"Koishi Komeiji? Is that you?" I called in a low voice as I crept through the darkness of the passage. I had proceeded far enough down this branching tunnel that I could no longer see the junction from my position, in pursuit of a youkai that may or may not have been there, but was widely rumored to act unpredictably. As I walked along the stone corridor I catalogued in my mind all the many reasons why this was a bad idea.

If she was still here I wondered if she would even show herself to me. Appearing directly behind us back in the garden and leading us on a chase all over the old city suggested to me that she enjoyed the idea of being hard to find. Still, she had appeared before me multiple times now. Our first meeting might have been an accident, but clearly the subsequent encounters hadn't been. I had to assume she was nearby. "Miss Koishi, if you're here, would you mind letting me know? I'm the only one here right now."

"Here I am!"

It was an odd-sounding voice. One I might describe as being bright and upbeat but somehow emotionless. It sounded as if the words being spoken were as much of a startling surprise to the speaker as they were to me. I turned to my right, where the voice had come from and saw her there. A girl in a frilly, mustard-colored blouse, pale-skinned and pale-eyed, wearing a floppy black sunhat in a tunnel beneath an underground city. The structure of her face and the curl of her hair was much like Satori's, leaving little doubt that the two were sisters. Moreover, I could now see that, like her sister, the odd bits of cord floating in front of her terminated in an orb floating in front of her chest. Koishi's looked noticeably different though - not only was it a deep purple color but the orb was resolutely closed, its lid still and unmoving. Trying to commit the details of her appearance to memory, in the hopes that it might make it easier to recognize her, I let out a slow breath and wished I had a better light source than the dim blue glow of the orbiting spirit.

"Hello there. Did I get your name right? You're Koishi Komeiji, aren't you?"

"That's right. Not many people can see me. You can though. Who are you?"

"You can call me Merry, it's nice to meet you." I said, squatting down to bring my eyes in line with hers.

"Mary? Like in the ghost story the children tell? Are you behind me right now?"

"If anything, I think you'd be the one behind me. Have you been following us?"

She nodded, happily. "You were chasing me, so I chased you for a while, then I got bored so I went ahead of you and now you're chasing me again."

"So you weren't actually trying to lead us anywhere then? You were just wandering around?"

"I guess? I was going places I felt like going. What about you? How did you wander all the way down here? You came from the surface, right? Why are you playing with my pet?" The questions came out all at once, not in an excited torrent, but in a meandering ramble, as her mind drifted from topic to topic.

"Oh, if you were following us, didn't you hear what we were saying to Orin?"

"She always has a lot of vengeful spirits floating around her, so I stay away. Yours is just a tiny one, but some of hers are mean, and try to put bad words in my mind."

"Really? I thought vengeful spirits were supposed to be afraid of satori youkai like you."

"They're afraid of my sister. I don't read minds any more though." As she said that, her hands drifted to rest on the closed eye hovering above her heart. It hadn't so much as twitched in the whole time I had been talking to her, remaining still and inert. "So I don't know what you're thinking either. Tell me why you came down here to the Underworld!" If a satori was a youkai that read minds by seeing with their third eye, then what sort of youkai was a satori whose third eye remained closed?

I had to focus on this conversation. Questions about the nature of youkai could wait for later. "Earth spirits have been leaking out of the ground and into our world, so my partner and I came here to investigate," I said.

"Earth spirits? Why would they be leaking out?"

"Well, it seems like there's a whole bunch of different things going on here. I'm afraid I don't have all the answers yet." I said, trying to channel Renko and avoid sounding guilty.

"I don't get it. Maybe I'll ask my sister about it later."

"Oh, that would be great if you could. You sister is looking for you. She asked us to find you and bring you to her."

For the first time, Koishi seemed to have an emotional reaction to that. Her expression soured and she crossed her arms in front of her, pouting. "No. I'm not going back."

"Oh? Are you sure? Your sister seems worried about you."

"Completely sure. My sister always orders me around and tells me where to go."

"That's a shame. I guess you won't be able to ask her about the earth spirits then. We can't go back to see your sister right now either."

"Ohhh, you have a secret! That's why you're following Orin through these passages, so my sister doesn't see you!" Koishi's motivations were unreadable, but she was still quite sharp, it seemed. "If you can't let her see your secrets though, then you can't capture me either, right?"

"We were never going to capture you, we were just going to ask you to go visit your sister. She'd like to see you, but it's ultimately your choice to make. We're not here to tell you what to do."

"Really?" She asked, cocking her head to the side. The concept seemed utterly novel to her, despite the fact that she had been acting freely since I had first seen her. "I can do whatever I want?"

"Why not? I don't think you have anyone relying on you right now, do you? Why not enjoy your freedom?"

She continued to cock her head, and seemed to be looking me over, as if evaluating me. "You're a pretty brave human. You even went into the Hell of Blazing Fires, didn't you?"

"Just to the edge. I don't know if I'm brave or foolhardy, to be honest. Why do you think I'm brave though? Are most people scared of you?"

"Those who can see me are. Maybe that's because they're kids though. You're a human grown-up, right? They can almost never see me."

"You've been playing with human kids? Are there any down here? Oh! Have you been slipping up to the surface since no one can see you?"

"Sometimes. There's a lot of kids in the human village and some who live out in the woods I see sometimes. Sometimes they can see me, but they usually get scared and won't play with me."

A youkai was slipping into the village and playing with children. Not just that, but a youkai from the depths of the Underworld, in violation of both the non-interference treaty and the laws of the village. As a teacher at the temple school, I couldn't ignore this information. But was she dangerous? Several people had warned me about her, but if all she wanted was someone to play with... Perhaps she wouldn't even seem abnormal to them. Even in the Scientific Century children's games often featured playmates who might disappear at a moment's notice. What might have been called an imaginary friend in my time was not that different from the concept of a zashiki warashi in Gensokyo -a phantasmal child that might be mischievous, but never malicious, visible only to children and not adults. Perhaps, having closed her mind-reading third eye, this satori had changed her nature and become something else.

"Hey, if you can see me, and I can do anything I want, let's you and me play a game, Merry!"

"Alright, what should we play? Tag? Hide and seek? We've kind of already been playing those for a while."

"No, let's play something new. You decide."

"Well then, may I call my partner over? She knows lots of games, and it would be more fun with three people, don't you think?"

"Ummm who? The girl with the hat?" Her wide, innocent eyes narrowed into a distasteful expression. "I don't like her," she said curtly.

I pulled back in surprise. "Really? Why not?"

"Because I want to play with you!"

"Alright, alright." I said, trying to calm her down. "Let's see, what's a game that just the two of us could play?"

"I know one!" She suggested, suddenly perking up. "How about I try to kill you!"