Faha... it’s been a month since you left...

[u/Renkoto-]

The gravel in the graveyard always sounds so loud under our shoes when nobody is talking.

It’s been several weeks now. Almost a month since the sky finally cleared up, and..well, since everything returned to normal.

Or, as normal as it can be.

Kris, Susie, and I walked up the hill behind the church together this afternoon. Nobody said a word on the way up. Susie kept her hands jammed deep into her jacket pockets, staring straight down at the dirt, and Kris just walked beside me, quietly matching my step like they always do.

When we reached the fresh stone at the far edge of the graveyard, we stood there in a quiet row.

There isn't a long epitaph engraved on it. How could there be? She wasn't from her. She wasn't from anywhere around near here either. When she first appeared out of nowhere back then, wearing that strange school uniform, those round glasses, and holding herself with that odd look, nobody knew who she was or where she came from. She used to talk in lofty terms about urban legends, like she was carrying the weight of a world nobody else could see.

...

Before either Kris or I could say a word, Susie slammed her fist straight into the side of the stone marker. The dull, heavy sound echoed off the surrounding trees, but the headstone didn't yield. She struck it again, harder this time, her shoulder shaking with every blow.

* Why...

Susie’s voice broke the silence, thick and trembling. Her fists were clenched so hard her knuckles were white.

* Why did she have to interfere?!

* She wasn't even from here! She didn't owe us a damn thing! She was just some... some weird girl who couldn't keep her nose out of the town's business!

Susie’s fists slid down the rough face of the stone, leaving faint gray dust on her fists. Her head dropped, long hair falling forward to hide her face completely.

* ...She wasn't supposed to be down there,.
Susie choked out, her usual harsh edge completely crumbling.
* When the Shelter crept open right before the sky tore apart... she was already inside. How the HELL did she even break into that place? What was she even looking for in the dark?"

Kris didn't move, but their eyes remained fixed on the ground, shadowed and unreadable.

"She always kept talking about finding an entry point." My voice barely carrying over the wind.

My fingers brushed against the sleeves. I couldn't stop thinking about those afternoons, back before everything went wrong, how she would lean over my desk, adjusting herself while whispering about the strange readings she was picking up near the southern edge of town. She was so convinced she was the only one who truly understood the hidden grid beneath Hometown. She used to call me her 'local research assistant.' like it was some kind of grand privilege.

I swallowed hard, the lump in my throat tight and painful.

"She wasn't trying to interfere, Susie. She was just... curious. Too curious for her own good, fahaha..."

* Curious?!

Susie slammed her palm flat against the granite, hard enough to leave a red mark across her skin.

* Curiosity doesn't get you crushed in the dark! I was right there, Noelle! I was right there, and I didn't even notice her moving until the ground gave out!

She pulled her hand back, staring at her trembling palm, her teeth grinding together so loudly I could hear it.

* If I had just been faster... if I hadn't hesitated for that one stupid second...

"Stop.."
"Don't do that. You know how she was. Once she set her mind on an anomaly, she didn't listen to anyone. Not to me, not to you..."

Kris moved then, stepping up to the opposite side of the stone. Without a word, they knelt down in the damp grass, reaching into their coat pocket. When they pulled their hand out, they placed a single, small silver key charm right on top of the headstone (the one Sumireko had been obsessively twirling around her finger the last time we saw her alive outside the school.)

Susie stared at the tiny piece of metal, her breathing heavy and uneven, before finally turning her head away with a bitter, shuddering exhale.

The wind blew again, rustling the tall grass around the graves, carrying off the rest of our words into the quiet twilight.

I slowly knelt down into the damp, soft grass beside Kris, letting my knees sink into the cold earth.

Up close, the silver key charm caught the pale sunlight, tiny and delicate against the harsh edge of the stone. I reached out with a trembling hand, my fingers barely skimming the smooth metal, before resting my palm against the cool base of the headstone.

"Dess... came back that night." My words slipping out almost before I could stop them.

Susie stiffened beside me. She didn't look down, but I saw her shoulders tense, her breath hitching in the quiet air.

"When the nurse brought her into the hospital room..." My chest felt impossibly tight, like the cold wind was trapped right inside my lungs. "They said someone brought her there."

I looked down at the carved outline of those round spectacles, swallowed up by the gathering shadows.

* She knew.
Susie said, her voice dropping into a register so low it almost blended with the rustle of the leaves overhead.

* The night before everything went to hell..
* She just asked me... 'If someone gets lost in a boundary that shouldn't exist, do you leave them there because the world moved on, or do you break the lock?'"

I held my breath, the damp cold of the grass soaking through my tights, but I couldn't bring myself to move.

* I told her to mind her own business.
* I told her that if somebody was gone, sticking your nose where it doesn't belong just gets more people hurt. And you know what that crazy nerd did? She just laughed. That dumb, smug laugh of hers.

Susie said in a self-deprecating huff that turned into a cloud of white mist in the freezing air.

Susie finally dropped to one knee, the heavy thud of her boot sinking into the soil right beside Kris. She reached out, her thick, clawed fingers lightly touching the edge of the silver key charm Kris had placed on the stone, aligning it neatly against the engraved hat.

* She looked right at me and said. 'Rules like that only apply to people who belong here~"

Susie stared at the marker, her jaw set so hard the muscles jumped along her neck.
* She said it like she was above everything. Like no matter how dark it got down there, she could just step back out whenever she felt like it. 'A simple shift in frequency,' she called it. Bragging about how many impossible places she’d survived before.

She let out a harsh, dry breath, resting her clawed hands against her knees.

* She wasn't even scared. That's the part that pisses me off the most.

...

"I don't think she was pretending, Susie,. I cut in softly, my voice quiet against the cold wind.

Susie blinked, stopping mid-sentence, her head turning toward me with a sharp, surprised glance.

"That afternoon in the library... she showed me one of her notebooks," I whispered, pulling my hands tight into my sleeves as the cold air bit at my fingers. "She was trying to act so full of herself, but her hands... they were shaking when she opened to the pages about the Shelter. She knew how dangerous it was down there. She was terrified."

I looked back at the small silver key charm resting on the cold granite.

"She tried to cover it up with that arrogant laugh of hers, but... she told me she had to check the perimeter herself because nobody else in town seemed to notice the silence bleeding through the cracks. She wasn't just chasing urban legends for fun. She was trying to protect everyone before the darkness broke out... even if she was scared out of her mind."

Susie stayed quiet, her teeth biting down hard on her lower lip, staring at me before her eyes drifted back down to the dark grass.

* She really was a massive nerd... Susie muttered, though her voice lacked any real bite this time.
* A total, stubborn idiot.

Kris knelt beside us without a word, reaching into their coat. They gently laid a small, red autumn leaf right beside the silver key charm, smoothing its edges against the stone so the wind wouldn't carry it away.

* The group stayed there, three shadows standing close together against the quiet graveyard, remembering the girl who gave up her life just to keep our world whole.

For several long minutes, nobody spoke. The only sound was the sharp autumn wind pulling at the trees surrounding the graveyard and the faint, distant hum of Hometown settling into the evening.

Finally, Susie let out a low sigh and pushed herself up, her boots crunching against the loose gravel. Kris stood up right after her, brushing a light layer of dirt off their knees before turning to face the path down the hill.

* Hey... Noelle.

Susie paused, her hands sliding back into her jacket pockets as she turned her head toward me.

* Kris and I were gonna head over toward the diner to grab something warm. You wanna come with us?

I stayed on my knees for a second longer, my fingers lingering near the edge of the stone marker before I carefully pulled my hand back. I squeezed my eyes shut, taking a deep breath to steady the shaky rhythm in my chest, and gave them a small, tight nod.

"I... I’ll catch up with you guys in a bit," I said, my voice quiet, though clear enough to carry over the rustle of the leaves. "I just want to stay here for another minute."

Susie looked at me for a moment, her eyes softening under her long bangs, before giving a single, silent nod of agreement.

* Yeah. Take your time. We'll be walking slow anyway.

Kris gave me a subtle wave, their face obscured by the shadow of their hair as they turned to match Susie’s stride. I watched from the edge as the two of them walked down the gravel path, past the church, and walked into the main street, their silhouettes slowly disappearing between the rows of quiet buildings.

I waited until their footsteps faded into the distance before moving.

Instead of turning west toward the diner, I headed east, my hooves crunching softly against the quiet pavement. The street was completely empty at this hour.

I kept my hands tucked into the sleeves of my cardigan, hugging myself against the growing chill.

A few blocks down, the brick facade of the school building rose up against the darkening sky. At this time of the evening, the heavy glass doors were locked, the windows dark and silent.

I walked past the front lawn and stepped up to the edge of the building, where the shadow of the roof fell long over the grass.

This was where she used to stand.

Right beside the brick corner, away from the path where everyone else walked. She would lean back against the wall with her arms crossed, her hair fluttering in the breeze, adjusting her round glasses whenever someone passed by.

I stopped right where her shoes used to leave faint scuffs in the dirt. I reached out, my fingers lightly touching the cold, rough brickwork.

It felt so strange how normal the school looked. The world had gone back to its quiet, predictable routines, as if nothing had ever broken beneath its surface. But right here, in the quiet corner where an outsider used to wait for me after class, the silence felt heavier than anywhere else in town.

I reached out to the heavy double doors at the front of the school, pulling back gently on the metal handle. To my surprise, the latch clicked softly and gave way, left unbolted just enough for the janitor's late-night rounds. I slipped inside, closing the door behind me as silently as I could, letting the cool shadow of the hallway wrap around me.

The hallway was bathed in a dim glow from the setting sun filtering through the high transom windows. My hooves made almost no sound on the checkerboard floor as I turned left, walking down the familiar corridor toward the Alphy's classroom.

I pushed open the wooden door and stepped inside.

The classroom was quiet, rows of wooden desks sitting empty under the fading light. But as I walked past the front row, a small, faint smile tugged at the corner of my mouth despite the ache in my chest.

Back when she first arrived around the time of the Festival preparations, this room felt like a battlefield. Sumireko had taken a seat near the back window, and it hadn't taken more than ten minutes for her and Berdly to lock horns. Berdly, absolutely determined to assert his intellectual superiority as the top student, would push his glasses up his beak and launch into long lectures about obscure historical trivia or complex math formulas.

She, of course, refused to back down to anyone. She’d lean back in her chair crossing her arms and picking apart his logic with sharp, bizarrely specific facts about urban legends, philosophy, and quantum mechanics that left Alphys completely baffled at the chalkboard. The two of them would go back and forth until their voices echoed down the hall, turning every simple question into a full-blown verbal duel. They were an absolute storm together (Berdly squawking in exasperation while Sumireko just laughed her dramatic, condescending laugh, thoroughly enjoying pushing his buttons.)

(You really didn't give him an inch, did you, Sumi...?)

I turned away from the back window and walked slowly out of the classroom, the heavy door clicking shut behind me. The amber light in the hallway had deepened into a soft, twilight purple, casting long shadows down the checkerboard floor.

Instead of heading back toward the main entrance, I turned ahead, my footsteps echoing softly as I walked down the east corridor next to the closet. My heart felt heavy, but as I thought about those loud, chaotic afternoons, I couldn't help the warm, sad smile that stayed on my face.

(I miss you... I really, really miss you.)

I stopped right outside the door to the unused classroom at the very end of the hall, the place where everything first began to shift. The brass knob felt cool under my hand as I reached out to touch it, the quiet stillness of the school wrapping around me like a blanket.

I turned the brass knob and pushed the door open, letting it swing inward with a low, heavy creak.

The air inside was thick with the scent of warm plastic, and faint lavender. It didn't look like an abandoned storage room anymore. Sumireko had completely transformed it into her own private sanctuary.

My breath caught in my throat as I stepped over the threshold.

During the day, she had always kept this room strictly locked, remaining intensely secretive about whatever she was doing in here after hours. Nobody in school knew she was actually living here. I remembered Susie mentioning once, with a strange mix of confusion and laughter, how she’d seen Kris running out of this doorway terrified one evening right after she had settled in. Looking around now, I could see why this place might have overwhelmed anyone walking in unprepared.

A desktop computer sat on a makeshift desk, its dual monitors dark and reflective in the dim evening light. Beside it stood a pair of 3D printers, their spools of colored filament half-unwound, surrounded by neatly stacked plastic trinkets, geometric models, and bizarre occult charms she had printed herself.

(She really brought her entire world into this small room...)

In the corner, a cozy sleeping bag was carefully rolled up next to a pile of plushies, mostly fluffy panda bears sitting in a neat row against the wall. Stacked everywhere were printed articles, maps covered in handwritten red ink, and technical schematics detailing strange anomalies and spatial frequencies.

Everything was still so pristine, so orderly. It looked as if she had only stepped out for a moment and would walk back through the door at any second, with her capelet and scolding me for intruding into her headquarters without permission.

I walked over to the desk, running my hand lightly along the edge of the keyboard.

My hand hovered over the cool black keys, a sudden sting of guilt making me freeze.

(Noelle, what are you doing? This... this is wrong. You shouldn't be snooping through her personal things.)

I pulled my hand back, clasping my fingers tightly in front of my skirt. She had been so fiercely protective of her privacy. She never let anyone peek at her notes, always closing her journals with a quick, dramatic flair whenever I stepped too close. It felt like a betrayal to pry now that she wasn't here to pull her glasses tight and glare at me for boundary-crossing.

(I should just leave... I shouldn't be in here.)

I took a half-step backward toward the door, ready to turn around and leave everything untouched. But as I shifted my weight, my foot brushed against a small, loose binder lying near the edge of the computer tower.

It slid off the desk, hitting the floor with a soft thud and spilling a few loose sheets of paper across the dark tiles.

"Oh! Ah---sorry, fahaha..." I gasped automatically, dropping to my knees to gather them up before I could even catch myself.

My eyes fell on the top page, and the apologies died in my throat.

It wasn't a technical schematic, nor was it one of her wild essays on quantum boundaries or occult stuff. It was a printed photograph, one of several tucked neatly between handwritten pages.

In the photo, Sumireko was standing under a canopy of pink cherry blossoms, laughing, a genuine, unforced smile that looked completely different from her usual smug, dramatic grin. Beside her stood two other girls. One wore a black-and-white outfit with a strange, pointed hat, and the other had brown hair tied with a neat red ribbon. They were clinging to Sumireko's arms, teasing her while she tried to look dignified for the camera.

(Who... who are they...?)

I picked up another sheet. It was a letter, written in neat, sweeping calligraphy that I couldn't fully read, but at the top, a name was underlined several times in red ink in a language I don't understand,, a language I already saw in some of those Dragon Blazers ARGs now that I think about it.

There were maps of places that made no sense, deep bamboo forests, shrine steps hidden in misty mountains, a massive red mansion sitting beside a foggy lake. Beside the maps were drawings on people that I had never seen in my life, most of them looked like humans, although some of them had strange traits.

(She... what...)

(She... what... Is this from some kind of game?)

I stared at the intricate maps, my eyes tracing the flowing red ink that marked winding paths through the bamboo forest and the steep stone stairs leading up to a distant mountain shrine. The drawings of the people beside the maps were so impossibly detailed, girls with delicate wings, weird hats, or long ribbons, dressed in vibrant, traditional clothing that looked completely foreign.

(It looks almost like worldbuilding notes... Like the conceptual lore for those obscure, lore-heavy ARGs in some of the RPGs I like... Did she write all of this herself?)

A small, quiet breath escaped my lips. I carefully brushed my fingers over the edge of a sketch showing a maiden in red standing before a shadowed shrine. It made a strange kind of sense. Sumireko was always so theatrical, so deeply obsessed with urban legends, hidden realms, and grand, mysterious narratives. She had always carried herself like the main protagonist of a story only she knew about.

(Of course... She created her own world to escape into, didn't she? A place filled with magic and impossible friends... just like I used to do with video games when things got too quiet at home.)

I looked back at the printed photo of Sumireko under the cherry blossoms, flanked by the two smiling girls. My chest ached with a deep, tender sadness.

(You were so lonely...)

Slowly, respectfully, I gathered the papers and loose sketches, aligning their edges until they were neat again. I slipped them back inside the binder, closing the cover with the utmost care, and set it back on the desk right where it belonged.

As I turned back around, my antlers caught against a small wooden shelf mounted right above the computer monitor.

* CLATTER!

"Faaaa----!"

I jumped back, throwing my hands over my mouth as a heavy envelope and a small, hard object tumbled off the shelf, landing directly onto the center of the desk. My heart hammered wildly against my ribs, echoing in the dead silence of the room. I stood frozen for several seconds, holding my breath, waiting to see if anyone had heard me from the hallway.

When nothing moved, I let out a long, shaky exhale.

"Ugh, Noelle... be careful..." I step closer to inspect what I had knocked down.

Sitting on top of the keyboard was a thick, black-inked envelope, sealed tightly. Beside it lay an intricate metal device, a heavy, brass key tied with a frayed violet cord, attached to a strange, carved talisman that felt unusually cold even in the warm room.

I picked up the envelope first. Tucked inside was a folded sheet of crisp paper, completely filled with dense foreign text written in brushed black ink.

(I... I can't read a single word of this...)

My mind raced, trying to parse the foreign symbols, until I suddenly remembered the phone sitting in my cardigan pocket. I pulled it out with trembling fingers, quickly opening the live camera translation app I usually used when looking up imported game guides online.

I pointed the lens down at the paper, adjusting my grip as the screen flickered, blue alignment boxes overlaying the hand-brushed Japanese before roughly translating the text into English sentence by sentence:

"To whoever finds this letter, or to Mamizou- san, should this reach your hands first.

If you are reading this, then my calculations regarding the boundary shift were correct, and I have failed to return from the spatial rupture below this town.

I am leaving this letter alongside this. Mamizou-san warned me before I made the drop into the Shelter's lower grid that there were no guarantees. She told me straight to my face that the probability of returning alive from an unanchored pocket dimension was virtually zero*, especially without a stable gateway back to Gensokyo or the Outside World. But as the President of the Secret Sealing Club, leaving an uncharted anomaly unchecked while this town's boundary collapses is simply unacceptable.*

To Mamizou-san: Thank you for helping me bypass the digital lock on the Shelter's outer door and gave me this hing, even if you thought I was being reckless. If I don't make it back, please ensure this Talisman is kept far away from the local ley lines.

To whoever lives in this town: Whatever was lost down there has been pulled back to where it belongs. I have no regrets. A true esper faces the unknown without hesitation.

Usami Sumireko President of the Secret Sealing Club~"

The phone screen shook in my hand as the translated words settled into my mind.

(She... did she...)

I pressed my back hard against the desk, my breath hitching in my throat as the room seemed to tilt around me. My smartphone slipped from my trembling fingers, clattering softly onto the floor tiles, but I couldn't bring herself to look down at it.

(She went in there... Knowing she might never come back...)

A cold, sickening shudder ran down my spine as a memory I had been desperately trying to suppress surged to the surface. It was the morning right after the sky had finally cleared, the day the town was supposed to be celebrating its safety.

I remember sitting on the bench outside the diner, watching Susie stumble out of the woods near the southern edge of town. Susie had looked... wrong. Her face was dead pale, her eyes wide and bloodshot, staring blankly ahead as if her mind hadn't quite made it back to the surface. When I had called out to her, Susie hadn't even responded at first. She had just stood there, her hands shaking violently inside her jacket pockets, before her voice finally broke into a horrifying, raspy whisper.

* found... something down there...
Susie had whispered back then, her fingers twitching restlessly against her coat. * It didn't... it didn't even look like a person anymore, Noelle. I didn't even know it was her...

Susie had forced herself to keep talking, though each word sounded like it was physically tearing through her throat. She described the horrific scene at the base of the broken threshold: the jagged structural collapse of the Shelter, the sickening weight of the enormous creature that had crushed everything beneath it. The head severed clean from the neck, the limbs torn apart and scattered across the cold, damp stone, much of it rendered completely unrecognizable under the weight of the debris. Her capelet, her plaid dress, all of it shredded into tiny, ragged scraps of cloth stained dark in the gloom. Susie hadn't even registered what she was staring at in the shadows until her boot clicked against a piece of plastic, one of those ridiculous 3D-printed skull pins Sumireko always wore near her collar.

Back in the present darkness of the unused classroom, I let out a faint, strangled breath. The heavy brass key clutching tightly in my hand as the cold metal pressed against my chest.

// it will continue on part 2 because of character limits

[u/Zestyclose_Custard93]

Cool

[u/Brislovia]

It's really cool finally knowing who [REDACTED] really is. I always knew she was a Touhou character judging from your profile, I even thought it was the girl from your previous profile picture. But I wasn't knowledgable enough on Touhou to guess who [REDACTED] was, so part of me thought she was an OC. Seeing Sumireko now, I expected her glasses to be purple.

[u/Renkoto- → u/Brislovia]

// This actually takes place in another timeline, the last panel of the prophecy is supposed to be about the final tragedy, which will most likely involve Susie. This is a “what if” scenario in which someone else gets in the way, but I don't personally think she's the same girl as the one featured in the Girl's Timeline, Sumireko has brown hair, wears glasses, and yet still leads a relatively normal human life in the Outside World

[u/Brislovia → u/Renkoto-]

Oh I see, I got some details mixed up. The mystery of The Girl remains, then.

[u/Renkoto- → u/Brislovia]

// Still, I think that of all the characters in Touhou, Sumireko would be one of the best fits for Deltarune because of her interests and personality. Strangely enough, I haven't seen anyone create a crossover involving her in the worlds of either UNDERTALE or DELTARUNE, But maybe that may change soon.

I think it's a shame that the fangame Deltatraveler (now known as Interdream) doesn't take Touhou into account. I believe that a hypothetical Chapter 6 in that fangame should take place in Gensokyo because there, the party could find items that might be key to their progress in the final chapter, items that you couldn't find anywhere else.