Stardew Valley of Gensokyo

"How could you use these things to desecrate Marisa?"

As if performing in a stage play, Alice recited her lines, twisted her skirt, stood up from her chair, bowed slowly, and stepped into the room.

After their owner left, the dolls swarmed forward, each with a clear division of labor, and dismantled the broken doll completely.

Penglai on the ball of yarn remained silent, watching everything unfold before it, its head slowly tilting to one side.

......

The Western-style mansion was brightly lit, with tiered crystal chandeliers radiating dazzling light. They were not connected to electrical wires, so they did not need electricity; they only required daily replenishment of magic.

From afar, Marisa spotted the brightly lit mansion while flying in the air. Her stomach growled with hunger, so she sped up and flew directly to the entrance.

"Alice, I'm here to see you~" Marisa called out after knocking politely on the door and taking a step back. She knew that if you were going to freeload, you had to act like one.

"Marisa, you've come?"

Alice, still immersed in the emotions of the newly adapted puppet show, suddenly beamed with joy. Instead of using the puppet, she walked to the door herself and opened it. Looking at Marisa's bright smile in front of her, her previous emotions vanished without a trace, as if they had never existed.

"Hehe~ I'm bothering you again."

"It's not something I can say outright about me getting a free meal," Marisa said, scratching the back of her head sheepishly.

"What trouble?" Alice suppressed her joy, a hint of complaint on her face, and took Marisa's hand, pulling her into the house, saying, "Just treat this place as your home!"

She wasn't joking when she said that.

However, Marisa didn't understand the meaning behind Alice's words; instead, her attention was drawn to the chandelier above her head.

"It's still brighter here!"

Thinking of the dim light bulb in her own home, and looking at the magnificent crystal chandelier, Marisa sighed.

"Do you want one? I'll give you a set," Alice said generously, and then she asked the doll to go to the storeroom to get one.

"Oh? No need for that. I was just saying, don't take it seriously."

Marisa, who was just saying it casually, quickly refused. Besides, she didn't have a space to hang a crystal chandelier, and replenishing her magic every day was also a hassle, which she couldn't do.

"Alright then..." Alice said with some disappointment. If Marisa really accepted, she could still manage to add a remote spying backdoor to the chandelier.

Gulu gulu~

The conversation took a while, and Marisa's stomach finally started growling.

"Um, excuse me, I'm a little hungry. Alice, do you have anything to eat here?"

"This is the most important purpose of coming here today," Marisa Kirisame said with bright eyes.

“Of course!” Alice turned and ordered, “Penglai, quickly go to the kitchen and make a new dessert.”

Having received the order, the Penglai doll turned and drifted quietly into the kitchen.

"Alice? I remember your puppets were all controlled by control wires, right? Now they can understand what I'm saying?"

With her hands flailing about, Marisa mimicked Alice's previous gesture of controlling the puppet and asked in confusion.

"It's a secret~" Alice blinked her bright eyes, her expression alluring and mysterious. "But if you want to hear it, I can tell you~"

"Then forget it." Marisa chose to start directly.

She didn't want to study on an empty stomach; studying should be done after she was full!

The principle is...

Alice, who had thought Marisa would agree out of curiosity, suddenly froze, swallowing back the words she was about to say. Since Marisa didn't want to hear it, she wouldn't say it.

The scene fell silent again, with only the voice of the doll in the kitchen still echoing.

Resting her chin on her hand, Alice looked at Marisa in front of her, feeling a little anxious. It had been so long since she had come, and their common topics of conversation were like a dried-up well, with not a drop left.

Suddenly, Alice recalled the time when Marisa taught her to fish at the Misty Lake. Ever since then, she had been practicing her fishing skills diligently, hoping to have something to talk about with Marisa.

Isn't the opportunity here?

Following her preconceived notions, Alice tentatively asked, "Marisa, have you been fishing lately?"

"Fishing?" Marisa shook her head and replied, "There hasn't been any lately. No fish are biting when we use mushrooms as bait."

Seeing that the topic had come up, Alice's face lit up with joy, and she pressed on while the iron was hot, saying, "You must be bored lately, after all, it's winter and the mushrooms in the forest haven't even sprouted yet."

"Maybe before, but I'm not bored at all today!"

Marisa spoke excitedly when the topic came up.

“Is… is it?”

The unexpected turn of events left Alice momentarily stunned, unsure how to respond.

With a delighted look in her eyes, Marisa recalled the time she had spent with Master Akina today and couldn't hide her smile as she said, "Master Akina came to ask me for help today. We went to the Old Hell. It was my first time going to the Old Hell!"

"The two of you together?" Alice replied somewhat stiffly, as she and Marisa had never experienced anything like this before.

"Yes?" Marisa responded doubtfully, but she quickly put those thoughts aside and continued talking about her favorite topics.

"You don't know, at that moment, the ground shook violently, and we couldn't even stand up straight. Just then, a stream of boiling water sprayed straight at the two of us!" Marisa described vividly.

"What happened next?" Alice asked with concern upon hearing that they had encountered danger.

"Hehe, everything was fine after that~" Marisa patted her chest and said proudly, "I didn't even have time to react before Master Akina pushed me away, while he got soaked in the rain."

"...Did something happen to him?" Alice didn't know what she was feeling when she said those words; at that moment, she felt somewhat ugly...

"Huh? Master Akina is fine too, but you don't know how worried I was!"

Just thinking about that scene made Marisa's cheeks inexplicably flush. She was too embarrassed to even mention the part where she pinned Akina Sawa to the ground.

"Does Marisa worry about others too?" Looking at Marisa's obviously blushing face, Alice didn't know what she was saying. At this moment, she just wanted to blindly follow the topic.

"Alice?"

Clearly, the conversation was off-topic, and Marisa looked over with a puzzled expression.

"I'm fine, let's continue. I'm probably hungry too." Alice forced a smile, but her mind was a complete mess.

Looking at Marisa in front of her, Alice really didn't want to stay any longer; her heart felt like it was about to escape.

She stood up, forced a smile at Marisa, and said, "I'll go check the kitchen; the dolls must be having some problems."

"Okay, then come back quickly. I still have a lot of things to tell you about Master Akina."

Unaware of what was going on, Marisa was so focused on her experiences that she completely missed Alice's situation.

“…Okay.” Alice nodded slowly and walked towards the kitchen, glancing back just before entering.

In the dim light, the look in Kirisame Marisa's eyes was one she had never seen before...

Chapter Ninety-Four: The Grim Reaper Who Just Wants to Slack Off

After following the clues through the barrier between the living and the dead and arriving in the village of humans, Onozuka Komachi naturally slowed down her pace.

The human world is much better than the godforsaken underworld. If the money from the incense offerings from the underworld weren't too much to buy a house in the human world, she wouldn't have used the residence of that ghost king who had become an immortal as her secret base for rest.

It's not impossible, but that guy keeps a lot of pets. Unfortunately, Onozuka Komachi doesn't really like animals. She's always being woken up by animal noises while she's sleeping. She's been woken up by animal noises several times while she's sound asleep.

Over time, even Death would suffer from nervous exhaustion!

The energy emanating from the Saigyou Ayakashi was weakened many times over after passing through the Netherworld Barrier, so much so that even Onozuka Komachi could only barely make it out.

So at this stage, the job becomes a delicate one, requiring one to walk slower, look more carefully, and occasionally lie on a roadside stone for several tens of minutes to recover one's energy. It seems that even if Lord Enma arrived, it couldn't be said that Onozuka Komachi was slacking off!

This is all for Lord Shiki's mission, his work!

But even the longest journey eventually comes to an end, and with all the stopping and starting, Onozuka Komachi said with dissatisfaction, looking at the courtyard not far away:

"How did we get here? Could we move to another spot?"

Feeling that the journey was too short, and basking in the sun, Onozuka Komachi felt that the faint musty smell on her body hadn't completely dissipated.

"Let me see what's going on."

Despite her complaints and her attempts to slack off, Onozuka Komachi dutifully began her investigation. Looking around, she could clearly see that the aura emanating from the Netherworld Saigyou Ayakashi was connected to the lush green cherry blossom tree in the courtyard.

There's clearly a big problem: cherry blossoms, green leaves out of season, and a faint aura of the dead.

"Clearly, this should be the location of the incident."

After a simple analysis, Onozuka Komachi concluded that although the tree also possessed a lush vitality, this did not affect her judgment.

The crime scene and the tools used in the crime have been found. The next step is to find the culprit—the one who caused so many souls to escape from the underworld, increasing the workload of the Hall of Right and Wrong and her ferryman.

"However, when it comes to this matter, Bai Yulou can't escape responsibility either, can he?"

While pondering the clues, Onozuka Komachi walked towards the yard.

But just as she was about to reach the courtyard gate, a warning voice came from beside her.

"Who are you? You're not allowed to come any closer!"

Following the direction from which the sound came, Onozuka Komachi looked over in confusion, only to see Cirno with blue hair and ice wings staring at her warily with wide eyes.

"No, I was just passing by."

Unwilling to reveal her true intentions, Onozuka Komachi made a small attempt to conceal them.

"I don't believe it! The intense aura of death emanating from you is almost overflowing; you definitely didn't just happen to be passing by!"

However, the seemingly dim-witted Cirno immediately saw through the Grim Reaper's lie.

She could also sense the aura of death emanating from the cherry blossom tree in the courtyard, and the person who had come to her door must be related to the tree. But now the tree was the lifeblood of Daijō, and Cirno could not allow anything to happen to it.

Although Cirno always felt guilty towards the Great Fairy and dared not meet her, her desire to protect her was genuine.

Normally, fairies would flee at the mere sight of her presence, but this fairy dared to block her path. The Grim Reaper, who was only looking to slack off, chuckled and said:

"You know my aura, so why don't you run away? Aren't you fairies the most cowardly?"

"I'm not a coward! Bring it on, my ice cubes won't lose!"

She adopted a fighting stance, but the three pairs of icy wings on Cirno's back were trembling incessantly.

Death is death, exerting immense pressure on living beings, especially on fairies with strong telepathic abilities; they are practically a special attack force against them.

But Onozuka Komachi didn't want to fight. She was only there to investigate, and it wouldn't be worth it to fight a fairy, especially since Shiki-sama's mission didn't mention that.

So, with the intention of scare away birds and beasts, Onozuka Komachi took the large scythe off her shoulder, gently wiped the gleaming blade, turned her head and grinned mischievously, "Get out of the way, or I'll take you to the underworld too. There are lots of ghosts in there~"

While using colleagues from the underworld as material for scare tactics is a bit inappropriate, as long as the method works, it's fine.

"I'm not afraid at all!" Cirno retorted defiantly. "Even if a ghost comes, I'll freeze it into a block of ice!"

"Oh? Really not afraid?" Onozuka Komachi chuckled as she watched Cirno tremble as she put her legs up.

"Not afraid!"

It seems this fairy has gone mad. Onozuka Komachi scratched the back of her head, feeling annoyed. She really didn't want to waste her energy fighting.

But if we ask Cirno why she's guarding this place, maybe she'll leave on her own?

Having made up her mind, Onozuka Komachi tentatively asked, "Why won't you let me through? Who's in that yard?"

"Those inside are all my underlings, though I don't know if they still recognize me..."

Cirno spoke with pride in the first part, but her tone clearly softened in the second half.

Seeing that a breakthrough seemed to have been found, Onozuka Komachi pressed her advantage, saying, "Since they don't recognize you anymore, why are you still guarding them? Why don't you leave quickly?"

"No!" Cirno stubbornly replied, "Only the boss has the right to disown his subordinates!"

"Sigh..." Onozuka Komachi sighed. She was helpless against the fairy in front of her if she didn't resort to violence.

But the mission absolutely had to be completed, and Onozuka Komachi took a step forward.

Cirno, who had been on guard, immediately pulled a frozen frog from her pocket, which had been frozen in the summer, and threatened, "Don't come any closer, or you'll end up like it!"

The frozen frog inside the ice block retains the lifelike expression it had just been in before it was frozen; it was frozen by Cirno while it was leaping and flying through the air.

"Huh? Your frozen frog seems to be melting?"

Onozuka Komachi pointed at the frozen frog in Cirno's hand with a look of surprise and said...

"Impossible! My frozen frog will never melt."

Although she was quite certain in her heart, Cirno still subconsciously looked down at the frozen frog in her hand.

"The Hate Symbol: A Bound Spirit Filled with Lingering Longing!"