"Oh, it's Merry and Renko! Welcome! Everyone's been talking about you two all day! Tell us what happened on that ship!"
That request, hurled all together as one long continuous string, was what greeted us as we came through the curtains hanging over the entryway of Suzunaan the next day. It had been spoken by Kosuzu, but the same request had been made by nearly everyone who knew us by name all day, from all of our students in classes this morning to the watch officers we had passed on the way here.
"Rumors have been flying around the village all day," Akyuu said, from the chair she was sitting in, just in front of one of the bookshelves, off to our right. "Some people say that it was a treasure ship full of gold, but other's think its a bunch of youkai trying to trick us into letting them into the village. I'd be interested to know what that Incident was all about myself."
I had insisted we stop by Suzunaan after school so I could return the books I had rented before they could get any more damaged. When we arrived Akyuu and Kosuzu had been deep in conversation, but the second we stepped through the door every eye in the store turned to us. There was little question as to what the conversation could have been about.
"Alright, alright." Renko said, raising her hands plaintively. "I'll explain everything." It was the third time today I'd heard her give the same speech. I could only hope that with all of the rumors circulating around the village about us now, perhaps we might eventually see a few more clients coming to our office in search of our services.
Akyuu and Kosuzu listened attentively as Renko explained everything we'd spent the last winter doing to help out captain Murasa. I noticed a handful of other customers in the store casting furtive glances over the tops of their books as well. By the time Renko got around to describing our journey to Makai, I was quite certain the entire village would have heard the story by tomorrow.
"So that ship isn't carrying a load of gold and silver?" Kosuzu asked. That giant sail is like false advertising then. People were all excited that a treasure ship flew over their houses. They thought it was going to make them wealthy."
"That's right. Byakuren says the treasure the sail refers to is faith in the Buddha." Kosuzu looked almost offended at that and pouted without another word.
Akyuu, however, had more thoughtful questions to ask. "I think I see why you came by my place the other day to ask about the events at the Myouren temple a thousand years ago now. Do you really think releasing Byakuren will be alright though? I don't know what exactly happened back then, but she's a youkai magician who was sealed in Makai. Doesn't that sound like someone who might be dangerous to you?"
"Well, I've only known her for a day, but my impression is that she's not a bad person. I've known Murasa and Ichirin for longer than that and they both seem to not only be fanatically devoted to her, but completely reformed. Murasa's a ship phantom who hasn't had a chance to be on water in a thousand years, but despite getting her ship sailing again, she never once tried to drown us. Ichirin's really nice too. It's enough to make me think there may be something to the idea that youkai can learn not to be enemies of humanity. Regardless though, whether she's right or not, I certainly don't think she'd ever intentionally harm the village. If I'm wrong about that, well, Reimu knows all about her now and she's beaten her once already."
"Well if Reimu's alright with it, I'm sure it's fine." Kosuzu said happily. "There's no problem she can't handle. While you're here though, did this Byakuren have any writings she might have made during her time in captivity? If there are any thousand-year old youma writings she has lying around, Suzunaan will happily buy them off of her!"
"She did have a scroll of some kind, but she seems to use it quite regularly, and it wasn't written in any language I'd ever seen. It was made out of rainbow light, and it could read itself in several voices at once. I'm not sure if it was just chanting sutras or incanting spells or what, but she used it in her battle with Reimu. I think it might have been doing both at once. I kind of doubt she'd want to sell it though." Kosuzu's eyes had been widening step by step with Renko's description. When she got to the last line, the poor girl looked almost heartbroken.
"So where is Byakuren now?" Akyuu asked, providing a calm counterpoint to Kosuzu's excitement.
"She said she was going to just fly around in her ship for a bit to get to know the land, then settle down and build a temple somewhere. There aren't any temples run by the villagers, are there? I've always thought that was sort of weird. Clearly people here have been exposed to Buddhism, but there's no priests in the village."
"There used to be one, until about sixty or seventy years ago, from what I understand. There was a priest who lived here and ran a small temple on the northern side of town, but he died without an heir and there was no one to take over the temple, so it got turned into a house. The cemetery just outside the north gate was originally managed by that temple generations ago, but there's no one watching over it now and no one goes there out of fear of ghosts. If she's looking for a place to establish a temple, that might be a good spot. The village might even welcome her if she took care of the graveyard. No one likes having to risk traveling to the Hakurei shrine every time there's a wedding or a funeral."
"Reimu does weddings and funerals? I don't think I've ever seen that."
"Well, she does them occasionally, if someone makes a donation at the shrine. A lot of people don't want to have a ceremony at the Hakurei shrine though, especially not since it has a reputation for being full of youkai. For the last few years, more and more people have been making do with just altering the names in the village's register instead of having a proper ceremony. When the cemetery shut down, the influential families in each section of town agreed to dedicate some land on their estates to allow people to bury the ashes of their loved ones somewhere where they wouldn't worry about them being disturbed. The Hieda household handles it for the central district, and the salt merchant's manor does it here in the artisan's quarter."
"Oh, I see. Would it present a problem for you if a temple opened near the village then? Are you worried they might steal away one of the Hieda family's income streams or corrupt people?"
"Not at all. Most families would rather have their departed buried than cremated and given the option, I'd rather not have graves on the manor's grounds. As far as the idea of a new religion corrupting people goes, people are free to believe what they'd like. Besides, that new shrine on the mountain already has a weird religion proselytizing in the town square. No one seems to mind that much."
"Huh, maybe Gensokyo really is ready for a temple where youkai and humans worship together. People are always calling the Hakurei shrine a youkai shrine and the Moriya shrine has more kappa and tengu parishioners than human ones. Times are different now than they were a thousand years ago, I suppose."
-.-.-.-.-
After I paid my damage fees we returned to our office behind the temple school, with its shoddily patched hole in the wall through which a sliver of daylight still filtered. My plan for the rest of the day was to try to sort through and organize the pages of my manuscript that had been scattered and disorganized in all of the commotion yesterday. Once that was done, I immediately started in on jotting down notes, wanting to keep as many details as possible fresh in my head before they could fade away. What I ended up writing down, after hearing Renko tell the story numerous times today, would later become the outline for the story you are reading right now, dear reader.
When I was writing things down at the time though, I struggled with whether or not to even relate these events as a casefile of the Hifuu Detective Agency. After all, we had not served as investigators this time around so much as we had served as instigators. Calling Renko a 'mastermind' seemed ill-fitting when so much had happened both beyond our control and outside of any plan. More than anything else, this Incident had seemed to simply be a result of a number of overlapping coincidences, though I couldn't deny that Renko and I had set many of the events that would make such coincidences possible in motion. In a proper series of mystery novels, having the detective be the mastermind behind the crimes would not only be a violation of the conventions of the genre, but be the sort of narrative trick that could only be executed in the final tale of a series. One last great illusion to throw all the previous conclusions into doubt and shine a new light on all of the events recorded to date, just as the discoveries of a great detective had done in each case leading up to the finale. Having it occur in the middle of a story arc like this simply wasn't done.
Nonetheless, reality seemed unwilling to bend to the laws of narrative convention and as such we found ourselves in just such a situation. I put down my brush for a moment and looked over what I had written, with my stack of organized manuscript pages off to one side. With a faint sigh, I rested my chin on top of my folded hands on the table and looked over at my partner who was lying flat on her back on the tatami mat, fingers interlaced behind her head with her hat resting on her face. She was making not the slightest movement, either deep in thought or completely asleep.
"So Renko, do you think I should start trying to write this Incident up now?"
Renko turned her face slightly toward me, but the hat stayed in place, covering her eyes and resting on the bridge of her nose. "It's a little early to compile a record now, don't you think? We haven't solved the case yet."
"That's what it feels like to me too, but what case is there to solve exactly? There was definitely an Incident here, but there's no real mystery, is there?"
"The mystery is just starting, Merry. The Incident resolvers have had their moment in the spotlight and the danger has passed. Now is the time for the Hifuu Detective Agency to reveal the truth behind the Incident and make the world a more interesting place by shining a light on the hidden motivations of the parties involved."
"I see. I suppose I should have expected an answer like that from you. What mystery is it that you propose our agency investigate, exactly?"
"Well, even knowing what question to ask is a bit difficult in this case. We're still missing so much information. I can see that there's holes in various people's stories, but they're so big I can't even see the shape of them from here, and if I were to go and ask the people involved, I'd only serve to tip them off and make them conceal more of the truth."
"Have you considered the possibility that there might not be a conspiracy to hide details from you, Renko? We're talking about events that are a thousand years old. It's possible the details have just been lost over time. Byakuren has used magic to keep herself young, but that doesn't necessarily mean she remembers everything that happened a millennium ago. What if for once there isn't a deeper, secret story underlying the events we witnessed? I mean things already make sense without having to have something else explain them right now, don't they?"
"All except one point. Why did Byakuren have to be sealed away in Makai? Who's decision was that? The Hakurei miko's? The Yama's? Byakuren's herself? Why Makai, and what transgression was she being punished for? Both she and the Yama seem to agree that she did something wrong, but when she talked to Keine yesterday, it doesn't seem like her beliefs or intentions had changed any since the time she was imprisoned. So what exactly is it she's trying to repent for?"
"Digging up someone's shameful past is kind of distasteful, Renko. If you're looking for a mystery, why not focus on something more current, like the the question of who broke the mast on the ship or why they went to the trouble of making the pieces look like UFOs?"
"I'm pretty sure that's just a straightforward story, Merry. A prankster playing a trick with unintended consequences. Reimu will find whoever it was and beat them up, and then we'll hear the story, but I doubt it will matter much in the long run. We already understand why those things looked like UFOs and captain Murasa at least thinks they understand the culprit's motive, so I think we can leave that be. No, Byakuren is the interesting one here."
"Alright, well what do you propose we do about that, then?"
Renko sat up, sliding her hat back onto her head as she did so, then turning and grinning at me. "What indeed, Merry? To start with, we ought to try and verify the details of the stories we've heard so far, to see if any of the testimony we've received can be trusted. Murasa told us a good story, but there's several bits I'm suspicious of."
"Like what?"
"Like the order in which the disciples escaped from the temple or the details of the Yama's ruling, or how exactly the Hakurei miko of a thousand years ago managed to place Byakuren in Makai and construct a ward like the one that was surrounding the Realm of Truth. Ideally, I'd like to go back to Makai as well, if I can."
"Makai? Why there?"
"There's some things I'd have liked to ask lady Shinki without any of Byakuren's disciples around. For the moment though, let's concentrate on getting answers from the people we have access to. Starting with Sanae. I'm going to go make a call."
Saying that, Renko clapped her hands and stood up to walk to the door. The quickest way to contact Sanae of course was to pray to Lady Yasaka using the shrine behind our house and ask her to relay the message. It wasn't the most direct way to talk to someone, and bordered on blasphemy, using a goddess for such a mundane task, but with Sanae living more than half-way up Youkai mountain, the convenience of such a method made it impossible to pass up. Renko opened the door and stepped outside, but before she could even turn the corner to walk over to the branch shrine she stopped in her tracks and looked up.
"Oh, hello Sanae!" She called into the sky. "Merry and I were just talking about you."
"About me? I wish you'd talk to me! Why didn't you tell me everything that was going on?"
"Ah, I'm sorry about that. We didn't want to risk stepping on your goddesses' toes since they were involved in the project, and we didn't know how much they'd want us to tell you."
"Well you could have asked them about that! Or you could have told me they were involved and I could have asked them! I talked to Lady Suwako last night. If I had known that she was involved in freeing Byakuren, I would have been fighting on her side instead of Reimu's!"
"Ah, I'm sorry about that Sanae. We just didn't want to get you in trouble."
"Well let me know next time, I'm a living goddess too, after all, I could have helped you. I worry about you two taking risks like that when I'm not around. I didn't come here to scold you though. I actually came here to deliver an invitation."
"An invitation?"
"Yes, from Lady Suwako..." Sanae began to explain, but as she did so Suwako Moriya suddenly popped out from behind her, leaping to the side, ridiculous, glass-eyed hat and all.
"Yoho you two. Surprise. I followed you, Sanae."
"Lady Moriya, how nice to see you again! Is this your first time coming down into the village?" I greeted her, walking into the entryway to stand behind Renko in the doorway.
"I guess, but I've seen plenty of human villages before. That flying ship was a first though, and that oni party in the depths was the sort I hadn't seen in ages. Yuugi really knows her sake. I heard from Sanae that the crew of that ship had succeeded in their mission, so I thought I'd go congratulate them. Would you like to come along?"
Sanae seemed just as surprised as we were to see the goddess appear behind her. "Lady Suwako!" she cried in surprise. "You didn't tell me you were coming along. Why'd you send me to deliver a message if you were going to come to? Why am I always the last to know about everything?"
"Relax, Sanae. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, and this way we can all go see them together. Besides, if you had known about all of this ahead of time you would have fought the shrine maiden, and she already has a bad enough impression of the Moriya shrine. You two are both priestesses and around the same age. I'd rather you be friends with her than enemies."
"Friends? With Reimu?" Sanae asked, considering the possibility. "I thought I was already?"
"Well, at any rate, don't blame Renko for not keeping you in the loop, Sanae. She had the best of intentions and was just trying to keep you out of trouble."
Sanae puffed out her cheeks in a pout, but after spending a moment glaring first at Renko, then at Suwako, she relented and let out a sigh. "Alright," she relented. "But next time an Incident happens I want to know about it before the shooting starts!"
"Ah, well about that," Suwako said, grinning up at her with a rather nasty expression. "When it comes to shooting, maybe I should have a word with Kanako. She's the one who's been encouraging you to hunt youkai recently isn't she? I wonder what she's planning, exactly?"
Renko turned to look at me as Suwako said that, but I could only shrug in response.