Chapter 101: Reimu: I'm Declaring War on All of Gensokyo!
....
"As if." Kaguya rolled her eyes with the unhurried elegance of someone exercising a right they were born with. "Setting aside whether Ais could even replicate this princess's exceptional range of expression — you do realize there are several other girls around you who've also swapped consciousnesses, don't you?"
"What?! You mean there are others?!"
Kihara's scalp prickled. He ran a rapid mental inventory of recent interactions — and found, frustratingly, that nothing specific had flagged as wrong at the time. He pressed forward. "Who? Tell me who."
"Why would I tell you anything? You just spent the last twenty minutes retaliating against me."
"Fine. Ais — we're leaving."
"...Could I stay a bit longer? I haven't finished Elden Ring."
"I'm sorry?"
He turned to look at Ais with the expression of a man whose strategic framework had just encountered unexpected terrain. She met his gaze and shook her head with complete sincerity.
"I'm not joking. Yesterday was genuinely enjoyable. And the Elden Ring run isn't complete yet."
"HAHAHAHAHA—!!" Kaguya collapsed sideways, laugh overtaking her entirely, one hand pressed to her mouth, eyes curving into crescents. "Oh, this is perfect. Where's all that confidence from thirty seconds ago, Kihara?"
"Tch."
He stood there for a moment, weighed his options, and concluded that pushing this further would only produce more of what had just happened. Neither of them was going to give him answers. He could find the information himself — it would just take time.
He left.
The moment the door closed behind him, Kaguya's entire skeletal structure appeared to dissolve. She sank to the floor like something that had been waiting for permission, spread out against the wood, and stared at the ceiling with the expression of someone reviewing a completed operation.
"He used a completely graceless method," she said, to no one. "But... it did break the deadlock."
She had noticed — during the time she'd spent behind Ais's eyes, watching Kihara from that unfamiliar vantage point — the specific difference in how he looked at Ais versus how he looked at her. With the others, there was warmth. There was the particular brightness of someone looking at a person they found interesting in a way that ran deeper than friendship.
With Kaguya, there was ease. Comfort. The total absence of self-consciousness that you had with someone you trusted completely.
The same absence of self-consciousness, in other words, that you had with your own hands.
She had cultivated him into someone she genuinely liked. The cost of that cultivation was that he'd stopped seeing her as someone to pursue and started seeing her as someone who was simply there. A fundamental piece of his landscape.
You didn't fall in love with your own landscape.
Forcing something into the dead water had been the only available move. Whether anything grew from the disruption was still unknown. At minimum, he hadn't been repulsed. He'd been annoyed, which was the specific emotional response of someone whose plans had been interfered with — and having plans to interfere with meant he'd been thinking about her in a category that wasn't purely friendship.
That was something.
"One step at a time," she decided, and pushed herself upright.
She glanced at Ais — fully absorbed in the screen, the boss health bar declining under her patient, methodical assault — and headed for the bathroom. The morning had been eventful and she wanted to wash it off.
Her peripheral vision caught the laundry basket on the way past.
Something in it that Kihara had left behind.
The fire that had been banking quietly all morning found new fuel. Kaguya's hand moved toward the basket with the calm deliberateness of someone who had decided that this was something they were going to do and had made their peace with it.
She pressed the fabric to her face.
Breathed.
She did not notice the small, inconspicuous irregularity of light that flickered briefly from the corner of the room.
Kihara, already well clear of the Bamboo Forest, pulled out his phone and checked the feed from the micro-camera he'd left behind.
Watched.
Very gentlemanly, he tapped the record button and put the phone in his pocket.
Whether Kaguya would eventually find the camera was a secondary concern. Even if the footage never saw practical use, it existed as leverage — a negotiating instrument he could deploy whenever he needed answers about which of his girlfriends were currently operating under foreign management.
He walked home with the specific satisfaction of someone who had come out of a complicated situation with at least one useful asset.
The following morning.
He had not yet begun his quiet observation campaign when Marisa crashed through his window on her broomstick, waving a newspaper with the urgency of someone delivering emergency intelligence.
"Kihara-kun, we've got a problem!! That paparazzi Aya is at it again!"
"You're voluntarily warning me about this. Which means you're also in the article."
"...That's not wrong, no."
He took the paper.
[BUNBUNMARU NEWS DISPATCH]
This reporter has uncovered evidence of a deeply unsavory under-the-table arrangement between Miss Marisa and Pelican Town's prominent landowner Kihara-kun. Burdened by considerable debt, the Black-White Bandit has been compelled to sell certain assets to compensate.
Following this discovery, your intrepid reporter infiltrated the subject's private group chat and found that his primary financial backer is none other than the NEET Princess of Eientei. Standards are truly in decline.
Should Kihara-kun require additional companionship, this reporter is available. I don't do anything untoward, but I am currently somewhat short on funds.
This issue sponsored by Kappa Heavy Industries.
"That's it?" Kihara snorted and handed it back. "I have things to do. Go water my crops."
"Read the other side!!"
"There's another side?"
Aya always ran single-sided. This was new. He flipped the paper.
[BREAKING — GENSOKYO SITUATION REPORT]
Moriya Shrine has formally contested the engagement between Hakurei Reimu and Kihara-kun, and announced its intention to go to war with Hakurei Shrine. Oni of the Four Celestial Kings, Suika Ibuki, has confirmed her participation as an allied combatant on Moriya's behalf.
Scarlet Devil Mansion proprietress Remilia Scarlet, citing concerns for her younger sister's wellbeing, has declared war on both Moriya Shrine and Hakurei Shrine, and intends to capture Kihara-kun for the purposes of comprehensive dismemberment.
Yuuka Kazami has issued the following statement: "Kihara is my apprentice and he's under my protection. Anyone who wants him comes through me first."
Eientei has pledged to provide full medical and logistical support for all parties throughout the conflict, with Dr. Yagokoro Eirin personally guaranteeing no loss of life among youkai or humans. Post-conflict, Kihara-kun is to be delivered to Eientei in a suitable container.
Hakurei Shrine's shrine maiden, Hakurei Reimu, issued the following declaration this morning: "Kihara is my sha— my dashing fiancé, and I will not allow anyone to take him from me. Anyone who tries gets flattened."
Youkai Sage Yukari Yakumo has announced that Gensokyo's First Annual Man-Stealing War is hereby officially open. She will be observing from a comfortable position with popcorn and beverages.
Kihara read to the end.
Then he read it again.
"...Is this still Gensokyo? What dimension did I wake up in?"
He had genuinely not anticipated that Reimu — of all people, the woman who charged him shrine visit fees and complained that the donations weren't covering her living expenses — would be the one to issue a declaration of war on every major faction in Gensokyo simultaneously. The photograph of her holding her donation box while doing so somewhat undercut the romantic framing she appeared to be going for.
She's treating me like a revenue source with legs, he thought, without particular resentment.
"Okay, but I genuinely haven't done anything the last few days. How did it reach this?"
Marisa gave him the look of someone who had a more complicated opinion about his self-assessment. "You're really certain you've done nothing?"
"I've been going on dates with my girlfriends. Normal. Routine. Nothing unusual."
He stopped.
Kaguya's words from yesterday came back in a specific sequence: several of the girls around you have swapped consciousnesses.
If multiple girlfriends had been operating under foreign management — and if those foreign managers had, in the process, made decisions or had interactions that their host bodies' normal relationship networks were not expecting — then the cascade of confused loyalties, territorial responses, and general Gensokyo chaos currently unfolding in the newspaper made complete sense.
He had, without intending to, been the center of a web of identity confusion that had apparently radiated outward until it reached critical political mass.
"How do I get them to stop fighting each other?"
"I'd advise surrendering that particular ambition." Yukari Yakumo stepped through a gap in the fabric of space with the unhurried grace of someone who had been standing in the wings waiting for her entrance cue. Her violet eyes carried the expression of someone who found the current situation genuinely entertaining and had arranged comfortable seating for it. "Unless, of course—" the smile widened slightly— "you're still interested in the Gensokyo Bulldozer project."
She produced a fan, opened it, and settled in.
"In that case, I'd suggest letting it run its course. These things resolve themselves eventually." A pause. "Usually."
....
Thank you for reading.
(T/N: Okay guys..... This is the ending of Volume 2....
And for Volume 3, It'll will be back on Monday! Hope you all enjoy it.)