literature

The Three Snakes #2

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Hibiya had invited his friends to spend a weekend on his household, in the Japanese countryside. His father, in spite of being very strict with him, loved the nature – to the point he regularly donated to environment protection agencies; he had a great tract of land that he personally managed it, when he had time to spare. Thus, convincing him to lend his house to Hibiya's friend wasn't as difficult as they tought to be, because they went there with the intention of admiring the nature. It's a pity that Ayano, Ene and Haruka couldn't go with them, due to needing to take additional classes in order to make up for their bad grades; and Hiyori was in a trip to Okinawa with her family (and they didn't allow her to bring Hibiya, much to his dismay).

Now, convincing Hibiya's father to house a homeless like Sanae was the difficult part: after explaining Sanae's situation to Hibiya, he knew that his father would expel her the moment she set up the feet on his house. So the plan was to distract him, until they could make her take a shower (because she did need a bath, as much as she was embarrassed by it, she knew it to be truth) and then make a place for her to sleep in a shed outside the house; they would feed her by passing food under the table; and in Sunday, Kido and Kano would follow take a bus with her and bring.

Of course, all this convoluted plan went straight to the trash bin when Sanae herself presented to the patriarch of the household. However, Sanae gave him a good luck charm. Then, for some reason, he allowed her to stay, as long as Hibiya's friends made sure that she wouldn't cause trouble.

“Why do you think that my father allowed you?” Hibiya asked.

“He's a traditional man,” she explained, “He recognized me as a priestess and I invoked hospitality rules.” She said, while eating: she held a bowl of rice, and at her side there was a filet, prepared with shoyu; and, as dessert, there were azuki bean cakes, that everyone was sharing. She also had showered herself and wore an old yutaka that Hibiya's cousin left at the house once.

“Wow, father really surprises me when he's dealing with this kind of stuff.” Hibiya said, scratching his head. “Sometimes, I feel like he likes trees more than I.”

“Hey, now that you're better, mind sharing stuff about you?” Kano said; Kido elbowed him, for his rudeness, or just force of habit.

“It's okay.” She said, putting on the table the empty bowl. “I can repeat, because I don’t want to forget: there used to be a place where everything that humanity ceased to believe could find a safe haven to continue existing. This place's name was Gensokyo.”

“That's a really fitting name!” Momo said, preppy as always, “This makes me want to go there!”

“Momo, less...” Shintaro grumbled.

“Gensokyo was a dangerous place for people who didn't know how to behave, because there was a place for magic, but it was also a place for youkai, beasts and demons.”

“Oh...I take it back!” Momo said, making an awkward smile.

“There is more than that,” Sanae held both hands at her chest, “I was the priestess of the Moriya Shrine, right at the top of Youkai Mountain. My job was to grant blessings to the people who sought the blessings of Kanako and Suwako.”

“Who were them?” Shintaro asked.

“Kanako and Suwako were the goddesses of the shrine. They were together ever since the Great Suwa War and they took care of me ever since I remember of my childhood.” Sanae looked down, and made a small, forlorn smile. “Gensokyo had one special rule: youkai should create problems and humans should solve them, thus belief in youkai wouldn't dwindle and make them die and humans could still conjure gods and magic.” She looked at the ceiling, with her smile still in her face, “I was part of a world where I could fit perfectly, something I could never expect in this world.”

“Feeling good, Sanae?” Seto asked.

“I used to be much better.” Sanae said, running her fingers over her dyed hair. “The point is that the spell card rules ensured a period of peace while maintaining the life of Gensokyo. Red-white, no matter how cranky she was, she knew what she was doing back then.” This time, she even allowed herself to chuckle, and she placed a hand over mouth.
She stopped to drink a cup of soda and then continued, “Youkai create problem, humans solve them – this was a good system because it ensured less people hurt; that, and the gap hag knew how to enforce it.” Her smile faded, and they knew the dark part was coming. “However, it wasn't a perfect system... The vampire of the Scarlet Devil Mansion created a problem that no one solved...”

Silence reigned in the room. No one dared to remember Sanae of the term 'Armageddon Day'. Hibiya wanted to ask something, but Momo placed a hand over his shoulder and shook her head.

“You are here with us now, Sanae. Can I ask how you...left?” Kido asked, being careful with her words.

“Kanako and Suwako brought me to the top of Youkai Mountain, while Gensokyo was being...unmade... And they opened a portal to a place named Heat Daze.”

“The Heat Daze!” Momo said, in loud enough voice to scare the others. But, in truth everyone, even Kido and Shintaro, were surprised by what Sanae said.

“How did you survive?” Hibiya asked.

“What did you see there?” Shintaro asked.

“Did you see any bad snake?” Mary asked.

Sanae stopped talking, her jaw was still agape. She didn't expect them to recognize that name or even be aware of its dangers.

“Let's calm down,” Kido said, lifting her hands, “And let Sanae talk.”

“You seem to be aware of the Heat Daze, so you might know that's a dangerous place...even youkai can't live there, or that's what Kanako told me when she gave me a charm to pass through the Heat Daze into the Outside World. There were people who fled Gensokyo through the Heat Daze, but I don't know what became of them...”

“I'm sorry...”

“No, tell me,” Sanae asked, “Tell me how you learned about the Heat Daze.”

They told her about how they met; Kano, Kido and Seto were born with red eyes and lost their families until they were adopted by Ayano’s father, Tateyama; Tateyama was possessed by an evil snake and Ayano made a plan to get rid of it by killing herself; after that, they left their house and wandered through the country, until they met Marry, who joined them; then, they invited Momo to join them, in order to control her power; then they met Shintaro and Ene and lastly Konoha and Hibiya, and then they decided to take on the snake possessing Tateyama - who proceeded to possess Konoha, creating what they called ‘Kuroha’ - then, he tried to kill them once more and restart the time loop; however, they managed to convince Marry to wish other thing, so that the time loop would end. Then, Kuroha disappeared, but they supposed that he was used to provide a life force for Hiyori and now they could live happily - however Ayano’s father preferred to stay at the Heat Daze with his wife, and Haruka returned with white hair.

“Wow,” Sanae said, “it sounds like an anime plot!” She said, her eyes glowing for the first time they saw her.

“It would be a really low budget one, with smeared animation, lack of support character, and everything masked to look deep and people don't complain.” Kano said, while Kino elbowed him again.

“But, do you still have your powers?”

“Nope.” Kido, with everyone agreeing with that.

"Well, I guess that's enough talk about the Heat Daze," Seto said, "Why don't we watch some anime to forget this?"

“Do you guys watch anime?” Sanae asked, her eyes gleaming.

“Sure!” Seto said, “I guess you have a lot to catch up.”

They talked about anime until late in the night; Sanae’s knowledge of the 1980’s anime and tokusatu was something that impressed them, while they update her with the recent trends; it was clear she loved it. She mentioned that before she went to Gensokyo, she used to live in the Japanese countryside, but didn’t dwell much on it. For once, they were satisfied that Sanae was happy.

********

Seto woke up in the middle of the night to go the bathroom. It was a fairly simple task, but the summer in the Japanese countryside made difficult for people to sleep. Granted, the heat never bothered Seto much.

What called the attention was what he heard in the varanda.

“...and then, there were dozens of flying saucers in the sky. Green, red and blue, I was there and…”

“Hey, what is happening?” Seto asked.

“Nothing,” Mary said. “Sanae was telling me the stories of her adventures in Gensokyo.” She was with Sanae and Momo. They were both in their pajamas, sitting down at the entrance of the house. The full moon illuminated the night.

“Gensokyo would be an amazing place,” Momo said, “If it still existed, I’d like to see it for myself, I always liked when Shintaro read for me the old tales!”

“Momo, Mary, Sanae needs space.” Seto said; his demeanor wasn’t proper of people like him, but he still tried to sound authoritative.

“It’s okay...what’s your name again?” Sanae asked, sounding embarrassed.

“Seto.”

“Seto, I have no problem on telling stories about Gensokyo,” she smiled at her, sadly, “Because I’m the last proof that Gensokyo ever existed, so the only thing I can do is share the stories of the land that once was. I just don’t want to talk about...that day...” she started to shake a bit.

“Alright,” Seto said, sitting down besides Mary, “I want to hear your story.”
Sanae nodded and continued, “The flying saucers arrived, and behind them there was a youkai, dubbed the Tiny Clever Commander…”

********

Sanae remained for the rest of Sunday in Hibiya’s household, until they left in the afternoon. In the end, she did have to take the bus, along with Kano and Kido. She slept through most of the travel. When they arrived, they brought Sanae to their hideout, where she spent the night.

The next day was Monday, but it was also a day off from school, so they took advantage to introduce Sanae to the remaining members of the gang: Ene, Haruka and, their proclaimed leader, Ayano.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sanae.” Ayano said, bowing to her.

“Thank you.” Sanae replied.

“Oh, it’s so good to meet you Sanae, my heart is exhilarated!” Haruka said, in a very upbeat tone, without any kind of sarcastic tone. “I’m sure Ene is also very happy to meet you.”

“Yeah, what he said.” Ene said, with one arm around Haruka’s arm, playing a portable videogame.

“Isn’t she lovely?” Haruka said, beaming as usual.

“Well, I have to say that you build up a really nice house here.” Sanae said.

“Me, Seto and Kido build this hideout over the years, after Ayano disappeared.” Kano said. “Thanks to the money we saved from our jobs, looking for good discounts and...other assets.”

While Sanae told her story for them, Ene fell asleep. Haruka explained she was narcoleptic, so this happened from times to times. After she was done, Shintaro called Ayano and Kido to talk about something. She excused her and went to another room.

“What do you want to talk about, Shintaro?” Ayano asked.

“Ene has been bugging me about something.” Shintaro replied. “I supposed it’s about Sanae.” He lifted his smartphone on his shoulder height and it turned on, showing Ene’s virtual form.

“Master! Master!” She proclaimed, floating on the screen, waving her arms. “While you were listening again to Sanae, I decided to look up her name on the internet.”

“Ene, that is not very polite.” Shintaro muttered.

“Oh, come on!” She said, putting her hands on her hips, “If there’s something people love is when someone looks up their name on the internet. As I was saying, I looked her up in the internet and, guess what?” Shintaro didn’t play along and didn’t try to guess; Ene pouted and continued talking, “I found that she’s nowhere in the internet!”

“And what does that mean?” Kido asked.

“You know what they say: if it’s not in the internet, then it doesn’t exist. However, Sanae, in a sense, doesn’t exist, because I couldn’t find anything about her in the internet. And to make things worse: she doesn’t appear not even in the government database.”

“Ene!” Shintaro said out loud, shaking his smartphone, making the virtual girl get tossed around like a ping pong ball, “How many times I have to order you to not invade the government computers?! If they backtrack you, you’ll get me in serious trouble!”

“C’mon, they wouldn’t mind a cute avatar of a helpful citizen like me.” She said, making a huge smile. “But this isn’t the funniest thing: when I looked at the data, it seemed it was overwritten…”

“Which means…” Kido asked, while Shintaro paid close attention to what Ene said.

“That the original data was deleted.” Shintaro replied.

“Very observant, Master!” Ene winked at him, while he just grunted. “It makes me wonder, what kind of thing they made to delete her from the national database. However, who made this, made a poor job, since even if you delete something, you don’t literally extinguish it from the face of Earth.”

“Is that so?” Shintaro asked.

“I also took a photo you shot of her and torrented a facial-recognition program. Also, I accidentally infected your PC with thirteen different virus, sorry.”

“What?” Shintaro said out loud, shaking her again.

“The virus part was an exaggeration.” Ene said, shaking her head to recover equilibrium. “But I ran her face on the facial recognition software,” Shintaro thought of lambasting her again, but he didn’t do it, “and I found nothing but one photo.” She picked Shintaro’s picture folder, “Let me, I think I put it besides his ecchi collection…” Shintaro blushed hard when she said that and hoped that Ayano didn’t list her (she did list, but decided to not show to not embarrass him even more). “Ah, here it is!” She returned with a photo: the photo itself was old, though it was in colors, taken by one of those oldest models of camera; it showed a classroom full of students, eight-year old children.

“This photo comes from the blog of a small elementary school from the outskirts of Suwa, in Nagano Prefecture.” Ene said, and then putting both photos side to side and making a red marking on Sanae’s face and a student from the photo. “I believe this is our little Sanae, the matching is 90.53% sure.”

“Hm...Sanae did mention she used to live in the Outside World before Gensokyo.” Kido mentioned.

“I also tried to search for Gensokyo in the internet, but AAAAAH!” Ene cried in frustration, with her hands on her head, “The term is too vague! I can’t find anything but bad results from crazy conspiracy sites and dictionaries!”

“Serves you well,” Shintaro said, “Now stop looking Sanae’s personal info.”

“As you wish, master!” She bowed and then said, “Besides, it’s time to snuggle Haruka!” Ene’s avatar unmade itself and disappeared, leaving Shintaro, Ayano and Kido alone.

“Kido,” Ayano said, “Would you like to share something?”

“Sanae is not lying.” She said, crossing her arms. “I mean, Kano could’ve guess if she was lying...But I know in my heart she’s not lying, because I know exactly what she’s been through.”

“Kido even hugged her.” Shintaro said.

“Oh! You rarely allow people to hug you.” Ayano laughed, placing a hand over her mouth. “You didn’t even allow me to hug you and then you go there and hug a complete stranger.”

“It’s not like that, Ayano,” Kido said, turning her face around to hide her blush, “That girl needed a hug.”

“Of course, Kido.” Ayano said. “Sanae can stay with us for a few days. I think no one else but us would listen to her, but let’s see what we can learn with her.”
Here's the second chapter, hope anyone likes.
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