(The sharp crack of a pointer hits the chalkboard)
Please pay attention and stop messing around! Class is about to begin.
Well, students, today I will teach you the true history behind Kaguya. Yes, that Kaguya. The Princess of the Moon. The very same one hiding in Eientei, deep within the Bamboo Forest of the Lost, who... well, the one who seems to have entirely too much free time to make my dear friend's life miserable. But as a teacher, my duty is to remain impartial and ensure history is not erased. So today, we will put personal grudges aside and stick strictly to the facts.
To understand where this Lunarian comes from, we must travel many centuries back to ancient Japan. It all began with a humble, hardworking old man, a bamboo cutter known as Taketori no Okina.
One ordinary day, while working in the forest, he noticed something highly unusual. One of the bamboo stalks was glowing with a strange, mystical light from within. Curious, he cut it open and found a tiny girl inside. And when I say tiny, I mean the size of a thumb. Having no children, the old man and his wife saw this glowing creature as a gift from the heavens. They named her Nayotake no Kaguya-hime and raised her as their own.
Now, as you might expect from a glowing alien baby, she didn't grow up normally. In a mere three months, she blossomed into a full-grown, extraordinarily beautiful woman. Not only that, but every time the old man cut a bamboo stalk afterwards, he found gold inside. They quickly became incredibly wealthy.
Her beauty became legendary across the land. Soon, five high-ranking nobles camped outside her house, refusing to leave. To politely tell them to get lost, Kaguya assigned each of them an "impossible task" to bring her a mythical treasure. She demanded the Stone Bowl of the Buddha, the Jeweled Branch of Hourai, the Fire-Rat Robe from China, a five-colored jewel from a dragon's neck, and a swallow's cowrie shell.
And oh, what a pathetic display of human greed it was! These so-called honorable men tried to scam her in the most embarrassing ways possible. One just bought a dirty old bowl from a random temple in Kyoto and tried to pass it off as a holy relic. Another—the Kuramochi Prince—hired craftsmen to forge a fake jeweled branch, but the unpaid artisans crashed his presentation demanding their wages! The fire-rat robe they presented immediately burned to a crisp when put to the test. The noble seeking the dragon's jewel gave up after a terrifying storm at sea, and the last one broke his back falling while reaching into a swallow's nest. They all failed spectacularly.
Eventually, even the Emperor of Japan proposed to her. Kaguya rejected him too, though they became close confidants. But then came the time when Kaguya revealed she had to return to her true home on the Moon. The Emperor sent his royal guard to protect her from the lunar emissaries, but they were blinded by an otherworldly light. She left the Emperor a farewell letter and the Hourai Elixir of Immortality, ascending back to the heavens in a tearful, tragic goodbye.
...Or so the human textbooks say.
Because, as we all know here in Gensokyo, she never actually left. She faked her return, went into hiding, and eventually ended up squatting in our very own Bamboo Forest!
But her reckless actions set off a chain of tragedies. The Emperor, heartbroken and possessing no desire to live forever without her, ordered an expedition led by a man named Iwakasa to burn the Elixir of Immortality at the peak of the mountain closest to the heavens—Mount Fuji.
However, they were being followed. Fujiwara no Mokou, the young daughter of the disgraced Kuramochi Prince who presented the fake jeweled branch, trailed the royal procession up the treacherous slopes. She sought revenge for her family's ruined honor, intending to steal the elixir.
When the expedition reached the peak, the goddess of the mountain appeared and forbade them from burning the elixir there. In the ensuing confusion and the sheer exhaustion of the descent, Mokou made her move. Driven by a dark, desperate obsession, she murdered Iwakasa in cold blood, stole the ultimate prize, and swallowed it herself.
By drinking that elixir, she condemned herself to a static eternity. For centuries, she wandered aimlessly as an immortal outcast. She could not age, but she could still feel the excruciating pangs of starvation, the ravages of disease, and the crushing, maddening weight of outliving everyone she ever knew. She became a ghost haunting the edges of civilization, a hollow shell without a purpose.
That was, until a chilling rumor finally reached her ears. The moon princess had never ascended. Kaguya was alive, hiding comfortably in Gensokyo.
That revelation ignited a dormant inferno within Mokou's stagnant heart. It was a burning, inextinguishable purpose that finally guided her steps to this very forest.
