A most candid friend
Lurks here and fixes piping
Do not distract her

Another day, another round of sweeping.

Licorice, through her newly gained experience in thorough drudgery, had slowly come to understand why so many geriatric old farts resided in the Scarlet Devil Mansion. This was a changeably static place, of variable intransience, where one could be at peace or at chaos whenever they wished.

The problem was, for our heroine, both of those states weren’t good for her. Peace meant more sweeping, and chaos meant…

“…kakvo po djavolite, why is there a giant hole on the ground?!”

The cobble path of the garden was interrupted by, none other than, the aforementioned giant hole in the ground. As far as Licorice knew, holes on the ground didn’t appear suddenly. She was obviously uninformed on the topic of sinkholes, though leeway could be granted to her from the fact that she couldn’t even remember her own name let alone remember what a sinkhole was.

“Alright, which one of you šibánjacite is responsible for this?!” Although this mansion wasn’t her own, nor was she going to pay for the repairs, she’d probably be tasked with the repairs as the one responsible for the commonwealth of this path. Licorice had gained a small sense of pride in her role as pathsweep. She wasn’t going to let some errant youkai ruin her day without making them taste her shoe, despite the fact that she’d realistically be easily beaten up by any youkai whose name didn’t start with “Cir” and end with “no”.

Licorice took out her trusty frying pan as she scouted the area around her. She swung her weapon around, trying to look threatening. She only ended up looking ridiculous to anyone observing her. “You have the chutzpah to ruin my path, yet you lack the balls to come out, eh?” The youkai weren’t human despite some having a human-like appearance, so it was actually a given that they wouldn’t have any balls of the reproductive kind.

Our heroine eventually grew tired of her vigilance. It seemed that the culprit had already ran away. The only thing left for Licorice to do was investigating to figure out what had happened. Maybe this was just a sinkhole that had formed under the mansion like any other, run-of-the-mill sinkhole. Or…

No, this isn’t natural at all. Licorice looked down at the hole, which was actually pretty easy to climb down and up to, to see various tools scattered around a tool bag. She jumped down to take a closer look. Closer inspection revealed that these tools had been placed near a series of pipes, leading from the general direction of the mansion to the water fountain that laid in the center of the garden. Somebody’s definitely attempting some sort of sabotage here…

Picking up a pipe that had been decoupled from its brethren, Licorice had a hard time lifting it up. It was pretty heavy, pretty unlike the plastic pipes that she had apparently seen. The pipe was a dull gray color, metallic and… This is lead, isn’t it. Our heroine instinctively scratched the piping to reveal the shiny lead underneath. What a fun prospect. It made sense. The mansion was pretty old; it’d be weird if the piping wasn’t made of lead.

For all I know, the mansion is painted with lead-based paints as well… I don’t want to think about all that lead dust flying inside the mansion. Somewhere, in her amnesiac mind, Licorice had stashed away the expertise needed to identify this sort of thing. It felt odd, to not have knowledge of your own name while having the knowledge that lead acetate, while tasting sweet, constituted a health hazard. I’m going to die of lead poisoning before I get eaten by some outlandish youkai.

Before lead poisoning however, Licorice suddenly had a new concern. Someone was behind her, suddenly as was usually the case with the assailants of our heroine, and a crowbar was about to make contact with her body.

“Šibánjako!” Licorice turned around at the last moment. Out of pure chance, and perhaps a little help from her training with Meiling, she met the quickly approaching crowbar with her pan.

Our heroine had learned, through cold hard experience, that one was not to trust appearances in Gensokyo. Still, Licorice was surprised to see the appearance of the one who was about to brutalize her with a crowbar. Her opponent was a little girl, no bigger than your garden-variety Cirno, whose crowbar was about as big as the rest of her body. She looked to be an engineer of some sort, with a ridiculously large bag and an equally ridiculous amount of pockets lined up around her light blue dress. A small green cap, reminiscent of a certain number two to a certainer Italian plumber of fame, sat atop her blue hair tied into a twin-tail.

“Who the hell are you, and what are you doing in my lawn?!” Licorice was ready to beat the rascal in front of her into a pulp.

The little engineer looked, despite what her sudden attack might suggest, shy and timid. She backed away when Licorice turned to face her. “A- A… Aiee!” The little engineer retreated from this engagement.

“Hey! You almost murdered me back there! Don’t be acting all shy now you kópele!” Licorice acted too late in throwing a shoe after her. The shoe plopped to the wet ground sadly, only serving to remind our heroine of her failure.

“Likǎolisū-xiǎojiě! Is something wrong?” Meiling flew down, just not in time. “I heard someone screaming just then.” She didn’t seem too concerned about the hole.

“You know, there’s a giant hole here. The pipes are made of lead, the mansion is coated with lead… Those are kind of wrong, I’d say.” Licorice jumped out of the hole. “Not to mention the fact that a little girl almost killed me with a crowbar.”

“Oh? Is that so?” Meiling seemed calm, too calm for someone hearing about her coworker being assaulted. She scratched an itchy spot on her face, doing it so calmly that it infuriated Licorice in such a moment. The gatekeeper continued staring idly for another couple seconds while she tried to remember something. “Āiyá! I remember now, Lady Sakuya called one of the kappa, named Nitori, over to take a look at the plumbing. Something about the water fountain in the garden, if I remember correctly.”

“So, I almost died for a decorative water fountain?” Licorice was glad to hear how valued her life was. “Please, never let a kappa near me again.”

“That’s odd… I’ve heard that Nitori isn’t the type to approach humans voluntarily.” Meiling hummed, trying to solve this mystery. “Maybe she was angry about you interrupting her work, and she tried to extract your shirikodama?”

“A shirikodama… dama (玉) as in ball, and shiri (尻) as in…” Licorice’s hands went somewhere towards her posterior. “…is that what I think it is?” She didn’t exactly know what a shirikodama entailed, but it didn’t seem to be a pleasant thing to have extracted from you.

With his, Meiling didn’t answer further. Licorice didn’t want to ask further questions. They both went on their merry ways.

Later on, after having sobered up, Licorice requested the mistress to have the lead piping and paint be replaced. Remilia didn’t want to waste money on such a vanity project, especially as there was only one person in the entire mansion who could be affected by lead poisoning. Remilia was more enthusiastic to get them replaced when Patchouli taught her that a high amount of lead in the human body commonly lead to anemia, not to mention all the other factors that could lead to her blood bank running dry.

Thus, Licorice saved herself from getting her shirikodama extracted, while also avoiding further lead poisoning.