the tale of kutsuna meira
When she was very young, her grandmother had told her a story, a story about her own grandmother, of the time long past, before the world was taken away from them.
Back in those days, she said, humans had conquered the darkness. The youkai were retreating, vanishing, and humanity was prospering. An era of peace and light had been upon them.
But then, the youkai stole the world from them, sealed them away from everything else, so that they could torment them, make them suffer for their hubris. For dreaming of a better world, they were condemned to the miserable fate of the playthings of evil.
People stood against the youkai, of course. The leaders of the village defied them, and were cut down. But it was their clan who had suffered the most. The guardians of the village, those trained in the arts of slaying youkai – they had no place in a world ruled by youkai, and so the leader of the clan was struck down by that puppet of the youkai, the Hakurei shrine maiden.
After that, they lost all their repute – their very purpose. They were reduced to the level of mere humans, in a world where mere humans were powerless to defy their pathetic fate.
She had loved that story. It fulfilled her desire to be important. It explained all the stupid, arbitrary rules that the village had, all the ones about being careful, minding your own business, not challenging the way things were. It made her realise that there was another way that things could be.
Her parents, on the other hand, hated the story being told, and often got into fights with her grandmother over it. Over time, she grew to resent them for it, and then pitied them, recognising them as the cowards they were, content with a worthless existence.
But not her. She once again claimed the name of her grandmother’s grandmother, the noble Kutsuna, and began training, learning the art of the blade, honing her skills as far as a human could, so that she could battle against the evils that dominated humanity.
…Or so she thought, of course, but those skills meant nothing without anyone to train her. Learning to swing an old sword is one thing; learning to use an old sword is another. Without guidance, all she could do was decide when she was ready for herself. When the blade sat in her hand without slipping, she was ready to go out and challenge the youkai. She would upend the order of Gensokyo, and take back the light that had been stolen from them.
Her name was Meira. Kutsuna Meira. And her blade would never see that light.
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It was more than ten years, now, since she had first picked up that sword and declared herself ready. Ten years of frustration and humiliation. Ten years of even the weakest youkai dancing around her and throwing her to the ground. Ten years of being forced to watch that youkai shrine maiden, the traitor to all humans, run around and perform her farce of subjugating the creatures that everyone knew ruled the world.
In that time, she had been cast to the edges of the village, rejected by even her family once her grandmother died as delusional, foolish, doomed to an early death. Maybe she was. And worse, it would be the end of a life that never accomplished anything, that never changed anything.
As a mere human, she would never have the power to change the world.
As a child, she had prayed for the power to accomplish the miracles she had heard of in the past. She no longer did that. To her, the kami that she saw sometimes were no better than the youkai, and perhaps no different. They were all inhuman things trying to dominate humanity. She would not spare such undeserving creatures anything, not the slightest fragment of her hopes and dreams.
And because of that, she was powerless. Prey to every youkai she came across and challenged. They would laugh at her earnestness, avoid every one of her simple strikes, and then kick her down and tell her to come back in another hundred years.
If she still had any pride in herself, it would have stung; but her pride was in her name, and so it burned like a flame. These monsters would not even bother to kill her. They saw her as a joke, something to amuse themselves with for a while before moving on to something else. She could hear their voices, even when they weren’t speaking – look at this pathetic human, they said, daring to challenge our rule. What a fool! Best that she should learn her place, right at the bottom.
They all looked at her like that. Humans and youkai alike, and the shrine maiden too. They saw her as nothing more than a pitiful wretch. The flame inside her heart yearned to prove them wrong, and so she suffered defeat after defeat. After every defeat she would train, and after every time she trained she would be defeated yet again. Over, and over, for ten years.
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She slowly pulled herself off the muddy forest floor. The youkai this time had been like all the rest, a thing in human form, laughing and playing as she lunged at them with practised, inexpert thrusts of her sword. And then, when it had tired of her, it had struck her once in the gut, threw her aside, and left her laying down in the muck. If she had fallen even slightly more to the side, she would have choked on the dirt, but as always, she had survived. She always survived; even that was outside of her control.
She wandered forth, steps unsteady. It always took her a while to fully recover from a defeat, but that wouldn’t stop her from moving. If she stopped, she might never be able to start moving again.
Forwards, step by step, through that cursed forest…
The trees blended together. Blood ran down her face, clouding her eyes. Forwards. Forwards. The world turned into a haze. The wind whistled through the trees, mocking her, beckoning her.
She emerged into a field of red. Corpse flowers filled her vision, as far as she could see. A voice, whispered on the wind, called to her. She stumbled forwards, crushing the beautiful flowers underfoot, until finally she tripped and fell to the ground once again.
Her outstretched hand touched something firm, and cold.
Her eyes focused, for the first time since she began walking. She had fallen, and her hand had gripped the hilt of a sword, buried in the dirt beneath the flowers. The wind has stopped its whispering, but she knew that thing was what had been calling to her.
She drew the blade effortlessly from the dirt, and it shone. Even an amateur like her could look at a blade like this and recognise it for the masterwork that it was – the equal of any other blade. This was a blade for slaying monsters – no, it was a blade for slaying worlds.
She looked down at her own blade, dragged behind her in her offhand all this way, and it looked dirty. Poorly maintained, scarred, dull. She dropped it without hesitation, and gripped her new-found weapon with both hands. It seemed to shine even brighter with her firm grip on its hilt. She understood, immediately, that this was the power that she had sought.
Her vision had never been clearer. She barely felt the wounds on her body. She ran back into the forest without hesitation. A youkai appeared before her, and she sliced it apart effortlessly, not even pausing in her charge. The youkai were nothing but pests.
There was only one true enemy that she needed to defeat, in order to save the humans of Gensokyo. Her goal was righteous, and her path was true. Without hesitation, with unerring aim, she charged towards the east.
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The Sun had risen, and the day was already proving itself to be a pleasant one. Hakurei Reimu, having spent the morning preparing herself for the day, was already considering letting all her efforts be for naught and to simply relax throughout the afternoon. None of the usual visitors had shown up yet, so surely she could get away with it…
The sound of someone running up the stairs to the shrine interrupted her, and she glanced up to see a figure rush forwards, before finally stopping, standing below the torii that marked the shrine’s entrance.
For a moment, Reimu didn’t even recognise her; covered in mud, blood, and spider lilies, any of the features that would normally have aided in identifying another person were completely obscured. Only the outfit – that distinctive red vest – gave her away.
“What are you doing here, Meira?” asked Reimu.
The figure raised her sword in response.
“I’ve come here for you,” she replied, voice calm.
Reimu blinked. “Really? I didn’t think you were that interested.”
The figure took a step forward. The unpolished sword she carried glinted in the Sun’s light.
“I’ve always wanted to, you know,” she replied. “To make the Hakurei mine…”
“R-really?” Reimu jumped towards her so quickly that the swordswoman flinched back. “I mean, I guess I don’t mind, but aren’t you moving a bit too quickly?”
Meira’s steadfast gaze wavered, and she frowned slightly. “What are you talking about?”
Reimu frowned back. “Aren’t you asking me out?”
Meira’s grip on the blade tightened. “Y-y-you–” She slashed forwards, and Reimu leapt aside. “You disgusting scum! I want you dead! I want you gone! I want your power, and once I have it, I’ll cleanse this world of all its youkai!”
“Are you sure you’re not interested?” insisted Reimu, floating behind her. “Because a lot of people have said that kind of stuff to me, and–”
Meira slashed at her, and the shrine maiden floated back. “I am certain!” she roared. “All else aside–” She leapt forwards into the air, her perfect, beautiful blade cutting towards her foe like starlight. “–I’m not interested in women!”
Reimu threw a needle from inside one of her sleeves, deflected the blow of the blade and slipped under its arc. “Really?” she asked. “I didn’t even know that was a thing.”
Meira twisted as she began to land, bringing her sword around once more. “What do you mean you didn’t know that wasn’t a thing?!” The shrine maiden dodged once more, but Meira bounced off the ground and leapt towards her again. “Are you really that much of a fool?!”
“Everyone I know is into women, so…” Reimu flipped around the next clumsy strike, and threw another pair of needles. They grazed Meira’s arm, but she didn’t even seem to notice. The way she hung in the air, too… she shouldn’t have had the power for that.
Reimu frowned again, eyes narrowing on the sword. It was unfamiliar, and looked dirty, as if it had been buried.
Twisting in the air, Meira lunged at her again. “I’m not like you! I’m human, not some youkai!”
“Even the humans are like that, though!” protested Reimu. It was definitely the sword. It was faint, but it was definitely possessed by something.
“I’m not–” Meira froze in the air suddenly. “What?”
Reimu threw a single talisman in that moment of bewildered hesitation, and it cut through the sword like a knife through butter. The upper part of the sword followed in its wake, and the moment that the two halves of the sword were separated, they crumbled into silver dust, leaving nothing but an empty hilt.
Meira dropped out of the sky, and Reimu swept under her and caught her. Unconscious, without the fury twisting her expression, she was honestly kind of cute.
“I’ll wash the mud off her face, at least,” mused Reimu, and then sighed. “It would’ve been nice if she’d actually come for a visit, though…”
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Meira awoke in her own bed, and didn’t know where she was for a moment.
She tried to shake aside the exhaustion, but it didn’t fade so easily. Her memories since last evening were incredibly blurry. She remembered leaving the village, and then…
She felt like something really important had happened. She had done something, or said something, or been told something really important…
Her brain failed to provide the memories in question, so she stopped worrying about it. She unconsciously reached out to grab her sword from the small plinth she kept it on, and frowned when it wasn’t there.
Even as her clouded mind began to realise that someone had taken her sword, she heard a soft thud from behind her house, and rushed out.
She almost sighed with relief. Her reliable blade had been stabbed into the soft dirt, standing upright proudly. Wrapped around its hilt was a scrap of paper – a message from whoever had brought it back, probably. She rushed towards it, not even worried about a youkai trick. Somewhere in her jumbled memories, she was grateful to have this blade back.
As she hefted the sword in her hand, savouring its comfortable weight, she checked the note. It was simple enough; a brief message that books on swordplay could be found at Suzunaan, and a somewhat playful reminder that she was welcome to visit at any time, signed solely with the kanji for “dream”.
She frowned at it, running through it in her head. Suzunaan had an odd reputation a few years ago, but it seemed to be on the mend lately; and besides, the Motoori family was almost as old as her own. Could the daughter have done this? But how would she have gotten the sword?
For that matter, where had the sword been? How had she let it out of her sight?
As for the second part of the note…
She tossed it into the air and slashed at it with her sword. Her inexpert strike caught it in the draft, sending it fluttering away into the air. She watched it float away until it passed over the village walls, and then it was gone.
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