Tradition's End (A Touhou Project Fanfiction)

Sonder

~~~~~~Foreword~~~~~~

Sonder

n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own

a.k.a.

Even side characters have lives.

~~~~~~Tradition's End~~~~~~

The next day, it was as if nothing at all had changed.

Tradition's End opened early and served its regular customers as it always has. There were no hiccups, no disasters, and no problems to speak of whatsoever.

For a certain employee of the cafe, oblivious to what had occurred the day before, it was all astoundingly normal.

Normal, that was, until after closing time.

Sekibanki waited with bated breath for a certain boss of hers to make his way over to a certain supply closet.

When, after wiping down the bar element, Eric announced that he would be getting a head start on the sweeping, she knew that it was time.

Sekibanki braced herself as her boss reached for the door handle and gave it a twist.

...

"Boo!"

"Agh!"

A surprised yelp and the tumble of cleaning supplies signaled that her most dastardly plan yet had come to fruition.

Out from the supply closet flew a head. With red hair, red eyes, and a large blue bow, it was practically a mirror image of Sekibanki's own head. It held a mischievous grin, like it had just executed the perfect prank.

She lifted a hand and ruffled the scarlet locks of her second head. There was no particular need to do so, but it just felt like the right thing to do.

In Sekibanki's opinion, she had, in fact, just executed the perfect prank.

Hiding one of her heads in the closet early in her shift, ensuring that Eric wouldn't need anything out of there during operating hours, and finally allowing him to be the one to go for the broom and dustpan...

The planning was all worth it. She had successfully scared her boss.

She could sense a spike of fear, small and intense, and in that moment it was exhilarating.

More objects clattered to the ground as Eric dug his way out of whatever mess he had tripped into. By the time he had stepped back into the cafe proper, Sekibanki and her head double were waiting for him.

He didn't appear to be angry with her, but he was certainly shaken up. Frazzled, rattled even. Her boss opened his mouth as if to speak, but closed it just as quickly. He looked from her, to her second head, and then back to her before he finally found his words.

"You can make more than one head!?" he cried out in surprise and disbelief.

"Yeah, if I really want to," came the straightforward reply.

The head wasn't real, per se. It was more like an illusion made solid. All of her heads were like that.

She could make ten, no, twenty of them at once if she had both the energy and the preparation time. Extra heads were useful, but difficult to control in large numbers. They were beyond conspicuous, too. Not great for hiding her true nature as a youkai among humans.

The real core of her being was her body, anyways.

The rush she had experienced from Eric's fear began to ebb. Her second head snickered again before she dispelled it. Everything, including the bow, faded from existence.