Sanae showed us to her room, where we enjoyed a long and lively conversation about the exploits of our detective agency. Being as we had had few cases of note, naturally this meant we told her all about the Incidents we had been involved in.
About the vampires in the Scarlet Devil Mansion and how they had covered the world in a maddening mist.
About the spring stolen from Gensokyo and the lonely ghost who ruled over the Netherworld.
About the troublemaking oni who turned Gensokyo into a drunken bacchanal every third day.
About the aliens who had hidden the moon behind a veil of illusion and mystery.
Even about the spring in which all of Gensokyo had been covered in unseasonal flowers.
In all of these cases, however, Renko made sure that the story she told Sanae was the same one that might be found in the Gensokyo Chronicles. The official story, so to speak, with no mention of the hidden truths that she had imagined. Sanae listed to each of these tales with a gleam of excitement sparkling in her eyes.
"So people rely on the Hakurei miko to resolve Incidents. I wonder if that's how she goes about gathering faith for her god?"
Renko chuckled. "You may well be right, but I doubt Reimu sees it that way."
"Oh, maybe that means I should be solving Incidents too! Are there any going on right now?"
"They don't happen all that often. The past two years have been pretty peaceful."
"Oh, that's a shame. I should go try to meet the vampire at the foot of the mountain and the oni who used to live here though. They're both almost like my neighbors."
"Well maybe the next time we get a day off we can introduce you to them. They're both acquaintances of ours."
"Really? That'd be great!" Much like Renko, Sanae seemed completely unfazed by the concept of mingling with monsters.
Sanae was kind enough to lend us each a bath (heated by a propane heater) and a set of pajamas (made of soft, synthetic fabrics) two luxuries that seemed almost magical to us at this point. When I emerged from the bath, Sanae waved me over to a spare room. She and Kanako had laid out three futons there.
"It's our very own slumber party!" Sanae cheered.
"Slumber party?" Renko asked. It was a term that didn't exist in the 2080s, but I had come across the concept before in media. It was easy enough to figure out from the title.
"Have you never had one?" Sanae asked in wide-eyed surprise.
"I guess not. Merry and I are more the type to get out of bed and wander the streets at night."
She gasped, one hand held in front of her mouth. "Really? I wouldn't have guessed you two were a pair of delinquents."
"Well I don't know if I'd call us delinquents. Outcasts maybe. Merry and I were members of an occult circle back in university."
"Occult? Like tarot readings and seances?"
"Nothing that cliched. We mainly explored mystery spots and things like that, looking for evidence of the supernatural. It was actually as a result of one of those sorts of explorations that the two of us ended up here in Gensokyo."
Renko shot me a wink. I suppose that was a way of describing our club activities that wouldn't raise too many questions. To say that the two of us were involved in discovering and crossing boundaries wouldn't have made much sense to Sanae anyways, I'm sure.
"That sounds even worse than being delinquents. It's like you were specifically setting yourselves up to be the people who get killed at the beginning of a horror movie."
"Well, I stand by my track record of never once having been eaten by a zombie or possessed by a demon." Renko said with a smile.
"Sure, we just ended up trapped in a vampire's mansion and spirited off to the land of the dead. Great track record, Renko."
Sanae laughed at my interjection. "There's no demons or evil spirits here. Only gods dwell in this place, so I think you'll manage to be fine for tonight at least." She said with a smile.
"Well in that case, I suppose I should give praise," Renko said. "The last thing I'd want to do is end up cursed by a god." She was joking, but personally I made a note not to do anything to Kanako that might come across as rude.
"You don't have to worry about that, Lady Kanako isn't a curse god."
Something about the way she said that stuck with me. The emphasis on Kanako specifically almost seemed to suggest that while Kanako wasn't a god likely to curse a mortal, other gods might. I wondered if a god like that might exist in this shrine as well. Before Renko or I could ask anything further, however, a voice called from outside the door.
"Are you all still awake in there? I have to take our guests home at dawn tomorrow, so you should let them get some sleep, Sanae."
"Okaaaaaay" Sanae called back, reaching out to turn off the faintly hissing lantern. In the darkness that followed I could just make out her silhouette returning to the futon and snuggling under the covers. "This feels just like a school trip" she whispered. Should we have a pillow fight in the dark?"
"I think we should just sleep. Kanako was right about us having to be up early." Somehow the threat of being cursed by a god carried a bit more weight than the thought of being yelled at by a teacher.
"Alright then. Goodnight Merry, goodnight Renko."
Despite both of us replying with a goodnight of our own we continued to chat, whispering in the dark until Sanae fell asleep.
-.-.-.-.-
I suspect it must have been about three in the morning, a time when even trees and grass are asleep that I awoke to Renko poking me. "Hey Merry, wake up," she whispered, almost inaudibly.
Sluggishly, I opened my heavy eyelids to find Renko fully dressed and squatting beside me. "Mmmmn. What is Renko?" I replied, rubbing at my eyes.
"What do you mean, 'what is it?' It's time to explore the other side of that barrier on the lake."
"What? Are you serious?"
"Hey, keep your voice down. Do you think you can get dressed without waking Sanae?" She held out a neatly folded pile of clothes. I had left them in bathroom after changing. Renko must have already snuck out to retrieve them.
Despite the weariness in my body, I slipped carefully out of the futon and into my clothes while Renko turned her back. I wasn't thrilled about this idea, but I had sort of suspected something similar might happen.
"You ready, Merry?" Renko whispered.
"I wonder if one can really be ready to get cursed by a god for trespassing."
"That won't happen, Kanako's not a curse god, remember?"
Where exactly Renko's confidence in the face of gods, youkai or other supernatural entities came from has always been a mystery to me. Nonetheless, I followed her as she softly walked out of the room, carefully stepping around the furniture to avoid waking Sanae. We proceeded down the corridor, suppressing even the sounds of our breathing until we reached the front of the building which contained the worship hall. Here it was nearly pitch black once we closed the door, with only the sound of wind whispering through the trees outside. Renko made her way across the room in total darkness, then opened the outside door. The moonlight seemed brilliant by comparison.
"If Kanako is enshrined here, then whatever's behind the barrier is probably a shrine of another sort. If this were the Suwa Grand Shrine, that would be where the initiated priests worship their hidden god."
"Doesn't that sound like exactly the sort of thing two non-religious people would be cursed for intruding on, Renko?"
"Hmmm, I wonder. I kind of suspect that Lady Yasaka wants someone to find it."
"Oh? That sounds like wishful thinking."
"Not at all. It's just like the Scarlet Devil Mansion or Hakugyokuro. Those who hide something without hiding that they're hiding it are just asking for the truth to be exposed. There's a ton of connections here making it obvious that this is or was the Suwa Grand Shrine. Anyone who knows about that shrine would know that there's a hidden god the public isn't told about there, whose worship is a secret. It's practically out in the open! If you want to hide X and keep it from being discovered, you can't leave up a bunch of signs saying 'I've hidden X,' that's just going to make people go look for it."
"That's the most Renko-like reasoning I've ever heard. How many people do you think know that there's a hidden god at the Suwa Grand Shrine? It's a 'hidden' god, after all. Among those people, how many of them are in Gensokyo? I get what you're saying Renko, but I'm pretty sure things would only look that way to you."
Trying to warn her of the danger was pointless though. Renko was the sort to add hot sauce to her curry, and mysteries, her favorite dish, were just the same. Danger was merely a spice. "If we open that barrier and there's some unspeakable horror covered with tentacles inside, I'm going to run away and leave you behind, Renko."
"If I end up with a cursed arm and a doomed fate, I'll tell you 'you're beautiful'"
"My name isn't 'Mononoke.' You should say that to Kagerou instead, she's the wolf-girl."
"She's not a princess though, and Kaguya's not the sort to wander this far from her home."
We discussed such nonsense while making our way down to the shore of the lake. Upon arriving, the view was even more astonishing in the moonlight. The pale light sparkled on the water, refracted in places to my eyes by the distortion of a strong barrier standing between the numerous upright pillars, starting on the shore, but reaching out well into the water.
"Well Merry, what do you think? Can you break the seal?"
I reached out and laid a hand on the pillar again. The seal in place here was powerful and multi-layered, immaculately crafted, and almost perfectly bound to the wood of the Onbashira... except...
"Right here, it's a little loose."
"That's my Merry. You're getting better at this, aren't you? That would have taken you 20 minutes before."
"Gee, I wonder if someone encouraging me to seek out boundaries and then getting me lost in a world surrounded by a gigantic one had anything to do with that?" I asked, flatly.
I poked my finger towards the spot where the barrier was loosest. As I brought the digit closer, the tiny hole yawned, it's edges quivering as if in anticipation of my touch. Taking hold of Renko's hand with my right hand, I worked my left into the gap and pulled it open. We stepped through, and into...
The same path we had walked down moments ago. Here the path was no longer an animal trail, but a gravel-lined walkway leading to the lake, lined on either side with Onbashira. There were many, many, more of them here though, more than a hundred in all, lining the entire trail down to the lake rather than just standing at the shore and extending into the water a bit.
"It's the same road we just took. But... not." I mumbled, at a loss for words.
"Yeah, looks that way. Let's see where it leads, Merry."
We walked hand in hand down the path. Lights glowed from within stone lanterns set at irregular intervals here, though they didn't appear to come from candles or burning oil, just hovering blobs of yellowish glow that floated in place, wavering slightly. As we rounded the corner and looked out over the glassy surface of the lake, a voice rang out, seemingly from above.
"Oops, how did anyone wander all the way over here? Are you lost? Are you two humans?"
We looked up and saw a small silhouette crouching on top of one of the sacred pillars, high above us. The voice that had spoken sounded like a child's but was filled with the same sort of confidence bordering on arrogance we had heard from Kanako.
"For two mortals to have wandered so far off the beaten path in the dead of night doesn't seem like an accident. If you two have come all of this way, and have passed through the barrier to get here, then I suppose its safe to assume you're prepared to be cursed?"
