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Tojiko waited, as she had always waited.
It had already been a week, she noted, so it was time to clean again. A broom was one of the few possessions she had brought in from outer Gensokyo. Seiga be damned, her power was useful for traveling through the sealed walls of the mausoleum. More than once, she'd inquired if Tojiko wanted to take an excursion with her, just to get some fresh air, maybe get a drink; she'd been waiting inside, alone, for hundreds and hundreds of years, after all.
But Tojiko refused, as she had always refused. She couldn't leave for a few hours, not even a minute--what if the Crown Prince and Futo began waking up while she was gone? What would she have to say for herself, then? She'd stood guard for a thousand years and then some, and she'd wait it all over again, if she had to.
A soft humming filled the tomb, contrasting with the scrape of the broom against the stone floor. She'd gave up singing eons ago--it passed the time, but nearly all of the songs she knew were about love, and longing, and tragedy. There was enough of that in her head to last a lifetime, no, hundreds of lifetimes.
She was here, as she had always been, in this building that held only three rooms and a hallway, with the company of twin coffins emblazoned with Futsuhime and Kamitsumiya-ou.
The first room, the largest one, was Miko's. The second was Futo's.The third room was hers, supposed to be hers, but it was empty. The coffin with Tojiko no Iratsume on it, the one that contained her body--the body she'd loved Futo and the Crown Prince with--was in the Soga clan's cemetery. Not here, where it should have been.
Tojiko did not go into the room that was intended to be hers. She could not bring herself to. More often than not, she spent her time in Futo's chambers.
"It's getting harder, Futo."
She talked to Futo often, when the silence of the tomb was too much and the static in her head grew deafening. Futo never answered her, of course, but it brought her comfort, in a way. She'd used the time and the space to vent her anger. The first few years, she screamed at Futo nearly every day; and when she wasn't screaming, she was sobbing.
How could she do this? How could she rob Tojiko of the blissful eternity together that they'd all planned for? And for what? Revenge for the clan she'd betrayed? Tojiko didn't understand, it didn't make any sense.
Gradually, it died down. Shrieking at someone who couldn't shriek right back wasn't satisfying. It just gave her an uncomfortably hollow feeling in her gut. So she told Futo everything she hated about her--the way she always sucked up to people in power, how much of a sore loser she was, her tendency to say the wrong thing at the wrong time and never realize it. The fact that she never owned up to a single one of her mistakes.
Eventually, her anger and hurt had faded into confusion. She still couldn't understand why this happened. It wasn't anything she could puzzle out on her own, she'd just have to get answers from Futo when she woke up....whenever that was. It was looking less and less like they'd be waking up in the next era like Miko had predicted. At night, Tojiko had heard footsteps outside, chanting and the jangling of beads and rings. Buddhists? They'd come for a few nights in a row, but eventually stopped, and Tojiko never heard them again.
When she'd run out of angry things to say, she'd told Futo all of the things she liked about her. That she had treated Tojiko like a human being worthy of respect from the first day they'd met, and that she wasn't just someone's daughter. Her painful earnestness, how easily she smiled, the dumb ideas she'd get so excited about before reality came crashing down.
Tojiko placed her hands on top of Futo's coffin, the sleeping woman inside unaware.
"It's getting harder. To wait. I don't remember the last time Seiga-san stopped by...she was keeping me up updated on the things happening outside for a while, but she hasn't visited in a long time," Tojiko said, dusting off the aging coffin. "I don't....want us to be stuck down here forever, but I don't know how I would even wake you and Taishi-sama up. If I even could--or if I did, would it just kill you both...?"
She sighed, slumping over Futo's coffin. "This is all your fault."
It wasn't. But it felt nostalgic to blame Futo for doing something stupid, again.
Another uncountable number of days, weeks, and months passed before Tojiko happened upon something unusual. She was shaking the dust out of one of the decorative cloths in Miko's chamber (well, as best as she could without a rug beater) when a spirit appeared in the room, bobbing in place. It floated near Miko's coffin, seemingly content to hover there. Tojiko frowned. Since when were there other spirits here? She'd have felt it if there were.
"Hey," she said, hands on her hips. "This is a private mausoleum. Leave."
The spirit did not leave. In fact, in the following days, nearly a dozen more were gathered in Miko's chambers, spilling out into the hallway and the empty room, until the only room left with standing space was Futo's. This was ridiculous. These stupid things were not going to get in the way of her duty! And they didn't even talk! She'd had some choice words for them, but she wasn't sure if they heard them or not.
Tojiko sat on top of Futo's coffin, swinging her legs and angrily grumbling to herself about the situation, pretending that Futo could hear her vent, that she shared her frustrations, that she would wrap her arm around Tojiko and pull her close.
She wished that Futo and Miko were with her, awake, as she had always wished.
"Scary, scary," came a voice, startling Tojiko out of her imagination. A hole had appeared in the ceiling, and Seiga dropped out of it, landing on the floor with a graceful tap. "I was coming to give you news, but you look like you might kill me first, Tojiko-san~."
Tojiko bit her tongue. Futo had confessed to her once that she didn't trust Seiga, that she only saw a slimy woman looking out for herself and herself only, that dealing with her was a migraine and a half. Tojiko had never wanted to kiss her more for that.
"What do you want, Seiga-san?" she said, leveling her voice into something less contemptuous.
Seiga smiled placidly. "There's much for you to catch up on, but I'll save it for later. The most important thing is that the day approaches. I trust you're well acquainted with the vulgar spirits that have made themselves comfortable down here." She poked a nearby one, causing it to float away into the hallway. "The seals on this tomb have broken. They're starting to spill out into the world above. Eventually, someone's going to investigate. The time for our Prince's return is upon us."
"The seals?" Tojiko prompted. "Plural? Since when have there been more than one?"
Seiga waved a hand noncommittally. "Oh, some monks came and put wards around this place a handful of centuries ago. But like I said, we'll save that for later!" The hole above Seiga closed up, and she returned her hairpin to its place on her head. "We need to ready things. Be a dear and wake up that one, would you?" She gestured to Futo's coffin, as though it was a troublesome thing.
She could feel her hackles raise. "How do I even do that? Wouldn't it kill them?"
Seiga clicked her tongue, sighing as if she were talking to a gradeschooler. "Of course it won't. Just open the lid and wake her up like you'd rouse any sleeping person. There should be a few enchantments on the inside, but they won't harm you--just things to keep the coffin quiet and repel dust." Without another word, Seiga floated into the hallway, forcing her way through the crowd of spirits.
Almost on instinct, Tojiko hopped off of the coffin and moved to chase her, to insist that she should be the one to wake up Miko, but--she didn't want Seiga waking up Futo, either. She grunted in frustration, dragging her hands down her face. Seiga wouldn't mess with Miko, at least. But still, would it have been that easy to wake them up, this entire time? She wanted to kick herself for not even bothering to try.
Tojiko turned around to face the coffin, as she always had done.
With a bit of effort, Tojiko hefted the lid off, manually lowering it to the floor to prevent the loud clattering of a fall. Inside was--
Her.
It was as though no time had passed. Her face was untouched, her clothes crisp and perfect, her body unmarred by the ravages of the sickness that had befell them all. She looked not a day over twenty, her hands delicately folded over her stomach. The faintest of breaths passed from her lips, accompanied by the most shallow rise and fall of her chest. Despite the passage of time, despite her interment, Futo still yet lived.
Tojiko leaned over the coffin's edge, placing her hands over Futo's. There was a lot they had to talk about. She didn't know where they would start. She wasn't even sure if she was actually mad at Futo anymore, or if her anger had evaporated through the years and been replaced with that telltale aching loneliness she felt when she looked at the coffin.
But, that could wait. They had eternity to talk, to make up for lost time. She brushed a lock of hair out of Futo's face, tucking it behind her ear.
"Futo...wake up. It's time."