Fellow in forest
Sells random crap for a price
A whole lot of crap

Today was a tense day for Rinnosuke, nay, a tense day for the entirety of Gensokyo and maybe even the Outside World, nay, the fate of the universe rested on what’d happen today according to a certain curio seller operating right outside the Forest of Magic: a doomsday device, similar (or the same) to the one had had let fall into Yukari’s hands a while back.

What do I do with this now? Rinnosuke kept a good distance from the device sitting on the counter of his shop. He had found this… thing, the device of the gods, once more when taking a routine jog through the forest. The curio seller had deduced, through his supernatural ability to understand the purpose of any item he came in contact with, that this device could start wars or end them, end the world or save it, and many more terrifying things that should not fall into the hands of any one person. He had already let one copy of this fall into that gap youkai, and she was terrifying enough without a doomsday device. No, Rinnosuke decided, he’d do his best to destroy this damnable thing forever. Perhaps he could ask Marisa if he could borrow her Master Spark for a bit? Yes, that sounded like the most rational answer, Rinnosuke concluded while playing with the glasses that perched on top his nose. He’d save Gensokyo today, which was rare for such a weakling youkai like him to do.

Before he could proceed with his plans for heroism however, he heard a light knock on the door. This was unusual, most of his regular “customers” tended to lack the courtesy to knock on the door in such a respectable manner. Reimu would almost break the door every time she knocked, Marisa just barged into the room without asking, and Yukari tended to gap herself in anytime she felt like it. The only other person who’d knock this politely was, as Rinnosuke deduced with his exemplary deduction skills, Sakuya. She was quite the good customer, so Rinnosuke quickly straightened his posture, rolled down his sleeves, and got ready to greet an actually paying customer in a presentable manner.

“Hello?” The person who entered was the maid of the devil, just not the one that Rinnosuke expected. “This is Kourindou, right? I couldn’t read the sign on the front.”

“Miss Licorice?” Rinnosuke had seen this human woman only once, so he didn’t exactly know what to expect. She looked courteous enough however, and anyone from the Scarlet Devil Mansion was welcome (as long as it was not Remilia by herself; Rinnosuke had banned her from entering without supervision after that one incident he liked to avoid reminiscing about). “Welcome to Kourindou? How can I help you today?” And, to be honest, Rinnosuke still hadn’t sated his curiosity about this ordinary human woman from the Outside World. Perhaps a cup of tea would help spark conversation with her? “Would you like a cup of tea?”

“O-čaj would be quite wonderful, yes.” Licorice took a few seconds to dust and fix her clothes up a bit. She had come to the store in her outfit from the Outside World, jeans and a shirt, as walking with a maid outfit in the summer heat didn’t seem appealing to her. She wiped some sweat off her brows, and took a look around while Rinnosuke had went to the back to prepare the tea. As usual there was an assortment of random curios on the shelves and on the floor, Outside World magazines, newspapers, books, toys, electronics… Most of them had no use, especially the electronics were quite useless in a land without electricity, but it was still entertaining to take a peek around the shop.

One item, however, was more interesting than the others; an item that stood on the counter. It was a small brick of grey plastic, with a green screen and red buttons plastered on top. She approached the counter, and read the Latin script on it as best as she could “Nintendov Gejm Boj…”. Her pronunciation aside, even Licorice had enough knowledge to know what ‘game’ and ‘boy’ meant in English. The text on top, however, was less understandable to our heroine. “Dat matriks vif shtereov savnd?” Then there was the ‘A’ and ‘B’ buttons, with ‘Start’ and ‘Select’ as standard on any device of this kind.

This item had piqued the curiosity of Licorice as well now, for much different reasons compared to Rinnosuke, so she found the power switch on top. Flicking it resulted in nothing. A modern woman like Licorice understood that the device must be out of power, so she flicked the cover on the back to find a slot for four AA batteries. Looking around she found a stack of them lying around on one of the shelves (batteries tended to get lost very easily so they were plenty in Gensokyo). She tore open a package of fresh-looking batteries, stuck them into the device, and voilà: there was life. Licorice found herself face to face with a game that seemed familiar to her: Tetris. After a minute of figuring the simple controls out, she seated herself on a spare chair and began passing the time.

“…” Rinnosuke entered the room in abject horror. Weird ‘beeps’, the likes of which the curio seller had never heard before, were coming out of the doomsday device in Licorice’s hands. He rushed to put the teapot and cups on the counter before snatching the horrid device from our heroine’s hands. “Miss Licorice! What are you doing?!” The device was still making those horrible noises in his hand, much to his horror. “How do I turn this thing off?!”

Licorice was quite frustrated to see her Tetris session be cut short. “What? I was just playing Tetris.”

“Tetorisu?” He looked at the gray brick in his hands. “Is that what this is called? It sounds way too close to terror, which is what this device instills within me!”

“No, I don’t believe the whole device is called a Tetris.” She didn’t know much about gaming however, so our heroine wasn’t so sure. “Why are you so afraid? This is just a device for video gaming.”

“Video gaming?” Rinnosuke had heard of ‘video’ before, some sort of enigmatic Outside World magic that allowed one to record beings and then reanimate them at will, and ‘game’ was another familiar term. Put two and two together, and it was obvious that this ‘video gaming’ device would allow one to play with the world at their whim! “Do you Outside World humans have no concept of restraint?”

Our heroine had no idea on how to explain the concept of a ‘video game’ to someone who was most likely older than her great-grandparents. “Look, it’s just a harmless thing.” She took the device back. The screen shoved a ‘try again’ due to a game over, much to her annoyance. “It’s all fiction. This device manipulates nothing outside of the screen. Think of it like a painting being automatically painted by this machine.”

“A painting being automatically painted…” Rinnosuke seemed to have calmed down by now. “I see. It’s all fiction? You aren’t murdering anyone?”

“Do I look like I could murder anyone if I tried?” Truth be told, Licorice had defeated two youkai by now. She could most likely murder a few people if she tried. “You aren’t murdering anyone when you read a murder mystery novel, do you?”

“I guess so.” It seemed that his ability had fooled him once again. He took a deep sigh of relief “I’m glad that the world isn’t ending at the least.” Rinnosuke poured tea to both of their cups to help calm himself down further. After a few sips, he had returned back to his usual self. Minding things too much wasn’t usually his thing. “Anyways, I assume you’ve got some business to conduct if you came here by your lonesome?”

“Yes, I was looking for some Outside World books. Not the Japanese ones though, the foreign ones in Bulgarian.” She took a peek at the bookshelves, spotting a few books with titles readable to her. “Like those ones.” pointed out Licorice.

“Bulgarian? Is that what this weird language is called?” Rinnosuke took one of the books out and handed it over to Licorice. “I’ve been finding more and more of these foreign books, and I haven’t been able to ascertain why.”

“You don’t normally get foreign books?” Licorice flipped over a few of the pages. It was a book of aphorisms published in the 80s, half of which were either from Lenin or Tolstoy; nothing of much use or entertainment to our heroine was contained within the pages.

“You see, Gensokyo is connected to the Outside World through somewhere in Japan.” Rinnosuke did his best to come up with information he had learned long ago. “So, it makes sense that most items and people that get in here would be Japanese.” He paused. “Unless Bulgaria borders Japan?” His geography was clearly not up to any scratch.

Licorice’s geography wasn’t up to scratch either, especially due to her half-remembering everything, but even she could see something wrong with Rinnosuke’s statement. “I’m pretty sure those two places are pretty far apart.”

“Hmm…” Rinnosuke closed his eyes, racking his brain to the fullest. “Maybe… But, no, that would be… Umm…” He eventually sufficed with shrugging. “I don’t know.” He took a sip from his tea. It looked like he didn’t intend to worry much further.

Licorice didn’t worry too much either, mostly because she knew nothing about how Gensokyo operated. “Anyways, no matter how they came here, I’ll be buying some of the more entertaining ones off of you.” She took out a 1948-issue 0.05 sen (¥0.05) banknote out from her pocket and handed it over to Rinnosuke. “How much can I get with this?” She had managed to mooch some money off of Meiling after much begging and pleading.

Rinnosuke took a look at the banknote. It wasn’t too uncommon of a banknote. He had already decided to refuse, however, no matter what our heroine gave. The curio seller shook his head and gently pushed away the banknote. “Nobody really has much use for these anyways. I’d feel bad if I charged you for useless items.” Rinnosuke had a habit of hoarding items and keeping them around, but that applied to things that looked interesting or were useful to him. Foreign books that he couldn’t read at all weren’t included in this category. “Plus, you’ve helped me enough with deducing the true nature of the doomsday device.”

“Ah? Thank you.” Licorice thought that the man had no sense of business at all, she’d have grabbed the money right here and then if she was in the place of the curio seller. “Then I’ll buy the so-called ‘doomsday device’ instead, along with a few batteries.”

Rinnosuke took another look at the banknote. The doomsday device, now that he knew it was a simple device for games, had fallen out of favor. He didn’t really know how valuable it was, so the money looked good enough for him. As for the batteries, they were dime-a-dozen. “Then we have a deal, Miss Licorice. Pleasure doing business with you.” He took the banknote and stuffed it somewhere in the drawer of his counter (which was unusually empty for a store that was supposed to conduct business and make money).

Thus concluded Licorice’s deal with the (half-)youkai.