>>33822 I seriously need to shut the fuck up about my update times.
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"Sit," Patchouli tells you, pointing to a chair next to her. You nod and obey, sitting on a plush chair next to her, and setting your rapier on the floor, beside your feet. Patchouli looks at the thing and smiles. "You really ought to get a scabbard for that. Lady Grey?"
She points to a kettle and a pair of cups. You frown. "That's tea, right?"
Patchouli nods, and begins filling the cups without further question, eventually handing one to you. As you take a sip, the warm tea tastes of orange and lemon, a tad too sour for your taste, considering it has no sugar. You resolve to drink it, however, if only out of politeness.
"I thought you drank brandy?" you ask with a tiny smirk. Patchouli smiles back. "Only at night."
"But enough of that," she sets down her teacup and gives you a scrutinizing stare. “You’re confused,” she says, “scared, probably, and most of all, you don’t trust me at all.”
You open your mouth to protest, but Patchouli raises a finger to silence you. “I wasn’t born yesterday,” she states drily, “if I were to find myself in your state, recovered from the wilderness by a band of strangers only to be placed in a situation of perhaps greater danger, I would be distrustful of those strangers, regardless of whether or not they acted like they wanted to help. That is how you feel, is it not? Be honest, or we might as well end this conversation right now.”
You try and fail to suppress a frown. You don’t like the way this woman is dissecting you, or the way she talks about what you’re feeling in such an authoritative tone. But the sad fact is, she’s right. Much as Patchouli has helped you, neither she nor any of the residents of this mansion have made a good impression. To do that would be impossible, after that…
thing. You look up to meet Patchouli’s gaze. Her stare is even, but there’s a hint of severity behind it.
Damn it, the best these people can get after what happened last night is brutal honesty.
“You’re right,” you say, raising your chin slightly. “I appreciate your help, after all you people
did save me from freezing to death.” Your brows knit together. “But I take a dim view of being carelessly placed in the proximity of a hideous man-eating monster, yes.”
Patchouli smiles. “A moderately polite rebuke,” she says, “it’s been a while since I heard that from someone other than Koa… Sakuya I don’t talk much with and the mistress of the mansion can be…
barefaced.”
Calmly, she sets aside her teacup and clasps her hands together, forming a bridge under her nose as she stares at you with interest. You can’t help but look at her more closely. In the actual daylight she’s even prettier, her black hair neatly arranged and covered in ribbons, the purple of her eyes clashing and striking with the ornaments on her pink bonnet, topped by a pin made of solid gold, in the shape of the crescent moon. “If you must know, I’m helping you for my own selfish motives. The mansion’s mistress has been and is a notoriously negligent person, and,” her face darkens. “She might be my friend, but I can’t let people come in harm’s way because of that negligence. I owe you, at least, to answer your questions. Then you might leave.”
You regard her with a level gaze. Leave? You’ve nowhere else to go. But… even though this Magic Library makes you feel almost as if you were in another, separate world, you can’t help but still feel too close to that
horror for comfort. After all, you only saw its retreat. You can’t understand how Patchouli seems to talk about it as if the problem had settled down. Just who are these people?
You take a deep breath. “That seems like a fine deal,” you state. “Let’s begin.”
“Ah,” Patchouli again raises her hand to halt you. “If we must do this, then I have to understand some basic things about you. You claim to have memory loss, but it’s clearly not thorough, not seeing how you handle yourself. So before trying to answer your doubts, I first want to learn what you
do know. Leave nothing out.”
Though her tone is calm, once again you get the feeling it breaches no objection.
“Alright,” you mutter, grimacing as you see Patchouli turn around and refill your teacups. “I’ll try to remember…”
But what
do you remember? You close your eyes, and once again that horrid feeling of emptiness assails you. As if you stared at your mind and all you saw were a blank wall.
But there’s hope. Among that wall of white, bits and pieces of colour. You don’t know where they come from, but as you open your eyes and look straight at Patchouli, you do your best to hold on to them.
“My name is Alice,” you begin. “I woke up in the snow not far from here with no memory of who I am and where this place is. But…” you frown. “I know the basics. I know that this is Earth. I know my geography, basic math, how to read, write, talk.” You stand up, pushing aside your cup of tea as you grab your rapier with your left hand. “I even know how to fight!” you say, expertly twirling the rapier in your hand before setting it down as Patchouli smirks. “I know that magic exists,” you go on, “even though a part of me says it
shouldn’t. But… when it comes down to myself, to anything having to do with me as a… a
person, all I come up with is a blank slate. As if the person named Alice
had never even existed.”
Tabula rasa, your mind provides. An empty girl.
Patchouli observes you from her chair, thoughtful. “I wonder,” she begins, “what do you know of history, Alice?”
“History?” you question, “I…”
You pause, trying to delve deeper into your mind. “It’s… it’s all a mess,” you mutter, “I know some things. Napoleon was the Emperor of France. Hitler… wasn’t nice? I… “
You shrug helplessly.
“Interesting,” Patchouli says with a far-off gaze. “Your memories of the modern world are thoroughly fragmented, making it impossible to discern if you’re an outsider or a Gensokyo native. Then again, with your attire…”
“Wait, what?” you interrupt, “Outsider? Gensokyo? I thought you were supposed to answer my questions, not…”
“Calm down, Alice,” Patchouli cuts in. “I suppose I’ve heard enough that we can begin.”
She stands up, heading towards a nearby bookcase. The contrast is shocking – compared to the bookcase, Patchouli’s small stature makes her look like an ant trying to climb a mountain. The witch herself remains thoroughly unfazed, however, as she walks along the columns of shelves before finally stopping. Smiling, she looks up and snaps her fingers.
You look up, seeing nothing at first, but then the sound of gears and chains fills your ears.
“What-“
You never finish. A loud crash rings through the floor as a man-sized platform lands beside Patchouli with so much speed you fear that the floor might break beneath it.
“Voilé has built-in elevators for the purpose of navigating the bookshelves,” Patchouli informs you as she stands on the platform and pulls on a lever built into it. In response, the platform rises several shelves until Patchouli is standing a good ten meters above the ground. The woman rummages through the shelves in front of her, finally pulling out a long piece of parchment. “I do prefer flying,” she says as the platform lowers her toward the ground again, “but today I’m not feeling predisposed to physical exertion.”
As you hear this, the image of Cirno floating using her tiny wings flashes through your mind and you can’t help but picture Patchouli with the same ice crystals sticking out her back. She would look ridiculous. “Flying?” you ask.
“But of course,” Patchouli answers, “though you won’t be able to understand that until you understand
this.” Hopping out of the platform, Patchouli heads towards the table and begins unfurling the scroll of parchment.
It’s a map, detailing a land you’ve never heard of before. There you see on its edge a tiny drawing marked “Hakurei Shrine”, to the side of it a dark forest leading to a “Great Fissure”, a nigh impassable scar on the terrain behind which is marked only “to Makai”. From the shrine itself stems a long path marked simply as “the long stony road”, which branches out in three directions, “The Forest of Magic”, “the Village”, and “the Garden of the Sun (to Mugenkan?)”. The whole map is like this, a collection of strange names and varied geography that changes far too much for the size of the territory. Almost like something out of a fantasy novel.
“What’s this supposed to mean?” you ask Patchouli. She smiles whimsically.
“Alice,” she begins, “what if I told you that not that long ago, a group of beings got together and decided to separate a tiny region of the country of Japan, a tiny place nobody would miss, and remake it into something different? Into, how shall I put it, into a world where those creatures that you would deem ‘fantastical’, could live in relative peace, away from the conflict that comes, as can be seen plain as day in any fairy tale, from living in the world you and I know? A place where fairies roam free, where humans regard magic not as either superstition or a secret to be kept hidden under the auspices of dark organizations, but as an open fact of life? What would you tell me in response?” She looks at you, expectant.
“I’d say you’re patently insan-“ the words stop in your mouth. Really? Was that what you would say, standing in this Magic Library? What you would say after seeing Patchouli and Koakuma do what they do? What you would say after fighting with that strange girl, Cirno? What you would say after looking at
that monster in the face?
You look at Patchouli with a worried frown. “No,” you correct yourself, “I’d… believe you. Maybe. I’d have to see for myself.”
“You will,” Patchouli nods, “but for the moment, take a seat again, please.” She sits back down, and you do the same. “Ask me your questions. I will answer them. It is up to you whether to believe them or not.”
“Who am I?” you ask on reflex, knowing beforehand you’ll get no answer.
“Could I possibly know?” Patchouli retorts, sipping on her tea. “That’s not something I could tell you.”
You pause, briefly pondering the fact that you’re not sure you quite like Patchouli.
“Alright then,” you make a face. “I knew that would get me nowhere. But you can answer… “
The torrent of questions feels like it’s going to make your head burst. Who is she? Who is Sakuya, Koakuma, Meiling the gatekeeper? Who is Remilia? Who was that monster? And this place… this world Patchouli so nonchalantly tells you you’re in. Vaguely, you feel something stir inside you.
“This place,” you mutter, “this world you’re telling me about, it has a name. Tell me that name.”
“Gensokyo.”
The mere sound of the word makes your head feel like spinning. Gensokyo.
’Gensokyo. This place. This place this place this place… why?’ You know this place. Not intimately – everything in your mind is broken, fragmented. But you can remember things. Or were they always there to begin with? Faeries frolicking over a misty lake. The fragrant aroma of pines in a dark forest. The glittering aurora of a magic boundary. A distant shrine on top of a mountain. The hazy image of a blonde girl, whose face you can’t quite distinguish, reading a book on a dreary winter night.
You stand up. Patchouli draws back, surprised. The words and concepts gallop across your mind. You
know them. The reason Patchouli’s casual talk of magic did not surprise you was because you’d known, instinctively, what magic was. The reason you’d known Cirno was a fairy was because you’d always known what faeries were.
“You…” you whisper, pointing at Patchouli with your index finger, “you’re a magician. The girl who led me to this mansion was an ice fairy from the Misty Lake. The reason Meiling, the gate guard, can live through being buried for hours under snow is because she’s a youkai. That hideous beast you people let wander through the mansion is a bloody
vampire! But why, but why…”
You turn around, slapping down a hand on the map of Gensokyo on the table. “Why do I know these things, why do I know these things but barely know my own name?”
“Residual memory,” Patchouli answers, “as amnesia goes, yours is rather benevolent. Some cases wipe the patient entirely, to the point where they don’t remember even how to walk. Other cases show the patient having his memories intact, but being completely unable to form new ones. Yours, however, seems almost… guided. Your background knowledge left intact, but your personal history shattered.”
She frowns, her demeanor growing darker by the second. “I can only assume magecraft of some sort.”
You run a hand through your blonde hair, nervously tugging on a lock. “But then you can help me, can’t you?” you ask Patchouli.
“Perhaps,” she says, a tinge of colour gracing her pale cheeks. “But such charms are not easily broken. And sometimes… sometimes we must accept the possibility that they’re not charms at all.”
You pause. “That… the memories might be gone for good?”
Patchouli nods.
You shake your head. “But… but why should I even trust you?” you ask. “You people help me one moment and put me in danger the next! And, the mistress of this mansion, this… Remilia…”
Something in your mind tugs at you. Slowly, you begin to connect the dots. It makes no sense otherwise, not without diving into contrivance.
“Remilia is a vampire too,” you mutter. “There’s no other way she’d let that
thing live otherwise, right? And you
work for her!”
You don’t quite know how it happens, but by the time you finish that sentence, the tip of your rapier is firmly pointing at Patchouli’s neck. In spite of this, she looks thoroughly unafraid, and stares you down unfazed. Calmly, she brings a dainty hand up, and snaps her fingers.
You feel the impact in your stomach before even knowing that you’ve been hit, the air leaving your lungs with a painful gasp as you are literally sent flying back by a sudden, massive gust of wind, smashing into a nearby bookshelf with a groan. Several books fall on your head, and you wince at their impact.
’That was magic,’ your mind unhelpfully provides. Looking up, you see Patchouli standing up before you.
“You will calm down,” she states softly, her tone deadpan. “You are right, Remilia Scarlet is a vampire. Your memories in that area are presumably intact enough to clearly know what that implies. I do not work for her, but I
am her friend. The being you saw last night was Flandre, her sister. You’re clearly smart enough to realize just
why her mere presence was enough for Sakuya to be alarmed enough to look for you. No, their stories are not mine to tell.”
She points an imperious finger down at you. “I understand that you’re shaken, confused. However, I will not stand for threats to my person. Behave.”
With a groan, you stand up, rapier in hand.
You’re not quite sure how to respond.
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[] Write-in.
[] Choose to trust her. She’s helped you this far, no?
[] You really don’t need this. Even the cold outside beats this lunacy. Ask as politely as you can for the nearest exit, and leave.
