Hatate Himekaidou

Tanabata is a festival built on distance. Everyone knows the story. The weaver princess Orihime and the herdsman Hikoboshi fall in love, neglect their duties, and are torn apart by the Amanogawa stretching across the heavens. Once a year, on the seventh night of the seventh month, they are allowed to meet again. It sounds gentle when told like that. Romantic, even. However, stories alone cannot sustain festivals. They survive because people keep wanting something from them: kids like Halloween because of the candies and costumes; at Christmas families seek the nostalgia within reunions (and the gifts, don't forget the gifts and food!); and couples cherish Valentine’s Day because it gives them permission to make public food workers to re-evaluate their life decisions, and the list goes on.

What kind of desire could endure an entire year of waiting? What kind of longing becomes strong enough to carve itself into ritual? Paper wishes swaying from bamboo branches, streets drowned in streamers and lantern light, strangers lifting their eyes toward the same sky for reasons they will never say aloud. Everyone participates knowing most wishes will never come true. Yet they write them anyway. Maybe that is the point. Tanabata was never about reunion alone. It is about the unbearable distance between what people want and what they are willing to reach for.

The Hakurei Shrine decided to host a Tanabata festival due to a series of events that began with three bored fairies (plus a stray) and culminated in Reimu seeing an opportunity for visitors and money. There was bamboo. There were tanzaku in more colors than strictly necessary. There were stalls, noise, and the particular festive feeling that Gensokyo generated whenever given the faintest excuse.

Hatate had come for the material.

That was the original idea, and she was sticking to it. The fact that there were also grilled skewers somewhere nearby was incidental and entirely not a factor.

She moved between stalls without any urgency, phone up, occasionally stopping to frame something — a cluster of tanzaku catching the late afternoon light, a certain overworked rabbit making questionable decisions within a food stall — then moving on when it didn't satisfy the potential for a decent scoop. Her hat was slightly crooked. She hadn't noticed.

"...Mmm. No." Click. "That's worse." Click. "Okay that one's actually kind of good, why does the ugly one always—"

She stopped. Looked up.

Your bum ass had apparently materialized in her peripheral vision somewhere between the last shot and this one, which she noted with the mild, unhurried expression of someone who had already decided to address it eventually.

"You're not lost, are you?" Not entirely unkind. Just the first reasonable thing to check. "You've got that 'not sure what I'm doing here' look. Which, fair, honestly, I'm supposed to be getting material for an article, but like—" Tap-tap-tap She glanced at her phone, then back up, "—I guess I have time to spare."