-.-.-.-.-
-7-
-.-.-.-.-
"Oh my goodness, what is all this?"
Kaguya and Eirin had eventually made their way to the same courtyard the rest of us were examining. Upon discovering the strange scene of flowers and phantoms, Kaguya's reaction had seemed to be more one of surprise and amusement than alarm or concern.
"Oh dear, Eirin. I don't know if we should have a flower-viewing party or a ghost-watching party."
"I'm sure we could do either, princess."
"Why not both, then?" She clapped excitedly, smiling as if she hadn't a care in the world.
Eirin seemed unworried as well, but at least appeared to realize that something was not as it should be. "Udonge," she called.
Reisen hurried to her side. "Yes, master?"
"Go out and see if you can find out what's happening for us."
"Understood!" Reisen responded with a crisp and formal salute, then hurried off down the hall.
"I suppose I need to go figure out what sort of preparations one makes for a ghost-watching party." Eirin said, and retreated back inside.
Only Kaguya remained with us, extending a hand and watching as one of the phantoms coiled around it.
Reisen returned a minute later, carrying what looked like an oversized megaphone attached to a strap across her shoulder. She stood rigidly and spoke to Kaguya. "Well princess, I'm off to go investigate this situation."
"Yes, go ahead. You'll have to hurry though, the other Inaba all already have a head start on you."
"What? When did Tewi leave? What's she going to... never mind."
I looked around. Sure enough, Tewi and the other rabbits had all vanished when I wasn't looking. That girl had a knack for making herself scarce when she wanted to.
"You, humans," Reisen called, turning now to Renko and I. "I hope you can see that I'm far to busy to be assisting you right now."
"That's understandable," Renko agreed. "Instead, may I accompany you on your investigations?"
"Absolutely not!" She said, and without another moment's hesitation leapt from the veranda, soaring clear over the low stone wall that stood before the taller bamboo one.
As a human, any thought of following her after a leap like that was hopeless.
"Ah, she's escaped again," said Renko limply.
"So much for your plans, Renko. What do we do now?"
"Well, given the circumstances, I think it would be wise for us to go and find Tewi. She's probably not gone far, and I suspect she might have some idea what all of this is about. If you'll excuse us then, princess." Renko bowed politely to Kaguya.
"Oh, are you leaving already? The flowers are uncommonly beautiful, why not sit and enjoy them with me for a bit?"
"Thank you for the invitation, but I have a hunch we're going to be see a lot more of these flowers where we're headed. Come on, Merry."
"Oh, yes. Please excuse me, princess." I nodded to Kaguya and hurried along after Renko, who was already making her way back to the entrance.
"Have a nice day you two," came Kaguya's shout from behind us.
-.-.-.-.-
Outside the gates of Eientei, we were greeted once again by a wealth of beautiful blossoms. Here, most of what we could see on the ground was the torch-like plumes of flowering ginger, but overhead nearly every branch of the dizzying canopy that spanned our view was laden with the sweet-smelling bamboo flowers. The cloying sent in the air was nearly overpowering. To see the entire forest erupt into blooms at once like this was shocking - even on our way into Eientei just a few hours ago, the scene had looked entirely different.
"This is amazing," Renko said, looking up in awe. If there had been a botanist or a nature photographer here with us, they'd be weeping with joy.
"It's not just a profusion," I added, "it seems like rare flowers are all blooming too. Bamboo usually only blooms once in a given plant's lifetime. With the whole forest blooming like this, I hope that doesn't mean the whole thing's about to die off."
"Exactly right. Maybe that was even the point of this Incident. You tell me, Merry, what's the other you up to?"
"I haven't done anything, Renko. Aside from the rare flowers, there are also things blooming at the wrong time of year. Bamboo flowers, Irises, moss and akizakura should never bloom at the same time, regardless of the season, but especially not in the spring!"
"Yes, there's definitely more going on here than just a lot of flowers opening at once. I wonder if it's like this everywhere or just here in the forest. Maybe things are blooming out of season everywhere."
"Like sunflowers, you mean?"
"Great idea, Merry! The Garden of the Sun isn't far from here. We can head there and find out. If it looks like it did last summer then it's definitely an Incident. Come on, let's go take a look!" Renko tugged at my hand as she began to stride away from the gate.
"There's just one problem with that idea, Renko," I said, holding my ground as Renko tugged. "We have no idea how to get out of this forest. Didn't you want to go look for Tewi first, anyway?"
My partner stopped dead in her tracks. Although we had come to Eientei several times at this point, we'd never found our way without the aid of an experienced guide. Usually we arrived by following Reisen or Mokou, and either Mokou or Tewi lead us back out after we were done.
"Right. First we find Tewi, then we go to the Garden of the Sun. Let's go, Merry!"
"Yes, yes. Lead on, Sherlock." Sometimes it would be nice if my famed great detective of a partner would devote a little of her genius to planning.
Instead of running out the gate, Renko turned and set to circumnavigating the inner wall of the complex, which stood between the bamboo thicket and the mansion proper. As we walked, we were on the lookout for any sign of the Inaba. In our experience, finding one of them was almost the same as finding Tewi. She was never far behind.
Perhaps it was because we were searching in this way that we soon noticed a crouched figure amongst the branches, staring over the wall into the grounds of Eientei. It wasn't a rabbit though. It was a girl, standing on a broken length of bamboo that had shattered partway up the stalk and fallen over to be supported by several other tall stems, forming a natural perch.
"Hey Mokotan, is that you?" Renko called out, when she spotted the figure.
The figure turned toward us, then with a rush of rustling leaves jumped down what must have been six meters to land in front of us.
"You've been hanging out with the princess far too much," Mokou said as she approached. "Don't call me Mokotan, especially when I don't know it's you saying it."
"Mokou did you come here to pick a fight with the princess again?"
"Well, not specifically, but there's something weird going on in the forest," she said gesturing to the blooms surrounding us. "I thought maybe that quack was testing some sort of new drug or fertilizer or something..."
"Ah, a reasonable guess but this time I'm afraid that's not it."
"Oh? Do you know what's going on then?"
"No, but neither do they. Both the princess and Eirin were with us when this happened and they seemed genuinely surprised."
"That doesn't mean anything. They could have had someone else do it, or have done it along time ago and just waited for it to kick in."
"That's true, but we don't have anything to suggest it was them either. A good detective can't let their personal biases color their judgement."
Mokou crossed her arms. "Alright then, detective, who do you think did this then?"
"Well, even I can't work that fast. We've only just noticed this situation ourselves. We were about to go check out the Garden of the Sun for the time being."
"The Garden of the Sun? You mean that big sunflower field near the village? There used to be a powerful youkai who loved flowers living there..."
"Yuuka Kazami, right?"
"I don't know, to be honest. It's a youkai who carries a parasol. I never learned her name. A few years ago I wandered in there in the summer, and thought I might as well pick a few flowers for Keine, since it was quite a sight. She came out of nowhere and warned me not to pick any that were still alive. I didn't fight her, but she seemed like a real nasty character."
"That sounds like Yuuka alright. I don't know much about her either. We met her briefly last summer. She seems to know miss Akyuu, and I heard from the daughter of the flower shop owner that she sometimes comes into the village to buy seeds or flowers. Everyone seems to be terrified of her, but everything suggests going to see her is what we need to be doing next. As a flower youkai she might have some idea what's going on here."
"Or, given the situation, she might even be the culprit."
"Hmmmm." Renko crossed her arms and tucked her chin to her chest in consideration. "At the very least, she's a suspect, but I don't have enough information yet to properly consider it. Well either way, I'll need to go to the Garden of the Sun to find out. Mokou, I don't suppose I could ask you to guide us out of the the forest, could I?" Renko held up one hand pleadingly, hunching and nodding.
Mokou shrugged. "I don't mind. I just hope you're wrong and this is all Kaguya's fault. It would be a waste to burn pretty flowers like that with my fire."
"Oh, you'll have to be careful," I interjected. "If you start another fire, you might get your face in the newspaper again."
Mokou frowned. "Ugh, I hope not. Damn that crow tengu, she's too fast."
Last year, not long after the Eternal Night Incident, Mokou had taken her revenge on Kaguya for sending Reimu and Marisa after her. The result of that battle had been a sizeable brushfire on the edge of the bamboo forest which had been reported in the Bunbunmaru. If I remember correctly, Aya's article had blamed Mokou for the fire, but for reasons of improperly disposing of a cigarette or something similar.
At any rate, future worries aside, Mokou lead the way out of the forest. It was a more difficult trip than usual with every step needing to be carefully placed to avoid treading on the ubiquitous flowers of every kind that were blooming from every plant in sight. Among the stalks and petals, phantoms were also drifting randomly about and a higher-than-normal number of fairies seemed to be present, playing with the phantoms and frolicking among the flowers. I wondered if the fairies had come because of the flowers, or the flowers had bloomed because of the fairies. Either way, neither option explained the phantoms.
"Where are all of these coming from?" Renko asked rhetorically as she reached out to grab a passing phantom. It wriggled out of her grip and floated away. "Do you think the barrier to the Netherworld got broken again?"
"Well, it probably wasn't a massacre at the human village. I think there's probably too many for that," Mokou responded. I blanched. Such a horrible thought hadn't occurred to me, but it goes without saying that all of these disembodied souls had to be coming from somewhere. I wonder what it was like for Mokou, who might just going on living forever, or at least until her soul ceased to exist to see so many dead souls swarming about, awaiting reincarnation. Would she be envious? Or glad to not have to endure such a thing? I was lost in such thoughts when Mokou suddenly thrust her arm out in front of me, saying "Wait. Hold up."
I bumped into her thoughtlessly. As I was about to apologize she placed a hand on my head and pushed me down. "Just get down already," she whispered hoarsely. Awkwardly I crouched into a bush as she hid behind a stand of bamboo and Renko squatted beside me.
Renko peeked her eyes above the bush for a moment, but apparently wasn't able to see anything. "What is it, Mokou?" she whispered.
"Up ahead. Someone's playing danmaku already."
Without any thought to safety Renko bolted up and dashed a few steps ahead to take cover at a better vantage point. Mokou frowned and fixed her with a disapproving glare.
"It's the proprietress of that food cart!" Renko whispered in surprise, turning back to us. "She's fighting with Tewi!" Mokou and I glanced at eachother for a moment then crept up to join Renko.
Sure enough, we saw the two combatants darting about in the air, weaving through the bamboo at the edge of the forest and around ground cover as they exchanged waves and rings of light bullets. It looked more like two kids enjoying a competitive game than a life-and-death struggle. The youkai Tewi was fighting was a night sparrow who I had seen before, but only behind the counter of her food cart which sold grilled lamprey eels and cheap beer. Renko and I had gone there once or twice for drinks with Mokou. I think her name was Mystia Lorelei.
Tewi descended sharply from a high leap and bounded off of the ground. The momentary touchdown provided a brief measure of predictability to her movement and Mystia capitalized, sending a wedge-like stream of glowing bullets just a hair in front of her position. They collided with Tewi and she was sent tumbling into a patch of tall grass with sandy colored blossoms on long stalks waving above it. It seems Mystia had won.
The night sparrow trilled musically, singing "Ha! Gotcha! No matter how far I fly, all I see is more of the same~" as she circled then soared away.
We rose from our hiding spot and carefully approached. Almost as soon as we did, Tewi's head popped up like a spring from the concealment of the grass.
"Oh, hello there. Did you all enjoy that show?" She said with a lilt of laughter in her voice.
"Tewi, are you alright?"
"No big deal," she said, brushing off her skirt and turning to Mokou. "You, you're the princess' nemesis. I should tell you that this flower Incident isn't the Princess' or the Master's doing."
Mokou scoffed. "Of course you'd say that. I don't suppose you could tell me who's doing it is?"
"Nope!" Tewi chirped happily. "Does it matter though? At a festival like this it's a waste of time if you don't try some of the games." Saying that, she bounded into the air well over Mokou's head, with a half dozen of her Inaba appearing from the grass and following after her. Singing and dancing, she and the other rabbits disappeared back into the forest.
Mokou sighed as she disappeared among the bamboo. "Now the youkai are all worked up too. It's been a while since this happened."
Renko turned to her in surprise. "A while? This has happened before then? How long ago?"
Mokou closed her eyes and massaged her temples with a groan. "Hmmm, I think it's happened before, or something like it. It's been a long time though. Maybe a human lifetime or two? I definitely remember the bamboo grove being full of flowers but... well, that was during one of my 'lying on the floor' years, back before I had someone to come to my door and bully me into taking care of myself. I don't really remember many details."
Renko and I glanced at eachother. Could something as unique as an Incident re-occur?
-.-.-.-.-
-8-
-.-.-.-.-
Shortly after that, we parted ways with Mokou and made our way to the Garden of the Sun. We had initially planned to go together, but our plans changed when Kaguya and Eirin showed up.
"Oh, Mokotan! Why don't you come with us to go flower-and-ghost watching?"
"Why the hell would I go with you?
"Because I'm lonely and bored. The Inaba have run off to play somewhere and Eirin's no fun."
"I'm not a toy for your amusement!"
It was at that point that Renko and I had elected to leave the three of them to their discussions and made our way to the Garden of the Sun alone.
The path leading there from the crossroads south of the village was now lined with countless flowers, in a plethora of colors and shapes. Sunflowers, dandelions, and white clover were the most common, but chrysanthemums, autumn cherry blossoms, and hibiscus were all in bloom as well, regardless of the season. Along with the flowers covering everything were more phantoms than I had seen since the flower-viewing at Hakugyokuro. It seemed the bizarre conditions we had noticed were not confined to the bamboo forest.
"Ghosts on the loose and the seasons out of control. Wouldn't it be natural to assume this is the same as the Spring Snow Incident all over again?" I asked.
Renko rested her chin between her finger and thumb and grunted. "Hmmm, during that Incident, winter was only prolonged here because all the spring had been gathered and taken to the Netherworld."
"Well, maybe we're at the center of it this time. Someone here in Gensokyo might have liked Yuyuko's idea and started gathering up all of the seasons at once. Maybe the Netherworld is all frozen right now."
"Hmmm, gathering everything into one place all at once? Now that sounds like Suika. Maybe there's already a big boozy party happening somewhere."
We continued discussing such possibilities as we continued down the path. After a few minutes of walking, we came to the narrow valley in which the Garden of the Sun lay.
"...or maybe not." Renko concluded, looking at the splendor arrayed before us.
As might have been expected, the garden was breathtaking. Sunflowers stretched as far as the eye could see, even taller and more vibrant than they had been in midsummer, despite the fact it was only spring. Simply looking at the sea of lambent gold swaying gently was enough to make you forget the season, so replete with the feeling of summer were the flowers.
"All right," Renko said, taking it all in. "Let's go find Yuuka." She took my hand and began to lead the way down the slope.
"Do you think this is a good idea, Renko? Yuuka seemed nice enough before, but I kind of doubt she'll remember us. She only saw us for a few minutes last time, and we don't have Akyuu with us to capture her interest this time."
"I'm sure it'll work out. Strong youkai are known for being polite right? Popping our heads off just because we wandered into her garden wouldn't be very polite."
"This doesn't seem like a particularly well thought out plan, Renko."
"Well, if it doesn't work I'll think of a new one."
"That's what worries me." As usual my partner's recklessness was by far the scariest thing to deal with in this world filled with supernatural monsters.
We spent some time looking through the dense maze of sunflowers for any sign of Yuuka, but there was no hint of her or her parasol anywhere about. It was hard to be sure with the visibility in the maze being close to zero, but I got the feeling she wasn't around -all around us birds continued to sing and the voices of fairies could be heard giggling and squealing from time to time.
"I don't think she's here, Renko" I said after perhaps fifteen minutes of searching.
"Do you think I should shout for her?"
"I'd rather you didn't."
Renko suddenly looked up, seeming to notice something above my head. I turned to look as she waved her arm toward the sky. There, a familiar figure was flying by, looking down. Noticing Renko's wave, she descended and dropped into the field beside us.
"Hello Youmu." Renko said cheerfully.
"Oh, it's you two. What are you doing here? I was expecting to find someone else."
"We're just having an out of season flower viewing. How about you?"
"I came here on an errand, and found everything like this, so I was having a look around."
"Everything normal in the Netherworld? No problems with the barrier or the seasons?"
"It's not anything that Yuyuko's doing if that's what you mean. And as far as I can tell the barrier's intact."
"You're not missing..." Renko gestured expansively "a whole bunch of ghosts, by chance?"
"Well it would be impossible to count them all, but not to my knowledge, no. This is a Gensokyo problem, not a Netherworld problem."
"I see," Renko said, pressing her hat down on her head. "Well, thank you for the information. I won't keep you then." Youmu nodded and began to rise back into the sky before Renko called out to her. "Oh! Youmu! Just one more question."
She turned around in midair, looking down toward us. "What is it?"
"Do you remember if anything like this has ever happened before?"
She tilted in her head in consideration. "Like this? Not that I can remember, but if was just in Gensokyo, I might not have known. Does this happen often?"
"Not as far as I know. Thanks again, Youmu."
Youmu nodded and rose higher into the sky, sailing off toward the Bamboo Forest of the Lost, presumably on her way to Eientei.
My partner watched her go for a bit, before turning to me wearing a Cheshire grin. "This is getting interesting," she said. "If the phantoms aren't missing from the Netherworld, then they must have come from somewhere else. Where do you suppose that might be? The Sanzu river? Hell? And what do the flowers have to do with it all? Mokou mentioned this had happened sometime before, but Youmu didn't know about it, which means it must have happened sixty years ago or more."
"That's assuming we can trust what she told us. We can't exactly walk to the Netherworld to check up on any of those details."
"That's true Merry, but there's one detail we can check. Our first clue to understand this Incident will be found somewhere in the annals of history!"
-.-.-.-.-
-9-
-.-.-.-.-
After that we headed back to the village, adding another few kilometers to our walking total for the day. The whole way back the road was surrounded by mounds of flowers, with drifts of phantoms floating lazily between them. At this rate I imagined that even inside the village flowers must be growing everywhere. It was probably a moment of crisis for the local florists. I wonder if Keine and the other members of the neighborhood watch were being besieged by complaints.
"Hey look!" Renko said, nudging me out of worry about such thoughts and directing my attention toward the sky. "Someone else is fighting too."
Sure enough, a ways ahead and far up into the sky I could make out two darting shapes flitting here and there between clouds of glimmering projectiles. Projectiles that looked like...
Knives. "I think that's Sakuya." I said.
And glowing, semi-solid floating musical notes. "I think that's the keyboardist from the Prismriver ensemble. Which one is she again? Lyrica?"
"I think that's right."
Whoever she was, Sakuya clearly had the upper hand. Despite sending out wave after wave of warbling, interlocking notes, Sakuya was able to simply move to a clear spot in an instant, raining down a seemingly endless downpour of knives that never seemed to quite reach the ground. I shuddered to think how much work re-collecting and hurling all of those blades amidst a stopped universe must be. Though I suppose if she got tired she could always take a nap in the middle of the fight and we'd be none the wiser. The keyboardist was forced to rapidly retreat under the onslaught, until, in a last desperate ploy she turned at the last second and charged headfirst toward Sakuya looking for a gap in the oncoming rain of blades.
She didn't find one. The blades clattered and crashed against the plastic casing of the keyboard and the pianist was sent hurtling to earth, landing not far from where we were. An electronic keyboard, even a haunted one capable of flying by itself, seemed like a poor choice of weapon to bring to knife fight in my mind. The poltergeist caught the limb of a tree on the way down and tumbled end over end, landing face first in a flowering rhododendron bush. Their keyboard fell just after and snagged in the branches of the tree.
Sakuya looked down for only a moment, then waved her hand dismissively and flew off without a word. She must have been investigating the Incident too. If she was looking into it, Reimu and Marisa were probably off fighting somewhere too. This was getting to be a big deal.
"Hello?" Renko called out to the pair of belled, red, curl-toed shoes poking out of the top of the bush.
Groaning, the girl righted herself and emerged, blinking, from the bush. "Oh my, I didn't know I had an audience. I hope this doesn't ruin your impression of the Prismriver Ensemble."
"No, not at all. We were just passing by and happened to see you. I think trying to fight the Scarlet Devil's maid at all is pretty impressive. Were you fighting all alone?"
"That's right. I'm playing solo at the moment. I was looking for some good sounds to sample. The trumpet and the violin have so much character on their own, but a keyboard only copies other sounds. I was hoping to find some good sounds to make my playing stand out. Do you think the sound of flying knives would make good music?"
Thinking back to the performances I had heard at the Scarlet Devil Mansion and later the Netherworld, it was indeed the trumpets and violins that stood out most in my mind. They keyboard had mainly been used to provide an electronic backbeat, if I recalled. Replacing that with the sound of knives sounded a little to avant-garde for my taste though.
"Probably a little too edgy," Renko replied with a grin. "You seem to be better at collecting ghosts than sounds anyway."
"Collecting ghosts? What do you mean?"
"I heard you and your sisters play at Hakugyokuro once. I remember your performance drew phantoms from all around to come listen. Could something like that be going on now?"
"Ah, that would be Merlin. Happy ghosts are attracted to the sound of her trumpet. Or maybe Lunasa. Gloomy ghosts like her violin. I'm just the coordinator between the two."
"A coordinator? How do you mean?"
"Phantoms don't have any ears, so they can't hear music. Our instruments play to their spirits though. Merlin's music is manic, and Lunasa's is depressive. Either one of them alone would be overwhelming, so I use my instrument to create delusions, making their music more dreamlike and creating sounds that living creatures can hear. Without me in the band, humans could still feel our music, but they wouldn't be able to hear most of it."
"I see. In other words they really get into the spirit of their music right?"
Lyrica's expression was completely unimpressed.
"Spirits and poltergeists are completely different. It's very insensitive of you to lump us all together. Unless you guys have any good sounds I can sample, I should get going."
"Who, me?" Renko turned to me with a grin. "What do you think, Merry, should we sing a duet?"
Lyrica and I fixed Renko with the same icy glare.
"Nevermind," Lyrica sighed, with an air of defeat. Floating up, she retrieved her keyboard from the tree. "Please check us out in concert next time" she droned automatically as she turned to drift off. Everyone seemed to have places to be.
A moment after she flew off, I noticed two more flying figures trailing her, one black and one white. "Renko, aren't those the other two Prismrivers?"
She peered up as they passed overhead, shielding her eyes from the sun with one hand. "I think so," she said. "I wonder if they're trying to meet up with Lyrica or stalking her. Either way, she didn't seem to know they were behind her. It doesn't matter though, we can rule out the Prismrivers as suspects too."
"You were suspecting them of playing the role of the pied piper of Hamelin to these phantoms?"
"Something like that. But from the sound of things it doesn't work that way. Their music attracts phantoms that like the way it sounds, or feels, I guess, but it doesn't compel them to follow. At any rate there's just too many phantoms for it to be them. Their music only reaches so far, and the phantoms are everywhere."
"There certainly are a lot of them," I said, looking around. "I wonder how they all got here."
Renko paused for a moment, cradling her chin in her hand as she thought. All at once she looked up and started marching toward the village, faster than before. "Come on, Merry, let's go," she said. "I think I need to re-examine my assumptions."
I turned and jogged to catch up to her. "Your assumptions? About what?"
"Our tacit assumption that all of these are phantoms."
-.-.-.-.-
At this point my partner was on the verge of making one important discovery, but had also made a critical mistake. The Prismriver Ensemble consists of three sisters, Lunasa, Merlin and Lyrica. Three musicians who play the violin, trumpet and keyboard. Three poltergeists who wield the powers of depression, mania and delusion.
They too were the culprits behind this unusual Incident.