After we parted ways with Reisen, we caught up with Keine and the rest of the parade and finished our route around the village. By the time we were done, my feet and throat were both sore and it was early evening. Being mid summer, the sun was still high in the sky, but it was too late to consider going to Eientei tonight -doing so would mean risking Keine's wrath again, and Renko and I were already on thin ice.
As such, as might be expected, my partner immediately came to the conclusion that we needed to find a way to get to Eientei without angering Keine -simply not going never seemed to have crossed her mind.
"Miss Keine, with all the emergency preparations we've been doing, it's been a while since we've seen Mokou, hasn't it? What do you say to going over to her place and bringing some dinner tonight?"
"Oh, that could be nice. I needed to go to the market to get something to cook tonight anyway. It's rare of you to bring it up though, Renko. What's the occasion?" She seemed to think for a moment, then suddenly glared at Renko with narrowed eyes. "Wait a minute. You're not planning to sneak off into the woods or something are you?"
Renko smiled broadly, utterly unapologetic. "Ah, I should know better than to try to sneak something by someone as perceptive as you. It would be nice to go see Mokou tonight, but I was also hoping she could take me by Eientei after dinner."
"Eientei? Why? Is someone sick?"
"No, no, nothing like that. I just have some business to attend to there. If I went on my own though I'd get back late, so rather than make you worry, I thought I might invite you to come along too."
"It's awfully late to go if your planning to go to Eientei tonight too. Does it have to be today?"
"Well, you're planning on keeping us just as busy tomorrow, aren't you?"
"Well, since we don't know when the earthquake is going to hit..." Keine closed her eyes for a moment, thinking before finally sighing as she resigned herself to a conclusion. "Alright, if I say no, I'm certain you'll just head out to see her anyway, so I suppose I had better go with you. I appreciate you talking to me beforehand, but please try to keep it quick and don't do anything dangerous. We have plenty to worry about here in town already. It's been very hot in the Bamboo Forest of the Lost recently though, so make sure to dress appropriately."
"No problem. We'll meet you there then, Keine. See you tonight!" Renko said, grabbing my hand as she turned and jogged off, dragging me along with her.
"Hey wait! I haven't even decided what to cook yet!"
I managed to turn around just long enough to nod and say "excuse me, see you tonight" before Renko dragged me around the corner toward the road leading south out of town. It seemed even without Sanae here I had no hope of avoiding be dragged from place to place.
I quickened my steps to move up beside Renko, but didn't let go of her hand. "So what are headed to Eientei for, detective?" I asked.
Renko grinned and poked the brim of her hat back on head, her eyes focused straight ahead on a future only she could see. "I need to talk to Eirin. I need to ask her why she bothered sending Reisen out to investigate this Incident."
-.-.-.-.-
Soon we found ourselves on the edge of the Bamboo Forest of the Lost. The scenery was just the same and just as confusing as ever, but the environment had utterly changed. Despite the dappled shade beneath the canopy of the forest, it was sweltering between the stalks, with hot and moist clouds of steam drifting visibly by. Stepping into the shade of the bamboo would normally be a refreshingly cool break from the summer heat, but now it was indistinguishable from stepping into a steam room fully clothed. We were sweating heavily within minutes of entering, though it would be hard to tell with all the moisture sticking to our clothes just from the air.
"This must be part of the abnormal weather that's happening, but in this case it doesn't even make sense," Renko panted as we trudged through the damp. "How can it get this hot somewhere the sun doesn't reach?" Despite her usual insistence on maintaining a proper detective look regardless of the season, Renko had folded her trenchcoat over her arm and loosened her tie and the top button of her blouse. The hat stayed resolutely in place though. Despite the sweltering heat and the sweat standing on her brow, she didn't complain. Instead she turned and asked me "Merry, are you doing alright?"
"The Hakurei shrine was bad, but I think this is worse. I'll be okay though, as long as we make it indoors soon." I had loosened my dress' collar as well and was fanning myself feebly with my cap as we walked.
"We're nearly there," Renko said. "In fact, look, there it is." We had indeed arrived at Mokou's run-down shack. Renko trudged ahead and rapped on the door, calling out "Hey Mokou, are you there?" As she did so. "Sorry to bother you but can we come in from the heat?"
The door opened to reveal a nearly half-naked Mokou, stripped to the waist with only a long strip of cloth wound around her chest and her hair tied back off of her neck with even more charms than usual.
"Oh whoa, sorry, should we come back later?" Renko asked, taken slightly aback.
"What? Oh no, don't mind me, and don't be a prude. You're not Keine and it's way too damn hot for normal clothes. I don't know how you can both stand to wear all of that." She was rapidly fanning herself with a paper fan in her free hand. I had to admit, given the conditions here, if I could have taken my dress off I would have. "Come on in though, not that it's much better in here," she said, opening the door wide.
The temperature inside the house was indeed not much different, though mildly more tolerable. With all the moisture in the air, the place stank of sweat and mold. Coming in, Renko looked around. "Mokou, you can't stay here in this heat. If you were anyone else this would kill you in a day or two. Or are you fine with it because you're used to handling fire?"
"No, this is unnaturally bad. It's already killed me twice, I think. What's the point in leaving though, it's just as bad everywhere, isn't it?"
"Not at all. It's not nearly this bad in the village, that's why we're dressed like this."
Mokou blinked in surprise. "Really?"
Although she was still fundamentally a human, being immortal had really distorted her views on things. Why bother ever leaving the house when nothing can harm you? I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised to find her assuming that the conditions here would be the same everywhere else. Alice had come to much the same conclusion after all, and was similarly unlikely to leave her home.
"In that case, have Kaguya and that quack been doing something again? Have I just been sitting in her latest torture for a month without realizing it?" Mokou's teeth clenched.
"I doubt it. The weather is weird everywhere right now. You wouldn't know it if you hadn't gone out, but different parts of Gensokyo are getting all kinds of different weather right now. There's even hail and snow in some places."
"Really? I tried to go fishing in the early morning before it got too hot over at Misty Lake a while back, but it was just as hot there too. There wasn't even any mist."
"What? When was this?"
"About three days ago."
"Eh? Really?" Renko and I turned to look at eachother without thinking.
"Renko, it was about three days ago that Sanae came by saying the rains at her place had gotten really bad, wasn't it?"
"And that's when Patchouli went out investigating and Yuyuko went to the Hakurei shrine too. Moreover, we went to Misty Lake to get to the Scarlet Devil Mansion that day too. It was cloudy and overcast, but the temperature was normal. There was mist if I recall correctly too. Mokou are you sure it was three days ago you went?"
"I'm pretty sure. The days and months and decades can all kind of blend together, but I caught three fish and had one that night, one the next day, and the last one last night, so yeah, three days ago. Why?"
"I'm pretty sure you just gave us a key clue we'll need in order to solve this Incident. As expected, Mokou, you carry the wisdom of ages."
"What? I just went fishing. What are you talking about? What Incident?"
Renko merely grinned and nodded in the face of Mokou's exasperation. I had no idea what she was thinking at the time, but she seemed to have come to a conclusion. "Alright Renko. I don't get it either. What's the big secret?"
"Don't you see, Merry? We've been looking at this all wrong."
"How so?"
"We were thinking the weather was being weird in different locations, but that's not it at all. It's being weird around different people. That's why it snowed when Yuyuko came to the Hakurei shrine! The snow was following her around. That must be what Patchouli was researching and why she was looking into 'temperaments.' The Kanji for weather is 天気, 天 for sky or heavens, and 気 for temperament! The weather must be responding to changes in the temperaments of individual people..."
"Renko, that's crazy. Don't you think it's a little self-centered to think the weather revolves around you?"
"Quiet, I'm still working out my hypothesis. It's not me the weather's centered around though, since we've seen all kinds of different conditions. It's other people. The weather changes to reflect the nature of certain individuals..."
"How does that make any sense?"
"The Hakurei shrine has been sunny, especially when it's just Reimu there, but it rained for a bit. I bet that was when Marisa arrived. When Yuyuko showed up it snowed, until she got chased off. It's been the rainy season non-stop at the Moriya shrine... The Forest of Magic appears to have hail sometimes and drizzle others... or maybe it drizzles near Marisa and hails around Alice! Meanwhile the Netherworld is as cold as the grave and here around Mokou it's blazing hot! We were looking at things far too scientifically for a world where someone can collect spring and take it somewhere else. It's not a natural phenomenon or global warming, it's people!"
"Alright, that explains why Misty Lake would have been hot and mist-free for Mokou, but how does something like that happen? And what can we do about it?"
"Yeah, are you saying this intolerable heat is my fault?" Mokou asked.
"Well, not your fault exactly, but a result of your nature. Meiling told us that the natural rhythms of nature's qi had been disrupted. They must have seemed chaotic to her because she was in a place with so many different people nearby. Here though, your temperament is overwriting the temperament of nature. You're a fiery person, so the heat is following you around. I wouldn't be surprised if our own temperaments are affecting things too, but we're normally in the village where everyone's temperaments are going to be interacting with everyone else's making for the unpredictable and changing weather we've seen there, or else we're hanging around someone much more powerful than us, and their temperaments override ours. As for what could cause things to be like this, well there's one detail unaccounted for that doesn't seem to change no matter what the weather's like. The scarlet clouds. We haven't seen them yet, but Alice and Sanae both had. I bet they're somehow responsible for the weather being responsive like this."
"So the scarlet clouds pick up on the temperaments flowing out of people and overwrite the temperaments of nature with those of someone present?"
"Exactly. That's why Reimu thinks it's been sunny everywhere and was worried about drought, and Alice didn't know that it's only hailing around her house. Even if any of them had gone anywhere, they would have seen things stay just the same."
"I'll admit it fits the facts and seems logical, but I can't exactly say it makes sense. So what would happen if Reimu and Alice were in the same place? How would the weather know which of them to favour? You couldn't have hail spontaneously fall from a clear, sunny sky, could you?"
"Great question Merry. Sanae told us that the weather at her shrine has been constantly rainy, but that rain didn't follow her into town. We took her all over, but it didn't rain anywhere we went. That must mean that the rain at the shrine is attached to Kanako or Suwako. So either Sanae isn't being affected by this Incident, or whatever type of weather she would normally create is being drowned out by something else."
"Drowned out? How do you know it works that way?"
"Well, look at the human village. If everyone has a temperament that could potentially control the weather, then all of those different conditions would be in conflict. We're not seeing a complete chaos of every type of weather happening at once though, so there must be some logic to it. Some people's temperaments overwrite others. Like a priority system."
"So things are hot here because Mokou has priority over us, but if it were the other way around then our weather would take precedence?"
"That seems to be the case, but I have no idea what the criteria for determining whose weather gets prioritized would be. Normal humans like us don't seem to have much of an effect on things unless there's no one else around, but why does the weather prefer Reimu's sunshine to Marisa's drizzle, for example?"
"This whole thing seems very arbitrary, maybe it's just someone's opinions of whose weather should be dominant? There doesn't seem to be any other particular logic to it. What would happen if someone with a sunny personality and someone gloomy went out on a date?"
Mokou walked over to the kitchen and ladled water into three cups from a basin. Bringing them back to us, she handed them out with a sigh. "I have no idea if you're right or not, but either way, I don't see what we can do about it. What did you guys come here for though? I don't think you'd want to play shogi in this heat, and since you're not with Keine, I'm guessing you want me to guide you somewhere."
"Ah, you're very perceptive today. You can probably even guess where I was going to ask you to take us."
"Back to Eientei again? I'll show you the way, but if you keep going back there, you're going to become one of that quack's experiments sooner or later."
"Don't worry, I'll be fine. If Eirin was going to dissect someone, she'd definitely want to start with Merry."
"That doesn't make it OK!" I cried, smacking Renko on the back of the head. Renko laughed but Mokou just sighed, shaking her head at our recklessness.