Hello again, readers. Today I begin my translation of a rather atypical companion piece to Asakihara Shinobu's こちら秘封探偵事務所 or 'This is the Hifuu Detective Agency.' This story, along with all of the books that make up the main series, are available to read at longnovel dot com /touhou, where they are presented along with with a series of illustrations, stories by other authors, merchandise, promotional materials and the like. I encourage you to check it out.
The story I'm about to present is not, strictly speaking, part of the Hifuu Detective Agency series. It was originally a side story, a shorter little prequel novella which was printed and distributed as a promotional gift to anyone who spent enough money at the author's Comiket booth. It was written in 2015, the same year that the Hifuu Detective Agency series as a whole began, but in 2018, after the release of the ninth book in that series, this story was released for free on Longnovel's website. For that reason, I'm including it here and now.
As a promotional material for the Hifuu Detective Agency series, this story is a little odd. First off, it's not a mystery -there's no secret to deduce nor culprit to point the finger at, though it does have some interesting implications for the main series that may inform your views of some of the questions found there. It also contains direct answers to two minor mysteries that have been around since the very first chapter of the main story: what was on the USB key Renko found in her grandfather's house and what was written in the "Hifuu Club Activity Record" notebook.
There are several other differences that make this story an odd choice to promote the Hifuu Detective Agency series though. It doesn't feature the same narrator for one, and it is mainly concerned with characters that still haven't appeared in the mainline stories at this point. Because it was not originally intended for serialization, the chapters are also of a more variable length than in the other books as well. As a result, some days' updates will be short and others will be much longer. It also has a slightly different tone than the main series -a little edgier, a little darker, with a lot of meta references. I'd say its deserving of the 'GAIDEN' suffix.
As far as objectionable content goes, this story contains discussions of murder, genocide, underage sex and masturbation and a few scenes that, if you squint, might count as some sort of non-physical mental/spiritual sex involving a minor. All of it is very surface level though and would probably get a PG-13 rating at most.
With all those caveats out of the way, I will say this is one the best-written and most compelling of all of the stories in the series (in my opinion) and functions well as a promotional material insofar as it's a good piece for the author to show off their skill at dialogue, humor and characterization, even if one of the characters they're depicting is an OC. It may not be the usual fare, but if you've enjoyed the series so far, then you'll probably like this too. If you're starting the series with this prequel, well, give it a shot and see if you like the way the story flows. There's plenty more where this came from.
With those comments out of the way, I will now step back and leave the rest of the storytelling up to our narrators. I hope that you enjoy the tale to come.