Silence in the classroom! I see that Halloween has you all worked up, talking about spirits, ghosts, and urban legends out of nowhere. Since your heads seem full of empty, meaningless horror tales, today we are going to study a real and tragic case from our own history: the origin of Yuyuko Saigyouji, the princess of Hakugyokou.
Long before she became the carefree and gluttonous specter some of you have heard about, Yuyuko was a young human of noble birth, the daughter of a courtier with an exquisite talent for poetry, whom she left plunged in grief and longing after withdrawing from her home. She lived surrounded by beauty, but she was cursed with a terrifying power: the ability to manipulate death. It was not an instantaneous ability, but rather a passive and inevitable influence that caused the living beings around her to simply perish naturally, meeting their hour for various reasons without her being able to prevent it. Unable to bear the weight of an ability that snatched away life, she made a drastic decision: to take her own life voluntarily.
Following her passing, she asked for her mortal body to be buried beneath the roots of the Saigyou Ayakashi, a millennial youkai cherry tree that absorbed souls. Her objective in choosing this destination was noble: to use her own power to keep that cursed tree asleep and prevent a massacre. That tragic choice and the symbolism of her sacrifice ended up immortalizing the theme of cherry blossoms in the famous subsequent verses and poems of her father: "May I die beneath the cherry blossoms in spring, around the full moon of February."
With her physical death, her soul ascended and was judged by Eiki Shiki, the Yama. Due to the unique nature of her sacrifice and the balance her body maintained in the living world, Eiki granted her a special existence: she was allowed to forget the painful memories of her mortality and become the mistress of Hakugyokou in the Underworld. That is why today we see her with that cheerful attitude, free from guilt. Furthermore, to maintain order in her mansion, the Konpaku family has faithfully served the Saigyouji for generations —most notably the master swordsman Youki Konpaku, and now his student and successor, Youmu—, taking charge of guarding the grounds.
And here lies one of the greatest and cruelest ironies of our history (recorded in the annals of Perfect Cherry Blossom): centuries later, since Yuyuko herself had completely forgotten her human past after Eiki's judgment, it was she herself who ordered the Saigyou Ayakashi to bloom! Her loyal gardener Youmu obediently helped her with the task without knowing the terrible secret hidden within the roots, nor that awakening that tree meant the final death of her mistress. They were on the verge of unleashing disaster and sacrificing the balance of Gensokyo, were it not for the intervention of those who stepped in to resolve the incident.
Let this serve as a lesson to you: the beauty of cherry blossoms sometimes hides the deepest wounds, proving that the greatest danger does not lurk in the dark, but in the forgetting of what we once tried to bury. Class dismissed!
