東方プロジェクト二次小説・オリジナル小説サイト
Chapter 13:Subterranean Animism

—37—


Before I reveal the solution to this mystery deduced by Renko, I should first make a disclaimer.

Renko's theory explaining this particular incident is closely related to and entangled with her theories regarding the Night Parade of 100 Oni Every Three Days. I'd recommend you read that case first if you haven't already.

—

From what I heard later, it seems that just as Renko and I were sitting in our room, warming our hands and worrying about Reimu and Marisa, those two were actually busy infiltrating Old Hell with the support of several youkai who aided them in various ways without actually accompanying them down into the Underworld.

Reimu was aided by the Youkai Sage herself, as well as Ibuki Suika and Shameimaru Aya. Marisa was aided by Alice, Patchouli and Nitori, who had all banded together out of a shared interest in the Underworld. The youkai supporting the two girls each had their own agenda and reason for wanting to explore the Underworld, but they were united in their desire to provoke humans into doing their deeds for them.

Despite the lack of information, Reimu and Marisa managed to shoot down Yamame, Kisume and Parsee without slowing down, then fought Yuugi in the middle of Old Hell and impressed her enough that she befriended them and showed them to the palace. From there, they met Satori then made their way to the Hell of Blazing fires itself, where they were greeted by Orin before they finally confronted Okuu in the very bowels of the inferno. I wasn't witness to any of these battles and this story has already grown quite long, so if you want to know the details of those confrontations, you'll have to either go ask Reimu or Marisa yourself, or wait for the next addendum to Miss Akyuu's writings to be published.

We didn't know about any of this at the time though. We first began to hear about it the next day...

—

That day saw only a light snowfall in the morning and so Keine opened the school for a half-day of classes in the afternoon. After classes, we made our way along the dim and slippery road toward the Hakurei Shrine, carefully navigating the icy stairs and passing through the snow-choked path under the torii.

Ours were the only footprints in the snow around the shrine that day and nothing had been shoveled. Still, we trudged our way through the yard and over to the offertory box, where we each threw some coins between the slate before dutifully clapping our hands and bowing before venturing around to the back of the shrine to look for Reimu.

Given the weather, it wasn't surprising to find that Reimu wasn't sitting on the veranda and had retreated into the warmth of the shrine, but we did see an unexpected figure dozing on the porch. A large black cat with a pair of red-tipped tails. Renko and I turned to look at one another in surprise, then Renko spoke.

"Orin? Is that you?"

The cat meowed in surprise at her voice and perked up its ears, then transforming into the same cat-eared girl we had seen before. "Hello surface-sisters! What are you doing here?" She asked with a mystified expression.

"What are we doing here? What are you doing at the Hakurei Shrine?"

"Do you two know the shrine maiden?"

"We know her. If you've met her too though, then I'm guessing she went down to the Underworld and fought Okuu?"

Orin nodded happily. "Mhmm! She came down yesterday. Since then Okuu has calmed down and given up on invading the surface. We're saved!"

"Ah well, I suppose that means our efforts were all in vain. Oh well. How's Okuu doing? I guess there's no more geysers if she's been beaten now, eh?"

"Nah, Okuu's fine and still just as powerful, they just made her promise not to set the surface on fire. The geyser's probably still running and I'm not sending the vengeful spirits up any more but I had to break a bunch of seals to do that in the first place, so a few may end up leaking out on their own from time to time." She explained this as casually as one might discuss the weather. Given that she was supposed to be the one in charge of managing the vengeful spirits, I wondered if such a blasé attitude wouldn't end up making for more trouble in the future.

"Well, that's nice to hear, but what are you doing on the surface, Orin? Are you allowed to be here?"

"Not my fault, sis. I got caught by a strange youkai who looked exactly like your friend there and she brought me here."

Renko's eyes went wide. "The Youkai Sage brought you here?"

Before Orin could respond further the door to the shrine's interior slid open and Reimu poked her head out. "What's all this noise back here?" she asked, craning her head around the door towards us.

"Hello Reimu, I hear you went down to visit the Underworld"

"Merry, Renko. I should be asking you about 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 visit to the Underworld. I'm used to you two inserting yourselves into the middle of incidents by now, but I never thought you'd go so far as to visit the Underworld."

"Well, it was a bit of an adventure to be certain. I take it you heard we were down there from Miss Yuugi?"

"Imagine my surprise when an oni ends her fight with me by saying 'say hi to Renko for me'"

"That's nice of her. I'll have to go pay her a visit again sometime."

"You most certainly will not. But now that you're here I've got some questions to ask you both," she said, glaring suspiciously at me with half-lidded eyes. "That hell raven was given the power of Yatagarasu by a mountain goddess. I'm guessing that was the one from the Moriya Shrine. You're close with her and Sanae, aren't you? Is she the one who sent you guys down to the Underworld?"

"Lady Yasaka was mixed up in all this? Really?" Renko asked, pantomiming ignorance. In truth Lady Yasaka hadn't had anything to do with our visit to the Underworld, but that hardly cleared her of suspicion. Reimu stared at Renko with an unimpressed look while beside her Orin just looked confused.

"Don't play dumb with me, you two are just regular humans. There's no way you could have gotten into and out of the Underworld alive without outside assistance."

"Honestly, she had nothing to do with it, Reimu. We fell into the shaft while looking for a safe way down. We would have died for certain except that we ended up getting caught in the web of a tsuchigumo. Maybe you saw her down there? Her name's Kurodani Yamame, and she usually hangs out in the vertical shaft before the bridge to the city."

"A tsuchigumo? I think there might have been someone like that..."

"We fell down there and were captured, but I managed to talk our way out of being eaten by befriending Miss Yuugi. Then we went on a bit of a tour and ended up meeting Orin there. I had no idea Lady Yasaka was involved in any way."

Reimu glared at Renko. It seemed like she could tell something was missing from the story but didn't know what to ask. Eventually, she settled on simply saying "...that sounds suspiciously convenient."

"It's the honest truth. Lady Yasaka had no involvement in our trip to the Underworld. If you don't believe me, go ask Sanae, she won't know a thing about it."

"Something about this is still suspicious. They’re definitely up to something up on the mountain. I’ll go ask them about it later."

"Well the Moriya branch shrine is right over there, Reimu. Why not call Lady Yasaka up and have her come explain everything to you? I'm sure she has a perfectly reasonable explanation at the ready."

"I'm not a priestess of the Moriya Shrine, I can't just call up their god like that." I thought about that for a moment. I suppose Kanako's appearance, or even acknowledgement of Renko's summons at the branch shrine near our house really was a special privilege granted to us due to our friendship with Sanae.

Reimu glared at us a moment longer then sighed, hugging her shoulders against the cold. "Well anyway, it's cold out here. Why don't the three of you come inside? I'll make some tea and we can talk without freezing."

"Why thank you, Reimu, that's uncharacteristically hospitable of you. What's the occasion?"

"I heard some coins falling into the offertory box."

"Well thank you very much for the offer, but I'm afraid we have other commitments today. Merry and I should be on our way."

"Where are you headed now? Up to the Moriya Shrine to warn Kanako that I'm on to her?"

"Not at all. Actually, if it's alright with you, Reimu, I was hoping to take this stray off of your hands when I go. Miss Orin, would you be so kind as to take me and my partner back to the Underworld?"

Reimu's eyes widened slightly in surprise, but Orin looked positively bamboozled. With a tone of complete astonishment she pointed to herself and asked "Who, me?"

—

Thus, for the third time, the Hifuu club descended into the Underworld. With Renko giving directions, Orin had flown us directly from the grounds of the Hakurei Shrine to the vertical shaft leading down into the Underworld and was now carrying us carefully down to the bottom.

"I'm sorry to ask this of you, Orin, but I really do need to talk to your master."

In response to Renko's statement Orin looked quizzically at her for a moment then shrugged. "I don’t mind. This is because she asked you to try to find Lady Koishi, right?"

"Yeah, that's what I need to talk to her about. I trust that now that the incident is resolved you're no longer worried about what might happen if she finds out about Okuu's plan?"

"Hmmm, Okuu's given up on trying to attack the surface, and Lady Satori already knew that Okuu had gained all of this power, so it should be fine. It doesn’t sound like she’s going to put Okuu down."

"So then you were worried over nothing?."

"Yup, seems that way. It’s a relief to be wrong."

"I have to ask Orin, why were you so worried that your master would be mad at Okuu? Was there a pet at the palace that had to be destroyed in the past?"

"No, nothing like that but... Okuu and I are Satori's pets, but to be honest she's been neglecting us for a long time now…" Orin said, looking down and away from Renko.

"Ah I see. I wonder if that could be because you and Okuu have taken on human-like forms?"

"Huh?"

"Satori had said she keeps so many pets because unlike humans and youkai, animals appreciate her ability to read their minds and aren't frightened of her. But since you and Okuu have grown strong enough to take on human forms I wonder if she suspected that you would now hate having your minds read just as other human-like creatures do. She may have been avoiding both of you because of that."

"Lady Satori thinks... that we hate her?" Orin asked, her voice full of surprise.

"Well, I'm not a mind reader like she is, but that's my deduction."

"I wonder if that could be it…?" Orin whispered to herself, thinking for a moment before looking up at Renko and smiling. "Alright, almost there! Hold on tight!"

I barely had time to reach up and clamp my arms onto her body before she surged ahead, the two of us swaying in her unsteady grip as she dived head first for the bottom of the shaft, and then into the utter darkness of the winding tunnels leading to the city.


—38—


We wound our way through the caves the rest of the way in darkness, listening to the sound of the underground stream emptying into the river ahead grow closer and closer. When we emerged into the canyon the glow from the city ahead was just enough for us to make out the looming shape of Parsee leaning over the railings of her bridge as usual.

She was alone on the bridge today, and as we emerged from our tunnel her green eyes scanned over us. Orin groaned a little as their eyes met.

"Orin, are you alright?" Renko asked.

"I don't like that hashihime. Let's just get past quickly."

"Ah, my apologies. I actually need to speak with Parsee for a moment."

"You're going to talk to her? Why, sis?"

Renko didn't answer but instead pressed ahead, walking around Orin to take the lead on the path. As she drew nearer to the bridge, she raised a hand in greeting and Parsee lazily turned her gaze from me to Renko.

"Hello, Mizuhashi Parsee. Good to see you hard at work as always,"

"You're that human who was with Yamame. I thought you left for the surface?"

"I got out. I'm back again to take care of some business down here. Speaking of which, I'd like to ask you a question if I may."

"About what?"

"It's about the job Miss Yuugi gave you. Did she by any chance ask you to watch this bridge and report to her if you saw any sign of Komeiji Koishi entering or leaving Old Hell?"

Parsee's eyes widened in surprise for a moment, then narrowed as her brow knitted angrily. "Where did you hear that? From that meathead oni?"

"No, it was just a guess. Did she only ask you to keep watch for Koishi? Not to try to stop her from leaving?"

"I was asked to try to stop her if I could, but I'm under no obligation to keep her from leaving if she fights back."

"So you have no problems seeing her then?"

"Yes. All those idiots say they can't see her."

"I see. I thought as much. Your eyes allow you to see jealousy, and as a result it's easy for you to notice her, right? Did you hear about her from Miss Yuugi originally, or were you already aware of her presence before that?"

"...I had seen her before, but it was Yuugi who told me her name and asked me to keep a lookout for her."

"I see, thank you. Just one last question then, if you don't mind. Can you tell me if Koishi is in the Underworld now?"

"I haven't seen her leave after she came back yesterday, so I would assume so."

Renko bowed graciously, doffing her hat in thanks as she did so. "Thank you very much, Miss Mizuhashi, your help is appreciated." When she rose up she had the troublesome smile I knew all too well on her face.

Seeing that grin, Parsee stared at Renko for a moment then sighed, turning back to her usual position looking out over the river. "You're a very strange human. If you're going to go back to the city, go on ahead."

—

We made our way back into Old Hell and through the streets toward the palace, following Orin's lead. It wasn't long before our path led us through the same market square we had traversed several times now and, predictably enough, into an encounter with Yuugi.

"Back again so soon? Come drink with me! It's only been a day, but a lot has happened! I've got a bunch of stories for you!" the oni cheered boisterously.

"Miss Yuugi, good to see you! My apologies, but I'm here on business, I'm afraid. I need to get to The Palace of the Earth Spirits."

"What? Didn't I tell you that there's nothing more pressing in the Underworld than an oni party?"

"Don Yuugi, let them go already. They've probably got something important to do." This line was spoken by Yamame, who was laying on a mat just beside Yuugi, with Kisume and her bucket just beside her.

"That's no fun," Yuugi scoffed. "If you can't stay to drink then you may as well go. I'll see you later." Yuugi relented, turning away from us.

"Oh! Before I go, there is one question I wanted to ask you," Renko said, raising one finger.

"What is it? I delivered that letter of yours, if that's what you wanted to know."

"Oh, thank you very much for that. It's not that though. It's actually about Satori's sister, Koishi. Have you seen her recently, Miss Yuugi?"

"Koishi? No, but that's not unusual, almost no one can see her but Suika and Parsee. Have you seen her, Renko?"

"I haven't, no, but Merry here can see her pretty well," Renko said, jerking her thumb at me.

"Really? You can?" Yuugi asked, regarding me with actual interest for the first time since we met.

"Wait a minute," Renko interrupted before I could respond. "Suika could see Koishi too?"

"That's what she said when she lived down here. She even talked to her."

"Interesting. I wonder if it’s related to her abilities somehow…" Renko's hand was already drifting toward the brim of her hat, her fingers twitching as she did.

Yuugi took a drink from her dish before exhaling a drunken sigh. "Well, if you do happen to find Koishi, bring her to see Satori. Her sister is worried sick about her."

"According to Parsee, Koishi's probably down here somewhere already. With any luck we might run into her at the palace. Take care, Yuugi. I'll see you around." Renko said, waving a goodbye and walking quickly away. Orin bowed quickly and followed along, as did I.

Somewhere behind us I heard Yamame calling "be careful, you two!" as we left the market behind.

—

And so we returned once more to the Palace of the Earth Spirits. Orin took the lead once more, opening the massive doors wide and showing us in, toward the wing where we had found Satori last time. As we made our way along the corridor toward her door, Renko suddenly stopped and reached out to Orin.

"Orin, would you mind going into Satori's room ahead of us? I'm expecting her to do something and I want to know if she has."

"You're expecting her to do something? What do you mean?"

"I sent her a letter the day before yesterday to make a request. If you don't mind, I'd like you to knock on the door and open it for us. If she's done what I asked of her, you'll know right away."

Orin looked at Renko with a strange, confused expression. "I guess that's ok, if that's what you want," she said, and knocked on the door.

"I'm here, you can come in," came Satori's uninflected response from within.

Orin opened the door and stepped inside. About a minute later she came back out saying "you can go in. I think I'd be interrupting something if I stayed."

Renko grinned beside me in the hall. "Oh good, it sounds like she set everything up as I asked. Thanks Orin, we'll head on in. We'll see you later."

Orin gave Renko one last suspicious look then stepped out of the way, allowing us into the room. Renko motioned toward the door and I followed behind her.

Inside the room was a new and unexpected sight. A large folding screen had been stretched out, dividing the near and far halves of the room. From here we could just see the upper edge of the tall stained glass window over the top of the screen, but Satori's desk and presumably the youkai herself were hidden behind it. In front of the screen, two of the plush, upholstered wooden chairs had been arranged with their backs turned to the divider.

"Welcome. As you can see I read your letter. Will this be satisfactory?" Satori's voice asked from the other side of the partition.

"Thank you for your consideration. I take it from the fact that I'm having to speak my questions this time that you can't read our minds through this screen?"

"That's correct. It's not often that someone is willing to go through this much trouble to talk to me."

In other words, Renko must have wanted to speak to Satori without having her mind read and asked in the letter that she had Yuugi deliver for this screen to be set up. She gestured to the two chairs arranged before us and I took a seat, facing away from the screen. Presumably Satori was seated on the opposite side of the screen, back to back with us.

"It's been a long time since I've had to have a conversation without being able to read someone's mind. To be honest, I doubt I'll be much good at it," Satori said, "will that be alright?"

"That's fine," Renko replied. "To begin with I'd actually like to tell you a bit of a story if you don't mind listening for a bit."

"Alright. Would this happen to be a story about Koishi?"

"It is indeed about your sister. It's also about the recent commotion caused by Okuu and Orin. I suppose you could say it has to do with everything that's been going on in the Underworld lately."

Since I couldn't see Satori, I couldn't read what sort of expression she might have had in response to that statement, but there was no spoken reply.

"But first," Renko continued, "we may as well get straight to the heart of the matter." She paused for a moment to take a breath, then leaned forward, hands resting on her knees, her voice raised just slightly to carry to the other side of the room. "Komeiji Satori. You engineered this whole incident, from start to finish for one purpose, didn't you? To save your little sister."


—39—


Satori made no response to the accusation. Renko waited only a moment to give her a chance to speak, then continued on, undaunted.

"Since coming down here to investigate the source of the Earth Spirits, I've had the pleasure of meeting a lot of people and hearing about a lot of different issues. In this paradise of the despised, we've seen a hashihime guarding the bridge leading in; a landlocked ship phantom and a nyudo-using sorcerer who are trying to find a path back to the surface; yourself, Miss Satori, who seems wholly unconcerned with the greater incident and only interested in finding out about your sister; and of course the hell raven and kasha who were the ostensible cause of the whole affair to begin with. As it so happens, the mountain god who gave the power of Yatagarasu to your pet is a close acquaintance of ours and as such I began to see some patterns in the disparate and seemingly disconnected stories of all of these parties."

"On the surface, all of these issues appear to be separate, with the people involved in each story acting independently according to their own motivations. Orin was worried for Okuu, you were worried about your sister because all the other youkai hate dealing with you. Once I found out that Koishi was making frequent trips to the surface and often exploring around above ground, I began to realize that things weren't as simple or as disconnected as they seemed. After I had a chance to talk to Yasaka Kanako, everything started coming together. All those separate little shards started looking like pieces of a bigger whole, and I realized that most of my questions could be answered if I were to just fit you right in the middle of the picture."

"What sort of questions?" The voice on the other side of the screen was completely emotionless.

"Well first off, why would Okuu want to invade the surface world? I understand that she got cocky after absorbing the power of Yatagarasu, but if she wanted to create a new Hell, she could have done it right here, in the city.

Secondly, there was also the question of what Miss Parsee is doing on that bridge. Normally, one would assume she was there to try and keep youkai from trying to reach the surface, but she seems to have no issue letting Miss Yamame and Miss Kisume out to play in the vertical shaft and Miss Yuugi doesn't seem opposed to the idea of letting a ship phantom and a nyuudo sorcerer escape to the surface, so it had to be something else. She seems to be there just to watch for specific youkai."

"And of course the third and biggest question of all came from something you yourself told me, Miss Komeiji."

"Me?"

"Yes. Our first meeting passed by so quickly that I almost didn't catch it at first, but you seem rather well informed about the nature of your sister's abilities. Which seems odd, given that you can't read her mind. Some part of that irked me. I knew it didn't make sense, but I couldn't figure out why."

On the other side of the screen I felt rather than heard Satori swallow unconciously. Renko's grin got a little broader.

"You told us that your sister gained the ability to manipulate the unconscious mind when she closed her third eye and in the process became completely unconscious herself, wandering aimlessly and imperceptibly. How would you know any of that if you couldn't read her mind, I wonder? You even told us that she unconsciously erases her presence from the minds of others. If you can't peer into her mind, how could you know that?"

From the other side of the screen there was only silence.

"If your explanation of Koishi’s abilities was a lie, then we can discard the whole bit about her manipulating other people’s unconscious minds. In that case, there had to be another explanation for why it was so hard for people to notice her. I’m betting it was a much simpler one."

"By closing her third eye and losing her ability to read minds, Koishi destroyed her own identity as a mind-reading satori. Without that, she had nothing more to sustain her nature and began to fade away."

Renko paused, giving Satori a chance to respond, but there was no sound from the opposite side of the screen.

"Just as a shrine with no worshippers becomes nothing more than a shack, and a youkai exterminator with no youkai to exterminate ends up having to find something else to do for a living, those who lose the premise of their existence are destined to either disappear or become something else. Reading minds is the essence of a satori’s identity, just as reflecting sounds is the essence of a yamabiko. When Koishi stopped being able to read minds she stopped being a satori. As a youkai, that loss of identity meant she started disappearing."

"With that thought in mind I went and talked to the Yama. The same Yama who once recruited you to manage the Earth Spirits trapped here, as it turns out. She told me that Koishi had closed her third eye even before the two of you came here to the Underworld and that you had asked the Yama to retrieve Koishi as payment for your service."

"If Koishi was already disappearing at that point then your relocation to the Underworld takes on new meaning. Your intention was give her a new identity. It was all part of your plan to save her."

"Hold on a minute, Renko," I interrupted. "That doesn't make any sense. If Koishi was on the verge of fading out of existence, how does being down here help her any? Youkai need human fear to survive, don't they? There's no humans down here to fear her."

Renko turned toward me with a smirk. "Quite right, Merry, there's no humans who live down here. So how are all the youkai who live in the Underworld able to sustain their existence?"

"Um…"

"People on the surface seem pretty scared of things down here. Most villagers still think this is Hell, after all, or at least something close to it. It seems like it's enough fear to sustain the oni, tsuchigumo, hashihime and everyone else we've seen down here, at any rate. Even captain Murasa and Ichirin are able to make do, and they've been here for a thousand years. Gensokyo seems to be a machine designed to keep all the youkai living in the Underworld alive. There's even still a Hell of Blazing Fires and a Hell of Blood Pools down here, and people fear those."

"Alternatively, it might be related to the deduction I made about the truth of Little Miss Melon's origins. If all of the oni down here are ones that had once been human then that explains why the oni are in charge down here. They would be the source of the belief that sustains all of the other youkai. In that case it would be just like the human village: no one could threaten the oni without endangering themselves and everyone else."

I hadn't expected Renko to bring up a case from six years ago in the middle of this one, but to her the details seemed as clear as if it had happened yesterday. I closed my mouth and shrunk back in my chair.

Renko cleared her throat. "I don’t know if either of those theories is actually correct. It could be that or it could be something entirely different. But the important thing is that the youkai of the Underworld are able to survive without the need for a local human population. If Koishi had lost her identity and couldn’t survive on the surface any more, moving her down here and making her into one of the Underworld youkai was probably an effective way to sustain her existence. Am I right about any of that?”

From the other side of the screen there was nothing but the usual silence.

"Alternatively, maybe you were trying to spread rumors about your sister’s existence on the surface, but you didn’t have any way to interact with the humans or other youkai on the surface to make them believe in you sister by yourself, since everyone up there despised you. If that was the case, then when the Yama asked you to look after the vengeful spirits, you must have asked her to sustain your sister for you."

"What ended up happening was when the other youkai moved down to the Underworld you had the same problem again. None of them wanted to talk to you, but you needed them to recognize your sister as existing, so you spread your sister's story among the oni who would go on to form the center of this new society, telling them that even if they couldn't see Koishi, she definitely existed and was the sister of the master of the Palace of the Earth Spirits. Even Miss Yamame, who had never met Koishi, still believed that you had a sister living in the Underworld who was hard to notice. In effect, you had created a new identity for your sister to replace the identity of being a mind-reading satori that she had discarded. She became a new kind of youkai. One that's hard to see, can manipulate unconscious desire and has no conscious mind of her own. That way her current nature would become self-reinforcing. The fact that there were some youkai here who could see her just helped to confirm her existence and keep the belief in her presence alive."

"...Do you mean Miss Parsee?" I asked turning to look at Renko once again.

She nodded. "And Little Miss Melon too, by the sounds of it."

I found myself instinctively bringing my hands up to cover my eyes. "Is there some connection between all of the different people who are able to see Koishi? Including me?"

Renko grinned. "That's a good question, Merry. As far as I know the only ones who can see Koishi clearly are you, Parsee, the Yama, that one kid on the surface, and maybe Suika, if we can believe Yuugi. We know the Yama can see Koishi because she has the ability to clearly distinguish anything as either black or white. Do you remember what she said?"

"Um, she said that to her there is no such thing as 'something that might or might not be there', right?"

"Right. Koishi exists, so even if she just barely exists, she'd be clearly visible to the Yama. The way your eyes work is sort of the opposite of that."

"The opposite? What do you mean?"

"You have the ability to see things that are somewhere between one state and another. Koishi’s existence is liminal, which allows you to see her. For Parsee, she can see things that are jealous. That kid back in town can see things that are about to be forgotten. As for Suika, I'm not entirely sure why she was able to see her, but I suspect it might have something to do with her ability to gather up things that normally can't be seen."

"...I see," I said hesitantly, tumbling the possibilities over in my head.

"Sorry for going off topic again, Miss Komeiji."

"...I don't mind. Please continue."

"As I was saying, you spread rumors about Koishi amongst the youkai living down here both to keep her from disappearing, but the sad truth was becoming more and more evident: there was no way she could ever be a satori again.

The youkai exterminators in the village became furniture sellers or members of the neighborhood watch as times changed. They had to change themselves in order to continue existing. Maybe something like that could have happened to Koishi too. Maybe it became necessary for the definition of who she was to be altered in order for her to go on existing."

"Telling people that Koishi was a youkai with the ability to manipulate the unconscious mind was a clever choice on your part. The new definition you created for her would handily explain why she was disappearing and why you couldn't read her mind, making those traits into something that helped to solidify her existence rather than be symptoms of her fading away. It also makes it clear why you knew so much about the way her abilities worked despite not being able to read her mind: you made them up."

"And with that, Koishi’s existence was safely tied to the Underworld. However, a new problem emerged, as a youkai of unconsciousness, eventually she started wandering up to the surface, moving away from all of the carefully setup support networks you had created to keep her from fading away. Up there, she was in just as much danger as before. You asked Yuugi to have Parsee stop Koishi, but even if Parsee could see her, she wasn’t willing to put effort into trying to stop your sister. You were left without anyone to help you because of your reputation. I imagine you must have been quite worried. You tried everything you could think of, but you couldn't do anything to keep her safe. And that's when Yasaka Kanako came to see you."

Still there was nothing but silence from the other side of the screen.

"There you were with an unsolvable problem and then along comes a goddess offering Okuu a terrific power. It was the perfect solution for you, a literal gift from the gods. A goddess from the surface had gone ahead and broken the non-interference pact on her own, so you didn't need to worry about whether you were violating the agreement or not. If anyone complained about your actions, you could just point out that the surface had broken the treaty first. You even anticipated that Okuu would forget that it was you who asked her to invade the surface, leaving you with plausible deniability."

"It even got better than that. If Okuu attacked the surface, then you could be fairly confident that someone powerful from up there would come down to stop her. You could use someone like that to spread the knowledge of Koishi to the surface, meaning that it could be safe for her to roam around up there too. That was all part of your plan and something you were willing to put your pets at risk to achieve, right? The only thing that didn't go according to plan for you was Orin releasing the vengeful spirits before your plan came to fruition. You hadn't anticipated that one of your pets would take the initiative and work to protect one of their friends, did you?"

Renko looked up at the ceiling and smiled faintly to herself.

"You know, now that I think about it, I should have picked up immediately that your reaction upon initially seeing us was strange. You weren't at all surprised that two humans had come down from the surface. You more or less expected that someone would."

"Plus, when you first looked at Merry and saw from her mind that she had seen Koishi, I thought that you were surprised that someone had seen her coming to the palace. But you were actually surprised that Koishi was in the Underworld at all, weren't you?"

"After that, when you asked us to find your sister—you gave us very detailed information on her abilities, but you didn’t seem to actually care whether or not we’d be able to complete the job. You just wanted us to return to the surface with the story of a youkai of unconsciousness, didn't you?

Still there was no answer from Satori.

"Well, that's just about all of it. I just have one last question. I'm not asking you to answer it, but I'd appreciate it if you'd at least hear me out."

Renko paused for a moment, centering herself, then took another breath and began. "It occurs to me that everything I’ve described so far would have worked just the same even if your sister had already disappeared completely. The youkai that Merry saw may well be your younger sister, and she’s definitely a youkai of unconsciousness, But what you were doing would also have worked if you were recreating her after she already disappeared. It’s entirely possible that the Koishi we saw was a youkai you created anew by working with the Yama."

"When I spoke to the Yama, she assured me that Koishi was definitely real, but she didn't mention if Koishi still existed. I think in exchange for you managing the abandoned vengeful spirits, you asked the Yama to bring back you sister. A sister who might have already disappeared after denying her own existence as a satori…. Tell me, Miss Komeiji, is this theory anything more than an unpleasant delusion?"