So wait, wait. If I got this right, Reimu accepting her love for Yukari would (somehow) make her lose her humanity, so she distanced herself from her
and Yukari resets the distance every spring, being certain some day Reimu will give in?

Either way, this was quite beautiful, I couldn't stop reading.

Lord-of-Roses said:

So wait, wait. If I got this right, Reimu accepting her love for Yukari would (somehow) make her lose her humanity, so she distanced herself from her
and Yukari resets the distance every spring, being certain some day Reimu will give in?

Either way, this was quite beautiful, I couldn't stop reading.

This work is essentially based on the idea that the Hakurei shrine maidens, being keepers of the balance in Gensokyo, are supposed to treat everyone equally. I don't see it much these days, but it used to be a somewhat popular take, I believe, around the time Yukari was featuring prominently in stories and Perfect Memento in Strict Sense, where Reimu's relationships and attitude towards other people are mentioned, came out. There is a much older doujin dealing with this theme by the same artist here: https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/about_official_matters
I don't think I'd consider this a direct sequel, but they're clearly connected and may provide context.

What is actually going on is probably meant to leave some room for interpretation. Basically, though, because Reimu isn't meant to be close to Yukari, the latter reset their distance once, returning them to being essentially strangers. This would have been the first incident of Reimu hallucinating the wisterias and subsequently unlocking them and removing Yukari's presence from her heart. That should have been the end of it, but her holding on to a trace of the wisterias (of Yukari) makes the incident keep repeating. We see that the wisterias make her feel at ease, that she doesn't want them to go away, but her duty is to make them go away. So we come to this story, where her inner conflict has grown to the point that the lock is running away from her.

This artist's works are way too abstract for me to understand lol