Before I begin talking about the Vengeful Spirit Incident, I would like to talk about one other event. This event occurred after Sanae joined our detective agency as a part-timer, but before the start of the earthquake Incident, earlier that same summer.
That day Renko and I were visiting the Moriya shrine, and were sitting in Sanae's room enjoying tea and snacks. Renko and Sanae were busy going over Sanae's high school physics textbook, which she had never had a chance to return to her school, discussing changes and advances in the field of physics in the time between modern day and the Scientific Century. Being a humanities major, I was was sitting politely to the side, listening to the discussion and trying to resist the urge to scream.
The two were animatedly engaged in their conversation, poring over the pages of the volume when suddenly Sanae popped her head up with a surprised expression, saying "Oh! A visitor just arrived on the shrine grounds."
"What? How do you know? Merry, did you hear anything?" Renko asked.
"No, nothing. Are you sure, Sanae?" I asked as she climbed to her feet and headed for the door.
"I'm sure. It's not like I heard anything, I just received a premonition from Lady Kanako."
"Is that like telepathy?"
"Not exactly, more like a feeling of something I need to do, like if you left the stove on when you left the house. It's a divine revelation!" She said, cheerily.
Personally, I thought it was rather routine for a divine revelation, but I suppose in a world without intercoms it would be a useful ability to have.
"I'll be right back," Sanae said, stepping into the hall and walking toward the front of the shrine.
Approximately ten seconds after Sanae slid the door shut behind her, I looked over to see Renko looking at me with her usual troublesome grin. I sighed and said simply "Even if I stay here, you'd still go, wouldn't you?"
"You know me so well, Merry!" She said without the faintest bit of guilt or shame as she climbed to her feet and moved to carefully slide the door open, peeking around the corner and down the hall.
I have to admit, even I was more than a little curious. Who would come all the way up to this remote location in the mountains? Most likely the visitor was a kappa or a tengu, but in that case I would have expected Lady Yasaka to have greeted them herself. Therefore, padding softly along the tatami floors, I followed Renko as she tailed Sanae, creeping to the door of the outer shrine and sliding it open a crack to peer outside. There we saw Sanae as she walked toward the torii gates to greet a visitor.
The person she was greeting wasn't anyone we recognized. It was a woman wearing something that looked like a cross between a typical Taoist Tai Chi uniform and the tabard-like drape of a cheongsam dress. More than anything else, it resembled the outfit Ran usually wore. The woman's most distinctive feature, however, were her arms. Her right arm was pure white from shoulder to fingertip, and looked to be covered by a full length glove or sleeve of some kind. Her left arm looked perfectly normal except for a thick metal cuff or bracelet with a short length of chain dangling from it.
Whoever this visitor was, Sanae seemed to be about to give her a tour, turning towards us and saying "Let me show you around." It was then that her eyes passed over the outer shrine and met Renko's as my partner had by now leaned her head fully outside in her interest.
"Oh! Renko. I though you were going to wait in my room."
"Ah, sorry." Renko said, rising up and walking out, rubbing the back of her neck in feigned embarrassment. "Call it professional curiosity."
"I may as well introduce you all first then." Sanae said, walking over towards us with her guest in tow. "This is a hermit who lives on the mountain. She's just come to pay her respects."
As the woman approached, I got a better look at her. She had the subtle muscle definition and grace of movement that suggested she was either a dancer or a trained martial artist. Her right arm, I now saw, was covered not in a long glove as I had initially thought, but rather it was completely wrapped in bandages. She seemed to have no trouble moving it, so it clearly wasn't the result of a broken bone, but still, any wound that ran the whole length of her arm must have been a fearsome injury.
"Do you two work here at the shrine?" The woman asked amiably.
"No, we're from the village." Renko said, stepping forward. "I'm Renko Usami, chief investigator of the Hifuu Detective Agency, and this is my assistant, Merry. We're not here on business though, we're just friends of Sanae's."
"Ah, pleased to meet you. I'm Kasen Ibaraki. I don't know if I'd go so far as to call myself a hermit. Just an ascetic Taoist and practitioner in training. Just call me Kasen." She smiled pleasantly as she looked around at the shrine grounds. "This is a truly splendid shrine," she said as she took in the enormous shimenawa hanging at the front of the outer shrine. "I had no idea the villagers had built something like this on the mountain. How old is this place?"
"Ah..." Sanae said, hesitating. "The shrine itself is quite old indeed, but it's likely new to you. It's been here in this location for about... a year now? Has it been a year already?" She asked, looking over at us.
Renko shrugged. "About that long. Time has a way of creeping up on you here, doesn't it?"
"Time is relative." Kasen said, closing her eyes and nodding sagely. "A year for a child is a significant fraction of their life, but by age fifty it's almost nothing. If I were to attain the mastery necessary to call myself a hermit, a year would not even be the blink of an eye for me."
"Hey, Merry, if she's a hermit in training how old do you think she really is?" Renko whispered, leaning over to me.
"I don't know. Don't be rude, Renko." I hissed back at her.
"So you must have come here from the Outside world then?" Kasen asked, turning back to Sanae.
"Oh, that's right! How did you know?"
"It's a simple guess. Unless I'm mistaken you're all humans, and I would be very surprised if the tengu allowed humans to build something here or transport something all the way up the mountain. Therefore, you must have brought it here across the barrier from somewhere else. As far as I know, the Outside world is the only place humans come from."
Sanae's eyes went wide with surprise and she ran over to Renko, grabbing her by both of her shoulders. "Renko! It's another great detective! You'll have to hire her or else you'll have a rival detective agency to compete with!"
"Well that's fine, it just means my series is getting popular right? Every great detective gets a rival eventually."
"Oh, you're right! She can be the Heiji to your Conan! The superintendent Akechi to your Hajime!" She turned to me, excitedly. "Merry, is there such a thing as a hermit detective? With martial arts and hermit magic and stuff?"
"Well, I've never heard of one, but many fictional detectives are hermit-like in their habits. It would hardly be the strangest thing in Gensokyo."
"Wow! A hermit detective. That's so cool, miss Kasen. Please come this way, I'll give you the full tour." She said, turning back to her somewhat baffled-looking guest. Renko and I glanced at eachother, then followed along, keeping a few steps behind as Sanae ran through her usual presentation.
Kasen listened politely and followed along as Sanae showed her the stage and the outer shrine, then brought her inside to show her the alters dedicated to each goddess. Later on, after Kasen paid her respects and left a donation at the offertory, Lady Yasaka appeared and the two of them had a brief, hushed conversation off to the side. Renko seemed to be trying to listen in, but it would have been impossible to make any details out between their whispering and Sanae's excited chatter.
After the end of the tour, Kasen bowed politely, saying "Well then, thank you for the tour, but I must be off." As she said this, she stepped outside and looked toward the sky. As we followed her gaze, we saw what looked like a bird circling there. It turned another half circle overhead, then began to descend toward us. As it drew nearer, I was able to see that simply calling it a 'bird' would be doing it a disservice. It appeared to be an eagle of nearly unbelievable size. It's body was easily the size of a car, with a wingspan that wouldn't have fit in my apartment back in Kyoto. It swooped low and Kasen kicked lightly off of the ground, rising into the air and grabbing its leg as it passed, sweeping her along as it turned a huge circle overhead.
Sanae watched the pair in wide-eyed awe. "Oh wow! Where do you live, miss hermit?" She shouted up at the sky.
"Up near the peak, on the west side. Come visit me some time, if you like." With that, she kicked her legs, flipping herself acrobatically up onto the eagle's back and soaring away into the sky.
Renko watched her go, shielding her eyes from the sun as the eagle soared ever higher. "Huh. There's something you don't see every day, even in Gensokyo. I guess there's more people living on this mountain than just tengu, kappa and gods."
"Wouldn't a mountain full of youkai be the perfect place for a hermit to train? No mundane distractions from everyday life, harsh but bountiful nature, rugged terrain, and someone to fight whenever she wants a sparring partner!" Sanae said cheerfully. "Oh, the newspaper lady said there's also yamabiko and yamauba living here too."
Renko nodded, her face still turned toward the place where the eagle had vanished, her fingers fiddling with the brim of her hat.
"I know that look, Renko. What are you thinking about?"
"Just wondering who that hermit might be. That bandage all up her right arm is a little suspicious."
"It must be a seal! I bet she only takes it off to release the Dragon of Darkness Flame!"
"The tengu made a big fuss when the Moriya shrine arrived, so she must be pretty important to be allowed to live up there," Renko reasoned, ignoring Sanae's outburst.
"Well maybe she is a tengu. Crow tengu look like humans if they don't have their wings out. I've never heard of an eagle tengu, but we've never seen the great tengu either. She could be one of them."
"Really? No one's going to say anything? You don't know YuYu Hakusho?" Sanae whined.
"It's almost a hundred years old for us, Sanae. It was a classic, but I've never read it."
"It was before my time too, but I can fill you in! History is important. You two are teachers, right? I have the full set of the manga. It's really good. I also have all of Slam Dunk! You should read them!"
Renko and I could only look over at eachother and laugh.
-.-.-.-.-
Thus, since then, our knowledge of the art and culture of the the period between the 1980s and the early 2000s has dramatically increased. Admittedly though, our perceptions are probably a little biased, having been highly colored by what was available at the Moriya shrine.
Surprisingly, Sanae told us that most of the manga she leant us belonged to Suwako and not herself. According to her, the goddess had been an avid consumer of manga and multiplayer online computer games back in the Outside world. That may be why Kanako had had the ready analogy of a networked application handy to explain the nature of divine spirits to us back then. Still, the thought of a native god playing an online game between bouts of talking to frogs or releasing curses into the world was hard for me to imagine. I can only feel pity for any unlucky individual who might have unknowingly griefed a goddess in an MMORPG of the early 21st century.