The world had come to a standstill as I peered into Chen’s trembling pupils, the hope that brews there, before following that hand I know so well. Hope washes over me. A prowling nightmare bore light again, and no matter how many Gaps marred Chen’s visage and maimed her, when the three of us are together—days under the pretend sky of every simulated season inside the Fake Shrine, drinking tea and enjoying the sparse moments of… peace—, every wrong of this world dies out and things just make sense.

I turn to look at her from below, precious fading life in my arms. A purple thunderstorm fills the background; Okina stares with an expression I neither care for nor bother with.

There’s only us.

It is why the heartbreak is so acute.

Her hand had left my shoulder, gaining a creaking quality that seemed to sicken her whole body, even underneath the tattered and damaged Yakumo clothes. Every inch of exposed skin was gaining these lines, ancient and coarse, as if her fair skin was made of paper—it seemingly was; they slowly peeled off and dissipated into the wind, revealing more and more paper below—, golden hair brittle and imposing nine tails, the fur so dense I once mused about knitting scarves from it, down and dragging across the gravel. She breathes laboriously, eyes on me, one of them unraveling like a blooming flower and losing scraps of paper to the air. “… What’s happening to Chen, Anon?” Despite what was happening to her, those eyes lay on the bakeneko.

The question left me before I could do anything: “R-Ran…?” I ask, dazed.

—

They run all summer,
He follows them; he's all smiles,
Distance swells; I stay.

—

Ran looks past me, focusing on Chen—I can’t tell; her eyes are unmaking. Tears prickle the corners of mine before I even get an answer—, and they narrow as they lay on the dissipating blue flames. Her brow furrowed, and she got on her knees, a trail of disappearing paper where her feet once were. What is happening…? Why…? “She used a talisman like this one on Yukari, didn’t she?” She asks low, showing me a red-and-blue talisman. The same Aya struck against my cage to destroy it. I nod, a trembling mess, eyes on her features, completely dumbfounded by how casual she seemed.

I had seen it before, when she came to the Fake Shrine with her back bleeding, whip marks all over.

She returns the nod. Her neck thins like a cut tree; her hair and nine tails are melting away; and her hands that I'd often take in mine threaten to disappear whole as, after placing the talisman by her side, she scoops Chen into her arms. I watched it all, impotent and overwhelmed. Our dying, most precious life held firmly by her crumbling figure. “… Yukari crafted this body of mine using her Gap, Anon,” she starts, nuzzling a few strands of hair from Chen’s face. Her eyes had closed again, dark circles surrounding them. “This body is not mine—it feels so… You loved it like so,” she smiles, despite it all. “But it is not mine.”

Pieces fell into place one by one, and a terrible picture formed. “… Y-Yukari lost her Gap.” I whisper, remembering her words.

Ran nods, looking at the talisman on the ground. “Without her as a source of power, this body is cannibalizing itself—it feeds from every Gap Yukari planted, consumes them… Soon enough, I’ll—”

“NO!” I yell, grabbing her shoulders. Tears thicken, heart thrums. The purple lightning is a constant reminder of who had launched this nightmare. “W-We can do something, right? If C-Chen took away her Gap, and you have another talisman… t-then you just take it for yourself! Then everything will be okay!” I reach to cup her cheeks with my charred, destroyed hands, and the way she leans into my touch stirs my heart.

She looks at me lovingly before reaching for one of my hands and gently taking it to the pouring hole in Chen’s chest, towards the collection of Gaps there. W-What is she—

On a dark night, loud sobbing echoes and overpowers the rain. I watch from a distance as she digs the ground with bare hands, a corpse by her side. It wears pink and soft blue, bloodied beyond understanding. I remember that pink-haired woman.

She was so very kind to me…

—I blink, and I’m looking into Ran’s eyes again. The one unraveling eye had fully disappeared, and she closed it. “… The Gaps are flocking to this wound without Chen’s command. A memory ingrained so deeply in them is what keeps her between the… border of life and death.” She continues as she releases my hand, not by will: it had disappeared. “If these Gaps are disrupted, she’ll die immediately…”

It is too sudden, too impossible to wrap my mind around.

I don’t know what to do.

Gensokyo is not meant for simple men.

I stare at my burns, the twin casts of porcelain. One gold thread remains. “I-If you just take the Gap…” This string of words disgusts me.

Ran hums. “… Yes, if I just…” then, she looks into my eyes. Her tears are many.

Within her one eye, insurmountable love.

Dolly had that same gaze.

“… I’ll save her instead, Anon.”