The Lone Shrine Maiden's Wish

Chapter 2: A Friendly Visit

Author's Note: Special thanks to Yin 陰#1909 on Discord for the fancy cover editing.

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The sun gently peeks its way into the Lone Shrine Maiden's room, illuminating the wooden floors and paper walls. 

Reimu's eyes squint from the harmful light. Risen by the will of Hakurei and maybe the sun, Reimu opens her covers and stretches, yawning afterward as well.

Another sigh escapes Reimu's mouth as she hops out of bed and heads to the washroom first, cleaning herself up with a nice shower and coming out with dried hair, tying her red and white bow as she arrives in the kitchen to prepare herself a meal. With a bowl of ramen and a glass of orange juice, she sits on the porch of the shrine, eating as she sees the sky slowly light up a beautiful blue as the sun makes it way further up.

At the same time as Reimu getting up from her sleep, Yukari wakes up at a reasonable time for the first time in many years of her very long lifespan. 

"Today is the day!" She excitedly stated to herself, using gaps to bring herself into the shower and quickly eat leftover pizza. She used gaps to bring herself to her front lawn, gazing far towards the Hakurei Shrine, where she could see Reimu sitting alone as usual.

"...Seriously? The same thing every day? She always sits there with some food then gets up, goes and cleans the shrine up, then prays. Then I stop watching because I get bored. Is she really that lonely? She doesn't change her routine at ALL?" Yukari was in slight disbelief. The odd time an animal or children running about woke her up, she'd spy a bit on Reimu, the one person to stand up to her. And everyday it'd start the same.

"Sheesh. I'm lonely too and even my life isn't that terrible." Yukari put her hands on her hips, disapproving of her own enemy's sad lifestyle. 

Yukari fails to know that Reimu's loneliness comes from her being an outcast. A human within the world isn't too uncommon, but the lone believer in a god no one has even seen? It doesn't help that she lives outside of the city where foot-traffic is nearly none. With all of these factors put in, it equals one sad, lonely little Shrine Maiden.

The most Reimu gets out is to handle Youkai's, and there's a special reason why.

Reimu is EXCEPTIONALLY strong for a human. Not only can she fly, but she has an incredibly powerful manipulation of auras and barriers. Whenever a Youkai is out of control, Reimu is on the scene, flying in and battling the Youkai, ending with their powers being sealed or the Youkai being put in containment. 

These powers lead Reimu to be quite feared among Youkai-kind, but Reimu isn't aggressive. She only attacks if Youkai act out of control or go mad. Yukari was once doing too much damage to Gensokyo, invoking Reimu to put her in her place. However, Yukari escaped at the end, leaving Reimu on a half-victory. But Yukari stopped her rampage, which was good enough for Reimu.

These attacks on Youkai are also what lead to most attacks on the Hakurei shrine. Youkai wanting revenge destroy the shrine, leading Reimu to rebuild it. Again. But it's never too difficult to do, as a magical human she can use powers to aid her re-building process.

Anyway, Yukari's staring goes on for a while before she sees how empty Reimu's plate is. 

"Now's the time, before she just begins to the clean the place again." Yukari says to herself, entering a gap.

Over in the Hakurei Shrine, Reimu sits with an empty bowl on her lap. As she sighed and got up, something caught her attention, the familiar 'you-who' of a Youkai.

Reimu quickly set her bowl down and stood in front of the Shrine in a battle position, floating slightly and being surrounded in ghostly tags of sealing. Yukari walked into view, smiling and looking oddly innocent.