When was it exactly that the epidemic of pessimism overtook the village? With the effects only being visible through people's outward expressions once they became too tired to keep up the outward signs of a happy disposition, it's hard to know exactly. Little by little though, towards the beginning of the summer's rainy season there were signs. It had been a rough year for a great many villagers, so as the rains set in and unpleasant humidity became the prevailing condition, cracks began to appear. In truth though, there had been looming omens of disaster for quite a while at that point. I can't say if some or all of the events leading up to that summer were related or not, but over the course of Gensokyo's 127th year, the village was witness to a number of suspicious fires which destroyed several homes in the autumn and then an eerie vertical column of water appeared over the Genbu ravine and lasted for several days, stretching high into the sky and causing a drought bad enough to affect crops and fishing hauls both. After that the salt merchant, one of the wealthiest and most politically powerful figures in the village died unexpectedly in the winter and an unusually heavy dump of snow and rain just before the coming of spring lead to floods and washouts. Keine and the rest of the neighborhood watch were kept busy assisting the fire crews and construction teams making repairs to the walls and gates, as well as shoring up and repairing damage to the embankments along the river.

None of those stories have any direct relation to the events of this casefile and all of them are likely already well-remembered by the people of the village, so I won't go into them here. The important bit to understand is that a feeling of pervasive hopelessness might not have been so unexpected when it started to spread throughout the village that June and so its coming went unremarked for a while.

As for Renko and myself, nothing in particular had changed for us recently. This in and of itself might lead to a certain degree of hopelessness if one were to consider the financial trajectory of our so-called business. About the only entities that seemed to be doing well in the village were the small brown birds nesting on the roof of our office, whose numbers and nest had both expanded to the point where they extended over one edge of the storehouse's small roof. Being as no customers were likely to show up and the incessant chirping of the young birds was now so loud that it had gone from charming to annoying, Renko and I found ourselves closing up shop one drizzly afternoon and making our way over to Suzunaan.

As we brushed aside the hanging curtain with its jingling bells and stepped into the shop, Kosuzu looked up and smiled brightly at us from behind the counter. She had grown a little older now, and while she hadn't gained much in the way of height, it was not at all uncommon to see her running the front of the store by herself now.

"Miss Renko, miss Merry, welcome!" She said cheerily as she put down the book she had been leafing through and removed her reading glasses.

"Hello Kosuzu, found any new youma books recently?" Renko blurted by way of greeting.

"Hey, shh!" Kosuzu hissed, raising a finger to shush Renko. "Don't talk about my private collections, dad's in the back today."

I shook my head at my partner's careless bluntness and sighed. It was sometime in the autumn of the previous year when Renko and I had learned that sweet little Kosuzu had been secretly using her earnings from running the store to begin collecting a variety of so-called 'youma books,' which is to say written materials of all sorts that had been created by youkai rather than humans. These books came in all formats, from scrolls to paintings, to cloth-bound Japanese books or hide-bound western tomes and might be anything from memoirs to collections of letters, spellbooks or even volumes which acted as seals and actually contained lesser youkai of one sort or another. Kosuzu collected all of them without bias and would go to great lengths to expand her collection, having already arranged to trade some of the store's merchandise or forgive long-overdue bills in exchange for known or suspected youma documents in the possession of other villagers. Why would a curious young girl take up such an unsettling hobby, you might ask? Well...

"Ah, sorry about that," Renko said, still smiling. "Let's change the topic then. What's that you're reading right now? It looks foreign..."

"Oh this?" Kosuzu asked, picking up the book she had been reading. "It's in French."

"French! That's beyond me. Can you read French, Merry?"

"Only enough to order breakfast," I replied. "Where'd you learn French, Kosuzu?"

"I didn't! It's not just youkai languages! My ability lets me read anything!" Kosuzu puffed out her chest proudly, a slightly smug expression on her face.

"I see," Renko said with a faint laugh. "That's a very handy ability indeed."

Kosuzu had awakened to this ability of hers last year and realized it only when she suddenly became able to decipher a scroll that the store had long been in possession of but hadn't realized was written in the tengu language. Apparently suddenly discovering unusual abilities like this wasn't uncommon for the humans of this village. There were those that suggested that gaining such unusual talents was a sign that someone in that person's family had become overly familiar with or fallen under the influence of a youkai, but it was common enough that most everyone who lived here at least knew someone with some sort of minor supernatural talent. Although I had never encountered anyone with abilities that were in any way similar to my own, the presence of a variety of other unusual abilities within the town made me feel more at home here then I ever could have in the world Renko and I had come from.

In all likelihood it was the awakening of this newfound ability in Kosuzu that had prompted her to begin collecting youma books. Such tomes were more readily found here in Gensokyo than Outside world writings in other human languages, though the few of those that did show up from time to time nearly all ended up at Suzunaan sooner or later. While the idea of books written by or possibly even containing various mythological monsters wasn't inherently appealing to me, if I had developed an ability like Kosuzu's one day, I imagine I might have done much the same as she was doing now. Especially if I happened to work in a rental bookstore as she did. On the wall behind Kosuzu the store's motto was printed in bold letters on a wooden sign: "Books Are Meant To Be Read." It was a message she seemed very much to have taken to heart.

When Renko and I had learned that Kosuzu possessed this ability, the first thing my partner had said was "Hey, do you have a copy of the Voynich Manuscript, by chance?" Sadly, Kosuzu had never heard of that book, and so its contents shall continue to remain unknown. At any rate, all of this is a digression. Getting back to the topic at hand, we had come to Suzunaan not only to return some books I had borrowed, but also to chat with Kosuzu, something we were now in the habit of doing somewhat regularly. Beyond that though, Renko and I had another reason for being there that day. One we wouldn't mention to Kosuzu.

-.-.-.-.-

"So you two know Kosuzu, right?"

It was late last autumn when, out of the blue, Reimu posed that question to us. We were at one of the unpredictable but somewhat frequent parties at the Hakurei shrine at the time, surrounded by merriment and the smell of roasting food.

"She works in the book rental shop, right? Yeah, we know her," Renko had replied. "Why? Did something happen to her?"

Reimu had folded her arms and frowned, seeming to consider something for a few moments before coming to a decision and leaning over to whisper to the two of us. "I want you two to keep an eye on her for me."

"Are you looking to hire the Hifuu Detective Agency, Reimu? It's about time, I've always thought our services could be of great use to you."

"It's not like that. I just want you to keep track of her and let me know if she's getting involved in anything dangerous."

"Anything dangerous? Kosuzu? What exactly are you imagining she might get mixed up in? Someone mad about a late fee? Oh, does this have anything to do with her newly awakened ability to read youma books?"

Reimu seemed about to reply, but then took one look at the excitement on Renko's face and sighed. "I'm asking the wrong person, aren't I? If she gets involved with youkai you're just going to make it worse."

"Don't say that, we'd be happy to tail her for you. The fact that you're asking us about it means that you must be concerned about her doing something that could be harmful to her, but doesn't fall under the scope of your authority as the Hakurei shrine maiden. Something that could get her in trouble with a youkai, but not be a big enough deal to cause an Incident, right? Let me guess, there's a youkai who's been visiting her store? No wait, it can't be that, you'd just exterminate them. Oh, I bet it's the other way around and there's a youkai that Kosuzu has been approaching of her own volition. Is that it? Or maybe she's been getting involved with youkai affairs because of something she read? Oh, no, I've got it! She's been collecting something recently, hasn't she? Is she collecting something she read about in that tengu scroll? Or no, I bet she's looking for more youkai writings to read. Is that it?" Renko thrust her index finger at Reimu as she pondered, jabbing each possibility forward as if pinning it to a bulletin board.

Rather than replying directly, Reimu buried her face in her palm and shook her head. "I definitely asked the wrong person. You're just going to give her ideas."

"Well you may as well tell me now, Reimu. You've got me curious. Better to have the Hifuu Detective Agency on your payroll if it's something serious, don't you think?"

"I never said anything about paying you, but you're right. Kosuzu has been collecting youma books. She's got a dangerous number of things put together already, including a few pieces that could potentially be harmful even on their own."

"How could a book be dangerous?"

"They're books written by youkai. Most of them are harmless, just a little weird, but she has at least one that's actually got youkai sealed inside of it. I'm worried that she might eventually break that seal, either intentionally or by accident. The sort of youkai who would get sealed in a book would generally be very minor sorts of monsters, but even something like that could be dangerous if it gets released in the middle of the village."

"I see. Why ask us just to watch her then? Wouldn't it be better if we tried to talk her out of collecting such dangerous books?"

"I wouldn't have expected to hear a proposal like that from you of all people. If anything I would have expected you to say you already knew about it and had been bringing her more."

Renko scratched at her head unconsciously and looked away. "The risks I take are my own decisions and I try not to put anyone who wouldn't follow me willingly at risk. If Kosuzu doesn't realize what she's getting into, I can see why you'd want to protect her."

"Look, I could confront her directly and forbid her from owning any more youma books, but I don't live in the village. She'd probably just start collecting them again but now she'd be hiding them from me. That could have the potential to get way worse, or end with Kosuzu moving out of the village."

It was sound thinking. If anyone in a position of authority were to punish everyone beneath them who makes any sort of a foolish mistake, it's easy to see that mistakes will start going unreported. Human error is unavoidable after all, so it was a good policy to instead praise anyone who reported mistakes rather than condemn them. In the end, the mess that would need to be cleaned up would be smaller.

-.-.-.-.-

And so, with that goal of surreptitious monitoring and harm reduction in mind, we had been coming to Suzunaan every week for months now, something that neither Renko nor I minded doing one bit. Suzunaan frequently had new books of one sort or another for me to look at even if they weren't anything I was interested in and Renko got to flex her interviewing muscles in trying to coax details about Kosuzu's activities out of her. Overall, I couldn't really be sure how much we were actually achieving by doing it though. Renko hadn't turned up anything worthy of getting Reimu involved yet and talking with Renko about her findings certainly hadn't made Kosuzu any less interested in growing her collection.

While I was going through the process of returning the books with Kosuzu this time, we heard the bells on the curtains on the front of the store chime and a familiar figure made their way into the shop.

"Welcome!" Kosuzu leaned around me to shout. "Oh, Akyuu, its you."

"'Oh, Akyuu, it's you?' Most of your customers get more greeting than that. You called me all the way over here in the rain and that's the reception I get?"

Despite Akyuu's lighthearted complaints the two of them seemed to be very close friends. I couldn't think of any other person around whom I had seen Akyuu speak in so unguarded and casual a fashion.

"Hello there, Akyuu," Renko said, turning and nodding to her.

"Oh miss Merry and miss Renko, you're here too." She smiled and bowed to us both. To most people in the village, Akyuu was the ninth Child of Miare first and foremost and the village's figurehead. Since we had been visiting Suzunaan so frequently at Reimu's request, we had both had the opportunity to become much closer with her even if she was still technically our boss' boss as she was an even more frequent visitor to Suzunaan than we were. We had been closer to her than most others before, of course, due to our frequent consultations with her in regards to our investigations and the help we had provided her in her research for the Gensokyo Chronicle, but now all four of us in the shop were on a first-name basis with each other, though I think Akyuu's relationship to Kosuzu was closer than her connection to either Renko or myself, if only because of their similar ages. Renko had at one point tried to give Akyuu a nickname, but Akyuu had politely but firmly dissuaded her. I wondered why in all the years I had known Renko I had only ever been 'Merry' to her.

"So what was it you wanted to show me, Kosuzu?" Akyuu asked, dispensing with the need for pleasantries.

"Oh, right! Renko, Merry, since you're both here too, I can show you as well. Come take a look." Saying that, Kosuzu excitedly lead us through the curtain dividing the front of the store from the work area in the back and lead us to a small table tucked into a corner of a printing room. Glancing around conspiratorially, she pulled out a scroll of high quality hand-made paper from a cabinet and carefully unrolled it on the table. "Take a look at this," she said, beaming with obvious pride.

"Well that's certainly striking," Renko muttered appreciatively. "What exactly is it?"

Printed on the scroll was what at first appeared to be an expertly-made fish print. Looking at it though it definitely couldn't have been that. Although the skillful application of an ink wash had beautifully preserved the intricate details of a creature's scales upon the paper, the shape of the animal's body would have been all wrong for a fish. It was long and snake-like, perhaps a meter in length, but with a pronounced and bony snout as well as a pair of features that had left a vague, membrane-like pattern behind which shouldn't have been present on either a snake or a fish. They almost looked like... wings?

"...Kosuzu, is this a real dragon print?" Akyuu muttered with a faint tone of awe in her voice.

"Yep!" Kosuzu responded happily, her eyes aglow with excitement. "A genuine gyotaku print of a real live dragon! It's completely authentic, an actual genuine article!"

"If it's actually a dragon print, wouldn't it be 'ryuutaku' instead of 'gyotaku?' How can you be sure it's real though? Couldn't someone have just made a print of a snake and some bat wings?"

Kosuzu tilted raised her chin and closed her eyes. "Tsk tsk, Akyuu, I suppose even a high-born noble like you might not have had the opportunity to see something this rare before. It's definitely the real deal. Can't you feel the aura of menace coming off of it? It's unquestionably a genuine youma book."

"Where would you even get something like this? Did someone someone come in here asking a fortune for a rare treasure or something?"

"Of course not! I wouldn't get scammed like that and I doubt something this priceless could be bought with money anyway. I got it from the same source who assured me it's a genuine article. The dragon who made the print himself."

"What?" Akyuu, Renko and I all blurted out the word in unison, but Kosuzu just stood there smugly, basking in our incredulity.