"Ahhh, what was I thinking?"
"At least you haggled him down a little."
"I can't afford this thing, Merry. We don't even know if it really belonged to the Myouren temple or not. I should have just brought Ichirin here to look at it or something."
"Well, we just got that raise, Renko. I'm sure you'll manage. It's not like you have student loans to worry about anymore."
"It's two weeks until payday though, Merry! What am I going to eat? They don't have instant ramen and microwaveable meals here!"
"We'll figure it out. If it does belong to the Myouren temple, then maybe captain Murasa will buy it off of you, and if not, well... remember that time you lived off of coffee, rice and that artificial cheese spray the previous tenant left in your dorm room for a week?"
"I don't have any coffee any more though, Merry! That's the key ingredient!"
We were making our way back to the village from Korindo, guided by the steady light of the pagoda. I felt bad about using what might well be a sacred artifact as a flashlight, but given how completely the night had fallen around us, what choice did we have? If it was a religious artifact, I could only hope that its light would also be effective at keeping stray youkai at bay.
"Well, if it doesn't belong the Myouren temple at least we can use it to light our house."
"If it's not theirs it's still a houtou of some kind. I hope Bishamonten doesn't strike us down for using it as a nightlight."
"Enh, don't worry about that, I'm a longtime Hanshin fan."
"Hanshin? What? You mean the baseball team?"
"The Hanshin Tigers, sure. Chogosonshi temple in Nara is supposed to have been built by Prince Shotoku after he was visited by an avatar of Bishamonten who appeared in the form of a tiger on the day, month, hour and year of the tiger on the old calendar. Every year the entire team goes there to pray for victory."
"What does any of that have to do with this pagoda?"
"Well, Bishamonten's got to be a Tigers fan too, right? No way he'd curse me for using one of his artifacts. If anything, I bet this brings us blessings, Merry."
I stared at her for a moment, walking in silence, trying to ascertain whether she was being serious or not. "...Your mind works in strange ways, Renko."
"It's the burden of true genius."
"There's no baseball in Gensokyo, so you'll have to make your pilgrimage to Koshien stadium some other time. What's the plan for now though? Try to track down Murasa in the morning to show that to her?"
"Hmmm, not right away. Hopefully the fairies will have found some of the missing pieces of the mast for us by tomorrow, then we can go bring those to her as well. Before that, I should try to collect a little more information about Makai. I need to find all the best restaurants, sightseeing locations and romantic getaways there, right?"
"Please tell me you're joking."
"Just a little. I would like to know more about the place though. The librarian at the Scarlet Devil Mansion is from there, right? Maybe we can go talk to her tomorrow. Maybe she'll have even have heard of Byakuren."
"That's not a bad idea. For now though, let's hurry back. They'll be closing the gates soon, and we have classes in the morning."
"You're starting to sound like Keine, Merry. With this we won't have to strain our eyes trying to read by candlelight any more. That means we can stay up later now. In fact, I kind of hope we get to keep it. It would be easier to conduct Hifuu Club activities at night with this, don't you think?"
"Just because you can stay up late doesn't mean you have to, Renko. I had kind of enjoyed not having to be up at two in the morning for club activities."
"Merry, did you just admit you enjoy being in the Hifuu Club for once? You said 'enjoy' and 'Hifuu Club' in the same sentence! That's like 60% of a compliment!"
"Renko, do you ever think about going back to the Scientific Century and our old lives any more? Can you imagine going back to being students and doing club activities between cram sessions? You and I are old enough that we should have graduated years ago. If we went back, we'd have to find work. I can't imagine we'd get to do many club activities any more. Even if we could, would there be a point? We discovered Gensokyo, a whole world that proves that there's more to reality than is described by the Hyper-unified Standard Model. Wasn't that the whole point of the club?"
"Well, I don't remember ever laying out a finish line so concretely, but you're right -even if we were to return, unless we lost all of our memories of this world, we'd never really be able to go back to the way things were before we came here. Trying to leave everything we've seen, everything we've learned here behind to just... get a job or something. I don't know Merry. If you opened a gap back to the Kyoto we knew right now... I'd like to visit it if I could, say 'hi' to my parents and all, but I don't know if I'd want to actually return. What about you, Merry? You're resolved to stay now, even if you could go back, aren't you?"
"I don't know either. I like it here. Things make more sense here and feel more real to me then they ever did at home, but I also don't really feel like I belong here. We're in this world, but we're not a part of it. We're Outsiders, and even if we live our whole lives in the village and die here, they'll still scatter our ashes on the nameless hill, like they do for all Outsiders. I don't know if any length of time here could ever wash that stain of 'otherness' off of us in the eyes of the people who were born here."
As we walked quickly along the road, talking of such things we both suddenly flinched as a shadow passed overhead, flying quick and low to the ground. From the size of it, it couldn't have been a bird and we were still far enough from the village as to be out of sight of the watchtowers, even with our light. It was almost certainly a youkai. I could only hope it was one we knew.
"Who's there?" Renko called out, raising the pagoda over her head and peering into the gloom beyond its rays. As if reading her intention, the light shining out from it intensified slightly, casting a harsh, greenish-white flare into the darkness. A pale face loomed out of the night, squinting against the against the brilliance. It was one we recognized, but not one I would have expected to see flying along the road after dark.
"Oh, I was wondering who would be wandering around these roads at night. I should have known it would be you two," said Alice Margatroid, as she raised one hand to block out the pagoda. "Are you on your way back to the village? Were you just visiting Marisa? The forest is dangerous for humans."
"We hadn't gone in that far, we were just shopping at Korindo."
"Oh, I see. It looks like you picked up something strange," Alice said as Renko lowered her hand. The intensity of the light died back down to a reasonable level as she did so. "Is that a pagoda from a Bishamonten statue?"
"Indeed it is! Are you interested in Buddhism, Alice?"
"Not really, but I've studied Buddhist statuary. It's not all that different from doll-making, really, both are trying to capture the essence of conscious sentiment and experience in inanimate matter."
"Oh, I see. I should have guessed you'd see things that way. Where'd you see a statue of Bishamonten though? There aren't any Buddhist temples in Gensokyo, are there?"
"Not that I know of, but my mother was friends with a Buddhist scholar. She might have been a nun, actually. She had carved a few of them."
"Oh? When was this? It mentions in the Gensokyo Chronicle that you used to be a human. Is that accurate? Did you used to live in the Outside world?"
"No, that's just something I told Akyuu to make it easier for me to get in and out of the village. I'm from Makai. Hadn't I mentioned that before?"
We both blinked in surprise and looked at eachother. Looking back over my previous casefiles, before writing this one, I found that she had, in fact, mentioned that before, though it had definitely been some time since then. At the time that we heard that though, the fact had completely slipped from both Renko's mind and my own.
"Alice! You're from Makai! You've lived there! Your mother still lives there, right?" Renko exclaimed, suddenly excited.
"Yes... I just said all that. Why do you ask?"
"Wait, you just said your mother was friends with a Buddhist nun there, let's go back to that first. I don't suppose... that nun, do you happen to know her name, by chance?"
"Her name? Well it's been a while... I think it was Byakuren, or something like that."
The two of us must have been quite a sight then, staring at her with our jaws hanging open.