During the week or so after Renko bought the houtou from Korindo and we ran into Alice, not much happened. We taught at the school, Renko survived on an increasingly questionable diet until I took pity and bought her a proper meal or two at the soba shop, and we chased down a few leads that ended up going nowhere. We visited Koakuma in the Scarlet Devil Mansion's library during that time, and while she confirmed a few details about Makai, she wasn't able to tell us anything about Byakuren.
"I've never been to the Realm of Truth, sorry," was all she said, but the look of distaste on her face when Renko brought it up suggested that such a place was far from popular with devils like her. She had been able to confirm that Alice was one of the Administrator of Makai's daughters, however. We learned from Koakuma that Makai's Administrator was referred to as "Lady Shinki" and thought of herself as a goddess, but was generally perceived to just be an exceptionally powerful Magician. "It's a bit of an exaggeration to say she created everything in Makai," Koakuma had told us, "but she did create a lot of it. All of the animals and creatures other than demons like me and fallen angels might well be hers."
You may ask if we saw captain Murasa in that week, to tell her about what we had heard from Alice or show her the pagoda. The answer, sadly, is that we did not for one simple reason: "Merry, we forgot to figure out a way to contact the Holy Palanquin, didn't we?" Renko asked me on Tuesday, after classes. Being as we had no means of communication nor any idea where the ship might actually be at the moment, we were stuck waiting on its crew to reach out to us. We also didn't hear anything from the three fairies of light during the whole of that week. We stopped by their house once more on Friday, but there was no sign of them at that time. Being as they were fairies, it was entirely possible they'd gotten bored of the whole affair and forgotten about it.
It was the seventh day after our trip to Korindo, another Sunday, when we were free from our regular teaching duties, that things took a turn for the worse. I was sitting in our office, listening to the sounds of the birds who had made their home on our roof while Renko continued to stare at the glowing pagoda, trying to see if there was any means to open the opaque crystal sphere that, she was convinced, contained whatever mechanism produced its glow.
"Don't break it Renko. What do you think you'd even find in there if you got it open? Probably a bunch of crystals or a weird symbol or something."
"I won't break it, Merry. I paid too much for it. Finding something like that would be ideal though, it would suggest that magic bears some similarities to electrical engineering. What's inside any electronic gadget but complex symbols drawn in copper or gold connecting a bunch of crystals and silicon wafers?"
"Well I still wouldn't fool with it. Maybe it's like a big battery. Those have warnings on them that you're not supposed to pierce them or they catch on fire. If you burn our house down I'm never feeding you again."
Renko seemed about to reply but stopped as we heard a knock on our door. It being Sunday, the only people we might expect to see would be Keine or perhaps Sanae, but Sanae wasn't in the habit of knocking. "Yes, one moment!" I said and got up to open the door.
Upon sliding the door open I was initially surprised to see no one standing there at all, but after a moment I thought to look down, and realized the knock had come from a small, hooded figure, barely larger than one of the children in my classes who was standing just outside our office. My initial thought is that it must be one of our students, but a necklace the figure was wearing, ornamented with a sizable crystal pendulum caught my eye. The crystal was glowing faintly. I definitely would have noticed if one of our students was wearing something like that. Additionally, the person at the door was holding a strange object in each hand. These were a pair of sturdy bent iron rods each about as long as the small figure was tall. They weren't crowbars or fire pokers, though those were the first connections my brain tried to make. The bars weren't tipped with anything that looked like a tool head, but rather something more akin to the cardinal direction indicators that might decorate a weather vane. From the way she was holding them though, I could only assume they were... dousing rods, perhaps?
"Oh, hello." I said, looking down at the stranger's hooded form. "Welcome to the Hifuu Detective Agency. How can I help you?"
Rather than replying, the small person deftly slipped around me and pushed their way into the house, moving me aside with surprising strength. Walking uninvited into our office, she made straight for Renko, who was still gazing intently at the underside of the pagoda, trying to pry the lid off with her thumbs.
"I've finally found it," the figure muttered. Their voice was difficult to place - it might have belonged to a teenage girl or a young boy, but they spoke with sense of deep relief evident in their words. Renko looked up from her examination of the pagoda just as the hooded figure thrust one of their metal rods out toward her face. "You there," they said. "Give me that pagoda at once."
Renko stopped what she was doing and looked up at me. "Merry, did you just let a child-sized robber into our house?"
"I'm not robbing you!" The figure said.
"So you just make a habit of wandering into people's houses and demanding their valuables for fun then?"
The figure sighed heavily. "I apologize. I didn't mean to treat your like a thief. That pagoda that you're holding originally belonged to an associate of mine. I've been searching for it for quite a while. If you are the current owner, I'll pay you a fair price for it, but I must have it back. Without it, we'd be in a great deal of trouble. Will you give it to me?"
Renko regarded the figure with surprise, her eyes suddenly lighting up with interest. "Oh, I see. You must be one of holy Byakuren's disciples then. Would you by any chance be one of the two youkai who managed to escape the destruction of Myouren temple a thousand years ago without being caught? If so, have you been in contact with captain Murasa yet?"
In response to the barrage of questions the little figure suddenly stiffened, their shoulders rising as the metal rods quivered. "Why do you know all of that? Are you the one who originally stole the pagoda? You're a human, aren't you?"
"I'm a human," Renko said, setting the houtou down on her desk and grinning. "And I'm not a thief. I bought this pagoda at a local junk shop, suspecting it might have been an artifact from that long-destroyed temple. Looks like I was right."
"How do you even know about the temple? You can't have been there a thousand years ago. How do you know about Byakuren? Or me? Or Murasa?"
"Ah, you haven't been in contact with the captain yet, I see. Well, this is a fortunate encounter for both of us then. You were able to escape from the temple a thousand years ago, but you had to leave this pagoda behind. I bet you haven't been in touch with the others yet because you're ashamed that you avoided being captured all those years ago, but left something so important behind. My guess is you've been looking for it all this time and didn't want to let anyone know you'd lost it. Is that about right?"
The stranger lowered their arm, and, swaying, sat down on the floor with a thump. Renko grinned at them with the cat-like smile I knew so well. "Don't worry," she said. "We're on your side."
"On our side? What side?"
"Perhaps I ought to explain. Are you aware that for the first time in a thousand years the Holy Palanquin is repaired and sailing again? It's somewhere over Gensokyo right now."
"Oh... uh, yes. I saw it. I didn't want to go see who was on it until I found that though."
"I see. So you hope to join them. Well in that case I'll pass it along to you. I bought it on the suspicion it would be useful to your cause, after all."
"...who are you?"
Renko laughed, a brief bark of mirth before replying. "Isn't it polite to give your own name before asking someone else's? I want to know if my guess was right."
"Oh, of course. I'm sorry, it's been a long time since I've talked to a human." The stranger reached up, pulling back their hood to reveal a girl with a young-looking face but dingy gray hair surmounted by two round, flexible mouse ears. "I'm Nazrin, a disciple of Bishamonten and servant to Shou Toramaru. I was once the watchman of the Myouren temple."
