東方プロジェクト二次小説・オリジナル小説サイト
Chapter 10:Hopeless Masquerade

—28—


"Let me get straight to the point," Renko said, flinging her arm forward, finger outstretched. "You're the mastermind who's been in possession of Kokoro's mask of hope this whole time, aren't you?"

A defiant grin bloomed on the face of the figure standing across from us.

"I don't think you can really call me a mastermind. After all, I haven't done anything."

"That's right, you haven't done anything at all. You just stayed hidden, concealing what Koishi had given you from everyone else. I'm betting your plan was to stay hidden like that until the time was right."

"And when would that be?"

"Let's not play dumb here. You knew that once Kokoro lost her mask of hope it would eventually lead to a crisis in the human village. You even knew that the various religious factions operating there would all try to resolve the issue on their own but ultimately fail. Your plan was to wait until things had gotten desperate and competing religions had all exhausted themselves in fighting before swooping in with the mask of hope in your hands and saving the day."

The figure across from us shifted its weight and folded its arms. "Let's just say you're right. Even if that's true, it's not a crime."

"You're right. It wasn't anything malicious, it was just making the most of a situation that happened to fall into your lap. Which is why I'm not here to criticize you or try to punish you in any way. I'm just here to tell you that you're too late. Your plan won't work anymore."

"Oh, is that so? Well I sort of expected that might happen," the figure said, scratching at its head. "Though for future reference, what makes you think that we're the ones with the mask?"

"It's simple," Renko said, poking the brim of her hat back with one finger. "You're just about the only one who fits all the necessary conditions."

"Condition number one: Komeiji Koishi is the one who picked up the mask to begin with, and only a very limited number of people can communicate with her. So if she gave the mask to someone else, then it had to be someone who was able to see her and that she trusted well enough to leave something of hers in their care."

"You don't know that she did that. She could have just dropped it and forgotten about it."

"I don't think so. When we asked Koishi where the mask was she said that it was a secret. If she had forgotten about it she'd have just said she didn't know. Saying 'it's a secret' meant she knew where it was, and she knew that it was somewhere hidden."

"Even still that doesn't mean she left it with anyone. She could have taken it home and stashed it away somewhere."

"Again, unlikely. We took Kokoro to the Palace of the Earth Spirits in the Underworld and she didn't sense the mask's presence. I don't have any reason to doubt that she was telling the truth when she told us that she would know if she ever got close to the mask. Besides that though, Koishi is aware that she's forgetful. She mentioned that when we talked to her, and she also indicated that she knew the mask was valuable. If she wanted to keep a hold of it, but knew that she was likely to forget about it on her own, then she'd want to leave it with someone she trusted. Which again, would have to be someone she could communicate with. It's true that having the mask meant that the number of people who she could talk to grew, but I think she'd probably want to leave her treasure with someone who she had known for a while. Someone who had been able to see her all along."

"I see. I'm not the only person like that though. Surely there are a few others she could have left it with. Merry can talk to her for one, right?"

"That's true. And that's what brings me to the second condition that you fulfill. Whoever had the mask of hope had to live somewhere where neither Mamizou's tanuki nor Nazrin's mice would have been able to get to them. That could have been Makai, or Heaven or the Netherworld, but she doesn't have friends in any of those places. Now it's possible that Koishi has friends that I don't know about, but there's also a friend she has right here in Gensokyo who happens to live in a place that's pretty difficult to access."

The figure standing across from us frowned silently, looking unsatisfied.

"There's also the third condition. Whoever has the mask can't be anyone who is taking part in the religious war. The situation in the village is being caused by the fact that the mask of hope is missing. If whoever has the mask were to take part in the conflict, they would have already won."

"If they were guaranteed to win, wouldn't whoever has the mask have joined the fight right away then?"

"What would be the point of that? If that was all you wanted you could have just given the mask back to the Menreiki who you knew was searching for it and everything would have gone back to normal right away. This whole situation would have never become an incident then and simply faded from people's minds. If you bided your time, however... Well, all you had to do was sit here and do nothing and you could be assured that sooner or later the village would fall into a state of crisis. If you had solved it right away no one would have praised you, but if you wait until it's a full-blown incident, then you would be a hero. You'd be the saviors of Gensokyo, resolving an incident that not even the Hakurei shrine maiden could have."

"That's three conditions," Renko said, holding up her hand with three fingers extended. Then she stretched out her pinky. "But there was a fourth too."

"Out of all of the people in Gensokyo you were in a unique position to know that the villagers' emotions were starting to go out of control before anyone else. You're probably the first to know almost anything that happens in Gensokyo at this point, due to the number of listening stations you've set up to monitor the human village."

There was no response from the person standing on the other end of the stone path. No spoken one, anyway. After a few moments she shook her head and scoffed though.

"It's all right there and by the numbers. You're the only person who meets all four conditions" Renko reiterated. "Condition 1: you can talk to Koishi, and you knew her even before the incident started. At the end of the Vengeful Spirit Incident, I heard that Koishi had followed Merry's suggestions and came here and that she had spoken with you while she was here."

"Condition 2: you live in a remote area protected by the tengu that almost no one can get to. Your home is not only sitting on the side of the tallest mountain around, but it's surrounded by the territory of the tengu, so any beast youkai like tanuki or mice would think twice before trying to come here."

"Condition 3: you're not participating in the religious war, even by proxy. In fact you're the only religious faction I can think of in Gensokyo that isn't."

"And condition 4: you've got shrines all over the village you can listen from. As kami, you can exist in all of those shrines at the same time and keep track of everything happening in the village remotely. You probably knew about everything that was going on before anyone else."

Renko grinned and gave the brim of her hat a flick as she stared across the twilit path at the silhouette of a small goddess wearing a hat topped with two staring glass eyes.

"So tell me, Lady Moriya Suwako, did I get it right?"


—29—


"Well you're not wrong," Suwako said, hunching in on herself and pouting. "But that's all circumstantial evidence. It wouldn't hold up in any court."

"I could have brought Kokoro with me if I wanted to get conclusive proof that the mask was here, but as I was saying that's not my intention. We're pretty certain we can get the Crown Prince to make a new mask of hope for us, so there's no longer any need for us to retrieve the original."

"Once that happens the mask of hope will lose its power and just become a regular old Noh mask, right?"

"Probably, though it may take a while."

This conversation had been taking place on the shores of the lake beside the Moriya Shrine. Suwako looked up at the darkening sky for a moment then let out a slow sigh before leaning her back against one of the standing Onbashira and sitting down on the rocky shore.

"Hey Kanako, I told you this wouldn't work out."

In response to Suwako's invocation of her name Kanako instantly appeared just beside her.

"That's alright," she said, with a hint of weariness in her voice. "We only pursued this plan because it was a matter of pure opportunity with no cost to us should it fail. We're not any worse off if we can't capitalize on it."

"That sounds like something a loser says to comfort themselves." Suwako griped.

"We haven't lost anything. We might not have won, but this isn't a loss either. Even if the other religions managed to net themselves a few followers out of all of this, once the situation calms down nearly all of those followers will lose their religious fervor and leave."

"Oh, that's definitely just a comforting self-delusion. You're bitter about this."

"Not at all. When this is over we can just have Sanae say 'pray to the Moriya Shrine. Unlike these newcomers they don't stir up riots and incite fear.' It will be fine, especially now that there's a history of fights between the temple and the mausoleum. Once we open people's eyes to these facts, we can make use of that. The Moriya Shrine will be the winner in the end."

"You sound like a scheming tanuki, Kanako." Suwako grumbled.

"Planning for the future isn't 'scheming'" Kanako said with a sigh. Renko shrugged her shoulders as Suwako sulked in silence and Kanako turned to face us.

"Lady Yasaka, may I ask how long you've known about this whole incident?" Renko began.

"From the hour of the ox on the first night that it happened. I happened to notice that a menreiki was searching for something during that time. Then Suwako showed me the mask of hope she had received from Satori's sister and I put the rest together myself. I reasoned that that missing mask was the cause of the villagers losing hope, and I figured we could use it to gather faith."

"And you never told Sanae about any of this, because you thought that she wouldn't be able to hide it from us, right?"

"It's as you say. Since you live in the village I had expected that you'd get involved sooner or later and it would come out, but you're here earlier than I had expected, I admit."

"So why didn't you stop us when we went snuck out to go to the village with Sanae then? I'm betting you were aware of what we were doing."

"If I had shown up and told all of you or even just Sanae not to go, would that have ended your investigation?"

"Heh, I suppose not."

"Exactly. The mask of hope falling into our hands was a simple stroke of luck with the potential to profit our shrine if we could figure out a way to make use of it. What we didn't expect was that bake-danuki making movers of her own. She threw our whole plan into disorder. I also hadn't expected to learn that the Taoist Prince was the one responsible for creating the masks or that she might create a replacement.

To put it all concisely, it seems like the Moriya Shrine's plan had gone something like this:

The Moriya Shrine had been the first organization to become aware of the nightly disturbances in the village. Shortly after they gained that information, they also came into possession of the mask of hope and devised a plan to use it to gain faith by letting the situation evolve into a crisis. Once that happened, they had everything they needed to immediately resolve the incident and become the village's saviors.

The key to their plan was to keep everything secret for as long as possible and ensure that no one knew that the cause of everyone in the village losing hope actually was the result of Kokoro having lost her mask of hope. If anyone found out about that, then they'd be seen as masterminds rather than saviors. Keeping their plan a secret from Sanae was part of their strategy of information management.

Kanako probably would have liked to have captured Kokoro and held onto her until things in the village got bad enough for them to intervene, but since they were keeping the mask of hope at the Moriya Shrine, they couldn't risk her coming into contact with it and ending the incident early. That's why she had continued to let Kokoro roam around this whole time. She could also count on the tengu to turn Kokoro away if she had tried to approach the mountain on her own.

And so, the Moriya Shrine had simply sat back and watched the chaos unfolding in the village from a distance, waiting for things to get bad enough that they could step in. Their plan had been derailed by Mamizou coming into contact with Kokoro and learning the truth of the incident. Her attempts to resolve the situation, which had included hiring us, had spread the knowledge of what was really going on and complicated the Moriya Shrine's plan to swoop in and save the day with their 'correct solution.'

Once Mamizou had realized it would be possible to make a new mask of hope and the original wasn't needed any more, the fact that the Moriya Shrine had the original ceased to be worth much. In the end, the Moriya Shrine's plan to do nothing had exactly the effect one might have predicted: it achieved nothing.

That was the reason why the Moriya Shrine had never entered into the ongoing religious war. It was also the reason why we hadn't seen Sanae at all since that first night. Kanako had realized that once Sanae learned about Kokoro and the mask of hope, she wouldn't have been able to hide what she knew from us, and so had kept her from visiting until the matter was resolved.

If not for Mamizou's interference, everything probably would have gone exactly as the Moriya Shrine had intended. The other religious organizations would eventually have descended into open war with each other, and likely no one would have found Kokoro or realized her connection to what was happening. Even if Reimu had managed to find Kokoro on her own, she would have had almost no way of locating the mask of hope. Then, once the religious war had ground into a hopeless stalemate, the Moriya Shrine would have swooped in with the mask of hope to save the day. It would have been a complete victory for the Moriya Shrine.

In short, the person who had done the most to ensure the stability and continuity of Gensokyo's balance this time around was Mamizou.

"The Moriya Shrine hereby officially withdraws from this incident." Kanako said with a sigh. "We won't do anything to influence the situation down in the village. I don't think we'll need to at this point anyway. I expect there will be plenty of faith for us to gain once this is over with."

"Thank you for that, Lady Yasaka. If you don't mind me asking though, where is the mask of hope now?"

"I have it back at the shrine. We can give it back to the menreiki if you want."

"Actually, if possible, I'd like you to give it back to Koishi."

Kanako was surprised by that response, raising an eyebrow.

"Huh?"

—

This was the course of action Renko and I had come up with after discussing it. If the Crown Prince could make a new Mask of Hope then there was no need to return the original to Kokoro.

And if that original mask was strengthening Koishi's presence at the moment, then it would be best for her if she could hold on to it for as long as possible. Even if the power of the mask was bound to fade eventually, that would just mean that she would go back to being the unconscious youkai she had been before. The fact that the mask of hope had temporarily made her more perceptible to people should have no long-term effect on her. If Koishi could manage to make a few friends while she was still easier for people to sense though, that might make her existence a bit more comfortable. If she happened to meet Kokoro, then I expected that the two of them might actually become good friends.

The expressive poker face and the philosophical zombie driven by pure emotion. A newborn consciousness just learning how to express herself and a closed-off consciousness that could do nothing but express its every notion as soon as they occurred. They were certainly an interesting pair from the perspective of Relativistic Noology.

—

"You have some scheme of your own you're pursuing, don't you?"

"Nothing sinister. Koishi already has gathered a lot of hope from the villagers, so I don't think giving her the mask will make much of a difference."

"Well, I suppose it doesn't matter to me. Suwako, if she comes back here again, give that thing to her."

"Okay, okay. I'll let Sanae know about all of this too," Suwako said before vanishing.

As if she had been waiting for that moment, Renko suddenly changed the subject. "Lady Yasaka, there's actually one more thing I wanted to ask you about," Renko fiddled with the brim of her hat as she spoke. "There's actually another mastermind involved in this incident who we've been trying to track down."

"Another mastermind?"

"Yes, the original one. The one who stole Kokoro's mask in the first place and dropped it into a fissure."

"Couldn't Kokoro just have lost it on her own?"

"Kokoro is a menreiki. Losing one of her masks would be like losing a part of her body."

"I suppose that makes sense for a tsukumogami." Kanako said, nodding in agreement. "A karakasa obake couldn't exactly leave their umbrella behind. "

"Exactly, there's no way she could have misplaced one under normal circumstances. Someone had to have stolen it from her and thrown it into a fissure."

"Why would anyone do that then?"

"I've thought of two possible motivations so far," Renko said, holding up two fingers. "One: they might have wanted to cause an incident by draining the hope from the people of Gensokyo. Two: they might have for Kokoro to develop a personality. Taking the mask of hope unbalanced Kokoro's personality, which might have been the reason she became a youkai in the first place."

Of course, when trying to imagine why someone might have done something, the simplest assumption is to conclude that whatever happened is what had been intended to happen.

"Alternatively, they might have wanted both of those outcomes—turning Kokoro into a youkai while also causing an incident in Gensokyo. If they did that, Kokoro would be bound to eventually encounter the person resolving that incident and be recorded as a part of Gensokyo."

"That's an awful lot of effort for someone to go to on someone else's behalf. It almost sounds like something a parent would do for their child." Kanako mused.

Renko grinned. "I'm glad that someone in your position sees it that way. Kokoro is a menreiki whose masks were made by prince Shotoku, but it's hard to imagine the Crown Prince as the one responsible for all of this. She's quite active in the ongoing religious wars, after all, and if she were the mastermind behind all of this, you'd expect her to be above it all. Because of that, I'm thinking that the mastermind I'm looking for is actually the person to whom the masks that would become Kokoro were given, not the person who created them: Hata no Kawakatsu."

Saying that Renko poked the brim of her hat, sliding it back on her head as she smiled up at the goddess before her. "So that's what I came here to ask, Lady Yasaka. Before we came here we stopped at Hieda manor to do some research. Hata no Kawakatsu was the founder of Noh theater, but he was so revered for his accomplishments that he was eventually enshrined as a god of the performing arts. Do you have any idea how I might be able to find the god of Noh?"

—

If you think about it, the seeds of this particular delusion of Renko's go back to the very beginning of this incident.

The wild dancing we had been seeing in the streets of the village, had, from the very beginning, seemed odd. How could a dance with perfect rhythm, established steps and even a lyrical chant to accompany it emerge spontaneously in the midst of a riot? Obviously it suggested some sort of orchestration, and my partner had suspected that whoever was responsible for organizing that was probably the same person behind everything else.

Her theory was that all of this—both the crazy dancing in the village and everything that had happened with the mask of hope, had all been according to the plans of one entity—the god of Noh theatre.

The only problem was that we had no idea who that was or where to find them. Hopefully Kanako could help us there.

"Unfortunately I don't have any information to give you on the locations of other gods."

Sadly things don't always go the way you would hope. Renko hung her head in disappointment, sighing "Ah, I was afraid of that."

"That's especially true for Hata no Kawakatsu in particular though. In all likelihood Hata no Kawakatsu is the only being that could possibly tell you where to even begin looking."

"Oh? Why do you say that?"

"I've only heard whispers and rumors about it, but apparently when Hata no Kawakatsu was deified, they became a secret god."


—30—


"...A secret god…" Renko was muttering as she fiddled with the brim of her hat.

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! Lady Kanako made me promise not to tell anyone about what she was doing..." 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 grumbling audibly as we flew along.

"A secret god would be one that didn't want people to know about them, right?"

"Presumably."

"Well why would a god like that cause an incident like this? Taking away all of the hope from the humans of Gensokyo is pretty flashy, don't you think?"

"Maybe after being hidden for so long their presence is starting to fade, and they're trying to come back into the open?"

Most of the incidents we had seen in Gensokyo had boiled down to a mastermind trying to assert their presence in one way or another. The Scarlet Mist Incident, the earthquake incident, and the Divine Spirit Incident were all typical examples of that sort of thing. Even in the Vengeful Spirit Incident, the mastermind's goal had simply been to make the Hakurei shrine maiden aware of an ongoing situation.

"If that's the case, this is an awfully convoluted way of doing things. It's not too much of a stretch to imagine that someone would have been able to trace the incident back to Kokoro, but to imagine that Hata no Kawakatsu is involved is a bit of a stretch, especially since Kokoro doesn't have any memories of anything from before this all began."

"That's true. The only person who would plan something as involved and convoluted as that would be you, Renko."

"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." If you asked me that's exactly the sort of thing only a megalomaniac would say.

"Really though the only way all of this makes sense is if it was the god of Noh behind all of this from the beginning. Maybe giving Kokoro a mind and sense of self was the real intent and the loss of hope and incident that resulted from it were just side effects."

"This was a pretty serious incident, Renko. If it hadn't been resolved it could have been disastrous. It's hard to imagine that all of this could have been unintentional."

If all of the villagers' emotions had disappeared, that could have ended up destroying Gensokyo. That said, we had encountered a celestial who had caused an incident with side-effects that might have destroyed Gensokyo merely out of boredom, so I suppose it wasn't out of the question.

"Who knows. We don't know anything about what this secret god is like, so we can't begin to guess if that's something they'd do or not."

"Well if Hata no Kawakatsu became a secret god then it probably won't be easy to—"

Just then, something very strange happened as I was replying to Renko. The space in front of us shivered and distorted, as the boundaries of the world itself seemed to shift and distort. 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. "What the... is that a door?"

I opened my eyes to see Renko staring in wonder. in the sky before us, where I had seen the distortion just a moment before a door was floating in the sky.

"I don't know, but if we keep flying forward we're going to go straight into it!"

"Hey Genji! Stop! Stop!" Renko shouted, slapping her hand ineffectually against Genji's shell.

"Sorry, but I can't stop. That door is pulling me in."

"What?" Before any of us could say anything more the doors before us swung open, revealing only darkness beyond. Before we could even scream we found ourselves suddenly accelerating toward them.

Darkness enveloped us, then with a bang the door in the sky closed.

—

All around us were countless floating doors.

We were still riding on Genji's back, but that was the only thing that hadn't changed. After passing through that doorway we had emerged someplace I had never seen before, in what appeared to be an infinite void, empty except for innumerable doors of all shapes, sizes and alignments floating slowly by at nonsensical angles, untethered to anything.

"Merry, where are we?"

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

"This is a strange place. I've never been here before either," Genji added. I supposed that that meant that Reimu had never been here either. And that we'd have to find our own way out of this place...

"Do you think any of these doors will lead to Gensokyo?"

"I hope so, but even in Gensokyo there's a lot of places I wouldn't want to randomly just appear."

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

"I don't think either of us opened a door. Let's just leave them to the Master."

We heard two nearby voices conversing, but before I could figure out who was speaking or where they were another large, open door appeared before us. Behind it was a woman draped in silks dyed a brilliant orange and decorated in a constellation-like pattern of starbursts sitting in a large wooden chair. She regarded us both with a mocking smile floating on her handsome face.

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

"...Who are you?"

The woman rested one elbow on the arm of her chair, resting her chin on her upraised fist as her smile quirked a little at one corner, becoming a derisive smirk. "You stand in the presence of the very secret god who you have been looking for."

Even Renko seemed unsure how to respond to that.

"I am the god of Noh. And also the god of the back door. The god of impairments. Of constellations and shelter. I am also one of the sages responsible for the creation of Gensokyo. And, 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. "I am Matara Okina. Those who worship me know me as Matarajin."