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At the top of Youkai Mountain, you contemplate the valley below.
You could have done so from many places, from the boundaries, from the in-between. But this is still the best vantage point of your little pocket world, and you had to see it in person.
In other circumstances, you would have been forced to vacate the premises by the Moriya shrine residents. This is irrelevant, these days. What remains of their shrine is slowly collapsing behind you, a constant creaking of wood and tiles and rotten shimenawa. The lake, dotted with broken Onbashira, has taken a color that would have rivaled the shrine maiden’s hair, if she was still here.
She is not.
They are all gone.
Gensokyo is ending.
Below, the wind rises, with no one left to control it. The rustling of the leaves of the moutain trees, that would have been red by this time of year were there still a goddess to paint them, is the only sound you can hear in the distance.
Genbu Ravine is deserted. Most of the kappa died when the river dried up, though those who could became yamawaro. You suspect some of them still hide in caves within the cliff, waiting for their time to come, to be forgotten entirely.
As for the tengu, they ended up following the oni to Old Hell, before it was sealed anew. Disappearing from human memories and legends, you suspect they will die too, though the seal may borrow them some time still.
Hell, Makai, the Netherworld: they all shut themselves away when it became clear that this could not go on. In the past, this would not have been a problem for you; but your own powers have been withering. You cannot forget the look Yuyuko gave you when you told her you may not be able to come back – to stay. You know, now, you will not. You cannot.
Thinking back on it, you may have seen the same look on the young pupeteer’s face when she went back to Makai, without a witch you would have expected to die decades ago by now, and who wanted to stay, just like you, until the very end.
Speaking of the witch, she is probably there, amidst the rubble of the Human Village, where the last few greedy youkai are fighting for control over a few acres of land that have no meaning anymore.
You remember crying together, at the funeral of the last Hakurei shrine maiden.
This taught you you could still shed tears. It surprised even you. You didn’t know.
You have again a few times, since then.
Sometimes, you wonder whether it was your excessive attachment that brought about this collapse.
Whether it was when you realized you could not have raised another Hakurei after her.
(Kasen tried for some time, but Kasen has always been too soft, and sometimes far too negligent regarding the Barrier’s porosity with the Outside World. This may as well have been in vain.)
Past the Human Village, you can see the Bamboo Forest in flames, like a gigantic pyre for a teacher gone. Its dwellers may be the only ones who will survive all this, for better or for worse.
You reminisce. After all, you cannot forget anything. You cannot forget any of them.
You will, partly, in due time – any time, now – but not yet.
You remember still, a few decades prior, one of your incursions to the Outside World, to say goodbye to a human you once knew as a high schooler. She had chosen that world over Gensokyo in the end, to pass on to later generations a sense of belief and magic, of mystery and wonder, a seed of hope only she could have carried.
It had been going just as you had planned.
Still, you remember looking out from her hospital’s window, her old body propped up on your shoulder. You remember her determined eyes, and her fragile voice, talking about how society had changed in terrifying ways, of all those people who had refused more and more the unknown, the uncategorized, the different – even more so than when she was younger. You remember looking at the city lights and wondering how many humans there still dreamt.
You remember her saying, distinctly: “I wish you could erase all this.”
She knew you could not do it. She knew you would not do it, though she did not know it was in part because somewhere in that world, soon enough, a descendant of hers would still have a role to play in this story.
You knew, in turn, she did not mean it. Not exactly. She had simply tried her best to dream, and she was exhausted. It must have been tiring, dreaming against all the humans who thought time and again that this bleak reality that was theirs was all that there was.
You left. You let her rest.
She died.
It had always been a vain war against the Outside World, that the Outside World never knew you were waging.
A war of hope, that you were losing.
In the decades that followed, the Barrier weakened in spite of your best efforts, under the blows of the humans’ common sense banishing the dream of someplace different. And with no new shrine maiden to keep the peace and maintain a balance, the youkai became more unruly than before, spurred by the end they could feel in the air.
Spellcard rules revoked, a few of them tried to take over portions of the Outside World. But they were not made to survive long there, nor their attacks to hit people who would not believe them to be real.
A lot of them died. You wish you could remember them better.
Mythical beings, when they vanish, do not leave bodies to bury or set ablaze, only distant memories that erode with time.
So does Gensokyo itself, as it crumbles around you.
It is a fitting time, somehow. The end of a sixty-year cycle, the end of a youkai’s clear memory span.
It is a right time for this world to end.
You weep in silence. You are watched only by a fox whose rusted programming, with even its talking unit lost, is barely able to hand you a pair of scissors.
You pet her, before her capabilities for movement break down for good, and she hums in contentment one last time.
Then, you prepare for the final act.
When a dream is ending, you know that the only thing left is to wake up.
(Snip – you cut the various red ribbons that decorate your dress.)
You do not want to wake up.
(Snip – you cut the one on your hat, until it is placed there again by a loved hand.)
At least, you would not want to wake up, if it wasn’t for her.
(Snip – you cut your hair, at last; shoulder-length, like it used to be so long ago.)
You look humbler. Smaller. Younger.
Human.
You were always on the boundary between what is human and what is not.
You focus.
You will seal your memories with the passage of the sixtieth year, but you will not forget.
You must not.
In due time, you will meet Okina again – on Tanabatazaka, a seventh day of a seventh month. A secret god again, she will remain. She will be there, to open inside you that door of sealed memories.
Then, you will remember.
Then, you will know what needs doing.
Until then, you will wait. You will wait until your powers grow again, through the extraordinary faith one single person will have in you.
You feel almost sorry for her.
Then again, it is the only way.
***
The first time you meet, in a corridor of your shared university (you had to attend there, you had to, you had to; why do you feel like you had to attend so precisely this one?), you are drawn to so many things of hers. Her eyes. Her voice. Her hat, that you have also seen elsewhere.
So many reminders of the past, that is the future, that is the present.
You do not remember yet. You are drawn to her still.
The first time you tell her your name, another one almost comes out. You do not understand why. This has always been your name.
Yet you tell it for what seems like the first time in ages, and somehow, it feels like reuniting with an old friend.
She tells you her own name. She tells you about the Secret Sealing Club. You could swear you knew all that already.
One day, you tell her you have no relatives in Japan. This is both true – it always has been, it always will be – and, in a found family sort of way, maybe the biggest lie you have ever told.
Still.
Most of them are dead.
Your voice is hoarse with emotion. You do not realize any of this.
You get closer. Closer. Closer.
You start investigating. Occult places, shady spots. Graveyards.
Once, you open a gate to the Netherworld.
Beyond is a world of cherry blossoms. A mansion you know by heart. A princess with pink hair, at whom you can only glance.
Your heart is heavy in ways you cannot express.
You dream.
You dream again.
When you wake up, and you tell her your dreams, you do not tell her you have been crying. Crying of seeing a red-colored mansion adorned by a misty lake. A bamboo forest, intact. A moutain, still sending up smoke. And, in passing, so many of those you would watch over, threaten, use, love.
She encourages you to make those dreams a reality.
Confusedly, inside you, you know you have.
You know you will.