東方プロジェクト二次小説・オリジナル小説サイト
Chapter 11:Scarlet Weather Rhapsody

—31—

[ 𝐀𝐧𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬]

When we returned to our office, we found Sanae there, sitting at Renko's desk, sipping tea and nibbling rice crackers while looking bored.

"Oh, welcome back," she said as we came in the door.

"Sanae, are you still here? Go home." Renko said as she took off her shoes.

"What? You leave me here alone then come back and tell me to get lost? Are you two going to make out now or something? I don't mind."

"You're still a minor, so I'm afraid it's time for all good little children to head home."

"Seriously? You're going to do that now? It's not even dinner time yet!"

"Renko! Don't give her any weird ideas about us." I reached out and pinched her cheek.

"Yow! Ow! Be gentle, Merry!"

"Oh, you two really are going at it" Sanae said, rising to her feet with an astonished expression.

"I know this is a bit of a jerk move on my part but I actually do have something I have to discuss with Merry right now though. I'm sorry about this, so can you please give us some time?"

Sanae reluctantly made her way to the door. "Alright, fine. You do whatever you're going to do, but the next time you come by the shrine make an offering to Lady Kanako and Lady Suwako." She walked past me into the entryway to put on her boots then looked back at us one last time before heading out the door. "See you later, I guess." Renko watched her fly away, then slid the door shut and propped a stick diagonally against the corner of the frame, wedging it closed. She let out a breath before turning to face me.

"I take it you've come to a conclusion?" I asked.

Renko walked past me and pulled out two cushions, then sat down cross-legged on the floor, holding her hat in her hands and running her fingers over the brim. "I think so. Normally I would run my theories past the mastermind of an incident and ask them to disprove them, but the person I need to talk to in this case is avoiding me."

"You mean the Youkai Sage?"

"Exactly. I'll run my theories by you this time. If you should ever happen to see her again, maybe you can do me the favor of asking her about them."

"I doubt I’ll be able to remember everything."

"I'm certain you'll manage, Merry. Now, where to start... In order to explain this one I'm going to have to get a little bit technical. How much do you know about dimensions, Merry?"

"Dimensions? In the sense of physics? Not as much as you. I won't be able to follow along if you get too deep into it."

"That's okay, I'll keep it simple." She stood up for a moment and looked around the office then went over to the corner where I kept my writing desk and supplies and grabbed a few things before coming back and sitting down. "Okay, Merry. How many dimensions are there in this world we live in?" she asked.

"Three, right? Up/down, left/right and front/back."

"Close! There's one more than that that I'd like you to add to your mental model: time. Ever since Einstein the view of physics has been that reality consists of three spatial dimensions and one chronal one. Do you remember when I told you about how time and space are inseparable?

"Yes, you mentioned that when we were first at the Scarlet Devil Mansion, when we were talking about Sakuya's abilities. Because she can manipulate time, she can affect distance too. You said something about distance only being considered distance because it takes time to cross and if it took no time then there would essentially be no distance, right?"

"That's right. By controlling time she was able to manipulate space. The same is true in reverse."

"The reverse? How would that work?"

"If you can manipulate distance then you can manipulate time, essentially." Renko's argument boiled down to If A=B then B must equal A as well which was easy to understand in principle but hard to imagine applying in real life. "That would probably be something like what we saw Reisen do during the incident at Eientei."

"Ah, you mean the corridor that stretched on forever?"

During the Eternal Night Incident Reisen had used her eyes' ability to manipulate waves to make the corridors seem to stretch on forever as a countermeasure against intruders. If you look at the time it would take to move down that corridor normally, and the time it would take to move down that corridor with the way Reisen had warped it, then Renko's point became clear.

"Okay, I follow that. You're thinking that the Youkai Sage has a similar ability?"

"Actually, no. I think she's far more powerful than that. What she does doesn't follow these rules. Sakuya or Reisen can both shorten the amount of time it takes to get somewhere, but they can't make it zero. Reisen can compress a wavelength, but she can't eliminate it entirely. Even when Sakuya seems to move instantly to us, time is still flowing normally for her. Neither of those two can ever be truly free from the yoke of time. The Youkai Sage doesn't seem to have any such restrictions. Her abilities allow movement across any distance instantaneously while keeping the flow of time unchanged from her point of view. She's not like Lady Yasaka either, where she's in two places at once or only restricted to appearing near shrines. She doesn't even have to be involved in the gaps she creates, as evidenced by her sending us to Hakugyoukurou. It's complete nonsense from the point of view of physics."

"Alright then, so why all this talk of dimensions, if the rules don't apply to her then?"

"Ah, you're jumping ahead. Let me get there, it'll make more sense if you see the steps in order. Now back to the planned lecture. Merry, do you know why time moves in only one direction? Always flowing from the past to the future? Our own inexplicable situation excepted, of course."

"What do you mean, 'why'? That's just the way time works, right?"

"Exactly. The laws of our universe stipulate that time has to always flow forward. Admittedly, the question of exactly why that is was still unknown even in the Scientific Century. But regardless of the reason behind it, that directionality is what makes time a dimension — it always moves in one direction, charting a path like a one-dimensional line."

"Alright, I think I’m starting to get it."

"Now, keep that idea in the corner of your mind. For the next bit though let’s ignore time and go back to just thinking of a three-dimensional universe."

Saying that, Renko produced one of the items she had grabbed off of my desk. A scrap sheet of paper. "Now, how many dimensions are there on this sheet of paper, Merry?"

"Three technically, right? The thickness of paper counts as a dimension."

"That's true, but let's say this only had two dimensions though, just for argument's sake. Like a perfectly straight line in math, it's technically impossible, but useful to illustrate a point. Speaking of which, how would you calculate the length of this line?" Renko said, drawing her finger across the paper diagonally, from one corner to the other.

"The length of the diagonal is the square root of the sum of the squares of length of the paper and its height, right?"

"Exactly. But more importantly, you and I both exist in a three-dimensional space. That extra dimension lets me manipulate things on lower dimensional planes in some interesting ways. For example, I can cheat like this." she said, folding the paper into a triangle with the diagonally opposite corners touching.

"Now the two dimensional distance is just the same, but if I were to travel between a point on one corner to a point on the other corner in the third dimension, the distance would be almost zero."

There was a mystery I had read where such a trick was the key to solving the crime, but I'll not mention its name here because it might end up in Suzunaan.

"So, as you can see," Renko continued, "higher dimensional spaces can interfere with lower dimensional ones. My theory is that Reisen's ability works the same way. Warping three dimensional space by manipulating something in the fourth dimension. Reisen says she does it by manipulating 'wavelengths' and I think the wavelengths she’s talking about are something that exists in the fourth dimension."

"So she can interfere with time?"

"She may not think of it that way, but by manipulating wavelengths, that’s what she’s doing. Just like how I folded the paper and traversed a what would seem to be a large two dimensional distance through a much smaller distance in the third dimension, I think the Youkai Sage can see and manipulate things from a higher dimension where she exists, bending our three spatial and one chronal dimension as she pleases.

"And so for her it’s like distance doesn’t exist…"

"Exactly. But if that were all she could do then her ability wouldn’t be any different than Reisen’s. I think the Youkai Sage can do more than just fold the paper." Saying that, Renko carefully rolled the sheet of paper into a tube, arranging it so the top and bottom just barely overlapped. "If I did this and then asked you how far it’s possible to travel along this sheet in a single direction, the answer would be infinite. If this were a longer strip of paper, I could even join the ends with a twist to create..."

"A Mobius strip."

"Exactly. A two dimensional shape in which you can transition from one side of the plane to the other just by going in a straight line."

Somehow when Renko said that, it sent a chill down my spine. I felt like we were approaching the heart of the matter, but I still wasn't sure where she was leading.

"So, higher dimensions can influence lower dimensions, but like I asked you to keep in mind, time is unidirectional. It only moves forward, and it always moves forward. It never stops, and it can't go back. So it stands to reason that you and I can’t possibly have gone back in time. In fact, we must have kept going forward.

But..." she said, putting the paper aside and fishing out a different object, a length of string this time, "If a higher dimensional being could take that unidirectional dimension of time and do this..." she said, tying the two ends of the string together. "Then time, even moving relentlessly forward, would be a loop."


—32—


I still remember the day Renko and I wandered into this world, unknowingly leaving behind our homes in Kyoto in 2085, perhaps forever. We had been visiting the long-sealed room of Renko's great aunt, Usami Sumireko. There we had found a flimsy, hand-written notebook with the title 'Hifuu Club Activity Record' and within its pages a chunk of amber with an insect trapped inside. I’ve recorded those details in my earliest casefiles, so you can find them there if you need to.

That piece of amber was then given back to me by the Youkai Sage, just after the conclusion of the Spring Snow Incident. She then transported me across the Great Hakurei Barrier, where I had in turn given it to someone else. A young child, who almost certainly must have been Renko's great aunt. Now, looking at Renko and the loop of string in her hands, I realized what she was trying to say.

"So then the reason we're here in Gensokyo in 2008 is because the Youkai Sage constructed a time loop?"

"Exactly. Time’s unidirectional arrow has carried us along from the future to the past, along the curvature of an arc shaped by the Youkai Sage. If I’m correct in assuming that she’s responsible for us being here, this is one way that she might have been able to do that. And if that much is true then it would also make sense to consider the Youkai Sage to be responsible for ensuring that my great aunt had come into possession of the amber in the first place. Of course with the information available to us it would be impossible to confirm if any part of this theory were actually true, but it would explain every aspect of the mystery of our presence in this world as well as her motivation for causing this most recent incident as well."

"What?"

"Think about it, Merry. If time is looping, then that means that the Youkai Sage knows what happens in the future. At least as far as when she created the loop and brought us here, in 2085. If Ran is right and she's always trying to create the best possible path for this world..."

"...Then you think she wanted things to play out the way they did to ensure that a keystone was placed in Gensokyo. To prevent a devastating earthquake that otherwise might have destroyed this place. Is that it?" I asked, finishing Renko's sentence for her.

"Exactly. If I'm right, then everything was set in motion to get Tenshi to insert that keystone. The Youkai Sage would have been the one to make sure that the sword was left where Tenshi could find it and dissuade anyone from stopping her from using it. All of that was just one step in her plan to get a keystone implanted in Gensokyo to protect it from a future earthquake. Making a big show of destroying the shrine again and punishing Tenshi in front of everyone might have just been a smokescreen to hide that she was responsible."

"In other words, you think the Youkai Sage had the same idea as Sanae did?"

"More or less, yes."

◆ ◇

"Okay," Sanae had said, taking a steadying breath and trying to organize her thoughts. "It goes like this. Heaven is accessible from various places in the Outside World, right? If we can convince Tenshi to use her powers for good, we could have her do in all of those places what she did here. Drive keystones into the ground to prevent earthquakes. You two know when and where a major quake is likely to happen, so all we'd have to do is point Tenshi at the right time and place! Think how many lives we could save in the Outside World!"

That was the nature of the project Sanae had proposed to us. A plan that might have saved tens of thousands of lives in Japan alone, if it had been able to prevent the Tohoku quake and tsunami or the devastating Tokai quake. If such a thing could be done, the humanitarian argument for doing so was compelling. But to do so would also necessarily mean intentionally causing a deviation from history —both of those tragedies had been recorded as historical events in the Scientific Century.

It was, of course, possible that the history of the Outside World occurring beyond the bounds of Gensokyo was already divergent from the timeline Renko and I knew. We had no means of confirming details, after all. But there was no way that we could accept the responsibility of intentionally reshaping history as we knew it. If we were to erase events that had reshaped Japan’s history, even if they were tragic events, we couldn’t possibly predict what the eventual outcomes of such interference might be. That was why Renko had had to refuse to be a part of Sanae’s plan, even if it was the right thing to do from a humanitarian perspective. Regardless of virtuous intent, it was simply too dangerous to try.

For the Youkai Sage though, such concerns likely didn't apply. If her goal was only to choose the best way forward for Gensokyo, then any external impacts to her decisions could be disregarded. She was free to reshape the history of this secluded world as she liked. Could that really have been her goal? Had Tenshi, Reimu and who knows how many others all been used as pawns in furtherance of her agenda?

◇ ◆

"So Renko," I asked, pondering that question in my mind even as I spoke, "why were you so concerned about the location of Gensokyo?" I had a suspicion I already knew the answer.

"Well, think about it for a second, Merry. I'm sure you can figure it out."

"If the Youkai Sage's goal was to prevent a major earthquake here, then I don't see why Gensokyo's location would matter."

"Right, but Gensokyo is connected to the Outside World. If a major earthquake were to occur here, it would affect the Outside World as well, but the reverse is also likely true. If there were a major earthquake in the Outside World, that shaking could be enough to wake up the catfish under Gensokyo —unless there was a keystone here pinning it down!" A chill coursed its way down my spine as she said that. "That's why Gensokyo's physical location matters. Miss Akyuu said that Gensokyo hasn't had any major earthquakes at all since it was sealed off 120 years ago. That would have been 1885, and there have been a bunch of huge earthquakes since then all over Japan. The great Kanto earthquake and the Great Hanshin Earthquake to name a few. But Gensokyo never felt any of those. In a country like Japan you might be able to find a spot that hadn't felt a single earthquake in 120 years, but that would have to be pushing the limits of how long you could keep getting lucky. We know there's going to be a huge earthquake in 2011, and maybe the Youkai Sage does too. And while it's true that most of the damage from that quake was the result of a tsunami, the tremors themselves would be more than enough to destroy a place like the human village that lacks modern building methods."

My mind flashed back to the pictures and videos I had seen in history classes as a high schooler. A massive earthquake, followed by an almost unprecedented tsunami. Entire villages wiped off the face of the earth without a trace by 20-meter tall walls of frothing mud. The resulting nuclear disaster had put the word 'Fukushima' in the same terrible category as 'Chernobyl' internationally, a shorthand for a terrifying man-made environmental catastrophe. The direct casualties were thought to have exceeded 15,000 and the ongoing effects of the contamination and cleanup efforts had been a looming shadow over all of Japan for the first half of the 21st century.

Perhaps Gensokyo had once been meant to be among those places destroyed in that disaster.


—33—


When we went to bed that night, the implications of Renko’s theory were still spinning through my head. If a being had the ability to loop spacetime as Renko had suggested and was actively shaping history to choose the best path for Gensokyo, then our presence here had to also be part of that plan. What could the Youkai Sage want with us though?

Listening to Renko's breathing on the futon beside mine, I tossed and turned restlessly. Random, disconnected thoughts flew through my mind, circling a central theme, but never filling in the missing pieces of the puzzle. How could we be instrumental in ensuring the best future for Gensokyo? Where did cause end and effect begin?

I remember distinctly the feeling of cold clarity that descended on me the moment it all clicked into place. The dreadful feeling of certainty that settled like a lens over my eyes, casting everything I saw in a new light. My eyes shot open as I sat up. Beside me Renko was curled into a ball, groaning softly in her sleep. I rose to my feet as quietly as possible and moved to the door, opening it gently and looking out at a bright moon shrouded by mist in the night sky. As if lured by the moon, I found myself stepping outside, barefoot and still in my bedclothes, with no destination in mind. Still staring upward, I wandered onto the compacted earth of the schoolyard.

"Good evening. The moon is beautiful tonight, isn't it?"

The voice had come from above me. I turned in its direction with a gasp to see a solitary figure sitting on the roof of the schoolhouse. The figure waved a finger at me. At once, the space itself directly in front of me split open, a clean cut in the fabric of reality appearing before my eyes. In the span of a heartbeat, the gap enveloped me and I found myself sitting on the roof of the school, directly opposite the Youkai Sage, face to face.

"...Yakumo Yukari..." I managed to speak, finding my throat suddenly dry.

"It's been a long time, Maéreverie Hearn."

The Youkai Sage propped her elbows on a tiny fissure in space and leaned toward me, resting her face on her folded hands and smiling at me with a cat-like grin.

"Why are you here?" I managed.

"What a question! You called for me, didn't you?" As she leaned back, her smile was hidden behind the fan that had appeared in her hand, but the mirth in her eyes was still plainly visible.

"Me?"

"That's right. You seemed to want to talk to me, so I went to the trouble of coming all the way here. Don't tell me you intend to waste my time."

Had I wanted to talk with her? Even if I had, I had no idea what I might have wanted to say to her.

"Despite how I make it look, being this world's Administrator does keep me rather busy. I only have time for a limited number of questions, and not the sort of lengthy diatribes your partner is fond of. So, if you have something you need of me, let's hear it." she prodded, snapping her fan closed and pointing it at me. I let out a slow breath and clenched my fists tightly at my side as I stared at the tip of the fan.

Why had she come here now? Was there some meaning to her having appeared at this moment, or was it merely coincidence? It could well have been nothing more than a whimsical youkai's boredom. I couldn't adopt the conceited belief that our presence in this world as Outsiders made us special. Even if we happened to be from the future, we shouldn’t have mattered to someone like her any more than any other ordinary human.

Still, there was part of me that couldn’t believe that her showing up here and now was truly just random. There had to be some purpose to it. Or maybe…

"Your partner seems to have dreamed up some rather interesting theories about me."

"You were listening in on us?" I blurted without thinking. Really though it wouldn't be surprising if she had been. Ran could easily have told her about having spoken to us, or...

"Was that what you wanted to spend your question on?" She said, again smiling like a cat.

"Ah, no!"

"Well then, spit it out. I have other business to attend to tonight."

If Yukari had heard Renko's theory, it would be easy enough to ask her about it. But in ruminating on Renko's words all night I had come up with a question of my own. Swallowing once more, I posed that now. To the only person who could possibly answer it.

"You were the cause of the recent incident, weren't you? But you weren't the mastermind behind it, I don't think."

There was no response to that statement, so I took it as permission to continue.

"Renko thought that you orchestrated events to get a keystone driven into the Hakurei Shrine grounds in hopes of protecting Gensokyo from being destroyed by a major earthquake that you know is going to happen in the future. But I think that would only make sense if Gensokyo happens to be located somewhere where it would be affected by the Tohoku earthquake or some other major quake, which isn’t guaranteed. If that’s not where we are then It’s possible that her whole theory is a bust. Personally, I think all of this recent fuss, with the weather and the earthquake and keystone —I don't think any of that was something you expected."

"And even if she is right, I think that still leaves the question of how Tenshi got that sword, and why no one stopped her. Renko thinks that was your doing, but I think it might be simpler than that. Maybe the powers that be in Heaven wanted her to have it. Maybe they wanted to be able to blame everything that happened on her and make it seem like causing earthquakes was just a childish prank even though it was really something they had wanted to do all along. I’ve thought about it for a while… and I think they might have manipulated Tenshi into doing this because they wanted to send a warning.

"The rule of the heavens over earth has been established since ancient times though, so why would they go to the trouble of re-asserting that rule now? I was thinking about that too and it occurred to me that someone on Earth could have done something to provoke their ire. Really, that was Eirin's idea, but the only one I can think of who might try something like that... would be you."

"If you were the one who brought all of this down on Gensokyo through some action in the past, then I think that might explain why you felt the need to go after Tenshi with your own hands. Since you were the ultimate cause of all of this trouble, it could be that you wanted to take some degree of responsibility for it."

Still there was no reaction from the sage. I looked down to avoid her gaze, wondering what she would think of the theory. Renko had thought that all of this was a grand scheme of the sage's, but it still left the question of why no one in Heaven had tried to take the sword away from Tenshi unanswered. My theory at least explained why that was. To me at least, it made more sense.

"An interesting story," The Youkai Sage said, showing a glimpse of a charming smile before she covered her mouth with her fan again. "But I'm quite sure I've never in all my years done anything that would bring the anger of Heaven down on this little paradise of mine."

I let out a sigh. In the end, I suppose I really am only the Watson to Renko's Holmes. As plausible as my theory had sounded in my head…

"In the end, the earthquake will happen regardless of what I do."

As the Youkai Sage said that, a terrible chill passed through my body. I raised my head to look at her as my mind filled with a terrifying, unreasonable imagining. The sort of megalomaniacal idea that could only be the result of my long association with my partner. But weren't the Sage’s words the same ones Reimu had heard several days ago?

The words leaked out of my mouth before I was aware that I was saying them. "No way..." I muttered. "Did you... was that the original history? You did something to Heaven and in retaliation they destroyed Gensokyo with an earthquake? Then you looped backward in time and brought us here to try and avoid the same thing? Are we already in an alternate timeline?" There was no answer. The Youkai Sage's eyes merely smiled at me above the fan, looking amused.

"Ran said you're always looking for the best future for Gensokyo. Is this incident just one test case for you to try out? Originally Gensokyo was destroyed by an earthquake previously, so you tried this timeline in which you never took any action against Heaven, but then Tenshi came along and caused an earthquake anyway?

As I spoke all of that in one explosive breath, a cold fear washed over me. Could this be why we had been transported to Gensokyo? Had my partner really figured everything out as far back as the Spring Snow Incident? Could the reason that we always arrive before the mastermind behind an incident before Reimu did be because of the Youkai Sage's interference? Was everything we had faced just a part of her attempt to rewrite history in a way that was better for Gensokyo?

The folding fan collapsed with a click as Yukari once more pointed it at me, slowly rising up into the air, still seated as she did so. "Alright, your time is up!" She said with a smile. "That was an amusing little diversion, so I won't punish you for wasting my valuable time. But I would be careful not to overestimate the importance of yourself or your partner, Miss Hearn. Gensokyo is a small world, but even in a place like this, the power of a single human is insignificant. No one person can change the world. To believe otherwise would be ignorant and reckless."

Unfolding herself from her sitting position, she stood, still rising toward the moon as she looked down on me.

"You know that better than anyone, don’t you? There is no such thing as 'objective truth' or an 'original timeline' Maéreverie Hearn. The world is only what we perceive it to be."

And just like that she was gone. Leaving me alone in the schoolyard, gazing up at the placid, mysterious moon which floated untethered in the sky, as serene as a reflection on still water.