(https://x.com/chamaji33/status/1356168610943623168)

By any account at any glance, it was Suzunaan’s most extremely ordinary kind of day. The sun, she beamed joyously; the wind sang softly outside and never brought inside the early winter chill. The scratchy tones of a phonograph - needle bouncing along the grooves of a chiptune record - and that pleasant kind of bookshop dust sweetened the air behind the curtained door. A handful of customers sat or stood in this corner or that corner (or were Sekibanki, bravely striving to look cool and intellectual by being in both at once and another besides, while appearing to read all at once books by authors with strange foreign names like Haideggaa, Kirukegooru, and Kamyu). Every single one of them had paid up their late fees and returned all their outstanding books.

Kosuzu whistled softly as she sorted out the ledgers and worried about when, exactly, it was that the hammer would fall. This was the kind of perfect day that usually only happened when some kind of mean sucker punch was hiding behind it.

She eyed Komachi, idling in the comedy aisle and giggling like a girl half her age (how old was she? … maybe half of half of half her age?) at an Outsider manga about being Emperor instead of the Emperor, or some such thing. Kosuzu had long since written off the books loaned to the shinigami as gone for good. Dropped in the river, maybe, or perhaps just made off with.

That assumption had turned out somewhat ungenerous, and now Kosuzu was in possession of an entire year's worth of unexpected late fees. Only slightly less generous was the subsequent assumption that this was a sign of some unwholesome scheme.

Komachi continued to flip pages, too absorbed in it to care about petty, worldly concerns like being forty-five minutes into a fifteen minute break… but if she was doing some surreptitious wrong other than that, there wasn’t the slightest sign.

Sekibanki was looking up from her books to see if any of the other customers were appreciating how intelligent and philosophical she came off.

Mamizou was flipping through back issues of the Kakashi Spirit News and fingering her pipe restlessly.

Reimu was bent over a desk, furiously consuming a compendium of myths. She seemed to have gotten stuck on a page midway through. She would read it, snarl, ball up her fist, and then read it again.

Minoriko - and wow Kosuzu was honoured to have the harvest goddess in Suzunaan! She would have to find some excuse to give her a discount - was making a valiant effort to browse the trashy romances without appearing to be looking at borderline erotica. Her strategy was to slide out a book, pretend she didn't see the cover, flip through the pages, and, if it wasn't to her tastes, make an affronted gasp, and replace the book on the shelf. It might've worked better if that section of the store wasn't so clearly marked.

The gramophone kept playing; Kosuzu's pencil kept scratching. Nothing kept happening.

“What the hell is this!?”

And then Reimu slammed her fist into the desk. The blow shook dust from the rafters–and books from the bookshelves, and buried one of Sekibanki's heads. The other two decided that whatever happened next was that head's problem, and Sekibanki swiftly abandoned herself to her fate. Kosuzu's heart went with her out the door, and she would've liked it if her body could've gone too.

Komachi quickly decided she felt the same and hey wait you have to pay for that stop and she was gone. Minoriko gave an ungodly shriek and threw herself to the floor, where she seemingly tried to hide under her hat.

Mamizou slunk into the shadows to watch.

Reimu stormed up to the counter, and slammed the book down. It was open to the page on binbougami.

“If you damage it, I'm gonna have to ask you to buy it…”

“Look at this!” She jabbed her finger at a particular paragraph with the same energy she usually reserved for needles.

Kosuzu meekly did as she was told, and soon understood the great and terrible wrath of the Hakurei.

There were stories there. One told of a man who had treated a binbougami as an honoured guest, and his graciousness transformed the poverty god into a god of good fortune. Others told of poverty gods who, properly invoked, warded away poverty; yet more who transformed poverty into prosperity.

In summary, a great and exciting variety of wonderful things that the binbougami currently living in Reimu’s home was not doing.

“That-” Reimu began, a volatile quaver in her tone, “that- that- thatthatthathat miserable borderline-youkai scum-sucking raggle-taggle knotweed crabapple treacherous rat leeching-”

She gasped for breath.

“-blue blistering bum! Where's my good fortune, I ask you!? I take her in, I give her food and shelter and clothing and friendship and you know what I get?” Kosuzu ducked under a flailing arm that had gone particularly wide.

“A friend you can count on?”

“A leech who sucks up my money and makes every noodle I've ever eaten in the past…”

She stopped to count up the time, quickly resorted to using fingers, then gave up.

“... makes all of my noodles soggy before I can even touch ‘em! Just by being there!”

Wham! Reimu hammered the counter again.

“Well, I'll show her gracious hosting! If she doesn't change up quick, I'll show her gracious hosting right where the sun doesn't-!”

“H-hold on! Wait wait, wait!”

“For what?”

The silence, as Kosuzu grasped for a way to phrase the thing she was about to say that would not set Reimu off even harder, was long–not to mention fruitless.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but have you been… actually… gracious?”

“... Say that again?”

“Well, you've pretty much had her under house arrest… in your house… right? Have you been making her feel actually at home? The book says… I mean, you actually ought to venerate the poverty god like you would any other god to make them lucky, basically.”

Reimu stopped to mull this over.

“But I could also just beat her ass until she realises how gracious I've been for not doing that all this time, right?”

“N-no, I think you'd just get cursed into more pover– uh, into poverty…”

This at last seemed to give Reimu pause. “Ugh,” she groaned, clutching her own shoulders and shivering.

“Anyway, she's your friend, isn't she? That's the really important part! Sounds to me like you’ve been taking her for granted and letting tiny grudges build up. Maybe you should try opening your heart to her a bit more!”

“Okay,” Reimu heaved a truly gargantuan sigh, “Proper god revering stuff. So I just gotta ply her with wine and flowers and stuff like that, right? And then I can roll comfortably in dough for the rest of my life?”

“... Is that normally how you'd worship a god? Or be good to a friend?”

“Close enough. Thanks, ‘Suzu! I'm gonna head out now! I'll buy you lunch when I get rich! See ya!”

The soothingly scratchy gramophone tunes continued playing. Sekibanki's head rolled out from under that pile of books. Minoriko found a book while cowering on the floor, paid for it, and left.

Kosuzu slumped over–sighed–and congratulated herself on a bomb adroitly defused. Honestly, though, she was happy knowing that she'd made a difference! She could really feel it; she'd gotten through to Reimu, no matter how much the shrine maiden tried to hide it under her usual grumpy facade. She was sure of it!

Mamizou sauntered over, set one elbow on the counter, and took a long drag from her pipe.

“Not inside the shop, ple-”

“Y’ain’t got no idea what you might've just set in motion, do ya?”

Reimu waved to Aunn on the way past, stepped over the drunken heap of Suika on the front porch, and entered her home… such as it was. In one corner a worn-down bucket safeguarded the tatami from a leak in the roof; in the other a rat trap stood empty (Nazrin had complained). In-between, Shinmyoumaru was hard at work mending clothes on top of the kotatsu; Shion was passed out underneath, clutching tightly to her skin-and-bone chest a black-red cat that seemed only mostly outraged by the situation.

Reimu’s hand went to her chin. Eyes closed; head tilted. This was what ‘thoughtful’ looked like for her, though it did not guarantee that her thoughts were full of anything in particular.

Properly venerating Shion didn't need to involve stopping her from getting what was coming to her, right? If she wanted to get mauled by Rin, who was Reimu to stop her? And anyway, waking her up unsolicited was definitely, absolutely, beyond any doubt not proper worship. Waking Reimu up early was something that ought, she felt, to be punishable by summary execution; waking up a god was probably a ticket straight to the Animal Realm, or maybe Hell, or even worse.

Reimu slid the kitchen door closed behind her.

She threw open the pantry.

She stared. Her left eye twitched slightly. She reached out and groped at the empty space, as if perhaps the food was all actually there, merely turned invisible by some malevolent spirit.

She stopped. She looked to the side.

“I wasn't involved,” said the less malevolent spirit haunting the shrine.

Kana brushed a cookie crumb from her cheeks. A purification needle pinned it, and her, to the wall.

“... The cookies, obviously. Not the rest of it. Don't be silly!”

Reimu crossed her arms; she tapped her finger against her elbow restlessly. She glowered. She glared. She snarled. She held up a sealing talisman, and opened her mouth to speak.

“No, I really wasn't involved! Mostly!” Kana protested, “It was mostly Shion! And a little bit me. But mostly Shion.”

Reimu fought the urge to let her scary face drop to pinch the bridge of her nose, or rub her temples. She could feel the migraine coming on. How was she supposed to throw Shion a big fancy meal if Shion…

“What happened?” Was the flat-toned reply she allowed herself.

“All I did was give her a little surprise, you know? You'd think she'd be used to it, living in a haunted shrine. She's so sensitive! Any way you look at it, resorting to fire was an overreaction.”

Right! Back to work!

Reimu brushed her hands together and trudged back towards the kitchen (Kana, bound up in sealing talismans, meanwhile hit the stone paving with a pleasing thud).

Shion's fires didn't really burn like normal flame, but they were very good at consuming anything that might be considered wealth. Which meant a shopping trip tomorrow, but for now, left the Hakurei Shrine just stocked up enough for one solid meal, and a little extra.

Reimu tied off her cooking apron, and set to work.

...

[ ] Just a normal meal today. The real work could begin tomorrow. It'd be weird to give specifically Shion a particularly fancy spread, right?

[ ] Give specifically Shion a particularly fancy spread. Sure, the other freeloaders will complain about unfair treatment and blah blah blah, but it was… probably… some kind of anniversary or special occasion or something else that would justify it, right?

Hello! It's me, the author of What Colour is the Unpainted Maiden? from the Halloween contest. As you can see, I finally decided on a pseudonym.

... as you can also see, this was a bit more delayed than I promised. Very sorry about that. A bunch of unexpected problems came up, and will probably delay at least the second update as well.

Nevertheless, here I am to give running a CYOA a go! I'm starting small, with the least ambitious of the ideas I've got... although the fact that RomCom is not exactly my area of expertise creates other challenges... but this is still the very first time I've tried something like this and I don't much know what I'm doing, so please go easy on me!

I look forward to setting out on this journey with you!