So then, what were Renko and I up to while all of that was going on?
"I'm booored, Merry."
"I'm more hungry than bored, myself."
The answer is not a lot. Renko's plans to explore the rest of the mausoleum had been thwarted before long, as Tojiko had returned and found us wandering the halls. Since then we'd been under what amounted to house arrest -not confined or bound in any way, but told in no uncertain terms we were not to leave this room. I don't know where Tojiko had gone after that, but she stopped in every now and then to check on us. I had asked her at some point if there was anything for us to eat or even read as a distraction, but she had merely shrugged saying "This is a tomb, not a hotel. There are no amenities for the living here."
Leaving of course, was out of the question. Tojiko expected us to greet the crown prince upon his awakening, but had no idea when that would actually occur, other than to say it would be soon. In the meantime, she forbid us from wandering, but was unable to provide anything for us to do to help kill the time. I couldn't help but suspect there she felt some level of satisfaction in making us two mortals experience a much briefer version of the trial she must have endured during the time that she was the only person conscious in this tomb.
"Merry let's go exploring."
"We can't, Renko. Tojiko yelled at us last time. If she finds us again she'll probably fry us."
"Aww, come on," Renko pleaded, "what's the harm? I'm not going to cause any problems. I just want to have a look around."
I glared at her. I might not be on board with whatever our captors' plans were, but this was still a sacred space, one that had been specifically built to resist the possibility of vandalism. The two of us had shown up uninvited, so it was hardly surprising that we were being treated as if we might be grave robbers.
"No, Renko. We're staying here," I said firmly.
"Sheesh. You'd think the least they could do would be to at least stay here and talk to us. She could have even let Futo do that if she didn't want to. Without anyone to talk to or any way to explore, I've got no way to gather information. Things are in motion, and I'm sitting here in the dark!" Renko exclaimed, finishing her statement with a groan and flopping over backward onto the floor, rotating her hat between her fingers.
I wondered about what she had said. It seemed clear that Tojiko had been specifically making an effort to keep us from talking to Futo, invariably finding some pressing task to burden her with whenever we saw her. I wondered what her reasoning was for doing that. Was she afraid that the rough-edged Futo would leave us with a negative impression? Or was she more concerned that when face-to-face with my partner, Futo's easygoing nature might let some secret slip? Either way, I couldn't help but think her judgement of Futo's character was probably sound.
"How dreadful. You could talk to me instead if you like."
"Gah!" Renko leapt back in surprise, sitting up and dropping her hat as Seiga's head emerged from a perfectly circular hole in the floor just beside where she had been laying. My reaction was more restrained but no less shocked at her sudden appearance. Seiga smiled calmly as Renko recoiled then pulled herself acrobatically up through the hole, which was just large enough around to accommodate her shoulders. The moment her silk-slippered toes were drawn up through it, it closed itself back up without a sound or any trace it had ever been there.
Once Renko recovered from her surprise, she stared in undisguised wonder at the spot where the hole had been a moment before, reaching out to touch the completely unmarred floor. "Is that Taoist magic too?" she asked. "Your religion seems to have an unusually large number of practical applications."
"It's an old hermit trick," Seiga said, smiling as she settled into a seated position atop her floating scarf, looking down at Renko with her usual, bemused smile. "A thorough understanding of the nature of the Tao can allow one to put a hole in any wall and pass through it. Well that and one of these, anyway," she said, pulling her long, gleaming hairpin out of the complicated braid she wore. Spinning the implement over one finger she offered it for Renko to examine. Its decorative tip was topped with a fan-like protrusion that looked as sharp as the corners of her smile.
"Does it only work on things that are considered 'walls' or will any surface do? You came through a floor just now, right? Are there any limits on how thick a substance you can pass through or the direction you go?"
"Such questions. It can go through anything solid that divides spaces. Generally it only goes from one side to the other, but if you're going through something very thick like the ground, you can bend the direction a little. It's a handy little tool." She said, spinning the hairpin back over her fingers and re-inserting it into place.
"That almost sounds like you're producing a quantum tunneling effect at will. Like an on-demand wormhole!"
Seiga nodded, apparently unfazed by Renko's jargon. "You sound like you'd like to know more. Have you given any thought to my offer? It's rare for a hermit to take a disciple, you know. Most people have to climb a mountain or face some terrible ordeal first and then are still subject to the fickle whims of an eccentric master." It almost sounded like a sales pitch. A real, 'you'd be a fool not to take this limited time offer' kind of speech. I wondered if coming through the floor had just been convenient for her, or had been done as a demonstration.
"Well, I can't deny being interested," Renko admitted, "but my interest is of an academic sort rather than a spiritual one."
"Such a strange way of speaking you have. Are you by any chance a foreigner?"
"In a manner of speaking, I suppose. I'm Japanese, but I'm from the Outside world. I've been living here for years now though. You must be a foreigner too, from China, I imagine?"
"Oh I've been many places at one time or another. It would be hard to say where I was from exactly, I'm not even sure that kingdom had a name and it's long gone now."
"But you came to Japan a long time ago to be the crown prince's teacher in the ways of Taoism and hermetic magic, right?"
"Oh, I came here to talk about the Tao, not myself, but I suppose I can tell you some stories if you like. Before I do though..." she said, reaching into the folds of her robe and withdrawing a prettily wrapped bundle. The squarish, cloth-wrapped object she withdrew was unquestionably much too large to have fit in the pocket she produced it from. "Here. This is for you."
Renko took the package from her and pulled at the cloth wrapper. Inside was a sizeable bento lunch, easily large enough for two to split.
"Oh! Food!"
"I suspected that, being mortal, you might be hungry. I wouldn't want you to think we Taoists are without a sense of hospitality. I have tea too," she said, producing a stoppered bottle from another impossibly small pocket.
The aroma of the food, accentuated by my hunger, was quite enticing. I didn't want to seem ungrateful, but somehow taking food from Seiga seemed ill-advised. My hand hesitated as I reached out to take a pair of chopsticks from the box.
"...Eating this won't turn us into something inhuman, will it?" I asked timidly.
Seiga's eyes widened and she raised a hand to cover her mouth as she tittered.
"There's no food so convenient it could turn you into a hermit with one bite and even making a jiangshi is a much more lengthy and involved process. I suppose there are things you could eat that might turn you into a youkai, but I doubt the villager who made this meal would have been the sort to eat them."
"Ohmf. Dif ya buy thif in the fillage then?" Renko asked around the onigiri she had rudely stuffed in her mouth already. I was appalled at Renko's manners, but Seiga didn't seem to mind.
"I took it from the village yes, but I didn't buy it. Someone carelessly left it on a table, so I just popped in and helped myself."
In other words, she had stolen it. And here I was poised to eat someone else's handmade lunch. How despicable. Renko swallowed and looked guiltily downward for a moment, hesitating for a few seconds before saying "Welp, I've already started eating it, it would be disrespectful not to finish something so well made." She took a swig from the bottle of tea Seiga offered her.
"What about you?" Seiga asked turning her unsettling smile on me, "aren't you hungry?" She would have looked like the very picture of innocence if her narrowed eyes weren't sparkling with mirth at my consternation. She certainly didn't look like she felt even the barest whiff of guilt. With her ability to go through walls she was probably so used to being a thief that something like this wouldn't even register to her. After all, to someone like that anything unattended no matter where it was left or how it was locked away may as well have been left sitting out in the open. To her eyes maybe this wouldn't even have seemed like theft.
I swallowed a sigh and reached forward, taking a morsel of rolled and seasoned egg before Renko could eat my share. "...I'll have some," I said. My apologies to whatever villager had their bento disappear mysteriously that day. My partner and I ate your lunch without leaving a single crumb behind. It was very tasty. In fact, that bento had a familiar and soothing flavor to it that I couldn't quite place, but it definitely seemed like something I had eaten before.