Spiders crawl up my throat and I feel each pneumatic leg, limbs growing numb and squinting eyes peering past the mist of colors that surround me, a pumping heart clenching as lungs beg for air. Something sickening etched itself to my stomach and made me want to throw up, feeling on my skin like the intense sting of a thousand bees, but I knew the moment I opened my mouth, I’d only be drinking more of this terrible vapor. Twin tails had arched and the cast Yamame-san gently fashioned on my head felt as if melting, and both my hands pressed against my mouth, making sure it stayed closed, tears streaking down my cheeks as I tried to find again Mr. Anon’s scent or any shape of a living person or safe place, the murk making it nigh impossible; no matter how high I tried to ascend or how fast I flew away, the fog seemed to expand ocean-wide, time a mere suggestion.

Everything hurts.

There was no escape, and in this mist that’d appeared with that colossal explosion—it happened many minutes ago, yet I can still hear rumbling thunder—, I slowly suffocate, skin aflame.

I don’t want to die, not yet. Not when I haven’t written all those books I’ve promised to share with Mr. Anon in the afterlife; not when I haven’t helped Ms. Reimu with that sad stuff that ails her heart… Not when I can still offer Yukari my best.

Hidden away in my qipao, a talisman boasting a side of death and one of mercy.

Her words linger, those she’d said inside the shrine.

Had she never felt loved, despite everything Ran and I did? Were we not enough, or did we not try hard enough…?

We could have been content with what we had, right? We had each other…

Body limps down to the ashen ground and through groans, I turn myself to face a cloudy sky, my breath dry, stomach aching, and fingers trembling. I still haven’t shown her my best, everything I can bring forth, the wonders of a life without sad. Everything I promised Yamame-san I’d show… A ‘best’ I know Yukari herself would never find within herself to show me—Ran, Mr. Anon—, and even so I seek it. Things will end the way I know they will—my nose tickles with the smell of burnt flesh and charred bones—, and tears and blood shall be abundant.

It’s impossible to imagine a different outcome for this war.

Beyond this warring Gensokyo are stars I and Mr. Anon have watched, eating and talking about spiders; somewhere in this rubble and poisonous smog that kills me softly are the memories we made together, those I’ll cherish beyond a forever. It was a terrible, sad thing, all that's happened to us, and it has caused so much harm and pain…

“… P-Please…” I beg to the stars, the world blurring around me.

I’ll do my best, anyway.

Doors open.

What else can I do, Mr. Anon?

I blink, and the stars are clear as day. Golden and red and blue, and shining. A moment of stillness precedes my lungs filling with clear air, and a coughing fit befalls me instantly, my hands wrapping around my belly as my body detoxes from all the icky mist, a sort of supernatural cleansing washing over me—not dispelling the pounding headache—, and replacing it with relief that grew and grew the more my hands touched my body: I’m a-alive! I didn’t die! “It’s good, isn’t it?” Her voice is familiar, and I have no time to writhe in icy fear when such pungent delight crosses through my whole. “To breathe again after drowning for so long.”

Eyes go up, and, laid on the ground a few paces ahead of the third sage, is Ms. Reimu. Battered and missing one arm, with a bloodied face, Ms. Reimu. Her chest rises and falls.

She’s alive, Ms. Reimu.

… So much Yamame-san had taught me; so much I thought I knew about death. I had thought myself prepared to face it when it inevitably came to be in this terrible war.

Ms. Reimu is alive.

I run up to her and my fingers caress her body, struggling to place her head on my lap, thighs scratched yet ignored as I peer into her face, its pallor and its mortal beauty, folded fire wings snuggled on her back as if afraid to open like a flower, cascading below like the tears of a volcano. I hold her to me with everything I know I’ll eventually lose, and that dark hole Yamame-san told me about is overwhelming against my chest, her missing arm and the remaining stump a wound all by itself. What had she gone through? What nightmares she’s faced alone!

She's so very hurt…

Even though she’s alive, the loss I hadn’t even fathomed crashed suddenly against me, its inevitability—Mr. Anon, where are you? I need to hug you, too, to see the dispelled sad from your eyes. I need you to see me at my best—a knife that stings dope casts and the many wounds below.

This hurt; this relief…

Around us, a dilapidated world I ignore, clinging to a feeling the giants whose shoulders I stand on have warned me of—of the consequences of feeling too much. “Careful there, otherwise you’ll end up suffocating the poor Hakurei miko!” The sage's voice calls me, a smile anyway on her face. “Wouldn’t be the worst way to go, I guess.”