My apologies for dragging on and stretching out this record with all of these chapters detailing our long search for Koishi. If it's any consolation I was getting just as frustrated as I imagine you might be, dear reader. Koishi had shown up directly in front of me at the beginning of this mess but then seemingly vanished without a trace for more than a week now. Upon hearing Marisa's report though we were excited about the prospect of finally bringing the search to a conclusion. As such, we rushed back to Mokou's shack, taking a long, out of the way route around the village so as not to be spotted, dropped Kokoro off again, then hurried to the village. As I had expected Koishi was long gone from the village by the time we arrived, but luckily we didn't have to go very far before we found her.

"Hey Merry, is that Koishi by chance?" Renko asked as we left the village square behind and made our way toward the Myouren temple instead.

"What? You can see her Renko?"

"Well I see someone in the middle of that crowd. Who's the girl in the hat that everyone's cheering for? That's her, right?"

"Yes, that's definitely her." Renko had switched her sitting position around to face the same way I was and was now pointing over my shoulder, toward a spot above the courtyard at the front of the Myouren temple where a crowd was gathered, cheering for a danmaku match between Koishi and Ichirin. From the way the crowd was reacting it seemed like all of the assembled onlookers must have been able to see Koishi too. Ichirin certainly could as she was dodging barrages and directing Unzan to rain lumbering blows that her opponent seemed to have no trouble dodging. How had Koishi become visible to so many people?

It was unquestionable that something unusual was going on. Previously, the number of people able to detect Koishi's presence was very small, limited only to myself, the Yama, Parsee and maybe her sister. For her to be returning to a readily visible state maybe meant that she was in the process of just becoming a typical satori again, rather than the imperceptible, unconscious youkai she had been. If not though, I wondered if being seen by so many people was healthy for her. If a youkai's nature is to be difficult to perceive, would being observed by so many people at once be harmful?

Any way you looked at it, Koishi's nature was difficult to understand. If Renko's theories about her were correct, she was something like a living contradiction in terms, a thoughtless creature of the mind, a real imaginary friend and a un-contextualizable youkai whose nature as a closed-eyed satori could only exist in the context of her relation to her sister. I did my best to put such existential questions out of mind to focus on the mystery at hand: had she found the mask of hope?

"Oh! It looks like she won," Renko said, cringing slightly as Ichirin was struck by a sudden and dense storm of heart-shaped danmaku.

"Ichirin walked right into that. It must be hard to read Koishi's movements seeing as even she doesn't know what she's about to do next."

As Ichirin tumbled from the sky and collapsed to the ground Koishi descended as well, landing in the midst of the crowd of onlookers who quickly swarmed around her, cheering and shouting congratulations. Koishi looked happy and confused by all of the attention. I lost sight of Ichirin as the crowd pressed in, but a moment later captain Murasa emerged from the temple, watery blue-green flames boiling around her as she called out. "Hey! Out of the way, you're blocking the entrance." Obediently, most of the onlookers cleared a path for the ship phantom who quickly extracted Ichirin and half-walked, half-carried her back into the temple. We seized the momentary opportunity and descended as well to land not far from Koishi, pressing our way through the quickly-dispersing crowds to get to her.

"Miss Koishi!" I called out over the indistinct voices of the people who were turning to head back to the village. "Over here, miss Koishi. May I talk to you for a moment?"

She turned her head and looked at me without any hint of recognition in her eyes. "Huh? Who is it?"

"I'm Merry," I said, forcing my way through the stream of people to finally arrive at her side. "Don't you remember me? We met several times in the Underworld."

"Oh. No. I forget almost everything from the past," she said amiably.

"Oh. Um, well, we're friends of your sister. I'm Merry and this is my partner Renko." I wasn't sure if she had really forgotten me or this was just some new sort of game for her.

"Renko Usami," Renko said, bowing quickly as she caught up to me. "Pleased to meet you at last, Koishi."

"You're friends of my sister?" Koishi asked, looking suddenly uncertain. "Did she send you here to make me come home?"

"Well she is rather worried about you," Renko admitted, "but more than that there's something we'd really like to ask you."

"What?"

"It's about a mask that we're looking for. A white one, with the face of a child on it. Have you by any chance seen something like that recently?"

"A mask? Was it a smiling one, like a Jizo statue?"

"That's the one! I take it you've seen it?"

She nodded. It was our first break in the search for the missing mask of hope. Without a doubt the mask must have something to do with why Koishi was so much easier to see now.

"Where did you find it?" Renko asked excitedly.

"It fell out of a hole in the roof. It was kind of creepy so I picked it up and kept it."

From a hole in the roof? I suppose living in the Underworld as she did that would have meant a fissure in the ceiling of the huge cave where Former Hell was located. Had a fissure leading all the way down there opened up somewhere in Gensokyo recently?

"Koishi, do you know where that mask is right now by any chance?"

Koishi eyed Renko suspiciously and took a step away from her.

"That's a secret."

"A secret? Is that because you can't remember or because you don't want to tell me?"

"I remember! Though I wonder why I only remember that? Anyway, I'm not telling you!"

"Relax Koishi. We're not going to take it from you. We just wanted to have a look at it. You can show us, right? Just a glimpse?" Renko asked clasping her hands in front of herself pleadingly.

"No! It's mine and I'm not giving it to you." Koishi kicked off the ground and into the air then faded completely out of sight in a way that wouldn't have been surprising before but seemed completely at odds with how perceivable she had been just a moment ago. I scanned the skies trying to find her and although I think I might have briefly spotted her once or twice she was already far away and it would be hopeless to try to follow her.

"She got away.." Renko muttered.

"More like she was chased away."

"It was my fault, wasn't it? I should have let you do it Merry. I was just so excited to finally see her." Renko pouted and I shrugged my shoulders at her.

"She didn't seem to know who I was either. It seems like she knows where the mask of hope is though."

"I'm pretty sure she ran away because it was me asking. We'll have to find her again Merry. Next time I'll let you speak with her. We spent all this time searching for her after all these years of wondering what she's like and now I can't talk to her."

"It seems that way Renko. What should we do now? I don't think it would do much good to just start searching randomly again."

"No, I agree, Merry. We'll put the search for Koishi on hold for the moment, at least until the next fight breaks out. We've got something more pressing to look for just now."

"Oh? What's that?"

"The next step in our investigation, Merry. The new element to this mystery that's just been introduced. You and I need to find how Kokoro's mask managed to fall into the Underworld."