Let me skip to the next day. It was a Monday, and it was after the end of classes for the day. There had been so sign of Keine returning yet, so Renko and I were still supposed to be working with the neighborhood watch. Ostensibly, it was in that capacity that we had now come to this place, a seedy tenement house on the southeast side of the village. In actuality though, it would be more accurate to say that the patrol that had brought my partner and I here was closer to a method of avoiding Kotohime's watchful eyes than anything else.
A small, weather-beaten sign affixed to the corner of the slum advertised a business, the only indication that the drooping eaves of the tenement house might be home to anything other than a residence. The sign said 'Enter, all those who are lost.' As advertisements go it was rather cryptic -there was no indication of what product was for sale or any indication of why this particular purveyor was superior to others. The name written in the bottom corner of the sign was all the convincing anyone in the know would need.
Renko and I had not come here to take advantage of the services offered within, however. We weren't a pair wandering in search of salvation. Rather, we had come here to save someone.
Renko nodded to me, then opened the door. We stepped inside to find a cramped room with worn and stained plaster walls and low ceilings above a bare dirt floor. The room was dimly lit by a single candle, but had been swept clean and tidied. I had to bow my head just slightly to stand inside the cramped space and getting through the low doorways required me to bend my knees to avoid bashing my head on the lentils.
The room immediately inside the door lead directly into a long hallway, but had enough space on one side to store coats and boots and just barely enough space on the other side to accommodate a gloomy-looking young man sitting on a stool behind a low desk upon which the lone candle in the room sat. He looked up and greeted us as we entered.
"Welcome, strangers. I see that you are first-time customers here. The grandmaster is not seeing anyone in the moment, but does have some time available tomorrow afternoon." He was a slim young man with a sallow, sickly-looking face behind a pair of round glass spectacles that caught the light from the candle. Despite the cramped, dim and slightly chilly confines he had a weak smile on his face, but it was less of a classic customer service smile and more of a faintly smug grin.
"No, no," Renko said, waving her hands. "We don't need to talk to the grandmaster himself. I'm sure for our needs one of his apprentices would be fine. Would that be you?"
"Ah. I suppose you could say I am one of the grandmaster's lesser apprentices, yes. I'm afraid I'm not ready to read your fortunes myself though. As it is, I think I may be on the verge of being expelled from studying here. My own methods of fortune-telling are somewhat different than the grandmaster's."
"You don't say? Well that actually sounds perfect for me. I should introduce myself though. My name is Renko Usami."
The moment Renko gave her name, the man's eyes blinked rapidly behind his glasses. He was surprised... but he was also almost certainly trying to conceal that.
"...Usami, did you say?" he asked.
"That's right. I'm a teacher at the temple school. Have you heard of me, by chance?"
"Ah, yes, the Hieda public school. No, pardon me, I must have mistaken your name for someone else's. What brings a schoolteacher to our humble place of business? I can't read your fortune myself, but if you can tell me a bit about yourself and what your troubles are, then I can determine what services the grandmaster might be able to perform for you..."
"Well you see, I'm looking for someone."
An uncomfortable moment of silence passed as he waited for Renko to say something more. He swallowed before saying "...Anyone in particular?"
"Yes, actually," Renko said, grinning and looking him straight in the eye. "I'm looking for someone named Sumireko."
Another moment of silence passed, during which the blood could clearly be seen draining from the young man's face. He opened his mouth as if to speak, closed it, then suddenly leapt up and over the desk, shoving Renko out of the way and sprinting down the hall toward the back of the tenement house.
Renko grunted as she stumbled into me, but sprang back instantly. "I hadn't expected an instant bingo! I'm chasing him, Merry!" She took off like a shot, dashing down the hall. In a panic I followed after them both, bowing my head hunching my shoulders as I tried to rush down the dim hallway without concussing myself against any of the overhead beams.
-.-.-.-.-
Perhaps it would be useful if I rewound just a bit.
The previous day, after our visit with Miko, Kotohime had come back to the watch office and we had had to put our investigation on hold until the evening. Eventually, after going over some more procedures and notable figures in the village with us, she had dismissed us and Renko and I had gone home. I was still thinking about what Renko had said though.
"Renko, do you really think someone from the Outside world could contact Gensokyo just by playing Kokkuri? If that were possible wouldn't it happen all the time? It seems a little too simple, don't you think?"
"I don't think just anyone could do it, actually. But supposedly my great aunt was a psychic and a believer in the occult. What's more, she seems to have some connection to Raiko's user in the Outside world. It's entirely possible that the reason my great aunt got into the occult might be that she caught a glimpse of Gensokyo through her friend and wanted to find out more."
"Huh. Well, if she was specifically trying to find a world of illusions that she already believed to exist, I suppose it might be possible..." Honestly, thinking about it now, I had no grounds on which to criticize anyone's methods. I had discovered and apparently visited Gensokyo simply by falling asleep at times. Doing so was an utter violation of the logic of the Scientific Century, but if Sumireko had an ability like mine maybe wandering away from the world of logic was similarly easy for her. Perhaps she might even be a kindred spirit to me, the sort of person who had always been ostracized by society for their inexplicable capabilities. If such was the case, then something like Kokkuri would be as good a method as any other for stumbling across a boundary. No more ridiculous than sleepwalking across the Great Hakurei Barrier, at any rate. "Kokkuri is a game of questions and answers though... if she did contact Gensokyo using that sort of a method, who would have spoken to her?"
"I think the answer to that question comes from asking this one: what do people use Kokkuri for, Merry?"
"Use it? It's a game, isn't it? I guess people use it to have fun, or to try to scare eachother?"
"Well maybe some people use it that way, but that could only work if you believe that the game is what it claims to be. A method of divination."
"Divination? So then people use it to find things? I thought it was for fortune-telling?"
"People use it for all sorts of things. The sorts of questions people ask it are usually along the lines of 'what will happen in the future?' or 'what is someone thinking?' It's for finding answers to questions that are impossible to answer with the logic-based tools of the Outside world, is my point. Now, it just so happens that here in the village there are people who do the same thing: use tools to attempt to learn that which they have no natural way of knowing."
"Oh, I see. You're thinking it would have been a fortune-teller who contacted Sumireko?"
"I think it must be someone who would be the sort to both look for answers to unknowable questions from external sources and be willing to listen to any answers such inquisition got them. A fortune-teller seems like the most likely candidate. That or a shrine maiden, but if Sanae or Reimu knew about my aunt, I'm sure they'd have mentioned it."
-.-.-.-.-
That was the logic that had brought us to the house of the human village's most renowned fortune-teller. It was nothing more than a series of assumptions piled one on top of the other, a towering edifice built of nothing but hope and sand. For Renko, that was completely normal. Why would a delusion of grandeur need anything more solid as a foundation? In my partner's mind, if the youkai sage had given us the extremely vague request of 'save a certain person' then that was a clear sign that she wanted us not only to dream up a solution but to make that dream a reality. That's just what Renko's like.
We had spent the afternoon after we had finished teaching classes on patrol, an opportunity which Renko had used to question random passers-by and shop keepers about local fortune-tellers. She wasn't doing anything illegal, but I imagine when someone wearing the armband of the neighborhood watch comes into your store asking aggressive questions about a shady business that would be at least a little nerve-wracking for most people. I could only hope that Keine would see this as merely irresponsible and not an abuse of power if she found out about it.
The answers we had received had quickly directed us to a tenement house on the east side of town. There a skilled soothsayer supposedly lived, a withered old man with a great talent for speaking predictions that often came true. Renko didn't seem particularly happy with that answer though.
"This fortune-teller's an old guy by the sound of it, Merry. That doesn't really make sense. Even if he were dissatisfied with the way things are in Gensokyo, old people are set in their ways. I don't think someone like that would work with an Outsider to cause a problem. The person we're looking for is probably someone younger."
"What makes you think that the person the youkai sage wants us to save is someone who would be likely to cause a problem? Wouldn't that be just the sort of person the Hakurei miko exists to deal with? Either way it still might be worth visiting this fortune-teller. If he's famous, he's probably got a few apprentices."
"Oh, that's a good point. Yes, a disciple could be young but still familiar enough with the art of fortune-telling that they might reach out in search of answers. They would be more likely to be upset with the status quo, too. Oh! And if they only just recently awakened an ability like Kosuzu's they might not even realize that they're contacting the Outside world yet. That's who we're looking for, Merry, I'm sure of it. A young apprentice fortune-teller who's dissatisfied with life in Gensokyo."
"So you're assuming that a person like that exists and that the youkai sage wants us to save them. From what, Renko? And how would we find them?"
"Finding them will be easy enough, we'll just have to ask around at fortune-tellers in the area. As for what we'd save them from... well, if they're in contact with my great aunt then the most likely scenario is that getting in contact with the Outside world is going to somehow put them in danger. Remember, if my theory is right, the Administrator will have knowledge of what's likely to happen in the future. She's probably wanting us to stop this person before they can convince Sumireko to do something that puts her in danger or maybe before Sumireko can convince them to do the same to themselves. That's our commission, Merry. We need to go find this fortune-teller and save them!"