HouseDerouxScribbles

  As my mind drifts off into the heady night, a strange thing occurs.

  My body feels miraculously light, as if I am being lifted in the air by an invisible force.

  I don't believe in the paranormal, so my logical mind put it down to sleep paralysis and left it at that...

  ... if that lifting force didn't have obvious fingers.

  "Mmmn..."

  Try as I might, my eyelids remain sealed shut, in the darkness, I silently count the number of hands that are carrying me like a mikoshi[1] at a festival parade!

  One...

  Two... Three...

  Four... Five...

  There are at least six pairs of hands holding me up...?!

  I can feel my body drifting forward slowly, guided by these unknown limbs, towards the ever louder beating of taiko drums and shamisen[2] ! The fast, energetic shamisen strings are accompanied by the rapid rhythms of a drumbeat that would be very at home in my ancestral homend of the Old Continent!

  It is when the drumming reaches peak volume when the hands decide to slide me off, bouncing onto hard wooden ground!

  Ow!

  My eyes jolt awake at this sudden pain!

  I realize something is extremely wrong.

  There is no wooden flooring in Sachiko-senpai's home!

  Before me is a familiar scene straight out of my nightmares.

  I find myself staring at the ceiling of an old-timey theater. The ceiling is crossed with long lines of lights that form five protruding edges of a star. Lush red leather covers innumerable rows of empty seating, such that the sole green exit sign at the back is but a hairpin's prick on my left pinky! Exclusive seating in the form of opera boxes rise up at least five stories high at both sides and the back, each section draped with ornate curtains carved chairs.

  This is the pce of nightmares, the pce I call [Deroux Theater].

  I have never understood the logic of how this pce works.

  I don't even know how I end up here in the first pce.

  I just know one thing for sure.

  This pce is definitely connected to Madi-san.

  Why? Because every time I have been pulled into this cursed domain, her annoyingly smug face is sure to be present!

  This time is no exception!

  I have been left on the polished wooden stage of this theater, red curtains pulled apart at the sides to make way for a performance straight out of the abyss; right next to the lying me, drumming a taiko drum that rises up to her unfairly proportioned chest is Madi-san. She is dressed in little more than chest wrappings and a loose orange haori, a pair of twinnedbachi in her hands, happily drumming away like nobody's business!

  "That's it, STOPPU, Madi-san!"

  At my command, the daemon's drumming immediately stops! The line of shamisen pyers arrayed in a neat row behind her also stop their string-pulling, the entire theater falling into echoing silence!

  The purple-haired Frxnchwoman points a bachiin my direction, "Hmm hmm, you don't like shamisen beats, Ayano?"

  "When have you ever learnt how to py instruments from my ancestral homend... Get out of here! You better change back to your normal clothes! Don't let me catch you EVER wearing that in public!" Turning closed eyes away from the clearly inappropriately dressed biichii, I grit my teeth and wait with folded arms! I bet she's wearing a fundoshi[3] down there just to complete 'that' look! This is ruining the PG-13 vibe of this visual novel, I just know it!

  "Spoilsport~"

  Saying thus, the madwoman dips behind the oversized drum which I cannot see behind of. The next moment, she pops out fully clothed in her usual long white sleeves and gold-lined miniskirt! As her pantyhosed boot steps out of the taiko's shadow, the entire ensemble, shamisen pyers knelt at the back and all disappear in a puff of red and blue smoke!

  "Wow, Aya-chan! You always are mean to your kami-sama!"

  The madwoman approaches me on the stage with all the nonchance in the continent, spine diagonally back and lifting her pantyhosed boots with exaggerated steps.

  "Why are you in my dreams again?"

  "How do you even know this is a dream?? Could be isreal for all you know!!"

  "This."

  I raise up my left hand for her to see. Earlier on tonight, Sachiko-senpai had bandaged up my hand with bck wrapping. Bck wrapping extremely specific and unique to her! Right now however, there is absolutely nothing on my raised hand!

  Compared to the past few times where I had been brought here screaming and against my will, my head is completely clear tonight! If this were a physical location in New Coimbra, there is no reason for Madi-san to take off my bandages! An obvious inconsistency! Therefore, your detective concludes that we aren't even in New Coimbra at all!

  "Let me out of your Dxmain Expansixn, Madi-san. Some of us need to sleep."

  "... what's a Dxmain Expansixn?"

  "How do you make 'Nah, I'd win' references if you don't even know what that is?!"

  I throw my hands up in despair, this smug biichii has zero reason to be in my dreams tonight! Its not like I died tonight, or we killed a glowie or anything...

  As I say that, my right foot steps on something squishy on the stage floor...

  ... looking downwards I find myself stepping on the lightly breathing body of a familiar glowing catgirl...

  "AHHHHH!!! DEAD BODY!!!"

  This was the catgirl I was talking about when I first met (You)! Remember that animal abuse (catgirl) charge that Madi-san has yet to pay for?! That's HER! I thought she died after you double-kneed her off a twenty-foot high rooftop! The cracks in the pavement don't lie! Why is SHE here?!

  "Rex, Aya-chan, its a dream... 「desho ne」! Ehehehe!"

  How can I rex, you biichii! Just two nights ago, the glowies sent her and an army of goatgirls to kill you with sound zars you call [Directed Energy Weapons]! Mere hours ago I got right up and close to a purveyor of human blood, fresh from the vein! Am I hallucinating all this because of the pink mist from back there? That's got to be it, right? I'm just tearing at my side-curls just trying to make sense of it all!

  "Oui! That's why its time for another round of [Deroux Theater]!

  Where YOUR best friend (moi'), the [Exposer of Conspiracies],

  expins recent happenings to those who don't believe!

  So listen closely Aya-chan,

  the topic of this [Deroux Theater] is [Spirit Coo---"

  "No."

  I put my foot down resolutely.

  The catgirl on the ground grunts in unconsciousness at the sudden impact on the small of her back, which I apologize for! sumimasen! It was an accident! Really! Really!!

  Shifting a little to the left where I won't accidentally stomp on her again...

  "No."

  [SFX:Stomp!]

  I'm not having any of this, Madi-san!

  Every time! Every time there's a happening! Something unexpined happens, and somehow you pop up miraculously in [Deroux Theater] to expin it all! There's zero logic or sense to how you even gleam the information, except that you somehow know from the beginning! Even when you do, its always some far-fetched expnation that makes no sense anyway! How do I know you aren't making it up as you go along!

  Madi-san doesn't even seem fazed at my frustration, and instead faces the empty theater, covering the front of her mouth with one gloved hand and pointing to the nearby me with the other,

  "Look at this ungrateful 「kohayai」! Her best 「sendai」 is SOLVING the mysteries for her tiny mind, and Aya-chan still refuses to believe!"

  Haah? Now that really pissed me off. If it comes to solving mysteries, ourSenpai and kōhairetionship should be inversed! YOU are the junior and I am the senior here! You can't even solve a locked room without crying to Bonaparte, whoever he is!

  I, Ayano Sane...

  ... will never accept a half-baked answer in a mystery!

  "I want to solve conspiracies... with logic!"

  My uncompromising firmness draws a line of red across the air. This time it is Madi-san who take a shocked step back. The two of us circle around each other on the stage, eyes burning with eversting fme meeting sea-blue determination! This isn't like back on Bylon Isnd, when I held the handicap of denying magick AND conspiracies!

  This time, it is Madi-san who puts her foot down,

  "Don't be stupid, Aya-chan! If you could do that, it wouldn't BE a conspiracy!"

  The glowing catgirl grunts with hollowed breath, a boot crashing down on her upper spine! Normally, I would wince, but I could care less for bystanders, this is a showdown between (me) and Madi-san now!

  "That's right! Your conspiracies then cease to be conspiracies... and becomes a mystery...!"

  [SFX:Dramatic Drumbeats]

  I have no idea where that one came from, but thank you, mysterious daemon with the taiko drum! There's no way I can beat the [Exposer of Conspiracies] at her own game. However, if that battlefield shifts to the field of mysteries, it is I, Ayano Sane who has the advantage! Seeing that pointed index finger of mine must be a great shock to you, Madi-san! You must have never thought the day would come when the kōhai would dare raise a finger against her senpai!

  The time for idle talk is now over.

  I have never stood up to Madi-san like this since the day she trounced me back on Bylon Isnd.

  If the biichii wants to cim that EVERYTHING is connected...

  ... I'll let her hang on her own rope!

  From my left side,

  I press the bottom of my right closed fist with the bottom of my left closed fist...

  An unguarded hilt mennifests in my right hand,

  drawing the deadly glint of blue from underneath!

  I'll begin... by attacking your central conspiracy...!

  Go Go And Learn Moonrunes With Aya-chan![1] mikoshi- 神輿, sometimes at festivals there will be float parades, one common sight at such parades are mikoshia small squarish shrine that can be carried around, usually on a stretcher by four people!

  [2]taiko drums and shamisen- Traditional instruments from the Old Continent. Taiko drums are self expnatory, the shamisen is a three-stringed instrument, these ones I saw have thin necks, but the ones from my hometown have really thick necks!

  [3] fundoshi- "Aya-chan! Expin!" "No!!!"

  HouseDerouxScribbles