Cute Rumia request

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# Shades of Darkness

The sun hung fat and golden over the Misty Lake, the kind of late-morning light that made the water sparkle like someone had spilled a basket of diamonds across it. It was a beautiful day.

Rumia hated it.

Not the lake — the lake was fine. Not the sparkles, either, which were admittedly pretty in a distant, squinty sort of way. No, what Rumia hated was the *sun*, that big bullying ball of brightness that turned her own little patch of darkness thin and stung at her crimson eyes until they watered.

She sat hunched at the forest's edge, wrapped tight in her usual sphere of inky black, a dark little bubble of grump against the cheerful green of the world. Even through the shroud, the daylight prickled.

"Stupid sun," she muttered, scrunching her face. "Who invited you."

"Yo!"

The voice came from above, sudden and loud, and Rumia's darkness wobbled in surprise. A broom swept down out of the blue, kicking up a swirl of grass and pollen, and Marisa Kirisame landed with the careless confidence of someone who had never once in her life considered the possibility of landing badly.

"There you are," Marisa said, planting her broom in the dirt and propping a hand on her hip. Her big black-and-white hat threw a slice of shade that Rumia immediately, instinctively, leaned toward. "Been lookin' all over for ya, ze. Heard from Cirno you've been sulkin' out here every day."

"I'm not sulking." Rumia sulked harder. "I'm *brooding.* It's different. It's darker."

Marisa snorted. "Uh-huh. Whatcha brooding about?"

Rumia jabbed a small finger up at the sky. "*That.* It's too bright. It hurts my eyes. I can't even open them all the way out here, and my darkness barely works when the sun's up, and everybody else gets to play outside and have fun and I just have to sit here being a sad little blob until nighttime." She huffed, cheeks puffing out. "Being a creature of the dark is *hard,* okay?"

To Rumia's surprise, Marisa didn't laugh. The witch just rocked back on her heels, looking thoughtful — which was a slightly alarming expression on her, like watching a cat decide something.

"Y'know," Marisa said slowly, "I might have somethin' for that."

"Did you bring me the night? Can you steal the night?"

"Even *I* can't steal the night, ze." Marisa rummaged in the depths of her apron pockets, which everyone in Gensokyo knew were less like pockets and more like small portable voids that occasionally produced other people's belongings. "But I was over at the Human Village last week, an' there was this fella sellin' all kindsa stuff from outside. Outside-world junk. Most of it was garbage, but *this*—"

With a triumphant flourish, she produced a pair of sunglasses.

They were nothing fancy. Plastic frames, black as a moonless midnight, with lenses so dark you couldn't see the eyes behind them at all. To Rumia, hunched in her shroud and squinting against the burning sky, they looked like the single most magnificent object that had ever existed.

"Whoa," she breathed.

"Outside-world folks wear 'em to keep the sun outta their eyes," Marisa explained, holding them up so the dark lenses caught the light. "Figured you of all people could use a pair. Here. Try 'em on."

Rumia reached out from her darkness with both hands, taking the sunglasses with the reverent care of someone handling a holy relic. She turned them over once, twice, then carefully — tongue poking out in concentration — perched them on her small nose and looped the arms over her ears, just behind the red ribbon that kept her ahoge in check.

She blinked.

She blinked again.

Then, very slowly, like a flower deciding it was safe to bloom, Rumia let her sphere of darkness dissolve.

The sunlight poured down — and it didn't hurt.

Oh, it was still *bright,* the whole world washed in a cool dim tint now, everything turned the soft dusky color of twilight. But that horrible stinging needle-glare was *gone.* For the first time in longer than she could remember, Rumia stood in the full light of day with her eyes wide open, and the sun could do nothing about it.

"It's like..." Her voice came out small and wondering. "It's like it's nighttime all the time now. Even when it's day." She turned her head this way and that, marveling at the dim-tinted lake, the dim-tinted trees, the dim-tinted Marisa grinning down at her. "Marisa. *Marisa.* I can *see.*"

"Heh. Knew you'd like 'em."

"I can see *and* it's dark *and* it doesn't hurt!" Rumia spread her arms wide in pure joy, the gesture she always made, the one that made her look like a tiny cross. "This is the best present anybody has ever — *ever* — given anybody in the whole history of presents!"

"Aw, it was nothin'." Marisa scratched the back of her head, looking pleased despite herself. "Just don't go losin' 'em, ze. And uh— don't bite anybody just 'cause you're in a good mood now."

"No promises," said Rumia cheerfully.

Marisa laughed, hopped back on her broom, and shot off toward the Forest of Magic with a wave over her shoulder, leaving Rumia standing in the meadow — eyes open, darkness banished, looking, for the very first time, *extremely cool.*

---

It took approximately four minutes for the fairies to notice.

Fairies, as a rule, noticed everything that was new, shiny, or potentially fun, and a youkai of darkness standing boldly in broad daylight wearing mysterious black eye-armor was all three at once. They came drifting in from across the meadow and over the water like moths to a particularly stylish flame.

The first to arrive were the three fairies of light, because of course it was — they could never resist a bit of mischief, and they could *especially* never resist whatever Rumia happened to be doing, since teasing the darkness youkai was one of their favorite pastimes.

Sunny Milk got there first, fluttering down with her hands clasped behind her back, ready with some clever taunt. "Heeey, Rumia, still hiding in your little ball like a — "

She stopped.

She stared.

"...What is *that,*" she said, in a completely different voice.

"Sunglasses," said Rumia, with enormous dignity. She tilted her chin up so the lenses caught the light just so. "Marisa gave them to me. They keep the sun out of my eyes. Now I can be out in the daytime."

Luna Child drifted down beside her sister, mouth slightly open. "They're so... *black.*"

"You can't even see her eyes," Star Sapphire added, awed. She floated in a slow circle around Rumia, examining her from every angle. "She looks like — like a totally different person. She looks *mysterious.*"

"Yeah." Sunny had completely forgotten whatever insult she'd been planning. "Yeah, she looks really cool."

Rumia, who had spent her entire existence being teased by these three, felt something warm and unfamiliar swell in her chest. She crossed her arms and tried very hard to look unbothered, like someone who got told they were cool every single day and was frankly a little bored of it.

"I know," she said.

Word, in the way of fairy words, spread fast.

Daiyousei came next, the great fairy of the lake, her single wing — well, the big bushy one — fluttering as she peeked shyly around a tree. She wasn't usually one to crowd in, being on the timid side, but the crowd of murmuring light fairies had drawn her curiosity, and when she saw Rumia she let out a tiny gasp.

"Oh— oh wow," she said softly, ducking half behind the trunk like she might be intruding. "Rumia, you look... um... you look really nice. Those are really pretty. I mean cool! Cool and pretty. Both."

"Thank you, Dai." Rumia turned to face her, and the green fairy actually took a small step back, like she'd been dazzled. The dark lenses, the calm tilt of her head, the way she stood there in the sun without flinching — there was something genuinely striking about it. "I'm a daytime youkai now."

"A daytime youkai," Daiyousei repeated reverently, as though Rumia had announced she'd become a goddess.

A few smaller fairies of the lake had gathered too, clustering at a respectful distance, whispering behind their hands. *That's Rumia. The darkness one. She's never out in the day. Look at her face-things. So dark. So mysterious. I bet she can see in the dark AND the light now. I bet she's the strongest. I bet—*

Rumia could hear every word and decided not to correct a single one of them.

And then, with a sound like a tiny firework and a smell faintly of brimstone and lakewater, *she* showed up.

"WHAT'S EVERYBODY LOOKING AT?!"

Clownpiece dropped out of the sky in an explosion of red, white, and blue, her ridiculous jester's hat with its little pom-poms flopping, her torch crackling merrily in one hand even in the bright daylight. The lunatic fairy from the moon never did anything quietly. She shoved her way to the front of the little crowd, elbows out, torch held high, and skidded to a stop directly in front of Rumia.

For a moment she just stared.

The torch sputtered.

"...Okay," Clownpiece said finally, in the hushed tone of someone witnessing a miracle. "Okay. Those are the coolest things I have ever seen in my entire *life,* and I have seen the *literal moon up close.*"

"They're sunglasses," said the fairies of light, all three at once, in the slightly proprietary tone of those who had discovered something first.

"They keep the light away," added Star Sapphire helpfully.

Clownpiece's eyes went enormous. She gestured wildly with her torch, which made several of the smaller fairies duck. "They keep the LIGHT away?! But Rumia, you're — you do DARKNESS, and you've got light-stopping FACE GEAR now, that means you're like — you're like — DOUBLE darkness! You're MAXIMUM darkness! That's the most metal thing I've ever heard!" She bounced on her toes. "Can I touch them? Can I try them? Where do you get them? Can the moon get them? Why doesn't the moon have these?!"

"Marisa gave them to me," Rumia said, basking. Oh, she was basking. She had never basked before in her life, on account of basking being a sun-related activity, but she was making up for lost time now. "And no, you can't try them, because they're *mine.*"

"That's fair. That's so fair. If they were mine I wouldn't let anybody touch them either." Clownpiece circled her, torch bobbing, narrating to the gathered fairies like an excited tour guide. "Look at her! She's so calm! She's so cool and quiet and you can't even tell what she's thinking 'cause you can't see her eyes! That's the scariest, coolest thing a darkness youkai could possibly do! Rumia you have to teach me your ways!"

"I have no ways," said Rumia serenely. "I just look like this now."

"INCREDIBLE."

The fairies of light, not to be outdone in the praise department by some moon-fairy newcomer, started piling on.

"Rumia, do the thing where you tilt your head!"

She tilted her head. The lenses gleamed.

"OoooOOOh."

"Now do the arms-out thing!"

Rumia spread her arms wide, palms open, in her signature pose. With the sunglasses on, standing tall and unblinking in the daylight, it didn't look silly at all this time. It looked, the fairies all privately agreed, like the pose of someone who could absolutely beat you up and would do it without ever once removing her cool dark glasses.

The little crowd burst into delighted applause. Daiyousei clapped the hardest, beaming, her earlier shyness forgotten. Clownpiece let out a whoop and shot a tiny celebratory firework from her torch that fizzled harmlessly above their heads. Sunny, Luna, and Star linked arms and spun in a little circle of pure approval.

"Okay okay okay," Clownpiece declared, "new rule, Rumia's the coolest one in the meadow now, everybody agree?"

"AGREED," chorused the fairies.

Rumia stood in the center of it all, arms still spread, the warm sun on her skin that for once didn't hurt at all, surrounded by friends who thought she was the most magnificent thing they'd ever seen. And the funny thing was, she didn't even need the darkness to feel happy.

Though she'd never, ever admit that out loud.

"Hey, Dai," she said, lowering her arms at last. "What time is it?"

Daiyousei glanced at the sun. "Um... noon, I think? It's the middle of the day."

"The middle of the day," Rumia repeated, and a slow, sharp-toothed grin spread across her face beneath the dark lenses. "Huh. I've never seen the middle of the day before."

"Is it good?" asked Clownpiece eagerly. "Is the middle of the day cool?"

Rumia considered the sparkling lake, the green meadow, the ring of fairies all watching her like she'd hung the very moon Clownpiece kept bragging about.

"Yeah," she said. "Yeah, it's pretty good."

---

That evening, when the sun finally dipped below the trees and the cool blue of dusk crept over the Misty Lake, Rumia slid the sunglasses up onto the top of her head — pushing back her ahoge — and let her sphere of comfortable darkness bloom around her once more.

She didn't *need* them at night, after all. But she kept them right there, perched and ready, because tomorrow the sun would come up again.

And tomorrow, for the first time ever, she was actually looking forward to it.

Somewhere in the dark, a small voice that sounded suspiciously like a lunatic moon-fairy called out across the lake:

"GOODNIGHT, COOLEST YOUKAI IN GENSOKYO!"

Rumia grinned into the night.

"Goodnight," she called back.

And the darkness, for once, felt a little less lonely.