Ball gowns were not the ideal clothes for sprinting. Nitori's heavy skirt bounced around her, and at one point, Marisa stepped on the train and nearly tripped the pair. Fortunately, by the time they reached the hall, Nitori's sight was coming back. Confused fairy maids looked on as she turned a series of corners, zig-zagging off toward what she could only hope was a less occupied section of the mansion. Not until they'd traveled at least a few hundred meters did she slow to a stop, panting, and let go of Marisa's hand.

"What in the hell was that thing?!" Marisa said, and rubbed at her eyes. "I'm gonna be seeing spots forever, jeez."

"Flash grenade. You should recover in a bit, though."

"Uh-huh. In a year, maybe." Marisa stopped rubbing her eyes and looked around. As she got her bearings, she said, "What was that about, anyway?"

"Weeeeeeeeell. Um. I kind of... forged my invitation."

Nitori had expected Marisa to be outraged, but she only nodded approvingly. "Good enough to get us in, not bad! The flash thing was a pretty good move too, but maybe warn me next time."

"How was I supposed to warn you without her noticing?!"

"I dunno, hand signals or something! You're the inventor, figure it out." Seeming satisfied, Marisa started off down one branch of the hallway, identical to all the others to Nitori's eyes. "C'mon, let's get moving. Something like that won't slow Sakuya down for long."

"Where are we going?" Nitori said, hurrying to catch up and cursing the gown for what felt like the fiftieth time tonight. This kind of thing might be nice to look at, but that was its only positive quality. "We should probably get out of here before she catches up."

"Yeah, probably! I bet she's pissed. The next time Sakuya sees you, it's gonna be free kappa sashimi for everybody."

"That's not even a thing."

"It could be. … what kinda dipping sauce do you think you'd eat it with?"

"Do you really expect me to answer that?!"

"Hey, somebody who eats people's souls outta their butts shouldn't be squeamish."

"Fuck you." Despite the remark, the exchange had lifted Nitori's mood. She'd never get anything done if she viewed arguments with Marisa as anything but harmless fun. On the other hand... her perfect date was kind of ruined. The magazines hadn't had many tips on how to woo somebody while fleeing from a vengeful maid through a vampire's mansion.

And who even made a dumb house like this, anyway? The archways in the halls were purely ornamental painted plaster. Not load-bearing at all. Typical human wastefulness. This place could stand up to practically anything if it had some good steel reinforcements, but no, instead there were some useless fake pillars with golden paint on them. This was the work of a race who thought that making dresses without pockets was a good idea.

Speaking of her dress, even walking at a normal pace like this, she'd nearly tripped on it half a dozen times. "Hey, hold up a second," she said, once the pair had gone sufficiently far that she wasn't looking over her shoulder for Sakuya every two seconds.

"Huh? Yeah, sure. What's up?"

"I have to do something about this thing..." Crouching down along the edge of the hall, Nitori slid her satchel to the floor and started digging through its contents. "You never answered my question, though. Where are we going?"

"I dunno. I figure Sakuya's got to keep most of her attention on the party, so she probably isn't gonna chase us much. This place is always fun to look around, you know?"

"So that's your plan?" Nitori grumbled. "To wander around this place until she throws us out or you get bored?"

"Yeah, basically."

Nitori sighed. In that case, the date was definitely unsalvageable. But, worst case scenario, she got to spend an evening with Marisa. That was what she really wanted, right?

"What're you doin', anyway?" Marisa said, leaning over her curiously.

"Alterations." At the very bottom of the satchel, she finally found her knife. With her other hand, she grabbed her skirt and lifted it away from her legs. Tip #18: Dress perfectly to make his jaw drop briefly flashed into her head, but she pushed it aside. Perfect or not, there was no way that she was wearing this thing for another second.

The dress had cost enough that Nitori flinched as she drove the blade into it, but if she was being honest with herself, it wasn't like she would have ever worn it again anyway. Once the initial cut was made, she was easily able to continue ripping the thin cloth. It was awkward to rip it behind herself, but squirming around, she was able to just manage it. When it was finished, she stood up, and most of the skirt stayed behind on the floor. The part that she was still wearing ended just above her knees, giving her a much more manageable outfit. Marisa looked shocked, but Nitori could already feel her mood improving. After sliding her satchel back onto her shoulder, she kicked the discarded cloth away, then looked to Marisa. "What are you waiting for? Let's get moving."

With Marisa leading the way, the two descended down the echoing stairs at the heart of the mansion. Nitori was relieved to not be attempting it in a skirt that nearly dragged the ground. She probably would have tripped and broken her neck. After going down several floors, Marisa opened a door that was otherwise indistinguishable from the others, then stepped into a hallway. "I just remembered, there's a room this way that I was wantin' to check out, and I think you'll like it."

"Huh. Okay." The hallway stretched forward for at least a hundred meters, and Nitori mentally weighed that against the mansion's size as seen from outside. "... just how big is this place, anyway?"

"I dunno! I've been exploring it off and on for a few years, and there's still a lot I haven't seen. Pretty cool, huh?"

"I guess." She had to admit, the size trick was pretty neat. Although it just raised further questions about how structurally sound this place could be.

Doors flanked either side of the hall, dozens of them, but they were all the same, unmarked white with panels that were embossed with flowers. Somehow, Marisa still seemed to know where she was going. "Aha! This one!" she said, and pushed one door open. It kicked up a cloud of dust from the floor, but she didn't seem bothered by it as she stepped inside. The room within was dark, but the light coming in through the doorway provided some illumination. It looked like it had formerly been a small parlor, but the furniture had all been pushed to the edges of the rooms. On top of it, outside world devices were piled. Hundreds, maybe thousands of metal-and-plastic shapes gleamed under the light. Lifeless power cords tangled on the floor, and the occasional repurposed bowl or crate held piles of plastic accessories. Nitori didn't even realize that she was staring until Marisa broke the silence. "Pretty neat, huh? I figure this was all the stuff they didn't have a use for after they moved here. I never got to ask Sakuya about it."

Nitori was already digging in her satchel for her flashlight. "Most of it looks like it needs electricity," she said. Already, she was considering whether it would be difficult to patch her house into the power grid that flowed from the underground fusion reactor. After finding her flashlight and flicking it on, she immediately moved over to the nearest pile to start hunting. Telephones, portable players for magnetic tape cartridges, speakers... a lot of this stuff was already pretty common on Youkai Mountain, and she doubted that human-made stuff was going to be higher quality. Some of the others, though, were interesting mysteries: Boxes with big glass screens on the front, some kind of big white machine with an elaborate mechanism on one end with a needle clamped inside, a black box covered in buttons with a rotating tray for discs on top... She wasn't going to be able to pack any of this out, but she immediately started looking for small, useful components that she could fit into her satchel.

She was pretty sure that there was an article in one of the magazines about not boring your date with your hobbies, but... screw it. She'd had been following the advice this whole time, and it hadn't really gotten her that far. If that was what human romance looked like, maybe she wasn't cut out for it. She was just going to have to figure out what kappa romance should look like. "Here," she said, tossing a screwdriver to Marisa, then pointed to one of the contraptions. "Start taking that thing apart. I want to see what's inside."

"Heh. I never saw you steal stuff before!" Marisa said, and knelt down to start hunting for screws.

"Yeah, well... I make an exception for people who tell everyone that I smell bad and don't invite me to parties."

"Ooh, good point."

The pair worked quietly for a while, both of them disassembling their respective devices. Nitori had squeezed in behind one of the larger contraptions, a giant white metal box that was sitting on the floor. After pulling some of the guts out of the back, she was delighted to see that it had a water pump, a lot of tubing, and some circuitry. The pump was sadly too big to sneak out, but she might be able to come back for it. After some time, Marisa broke the silence. "Hey. I was wonderin' something."

Nitori's focus was on a small motor that she was now maneuvering out of its holding bracket. Only after sitting it on the floor and wiping the resulting grease on the front of her dress—might as well, at this point—did she peek out from behind the machine. "What?"

"Why'd you even invite me to the ball in the first place?"

"W-what do you mean?"

"Well," Marisa said, scooting closer to make conversation easier. Past her, Nitori could see that she'd made quite a bit of headway on disassembling her own target. "I mean, you weren't invited, but it doesn't really seem like your kinda thing anyway. Did ya really forge an invitation and stuff just to get me in?"

Popping the pump casing open, Nitori was pleased to see that the mechanisms within were small enough that they just might fit in her satchel. The work gave her a good excuse to stay silent as she considered her response. The thought of admitting that she'd done all of this for Marisa's sake was an embarrassing one, but it wasn't like she could think of a convincing lie otherwise. "Yeah, sure, I guess. It's not like I care about some stupid dance. That kind of thing is just a waste of time."

"Huh..."

Marisa's tone of voice just seemed to be prompting further explanation. Nitori scooted back behind the machine to hide her face. "I-I thought it would be a fun way to hang out or something. I don't know."

"Pfft!" Marisa broke into snickering, and it took her a few seconds to recover. "J-jeez. Next time, you could just ask to hang out by the river or something. Probably less likely to end with you chucking bombs at Sakuya. Doesn't really matter what you're doin' when the company's good, y'know?"

"I-I'll keep it in mind," Nitori said. She was proud at how level she was able to keep her voice. Her heart felt like it was flopping around like a fish out of water.

When the pair left the storage room, Nitori's satchel was bulging with all of the outside world tech that she'd salvaged. She was quite happy with the findings, and already planning what she could do with them. It would depend on how the pump held up under testing, she decided. If it was strong enough, maybe she'd try her hand at designing hydraulics.

After some wandering, Marisa started selecting rooms at random. Most of them were long-disused, full of furniture draped in throw cloths, but there were a few more interesting finds. A small reading room that, judging by the contents, hadn't been used since the 1500s. A room full of medieval medical instruments, with a heavily-stained operating table in the middle. A storage room containing dozens of hand carts for delivering food. (After much debate, Marisa convinced Nitori to push her down the hallway on one while she tried to balance on top of it.) An oubliette, which Marisa spent at least five minutes inside shouting and listening to her voice echo.

At one point, they walked into an old bedroom, and Nitori caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Grease stains across the front of her dress, a ripped and uneven hem line, dust smeared along the back of her clothes, her hair a mess from crawling around behind the machine... it definitely wasn't much of a date look, she had to admit. But it seemed like a pretty suitable look for a kappa.

By the time that the pair realized that the ball might be winding down soon, she was in a pretty good mood. It wasn't quite the date she'd been expecting, but it was still an enjoyable night with Marisa. As the two walked back toward the front of the mansion, she was already planning on how to say goodbye as un-awkwardly as possible when Marisa said, "Hold up, I've got one last stop I wanna make."

"Jeez, I'm starving," Marisa announced to nobody in particular, as she led Nitori into the mansion's kitchen.

"How can you still be hungry? Didn't you eat half a tray of chocolates before we got kicked out?"

"Yeah, but I was expectin' to stuff my face here, so I didn't eat all day," Marisa said. Crossing the room, she pushed open a door toward the back. "Here, dig in."

On the other side was an expansive pantry. It was easily as large as Nitori's entire house, and the options were... generous. Most of the contents were ingredients, sacks of flour the size of a person, barrels of cooking oil, and jugs of molasses. Still, there was plenty of ready-to-eat food, too: Cheese wheels half a meter across, barrels of fruit and vegetables, baskets of nuts... but it was a jar of pickled cucumbers near the ceiling that caught Nitori's eye. Ignoring everything else, she hovered up and grabbed the jar. She was already wrestling the top off by the time she took a seat on the edge of the shelf, while Marisa hunted below.

"If your skirt was like five centimeters shorter, I could probably see your panties from this angle, y'know," Marisa said, as she dug through a pile of cheeses wrapped in wax paper.

"W-what the heck is that supposed to mean?!"

"Just sayin'." Marisa seemed satisfied with one of the cheeses, and after unwrapping it, looked up to Nitori. "Toss me your knife."

"You're gonna drop it and cut yourself."

"Just do it."

"Fine."

The knife was now buried under half of a disassembled water pump, so she had to dig for a while before she found it. She tossed it down, and Marisa caught it safely enough, with a minimum of fumbling. After cutting herself a wedge of the cheese, Marisa floated up and settled onto the shelf across from Nitori. "Pretty cozy up here, huh?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"Y'know, even though we got kicked out of the dance, tonight was still a pretty good night," Marisa said, and paused to take a big bite of cheese. Waggling the rest of it at Nitori, she continued, "I mean, neither of us actually wanted to dance and stuff anyway, right? Pretty funny, when ya think about it!"

"Yep," Nitori agreed, and returned to the question of how to end the night. She still did have the letter safely tucked away. The magazines hadn't said much about how to deliver love letters, but they'd had plenty to say on the topic of confessions. You were supposed to confess in a romantic location, under the stars or walking in a flower garden or something. Eating pickles and cheese while sitting in a pantry was pretty far from the recommended approach.

… which meant that for her purposes, it was probably perfect. She'd seen Marisa outside on starry nights, anyway. You couldn't get her to stop staring at the sky and pointing out constellations. It was all a bit boring to Nitori, but she found it kind of endearing anyway. That was probably what she sounded like to Marisa when she talked about engineering, so it was only fair. After digging the envelope out of her pocket, she anxiously turned it over in her lap as she worked up the courage to speak up. "Hey, uh, Marisa?"

"Yeah? What's up?"

"I-I, um..." Nitori smoothed out a crease on the corner of the envelope, then decided that it was probably better to just let it speak for itself. With a flick of her wrist, she sent it flying across the space between them. "Here. Just read it."

Marisa caught the letter effortlessly. "Uh. Okay." She sat her cheese down on her apron to free a hand, then ripped the top flap open with a single long tug of her finger. By the time she started unfolding it, the tension was already too much for Nitori, and she looked away, chomping heavily on another pickle to distract herself. Even so, she couldn't resist peeking at Marisa's face, and she saw the exact moment when Marisa realized what the letter was about and stiffened up. It didn't help her anxiety, and soon she'd eaten the entire pickle and started on another.

… she was fishing a third out of the jar by the point that Marisa finally let out a soft 'pfft' and said, "I can't believe you called my hair friggin' radiant."

Nitori froze, hand still in the jar of pickles, as a violent blush overtook her face. "I-I like how it looks in the light, okay?! It's a compliment!"

"Still really corny."

"If you don't like it, you don't have to read it!" Without thinking, Nitori hurled the pickle at Marisa. This time, Marisa wasn't prepared, and the pickle smacked against her stomach with a wet thud.

"I didn't say I don't like it! Just that it's corny." Marisa held the letter up with one hand now, lifting the pickle with the other to idly munch on it as she read. "... aw, and you even drew little hearts in the margins!"

… right, she had written the letter following the magazines' advice. She'd bought a bottle of perfume just to spray it with. She was pretty sure that she used the phrase 'love as strong as a coursing river' somewhere in there. "R-rrgh. Give me the letter back," she said, holding a hand out.

"They're kinda cute..."

"Just give it!"

Marisa looked questioningly over to her, then folded the letter closed again. "... well, okay, but I wasn't done readin'," she said, and tossed it back.

Now that it had been opened, the paper wasn't quite as aerodynamic, but Nitori was able to crane forward just enough to snatch it out of the air. As soon as she had it, she ripped it in half. And again, and again, until nothing was left but a pile of tiny scraps, which she dramatically dumped in her lap. "Why do humans even think that drawing pictures of your organs all over stuff is romantic, anyway? You're a really messed-up species."

Marisa was now looking at her like a ticking bomb. "... so, uh, change your mind, or...?"

Nitori slumped down in her seat, rubbing at the back of her neck thoughtfully. Destroying the letter had been satisfying, but the feeling was brief. Now she was going to have to do this the old-fashioned way. "L-look. The letter was a bad idea, okay? I was following a bunch of useless advice. It's just... I like you, okay? You're not bad for a human, and you're more fun to be around than most kappa. … there. I went through all that trouble just to say that."

"Huh... so the dance and stuff too...?"

"Yeah..."

"Seems like a lot of work just to ask somebody out. Most people would've just shoved the letter under my door or something."

"Y-you don't have to rub it in!"

"Hmm... explains the kiss, too..."

"I wasn't planning that! It just kind of... happened..."

"Uh-huh. Sure it did. ... wanna give it another try?"

"H-huh?!"

Marisa was grinning now, and leaned forward, resting her forearms on her knees and studying Nitori's face. "Kissin' me. Tonight was pretty fun. If you still want to do the whole dating thing, sure, I'm game."

"Y-y-yeah, sounds fun!" Nitori barely managed to squeak it out before she stuffed another pickle into her mouth. It was a good excuse to stop talking before she managed to kill herself with embarrassment.

Much to Nitori's surprise, the pair managed to get out of the mansion without anybody being made into sashimi. Five days later, she had her first date with Marisa. On the banks of the river, they went for a swim together, then split the remaining bottle of stolen wine and talked about stars and machines. She wore her normal clothes, grease stains and all. At the end of the night, they got into an argument over the last cup of wine, and she threw Marisa's hat in the river to distract her for long enough to gulp it down. Marisa retaliated with a kiss when she got back.

It was, in her opinion, the perfect date.