We all listened as Keine told us the tale. According to her, at what must have been very close to the time we first heard the dancers begin parading through the streets here a similar procession had begun in the north of the village, in the entertainment district. Without warning wild dancers, discordant chanters and a throng of marchers had gathered together to shout and carouse in the middle of the street. A number of small fights had broken out and just as things looked likely to transition into a full-fledged riot, the head nun of the Myouren temple, Byakuren Hijiri had suddenly appeared at the northern gate of the village.
She had waded into the crowd, breaking up fights and admonishing the revelers while exhorting them to give up a life of greed and debauchery and find peace in following the teachings of the Buddha. She had apparently made various sweeping promises about the benefits of a life lived in accordance with Buddhist practices then turned to leave, with roughly half of the assembled crowd following her through the gates and down the road toward Myouren temple. Other than the people involved, the situation sounded identical to the one we had just witnessed.
"I asked around there and was interviewing people, but no one could tell me how the dancing had started or who had been the first to start singing. Everyone claims to have been swept up by someone else. I was trying to get to the bottom of things when a runner from the watch office found me and told me about the situation here," Keine said with an exhausted sigh.
"The same event, occurring in two different places at the same time, and both of them brought to an end by the head of a different religious institution. If the Myouren temple and the Divine Spirit Mausoleum weren't rivals, I would think they were somehow colluding here. What are the odds of both organizations coming up with the same idea at the same time?"
We were all still gathered in Suzunaan, though we had taken the time to find seats on the various benches and chairs available in the store and Kosuzu had been gracious enough to fetch Keine some cold barley tea to drink.
"It would make more sense if, rather than colluding, both groups just saw and opportunity at the same time and decided to engage in some missionary work," Akyuu reasoned. "Whenever people are in a state of emotional turmoil, religions tend to find a lot of new worshippers."
"That's odd to hear you say, Akyuu. As the figurehead of the village, aren't you something like a political leader?" Renko asked. "I would think that people would be coming to the Hieda when things get desperate before they'd start looking for preachers. If people are in dire straits, isn't it your job to help them?"
"No, why would you think that? I'm just a symbol for the village. If the people are having problems, the only thing I can really do is write about it. If I had any actual political power in the village then the fact that I also have some degree of sway among the youkai would mean that everything in the village was under the control of the Hieda. When this village was founded, a divide was intentionally set up between the landowning households and the role of the village Chronicler."
"Ooo, a dictatorship run based on Akyuu's mood. Yeah, I see how that could be a problem." Kosuzu said with a nod.
"Hold on, what's that supposed to mean, what kind of a person do you think I am?"
Kosuzu stuck her tongue out impertinently as Akyuu glared at her.
Keine sighed. At any rate, I never found out who started the riot on the north end of the village and this one was broken up by the time I got here. Meaning that if someone was responsible for either or both then it could definitely happen again. Merry, Renko, if you see or hear about anyone who's been riling people up please let me or another member of the watch know about it right away.
"Understood," Renko said with a nod. "For the time being though, what are you going to do about all the people who left to go to the temple or the mausoleum?"
"There's nothing I can do," Keine said with another sigh. "I don't like the idea of either of those groups taking advantage of people, but I can't prevent people from pursuing their chosen religions, nor is it against any of the village's rules for people to proselytize in public. If anything happens to the people who left, it will be outside the walls of the village and therefore up to the Hakurei miko to resolve. For now though, I suppose I should work on trying to find out exactly who left so I can check on them and see when they come back. I've got a lot of doors to go knock on, I think." Saying that, Keine took a deep breath then stood up from her seat. "I don't like that so many people could be lead out of the village by two non-humans so easily. For people to be willing to do that it means that I'm not doing a good enough job of making them feel safe here in the village, or else I'm not doing a good enough job of impressing on people how dangerous it can be to leave."
"Don't blame yourself, Keine. Everyone's on edge after all of the natural disasters last year. You can't be held responsible for that."
"There were other things going on too..." she muttered, then remembering herself, turned to Akyuu and Kosuzu. "Well at any rate, I should get back to patrolling. Thank you for tea, miss Motoori. Miss Hieda, please let me know as well if anyone comes to you with any information." She bowed quickly and then turned and left the store.
I looked over to my partner, who seemed to be miles away despite the fact that she was sitting right next to me on the bench. She had her head down and was fiddling with the brim of her hat. Though she seemed lost in thought she was smiling to herself.
"Oh no," I sighed. "You have that look again, Renko."
"A wild spate of dancing suddenly breaks out in the middle of a calm afternoon in two different locations at once. That's a heck of a coincidence, don't you think, Merry? Hard to believe that it's just spontaneous. At this point having there be a mastermind pulling people's strings seems more likely than not, no? We should get going too. This is clearly a case for the Hifuu Detective Agency!" She declared, leaping to her feet.
"Detectives get hired to investigate things, Renko. No one's hired us."
"Sure they did, Keine just asked us to find the culprit behind these uprisings for her."
"She told us to let her know if we saw someone stirring people up! That's not the same thing, Renko."
"Well how are we going to see something like that if we don't go looking for the culprit? It obvious that's what she meant."
"I don't think that's obvious at all!"
"Well that's why I'm the director, I guess. Now come on, Merry, let's go collar the culprit responsible for making everyone break out in dance!" She flashed me her troublesome smile as she held out her hand.
I had my doubts about this case but letting Renko run about on her own was a surefire recipe for trouble. I took Renko's hand but continued to chide her as we walked towards the door. "Do you really think there even is such a person? What would anyone have to gain from something like this?"
-.-.-.-.-
We began by interviewing people on the street around Suzunaan. All of the people who had been involved in the disturbance that hadn't followed the crown prince out of town had returned to whatever they were doing before the crowd had come through, whether that was shopping, working or just walking from one place to another. We managed to locate a few such people, but the testimony we heard from them didn't make a lot of sense. Everyone seemed to have just been caught up in the mood they perceived in everyone around them. No one would admit to having wanted to participate in the commotion themselves and everyone claimed to have just been carried along by the inexorable momentum of the crowd.
"Hmm, identifying the instigator of these events might not be as easy as I hoped, Merry," Renko mused.
"Why would you have expected it to be easy? Typically in mass hysteria situations like that, even the person who sets the crowd off may not be aware that they're doing it right? These sorts of things happen spontaneously."
"Hmm, actually that raises an interesting point, Merry. Normally I'd agree with you, but if you think about what we saw and heard, this crowd didn't seem entirely spontaneous, did it?"
"What do you mean?"
"Think about it. The people who were singing seemed to have a proper song in mind. They weren't singing well, or in sync with one another, but there were verses and lyrics. Someone had to have thought those up ahead of time.
"Maybe they were just repurposed lyrics on top of some well-known songs. I think I've seen people singing something like that at the harvest festival, with people following behind and chanting 'yoi yoi'"
"You're right, there definitely are some similar songs that are sung at the harvest festival, but that just makes things even stranger. These people weren't farmers, Merry. This is the market district, and we saw a bunch of the people in the crowd leave their businesses to dance and sing. Would they know those songs?"
"Farmers come here to shop Renko. They could have been the ones singing, or people might have learned those songs from hearing them every autumn."
"It seems a little suspicious if a bunch of farmers show up, start singing rice-planting songs with lyrics repurposed to be apocalyptic and everyone just starts spontaneously singing along and dancing, don't you think?"
"Well what do you think is going on then, o great detective?"
Renko grinned at me. "Well, for everyone to get swept up in a song all once? Especially a dreary, pessimistic sort of song and then all be lead along by it toward one destination? We've seen that happen before Merry. I think we have a suspect."
"Who?" I blurted, frowning at her.
"The musicians with the power to manipulate mania and depression of course. We need to go see the Prismriver Ensemble, Merry!"
