-.-.-.-.-
-16-
-.-.-.-.-
"I apologize for entering without permission. We found the door open."
I refrained from mentioning that an open door didn't exactly excuse barging into someone's house and up their stairs.
"It's fine. It's been a long time since there were any humans in this house," said the girl with the trumpet.
Renko doffed her hat and introduced herself, exchanging polite and formal pleasantries with both sisters as the phantoms drifted lazily in the air. No longer drawn by the music, they seemed to be dispersing at random, slowly floating in every direction. There was no sign of the keyboardist at any point during their discussion. I wondered if she had gone out hunting sounds again. I willed myself not to worry about such things right now and turned my attention back to the ongoing conversation.
"I'm Merlin, this is Lunasa," the girl with the trumpet said. "You two were both at Hakugyokuro and the parties at the Hakurei shrine, right?"
Renko seemed almost giddy with excitement. "You remember me? I've always been a big fan of your performances."
"Who wouldn't remember a pair of live, flesh-and-blood humans hanging around in the Netherworld? You kind of stood out."
"Oh, you're friends of the lady of Hakugyokuro? Pleased to meet you then." said Lunasa, emerging from behind Merlin and into the hallway. "That was quite a party. Most of our shows don't end with an extermination by the Hakurei miko."
"I'm Renko Usami, this is my partner, Merry." Renko said as she climbed the rest of the way to the second floor. She held out her right hand, which Merlin took in greeting.
"Always happy to meet a fan. What can we do for you today? If you're looking to book a live performance, I'm afraid our schedule is pretty full right now."
Renko shook her head and waved her hand dismissively. "No," she said, "It's not that." Looking up she pointed a finger at the phantoms drifting around the entryway. They were no longer coming into the house, but mainly seemed to be staying in the general area of the stairway, near to where they must have last heard or felt the music of Merlin's trumpet. There were still enough of them around to make the room noticeably colder. "I just happened to notice a bunch of phantoms gathering here in this seemingly abandoned house and got curious as to what they were doing."
My partner happens to be a very skillful liar: believable, spontaneous and utterly shameless. Lunasa looked over at Renko suspiciously. "First we find you in the Netherworld, now you're following phantoms around. Are you sure you're a live human?"
"Yep, plain old human, live as can be. Why are you guys collecting up phantoms though, I wonder?"
Renko made the accusation into a question, delivered just as amiably as one might ask about the weather or some other triviality. In response, Merlin and Lunasa looked at eachother, sharing a confused expression before turning back to Renko.
"We're not collecting them, they just gather up on their own. Phantoms respond well to our sounds because the music of these instruments touches the soul. You saw that at Hakugyokuro, didn't you? When we were rehearsing?"
"Ah, that's right," Renko said, adding in a fake chuckle. "You mentioned that cheerful sounds attract cheerful phantoms and melancholy sounds pull in the gloomy ones, if I recall, yes?"
"Yes, exactly," Merlin said. "My sound is manic, so it calls to cheerful spirits. Lunasa's sound is depressive, so it calls to gloomy ones. Neither of our sounds are something living humans should be listening to without our sister around though. It can be dangerous for humans to hear either of us alone, as our music can also affect their souls directly."
It was the same story we had heard from Lyrica yesterday. Her music acted as a sort of buffer between the dangerous extremes of her sisters' instruments, coordinating their playing in a way that made it safe for humans to listen to.
"Ah yes. Speaking of your sister, where is she?" Renko asked.
"Lyrica? She's downstairs, isn't she?" Merlin asked, clapping her hands together. "Since we're all here together with guests though, why don't we move into the living room and have some tea?"
Lunasa looked discouraged, her shoulders sagging. "It's fine, I guess." She responded. "It looks like we weren't going to get much more practicing done anyway."
-.-.-.-.-
Thus, we ended up having a rather odd tea party in a parlor surrounded by phantoms, in a house haunted by three poltergeists. Lyrica, who I had initially thought wasn't home, had appeared after being called by Lunasa.
"You two again! What are you doing here?" She asked upon walking into the room.
"Hello again miss Lyrica. Have you finished collecting new sounds?" Renko asked amiably.
"Oh Lyrica, you know these humans?"
"I just happened to bump into them yesterday is all. You saw that though, didn't you? You were following me after all."
"We were really far away, we didn't notice anything like that," Merlin said nonchalantly as she brought in tea and cake. The table, chairs, plates and silverware all seemed to be clean and in good condition. I wondered if the decaying state of the house was merely an aesthetic choice.
"Oh, it seems just like the lady of Hakugyokuro, you three still enjoy meals," Renko commented.
Lunasa narrowed her eyes. "Of course," she said. "Why wouldn't we? Humans really don't know anything about the differences between different types of spirits do they?"
Lyrica frowned and added "Yeah, she said something like that yesterday too."
"My apologies," Renko said smoothly. "It's not my intent to offend. Merry and I are Outsiders, you see, and woefully underinformed on some of the things people take for granted here in Gensokyo. Would you be willing to explain the differences to me?"
Lyrica and Merlin both turned to Lunasa expectantly, who glanced at them each in turn, then sighed, turning back to Renko. "Alright, alright. This is all very basic, but the first thing to be aware of is that phantoms are just an embodiment of human temperament. Temperament determines a living creature's reaction to things, like the way some people see a glass as half-full and others as half-empty, or how some people like melon while others hate it. That's the effect of a being's temperament and phantoms are the embodiment of that."
"Isn't that the same thing as a soul?" Renko asked. "The thing that makes one being distinct from another of its kind?"
"Well, you're right in so far as they are distinct, but a soul is not the same thing. Multiple phantoms can be born of one dead person."
"Oh? How does that work?" Renko asked, leaning in with interest.
"A soul is usually made up of multiple different temperaments all bundled together along with everything else that makes up a person. Memories, sins, consciousness, stuff like that. If a creature dies, and all or most of those pieces stay together, then that's what becomes a ghost. If a soul forgets who it was though, then the temperaments start to break apart and become phantoms, each with their own desires."
Lunasa's already narrowed eyes seemed to grow even more suspicious. "You, for example, seem to be a very curious person. If you were to die, the majority of your soul would probably stay with that curiosity, making for an extremely curious ghost. Other aspects of your personality might give rise to other phantoms though. That's why most ghosts seem to fixate on one thing to the exception of everything else -death robs them of all but the most essential parts of who they are."
"For a human being that's a pretty frightening story."
"Well most ghosts cross the Sanzu river soon after death, so humans don't generally need to worry about them. Ghosts that are newly born don't even know how to manifest yet, so most humans can't even tell them apart from a regular phantom."
I glanced sideways at Renko. Morbid as the thought was, I couldn't help but wonder what part of her essence might be the most central to her being. If she were a ghost would she actually be a purely curious one? Or merely a purely reckless one? Or perhaps a purely overconfident one? All options sounded like a headache. I'd have to make a point of not getting haunted. For that matter, what sort of ghost would I become if the tables were turned, I wondered.
"The part of a being that contains their soul is what crosses the Sanzu River to be judged by the Yama. Any leftover phantoms that broke off just fade away eventually," Lunasa continued.
"So every phantom is just a broken-off piece of human temperament then? A fragment of a soul?"
"No, not necessarily. Many of them certainly are, but there are the souls of beasts and birds and fish too, those all have their own natures and temperaments that could split off. Some things even come into existence only as phantoms, momentary partial souls that exist briefly then fade away."
"You're talking about the souls of places, right? The atmosphere of a room, for example."
"Oh, you already knew? Yes, that's one example. A room might develop a fragment of a soul if everyone in it is being very serious or very boisterous. An atmosphere that makes a place have a different feel to it than the rest of the world which is immediately apparent upon entering it. That's something like a phantom too. Some of those can even last quite a while, but they have no will or desire of their own, they're just fragmentary bits of what might be called a soul. Ghosts can only be born of a complete soul though, and only one with a strong unfulfilled desire animating them can become something manifest -that's what the lady of Hakugyokuro is, I think. A powerful, nearly complete soul held together by some unfulfilled desire. That's also why ghosts are almost always human. Few other creatures can have desires or regrets strong enough to tie them to this world."
"In other words humans are the only creatures self-centered enough to deny their own mortality?" Renko asked with a wry smile.
Lyrica, who had taken a seat beside Merlin on a couch elbowed her sister, saying. "Oh is that what we are, Merlin?" Merlin chuckled in response.
"So that's ghosts and phantoms then. Where does that leave poltergeists like yourself and your sisters," Renko asked, cutting to the chase. Lunasa sighed again, resting one cheekbone on her hand as she began her explanation. As she did, Merlin cut the cake and handed out slices to everyone.
"Hmm, while you could say we're ghosts in one sense of the word, it would be purely metaphorical. My sisters and I are neither the souls of the dead nor portions thereof. We're the memories of sisters that were. Exactly as they were remembered by another. The three of us are magical creations, a result of that girl's wish."
"And what girl would that be?"
"Someone who is gone now, leaving the three of us behind. Oh, your tea is getting cold."
With that, Lunasa took a bite of her piece of cake, as if to signal the end of the story. Renko took a sip of her tea and looked over at me.
"Well that was a downer," Merlin said, cheerfully. "Anything Lunasa says, it always ends up coming out sounding bitter. Ah well. Would you like another cup of tea?"
Her bright voice was the vocal equivalent of her trumpet, lightening the mood as she spoke. It seemed every word to fall from these girls' mouths was another part of the sounds they made, each with the same emotional effect.
-.-.-.-.-
-17-
-.-.-.-.-
After that we visited and enjoyed a peaceful, friendly chat. At all times Merlin was the one to get a conversation going, saying something provocative, interesting or spirited, followed by Lyrica, who would say something to calm her down and add some nuance. In between Lunasa would add a word or two here or there, grounding the more fanciful diversions from a topic when they cropped up. All in all it was just as Renko had said -an intimate version of the same sort of performance one might experience at at Prismriver Ensemble concert, performed live, for whatever value of 'live' applied to a trio of poltergeists.
After my partner had sated her endless curiosity for the time being, the topic of conversation turned to the two of us.
"A detective agency?"
"Yes, our purpose is to investigate and uncover the secrets of this world. Right now my partner and I are working to discover the nature of this current flower-related Incident."
"Visiting the Netherworld and getting involved in the shrine maiden's business... You sure keep busy, but are those good things for a human to be pursuing?" Lunasa asked.
"Yeah, I understand wanting to be where the excitement is, but pursuing the secrets and schemes of Gensokyo's most powerful people seems a little reckless for a human." Lyrica said, nodding in agreement. I gave Renko a nudge with my elbow.
"Well, I thank you all for your concern. I'll try to keep your advice in mind. While we're on the topic though, do any of you have any idea what's causing this flower phenomenon?"
The three of them looked at each other in surprise at the question.
"Do Incidents always have a cause?" Lunasa asked.
"Sometimes phantoms and flowers just forget the seasons would be my guess," Lyrica said.
"Who cares? It's a good excuse to have some battles and make some noise with everyone out and about!" Merlin shouted exuberantly.
"If you really wanted to know you could just go to Muenzuka," Lunasa then added, propping her chin up with one hand. "There's someone there who likes to preach and lecture a lot, but if you don't mind having your ear talked off, I'm sure she could explain it."
"Muenzuka?" Renko asked, puzzling out the kanji that made up the word. "The Mound of The Nameless?"
"It's just past the north end of the Forest of Magic, where the Road of Reconsideration begins."
"I've never heard of it before. I guess I shouldn't be surprised though, getting through the Forest of Magic is pretty difficult for a human."
"Oh, Lunasa, do you mean that pompous lady from yesterday?" Lyrica asked. Lunasa nodded.
"Oh, you should go!" Merlin said. "You can see flowers there that can't be found anywhere else."
"The flowers are a little spooky though." Lyrica added.
"And flower-viewing while receiving a lecture is no fun," Lunasa concluded.
"Who exactly is this talkative person with so much to say?" Renko asked "Are you sure you weren't actually at the temple school in the village?"
"Oh no," said Merlin. "She's way worse than any human. She can talk and talk and talk forever, and the worst part is all of her criticisms are true."
"Well, she might not be there any more," said Lyrica.
Lunasa narrowed her eyes again and gave Renko a faint, mischievous smile. "It's Lord Yama," she said. "If you want to go meet her."
-.-.-.-.-
Shortly thereafter the tea party concluded with the Prismriver sisters departing to prepare for their evening performance at The Garden of the Sun.
"Come and see us perform some time, I'll be sure to get you movin'!" Merlin said as we left.
"Thank you for the invitation, but I think our first order of business will have to be finding a way to go to Muenzuka as you suggested."
"We'll be playing in the Field every night until the end of the month, so be sure to come check us out!" she called as the three of them soared over our heads, heading south.
We waved as we watched them depart into the brilliant afternoon sky, then I turned to my partner.
"Were you serious about heading to Muenzuka, Renko?"
"We've pretty much got to, Merry. An Incident involving an abundance of misplaced souls and the person who's supposed to be in charge of judging them suddenly shows up? There's no way those two things aren't related. Maybe they've got some sort of problem and all the souls we're seeing here are overflowing from one of the afterlives rather than the Outside world or something. If that's the case, then we don't need to worry about the fact that we don't know of any suitably calamitous event in 2005 to explain it."
"Given how harmless this Incident seems, I kind of doubt that. Somehow, if the hells overflowed every sixty years I suspect it would be a bigger deal, Renko. We have a more immediate concern though. How do you intend for us to get somewhere that's on the opposite side of the Forest of Magic?"
We had been deep into that Forest only once before, to visit Alice's house, and at that time we had had to wear filter masks she had leant to us in order to keep from breathing in the hallucinogenic spores that covered much of the forest in a drifting miasma. It wasn't the sort of place one could just walk into unprepared, despite that fact that a few people we knew made their home within it.
"You see, Merry, this is where having a good support network becomes critical to a detective. Every good sleuth knows when its time to rely on their connections."
"By 'connections' I assume you mean Alice?"
"Oh, she'd be good too, if we can find her, but there's no predicting when she'll come into the village to put on a show. I don't think she comes in to buy food regularly or anything. I was thinking of the other resident of the Forest of Magic we know."
"Marisa? You want to cram the three of us onto her broom again? If you recall, I was adamantly against that the first time. I'm definitely not doing it again."
"Oh come on, Merry, that was almost two years ago now. Besides, if we're planning it ahead of time then we won't be in such a hurry this time. I'm sure it'll go more smoothly."
"Even if you wanted to take your life in your hands riding with her, she lives in the Forest of Magic herself. It's not like we can walk to her house any more than we could with Alice."
"Ah, but unlike Alice, Marisa regularly leaves her house. All we have to do is be waiting for her somewhere she's likely to go."
"And where would that be, the Hakurei shrine?"
"Well, that has potential, but it's in completely the opposite direction from the Forest of Magic. She might not want to fly us that far. We need somewhere she's known to frequent and which is as close to the Forest as we can manage.
I thought for a moment.
"You mean Korindo then?"
"Precisely, Merry. Our next step on the road to see the Yama is Korindo!"
-.-.-.-.-
-18-
-.-.-.-.-
I suppose I should be grateful that we set off today in such good spirits. If not for that, I'd probably be feeling even worse after having walked from the village, halfway to the scarlet devil mansion and then back again only to immediately leave from the west gate and walk all the way to the edge of the forest of magic. If you considered our path, it would almost form a right triangle, where the distance we had travelled along the perpendicular sides was greater than the distance one would have had to walk if they had set out for Korindo directly from the the Prismriver's house. There was no road going that way though, and forging a path through the trackless wilderness, even in the middle of the day was a move foolish enough that even Renko hadn't suggested it. Gensokyo was a small place, but it was a long way to hike, and more than enough to make me envy humans like Reimu who could simply fly wherever they needed to go.
"You getting tired already, Merry?" Renko called from somewhere ahead as I trudged onward.
"I'm coming, I'm coming." I said, hustling up to her side.
Maybe I really am a hikikomori at heart, but walking for hours under the sun was not my idea of fun. By now that sun was beginning to descend, and part of me wondered which would be worse -the sore muscles I'd be facing tomorrow, or the headbutt we'd be sure to get if we didn't get back until after the village gates were closed again.
Of course, the surest way to avoid such problems would have been not to go looking for Marisa in the first place, or to have at least waited until tomorrow to do so, but with Renko's curiosity setting our course, delay was simply not an option. And so, we marched on. From the Prismriver's house back to the village along the north road, out the western gate, along the path that rose and fell along the low hills and eventually to the store that stood outside the walls of the village at the edge of the Forest of Magic, just alongside a road that disappeared into the foreboding gloom. We had arrived at Korindo.
The store itself was a modest wooden building that didn't look much different than a curio shop in the village might have, other than for the fact that it was a bit larger and had several detached storehouses. The grounds around the shop were littered with whatever treasures the owner had dragged home but not managed to find a place for inside, making for a junkheap of shigaraki tanuki statues, steel road signs, old tires, broken bicycles and other assorted rubbish gathered in drifts around the door. The piled detritus gave the place a look that was closer to the administrative office of a landfill. Just looking at what had been allowed to gather up outside, one got the strong (and as far as I could tell, accurate) impression that the owner of this store was more concerned with collecting whatever items from the Outside world he could, with little, if any thought given to being selective.
As we approached the shop, we saw an unfamiliar figure sitting on a bus stop bench that had been placed just outside the door of the shop. It too must have been an import from the Outside world, but in a place where no bus would ever come and with the pole listing the routes and schedule leaning against a tree several paces away, it looked somehow lonely. The girl sitting on the bench was clearly a youkai of some sort, with a trio of birdlike wings with striking black and red feathers. Two of the wings sprouted from her back as might be expected, but one stood asymmetrically on the side of her head, giving her an unbalanced look. She was sitting and calmly reading a thick hardcover book, oblivious to her surroundings. Seeing her reading with calm focus, I somehow felt a kinship with her.
As we walked up, she heard us approaching and looked up. Seeing us, she narrowed her eyes suspiciously and clutched her book to her chest. It was another rare occasion where a youkai seemed, oddly enough, to be afraid of me.
"Hello," Renko said. "Shopping at Korindo? What's that you're reading?" She doffed her hat as we drew up, smiling amiably.
The youkai girl shied away from us, edging toward the far side of the bench and clutching onto the book as if her life depended on it. Could any book found here really be that valuable?
"Hey, easy, I'm not going to take your book."
The girl looked like she was about to respond, but her eyes suddenly went wide as she spotted something in the sky behind us. Following her gaze, we whirled around to see the familiar shape of a witch on a broom zooming toward us, wearing an oversized pointed hat. Immediately the girl on the bench scrambled to her feet and bolted like a hare, flapping her wings as she lifted off of the ground and disappeared into the forest.
"Ah, where are you going..." Renko called, reaching an arm after her. It fell limply to her side as the girl vanished into the shadows beneath the trees.
The next moment Marisa Kirisame, the very witch we had come here to see circled overhead, turning her broom in a tight orbit before dismounting in midair and dropping down to land right in front of us.
"Hey, you two. If you're both out away from the village you must be getting into some sorta interestin' trouble again, I bet." Her grin was a twin to Renko's, though with a slightly manic edge.
"Marisa! Just who we were looking for! We were just about to ask Mr. Rinnosuke about you," Renko replied.
"Oh? Not often a detective comes after me. Did Patchouli finally put a bounty on my head?"
"Have you really stolen enough books to warrant a bounty?"
"I haven't stolen nothin'. I'm just borrowin' 'em for a while. My lifetime's a fraction of hers, she can afford to be a bit less stingy. 'Sides, if anyone were going to end up with a bounty placed on them, I think it'd be you two."
"Us? We're just two human girls from the village, harmless as can be. What would someone want with people like us?"
"You've done enough to get Reimu suspicious just by showin' up in the middle of every Incident. Just a friendly word of warning, you really don't want to be on her bad side."
Come to think of it, at the end of the Eternal Night Incident, Reimu had come by our house to say much the same thing herself. Even if we did often find ourselves in the company of the masterminds behind Incidents, it was merely a series of coincidences that had lead us there. I could see how that wouldn't seem like much of an excuse though.
"Well that'll happen, I suppose," Renko said, with a bravado that bordered on foolishness. "After all, I'm a great detective whose job it is to solve supernatural mysteries."
"If there were an Incident that you could solve on your own, I don't think it would really count as an Incident. What you do is stir up more trouble after the fact. Not that it bothers me, mind you. Keeps things interesting, and Reimu's miserable when she doesn't have some heads to crack. So what did you two want with me anyway?"
"Ah yes. We want to go to Muenzuka. Do you think you could give us a lift on your broom?"
Marisa's eyebrows raised in surprised as she cast a glance northwest over the forest. "Muenzuka? Really? I was just thinking of goin' there myself. What d'you two want with it though? It's a dangerous place, 'specially for you. When Outsiders wander into Gensokyo, that's usually where they appear. As a result, there's a lot of youkai who hang around nearby, hoping for a chance to gobble up a human who doesn't count as a villager."
In other words, it was a place where Outsiders like us were a regular part of the local menu. I wouldn't have thought so at the time, but we were lucky to have emerged in the library of the Scarlet Devil Mansion when we arrived in this world.
"Well, I think it'd be obvious what we want with it," Renko said as she pressed her hat back onto head and fiddled with the brim. "We're investigating an Incident, same as you right?"
"Not the same as me. You can't fly and you can't fight. All you've got going for you is curiosity and guts, but that won't get you very far without power to back it up."
"Marisa, I'm surprised at you. Don't you know that curiosity and brains are the two greatest weapons in mankind's arsenal?"
"I know there's a sayin' about curiosity, but I don't think that's how it goes. Somethin' about dead cats, if I recall."
"Well we're not cats, so no problem then. If anything, Reimu's the catty one."
"Hmm, catty I'll grant you, but she's not very curious so she's fine too. Wait, what were we talkin' about again?" Marisa twisted her head in consideration. "Ah whatever, it's fine. I don't mind flyin' you both, but I can't watch over you once we're there. You two'll be on your own. Somehow, I 'spect you're actually fine with that risk though, aren't'cha?"
Renko snapped her fingers victoriously and grinned even wider. "You bet!"
Marisa shook her head with a sigh, then laid her broom in midair parallel to the ground where it hovered in place. "Alright," she said. "Climb on. We're gonna be over capacity again though, so I'll only fly you as far as the Road of Reconsideration. Past that you never know if I might have to dodge and I don't want you fallin' off."
"The Road of Reconsideration! That's perfect, right where we were told to go. What is it, exactly?"
"It's a road that leads from the Forest of Magic to Muenzuka. Sometimes they set up some stuff along it. You'll know it when you see it."
And so once again, for the first time in a long time, the three of us crammed ourselves onto Marisa's broom. It was nice to not be thrown into the air without time to properly find my seat this time, but that didn't make hurtling through the sky, clinging onto your support with only the grip of your thighs on unpolished wood any more comfortable. As before we rose into the air with only the faintest sense of momentum and a seeming absence of the pull of gravity. Once Marisa set the broom in motion, floating felt like the natural thing it should do, rather than a contradiction of all the laws of physics we knew. I wondered if Renko and I were to abandon our belief in Newton's Laws and somehow completely cast aside all knowledge of the rules of gravity as we understood them if we would be able to fly in the sky too? Maybe that's what magic was, ultimately.
"So do you two know anything about this Incident then?" Marisa asked as the dense canopy of the forest raced by beneath us.
Renko was sitting behind me, with one hand clutching the last few centimeters of broomstick before the bristles she was sitting on and the other clamping her hat in place. "Well, I have my suspicions," she shouted over the rushing wind. "But I can't be certain yet. How about you, Marisa, what do you think?"
"Hey don't answer a question with a question," she chided. "I asked first."
"Sorry, but unveiling the truth before you've even seen who's pulling the strings would be a spoiler. You wouldn't want to win by cheating, right?"
"I dunno what a 'spoiler' is, but you've got a weird way of lookin' at things. Alright though. I thought this was a flower Incident at first, but now I think it's a phantom Incident. I went to the Netherworld already and everything looked normal there, so I think it's gotta be a problem somewhere else. Spirits leakin' outta hell or the Outside world, or somethin.'"
"I see."
"What about you now?"
"My thoughts are mostly the same. It's just..."
"Just what? Don't hold out now."
"I can't say yet. There's some details that I have doubts about. I'm hoping they'll be cleared up once we get to Muenzuka."
"Like what?"
"I can't say yet."
"She's always like this once she gets an idea, Marisa," I chimed in. "Totally insufferable."
"Merry, it is a great detective's right -nay, their duty to be pompous. How could you have a dramatic denouement at the conclusion if the detective were to air their thoughts publicly the whole way through? Have some respect for the conventions of the genre."
"I see what you mean." Marisa said over her shoulder, grinning.
"What about Reimu?" I asked. "Has she been looking into this Incident as well?"
"She's been huntin' around. I don't think she knows any more than I do though, just beatin' up every youkai she comes across."
If that were the case then it would mean Akyuu hadn't shared her knowledge of this Incident with Reimu, just as she hadn't with Keine. I wondered what her motivation could be there. Even if this Incident presented no threat, wouldn't it have been beneficial to warn the villagers that it was coming ahead of time? If it really happened every sixty years, wouldn't someone have remembered stories from their grandparents about the last occurrence? Sixty years was a long time for an individual to remember something, but not for the oral history of a village to do so.
"Hey, there it is," Marisa called out, pointing downward. "The Road of Reconsideration."
I looked down and gasped in surprise.
-.-.-.-.-
Beneath me the world had turned bright red. Beyond the far edge of the forest the ground was covered in a sea of undulating, out-of-season blooms -thousands upon thousands of scarlet spider lilies, as red as a sea of blood, waving softly as the breeze sent ripples cascading along it.
"Oh wow, it looks like the edge of the Tokyo Metropolitan Expressway around the autumn equinox," Renko said.
"It looks like a scene out of hell." I countered.
"You have no appreciation for the beauty of Tokyo," she grumbled.
She was wrong though, I remembered clearly the time that Renko had taken me to the top of Tokyo Skytree to look out over the city. Seeing the bloody tint of the old path of the Tokaido Highway winding its way into the elegant ruins of that magical old city, she had held my hand and leaned toward the glass. That day Tokyo had seemed just as supernatural and mysterious as any of the worlds in my dreams.
This scene was different though.
In addition to the unending waves of blood-tinted flowers, there were countless phantoms here, more than we had seen anywhere else in Gensokyo, flitting translucently between the plants, appearing and vanishing randomly. In the far distance I could see the glimmer of light off of the surface of a broad stretch of water that must have been the Sanzu river. Looking down at the sight below us though, it would have been impossible to guess which shore we were on.