Backfiring Lunacy

Chapter 8

What would you do if you found yourself in a situation where everything was different? Perhaps not exactly a different situation per se, but a different atmosphere and environment that was completely unfamiliar to you. How would you react to suddenly being thrusted into a warped, fiendish hell or a foray into unnerving eyes that deceit your every step as your journey further into discovering what is laying behind the walls that refuse to give any hint whatsoever as to what the answer may be?

Would you run?

Would you face your fears?

Or would you become someone entirely new and unfamiliar to the one who you were originally?

The answer can be bloodcurdlingly hard to give -- because we would never know how we would react until we are shoved into that situation, environment, surroundings, or atmosphere against our own will. Or perhaps, it is our will that makes us journey into what our intuition screams and howls at us to turn back. Why do we proceed anyway when the most rational, logical answer would be to turn back and stop believing bravery is a good trait to have? A lack of cowardice does not display bravado, rather it can display ignorance of the unknown. Any sane man would know that once they were in that situation, that maybe some things are best left unchecked and unanswered.

Mayhaps there is an opportunity to gain something out of the experience.

Mayhaps there is a new discovery lying at the end of the tunnel.

But why subject yourself to such horrendous surroundings or risk your life for something you aren't even sure about?

Say, an old, large school had been abandoned for many years. The place has been so abandoned that there was many stories about how people have terrifyingly disappeared when they went in. Why would you go in it anyway? The best choice of action would either be to turn a blind eye and never go into it or get the police to explore the building themselves entirely. Even the military if may be, but it is incredibly unlikely they would accept the call to explore it.

A new experience can always change us, worsen us, or hurt us in any way.

But as for people like Reisen, this new experience is going to be rather excruciating.

--

The trio composed of the immortal, the lunarian, and the schoolteacher were conjured like glue side by side, all of them staying close together whilst shepherding their way to the Human Village. There, the school would be ready for their entrance once they had arrived there - as for now, Reisen seemed to be struggling with how she intended on walking alongside two individuals that she presumed were bushing away their hate. It had to be hidden somewhere, concealed from her eyes to make it ostensibly so that they were unreliable or tricky to trust. However, as time went on, the lunarian felt her intuition tell her placing trustworthiness with her newfound partners wasn't an irrational choice.

The first motion of her eyes laid on was the immortal on the left, her hands buried into her pockets like the tip of a shovel digging into the ground. Fujiwara No Mokou, a human who became immortal after consuming the Hourai Elixir before it was dropped into Mount Fuji, piled quantities of stress upon the lunarian because of the previous incursion in The Bamboo Forest of the Lost. Despite giving her word that she forgave her, Reisen could not help but feel the truth was smeared with the audacious grime of lies only due to her friend instructing her about what she intended to do. Would the apology truly be enough to seal the conflict between the two?

That question was what haunted Reisen.

Incidentally, the other one on the right was Mokou's closest friend, Keine Kamishirasawa. Being a history teacher at the Human Village, using her utmost strength to stop anyone who dared to attack the remote location she sought to ensure its safety, she was amiable and friendly to humans as well as most youkai that she encountered. Reisen found herself trusting the schoolteacher the most, given that she displayed and proved her friendliness to her when she asked to apologize to Mokou. However, the conundrum that split the difference was that she was a friend of Mokou's, and Reisen wasn't sure if she should trust her either. She was obsequious to Kaguya and Eirin, one as a student and the other, well, as her pet.