A Marisa-Reimu couple sees a human giving another couple some sweets to help their starving child, and mutter darkly to themselves how the stupid human should have given it to them instead to help theirs.
They call out to him later, and he wonders if they're another pair asking for charity. They laugh and say that they're strong, so he should give them sweets. "Ah, I see- that means, you want to die."
He kicks the Marisa so hard she flies halfway across the bridge, then starts beating her up, with Reimu begging him to stop. When he asks Reimu if she wants to take over for Marisa, she hurriedly declines.
As he whacks Marisa around, asking why she could still mouth off in this situation, Marisa finally snaps and apologizes, to which Reimu is shocked, but Marisa snaps back at it, saying it didn't experience any of the pain.
"I don't give a shit about win or lose. Hurry up and try to kill me. If you're not going to do anything, I'll kill you instead."
So saying, he pierces one of Marisa's eyes with his finger. When she asks why he doesn't stop despite her apologizing, he reminds her that she would have said 'I won't forgive you even if you say that! I'll punish you by killing you' or something like that, but when their situations are reversed...? Marisa can't give a reply.
As Marisa suffers, she wonders why things are happening this way. Is it because she's weak? Because humans are uneasy? No, it's probably because she stupidly thought she was the strongest. Losing means losing everything. Thinking that 'I'll just apologize and escape' was naive.
In the end, Marisa bows and pleads with him not to make it die like one of the scum. He realizes that Marisa considers her pride important, and tells her to recall everything she has said until now, pointing out that shouting 'Oi, you' wasn't the right thing to do. In fact, they're more stupid that the other couple now, and that their children would die because of them.
Marisa tries to defend itself, saying that it was a good father. Anon just reminds it that if it was, the children wouldn't be dead. He goes on to compare the previous family against Marisa's, about how they sacrificed their pride to save their child by begging humans, while this family ended up losing their chance because they were stupid. "You understand, don't you? If you don't want to admit it, I'll just say it for you. You can't do anything, you're useless, and because of your mistake, you led your family to their deaths. You're just a fool."
Then he slowly crushes it to death and drops it into the river. He turns to the Reimu next, kicking it mercilessly despite its apologies and begging for forgiveness.
But Reimu suddenly hears its children crying weakly for help, and quickly offers them up to Anon, saying to spare Reimu only. He doesn't get it initially, but eventually realizes that it is sacrificing its children for itself.
Surprisingly, he accepts, and tells it to get out of his sight. As it starts to leave, it hears some weird sounds, and turns around to see that its children are gone. He has thrown them into the river.
It starts screaming at him, demanding to know why he did that. Anon responds that he was only getting rid of trash. Reimu shouts that the children aren't trash. "If they're so important, then why did you sell them out to a human?"
He tells it that the only one who thought such trash was cute was it alone, that's why he got rid of them. He also reminds it if it hadn't followed the idiot sinking into the river, things might have turned out differently.
"Reimu..." "Mister human...?" "They're not yours, remember? They were already mine."
Realizing that it has lost everything, Reimu stands there in shock, distantly hearing the other family telling their children to be grateful to mister human for saving it, and their children replying that they want to repay that favor. The parents say that they should help other yukkuri too, and then they dig into their meal.
Finally understanding what its stupidity has wrought, Reimu squirms through the bars and throws itself into the river.
Hmm I don't know if it's your choices or it's a trend, but it seems there are many yu-stories with aesops in the ankos, using the Mister Humans as devices of Teaching & Reward or Punishment and Termination for the yukkuris who the stories focus on.
JusticeItEasy said: Hmm I don't know if it's your choices or it's a trend, but it seems there are many yu-stories with aesops in the ankos, using the Mister Humans as devices of Teaching & Reward or Punishment and Termination for the yukkuris who the stories focus on.
Either way, thanks again Wrathkal!
It's mine, I mainly pick stories that are marked 'Justice' in the website, but in this case, I just happened to see the picture in the anko-related pool and did it on a whim
Ah so their "Justice" Themes are more than just beating up bad manjuus but also dropping a reasonable aesop? (well as reasonable as it can gets in non FF yu-works)
Sotodashi said: this contradicts the concept of yukkuri personalities being unchangeable. :p
doesn't that irritate you, JIE? xP
well, ironically, they still manage to be able to self-reflect anyhow.
If you had read some of oyp's earlier discussions, it had always mentioned the idea that there are average or neutral yu's who have a more "moldeable" personality, leading to cases of "Scum with Potential" (yukkuris who appear scum but after punishment or some proper teaching they actually learn) and "Comfort Shifters" (Yukkuris who appear nice but at the first moment of comfort or pampering they turn scum ).
The problem of them not changing is when they reach a level in the "Nice Side" or the "Scum Side" of the Ease, if they become Shithead, Scum, Decent or Nice, they won't be able to change back. Average Yu's tend to be more moldeable but also easier to influence, so Average yu's can easily be corrupted by a cunning or charming bad yu or sometimes, sadly not that often, inspired by a noble yu.
You can tell how far they are based on how reasonable and open they are to what "non yukkuris" or those "not agreeing with them" have to say, or how rabid their scum attitude is. In this story you can tell that they aren't as rabid as other scum so the potential was there, but well, as anon said, they wasted it with their baseless pride.
Maybe i should had mentioned that to you before, but since you said you were long time lurker, i supposed you were a bit more aware of the Karmic Scale of the yukkuris.
Hope this solves any loose thread my previous interaction with you had.
Now i think about it there is something odd about the pic, it looks like it implies the river isn't that deep and that the remains of marisa and the ko's are still there. Kinda Weird, one would think the river would be deep since there is no way for the yu's to remain afloat without a hat or something.
I actually like the yukkuris that never comprehend. To me it feels like if you give yukkuri the way of "understanding humans" such that it can learn its mistakes in 10 minutes of conversation with humans, then they're at a sufficient level of intelligence where killing yukkuris would never be justified. You can just have a 10 minute conversation with it and it'll understand and be better, and the world is all roses and rainbows and happiness.
I like to think the shitheadedness is bred into the yukkuri and that it would take an act of god or intense merciless torture to get it to repent, and it will only repent to save itself and not because it understood what it did is "wrong". The nice-heads stay on one side of the fence and the shitheads stay on the other.
In other words, I like to think of "learning" should be an intense lifechanging process that would take the yukkuri most of its life to comprehend, not something it can suddenly understand simply because instinctively they are not taught to behave this way.