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RESUME!
>Two months after the Solstice, Hana is taking commissions from Keine to hunt Youkai. She hunts a foreign Yukionna and easily defeats her, but gets hurt in the process. She disregards it and goes back home. After she bathes, she meets with Keine who'd come to question her report on the Yukionna, saying the level of danger Hana associated with the Youkai was low. Hana's pride struggles against the logic, but she allegedly accepts the extra "pity money,". Keine hands her and Aunn invitations to hers and Mystia's double wedding, though the third invitation is meant for Anon, and asks Hana to deliver that one. Hana isn't keen on it, dwelling on her problems with Anon, but ultimately accepts to deliver it after Keine gives out some vague words. Keine leaves and Hana sulks as she prepares to leave, noticing many changes from the way she used to live and how much better off she is than Reimu ever was. She leaves for Anon's house, located on the border of Yuuka's fields, thinking a lot about Keine's words, determined to believe she enjoys the life she's been leading, where she throws herself at work so as not to face her fears and anxieties. She gets to Anon's house, chickens out briefly, but knocks and is greeted by Yuuka, who is very comfortable, like she's lived there her whole life. That nags at Hana, and after meeting with her father and being dragged into dinner with the two of them, the backlash she's been experiencing all night from her wounds from battling the Yukionna leaves her irate and sick, extrapolating her feelings out of control, which she directs at Anon, chastising him for having forgotten Reimu. She then collapses and calls her Father in distress before passing out.

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[Chapter Count]
(1970 entries)(+9 chapters last thread)

[for phoneanons who can't access the dead threads, here's the last thread. Link to all others in the 'all entries']:
>>https://warosu.org/jp/post/50505034 | 39th thread

[Expiration date: 1/27~1/28]

I'm sorry for archiving the previous thread. That comment was uncalled for and I hope Rananon forgives and forgets.

Why new thread if no updates ready?

>>50573358
I blame Yukari for manipulating the boundaries of your sexuality.

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Wind chimes beckoned me to the surface, away from a pool of comfortable darkness I swam in for a time neither long nor short. The bat of eyelashes and yet, everything around me had changed. Panorama, the surface I laid upon—the seasons. Gone's the winter and the cold; full trees and a clear blue sky welcome me. Torii gates. I longed to touch this ethereal plane but found myself immobilized. Her fingers brushed my hair and gently fixed my head on her lap, her range of movement untamed. “… You’re dead,” I told Mom.

“I am,” she said.

My last few seconds before I died came back to me: I yelled at Father, words evoked by the engine of rage that’s whirled since I watched the monster who took Mom’s body beat him from this very porch, then the sight of a black wound, and losing consciousness.

The fruit of my carelessness has been reaped, and this is its taste. Breeze blew, tepid, floral, and nostalgic. Would it be too greedy to wish for a dessert…? Yeah, likely. Mom’s fingers soothe me. Not so bad. “… This what being a mitama is like?” No question about that.

I am dead. Her words would make it real.

Rather, she huffed and batted a hand to my forehead. “Ouch!” I grumbled.

“Would the dead feel pain?” She massages the spot she’d slapped.

Ah… I’m alive. When I wake up, I'll have to face Father.

“So I’m just knocked out cold?” I asked. How can I feel pain in a dream and not wake up? “I’ve never… dreamed like this. I haven’t dreamed at all since the Solstice.” The last dream I recall is of Father and Mother walking away after they replaced me with a better daughter. My brows knit together. “That means you’re just a… delusion. Figment of my imagination,” she nodded, even though I couldn’t see it. “That sucks.”

“Why?” She fiddled with my bow. “It means you’re alive.”

“Because I miss you…” I paused to gather my breath. Feel hollow inside. “This you. We had no time to spend together—neither did you and Father… if you had, I think he'd have… forgiven you, I guess.”

“Does it matter?” Her fingers lingered. “That your father forgives me? Remembers me? Yearns for something we once had but lost because of me? No amount of time we could’ve gotten would’ve changed the scars he hides, that you know exist…” They resumed their delicate motions, and Mom’s voice grew soft as a plume. “It was a miracle by itself I got to hold you two just one more time; that I could look into his eyes and let him know I died proud of you.”

“I-I know, but—”

“—But you wanted more.” She pinched my cheek. “Brat.”

“Stop that! Gee…” I pouted. “Even if you’re fake, just… pamper me, dammit! I prefer that.” Mom merely chuckled and, as commanded, retook to brushing my hair. She also kept her silence, and in silence, thoughts swim. I got so much more than I ever thought I’d have when I left home with Father a year ago. Thought we’d struggle, live a humble life. He’d find a woman, marry, and then we’d have more money to our name, and we’d share a comfortable life.

Together.

Then Mom came back, and I wanted her in the picture.

In the end, I sat on a growing wealth and neither of them shared it with me.

“… Guess I don’t find joy in that life,” I answered a question from a few weeks ago with a groan. “Not without you two. Thought I could take on this world you gave me, be cool and be a… protector… I don’t feel like I’m protecting anyone.”

I have Aunn—two of them—, Yuuka-san, the whole of the Moriya Shrine, some Inaba that consider me part of their cloister to an unsettling degree. Sekai is my tree-sister, or something like that. I have friends; I have good money; have a stable job that I’m good at.

I have everything I've ever dreamed of since I was a child.

“Without you, I just feel…”

One word hung true at the roof of my mouth. It drove me into endless hunts, into buying five pairs of working boots, into eating full meals every single day. Dragged me to Father’s doorstep even though I knew meeting him without properly healing—coping with the only feelings I haven’t coped with yet—would’ve ended up in disaster…

And also an admission of defeat to the person who’d nurtured it in mind.

It’s not really her; it’s what my mind wants to see, to feel.

The child wouldn’t have said it, but I’d promised myself the problems of that petulant one were meant only for Mom and Father.

So, I tell my Mom: “… Lost.” Should’ve felt ashamed, stupid. Can’t even navigate this new Gensokyo without making a scene and being a nuisance. “I wake up every day, don’t even think I murdered my sibling; I have money, people who support me… And I’m squandering it all. Did it to Father. That magician said words that should’ve made sense, but they didn’t stick… Am I really an ungrateful person who, no matter what, always wants more?”

A long breath sung beside chimes. I tried craning my neck to look into her eyes.

“Will I always need more from you…?”

I looked up.

Mom wasn’t there. I lie alone on the ethereal porch of the Hakurei Shrine.

“… Even though I don't have you anymore?”

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For how long I laid there I wouldn’t know. Wind chimes rustled their sweet lullaby, and the breeze remained comfortable, nothing like the fever that I’d thought killed me. Hair cascaded down the edge of the porch, birds sang, ants crawled across my midriff. Saying those words… hadn't been as humiliating as I thought it'd have been; maybe because I told them to a figment of my imagination and not Mom? Essentially, I'd talked to myself in this delirious dream.

… What adults do when they want more, but can’t have more?

All I tried didn’t work. I don’t find joy in my good life.

But this place, the creaking floorboards, the magical hum of the Torii Gates, the chimes… Everything that composes the shrine and its every individual component is my place in the world.

No other place I long to be more than at the roots of my lineage.

My fate I took back from Yukari’s cold, dead hands.

Mom's shine, that of a dying star, had blurred it to me, making things less straightforward. Without her, it felt hollow; and without Father, it felt meaningless. Was it truly regrettable that I saw her shine so bright only to fizzle out soon after…? If I hadn’t seen it, I don’t think I’d be in this precarious position with Father.

Memories surged of moments embraced by fire. Red eyes bore into mine; she smiled her last smile, and it was all mine.

One entire wing of Hakurei flames lies folded away in my bloodstream, power hibernating yet mine to call upon at any moment, even if its active state would have me dead.

Father had not seen her shine as I did, and he effortlessly forgot her.

I closed my eyes and exhaled. The relaxation tugged something at the back of my head, like a frail pull.

No answers, no resolutions. Only scattered thoughts that loop me around like a dance. The power to move free and unbounded, and I trap myself in such a bind.

“… Being an adult sucks,” I muttered to myself.

That pull grew exponentially as I simmered in my thoughts, and the floorboards beneath me yawned suddenly. Where’s spring? The chimes and the singing birds? Everything disappeared, and etched to the strained second was pure silence—chills swept my body up and down. Wandering the insides of the Gap, only to pop out months into the future. Time. Another treasure Yukari stole from me—, and then exploded a pain that surrounded me whole, pulsating from the side of my abdomen.

Pain, silence, darkness. All of it condensed.

Only one thing I could do in this situation: “F-Father…” I called him amidst fresh tears.

… Soon came respite. Pain receded like a wounded beast, and with my body not overwhelmed anymore, sensations were picked up. Warm and cozy fluffiness beneath and sprawled upon me; the chill that permeated the air, kept at bay yet ever-threatening. Rough breathing not far to the right.

I’m not dreaming anymore…?

Eyes fluttered open, and I watched the ceiling. At the edge of my vision, I saw gigantic… sunflower heads.

Trying to move, weight and a spiking pain made me hiss. Aunn was asleep on my legs, my torso wrapped in bandages all over, and seals I’d recognize anywhere—

“Sunrise, Parabellum.”

—Body tensed, and I turned to Father. He sat on a chair beside the bed, his eyes drowned in black weariness, his posture lurched over, talisman-clad elbows propped on his thighs, forehead glazed with sweat. A relieved smile set his expression alight. “… How long has it been?” I whispered as to not wake up Aunn, though whimpered as I seated upright and cleaned my tears.

“Does it still hurt?” He asked.

“… It does.”

Without another word, he joined his hands and voicelessly prayed. Confusion died in a mouth hung open as a sapling of golden light, the size of a fiddle, bloomed from my lower abdomen. Most of the leftover pain immediately vanished, and it didn’t even stir Aunn awake. He’d used that magic during the Solstice… A small spot under the talismans of his left arm shone just as gold before it faded away alongside the translucid tree.

Were it not for him folding forward and clasping to his mouth, fighting against gag reflex to keep himself from puking, I'd have allowed myself a ‘wow…’

“F-Father—?” He lifted a hand as a stop sign and kept on his muffled struggle—enough time for our last interaction to return full force to me and burn the skin off my cheeks. Dread pooled inside my belly; hairs stood. Gotta clean up the slate. “… H-Hey, Father, um… I-I want to… apologize for what I said earlier. I was out of my m-mind! Didn’t mean any of tha—”

“—No,” he managed between dizzied sounds, and my words froze in my throat. No…? “It was…” His hand fell from his mouth, the paper stained. How many times had he healed me? “… It was a long time coming, Hana. We allowed ourselves to drift far apart by failing to communicate. I don't like this…” Spine straightened, dreadful anticipation billowed inside me. “Can you walk?”

Space bent, and I stood on my two feet. Aunn’s head rested on the mattress. “… I'm fine!”

Father weakly smiled. “Let's go outside.”

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>>50575133
>>50575129
never using the words “just,” “two” and “weeks” together ever again…
more soon~!
>>50573358
it's okay man, after last year's new year's eve I'm not even surprised anymore

Just
Two
Weeks

I forgive you, Yukari. Even if Anon only gets visitation with Hana in two-week periods, I forgive you. But you did nothing wrong, so I will never forget what you did. It will live in my memory forever.

>>50575620
She's dead bro, you won't get any pussy.

I want Hana's relationship with her father to get WORSE

>>50576389
This, Reimu is no longer here to get in the way of Hana's love. Her true desires can be unleased without consequence.

>>50580074
>Her true desires
A world without pesky hags...

>>50580188
Expedition 33

>>50582057
Hana should wear the golden fitting dress for the cosplay, it would be great.

>>50582057
Make Anon play the piano.