"So, Renko, what now? Please don't say we're going to go ask the Yama directly."
We were walking away from the Hieda manor, back towards the village square as I asked this.
"No, even I'm not that reckless. If the Yama learns that Murasa and the Holy Palanquin are freed from their imprisonment and actively looking for a way to get to Makai that could be trouble, both for us and for them. I'm still not sure if the Yama is actually against the idea of letting Byakuren out or not -she had to have seen that that's what Murasa was talking to me about when she looked at me in her mirror, but she didn't say anything about it. Maybe she doesn't care if they try, or maybe she thinks its impossible, but we can't predict what her reactions will be."
"Alright, fair enough, but then where does that leave us?"
"Well, it seems the official Hieda histories have been doctored to omit any mention of the Yama's involvement. Murasa and Ichirin don't know what the Yama and Byakuren discussed either. We can't ask either of them, so that leaves just one person who might have the information we're seeking. Hopefully she might have left some sort of document or record behind."
"You mean the Hakurei miko of a thousand years ago, right? We already asked Reimu about that, remember? If there were any such records before, they're gone now. They were destroyed in the earthquake."
"Ah, you weren't paying attention, Merry. Reimu didn't say they were 'destroyed.' She said she 'got rid of them' after the earthquake. It's a key difference."
"So what, you're proposing we find a garbage dump and try to sort out Reimu's things from six months ago?"
"You're off your game today, Merry. Does Gensokyo have a landfill? If you were the Hakurei shrine maiden, living alone up there at the shrine and dealing with the sorts of financial problems Reimu always is, and now you had a collapsed storehouse's worth of miscellaneous old junk to dispose of, what would you do?"
"Wouldn't the easiest answer be to just burn it all and then bury anything that couldn't be burned?"
"Maybe, but Reimu has bills to pay. Well, metaphorically speaking. I don't think she actually pays any bills. Think though, Merry. What would you do if you had a bunch of books to get rid of? Burn them?"
"Of course not, I'd sell them to Suzunaan."
"Exactly. And if Reimu had a big pile of old, possibly magical, possibly cursed who-knows-what..."
"Then she'd sell it to Korindo!" I suddenly exclaimed.
"Rinnosuke's got washing machines and old engine blocks outside his store. I don't know if he can fly or not, but he's definitely stronger than he looks. I bet he came and picked up the whole lot from her, as is."
"So that's our next stop then? The edge of the Forest of Magic?"
"Lead the way, Merry."
-.-.-.-.-
And so, before long we arrived at Korindo. As always, the grounds around the shop looked something like a junkyard, with an unpredictable and nonsensical mishmash of goods, old and older standing out front. Everything had at least been arranged into neat, orderly piles, but the sheer variety of the outdated and poorly maintained objects littering the grounds definitely gave off the impression that the place was more the site of an expansive, incomprehensible collection than a store.
"Hey Merry! Look at that! I think that's what they used to call a 'phone booth!' I've never seen one outside of a museum."
The antique was standing next to the entrance of the store, a single lonely telephone, not connected to anything, housed in a glass display like some rare and priceless artifact. Somehow it exuded a sense of melancholy.
"Do you think it's for sale?" Renko asked, running over and pressing the creaking accordion-fold door of the booth open.
"Where would we put it, Renko? It's much too large to use for interior décor."
"Look at this, Merry! Physical buttons! How retro!" she cried, pulling the handset off of its hook and excitedly depressing the metal keys as if she were an elementary school student.
"Don't do that, Renko. This is Gensokyo, who knows who you might end up connecting to if you dial the wrong number."
"You're being silly, Merry. That couldn't happen. I haven't put any coins in."
"Well don't do it anyway. You look like the villain from some old mafia story in that trenchcoat, calling someone to ransom a kidnapping victim or something."
"If I put the phone down though, it might start ringing all on its own. Wouldn't that be creepy?"
"What's creepier is that I know you'd rush to answer it if it did. Now leave that alone Renko, we came here looking for something else, remember?"
"You're right, you're right." she said, allowing me to drag her out of the booth and shove her towards the entrance to the store. Renko slid the door open and stepped into the cluttered space. By now the late afternoon sun was slanting through the windows at an angle, illuminating countless motes of dust hanging in the air. The shafts of sunlight reached most of the way across the store, but not quite far enough to fall upon the proprietor, Rinnosuke Morichika, who sat calmly reading a book behind his desk at the far end of the shop.
As we walked in he looked up from his book for just a moment, took notice of us and said "oh, its you Outsiders again. Welcome," and then turned his attention back to the book. It was the least motivated sales pitch I had ever seen, but it seemed to fit someone like Rinnosuke, who struck me more as a hobbyist and collector than a merchant.
"Hello Mr. Morichika," Renko said, carefully avoiding the odd children's toy or errant CRT monitor leaning out from the various piles as she made her way toward the back of the store. "I'm hoping you can help me find something."
Rinnosuke raised his head again and inserted a bookmark into his book before addressing her. "Well, I only have what you see in the store. What exactly are you looking for?"
"Last summer the Hakurei shrine collapsed. Did Reimu have you clear out any of the rubble from back then?"
"The Hakurei shrine? Yes, she sold me everything that was left of her storehouse as a package deal. Most of the artifacts and all of the pots were crushed, and Marisa and Reimu have already come by to eat all of the foodstuffs that were stored in there, but the books and scrolls were mostly unharmed. I put them all together on the bottom of that bookshelf," Rinnosuke said, gesturing toward a corner of the store. "If I had left them for Reimu, I'm sure she would have just used them for kindling."
"Excellent!" Renko said, excitedly making her way over toward the indicated shelf. "Has anyone come in and bought any of it yet, or is this the complete collection?"
"I don't think anyone's even looked at any of it yet, other than myself, of course."
"That's perfect, Rinnosuke, just as expected of you!"
Rinnosuke looked a little confused by that comment but quickly settled his expression, asking "Is this a request for Reimu?" as Renko squatted in front of the bookshelf and began pulling out boxes of scrolls.
Renko was too absorbed in her work to answer, so I responded for her. "No, we're just wanting to do some research into the history of the Hakurei shrine."
"Ah, I assume you must have already talked to Akyuu about that. In that case, I presume you're looking for the sort of history that wouldn't have been recorded in the Gensokyo Chronicle?
"Maybe. We're hoping to find the account of a specific event..."
"Hey Merry, help me out here. Some of these documents are really old," Renko called out, ignoring my conversation with Rinnosuke.
"Coming, coming," I sighed, trotting over to where she had already surrounded herself with a half-dozen unfurled scrolls.
"There's a lot here, Merry. I don't even know what I'm looking at. Are any of these dated?"
"I'd have to read them to know Renko, and there's not enough room in here to unroll everything. Mr. Morichika, do you happen to know what these documents are, exactly?"
"Well, that relatively new-looking bound book there is the Gensokyo Atlas. One of the previous shrine maidens was a fair hand at drawing maps, it seems. The ones you have laid out are all picture scrolls, but there's not much writing on them, they seem to mostly be drawings of girls one of the previous Hakurei miko knew. If you could tell me what you're looking for, I might be able to tell you where to look."
"It's something that happened from a thousand years ago," Renko volunteered. Do you have anything from the shrine maiden of that era?"
"Oh no, none of these are even close to that old. I'd guess the oldest materials here go back about four hundred years."
Renko let a scroll drop from her hand to clatter on the ground with a look of utter horror on her face. "four hundred? That won't help, why didn't you tell me that before I pulled all of these out?"
"You never asked." Rinnosuke said with an exasperated expression.
"What a waste of effort," Renko moaned, sounding defeated.
"If you're not going to be buying any of it, can I ask you to please put everything back as you found it?"
"Yeah, of course... Merry, do you remember where any of these went?"
"Yes, just roll them back up, I'll handle it."
I had more or less expected this outcome. If there had really been details in the Hakurei miko's records that contradicted the Gensokyo Chronicle, I couldn't imagine they would be easily found. Material like that would probably have been confiscated by the Hieda or maybe even the Administrator. If not, there would be no point to having altered the histories that Akyuu had read.
As I helped Renko pack up the various scrolls and handbound books, Rinnosuke muttered "It's starting to get dark" to himself then disappeared behind the curtain separating the storefront from his modest living quarters. He was gone for a few minutes, long enough for me to start to wonder where he might have wandered off to before returning holding something shiny and vaguely luminous in his hand. He climbed a small stepstool to reach up to one of the rafters and placed the object on a small shelf there. He touched it briefly, seeming to rub the side of it and immediately the interior of the shop became much brighter, illuminated by a steady, greenish-white light that never flickered.
"Oh, that's handy." Renko said, looking up at the object appreciatively. "What is that? It doesn't seem like an LED lamp."
"It's called a houtou." Rinnosuke said, adjusting his glasses.
"That sounds like a noodle dish. Something with udon, maybe."
"They're small pagodas associated with Bishamonten. Have you ever seen a statue of him? He's always portrayed holding a spear in one hand and one of these in the other. Originally, Bishamonten was a treasure god from a foreign land, but in the process of being transmitted among esoteric Buddhist sects through China and into Japan, he became revered as a warrior god, charged with punishing evildoers and protecting the righteous. The shape of the houtou is reminiscent of a sort of treasure house traditionally used to protect Buddhist relics and the fact that Bishamonten is always depicted as holding one has lead people to associate him with guarding and giving out treasure, so nowadays he is often seen as a god of fortune in Japan, prayed to by gamblers and the like, even though the 'treasure' that he guards is actually supposed to be of an entirely different sort. Traditionally, you see, Buddhist iconography would often refer to..."
"Oh Mr. Morichika, you're quite knowledgeable. Are you a practicing Buddhist?". Renko asked, interrupting Rinnosuke before he could really get started.
"Oh, it's not like that. I just dug this object out of a storehouse recently and since it's handy I'm putting it up for sale. I'm not certain what the mechanism of its operation is, but it produces a steady light without heat. I imagine it must have been a religious artifact of some kind at one point though."
"I see. It almost seems a shame to use something like that just as a light source. You said it's associated with Bishamonten? Merry, wasn't the Myouren temple supposed to have been a Shingon temple devoted to Bishamonten?" Renko asked, glancing over at me. I met her gaze and the same idea seemed to occur to us both at the same time.
She stood up suddenly, the box of scrolls at her feet forgotten. "Mr. Morichika where did you find that thing?"
"Oh, it's been in my collections for a long time. I think I initially found it in an old abandoned temple somewhere, but I've had it since long before I opened this shop."
Renko looked up at the stone pagoda, sitting quietly on its shelf. Could such an object have really once been part of the Myouren temple? If so, how sad to think that it was now relegated to illuminating a dusty shop like this one.
Renko reached into her trenchcoat pocket, fishing for her wallet while looking Rinnosuke in the eye. "Mr. Morichika, how much for that pagoda?"
