After a statement like that, I clammed up. I didn't want to say anything disparaging about Sanae or the goddesses who acted as her parents, but it was hard to discount Renko's logic. Could they really have deceived her into coming here for their own ends?
Renko was more than happy to fill the space left by my silence. "Kanako Yasaka and Suwako Moriya. A goddess of blessings and a goddess of curses. There's two sides to everything, Merry. Sanae probably thinks that the goddesses left the Outside world to rescue her, but they might have done it to save themselves. That said, if that was their aim they could have sent her here alone, but they both came along. Maybe they didn't have the heart to abandon her like that. Two sides, all the way around. All of that's only a guess though... and that's as far as I've gotten so far. I don't have any answers for the rest of it," Renko said, flopping over backwards and stretching out on the tatami.
"In fact..." she continued, "I think that's as far as we can get right now. There's lots I don't have a solution for yet. We're probably missing some key details. But at any rate the mystery of the Moriya shrine is far from solved, Merry."
"You're not planning on asking the youkai sage to take you to the Suwa shrine of the Outside world, are you? I don't think you'd like travelling with her, Renko. It was scary."
"Well, that would be great. You don't happen to have her number do you? I guess it wouldn't matter if you did, we don't have a phone to call her with. No, I'll assume her help will be impossible to secure as usual, as she really doesn't seem to want to talk to me. We'll have to settle for the next best thing, Merry."
"You're going to go back to Moriya shrine and poke around again. Do you really think that's a good idea?" I asked, rubbing the spot where Keine had headbutted me. It was still quite sore.
"You know why I do things like this, Merry. The Hifuu club exists to reveal the secrets of the world and make the world a more interesting place."
"Are you sure that that's what poking around the shrine and revealing something that's been kept hidden from Sanae will do? What if there's nothing interesting there, just something that will make Sanae feel awkward or unwanted?"
Renko sat up and fixed me with stare, suddenly serious. "I admit that's a possibility, but this time this goes beyond mere curiosity. The mysteries of the Moriya shrine hold important implications for the two of us, Merry."
"...You're talking about the relationship between the shrine on the mountain and Suwa Grand Shrine in the Outside world, right? You want to know if history has diverged from the course we know of."
"Exactly. If the Suwa Grand Shrine really disappeared from the world beyond the Great Hakurei Barrier, then either our time travel has changed the flow of history or you and I have come to an parallel world where history is divergent from what we knew. Either of those possibilities has big implications if we ever want to try to return to our lives in Kyoto."
"Well then why don't you explain that we're time travelers to Kanako and just ask her why the shrine was still their in our time? That would be the most direct solution, wouldn't it?"
"You heard her before, she said that the physical version of the shrine stayed behind and the spiritual version of it came here. She could say the same again and we'd have no way to verify or refute that supposition since we can't observe the Outside world. We'd just be going in circles. In order to sort this out we'll have to find the answers ourselves. There's got to be something that proves one way or the other if Moriya shrine really is Suwa Grand Shrine or not."
"Well, let's start with the question of why it's just one of the four shrines that make up the Suwa Grand Shrine in the Outside world then. Moriya is just the lower autumn shrine, right? The Akimiya?" I asked, running my finger down the list of questions.
"Right. Specifically it's got all the really memorable parts of the Akimiya - the giant shimenawa, the onbashira, and the big lake behind it. But if it were really the same Akimiya then there's a bunch of things missing. I can't say for certain that everything we saw when we visited it in our time would have been there in 2007, but you'd expect there to be some tourist-friendly signs and pathways. When we went they even had that little ice cream shop near the raised stage with the lanterns. There were trashcans everywhere too, but I didn't see those. More importantly, the Akimiya you and I went to was comprised of four separate shrine buildings, right? Two on the south side of the lake that everyone goes to and two more smaller ones on the opposite side of the lake. We didn't go visit those, but they are considered part of the Akimiya shrine. If the gods who are enshrined there were going to move the place, you'd think they'd want to bring everything of spiritual significance with them, even if it's not popular with tourists, right?"
"You're right. Those shrines on the far side were supposed to be the place where the gods walking across the lake would come ashore. Without them and the rest of lake Suwa there, there can't be the yearly miracle of Omiwatari. That kind of defeats the purpose of having the lake there at all, doesn't it?"
The Omiwatari was supposedly a natural phenomenon which caused the winter ice of lake Suwa to rise into a series of jagged ridges due to repeated expansion and contraction that formed a zig-zagging road between the shrines on either side of the lake. The legends of the place claimed that this path was the road used by the god Takeminakata to visit his wife, the goddess Yasaka in her shrine on the opposite side of the lake. In our time though, we had only seen pictures and computer-generated images of the Omiwatari. The real event hadn't been witnessed in decades due to global warming.
"That's right. The Omiwatari is supposed to be Takeminakata crossing to visit his wife, but Kanako says both of those personages are actually her, so there's no need for that to happen. If that's the case, why do they need the lake at all? They could have come to Gensokyo and just set themselves up on the river leading to the village instead. Then they would have no problem gathering faith from villagers."
"If we suppose you're right and Moriya shrine isn't actually Suwa Grand Shrine, but just something made to look like that place, then Sanae would have to be aware of that. Whatever Moriya shrine actually is, she grew up there. She has a room and everything. Are you suggesting that Sanae is in on the ruse too and was playing along to try and convince us that Moriya shrine and Suwa Grand Shrine are connected?"
"She'd pretty much have to be."
"But what would be the point of any of that? Suwa Grand Shrine is pretty famous, but not enough so that people in Gensokyo would know about it. Why bother disguising the shrine as a different shrine? And if for some reason you did, why would you then give it a different name? You'd think if they went to all the trouble of creating a copy of Suwa Grand Shrine, they'd want to call it the same thing."
"Clever, Merry. Now you're catching on. That's the core of the mystery here. Is Moriya shrine a half-hearted copy of Suwa Grand Shrine with half of its buildings missing, or is it the real deal and only a fraction of everything got moved? And in either case why? And why give what they brought over a new name?" Renko stood up from her desk, grabbing her hat as she did so and putting it on -then carefully readjusting it to not sit on the spot where Keine had headbutted her. "Alright, now that you get it, let's get to investigating."
"Really? After everything last night and then Keine today you want to go back to the shrine again? How will we even get there?"
"Of course not, Merry. We've got some info closer to home we need to gather first," she said, flashing me her troublesome grin.
