(18) Yukari Yakumo ～ Youkai of Boundaries

A great purple mist
Made of endless clouds and gaps
The mastermind is here

Licorice was, after her daily round of sweeping the garden, free to do whatever she wanted for the rest of the day. She’d usually wander around the Scarlet Devil Mansion, idly chat with Meiling, or visit Patchouli to have a more intellectual sort of conversation.

Today however, she had something else she could do: reading. Licorice didn’t know enough kanji to read anything more complicated than children’s books in Japanese, but she could easily read the Bulgarian and Russian books that Patchouli had acquired. Thus, her boredom could be lessened thanks to not having to talk to the same people over and over again.

Our heroine sat in her room, on her bed to be exact as she had nowhere else to sit other than the ground. In her hand was a cookbook from the 70s, detailing the secrets to Bulgarian cuisine.

After she had made palachinki for the Scarlet sisters, Licorice had been asked by Remilia to make food from time to time. This was why she was currently trudging through a cookbook, which was honestly a pretty boring task, to try and find something that might please the mistress. She had also had a pile of books sitting next to her lap, waiting for their turn to be read.

“Tursko kafe? I don’t think I can get anything resembling Turkish coffee here. Not to mention the fact that children usually don’t like such bitter drinks.” She spoke to herself while skipping the page containing something that she definitely couldn’t make. Plus, Licorice preferred tea over coffee. “I should probably look at the pages with tea instead of coffee…”

Mentioning and thinking about drinks had made Licorice quite thirsty. She set the cookbook aside, turning around toward the jar that contained her dear comrade: the sake bug. Our heroine poured a miniscule amount of sake from the jar to a small cup that rested right next to it. “Ah…” That’s quite good. Using sake instead of water might seem like a bad idea to some, but to someone like Licorice there wasn’t much difference between the two except for taste.

Turning back around to the cookbook, she found it missing along with all the other books she was reading. Licorice turned her head around, ducked under the bed, opened the windows to see if the books had somehow flown off, but her books were nowhere to be seen. Did that ordinary magician steal it? No, I’d have definitely noticed if she suddenly flew into the room.

Extraordinary events happening to this ordinary maid were quite a common occurrence. Books suddenly disappearing was more than extraordinary: it was nigh impossible, breaking several laws of physics and logic. Nor did these two actually matter in Gensokyo, so books disappearing wasn’t too surprising when Licorice thought about it more deeply.

No matter the possibility of books suddenly disappearing, our heroine still had to face the fact that she had nothing to read anymore. Licorice internally cursed the fiend that had spirited away her books. Her curses did nothing to fix her current predicament. Perhaps consulting Patchouli would? Licorice headed out of her room to do just that when…

“Eek!” Something grabbed her ankle. Our heroine looked down to see a hand covered by a white glove coming out of… she couldn’t exactly describe where the hand was coming out of, so Lovecraftian was the source. A bunch of red eyes stared at her from a gap of purple opened up below her feet. It was as if the boundary between reality had been broken by the gloved hand grabbing her ankle.

Licorice did her best to pull her leg out of the hand’s grasp to no avail. There was only one thing her left to do now. Our heroine pulled her last card up from her sleeve. Iisús Hristós… Bóža… Allah… Marija, whatever-or-whoever-the-hell-is-listening-to-me-right-now, I know we haven’t been on the best of terms lately… But, in your infinite grace, may you bequeath me some of thine grace and help a member of your poor flock get out of this sticky situation? She could only pray for divine intervention.

Then the hand let go. Huh. Divine intervention usually doesn’t tend to favor me, but… Our heroine didn’t have time to think about theology. She began running towards the library in hopes of finding Patchouli and requesting her help. The labyrinthine corridors seemed to wind longer than they usually did, and Licorice swore that she could see more of those purple holes appearing on the walls as she ran.

Our heroine finally managed to make her way to the gates of the library. She practically jumped toward the door, opening it faster than humanly possible. “Patchouli! There’s a weird monster chasing after me!” To her surprise, Patchouli was immediately within her sights sitting on a throne of books as usual. She was also joined by someone who wasn’t familiar to Licorice…

“Ah!” Our heroine screamed when she saw the woman in front of her. Her arm was stuck in one of those eye-filled holes she had just seen! “Miss, your arm! Do you need help?!” The woman in front of her, a blonde lady with a purple dress and a cap similar to the one that Remilia and Patchouli usually wore. She was carrying an umbrella with her other hand despite the fact that the library was most definitely indoors, and she was way too calm for someone whose arm was stuck in what looked to be creature out of Lovecraft’s worst nightmares.

“Hm? You showed up.” The woman in purple turned to her with golden eyes that were half-closed. It looked like she had just woken up; the woman’s voice was slow and cloudy, her sentences flowing slowly like clouds in gentle wind. She retracted her arm, covered by a white glove, from the gap. “As expected, my plan to make you run over here worked.” She looked generally disinterested in the entire existence of Licorice other than that.

“Sorry about that, Licorice. I can’t exactly control this creature of fickle whimsy.” Patchouli shot a glance towards the woman in purple. “This right here is Yukari Yakumo. Before you ask, no, Yukari is not a human. She’s a big maker of trouble, and someone you generally shouldn’t mess with if you want to keep staying alive.”

“How rude.” Yukari was smiling despite her verbally chiding Patchouli. It was clear that she didn’t mind being insulted. “Is this how you want to introduce me to the little damoiselle?”

“I’m just telling the truth. Do whatever it is you wanted to do with Licorice.” Patchouli returned back to staring at her book. “She’s a bit fragile, take care to not to break her too much. It’d be nice if you could keep Licorice in a state where she’s not beyond repair.” She said these last lines without staring up from her book.

Breaking?! Licorice wasn’t enthused to find out what might soon happen to her. She was less enthused when Yukari stood up. The woman was like a beast towering over her; our heroine’s neck began aching while trying to keep respectful eye contact. She must be about two meters tall… Yukari’s stature by itself was enough to intimidate Licorice.

Yukari took hold of Licorice’s chin, forcefully turning her head around while she was closely examining her. “Hmm…” Our heroine wasn’t exactly in a spot to go against Yukari, so she sufficed by praying that she wouldn’t be killed right then and there. “Huh.” Then Yukari let her go, apparently having satisfied her curiosity.

“I’ve seen a lot, by that I mean a lot, of things in my life. Rarely am I surprised or disappointed.” Yukari took a few steps back from Licorice. “This maid has surprised me by how much she has disappointed me.”

“…What?” Licorice knew she had to be offended at such a statement against her character. Her survival instincts stopped her from openly doing so.

“I just thought that there’d be more behind what the villagers called ‘the new devil in the mansion’.” Yukari took out her fan and began flapping it disinterestedly as if she wasn’t currently speaking to anyone in particular. “I’m surprised that the little brat hired someone as uninteresting as this maid.” She rolled her eyes around and yawned. “I’ve got nothing more to do with you or this place. Ciao.” The floor beneath Yukari opened to reveal one of those frightening purple gaps. She casually fell in and disappeared from sight along with the gap that she had opened. It was as if Yukari had never been in the room.

Licorice’s eyes were locked to the floor where Yukari had disappeared from. “…Patchouli.” She slowly turned around back to the librarian. “What the fuck was that?”

“Mm?” Patchouli tilted her head ever so slightly upon hearing Licorice mention her name. “Oh. She’s gone. Don’t fret over it too much. Yukari’s not someone you mortals should ever have to deal with.” She pointed toward a pile of books that was next to her own throne of books. “Here are the books that Yukari borrowed. You can take them back.” With this she tilted her head back down to her book.

“Okay?” Licorice took back her precious pile of Bulgarian books, cradling them in her arms. She had made her mind on one thing while making her merry way out of the library:

I’m going to jump off the window, fake my death, escape to the countryside, and never come back to the mansion if I ever see one of those purple gaps again.