After a third day of operations, the decision was made to to pack up the Futuristic Floating Youkai Bazaar. Among the kappa, the entire affair was viewed as a tremendous success. The crowds of visitors at the Genbu ravine had thinned out by this point and many of the kappa had sold out of their stock. We arrived as they were packing up their stalls and carts, or in some cases merely stuffing their remaining wares into their oversized rucksacks and diving into the river with them.

Suwako greeted us happily as we approached. "Hey, Renko! Good to see you again! Everything went off without a hitch! The kappa made enough to cover another few months worth of labor on the Underground Geyser Center and no one got exterminated!"

Renko met Suwako's smile with a grin of her own and a big thumbs up. "I'd call that a win then, wouldn't you?"

"I would indeed. I'll have Sanae bring your consulting fee by your office tomorrow like we agreed."

When had Renko made any sort of agreement like that? I certainly hadn't noticed, but I suppose every now and then Renko might actually have a bit of business sense to her, or at least a good eye for opportunity.

"Now that the bazaar is over, what will you do with Hisoutensoku?"

"Hmmm, I was wondering that myself. I've already closed off the underground shaft I had opened to bring the steam over here, but as for the balloon itself, it's quite big even when deflated, so I don't know where we could keep it. We'll probably have to dispose of it, I guess."

"Maybe you could give it to Alice," I suggested. "She's a puppeteer who lives in the Forest of Magic, she collects all sorts of dolls."

"Oh, the magician, right? I met her at one of Reimu's parties. You think she'd take something this big? It won't inflate on its own without a link to the hell of blazing fires, but I suppose a magician might be able to enchant it."

"Wait, you're going to get rid of Hisoutensoku?" This had come from Sanae, who had apparently overheard us talking and scurried over to us from where she had been helping the kappa decamp. "I wanted to keep it, it was so cool!"

"Keep it? What for?"

"We might want to have another bazaar some day. Or we could use it as an attraction at our shrine to draw worshipers. Something like that probably has all sorts of uses, right?"

"Oh, you've gotten really attached, haven't you, Sanae?" Suwako crowed. "I thought you didn't like the design?"

"Well, it's not as cool as a gundam or a patlabor, but these old fashion designs are more fitting for Gensokyo, especially for a steam-powered robot. I'd hate to have to throw a divine artifact away just because we don't have a place to store it. What if we kept it underground?"

"The Palace of the Earth Spirits sent us an official request the other day that we stop storing things we aren't using in the Underworld. Apparently the kappa have been leaving all sorts of stuff down there and someone complained."

The two of them continued to discuss the situation for a bit. I found myself agreeing with Sanae. It would seem wasteful to let something as grand as Hisoutensoku be destroyed, but I couldn't really imagine any use for it other than advertising the bazaar, and it it were left up and operational anywhere else, it would just look tacky and out of place.

"Ayayaya, hello there, event staff. Mind smiling for the camera?"

We all turned to look up toward the source of this new voice and were momentarily blinded by the flare of a flashbulb. Aya was hovering in place a few meters away, camera at the ready and wings flapping quietly. She snapped a few more photos then landed softly in front of us.

"Hello there Aya," Renko said, raising her hand in greeting, "are you covering the close of the bazaar?"

"That's right. I was hoping to get a few quotes from the organizer, but it seems she's busy right now," she said looking over towards where Suwako had already fallen back into her brainstorming session with Sanae. "I've heard rumors though that this whole affair was planned by you two rather than the Moriya shrine though. Any comment on that?"

"Not the two of us," I corrected her. "This was all Renko's idea."

"Well, I wouldn't go that far Merry. I just came up with the initial suggestion of holding a bazaar and using an advertising balloon to promote it."

"Ah, so that giant doll was your idea then?" Aya asked, her pen scratching rapidly over the pages of her notebook.

"Well, I advised them to make some kind of large landmark. Turning that into a giant robot was all Lady Suwako's idea, and the design was to her tastes."

"A 'giant robot,' that's what that Outsider god called it too. I take it a 'robot' is some sort of Outsider art form? It seems rather garish to me, to be honest," Aya said, looking over toward where Hisoutensoku had previously stood. Here in Gensokyo where there was no cultural tradition of giant robots or anime, I suppose the idea of something that looked human-like but built at an immense scale would seem somewhat unusual, like a bit of avant-garde sculpture or something. "In that case, as an advisor, what was your impression of the bazaar? Did it live up to your expectations?"

"Well, by the time it was setup my role was long over, so I mainly viewed it as a customer. In that respect, I'd say it was quite entertaining. If possible, I'd like to see it become an annual event."

Aya's pen flew across the page as that answer was copied down into her notebook. She had mentioned before that her pen and camera were of kappa manufacture. I wondered if a bazaar like this would be something she would welcome or as a tengu would she see the proliferation of kappa goods to other peoples of Gensokyo beyond her own as a sort of sabotage? I suppose I'd get to see her spin on events in the next issue of the Bunbunmaru Shinbun.

Aya looked up from her writing and offered a brief nod of thanks before turning away, but Renko stopped her before she could walk off.

"Oh, by the way, miss Shameimaru, I had a few questions I'd like to ask you if I could. Its about that manga you showed us the other day."

"Ayaya, that thing? I had forgotten about it already. It's been given to the Scarlet Devil Mansion's library, if you want to go read it again."

"Yes, Remilia rather liked it, I'm happy to report, as did the gate guard. Perhaps there's an audience for that work among other youkai. I wanted to ask you though, who was it who wrote the story for that manga?"

"The writer? They would prefer to remain anonymous. Let's just call them tengu A, for the purposes of discussion."

-From the way she reacted I'm almost positive it was her. I wonder if she had done the art too? Somehow, I couldn't picture her dedicating the time that would take to it. Had the manga been a joint product between her and a friend?

"Alright," Renko said. "Well, you may not know then, but I'm curious as to where tengu A got the idea to write a story about impostors in the guise of friends and acquaintances attacking the hero."

"Ayaya that? From what I heard, they may have based it on a dream they had."

"A dream?"

"Yes," Aya said with a nod, twirling her pen between her fingers, "a recurring dream about being attacked by an impostor posing as a friend."

"I see. How long did it take for that manga to be produced, I wonder?"

"Roughly two months, from what I understand. Not including the time needed to research background materials from the Moriya shrine, of course."

"I see, so tengu A would have had to have had the dream at least that long ago... Well, thank you very much, Aya. I'm sorry that the manga wasn't popular in the village, but if the tengu are looking to establish a relationship with the Scarlet Devil Mansion, you're guaranteed to have at least one subscriber."

"Ayayaya, we tengu wouldn't set our sights so low. Rest assured, there are tengu artisans working on producing an improved prototype right now. Someday the tengu will produce something that will wow even the seasoned critics of the Moriya shrine."

"I hope that's within my lifetime. I'd like to see it." Renko said with a grin.

"We'll do our best. Adhering to human conceptions of a publication schedule may well be the most demanding part of the exercise. Now then, if you'll excuse me, I see Lady Suwako is free."

Renko nodded and Aya swooped off, in pursuit of the goddess. Renko watched her go, one hand drifting up to fiddle with the brim of her hat as she did.

"What are you thinking this time, Sherlock?"

"There's something going on here, but I don't know what yet," Renko muttered. "In a place like Gensokyo, I can't consider all of these people having the same dream to be a coincidence though."

A dream in which a fake version of an acquaintance appeared. For me it had been Keine, and in Renko's dream it had been Sanae. For Meiling, she had told us she had seen Reimu and Marisa. If there was something affecting us, it seemed to take whatever form was familiar to the dreamer.

"Don't you think it could just be that manga, Renko?" I asked. "After all, each of the people affected read it."

"That's true, Merry, but you had your dream before you read the manga, and the artist responsible for creating that manga apparently had the dream months ago, before the manga even existed."

"Oh, that's a good point," I said, thinking back. Renko was right. I had gotten that flyer from the Myouren temple before Aya ever came to talk to us about the manga.

"Right now we only have four known occurrences of this phenomena, but being as the four people in question didn't have any chance to discuss their dreams with each other ahead of time, it's certainly suspicious. Dreams are more your field of expertise though, Merry. Given everything we know so far, and everything we've seen in Gensokyo, what's your take on the situation, as a Relative Psychology major?"

"Oh, that's an interesting question. If we assume your theories about the way Gensokyo works are correct, then I suppose the most sensible explanation would be that since everyone who had this dream experienced something different, but with similar elements, then my supposition would be that in Gensokyo, the world of dreams might actually be a separate, but entirely real place, like the Netherworld, or Makai."

"None of us traveled anywhere though. I didn't notice you vanishing in the middle of the night, and I woke up in the bed I would expect to. Remilia didn't mention anything about Meiling vanishing either, and I think she probably would have."

"Well, I can't say for certain but maybe when we're dreaming its not our physical selves that go anywhere but something like a spiritual projection. You and I visited the TORIFUNE back in Kyoto, Renko, but do you really think we traveled from Earth halfway to the moon in an instant?"

Hearing that, she tucked her chin to her chest, fingers playing about on the brim of her hat, no doubt lost in thought, trying to find a way to square the circle of our experienced reality with the sharp edges of her empirical worldview.