It had been two years since the conclusion of the Great Barrier Incident of Sixty Years, meaning it was now our fourth autumn in Gensokyo and the twelfth season overall we had experienced here. It is natural for you to ask how our lives had changed in that time. The answer, in essence, is that the interval could just as easily have been a decade or a day. The routines of our day-to-day life were still just the same.

-.-.-.-.-

"Bye, miss Merry!"

"Take care, everyone."

Standing at the door of the schoolhouse, Renko, Keine and I waved to the gaggle of children making their way to to the gate. Here, one could observe what was, perhaps, the largest change our lives had seen in the last two years. Fully fifty-two children were now flooding out of the building, laughing and calling loudly to eachother as they meandered home. Enrollment had trended steadily upward, with not only more new students enrolling each year, but with some students returning for five or even seven years, far longer than the three years that had been the typical length of instruction before Renko and I had arrived. The additional students had been enough that the school now held two simultaneous classes, one teaching the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic, and the other teaching more advanced classes, including history, composition, and a more advanced mathematics class including the basics of algebra and its applications. This growth had necessitated Keine hiring a carpenter to add a second classroom to the school as well as purchasing a second set of supplies for the students. It was a significant outlay of capital for a business that had been struggling for so long, but, thus far at least, we were on track to come out on top for it.

Ensuring that we kept our heads above water and kept the student numbers trending upward, however, meant that Renko and I were much busier than ever before with our teaching positions.

Once the last of the children had left the grounds, the three of us walked back inside, shutting the door behind us and retreating to the staff room. Renko sighed and stretched as she walked, extending her arms over her head, elbows bent.

"Thank you both for your hard work today," Keine said as we moved into the office.

"Hard work I don't mind," Renko said, "but we're reaching the limit of what the three of us can do. I think we may need to consider hiring more teachers."

"Our income for this semester might support it, but there's still a lot of debt to pay off. Besides which, I'm not sure who we might ask. It's one thing to find someone who might be able to assist with what we're teaching now, but if we want to pay a fourth salary, we'd want to ensure we could hire someone who would could offer something new so we can continue to bring in more students."

Already the burden of having two classes and three teachers had caught up to us once or twice. Occasionally the need had arisen for one of us to cover the others' subjects. When it came to the basic class, teaching arithmetic or history hadn't proved much of an issue for me, but the advanced classes required more preparation and familiarity. Even Keine seemed uncomfortable trying to provide instructions on some of the topics Renko had introduced.

"Renko, do you have any suggestions?" Keine asked.

"Well one, for a math teacher. If we could get her to teach mathematics then I could switch to that science course I had been mentioning. What's more, we might not even have to pay her much."

"Your math class is most of the children's favorite though, Renko. Who did you have in mind?" I asked.

"Ran Yakumo, the shikigami to the youkai sage. I read in the tengu newspaper once that she managed to calculate the width of the Sanzu River based on observations taken from this side."

Keine raised her eyebrows in clear shock at the suggestion. "You can't be serious! Our temple school is just finally starting to be accepted by the villagers as a part of the community. What would they say if we were to have a youkai fox as a teacher?"

"That's a 'no' then?"

"A definite 'no.'"

"Well then, maybe we should ask miss Akyuu? The child of Miare receives a full education, do they not? Maybe she can recommend one of her old tutors if they have some free time."

"That's not a bad idea. I'll mention it the next time I see her."

After that, our conversation drifted to an end as we all pored over our lesson plans for the following day. A while later, we left the school and all made our ways home. Keine to her house on the eastern edge of the village, and Renko and I to the storage shed behind the school that had become our home and office. As usual, there were no visitors waiting for us beneath the sign that read "Hifuu Detective Agency" and the only beings who seemed interested in talking to us were the second generation of birds nesting on the roof. Although the performance of the school had been markedly improving, it seemed any hope of our detective agency turning a profit was a long way off. My partner, the agency's director, seemed entirely unconcerned by this.

On evenings and weekends she waited for clients who never came at the office, or else dragged me along on hikes to see various places around Gensokyo. By now we had been nearly everywhere that a human only capable of travelling on foot could hope to reach. Despite being an Outsider, Renko's knowledge of the geography of Gensokyo was better than most villagers'. She was, of course, still limited in ways that other humans we knew like Reimu and Marisa weren't, however. Muenzuka at the end of the Road of Reconsideration was still probably the furthest we had ever been from the village and there were other places that, while they were connected to Gensokyo, were simply not somewhere Renko had the power to go. The tengu city atop Youkai mountain, the kappa hideout, the heavenly realm of the Dragon God, the world of demons and the Underworld beneath Gensokyo were all places we had heard of, but had no means of visiting. Even the Netherworld, which Renko and I had visited long ago, was a place we had no means to return to as our travel there had only been a result of interference by the youkai sage for unknown reasons.

I too had become accustomed to life in this world of fantasy. It was rare now for me to think back to our lives in the Scientific Century in which Renko and I had once lived. Despite the fact that we had only been here for four years, Gensokyo felt like home and it was hard to imagine leaving it behind for the world of hustle and artifice we had once known. The idea that we might never return to our own time and would end our days as residents of Gensokyo is one Renko and I had come to terms with. At this point, the thought didn't even strike me as a bad thing.

Here, Renko and I were unquestionably Outsiders, prone to getting strange looks when we spoke to the locals, but back home, living in the Japan of our own time, I, at least, had been rootless. Far from family, without a plan for my future, merely drifting through life until I had met Renko and been given a purpose, however unusual, through our explorations as the Hifuu Club.

To think that this temple school, the various unusual humans, part-humans and non-humans I had come to know here, and this farce of a detective agency might be roots that I put down was certainly not the way I had expected my life to turn out, but looking back, I saw little reason to complain. In the end, it was my nature to follow behind Renko, and go where she lead. For now, that meant being here.

My partner opened the door to our office and poked her head inside, looking around. "Nothing today either..." she muttered.

"You mean no clients? That's hardly unusual, Renko," I said. I pushed past her and into the room. The autumn days in Gensokyo were warm, but the winds could be biting and the scent of the coming winter carried on the breeze. It wouldn't be much longer before the beauty of the leaves adorning every tree in fiery color gave way to bare branches and the quiet solitude of winter.

"No, I mean no newspaper. It's been a while since there's been a new edition of Bunbunmaru Shinbun. It's been a month now."

The Bunbunmaru Shinbun was a tengu newspaper, written and published by Aya Shameimaru, with whom we were acquainted. It had always been irregularly published, sometimes coming out as often as five times a month, and other times going three weeks without an issue. No issues for a month was definitely unusual though.

"Huh, that is odd. Did you do something to anger miss Shameimaru, Renko?" I teased.

"Not that I know of. I haven't paid the subscription fee for this month yet, but that's only because she hasn't come by to collect it. I haven't seen any new issues in any of the teahouses either, so I don't think it's just me who's getting stiffed."

"Well, maybe she retired then. Isn't now about the time newspapers all started failing in the outside world?"

"This is Aya we're talking about. A crow tengu who spends all her days flying to every corner of the world to track down rumors and stories. She might be more curious than I am, about certain things anyway. Do you really think she'd hang up her hat?"

"Well maybe the paper became too unprofitable to continue then. Even with superior technology, it's got to cost the tengu a lot for all that ink and paper, and they don't get a lot to show for it in terms of trust among human villagers."

"Or maybe miss Shameimaru is busy doing something else. Something so time-consuming and interesting that there hasn't been an opportunity for even someone who introduces herself as 'Gensokyo's most beloved reporter' to find time to put out an article."

"Like what?"

"Well, that's the question, Merry. It's quite the interesting mystery, don't you think?" She asked the question with a glint in her eye, easing the hat she still hadn't removed backward on her head with one finger as she did so.

I sighed in exasperation. It had been so long I had dared to wonder if this side of Renko might have finally calmed down. Seeing that glint in her eye though, there could be no doubt. I had known her long enough to know what that look meant.

"Sigh all you want, Merry. The Hifuu Detective Agency can't ignore a question like this. It might very well be the beginning of a new Incident! The tengu reporter Aya Shameimaru has vanished from the public eye and not been seen in a month! Newspapers have stopped reaching the village from the mountain. All of this points to some sort of upheaval or crisis in tengu society. Something major might well be happening atop Youkai Mountain right now with no one down here any the wiser! As citizens of the village, we have a duty to investigate. If we could warn people about an Incident before it began, wouldn't that help to drum up more business for us?"

"Renko, are you serious about this, or are you just trying to find an excuse to try and sneak into the tengu city again? Don't you remember what happened the last time we went there? We were immediately intercepted and Meiling almost got run through with a sword."

"But just think about it, Merry. The tengu city is one of the few places in Gensokyo we still haven't explored. Even if there isn't an ongoing crisis there, it's a blank area on our maps. What's the point of living in a exciting world like Gensokyo without a spirit of adventure to go out and explore it?" Grinning her usual troublesome smile, she reached out and took my hand. "Come on, Merry. Let's go explore Youkai Mountain!"

If I had within me the power to refuse that hand, I'd never have been here in the first place, either in this world of dream and fantasy, or here in this cramped and pathetic detective's office plying our sad excuse for a trade.

"All right, Renko, but you'll have to wait for tomorrow. It's already evening and if we go now we'll be adding darkness and the threat of a headbutt from Keine when we get back to the already long list of reasons why this is a bad idea. Tomorrow's a day off, so we can set out first thing in the morning. I'll pick us up a box lunch set to bring along."

"That's practical thinking, Merry. You're right, we should spend today preparing. You get the provisions in order, I'll go and make some preliminary inquiries."

"Inquiries? Like what?"

"Well, first off, I need to confirm whether or not anyone has received any newspapers in the last month. Then I'll see if I can learn anything about miss Shameimaru and the other tengu. Gathering information from disparate sources is the very essence of detective work, Merry."

"So is getting paid to collect that information, but I don't see you doing that."

"You're focusing too much on the details. First we make a great product, then people will come to buy it, that's how startups work."

And thus, we began our headlong plunge into the commotion that, just as Renko had predicted, was enveloping Youkai Mountain at the time.