are ya talking about? I’m the same as ever,” she answered with a tone of heavy concern with a slight chuckle at her little quip. “Though seriously, if you want to tell me later, you could have just said so.” She hopped onto her broom, which seemed less detailed than normal, the bristles blending together to form one solid-looking tail-end. “Well, see ya!” And she flew away into the horizon... the fading horizon.
I looked up again towards the Border of Life and Death, my eyes locked onto the ghostly world above. It felt like I couldn’t make out anything in the sky, and it’s making my head hurt. It almost felt like as if something was suggesting to me, by some odd unnatural means, that everything I see here... was a...
No way, it can’t be a dream. It possibly can’t be a dream, otherwise I’d have awoken right now from this terrible nightmare.
…this isn’t a dream… right?
{|}o>----------<o{|}
As I flew up to the oddly unguarded gates to the Netherworld, I noticed one thing that stood out to me. The normally intricate stairs that winded up towards the main entrance to Hakugyokurou were nothing but a rough stone path leading up to it. Some parts were even plain dirt, and they all were faded significantly, blurred to near unrecognizability. The sky was distorted, the plants and spirits seemingly blurred or gone. There had never been a feeling of loneliness before in my life, and this had exceeded all of my past experiences. Not even Yukari could manage something so dreadful as this.
It was a complete mess.
When I arrived to the ‘top,’ I saw empty land. The mansion was barely visible, clouded by the distorted atmosphere and the blurred lines and colors. It was so bad even color lost its meaning. “Youmu? Yuyuko? Anyone home?” I called out. No answer. Unsurprisingly enough. And yet, this unsettled me. Why was no one home? Why was the one place so busy with activity (though very much cold and dead) so... empty?
I entered the mansion after knocking on the hardwood door... or what was left of it anyway. Inside, none of the partitions seemed to be there, just floors and half-empty stairs, and worse of all, everything was blurred to the point of unrecognizability. Where the lounge room sat, however, was a table, completely intact, along with a fully comprehensible note on top of it. Curious, I walked up to it with caution and knelt by the table, my knees touching the cold floor, its texture alien to me.
And so I read the note. Signed by Yuyuko, addressed to... no one?
“To whom it may concern…” it read, “My life is coming to an end. Figuratively speaking, of course, as I’m a ghost. As soon as Youmu and I left for home, we started to notice something strange happen. Everything began to fade.”
“The staircase was losing its shape, the gates warped. Youmu herself wasn’t feeling too good as she herself began to fade into nothingness. I couldn’t save her, no matter what I did, what I tried.”
“I found my place empty when I arrived, sobbing for the loss of my trusted gardener. Everything felt wrong, everything felt like it was going to fall apart. There is only one conclusion about this that I have seen so far as the Netherworld deteriorated.”
“Gensokyo may be collapsing. If only Yukari could help, but she never came. If you’re reading this all the way to the end, I’ve already passed on. Try to figure out what is going on here, dead reader, and help us save our Gensokyo...”
The signature at the end was unfinished, presumably because Yuyuko had already begun to fade as she wrote her last words. Just that... I’m afraid this could be the conclusion. Maybe it was true that Gensokyo might be a--
“…I gotta find help,” I declared, interrupting my train of thought. None of that pessimistic bull, I decided. And since Yukari was MIA, I decided on the next best thing as I speedily flew downstairs (technically downhill as there doesn’t seem to be any semblance of stair).
“Eientei, here I come...”
