"Oh, it's right there!"

We had only been exploring the forest surrounding the shrine for a few minutes. Our first stop had been an enormous tree situated behind the shrine that had been struck by lightning years ago. It had then, over the course of a few mere months, surged back to life and regrown itself larger and healthier than ever. Reimu had made a token effort of enshrining it by wrapping it round with a shimenawa, but as it was a fair distance behind her shrine, which already saw few visitors, and was located in a small clearing that could only be reached by traipsing through the woods without a trail for a few minutes, she had quickly given up hope of turning it into a tourist attraction and abandoned it.

She had first shown it to us years ago, just weeks after it had been struck by lighting and the sight of green leaves sprouting from the blackened char had been impressive then, but not really noteworthy. Coming back to it now, it looked completely different to me, not only larger and covered in verdant foliage, but quite clearly its hollow interior had been made into some sort of a dwelling. A door had been fit to a seam near the base and small glass windows shielded by peaked rooves poked out of the trunk here and there. It looked less like a broad tree and more like the shell of a tree wrapped around a quaint cottage, at least until you got to the canopy.

"What is it, Merry, do you see something?" Renko asked, jogging back to me and looking around.

"Well, that quite clearly looks like a home," I said pointing to the immense tree.

"What? Where? Is there something inside one of the knotholes?"

"No, the whole tree. It has windows, Renko! I can see people moving around inside."

"I don't see any of that, but I know better than to doubt you, Merry." She cleared her throat, then called out to the tree. "Hello, three fairies of light. Would any of you happen to be home at the moment?"

There was a moment's silence then a loud thunk from inside the tree followed by the sound of chairs scraping and feet scrambling. A moment later a door and several windows near the top of the tree opened and three small girls, each suspended by fluttering, transparent wings swooped down towards us. They landed in a ring around us, keeping their distance but regarding us curiously.

"Two humans?" asked the one whose golden hair hung in spiraling ringlets. That one called herself Luna Child. "How did they find our home?"

"Sunny must have forgotten to hide it." The one in the blue dress said brightly. She called herself Star Sapphire.

"It wasn't me!" Said the fiery-haired one, who went by the name Sunny Milk. "Luna must have screwed up."

"Hiding the house isn't even my job, how could I have forgotten it?" Luna protested.

"Merry here is good at finding hidden things. More importantly, we've found you now, so it doesn't really matter if it was hidden or not, does it?" Renko said, grinning at them.

Having the three of them together in one place always felt like trying to teach some of the more rambunctious students at the school, something Renko had great proficiency at. If you should ever happen to see the three of them while visiting the Hakurei shrine, they're safer than most sorts of non-humans to play with and are generally quite friendly.

"So now that you've found us, what do you want?" Luna asked, looking up at Renko with a slightly pouty expression.

"Well, I'm guessing from the fact that the three of you are still hanging around at home you didn't hear about the commotion earlier today?"

"What commotion?" Sunny asked, taking a step towards Renko.

"Sunny spilled her tea all over Luna's newspaper this morning," Star commented. "Is that what you mean?"

"Star, you don't have to tell her about that!"

"Maybe she should! I hadn't even read that newspaper yet. Maybe these humans will take Sunny to jail for ruining my paper! Marisa said they do that to thieves."

"Oh, I've never been to jail before. Tell us if it's fun, Sunny.

"I told you that was an accident! And they can't take me to jail, I didn't steal anything! You still have the newspaper, it's just soggy now."

"You stole the words! They're the best part!"

"If I stole the words then I'd have them, but I don't even know half of those words. I'm innocent! Besides, the words are all still there, they're just all together now. If anything you should be the one to go to jail, Luna! Your newspaper drank all of my tea."

"That's the newspaper's fault, not mine."

"Send the newspaper to jail!"

"And get me a new one to read!"

"Hold on, hold on, we're not here to arrest anyone. I was just coming by to ask if any of you three had any interest in discovering a lost treasure."

"Treasure!?" they all said as one, whirling to face Renko, eyes sparkling with interest.

"Yes. As luck would have it, there's a great airship which belongs to a famous monk flying over Gensokyo right now. It got in a crash though, and shattered its mast into a whole bunch of pieces."

The girls nodded in unison, raptly attentive.

"Those pieces of the mast hold the power of the monk and can fly even after having been shattered. The captain of the ship is looking for all of them now. If you find them first, I bet there's a juicy reward in it for you."

"What do the pieces look like?" asked Sunny.

"What kind of reward is it?" asked Luna.

"Where do we bring the pieces when we find them?" asked Star.

"They should just look like pieces of wood that can fly on their own. Some of them might have already been taken by other fairies though, since you're a bit late starting out. Those fairies don't know about the reward though, I've only told you three about that. As for the reward, I don't know what it is exactly, but if you bring the pieces to our house in the human village, just behind the temple school, I'll give you some candy for every piece you return. Then I'll bring 'em all to the captain for you and you can claim your prize."

"Human candy?" The three girls said in wonder, their mouths watering. Refined sugar was hard to come by in Gensokyo, but the Administrator's shikigami regularly delivered a dozen kilograms of it, along with a few other supplies, to the village every month. The candy store on the eastern edge of the village was the sole source of one of few goods most youkai couldn't obtain anywhere else.

"What do you think," Renko asked with a grin, "will you do it?"

"I'm gonna find them all first!" Sunny declared, raising her fist in the air.

Upon hearing that, the other two immediately took off and started flying away. "Hey, wait up!" Sunny called, flying off behind them.

I watched them go for a moment before turning to Renko. "Hey, Renko is that wise? Captain Murasa didn't promise any sort of reward..."

"They're fairies, Merry. The candy is probably reward enough, and if not, I'm sure she has something laying around to give them. Receiving any sort of object from a ship phantom would be pretty cool. Maybe she's got a collection of ladles with the bottoms missing or something." Despite her assurances, I couldn't help but feel uneasy. Renko looked off after the fairies with a sense of accomplishment, but I felt nothing but a looming anxiety.

-.-.-.-.-

"What are you two doing here? Or moreover what are you doing there?" Reimu asked as we emerged from the woods and onto the shrine grounds. She had been busily sweeping the courtyard as we came out of the trees, but had now stopped to look up from her work and cast a suspicious glance at the both of us.

"Yo-ho, Reimu. We're just here to visit, nothing suspicious."

"I'm not serving you tea this time. I just drank the last of mine. What are you doing coming out of the forest?"

"Just a romantic afternoon stroll, nothing strange about that."

"Everything's strange when it's you two. My intuition is telling me you're involved in something." As usual, her intuition was right on the money. Or close, at any rate. In this case we had already been involved in something. I kept my mouth shut. It's not that I was trying to avoid getting into trouble exactly, but more that I expected that if Reimu found out about the Holy Palanquin then it would cause no end of trouble for Murasa and Ichirin, who had suffered through plenty of hardships already. If the fragments of the mast could be retrieved quickly, then the captain and her ship could be on their way with Reimu none the wiser. It was the easiest solution for everyone. There was no need for Reimu to become involved and with her tendency to not stick her nose into affairs until they affected her directly, hopefully it wouldn't ever be an issue.

"Honestly Reimu, I promise we're not about to get caught up in an Incident." Renko said with a grin.

"Knowing you two I almost expect you to start an Incident of your own."

"O-oh? Really? Are there even any Incidents going on right now? We just had one in the winter, wouldn't it be a bit early?"

"There are a lot more suspicious characters around nowadays. And when people like you who don't learn from the past are around it feels like an Incident could happen at any time. Maybe the next time one does I should just exterminate you both for good measure. And that green miko too. Speaking of which, where is she? Isn't she usually with you?"

"Sanae? The Moriya shrine's been real busy lately, we don't see her all that often any more."

"You don't say. I bet they're up to something too." Reimu crossed her arms and grumbled. I suppose her suspicion, however uncharitable, was warranted. The Moriya shrine had been the instigators of the previous Incident after all, even if they had had no hand in the events that ended up compelling Reimu to get involved.

"Oh, on that topic, how's your hot spring working out, Reimu?"

"Ugh, don't remind me. I put in all that work making Suika build it up for me and now the only people who ever go there are youkai. What a disaster."

"Youkai? Like who?"

"Ones who aren't afraid of dealing with the occasional vengeful spirit on their own or don't know better, mostly. Yukari, her fox, Suika, Newspaper, and that cat from the Underworld. All of them have money, but they scram whenever I show up to yell at them. A bunch of other lesser youkai wander in sometimes too, but they don't have anything to pay with or understand why they're not supposed to be there. One of them tried to pay me with bones."

"Orin comes up here? While Yukari is there? I guess that means the non-interference pact between the surface and Former Hell is basically null and void then, now. If that hot spring is good enough for the Administrator we should really give it a try though. What do you say, Merry? You up for a soak?"

"What? We can't just..."

"Don't worry, Merry. I'm sure Reimu will lend you a towel and some soap."

"I never said I was..."

"I'm not lending you anything. All supplies are to be brought by the visitors."

"You see Reimu, poor service like that is why you don't have any customers."

"I don't want customers. This is a shrine. I'm supposed to have visitors, or pilgrims or celebrants or something. People who are expected to leave donations," she said, gesturing pointedly at the offertory box. Since the twin collapses of the Hakurei shrine last summer, Reimu had had to replace numerous housewares and articles of clothing. For someone like her, that had to be a very significant expense. It's a sad and worldly story to think of a shrine maiden so troubled by material concerns.

"Well that's your problem, Reimu. Times are changing. You can't rely on the religiosity of the people for a living any more, not in an age where you've done so much to quell people's fear of youkai and dangerous spirits. If you want to get back in the black you're going to have to treat this shrine like a business. Have you thought about diversifying your income streams? You have land here, why not charge rents?"

"Rents?"

"Or usage fees. You're still relatively close to the village here so if you hold a festival or something to give people a reason to come out, they will. If you were to allow someone to set up food stalls or storefronts on the shrine grounds, they could profit from the crowds and you could charge rent. That way you make a profit even if no one leaves a donation. If the festival is something really fun, people will spend more money, and the shopkeepers will be lining up to get in on the deal. That way you don't even have to worry about the piety of your visitors."

Reimu paused for a moment, staring hard at Renko. "That sounds too good to be true. Have you been working with that fraudster rabbit? Is this some kind of scam?"

"It's just free-market economics. You can't sell a product there's no demand for, but if you give the people what they want, profit is sure to follow."

Reimu glared at Renko harder than ever. I could almost see the gears in her head turning as she tried to find some flaw or hidden trap in the logic.

"Reimu, I'm afraid you just don't have much of a grounding the concepts of business management. Lucky for you, you have something better. A friend like me who can show you the ropes. Where Merry and I come from, this sort of stuff is child's play. Practically every kid has run some kind of business venture at least once by the time they're ten. You just have to learn to embrace the principles of modern commerce."

The glare that Reimu directed at her was withering, but Renko's smile was unshaken.