"Wakasagihime, I'm back!"

"Kagerou!"

Walking ahead of us, Kagerou had called out as soon as we reached the shore of the lake after having followed the trail of the river back down from the mountain. Upon spotting her, Wakasagihime had surfaced and waved excitedly, slapping the surface of the lake loudly with her iridescent grey tail. Kagerou ran to the shore and leaned over the water as Wakasagihime leapt partially out of the lake, just high enough to give Kagerou a tight hug before releasing her and splashing back down.

"Are you all right? Did you get hurt at all up there? Did the kappa try to pull anything out of you?"

"I'm fine, I'm fine. You worry too much, Wakasagihime."

"I was worrying the whole time you were gone! What if the tengu found you? Or if those humans tried to feed you wolfsbane? Or if you got lost on the mountain? Or you didn't bring a change of clothes and fell in the mud?"

"It's fine. None of that happened. Well, I did meet a tengu, but I'm safe and sound." Kagerou laid down on her belly a small spit of land that jutted out into the lake, propping herself up on one elbow. With her free arm she reached out, stroking Wakasagihime's hair as the mermaid continued to fret, bobbing up and down, at times lifting the entire upper half of her body out of the water.

Seeing the care that Kagerou displayed toward Wakasagihime was heartwarming, but at the same time it filled me with regret to think of what we had interrupted to drag Kagerou up the mountain in service of one of Renko's mad whims. As for my partner, she was smiling broadly, idly spinning her hat around an outstretched finger.

Sighing in exasperation, I looked away from Renko, toward the pocket of distorted space my eyes saw behind her. It was a small disruption, not a gap in space or even anything that threatened to become one, but more like a bubble or bulge in the surface of reality. I had noticed it some time ago, on our way back down the mountain. It had been following behind Renko for some time, being careful not to make a sound. Neither Kagerou or Renko had shown any sign of noticing it.

"...So Renko, what should we do about that person who's been following you since we came down the mountain?" I asked conversationally.

"Huh?" Renko asked, turning to me in surprise as her hat flew, unnoticed, off of her finger.

"Yeek!" shrieked the distorted space behind Renko.

There was a blurred streak of motion that I couldn't tell if I was seeing with my boundary vision or my more mundane sight, or perhaps both at once. The streak resolved into a head floating in the air disconnected from anything else, and bobbing as the person it belonged to staggered backward and collapsed into a heap on the ground. Looking closely, the head didn't seem detached, rather it looked like a person where everything beneath their neck was invisible, or at least very hard to see. The face, however, was familiar. It was the same kappa girl we had met on our last trip up the mountain. Beneath that, everything was a colorless blur, or maybe a blur exactly the color of whatever was behind it. At any rate, it was very hard to determine the shape of.

"Oh!" Renko gasped.

"Ah! My optical camouflage suit!"

Renko turned in surprise, leaning away from the kappa as she scrambled to her feet, hurriedly reaching behind her head to draw a hood made from the same colorless whatever-it-was over her face. As soon as she did so she vanished again, once more becoming a crumpled bulge in the fabric of reality to my eyes, exactly mimicking the appearance of whatever scenery was behind her. I wondered what she looked like to Renko. To me it was laughably obvious where she was hiding, huddled in her colorless raincoat and standing rigidly still.

I waited a beat before saying "I can see you, you know."

"Huh? Why? No fair!" cried the shapeless distortion.

Seeming to realize that I was following her with my gaze, Nitori appeared on the spot, an annoyed expression on her face, wearing what looked like a long, hooded raincoat made of what appeared to be the same waterproof pale blue material as her dress. Renko grinned and approached her, whistling appreciatively. "Now that's an impressive bit of tech! What is it, exactly?" The kappa twisted away from Renko, trying to keep her garment out of arm's reach.

"You can't have it! It's mine!" She cried, glaring at Renko.

"Your name was Nitori, right?" Renko said, halting her advance and instead settling onto one knee to bring herself closer to eye level with the diminutive kappa. "Long time no see."

"Hi..." Nitori seemed flustered, searching her mind for a name and coming up blank. "Lady Ibuiki's friend."

"Hey, no reason to be afraid, I'm not going to call Suika. Did you say that was an optical camouflage suit? Does that mean technological inventions that are just pipe dreams in the Outside world exist in Gensokyo too? Can you show me how it works?"

"It's top secret! Kappa eyes only! But how did a human see through it? It should be working perfectly!"

"Merry, you can see it just fine, can't you?"

"Sort of. It looks just like the scenery behind it to me, but I can tell it's fake. Like the kaleidoscreens on the trains back in Kyoto."

The kappa sighed. "I guess it's still got a long way to go before it's ready for field testing."

Renko smiled and reached out a hand to pat Nitori on the shoulder. She flinched away. "Merry has weird eyes. I wouldn't worry about it much. I bet it would fool most people just fine."

Hearing Renko call my eyes 'weird' was the last thing I wanted to hear. My shoulders sagged in disappointment.

"Oh! It's the kappa I met up the river! Hello!" Wakasagihime waved from her position near the shoreline.

Nitori blinked, peering around Renko toward the lake. "Oh, you're that mermaid I saw. Do you live in the lake? I'm surprised to see you around so many humans, I thought you were scared of them."

"I am! And there's too many here!" Without another word, Wakasagihime propelled herself away from the shore and vanished beneath the water, leaving not so much as a ripple to prove she had ever been there.

Looking dejected, Kagerou turned away from the lake, muttering "do I count as a human too now?" She stooped to grab Renko's dropped hat as she walked over to where my partner was talking to the kappa.

"Did she only just notice us now?" Renko asked, smiling as she took the hat from Kagerou. "A mermaid is half human, half-fish anyway. Between you and her you have one whole human, right?" Kagerou's eyes seemed to flash in anger at Renko's comment, but she didn't notice, having already turned back to Nitori.

"Now, may I ask why you were trying to follow us invisibly, miss kappa?"

"It was just a little reconnaissance. You know, scouting? Information gathering? I saw two humans coming up into the mountains and talking to a tengu. That doesn't happen every day so I wanted to know what was going on. I thought maybe something had happened in the human village."

"Ah, I completely understand. The human village is fine, I assure you. We were just coming up to the mountain for much the same reason, we were concerned that the tengu we know up there might have been caught up in the recent commotion."

"You mean the newcomer god?"

"Oho! Do you know something about them, Nitori? Had you maybe been using this invention of yours to spy on them?"

"Just gathering information! It pays to be well informed. They appeared overnight and seem to be trying to gather faith from the youkai who live on the mountain, but that's all I know!"

"You got a look at them though, right? What did the goddess look like?"

"Uh, like a human mostly, I guess. She's tall and wears a huge shimenawa in a loop on her back. There's a human who lives there too, but she's a weird one."

"A human? Oh, maybe something like a priest or a shrine maiden to the goddess?"

"Maybe. If everything's ok in the village though, I've found out what I need to here. Goodbye, friends, I need to go perfect this optical camouflage. Next time you see me you won't see me!" Saying this, she quickly pulled the hood up over her head again and vanished once more, bolting off toward the mountain like a hare.

Kagerou turned toward Renko a moment later. "I guess that means that you and Merry are going to head to the Hakurei shrine now?" She asked, narrowing her eyes.

"That's right," Renko answered, "but we know the way well. We'll manage fine on our own, don't worry."

Kagerou sighed. "It's not too dangerous out that way as long as you're not travelling at night, but I still don't think two humans should be so carelessly leaving the village. I can't imagine miss Keine would be happy to hear about this."

"It's nothing she's not used to. Thank you though for escorting us into the mountains. I'm deeply grateful to you for taking the time to see us safely up and back." Renko had risen back to her feet and took Kagerou's hand in both of hers as she said this, smiling like cat.

Kagerou turned away from Renko, looking down sheepishly and muttering. "Anyone would have done the same..." From where I was standing, I could see Wakasagihime's head rising out of the water. Although only her eyes and ear fins were above the waterline, I could tell the expression on her face was scary enough I didn't need to see any more.

"Alright, Renko. I think you and I have taken up enough of Kagerou and Wakasagihime's time. We should be going." I said, pinching the sleeve of Renko's blouse to drag her away while nodding to the two girls. "It was nice to see you both."

For once I lead the way, striding into the mists and toward the road back to the village, with Renko hurrying along in tow. Somewhere behind me I heard Wakasagihime calling out sullenly for Kagerou as the fog closed around us. I kept right on marching, dragging my partner along before her naivete could cause a disaster.

"Hey Merry, wait up. Why the sudden rush?"

"You're too dense to stay in that scene Renko. I'm afraid you'd sink to the bottom and end up as fish food if we stayed."

"You mean Wakasagihime? She just seemed a little skittish, I'm sure she wouldn't do us any harm."

I sighed and shook my head, while Renko regarded me with a look of confusion. I had always envied Renko's ability to seemingly befriend anyone in an instant, whether here or back in Kyoto, but in a world with a different culture and different social expectations, I shouldn't be surprised that her particular brand of overt and aggressive friendliness might lead to misunderstandings.

It might well be that Renko's obliviousness and inability or unwillingness to read obvious social cues is why the two of us had become friends in the first place. My childhood experiences of seeing people be repulsed or weirded out by my eyes was enough to make me standoffish. I had never made friends easily, myself, but seeing Renko treat others with the same warmth that had initially broken down my own defenses made me feel like a small shard of something sharp had become lodged in my heart. I, for one, am smart enough to leave the landmines in my psyche alone though. I resolved not to think about it any further as the two of us made our way south.