Chapter Text
Something's been bothering Yuuka Kazami.
From time to time, during her evenings spent sitting on the porch, enjoying the sunflowers, she swears she can catch a glimpse of someone.
Short, boyish hair, a little cape (it looks like velvet from far away, but she knows better: it's just velveteen - particularly good velveteen), and a pair of wriggling antennae just barely in view. Some sort of insect youkai, she reckons.
Insects never bothered Yuuka. There are spaces they belong in, and places they do not - in her view, they are perfectly fine as long as they do not intrude into her little dwelling. In fact, they're more good than bad: many of the plants and flowers she so loves rely on their little, grubby hands to pollinate them.
How charming, the bond of flower and insect. Mutual exploitation - mutual benefit.
These past few weeks, she's been taking notes, trying to paint a mental picture of who this ever-distant insect may be.
So far, of note:
- The certain someone (she's taken to calling them Chitin in her head) isn't actively stalking her. In fact, she's never spotted Chitin actually staring.
- Chitin is surrounded by smaller insects whenever Yuuka spots them. Even when they vanish between the leaves or fly through the clouds, a few remain - heralds of their arrival and departure.
- This may imply that Chitin can control other insects. A fearsome power against the common folk, especially farmers. Not much of a threat to other youkai, though.
- Chitin's eyes met Yuuka's exactly once, two days ago. They were little, round, cerulean buttons, glimmering in the evenfall - a sort of color rarely present in this garden of a thousand suns.
- Chitin's eyes must be seen again.
Yuuka's eyes sweep the landscape. Admittedly, there is little to look at for most people - sunflowers surround the home, the more varied flora confined to her porch and the indoors. To her, however, each petal-adorned wheel has something that makes her see it as an individual. They're all sunflowers, yes, but that is simply their origin - some have lost petals to the elements, some are taller, some shorter - that is to say, they are all more than just a sunflower.
At dusk, these plants are always a contradictory sight - tonight, they feel even more so. The shade dulls their yellows and their greens, everything melting into a desaturated slurry, a blur worsened by the dull, hazy warmth of the archetypal summer evening. The stars are a better view around this time - but they have not yet arrived to dot the black above.
Yuuka recalls one more thing she should note.
- Chitin always appears in the evening hours. Precise time is unclear - Yuuka cares not for the hour or the minute, and she doubts that the other would.
Between two sunflower heads (perfectly level with one another: she didn't even notice before), a faint rustle alerts the lone home's resident - and where the rustle hides, lies a gaze.
- Chitin's eyes have been seen again.
The flower's heart skips a beat.
Wriggle Nightbug has made a terrible mistake.
She never should have come to the Garden of the Sun. The flowers are pretty and her insects love them - but one looming, ever-present threat lies inside it.
Yuuka Kazami, sole resident of this forever blooming summer field. She's less a person and more a force of nature, if the tales spoken around her are to be believed - Wriggle has no reason to doubt them, so they may as well be so. She could squash the lesser youkai like the insect she is without even lifting a finger; avoiding the lady's watchful eye was, as such, her only option.
Curiosity is a greater force than she, but it dwells in her mind - wanting, craving, screaming to know about things. Ms. Kazami has been the latest interest - Wriggle looked her dead in the eye for a split second (two days ago; Nightbug never cared for calendars, though she does count days), but what she saw in Yuuka's vermillion, almost glowing eyes was not hatred nor scorn.
It was curiosity.
Ever since, she's done increasingly irrational, irresponsible things - leading her swarm closer to Yuuka's home, generally spending more time in the sunflower field - all culminating in tonight.
She saw her sitting on the porch, staring into the distance - perhaps wrapped in the cocoon of her own imagination?
No, no, that's nonsense. People don't daydream as much as Wriggle does - especially not someone as significant as Ms. Kazami.
The insect wanted to know the flower. To see her, perceive her - through observation, she might come to understand.
But now, she is noticed. Perhaps Yuuka's curiosity was an intentional deception? Surely. Surely she knew the firefly's nature, creating a lure into which it would inevitably fly - why would the insect not accept pollen offered to it?
This might be how she dies. She should run, she should fly, she should get as far as possible and hide until the sun rises and sets again - she cannot. Her feet refuse to, her wings refuse to.
The insect's little heart skips a beat.