Chapter Ten

I didn’t fall far. I landed mostly on my feet, but still lost my balance. I tumbled onto my back, and my head thumped on stone. White light burst into my eyes. The world did loops around me. Up and down kept rotating.

When I felt well enough to move without heaving, I sat up and looked around.

“This is the netherworld?” I said, rubbing the back of my head.

I sat on a square granite platform, about three times wider than I was tall. The platform itself stood on nothing. All around was featureless pink fog with random blue tendrils running through it. I looked up, expecting to see the portal I had just fallen from, but there was only more pink and blue. I scooted to the edge of the platform and looked off it. More fog, down as far as I could see.

If I jumped, how long before I fell through the clouds and hit the... ground? Was there any ground? Would I fall forever?

A sound rumbled through the fog, like a distant thunderclap but higher in pitch. It was a voice, echoing from far away.

“How? How did she move so fast?”

Youmu’s voice. A vindicated smile spread on my face.

“You’re here already?” I called. “Come see me! We can finish this!”

The fog swallowed my words, and my voice made no echo.

“Youmu!” I yelled. “Youmu the thief! Where are you? Show yourself!”

No response, but there was a gust of wind. It lifted my hood briefly, and I had to paw my hair out of my face. The wind blew some of the fog away, revealing more of the granite platform. This showed it to be not just a platform, but a landing. Plain stone stairs started at the far edge, climbing up into the fog.

“Stairs?” I said. “Why did it have to be stairs?”

No voices boomed from the clouds with any helpful reply.

“Fine,” I said, pushing myself up to my feet, “but this had better go somewhere. If these stairs loop forever, I swear I’ll jump off.”

---

One step up after another. The fog soon closed around me, so I could see only stairs behind and stairs above. They climbed up and up in a straight line, no twists or turns or landings. I felt like I wasn’t going anywhere. My ears never popped because the air pressure never changed. The scenery was the same, pink laced with blue.

If I could believe the stairs themselves, I wasn’t climbing the same steps over and over again. The granite was old. It was worn, chipped, cracked in a few places. I took mental note of how one stair was damaged, and looked at each stair after it. No two steps were deteriorated in the exact same way.

I started sweating, both from the temperature and from pushing forward against my injury. It was hot like a spring afternoon, or whatever passed for spring in this place. I took off my coat and cloak and carried them for a while. That was too much work, so I dropped them on the stairs and left them behind. I didn’t need cold-weather gear anymore.

I had to take a break. I sat on the steps, looking down the stairs behind me, but I couldn’t see how far up I had climbed.

Youmu’s voice rumbled through the clouds again.

“Why isn’t it working? She said it would work. That was supposed to be the last time.”

“Last time what, Youmu?” I called back to the clouds, though she probably couldn’t hear me.

Youmu went on. She sounded increasingly worried. Something had gone wrong in her plans. Served her right.

“She said the Ayakashi just needed this last little bit.

“Did... did she lie to me? Does her power only make it bloom?

“No! The portal is closed! I can’t go back! President, try to open it!

“It’s not opening! The energy is trapped here! Why is she doing this?

“Does she want to kill Gensokyo? Has she gone completely insane? That’s her own country!”

“Who are you talking about?” I yelled into the clouds uselessly.

“I can’t believe it! She used me! She used me!

“Why? Why would she do this?”

The fog was clearing. I looked down, and saw I no longer sat on stairs, but on the peak of a hill. A vast landscape was revealed around me. I got to my feet and looked around, awestruck.

I had come to Hakugyokuro.

---

I stood on a small hill in a massive orchard of blooming cherry trees, thousands of them. Rows of them, ranks of them, a loose grid that stretched off as far as I could see in all directions. Cobblestone walking paths webbed in between the trees. Small blue streams snaked off across the landscape. There was no sun, but the sky was varying shades of pink. It was the colors of sunset with the brightness of an afternoon.

I rubbed my eyes, blinked a few times.

“What is this place?” I turned to get a look over the land, and saw something that startled me just to see it.

Far off, like a mountain in the distance, there stood the largest cherry tree ever. It was at least fifty times bigger than any other tree here. I had to crane my neck back to see its top branches. Its trunk was as big around as the entire Scarlet Mansion.

This tree had bloomed, like all the smaller ones. Millions of cherry blossoms grew out in an enormous pink puff that could enclose whole villages. A breeze waved the blossoms back and forth in a hypnotic dance. The tree’s roots grew out from its base and gripped across the land for miles. They were huge near the trunk, stood up from the ground taller than an entire house, but gradually sunk into the earth farther from the tree.

I looked down the hill. Below me was a plot of land that had been cleared of trees but was surrounded by them in a semicircle. There stood some squat but ornate outdoor furniture: a table with seats and a couple of park-style benches. It looked like a spot meant for enjoying picnics or hanami.

Youmu sat on one of the benches. She no longer wore her cloak, so I could see her clearly for the first time. She wore a green dress and vest, embroidered with squiggly crests. She carried not one sword but two, one longer than the other, sheathed and hanging off her back. The shorter sword was the one I had seen her draw before.

Her colors struck me, being similar to my own. Her hair was shorter than mine, cleaner cut, nearly white. She wore a black bow atop her head. Her eyes were blue, though darker than mine. There was no mistaking us for relatives, given our difference in height and build.

I raised a hand to her. She waved back, then hopped off the bench and walked towards the base of the hill. There she stopped, looking up at me.

“How did you instantly move to the portal?” she said.

A knife came out of my pocket, ready to throw. “How did you deflect the knife I threw at you?”

We both waited for the other to answer. Neither of us did.

“No parley, then?” she said.

“No.”

She drew both of her swords, one in each hand.

“Then you will die here.”

She charged up the hill at me.

---

She was at a disadvantage: I was out of her range. I couldn’t let her get close, but I couldn’t run. My injured leg effectively brought me to a standstill compared to her speed.

I threw my knife. It twirled down the hillside, then bounced away when she batted it with the shorter of her swords. A sharp twang rang through the air. The knife tumbled away into the cherry trees.

Youmu had to stand still for one second to deflect the knife, then she continued running up at me.

I whipped out another knife and threw it. She stopped, held her sword at just the right angle, and deflected again. This one went down to the ground, flat against the hillside. She started moving again.

Youmu had to pause when I attacked. What if I threw more knives? A lot more?

I held up two knives, one in each hand, and threw both. Youmu flipped up her second sword and crossed her blades before her, like a letter X leaning on its side. My knives hit one each. She pulled her blades apart at the right moment to send the knives flying away from her.

I threw another knife, and another, and another. She blocked them. Sooner or later she would reach me, but only if I kept fighting fair. She was almost to the hilltop, ready to chop my feet out from under me.

I shifted. Youmu froze in a ludicrous running pose; she touched the hill only by the toe of her left shoe. Her other foot hung in air, ready to stomp down when I let time resume.

With her paused, I limped down the hill toward the clearing, going in a wide berth around Youmu. I wished I could sneak up behind and put a knife in her back, but my shift doesn’t affect things very close to me. She would reanimate and be in perfect range to lop my head off.

Instead of stabbing her point blank, I threw knife after knife after knife on my way down the hill. Each of them stuck in air shortly after they left my hand. There were nine of them by the time I was on level ground, all of them ready to fly at Youmu from different angles, heights and distances, as soon as I released the shift.

Which I did.

And Youmu still didn’t die.

She stopped in place, as if she immediately knew I was no longer on the hill. She didn’t hesitate, showing no surprise at my disappearance. She turned, her longer sword already in place to deflect the first knife. The others came at her, but there was the shortest of delays between each. She used that time to position her weapons in sequence, and the knives all bounced away. One knife came spinning towards me, passed by my foot as it skipped along the ground. I heard it hit a tree trunk behind me.

Youmu was unhurt.

“How can you do that?” I yelled at her.

She turned to me. She already knew where I was, spent no time reacquiring my position.

“How can you move without time passing?” she yelled back.

I bared my teeth. “I kill you. That’s how.”

She ran back down the hill, coming at me fast. I threw more knives, and she blocked them all. When she got too close, I shifted again, moved over toward a nearby stream. Again, I left a trail of knives hanging in air behind me. I let the shift go, the knives flew, and Youmu deflected all of them. It made her into a dancing swordsman, turning her body every which way, slicing her swords around to meet the incoming projectiles.

All the knives had fallen. Youmu stood, breathing heavily, holding up both her weapons.

“Stop toying with me!” she shouted. “Either strike me down, or take your death like a warrior!”

“I’m not playing!” I shouted back. “We’re evenly matched! You can’t get close to me, and my knives can’t hit you.”

“We’re anything but even. I don’t fight as if it were a game!”

She turned and slashed the shorter of her swords downward. A dark hole opened in air where her blade cut, the same that she had used to escape from the Hakurei Shrine when we first met. She lifted her longer sword and stabbed it into the rent.

“What are—” I started to say.

Another hole opened in the space before me. Youmu’s blade stuck out of it, and stabbed right into my chest.

---

This wasn’t right.

I looked down, saw the blade coming out of nowhere, saw it stabbed into me at an angle. I looked up. Youmu pushed the sword deeper into the dark hole beside her, and the blade plunged further into me. The skin on my back puckered, and the blade’s tip poked out beside my spine. I tried to gasp in surprise, but I could draw no breath.

It didn’t hurt.

“No,” I said, and I paid for it. Wet heat came up my throat. I coughed out blood in a red spray. It flowed over my lower lip and dribbled down my chin. A metallic taste filled my mouth.

Youmu pulled her sword from the dark hole, and thus from my chest. It felt cold and rigid as it was drawn out of my flesh. The gaps closed once Youmu’s sword was out of them. I fell to my knees. My chest was desperate to pull in air, but couldn’t.

“This...,” I said. “This can’t....”

I coughed again, speckling more blood on the dirt.

Youmu sheathed the longer sword, but kept out the shorter. She walked towards me.

“You left me no choice,” she said. “I couldn’t let you approach my mistress – but I know this isn’t fair. Nothing about this is fair. Not how I was tricked, nor how Gensokyo was destroyed, nor how you died.”

I couldn’t breathe. My head grew light, wobbled around on my shoulders. Fear burned into me. Simple, panicky, childish fear.

“I don’t...,” struggled to say. “I don’t want to die.”

Youmu now stood over me.

“Neither do I, but how do you think the people of Gensokyo feel? They deserve justice. I hope I can overcome my cowardice and give it to them.” She held her sword down, touched its blade to my neck. “When you pass the Sanzu, convey my apologies... if you can forgive me.”

“Please, no.” My throat bobbed against the edge of her sword.

“I do you mercy. You died honorably in battle, even if for an unjust cause, whereas I was a pawn and a fool.”

With a quick, skilled movement, she opened my neck. I lost what little breath I had. My vision turned red, then went black. I felt my body fall on the ground, but there was no pain.

My arms and legs thrashed, grasping for something, anything that would keep me alive.

I lost. My body failed me. My chest emptied, my final breath blowing bloody bubbles out of my ruined neck. My heart stopped. The strength in my limbs faded, and they went limp.

Remilia.

My last thought was of my mistress. I saw Remilia Scarlet mourning my death. She cried and cried. Our family tried to comfort her. Patchouli read her favorite books to her. Meiling promised to be her new bodyguard. Koakuma offered to be her new maid. Flandre held her elder sister, giving her a shoulder to weep on.

There was no comfort. Sakuya was gone, and her mistress’s heart was gone with her.

I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for everything.