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“And as your first assignment as the new Myouren Temple trainee,” the dog-eared girl chirped at a very loud volume, “start sweeping!” She threw open the temple side doors and danced out onto the veranda, beckoning her charge out from the comfortable confines of the Temple housing.
Jo’on Yorigami, who followed, was near unrecognizable. Under Byakuren’s tutelage, she had been stripped of all her wealth—her imported sunglasses, with a name nobody could pronounce (Givenchy); her rubies, sapphires, and her emeralds; her boots, made of leather from cows that only ever spoke Italian; her overcoat, oh her precious, fuchsia overcoat—now replaced with some chintzy colorless robe! Sure, she’d managed to save a couple of her plainer golden bands from the miserable lock-and-key (on the lie that they were of sentimental value), but her geta-shod feet ached, her hat-less head throbbed, and she could feel the wrinkles forming in her un-moisturized face already—even her shiny vermillion hair had oil-darkened to a sad cinnabar now. The tips were still a little wavy from their time spent in twin-drills, but alas! Her ribbons had been confiscated too, so now her hair blew into her face at the slightest wind!
Jo’on herself was silent as she too stepped out onto the veranda, too tired to properly respond. And then she looked up.
Now before them was a flat expanse of flagstone—a prayer yard of sorts, a hundred meters square, flanked by a rising grove of trees to either side. Apparently used for larger demonstrations and gatherings, it was the largest open space still technically within the grounds proper—and it was covered in leaves. Brown leaves, red leaves, yellow leaves—they covered the yard in a carpet of mottled color, shorn from the overhanging trees and sent skittering along the stone, unabated by neither wall nor fence.
Jo’on stared at the first of her punishments slack-jawed. The wind kicked up, then, and bled right through her thin linen robe. “You’re joking. You simply must be joking…”
“Usually, I have to do the whooooole grounds by myself, but not today! Yippee!” Kyouko said, her little tail-poof wagging with an audible swish. She hopped off the veranda with a broom over each shoulder, full of early morning cheer. “Wow, and there’s even more leaves than usual here too!”
“How about a thousand yen?”
“Not a chance~”
“Two thousand?”
“I’ll bonk you with this broom myself,” Kyouko said as she swung one off her shoulder, turning back to Jo’on. “Besides, I heard you did something bad, right? Not like you have any money anymore anyway!” she giggled. “Guess you really do reap what you sow~”
“…you’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“I’m a senpai now, yay!” Kyouko didn’t answer the question—or did she?—as she pressed the shaft of the broom into Jo’on’s hands. “Which means I get to boss you around!”
“Th-three thousand, final offer…”
“It’s really simple, don’t even worry! You’re lucky it’s me—if it was Ichi-san telling you, she’d just throw you the broom and make you figure it out on your own… But I’m not that mean, don’t worry!” she chirped. “Just sweep it all up into a big pile, throw it in the cairn over there,” Kyouko proceeded to point towards a rock pit across the yard, rendered almost comically small by distance, “and we’ll burn it when the day’s done!”
Such were the extent of her instructions, for before Jo’on could even express her immense displeasure again, Kyouko scampered away with some vague promise of coming back. Maybe. Probably. Hopefully?
And Jo’on was left, holding an implement she’d barely ever seen before, let alone used—with only a flat expanse of leaves before her.
—
Jo’on quickly realized two things.
The first, and most obvious one, was that she had no clue how to use a broom. She knew it was some sort of sweeping motion (hence the word), but it took her an hour before she even realized the bristles were supposed to hit the ground at an angle, and by then her usual cusses had lost their novelty and she’d started pulling out the backups—hopefully she was out of earshot of that klazomaniacal buffoon-dog.
The second, less obvious, was that this task was utterly pointless. Even when, after much grunting and groaning, she managed to awkwardly sweep a few meters worth of leaves into a little pile—a chittering breeze would come rushing down the vale throw all her hard work up into her face. A stupendously frustrating exercise.
Many times, she simply threw the broom down amid a torrent of vulgarities (her composure had already been blown to bits anyway), whining and whinging with no one to hear, before going back to sit ‘neath the veranda’s shade to grumble and fume. Only an hour or two into her work, she already felt faint from the exertion—only a fraction of the expanse was clean now—and so she began to address an imaginary Shion, really laying into her: about their failure, Shion’s uselessness as a god, about their origins as petty grifters, Shion’s uselessness as a partner, about how they’d nearly won if not for that blasted gap youkai’s trickery, Shion’s uselessness as a sister—
And then along came the red-white—saying nothing but flying low and slow, her bored gaze an implicit threat. So Jo’on was forced to scramble for the broom; for a couple minutes she really swept her heart out, before dropping the broom once again from her jellied arms and adding Reimu into her curses as well. Reimu wasn’t the only Gensokyoan to pay her an impromptu visit, either—the gap youkai herself didn’t make an appearance, but of course Jo’on caught her familiar’s familiar perched atop one of the temple buildings in the distance—she made no move to leave when caught, her smug grin sprouting into a childish giggle, obviously at Jo’on’s pitiful state. One of those fiends must’ve told the tengu reporter, too—she arrived sometime in the late morning, just when there were some new, juicy piles for the reporter to scatter and kick. But again, they didn’t talk—Shameimaru wasn’t interested in taking a statement, only wishing to see if the rumors were true.
And they were, of course they were; Jo’on already was the laughing-stock of Gensokyo. The sort of person to kickstart a massive incident just to pickpocket a bunch of humans. What, and blotting out the sun to take a walk was somehow less asinine?
By mid-afternoon, the revelers had left her well alone, and thanks to a break in the wind, much of the expanse was done—but for a couple missed spots, all the leaves swept up into a nice big pile. Her knees were wobbling, her legs aching, covered in a cold sweat; her fingers bumped and blistered, her gold rings tight around her swelling digits, but she had a pile to show for it, at least, and all she had to do was negotiate it over to the cairn—
And then a good gust of wind came, brisk and strong.
Jo’on watched as all her hard work was scattered—leaves curling about on the wind, skittering across the stonework, diffusing out every which way. And half the courtyard was covered again. Pointless.
She started tearing up, at that. She hurled the broom out into the yard (it didn’t go very far) and collapsed onto her back, tears streaming down her face, the sun beating down on her throbbing head, vision stinging and all ablur—and then a guttural whine started in her throat, soon raising to a screaming pitch. On and on she whined—about her life, her loss, her sister, and she buried her face in her soft hands rubbed raw and sobbed, with nobody around her to hear. Her hands smelled like sweat and dirt and metal, the smell of circulated coins—a smell of humanity, a scent that’d followed her throughout her life. She ripped her last few rings off her fingers, and hurled them too, somewhere towards the gravel at the edge of the yard.
“Damn, you really are pathetic.”
Jo’on’s eyes snapped open—then immediately squinted half-closed, as she was looking straight up into the sun. Even despite this, she caught a glimpse of the voice’s owner standing over her—auburn hair rough-cut shoulder length, a brownish frock covering a loose linen dress, a great big furry tail ringed brown and beige—
“You—!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Mamizou frowned. “You really don’t get the point’a this, do you?”
“Oh, no, I get the point,” Jo’on shot back. “This makes you happy, does it not? All you lot are cracking up in there—oh, that bastard Yorigami, reduced to this commonry! Why, if Shion was here…”
“It’s just sweepin’ some leaves, kid, it ain’t that serious. Though, you do look like you just stepped out of a sauna,” Mamizou continued, her lips curling into an exasperated smirk as she shifted the kiseru pipe in her mouth.
“Shut up!” Jo’on hissed, hoisting herself bolt-upright by the power of hate, “no, my first day here, I am made to do the impossible—this inane activity you people call a task, yet really it is just battling against the forces of nature! Well, I’ve had enough, I’ve had enough of all this, just let the whole blasted thing stay covered for all I care—”
She was cut off by something smacking her in the face, something soaking wet. Mamizou had produced it from her pocket and chucked it at her with nary a word. It took a moment to fully process it, but…it was a washcloth?
“Gods, Hijiri could hear your whinging from the main temple,” Mamizou drawled. Her voice got a little closer, as if she were squatting down to Jo’on’s eye level. “Even she was gettin’ annoyed, and that woman’s got a long fuse if I’ve ever seen one.”
Beneath the washcloth stuck to her face, Jo’on frowned. “So your idea of getting me to shut up was to come insult me?” she muttered, jerking her head a little bit so the washcloth dropped into her hands.
“Well, the idea was to give you a pep talk…” Mamizou sighed. “And here I was, thinkin’ this was gonna be easy.”
“…where’s my pep talk, then?” Jo’on mumbled as she spread out the washcloth and buried her face in it anew—indeed, it was just a bolt of undyed cloth, sodden with well-water. But it was a little damp, a little cold in the blowing breeze, and the smoothest thing she’d touched in hours. Right now, it felt more valuable to her than silver or gold.
And someone had just…given it to her. Expecting no recompense.
“I wouldn’t be here in the first place, you know, if you’d have just let us fleece those misers for all they’re worth,” Jo’on muttered, balling up the cloth now to wipe off her arms.
“Yeah, y’see, the humans… Well, let’s just call ‘em a protected species around here,” Mamizou said, hopping up and giving a long, tail-flicking backstretch. “Besides, I even kinda like a few of ‘em. They’re fun to watch with a drink in your hand.”
“Yeah? And yet here you are—helping their pickpocket?” The phrases themselves were haughty, but their final syllables were uptilted—a genuine question, phrased by someone who couldn’t fathom any other tone besides confrontational.
But Mamizou didn’t answer her question, nor even acknowledge it—instead, she nonchalantly wandered over to Jo’on’s discarded broom. She picked it up at its mid-point, turning it over in her hands with all the practice and ease of Shion twirling one of her old plastic chess pieces. “Kid, did anyone actually teach you how to use this thing?”
Jo’on scowled—in a flash, she’d gotten to her feet. “Well, even I know how to use a stupid broom,” she spat as she ripped the broom from Mamizou’s hands and stomped over to a little pile of leaves, “don’t you patronize me, look! Look!”
Truth be told, she was feeling much better—between the rest, the cloth, and the vent, she was able to attack that pile with big straight strokes brimming with murderous power; she put so much force down, perfectly perpendicular to the ground, that the tough bristles were bending up and out like a raindrop plopped into a pond.
A terrible result, frankly. In fact, the only measure in which it succeeded was to illustrate her previous “work.”
“Whoa, whoa!” Mamizou rushed over and grabbed her arms tight enough to still her flails. “Kid, kid, that ain’t how you use that thing—”
And then a flash of genuine, almost childish confusion appeared in Jo’on’s eyes—and then Mamizou slid her own hands over top Jo’on’s. “Gods, they just threw you into the yard and never even taught you to use a broom,” Mamizou muttered under her breath.
While Jo’on just stood there frozen, silent, staring down at Mamizou’s hands curled around hers with eyes wide as persimmons.
“Okay, kid, kid. Look,” Mamizou said, the roughness of her voice softening to a steady, even tone, tinged with something like desperation. “Ya keep your hand up here, yeah? At the top. And this hand, this one—you push an’ pull with it. Just that. That’s all ya need to do. The whole thing is pivotin’ around your top hand,” she said, now gently guiding Jo’on’s hands in the right motion.
“Y-you…you just touched me?” Jo’on mumbled, going along with it but still staring off into space. “A…a plague god. You touched me without…without wanting to hurt me.”
“Uh…yeah?” Mamizou said, abruptly letting go. Jo’on’s Mamizou-guided sweeping motion came slowly to a stop. “Gods, kid, if you were trynna sweep like that the whole time, no wonder you’re huffin’ and puffin’.”
But Jo’on just blinked, and her brows furrowed, and she looked up and met Mamizou’s eyes, her own clouded not with derision or retaliation now but just genuine confusion: “You’re…trying to help me? Why? I-I’m annoying, I’m a nuisance…”
“W-well, yeah, but—”
Suddenly Jo’on’s eyes darkened, and her gaze turned to a glare.
“No. I know what you’re trying to do,” she said, her voice venomous now, “You think that by helping me, you’re gonna change me. Rehabilitate me. Well, it’s never worked before and sure as hell won’t work now—"
“You really, really don’t get the point’a any of this, do you?”
Jo’on blinked, disarmed in an instant, and hesitantly shook her head.
“Listen. I’ll let you in on a little secret here, okay, cuz maybe you don’t get it—nobody here really thinks you’re gonna change. I mean, Hijiri’s not an idiot. And while I don’t agree with a lotta her “mindlessness” methods, this one…she knows what she’s doing,” Mamizou said, crouching down so as to look up at her, gently taking both of Jo’on’s shoulders again. “We ain’t askin’ you to change, or become somethin’ you ain’t. It’s the beauty of Gensokyo, kid—be who you want. O’ course, if you cause a ruckus, you’ll get smacked, but it’s only because we all just wanna get along! So for what it’s worth—just sweep up some leaves, breathe some fresh air, gawk at some nice scenery, and just be by yourself for awhile. Just existing is enough for now. Okay?”
Jo’on blinked, still shellshocked a little bit, and opened her mouth to reply—
And then, out of the blue came a strange yipping sort of sound, bouncing around the stone corners of the temple—both of them turned to look as Kyouko skipped around the bend with a big jolly grin on her face, holding a whole bushel of warmed dorayaki in paper sleeves to her chest.
“Oh!” she blurted out once she saw Mamizou (twice as loud as she needed to, of course), “Futatsuiwa-san, hi! I didn’t know you were here today!”
Mamizou shifted in place uncomfortably. “Y-yeah, heya Kyouko-chan…”
Kyouko bounded up to them, chipper as ever. “Oh, would you like a dorayaki? Thank goodness I brought a bunch! It’s super rare we have ‘em too cuz Hijiri-sama doesn’t like us having sweets, but since she’s out today Shou-sama went and got some from the Village so we could all share!”
“Uh…yeah, sure, thanks…” she said, gingerly taking a single dorayaki for herself. Jo’on thought she caught a hint of a blush in her cheeks as she did so.
And then, to Jo’on’s infinite surprise, Kyouko turned to her, and held out a dorayaki for her to take, too.
“F-for…for me…?”
“Duh, silly!” Kyouko beamed at her, her little poof-tail wagging a mile-a-minute. “I brought ‘em over to share with you! And besides, I haven’t gotten a chance to pry all the juicy details out of you yet~” she finished with a mischievous grin.
And in that moment, she would later come to realize—Jo’on Yorigami felt truly happy.
—
And as nighttime fell across Gensokyo, the wind had died down, and all was silent again, Jo’on continued to sweep. Awkward little half-sweeps, the bristles getting stuck in the gaps in the stone, her arms all throbbing and pins-and-needles numb—she kept sweeping, and sweeping, until all the leaves of the courtyard were in piled in the corner cairn.
She stood before it for a moment, alone.
With a wordless, thoughtless prayer, she grew a flame in her hand, weak and thin, and cast it into the pile. She watched the fire grow—last year’s leaves shriveling away, blackening under the heat. And even though her task was complete now, she stood watching the flames crackle and flicker against the night sky, till they collapsed in on themselves in the inferno, turning to ash in the hollow cairn, having made way for the green and the new.