A very unusual magician who lives in the Forest of Magic.

More specifically, magician is her occupation, but she is human.

She's clad in mostly black clothes, wears an enormous black hat and is often seen going to the shrine.

She usually doesn't appear much in the human village.

She is the only daughter of the proprietor of the successful Kirisame second-hand shop in the village, but it appears she's cut off all relations there (*1).

The forest isn't her only home; she also runs a general store, the "Kirisame Magic Shop".

However, due to the difficulty of finding the store in the forest, and the fact that nobody has any idea what she really deals with in the first place, she has rarely been seen actually working.

Her personality is condescending as if trying to make fools of others, and tends to have difficulty expressing sympathy towards others, but she can be refined, and it is interesting to be with her.

1: As this is a private matter the details are unclear, but it may be related to the fact that the Kirisame family doesn't deal in magical items.

She has the ability to use magic.

Her specialty is magics that are mostly concerned with light and heat.

She likes to say, "It ain't magic if it ain't flashy. Danmaku's all about firepower."

The magic she uses does appear flashy, but their source is relatively simple.

First, she has to hunt for magical mushrooms to use as the fuel, which only grow in the wild.

Next, she has a peculiar way of preparing them that involves boiling them for several days in a concentrated soup.

She'll create blends of many kinds of soups and dry them into a solid mass over the course of a few more days.

At that point they're ready for magical experimentation.

She will run all sorts of experiments, including throwing the masses, heating them or submerging them in mountain stream water.

Very rarely, she'll discover a truly magical reaction in the course of these experiments.

She'll record both failures and successes in her records, and then begin gathering mushrooms once again.

Her magic is extremely flashy, and indeed quite beautiful, but it's backed up by a considerable amount of nothing but her own effort, which she goes to great lengths never to show others.

In other words, it's not unlike a gigantic fireworks show.

Still, it's quite unusual for a human to be able to use magic to this extent (*2).

She says this is also due to the effects of the Forest of Magic.

2: It's possible that in the future she may become a (youkai) magician.

Her current occupation.

Or so she says, but she's almost never been seen actually working.

The shop is located at her house, but not only do you have to make your way safely through the Forest of Magic to get there, you must do so while she's actually home.

It is as if she doesn't seem to be concerned at all with conducting business.

Furthermore, the shop's interior is disorganized beyond imagination, almost as if it's a miniature Forest of Magic in itself.

She undertakes a wide variety of work, ranging from making gambling predictions to the resolution of serious incidents.

However, if you want to see her use magic, requesting her to put on a summer fireworks display might be a good idea.

Since she typically accepts payment on success, she won't take any money at all in the case of failure, which is surprisingly forthright of her.

She says she does any kind of magic, but that doesn't mean she can actually use a variety of different spells.

Her magical skills are generally limited to destruction, so there isn't much she can do besides youkai extermination.

However, her powers generally have few weaknesses, and have the same effect regardless of their target, be they human or youkai, so there are few who can match her in terms of sheer destructive power (*3).

As she usually spends a lot of time at the shrine, whenever someone requests that the Hakurei shrine maiden take care of a youkai, she often decides to do it herself.

Due to her considerable skill as a youkai hunter and especially since the establishment of the spell card rules, she will shamelessly flaunt her showy magic abilities every chance she gets.

Since she seems to act in competition to the shrine maiden, they help improve the other.

3: Among humans.

Her other occupation is as a common burglar.

She seems to be more enthusiastic about that than being a jack-of-all-trades.

Her motto is, she fair-and-square breaks into the front, and fair-and-square says "I'll borrow ze" while carrying it off.

She especially seems to feel little guilt in carrying off books, though they damage easily.

The Gensokyo Chronicles of the Hieda family have not, as yet, incurred damage, but it would be dangerous if the existence of this collection were to become public knowledge.

Magic users occasionally use tools.

The tools this particular magician uses include a magic broom, a miniature furnace, and handmade grimoires.

She uses the magic broom to ride around on because she believes it's an essential tool for a magician.

It was originally a normal broom for cleaning, but it was affected by her constant use of it in magical rituals and began an unusual growth of its own.

Leaves appear to be sprouting from the handle, even though it is already dead.

This is unrelated to her magic.

The furnace is her strongest weapon, and manages to hold up through strenuous use in magical experiments and cooking.

It's a miniaturized source of immense firepower, the only one of its kind in Gensokyo.

It fuels her magic power and she is able to control it at will, from gentle flames for simmering pots overnight to fire powerful enough to cause bushfires.

However, it's not an item of her making, but was created by Kourindo.

The grimoires are a careful recording of the results of all of her magical experiments, regardless of their outcome.

They're grimoires in name only, simply a record of her actions.

She probably believes that magicians need to have books.

In addition, she seems to have various other small implements that are hidden away in her skirt or her hat (*4).

4: It's probably dangerous to hide things that explode when thrown.