Keine joined us for dinner. The side dishes and her company were both welcome additions, but it was hard not to imagine that at least part of the reason for her being here was to keep an eye on us. Having Byakuren accompany us back to town and preemptively apologize to Keine had spared us a lecture and a headbutt but by now Keine knew Renko well enough to understand what it meant when she was pursuing the answers to a mystery. The fact that the self-proclaimed reincarnation of prince Shotoku had suddenly opened up a door in the floor of our office while Keine was present certainly didn't help matters and I imagined that even on days when classes weren't in session, Keine would be finding a reason to keep tabs on us for the next few days.
As we sat down to eat my fried rice, miso soup and the selection of pickled and stewed vegetables Keine had brought, Renko seemed to still be lost in thought, barely saying a word and moving mechanically as I dished up.
"What's wrong, Renko?" Keine had eventually asked. "Is there something you're worried about?"
"No, no, it's nothing..." Renko muttered in reply.
Keine shot me a significant look across the table as if to say 'she's up to something again, isn't she?' I'm not sure what I could have done to convince Keine otherwise, nor could I truthfully deny my suspicion that she was probably correct. Somewhere inside Renko's head a grandiose delusion involving Tojiko, Seiga, Futo and the crown prince herself was no doubt taking shape and once it was fully formed, I had little doubt that Renko would be keen to do something that was likely to cause some form of disruption, whether intentionally or not.
"So I've done a little research on prince Shotoku..." Keine began, looking over in Renko's direction. Instantly Renko's head popped up. She seemed to notice the bowl of soup in front of her for the first time and picked it up as Keine continued. "I couldn't find anyone with the name 'Yoshika' anywhere in the prince's orbit. The closest I could find was a prince Tomoshiko, one of prince Shotoku's sons by his fourth wife."
"His fourth wife... which one was that again?"
"That would be the lady Kawashide no Iratsume, who came after Uji no Kaitako, Tachibana no Oiratsume and Tojiko no Iratsume. His first wife, Uji no Kaitako bore him no children and is generally believed to have died very young. Tachibana no Oiratsume is famous for having created an elaborate tapestry mourning prince Shotoku's death. Tojiko no Iratsume is of course the one you claim to have met in that tomb and the mother of the equally famous prince Yamashiro."
"Alright, I think I can keep that straight. What about his fourth wife, this Kawashide no Iratsume?"
"She was the mother of princess Tsukishine, who would later marry her half brother prince Yamashiro as he attempted to secure the imperial throne. She was the daughter of a powerful merchant family, making her the only one of prince Shotoku's wives who wasn't born into nobility. She also bore him eight children - four sons and four daughters, so she's generally believed to be his favorite.
"He preferred her to Tojiko then?"
"Well, I can't really say, being as these were people who died 1,400 years ago. Prince Shotoku's fourth wife bore twice as many children for him as Tojiko though and was said to have died at the same time that the crown prince did, being buried just one day before he was. She's supposedly buried along with the crown prince's mother in a tomb in Isonaga."
Upon hearing that, Renko suddenly stood up, her bowl of soup still in hand. She showed no reaction as the hot miso sloshed over her fingers, her eyes staring into the distance without seeing anything.
"Renko? What's wrong?" Keine and I asked as one.
"Hm? Oh. Ah! Hot! Sorry, sorry," she said, trying to sit back down, put her bowl down, bow in apology and keep from spilling more soup all at once. "Hey Keine," she began once she had carefully set down the bowl and found her seat again. "You said that Kawashide no Iratsume died at nearly the same time as prince Shotoku, right? What about Tojiko? Do you know when she died?"
"There's no dates for that in the Nihon Shoki, but it must have been after the crown prince's death as she's recorded as the founder of Zenko-ji temple in Nagano and that was thought to have been built in the seventh century - well after prince Shotoku's time. Of course, there's no way of knowing if that's correct or not. It could easily have been a story someone made up later to claim some relationship to prince Shotoku's fame."
If the Tojiko we had met really was the same Tojiko no Iratsume whose life had been recorded in the Nihon Shoki then there was no way that the story of the founding of Zenko-ji could be accurate. Tojiko would have been sealed in the tomb with Miko at the time, awaiting her doomed attempt at resurrection. One of the two stories had to be false.
"All right," Renko said, continuing with her questioning, "what about Futo? Or Futusuhime, rather. Do you know when she's supposed to have died?"
"She's not even written about in the Nihon Shoki, other than to say that Soga no Umako used his wife's plan to destroy the Mononobe clan. There are other historical records that suggest that that wife must have been Futusuhime, but none of them mention the date of her death." Keine replied, while taking a bite of her vegetables. "Now you can see why I was confused. For either Futo or Tojiko to have come back to life or have been buried with the crown prince contradicts history as we know it. If they are who they claim to be then there's no explanation for why either of them would be found in that tomb instead of the ones in Isonaga, nor is there any explanation for why prince Shotoku would have chosen them among all of his other relations to be reborn." Keine let out a heavy sigh. "That said, Miko seemed extremely knowledgeable of all of the details that I would have expected her to know. I don't like the idea, but its possible that the historical records are all wrong."
Keine put down her bowl as she said that and seemed to be too concerned to eat. Renko on the other hand, after hearing what Keine had said, froze in thought for a moment or two then began vigorously shoveling food into her mouth. I turned to glare at her for her appalling table manners but I couldn't catch her eye -she had already lifted her bowl of soup and was draining it in one long, hasty and noisy slurp. She set the bowl down with a thump and exhaled a long, steamy sigh. "That's it," she declared. "That's would certainly explain everything, but it's a question of who we can believe."