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

—31—


"Renko, is it really such a big deal if Miss Satori knew about this whole plan?"

"Of course it's a big deal." she grumbled. Her hand kept drifting up to fiddle with the brim of her hat. I had been trying to get her to explain to me what she was thinking about, ever since we set out from the Moriya Shrine almost an hour ago, but anything I asked got a brief reply, followed by more muttering as she turned the issue over in her head. Try though I might, I couldn't guess what was going on inside her head.

Satori had given permission for Kanako to grant the power of Yatagarasu to Okuu. Okuu had gotten a bit too sure of her own power and hatched a plan to invade the surface world, and in response Orin had released the Earth Spirits as an SOS. All of that was clear. What wasn't clear to me was why it mattered whether or not Satori had had any knowledge of Kanako’s plans or not. As far as I could tell it didn’t matter one way or the other. After all, what Orin had been worried about was not whether or not Satori found out about Okuu gaining the power of Yatagarasu, but rather if she found out what Okuu was planning on using that power to do.

If that was the case though, what about that situation could be bothering Renko so much? Was it just that Orin seemed unduly afraid of Satori? If Satori had been willing to let Okuu gain the power of Yatagarasu, surely she wouldn’t do anything rash just because Yatagarasu’s influence had made her pet go out of control, right?

All I could do was wait for Renko to reveal whatever delusion she might be cooking up and dutifully and respectfully record it, like the obedient little Watson that I am. Instead of ruminating on it any further I turned my attention to the path we were walking and Kanako's figure several meters ahead of us, the large shimenawa loop on her back swaying with her every step.

After our conversation back in the village, Kanako had flown the both of us to the Moriya Shrine, promising that she would arrange for us to meet with Okuu. From there she had then led us down a long and meandering mountain path toward the hole that she had had Suwako bore straight down into the mountain.

And so it was that we spent nearly an hour walking down the winding, snowy mountain path. Kanako seemed to have done her best to pick out a safe route for us, but the trail was still difficult and occasionally treacherous with all of the snow covering it.

"This is it," she announced as we arrived.

It might be that the route Kanako had taken us down had been intentionally winding and circuitous to keep us from memorizing the route but personally I couldn't care less. I wouldn't want to go for a hike like this one ever again if I could avoid it. As I bent over to catch my breath and brush the snow off my legs Renko ran ahead, excitedly exclaiming "Look Merry, there's no snow here!"

That much was certainly true. We had come to a small, bare clearing where the ground seemed unusually flat. Perhaps the heat of the Hell of Blazing Fires had reached as far as the surface here, or more likely there was something like the geyser outside of the Hakurei Shrine nearby. Then, directly in the middle of the clearing, I saw it. There was a simple, unadorned and perfectly circular hole in the ground, the top of a shaft that disappeared downwards.

This hole was far smaller than the one we had fallen into, roughly the size of a large well. I suppose if you were just digging the hole so you could go down to the depths yourself there was no need for it to be any bigger.

"Well then," Kanako said, standing by the edge of the shaft with her hands on her hips, "Shall we head down?"

"Into the Hell of Blazing Fires? No thank you!" I said in a panic, flinching away. It's always been a policy of mine that, if possible, I should avoid burning to death.

"Well not all the way, of course," Kanako said. "You two would never survive the heat. I'll take you down as far as it's safe for you to go, then call the raven up so you can meet her. I think once you see her, your worries will largely be allayed."

Renko and I both nodded at the same time—"Absolutely," Renko said. Kanako then stepped forward and wrapped an arm around each of our waists, holding us up off of the ground and squeezing us to her sides.

For the second time in two days I was in freefall, plummeting out of control into the depths of the earth, surrounded on all sides by darkness. Rather than becoming more tolerable due to repeated exposure, the experience remained one I would rather not experience ever again.

The air around us grew steadily warmer, from pleasant to uncomfortable, to a sauna-like oppressiveness to the point where the heat of it stung my skin. The winter clothes that had been so comforting moments ago quickly began to feel oppressive as I started to sweat from the heat. "I think this ought to be close enough," Kanako said, slowing our plummet to a gradual slide and then a hover. Her voice echoed off of the walls of the shaft as a pulsing orange light lit everything from below.

"You two stay here while I go get her," she said, clearly noticing how overheated we both looked. She found a narrow ledge just barely wider than the length of our feet jutting out from the rock wall and placed us both down on it. To me the ledge looked like it might collapse at any moment, but it held steady as we settled into position. Kanako hovered in place, watching us turn around so that our backs were to the wall and we were secure in our footing before descending deeper into the heat of the earth.

Left alone on the narrow ledge, I found myself taking a step closer to Renko and wrapping both of my arms around hers despite the heat. If I were to lose my balance for even a moment it would be a one way ticket to Hell. There would be no net to save me this time.

"Does this sort of place get you going, Merry? It's not like you to snuggle up to me like this. Not that I mind."

"How can you say something like that in a circumstance like this? Are you missing the part of your brain capable of feeling fear or something? How did you manage to survive for two decades in the Outside world before you met me?"

"Maybe it's my superpower. I could be some kind of supernatural survivor."

I was about to quip back at her when a blast of hot air buffeted us from below, carrying the stench of brimstone with it. A flare of red light illuminated the shaft for a moment before dying down. In its pulse I watched a few tiny grains of rock tumble from the ledge and drop into the pit below. Right now my fate seemed every bit as fragile and ephemeral as those pebbles, likely to twist away into a precipitous void at any moment. I said nothing and clung to Renko even tighter as I squeezed my eyes shut. The fact that I had let my partner drag me down to Hell with her on two occasions must say something about my mental state. The next time she tries to come here, I’ll have to make a point of refusing.

After a moment, a voice spoke. "Sorry to keep you waiting. Merry? Are you alright?" I opened my eyes to see Kanako hovering in front of me, looking me over with concern.

"Oh my, Merry. I know you can't keep your hands off of me, but now you want Lady Yasaka to watch? Well I don’t mind, I guess." Renko said, adopting a mockingly scandalized tone.

Forgetting the precariousness of my footing I let go of her with one hand to reach up and pinch at her cheek. Renko laughed and did her best to dodge while unable to step any further away. "Oh, feeling bolder now, Merry? Hey, watch it!" She said as she leaned away from my hand.

"Leave the married couple comedy routine for later, you two." Kanako said, turning in the air to look back down the shaft. "Here she comes."

Remembering myself, I looked down and watched with interest as a figure ascended towards us, her black wings flapping.

The girl who appeared was a breathtaking sight. She was tall and broad-shouldered, larger than Renko or I in every dimension. Her size was further accentuated by three unusual additions to her silhouette. She had lustrous black hair that matched the sheen of her wings and was tied back with a simple green ribbon. If not for the wings and the unusual accessories, she might have passed for an unusually tall and pretty human girl, but looking at her as she was, she seemed just the opposite—not human and largely not even natural. There were elements of her that seemed entirely man-made, standing out chaotically all over her body.

The first was a large jewel-like oval on her chest, which glowed faintly with ruby light. It had a vertical, slit-like dark streak running through it, giving the disturbing impression that it was an enormous, blood-red eye that reached from her collarbone to the bottom of her ribs.

Next, there was the enormous, sharply hexagonal metal rod inset into her right arm. It reached to just before her elbow and extended past her knee, looking like what must have been a bulky and difficult to manage prosthesis. Was that the 'control rod' that Kanako had mentioned?

Finally, her right leg was encased in something dense and irregularly shaped, looking vaguely like an iron boot.

Renko was the first to break the silence. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss," she said, extending her hand to shake, then looking at the rod on Okuu's arm and thinking better of it. "I take it you must be Okuu the hell raven?"

In response, the girl tilted her head curiously, and responded with a voice and tone I wouldn't have expected given her weighty and imposing appearance.

"Unyu?"


—32—


"We're a pair of humans from the surface. I'm Renko, and this is Merry. Orin told us about you. She mentioned you recently acquired a very strong power."

"You know Orin? Have I met you before?" She asked, her head still cocked at a 45-degree angle.

"No, this is our first meeting. It's nice to meet you."

"So you're strangers, then? Why do strangers want to know about me?"

"Well, we were hoping to ask you some questions about the power of Yatagarasu and what you planned to do with it..."

"It's nuclear fusion!" She declared excitedly, interrupting Renko. "Lots and lots and lots of heat and energy all smushed together!" As she said this she swung her right arm around, bringing both hands up toward her face in excitement. "Do you do fusion too?"

As I watched the control rod sweep past, I wished she wouldn’t wave it around so wildly given our precarious footing. It didn’t particularly seem like her excitement had much to do with Renko’s question though.

Renko blinked in surprise at her exuberance. "Uh, no," she said, leaning back as the rod swept over us both again. "I don't do fusion."

"No? You should! It's the ultimate, most unbeatable form of energy. By the way, who are you?"

"I just introduced myself a moment ago..."

"Unyu?" She asked cocking her head to the said again. It was as if the entire conversation had just reset.

"...I'm Usami Renko. This is my partner Merry. We're humans. From the surface." Renko explained again.

"Why are humans in the Hell of Blazing Fires? Are you here to be burned? Orin will be happy, she's always looking for more fuel. Yay fuel!" She said in a sing-song voice, extending both arms over her head happily. She seemed to have no trouble moving or flying despite the heavy looking boot and the rod on her arm.

"No, we're not fuel!" Renko declared, waving her hands in front of her face. "Look, let's try a different question. Orin told us your name was Okuu, but that sounds like a nickname. What's your full name?"

"Utsuho!"

"Utsuho? As in ‘empty’? Hmm, I see, that would be written with '空,' which could be read as 'kara' or '-kuu'. Orin’s in the habit of taking O’s onto the front of things to give people nicknames, I guess. Is that where ‘Okuu’ comes from?"

"Unyu?" Again her head tilted to the side.

"We were about to ask you abo—"

"You guys are really confusing. I'll just go get Orin for you, she'll be so happy I found two new corpses to burn. And really fresh too!"

"We're not here to be burned! We're here because Orin was worried about you and asked us to make sure you weren't getting in trouble!"

"Unyu? Do you know Orin?" Just like that, we were back at the beginning.

Renko stared at Okuu, seemingly flummoxed. Not only was her typical talent for cunning wordplay of no use here, but Renko seemed to be the one getting led by the nose in this conversation. It was quite the rare event to witness.

For her part, Okuu seemed to be unable to keep a given thought in her head for more than a few seconds at a time. It wasn't quite severe enough for me to attempt to diagnose her with anterograde amnesia, but it seemed the capacity of Okuu's short-term memory was severely limited.

Renko sighed and adopted a different tack. "Alright, let me just ask you a simple question, Miss Okuu." Renko spoke slowly, moving her hands demonstratively as she did so. Okuu blinked at her, an utterly vapid, blank expression on her face as her eyes followed Renko's hands. "Are you planning on invading the surface and trying to set everything there on fire?"

"Oh," she said, blinking her eyes with a blank expression.

"Yup!" The smile on her face as she nodded was the sort of blissful, innocent grin that can only survive on the face of a true idiot. Thanks to Yatagarasu’s power, the Hell of Blazing Fires is just as hot as it used to be! I’m gonna spread its fire everywhere and turn the whole surface into a sea of flames. Then we can use the whole surface as a Hell of Blazing Fires!" She announced this with the same brainless tone that one might expect when excitedly discussing tonight's dinner.

"Well, as a human who lives on the surface, I'd prefer if you didn't turn the surface into a sea of flame. Are you aware that doing that would cause a lot of problems for people?" Renko asked, doing her utmost to keep her tone even and conversational.

"Unyu?" was, perhaps entirely predictably at this point, her only response.

"Okuu, why do you want to invade the surface?"

"To make a new Hell of Blazing Fires!"

"Alright, but why? What would doing that accomplish?"

"Why? Unyuuu... I wonder..." She said, tapping a finger of her left hand on her lip as she tilted her head in thought. "I dunno."

If I weren't standing on a narrow ledge above a sea of flame, I might well have stumbled at that.

"You... You don't know?"

"Unyu… I don't remember. But as long as I invade the surface I’ll be really happy, I think!"

It was eerily similar to trying to talk to Cirno. Renko let out a slow breath, pressing two fingers to her temples as she endured a headache which I suspected had little to do with either the heat or her hangover.

"Alright then. Thank you very much for answering that question, Miss Okuu. I suppose there's just one more thing that I should tell you now."

"What's that?"

"Very soon someone very strong is going to come before you, to try and stop your plan."

"A strong person?"

"Yes. They may even be so strong that even with the power of Yatagarasu you won't be able to win against them." Renko said that, but I wondered if it was true. I had seen the things both Reimu and Marisa were capable of and while they were both impressive, could they really compete against the power of the sun? I'd rather not imagine either of them being reduced to ashes amidst the flames of the Hell of Blazing Fires.

"That's impossible!" Okuu declared. "No one can stop me! My ultimate nuclear fusion will burn through anything!" Saying this, she spread her feet and wings wide, and raised the control rod above her head, pointing it straight up the shaft.

I was overcome with a sense that she was about to do something dangerous and began to shrink behind Renko but just then Kanako, who had been floating silently nearby the whole time, cut in. "Alright, that's enough. Go back to the Hell of Blazing Fires now," she said commandingly.

"Unyu?" Okuu asked, relaxing her stance and looking up at Kanako. "Oh, um it’s you… um… God!"

"Yes, that’s right. The goddess from the surface. You've talked enough. You can go back now. If you're going to use Yatagarasu's power, you have to do it down in the Hell of Blazing Fires."

"Oh, right."

"Now run along, I'm sure your friend the kasha is waiting for you somewhere down there."

"Oh! Orin's waiting? I should go find her!" With a flap of her wings, Okuu turned and dived straight down the shaft, back towards the fires below. As her bizarre, lopsided silhouette shrank away, Renko let out a faltering breath.

"Well..." Renko said, slowly recovering herself, "I thought it was difficult to communicate with Satori with her handling both sides of the conversation, but trying to talk with someone who doesn't follow either side is even harder."

"You see what I was getting at now though. That raven has a bird's brain. She didn't even seem to remember my face this time." Kanako stared down the shaft toward where Okuu had departed for a moment longer, then moved to wrap an arm around each of us again.

"Shall we head back to the surface?"

"Yes, let's!" I said, nodding enthusiastically.

Our ascent to the surface this time was much less harrowing than our last trip and the hot air blowing up from beneath us gradually gave way to the pleasantly chilly feel of the winter air as daylight enveloped us once more. After all of that though, I wondered what the point of any of this was. For all of our explorations and discoveries, things were still just as they would have been if we had never gone below ground. Renko was busily pondering something, rotating her hat in her hands as Kanako carried us through the air, but I couldn't for the life of me imagine what there was left for her to figure out.


—33—


"Miss Merry? Miss Renko? What are you both doing here?"

Kanako had flown us straight from the shaft that led down to the Hell of Blazing Fires back a ways up the mountain and over to the Moriya Shrine. As we landed near the stage in front of the outer shrine, Sanae was already running over to us, wide-eyed with surprise.

"Hello Sanae, we were just having a little talk with Lady Yasaka." Renko said as our feet touched down.

"Really?. Lady Kanako, what were you talking about?"

"I'll explain the details later, Sanae. For now, have you seen Suwako?"

"Isn’t she down by the lake?"

"She wasn’t when I looked earlier. I'll go check again." Having said that, Kanako instantly vanished.

Sanae turned to us and cocked her head to the side. "What were you guys talking to Lady Kanako about?"

"Sanae, has Lady Yasaka told you anything about her plans to expand the shrine's capacity to generate electricity?"

"I knew she was planning to do something, but she's being very secretive about it."

"Well, if she hasn't told you yet, I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise."

"But she let the two of you know? Or are you involved somehow? Now I'm curious!"

Sanae leaned forward, shoving her way into Renko’s face like Chitanda Eru from 𝐻𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑘𝑎, chanting "I’m curious, I’m curious" until Renko finally held up both hands to push her off.

"I can't say anything about that, but I've got another mystery we could use your help on."

"Oh? What's that?"

"There was a hermit who came to this shrine once, do you remember her?"

"The one who had a bandage all up her right arm?"

It was only when Sanae said that that I remembered ever having met the hermit at the Moriya Shrine before. What had she said her name was?

"Sanae, do you know where that hermit lives?"

—

"I see her flying around on her eagle sometimes, but I've never gone to visit her. I think she said she lives on the west side of the mountain, near the peak." The three of us were soaring through the air, hand in hand, suspended on a cushion of wind like always.

With Sanae's help we had ascended from the Moriya Shrine half of the distance to the peak of Youkai Mountain. In just the last 24 hours we had travelled from the bottom of the Underworld to almost the top of Youkai Mountain with two additional back and forth journeys along the way. We were very busy people these days, it seemed.

After all of the time we had spent underground and the oppressive heat of merely being in the proximity of the Hell of Blazing Fires, I would have thought flying through the wintry skies would have seemed refreshing, but as gusts swirled old snow off of the mountain and all around us, I found myself being grateful once again for the protective bubble of air Sanae had conjured around us.

"I don't see any buildings down there at all." Renko muttered as she scanned the patchy forest.

"Me neither."

I had no idea how big a hermit's dwelling might be but if it was just a little shack hidden in the trees it would be pretty hard to spot from the air, I imagined. As I looked about, searching for any sign of the place, I happened to notice something else: a lone figure flying through the air just as we were, a ways off to our side.

"Hey Renko," I said, squinting as I tried to make out any details of the flying figure's outline, "Is that Miss Komachi?"

Renko narrowed her eyes and peered in the direction I was pointing before nodding. We only knew of one red-haired shinigami and who else would be flying around carrying a large scythe?

"Do you know her, Renko?" Sanae asked.

"If it is who I think it is. Oh, I think she's seen us too." Renko waved her free hand as the figure that had been flying to our left changed her heading to move towards us. There was no doubt now, it was definitely Onozuka Komachi. As she drew closer, she looked at us, seeing the two of us flying through the air by holding Sanae’s hands with confusion.

"Hello again," she said pleasantly. "You two are the humans I met at Muenzuka a few years ago, aren't you?"

"Indeed we are. I'm honored you remember us, Miss Onozuka. I'm Usami Renko."

"It's rare for any human to come out to Muenzuka in the first place, so of course I would. I'm happy to see that you're both still alive, but what on earth are you two doing flying around a place like this with the shrine maiden from the mountain shrine? It's a cold day to be sightseeing, isn't it?"

"Nothing too serious, we're just looking for a friend of ours who mentioned she lives somewhere around here."

"Umm Miss Renko," Sanae interrupted, "is this person a bad guy?"

"Oh, sorry, I haven’t introduced you two. Sanae, this is Onozuka Komachi, shinigami ferrywoman of the Sanzu River."

"Whoa, are you really a shinigami? Do you have a Death Note and everything?"

"What's that?"

"You don't have one then? What about eyes that can see other people's names and lifespans?"

"Sure, I have those. Did you want me to trade them to you for half of your lifespan?"

"Oh wow. I never thought I'd get the chance. Though if you don't have a Death Note, I'm not sure how useful that power would be..."

"I've never met a human so happy about the idea of trading for shinigami eyes. What would you want them for?

"Oh, there's all sort of ways they could be useful, like—"

"What brings you out here now, Miss Komachi?" Renko interrupted, derailing Sanae's musings. "This is pretty far from the Sanzu river. Are you dodging work again?"

"I'm not slacking off. I'm looking for someone too. Say… would this friend of yours you were searching for up here happen to be a hermit, by chance?"

"Oh, you know her?"

"Yeah, I came to check on her too. I haven't been able to find her anywhere though, she must have shut herself up in a senkai. I was about to call it a day and go find somewhere to warm up."

"A senkai?"

"It's a hermit technique. It creates a space that's only accessible to them where they can be alone to train. Some are only as big as a house and others can be entire worlds, depending on what their creator wants. Finding and breaking into one is a huge pain and it’s cold up here, so I was just about to head home."

I wondered what something like that would look like to me, or if I would even be able to see a barrier concealing what might be an entire world. Perhaps it would be something like interfering with three-dimensional space from some higher dimension, like Reisen's powers. Regardless, it sounded like hermits had some impressive abilities.

"What do you want from that hermit, Miss Komachi? You're not here to collect them, are you?"

"No, I'm just a ferryman, not a reaper. My boss seems to like to keep an eye on hermits, so I check up on her from time to time. "

"I see. By 'my boss' you mean the Yama, right? The same one we met?"

"That's right. If you happen to see her don't mention this though. It's not something she'd want me to talk about. What did you three want with a hermit, by the way? I hope you're not planning to become her apprentices."

"No, we just wanted to ask her a few questions. If a senkai is a type of alternate dimension though, then maybe my friend here can find it. She's quite a skilled barrier-detector. How about it, Merry? Do you see a senkai hanging around?"

"I don't know what one would look like. But I don't see anything that looks unusual, not from up here, anyway," I replied, turning my eyes back to the ground.

"If your eyes can't find it, then it must be very well hidden. Well, there's nothing we can do about that for now and we’re going to catch a cold if we just stay up here circling around. Let’s go back."

Renko sighed, then suddenly perked up, seeming to have just realized something. "Oh, actually,Miss Komachi, would you be willing to take us with you to see the Yama, by chance?"

"What? You want to go to Lady Shinki’s court?"

"Yes. I have a few questions that only the Yama could answer."

Komachi gave Renko an odd look, tilting her head in consideration.

—

"Hey, Miss Shinigami, can you really see our lifespans?" Sanae asked as we landed on the banks of the Sanzu river. It was winter now and the rocky shore was buried under a thick blanket of snow. The spider lilies lining the Road of Reconsideration had of course faded long ago and now slept beneath the silent fields watched over by the foreboding gloom of the edge of the Forest of Magic. Somewhere beyond this river lay Higan, and within it the offices of the Divine Ministry of Right and Wrong, where, presumably, we would find the Yama.

"I can, but I'm not allowed to tell you anything about them."

"Oh, this is weird. I'm really curious but at the same time I don't want to know. But I also do! Oh, by the way though, you said you're just the ferrywoman. What's the big scythe for then?"

"This thing? It’s just so I look more like a shinigami."

"You mean it's just a fashion accessory?"

"What's wrong with that? Fashion is important! More importantly though, I don’t think I’ve ever had a live human ask me to take them across the river before. I'm honestly not sure if that's allowed."

"Would it cause some sort of problem?"

"I don't think so, but it's definitely not how things are supposed to be done."

"Do you think the Yama will mind, Miss Renko? What kind of person are they?" Sanae asked.

"Well, she's a bit prone to lecturing. If we go see her, then chances are pretty good you'll get a solid talking to."

"Me? I don’t really want a lecture, but I’ll be fine since I've got nothing to feel guilty about!"

While I'm sure the concepts of regret and self-loathing were as distant and foreign to Sanae as they were to Renko, I doubted the Yama would see things the same way.

"Kochiya Sanae, you are a bit too selfish for your own good," announced a commanding voice from behind us.

The voice was one I hadn't heard in a long time, but was certain never to forget.

"Lady Shiki!" Komachi half-shouted, spinning around in alarm.

The Yama's silhouette could be seen wading out of a bank of fog clinging to the shore of the Sanzu River, a stern expression on her face and the official hat and uniform of the Ministry of Right and Wrong adorning her body.

"You think of yourself as being free-spirited, but you use that flexibility and lack of commitment only to thoughtlessly pursue your own pleasure, with little sensitivity to the needs of others. You impose your will on people as you please, with no respect for decorum, propriety or dignity. You must learn to restrain yourself, wind priestess of the Moriya Shrine. Keep a respectful distance from others, rather than thrusting the whole of your being on them at a moment's notice. Above all else, you must strive to be humble—"

"Renko, is that the Yama? You didn't tell me she was so cute!" Sanae let out a squeal, interrupting the Yama's lecture as she ran towards the Divine Judge of Paradise and threw her arms around the girl, pressing her cheek up against Eiki’s face she did. "She's a total Becky! Even though she's not blonde! I feel like I'm Himeko or Rena, I love it! Renko, can I take her home?"

"What do you think you're doing?" the Yama cried.

"Maho!" Sanae replied nonsensically, squeezing the Yama against her cheek.

"I am the official Yama of Gensokyo as appointed by the Divine Ministry of Right and Wrong! Get off of me this instant!"

"She's bullying the Yama. What a frightening girl..." Komachi said, covering her mouth as she spoke, an expression half-way between awe and terror written on her face. Somehow I wondered if this was the same technique that had allowed Sanae to subdue Flandre. I was used to thinking of Renko as free-spirited but Sanae was on an entirely other level.

"Alright Sanae, how about we give her some space? You don't want to make the Yama cry."

"I'm not going to cry! Kochiya Sanae, do you want me to condemn you to Hell right here and now?!"

"I'm a living god," She said, squeezing her eyes shut as she again snuggled into the Yama. "I'm beyond your judgement."

By now the Yama's face had grown quite red. With her hair sticking out at all angles from Sanae's ruffling and her hat sliding off, she had lost nearly all trace of the dignity befitting a representative of the heavenly bureaucracy. She growled and Sanae smiled blissfully. Komachi covered her mouth and turned away, whether to keep from laughing or out of mute horror, I couldn't be sure.


"We will have a 𝑙𝑒𝑛𝑔𝑡ℎ𝑦 discussion in due course, you and I. For now though..." she began, tugging her uniform shirt into position and fixing her hat. "I feel I must first speak to you, Usami Renko."


She coughed faintly and brushed a stray lock of hair off of her forehead, trying to regain some measure of dignity. "I see that you have continued to endanger both yourself and your partner without the slightest bit of remorse. What will it take, I wonder, to impress upon you just how dangerous the path you are walking has become?"

"After examining my lifestyle I've yet to find anything in need of change."

"This reprehensible arrogance of yours will be your destruc—No, I will forgo the sermon this time."

Even the Yama seemed to recognize that trying to lecture Renko under the current circumstances wouldn’t be very productive.

"With that said," the Yama continued, "I take it you have some pressing question to ask of me? Let's hear it then."

"Oh, thank you for your brevity! It's about the Underworld."

"Yes, I see that you've recently visited the old capital."

"Quite accidentally I assure you. But while we were there we happened to meet Komeiji Satori from the Palace of the Earth Spirits."

As Renko said that, the Yama's eyebrow twitched ever so slightly.

"I heard that you tasked her with the duty of managing those vengeful spirits left behind in the Underworld when Hell was moved."

"Yes, that's correct. It's a task of critical import. Komeiji Satori was given that duty because her ability to read minds makes her naturally suited to the role. Vengeful spirits cannot hide from her, as they are little more than bundles of dark thoughts themselves."

"Given that the task is so important, and so uniquely suited to Miss Komeiji, I must imagine you would be disappointed to hear that that task is actually being carried out by one of her pets, for the most part."

"I am aware of this. The pet in question is a kasha who has been living in Hell of Blazing Fires for a very long time. She too is quite skilled in the manipulation and handling of vengeful spirits. Making use of her pets is an acceptable managerial practice and an appropriate delegation of responsibility to a skilled underling from the Ministry's perspective."

"I see. I take it there was some issue preventing you from simply moving the Earth Spirits to Hell's new location?"

"To some extent, yes. Moreover it was a matter of protocol. Those vengeful spirits have become bound to their locations, but more importantly, they’re all souls who were sentenced to the Hell of Blazing Fires to be punished. To transport them elsewhere could lead to their annihilation."

"So it must have been a real problem for you when the oni and all of the other youkai moved down to the Underworld. You had intended to use the ruins of Old Hell to seal them away, right? You must have had to scramble to get Miss Komeiji into position once that happened."

"Not at all. She was already there, working for us long before the oni came to the Underworld."

"Oh! So then the Palace of the Earth Spirits predates the oni from the surface moving down there then? That makes sense. " Renko asked.

"Yes, what of it?"

"Well, I'd just like to confirm one detail about that time. Back then, when you were overseeing the Underworld, did Komeiji Satori happen to have a sister? Was there another satori, by the name of Komeiji Koishi, living with her?"