"Ayaya, you want to know about the generator at the Moriya shrine? I suppose if anyone would ask about that it would be you two."
We had missed our chance to ask Sanae about the recent advancements that had allowed her to charge her Gameboy, but we were lucky enough to catch Aya in the village the next day, as she was collecting subscription fees from tea houses and bars.
We had found her walking the streets of the village, breathing out plumes of white fog and wearing a somewhat more subdued and human-like outfit than usual, in the form of a tweed jacket and cap with a pair of trousers. Having exchanged her usual high-toothed geta for simple loafers, she was perhaps two centimeters shorter than me now, and I hadn't recognized her at first. Even Renko had had to do a double take, but even if she didn't immediately look like Aya any more, the disguise still made her stand out from the other villagers huddled in the cold.
As Renko flagged her down in the street, she turned to us with a sour expression, only looking more exasperated after hearing Renko's question. "I was planning to write an article about that in my next issue. I can't go spoiling the details now, you'll ruin my scoop."
"Can you give us a hint, at least?"
"Hmmm, I might be willing to negotiate if you can give me a juicier story to chase down."
"Oof. Fresh out of intrigue today, I'm afraid. Merry, you got anything?"
"Don't ask me, Renko. You're the one who says I spend all my time reading aren't you?"
"Why are you two even asking me?" Aya asked, tilting her head. "I thought you two were good friends with the wind priestess."
"I intend to ask her about it, but I actually wanted to get a non-human perspective on the idea of generating electricity. I would have expected the idea of industrial technology to be seen as a threat to tengu dominance, but you don't seem alarmed.
"Hmmm, I'm sure there are some that feel that way, but science and technology don't have to the enemies of youkai." She tapped the back of her fountain pen against her chin. I hadn't even seen her draw her pen and pad out, but they were in her hands now. Even in disguise, I supposed she never left them behind. "The science of the Outside world is dangerous because it is coupled to the idea of empiricism. It explains a lot of natural phenomena, but denies the existence of anything it can't explain. Youkai are born from the human practice of giving names and traits to phenomena of unknown origin, so science is the opposite of that. It's become like one big god swallowing up all of the fear and awe that would normally create countless different youkai. We tengu, along with the kappa, have formed an advanced society, however, with a well defined presence of our own. We no longer rely on human misunderstandings of the natural world to solidify our existence. Humans think of us as the people who live on and rule over the mountain, so as long as we continue to do that, we can pursue understanding of the natural world and refinement of technological innovation without issue."
"Besides," she continued, producing her camera from a shoulder bag, "some of these inventions can be quite useful." Aya had mentioned to us before that her camera was of kappa design. Even in Ryunosuke Akutagawa's Kappa from the beginning of the previous century kappa had been portrayed as clever engineers. I wondered what a man like Akutagawa would have made of the kappa we had seen and their technology. While I was lost in thought over such things, Renko was continuing her discussion with Aya.
"Scientific rationalism would still be a threat to you though, wouldn't it? Doesn't the explanation of the origin of natural phenomena erode the space even youkai like you have to operate in?"
"Perhaps, but I don't think we have to worry about that in this case."
"Oh? Why is that?"
"Because these recent innovations aren't the result of discoveries based in rationalism and empirical observation. They've all just been handed down, pristine and complete as divine revelations by the goddess of the Moriya shrine. I'm sure she wouldn't spearhead any technological developments that put her own nature at risk."
"Ah, I see. Rationalism does tend to lead to atheism, but if technological advancements are seen as divinely inspired I suppose that wouldn't be a problem."
"That's her hope. She's been talking extensively with the kappa recently. Her aim is to usher in a form of science that can allow for convenient technology to coexist with gods and youkai."
Her words struck what was, perhaps, a unique chord with Renko and I, who, knowing the future history of the Outside world, saw our own Scientific Century as a natural outgrowth of and reaction to the close-minded rationalism of the previous 250 years. It is in the inevitable nature of scientific inquiry that as the body of accumulated knowledge becomes more complex and sophisticated, it necessarily exceeds the bounds of what a typical person or even a scholar not devoted to a particular specialization can understand. As a result, people come to take news of scientific discoveries on faith, even when those discoveries are completely outside of, or even counter to their observed experiences. In short, the advancement of scientific rationalism had eventually become a religion in its own right, an edifice supported by the power of faith in its institutions and moral code, delivering miracles of technological advancement and supporting its own ecosystem of philosophers, evangelists, scholars, grifters and splinter sects. The fact that they went by names such as scientists, educators, professors, inventors and pseudoscientific hucksters didn't change the operating principle behind it all. Pseudoscience in particular, and the widespread acceptance among specific communities of long-debunked theories like ESP, orgone energy, extra-terrestrial UFOs, crystal healing or the like was something that could only exist because of the broad scope and reach of scientific advancement which it mimicked. Many of the Hifuu club's early investigations had centered around such things, if you can call lengthy discussions in a coffee shop 'investigations.'
The embrace of spiritual research in the latter half of the 21st century along with the establishment of Relative Psychology as a discipline was an attempt to bridge the gap between scientific rationalism and the need of the common man to take the teachings of science on faith alone. The term 'Scientific Century' itself even had a strong, self-deprecating connotation to it. It begged the question of whether the tools dreamed up by science for investigating the world could possibly be up to the task of investigating science itself, and excising truth from superstition with the same precision. For my partner, who had always considered herself a scientific rationalist, the whole philosophy of the Scientific Century was a dark and bitter joke to tell in a world where all the questions of the physical nature of reality were broadly considered to have been solved by that same science. In essence, the joke went 'we know everything now, except how to know if we know anything.'
While I was lost in contemplation of that heavy topic, the conversation had moved on.
"Well then, should I assume that any future technological advancements we hear of coming from the mountain can be considered a result of cooperation between the Moriya shrine and the tengu or their subordinates? It seems like that treaty of friendship you agreed to has extended a bit further since then." Renko said with a wry smile.
Aya looked like she was about to respond and opened her mouth, then suddenly froze in position. She paused, standing perfectly still for a moment, as if listening intently, then turned and sniffed twice. "Ayayaya, that smells like news!" She suddenly declared, and then without another moment's hesitation bolted into the sky, her raven-black wings emerging from under the contours of her suit jacket and propelling her upward in a streak of motion too fast to comprehend. In the space of a heartbeat she was gone, racing eastward through the air, toward the Hakurei shrine.
Renko stood dumbfounded for a moment, then turned to watch her figure vanish into the winter sky. "What do you suppose that was all about, Merry? Did something just happen at the shrine?"
"I hope it hasn't been destroyed again."
And so, with a compelling lead like that, it wasn't long before we set out, on the road to the Hakurei shrine, on the lookout for wherever Aya had disappeared to.
-.-.-.-.-
We arrived at the Hakurei shrine perhaps an hour later, having made the trek over the snowy path as fast as our legs would carry us. We ascended the stairs and came through the torii gates panting and sore, only to find the place completely deserted. The shrine itself, which had been destroyed twice the past summer, had long since been rebuilt from the ground up and stood intact and in good repair, if rather conspicuously unattended. The grounds were unswept and covered in snow, with no sign of recent footprints. If not here, just where had miss Shameimaru gone?
Renko looked around, dismayed. "No sign of anyone here and no smoke from the chimney. I don't see any footprints either. Could Reimu have been abducted?" We trod through the crunching snow and toward the main shrine building, looking around in the isolated silence when suddenly Renko called out. "Whoa! what is that!?"
I turned my gaze to where she was pointing and immediately my breath caught in my throat. In the distance, in the deep forest just north of the Hakurei shrine, a plume of white smoke was dissipating in the air.
"Is it a fire?" I asked.
"I don't think so," Renko said, shaking her head. "That whole plume wasn't there a second ago, it just all jetted up at once. I think it's too white to be smoke anyway. Steam maybe?"
"Steam? Is there a hot spring over there?"
"Let's find out!" Renko said, proceeding toward the northern edge of the hill the shrine sat on. Her progress was immediately impeded however. The hill on which the shrine sat tapered off slowly to the west and south, but ended in a fairly sharp drop to the north. Worse still, that drop lead directly into a dense forest without any hint of a trail running through it. The lands east of the village were supposed to be relatively safe, with few youkai willing to live in Reimu's proverbial back yard, but I still wasn't wild about the idea of plunging into the trackless wilderness without a guide, a trail to follow, or any plan.
Renko, however, was undaunted. As soon as we made our way back down the stairs leading up the hill, she turned and left the road, disappearing into the woods without hesitation. I dithered for a moment, torn between worry for her and fear for myself, but predictably, I found myself chasing after her before she disappeared from sight.
I chided her for a bit, but before long we were wandering through the woods in silence. Me praying that we wouldn't get lost and trying to keep track of which direction lead out while looking out for stray youkai and Renko narrow-mindedly focused on trying to determine where the white smoke had come from. It wasn't long before we began to sense something. A familiar, if somewhat unpleasant but wholly unmistakable smell.
"Is that sulfur?" I asked.
"Even better, its hydrogen sulfide. That's soluble in water, which means a hot spring, Merry!"
"I never knew there was a hot spring so close to the Hakurei shrine." I followed along behind Renko as we made our way through the undergrowth, walking over fallen branches and thin layers of snow as we followed our noses toward the source of the stench.
It didn't take long to reach a place where a clearing had apparently recently been formed. A break in the forest was ringed by splintered and fallen trees and all hint of snow on the ground was lost along with much of the topsoil, revealing an open space dotted with bare rocks surrounded by a wide circle spattered with mud. No grass grew here and white steam was rising in a steady column from a hole in the ground. Standing before this hole, with their backs to us were Reimu, Marisa and Aya.
"Reimu! Marisa! Oiiii!" Renko called out as she emerged from the trees, waving her arm over her head.
All three figures turned toward us. Reimu immediately rested her fists on her hips, glaring at my partner. "What are you doing here?" she asked.
"I was about to ask the same of you, but with the smell and the steam, I think I can guess what happened."
Marisa grinned broadly. "Well, if your guess was 'the ground blew up and keeps doin' it again every so often,' then you can see for yourself in a minute."
The next moment, before Renko could respond, there was a deafening roar as a geyser of boiling steam rocketed out of the hole and easily a dozen meters into the sky, spattering noisomely over the bare rocks and releasing a long plume of mist that slowly drifted to the north. Aya snapped the moment of its eruption with her camera, having clearly been waiting for just such an event. The torrent of water hammered down a moment later in a fierce, hot rain as a miasma of sulfurous, tropically warm steam covered the whole clearing. The roar and clatter of the falling water slowly began to die off, letting us hear Marisa whooping excitedly somewhere in the dense cloud. Although we couldn't see even a meter in front of us any more, the skies above were clear and Renko and I sighed in awe as we watched the last of the spray high above us fade away.
As the steam slowly began to clear, Aya whistled appreciatively. "Ayah, I don't think we even have any quite that big on the mountain. That's a nice geyser."
When the steam had cleared enough for us to see Reimu, she was looking into the hole with an unusual gleam in her eye and an uncharacteristically wicked smile. "With a geyser like this, all I have to do is dig out a pool and I can turn it into an onsen. That'll bring in more visitors, and if I charge a fee to bathe, I can even double my profit. This must be a gift from the gods since my shrine was destroyed twice. Twice down, and twice back up again. The Hakurei shrine will finally be out of the red..."
I can imagine that even with all the help she had enjoyed rebuilding, the dual collapses of the shrine over the summer must have severely strained whatever savings Reimu had. Still, seeing her wring her hands expectantly while peering into the depths, her expression would have looked more appropriate on a tanuki.
"It makes no sense for a hot spring to suddenly come up here though, there's never been any signs of volcanic activity this far from the mountain, have there been?" Renko asked. "Reimu did you bully the kappa into digging this for you or something?"
"Me? I didn't bully anyone. The ground just suddenly exploded. It's a miracle is all," she declared matter-of-factly.
"It doesn't make sense for a geyser to come out of nowhere. Even if there was already an aquifer here, there'd have to be a new source of heat to get a geyser like this."
"Don't things like this happen after earthquakes sometimes? Maybe Tenshi actually did something good for once. Probably by accident."
"I suppose that's possible," Renko admitted. "But that quake was highly localized. I wouldn't think it would have reached down far enough to have diverted a magma vein or the like."
"Maybe there was already a heat source there and the earthquake last summer just opened up a vent for the steam to come up," I suggested.
"Maybe..." Renko said, fiddling with the brim of her hat. She still looked unsatisfied with the explanation.
"Who cares why it's here? The important thing is its here, and I'm claiming it. Now I've just gotta find Suika so she can dig me a pool and stomp out a trail to here from the shrine. Or maybe I should go find Tenshi and make her build a proper onsen. Either's good, I suppose, I'll have plenty of money to pay them both."
"Yo, Reimu, are you feelin' okay?" Marisa asked, turning toward her friend. "I get that this geyser is near your shrine an' all, but you sound like you've been possessed by a tanuki or somethin'." For the rest of us gathered around, watching her seem to count coins in her head, our reaction was much the same.
-.-.-.-.-
Marisa's dig at Reimu back then was, of course, just that. A mere joke at Reimu's expense and not a serious concern that she might have been possessed. Had we known then what we know however, it might have been said with a bit more seriousness.
For as it turns out, steam wasn't the only thing that would end up erupting in a torrent from that geyser.