"A secret god..." Renko was muttering to herself as she fiddled with the brim of her hat. "How would something like that even work...?"

After concluding our conversation with Kanako we had stopped by the outer shrine briefly to say hi to Sanae, who had bowed and apologized to us. "I'm sorry guys. Lady Kanako did something again, didn't she? She told me I might not be able to see you two for a few weeks, but she wouldn't tell me why..." I had given her a hug and Renko had laughed off her apology and then we had departed from the shrine on Genji's back. Now that Renko had a moment to herself though she was once more deep in thought.

"Putting aside the question of how a god of hidden and obscured things could get enough faith to survive, the fact that the god of Noh is a secret god must mean that they want to stay hidden. If that were the case though, why cause an Incident like this?"

"Maybe things like this are how a god like that works. By causing an Incident where the motives and causes are obscured wouldn't that raise people's faith in the idea that there's some supernatural presence orchestrating things and putting obstructions in their path?"

"But this Incident robbed the villagers of their hope. Hopeless people wouldn't think their was some secret force working against them, they'd just think the circumstances were hopeless, wouldn't they?"

"Well, maybe that's the problem then. Maybe as a secret god they'd been hiding for a long time, slowly losing faith so every now and then they need to do something to make their presence known."

"If that were the case, why go to the trouble of concealing their involvement in this Incident to the degree that they have? We've seen plenty of Incidents where someone caused problems just to make their presence known." She was right. The Scarlet Mist Incident had been like that and so had the Earthquake Incident and the Divine Spirit Incident. If a secret god had wanted to make their presence widely known, all they had to do was antagonize the Hakurei miko.

"I'm not sure how we could get any answers either. No one saw where the mask was dropped from and Kokoro doesn't remember anything from before she lost it, so even if she saw the mask being taken from her she wouldn't recall who did it. It's like every aspect of this Incident was setup to just lead to more questions without answers. Pull one string and you find another tied to it and another tied to that, but you're no closer to finding the end of the line."

"It almost sounds like one of your convoluted stories, Renko. Whoever Hata no Kawakatsu became, they must be the same sort of delusional conspiracy theorist you are."

"Come on Merry, you could be a little more charitable to your partner than that. Why not say 'they must have the same sort of profound, expansive intellect that you do?'

"Yes, yes. Of course, miss Director. That's not at all the sort of thing a megalomaniac would say, I'm sure."

"It's not a megalomaniacal delusion though, Merry. I'm more convinced of my reasoning now than ever. Before our only clue that another party was involved was the singing and the dancing but now that we know that Hata no Kawakatsu merged with a secret god of obstacles, it makes sense that they were engineering the whole thing. Giving Kokoro her ego and awakening her as a menreiki must have been their true aim and the loss of hope was just a result of that. They must have gotten involved in the village and started the riots and outbursts so that someone would realize something was going on and do something about it. Think about it, Merry. If the people lost their hope you wouldn't normally expect them to start dancing and singing about it. There must have been some sort of outside influence involved."

"Let's assume you're right. Wouldn't that be counterproductive? You're suggesting they started a big Incident, then tried to get it resolved. Even if they were only intending to awaken Kokoro as a Menreiki it's still a risky way of doing that. If anyone else had gotten a hold of Kokoro's original mask then her ego would probably have been erased by now. On top of that, draining the hope from everyone and putting the village and everything that depends on it at risk is a long way to go just to awaken one youkai. Doesn't that seem like a lot of collateral damage?"

"I don't think gods think about people the way we do, Merry. We're all just mere mortals to them, gone in the blink of an eye. Look at Tenshi, she's not quite a god, but she has the same mindset. She nearly destroyed all of Gensokyo because she was bored."

"Well you're going to have to settle for dreaming up stories like that Renko. We'll never know the truth and there's not going to be anywhere where we can look up information on a secret god." Renko didn't have a retort for that, but from where I was sitting just behind her on Genji's back I could see the frustration knotting her shoulders.

Renko was still stewing in silence, hunched in on herself when something very strange happened. In the space of perhaps a half a second the empty air in front of us shivered and distorted as the boundaries underlying space itself seemed to compress themselves, shaking erratically as they did so. Feeling an intense wave of vertigo, I squeezed my eyes shut and grunted in discomfort.

"Merry? You alright?" Renko asked, speaking over her shoulder to me. Her words reached me, but seemed distorted, as if they were flowing around some object to get to me or travelling through something thicker than air. There was a distinctive click. It sounded like the sound of a door knob being turned. "What the... a door?"

I opened my eyes to see Renko twisting around in wonder. On Genji's back, between the two cushions we were both sitting on, a doorway had appeared. A small, rectangular pair of painted wooden double doors, set flush into his shell, too small to be of any use for anything, were fitted comfortably into the few centimeters of space between us.

"Merry are you seeing this?" Renko asked incredulously, trying to reseat herself so that she could get a better look at the strange object. Before she could do so the doors swung open. As they rotated inward and away from us, the space behind them was a pitch-black, empty void. Curiously, I reached out a hand toward the doors. Before I could touch them there was suddenly an overwhelming sensation of being drawn forward and my sense of balance shifted and tumbled as Renko and I were pulled into the nothingness of that open portal. There was no time to scream. I remember thinking that there was no way I could possibly fit through the small opening and I was about to hit my head on Genji's hard shell. Then suddenly I was surrounded by empty space with Renko floating behind me. The only sound was the decisive bang of the doors closing behind us.

-.-.-.-.-

We floated aimlessly for a while. After a time we seemed to reach something that worked like ground. We could stand and walk on it, but there was nothing to see. Our feet were either resting on empty nothingness or a perfectly clear and featureless sheet of something translucent. The void we were in turned out not to be completely empty, but it was devoid of anything familiar. There was neither sun nor sky, nor any other source of light, yet it wasn't dark. We could see our own bodies. There was no visible ground, nor walls nor limits of any visible sort to the space. What there was was doors. Many other sets of doors similar to the ones we had just come through, but in all manner of styles and colors. They were floating in the air, unconnected to anything else at seemingly random angles and positions that seemed to suggest that whatever plane they acted as openings in was completely unrelated to the one we were standing on. It was like no place either of us had ever been.

"Merry, where are we?" Renko asked after a few minutes of staring about in mute wonder.

"The other side of that door, but I don't know what that means, really."

"I've never heard of a place like this from anyone, have you? I wonder if Reimu's ever been here."

"I'm more worried about how we get back. Do you think any of these doors will lead to Gensokyo if we open them?"

"Who knows? We'll have to pick one and find out."

"Can we even get to them? I'm not sure if there are directions here, but all the doors I can see look like they're 'up' from where we are."

"Ah! They found their way in!" A new voice called from somewhere nearby.

"I didn't open a door for them! Did you? Well it's not our fault then. Master must have wanted to see them."

I looked around for the sources of the voices but I couldn't see anyone. Directions were maddening in this black void. With no ground it quickly became impossible to know if something was behind or beside you and the doors we could see in the distance all seemed to be slowly floating in different directions.

All at once a large pair of doors zoomed towards us, tilting to align with the plane we were standing on after flying through empty space at a skewed angle. The doors rushed to a point about a meter and a half in front of us then froze in place and opened soundlessly. Behind them sat a woman draped in silks dyed a brilliant orange and decorated in a constellation-like pattern of starbursts. She regarded us both with a mocking smile floating on her handsome face.

"Welcome, humans, to the land of the back door."

My surprise at her sudden appearance was absolute, but Renko recovered quickly. "...I take it you're responsible for bringing us here? Whom do I have the honor of addressing then?"

The woman's smile quirked a little at one corner, becoming a derisive smirk. "You stand in the presence of a god. Were you two not pilgrims in search of the divine?"

Even Renko seemed unsure how to respond to that. We had met gods before, but not ones who had so obviously considered the two of us to be nothing more than playthings. What was the best way to address such an entity without throwing away your life?

The woman continued before Renko could decide what to say.

"I am the god of Noh. And also the god of the back door. The god of secrets, obstacles and disabilities. Of constellations and destiny. I am also one of the sages responsible for the creation of Gensokyo. As you had guessed, the masks that became the menreiki you call Hata no Kokoro were originally my property." She spoke with an impressive, self-assured dignity in much the same way Kanako did but there was a crueler, more dismissive edge to her words that would never have come from the mouth of the woman who had raised Sanae like her own daughter. "I am Okina Matara. Those who worship me know me as Matarajin."