東方プロジェクト二次小説・オリジナル小説サイト
Chapter 2:Hopeless Masquerade

—4—

"Did you by any chance play a gig in the village today?"

"...In the village? No? All three of us have been here at home all day."

And just like that, my partner's delusional theory immediately fell apart.

We had arrived at the abandoned-looking western-style mansion not far from the shore of Misty Lake, which was the residence of the three sisters who made up the Prismriver Ensemble. Renko had run confidently up to the door as we arrived and knocked loudly until Lunasa had opened it.

"Oh, I see." Renko had replied, looking crestfallen.

"Why? Did something happen in the village?"

"Well actually..."

Renko proceeded to explain about the simultaneous outbreaks of strange dancing behavior we had seen. When she had finished, Lunasa let out a melancholy sigh. "I see," she replied. "So you immediately suspected Merlin."

"Well I wouldn't say I suspected her exactly..."

Liar. She had called Merlin her 'Prime Suspect' on the way here. I shrugged and let out a sigh.

"Well, it's true that Merlin could easily make a few dozen humans get all riled up and acting crazy..."

"Did you call me, Lunasa? I heard my name." Merlin's voice shouted from inside the house. A moment later Merlin floated into view behind Lunasa. At that point we figured it was easier to come inside to continue the conversation. Once everyone was comfortably seated in the living room, Renko explained what had happened again while the three Prismriver sisters listened. Once she had finished, it was Lyrica who seemed most annoyed.

"Well of course Merlin 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 do something like that. That's why I never let her play solos when we're playing in front of humans! You have to balance her sound with Lunasa's or things will get out of control."

"It's kind of boring only being able to play solos for ghosts though. It would be nice to be able to play for humans at least once. Wouldn't it be fun to see how many people I could get excited? Just once?" Merlin pleaded.

"No." Lunasa said. "You have a tendency to go out of control. If you're going to play in a place with a bunch of humans around, you need to at least have Lyrica around to mellow your sound out."

"Awww, you're no fun." Merlin pouted.

It seems like the Prismriver Ensemble is actually pretty careful about how they affect people.

"You said the people in the village were singing and dancing. What did the dance look like?" Lunasa asked.

"Oh, let me show you," Renko said with a laugh as she climbed to her feet. "Merry, come dance with me."

"Absolutely not."

"Oh come on, it's no fun dancing alone."

I glared at her. Renko sighed dramatically then began her re-enactment without me, clapping her hands over her head and kicking her legs out. It was embarrassing just to watch her flailing about like that, but Merlin seemed to get excited and was clapping in time with her before long, making everything a little less mortifying.

When Renko had finished she took a quick bow while Merlin applauded then sat back down. Lunasa grunted contemplatively. "Hmmm. It's different from the way the villagers dance at the harvest festival. You said there was just singing and clapping right? No instruments?"

"That's right, people were only clapping and stomping their feet."

"Well it definitely wasn't any of us or even a youkai like us then. We need the sounds of our instruments to affect people. Assuming that it was a youkai responsible for this though, I think it would have to be some sort of youkai that likes dancing, rather than a musical one."

"A youkai that likes to dance?" I asked, tilting my head at the thought.

"Hmm, maybe an abura-akago?" Renko suggested as she tucked her chin to her chest.

Abura-akago, or 'oil babies' were supposed to be floating fireballs that appeared at night and danced around until morning. They were harmless according to legend, other than a tendency to steal lamp oil.

"I've heard that tsukumogami shoes like to dance!" Merlin said excitedly.

"Rather than worry about what sort of youkai it might be, I think the more important question is why a youkai would want to make a bunch of villagers dance crazily," Lyrica interjected. It was a perfectly reasonable question to ask. Nothing like this had ever happened before. If it was the work of a youkai, what would they gain from causing a disruption right in the middle of the human village?

"...Maybe it was the work of a youkai who doesn't know they're not supposed to. A recently born or re-awakened youkai, for example..."

As soon as Renko said that, she turned to look at me. I returned her meaningful glance. If it really was the work of a recently re-awakened youkai, there was only one obvious source for such a creature—Suzunaan and more specifically, Kosuzu's collection of sealed youma books.

—

And so, just as spontaneously as we had shown up, we ended up leaving the dilapidated mansion near the lake. On our way back to town, Renko suggested we stop by the Myouren Temple to check on the villagers who had gone there. When we got to the temple, we found Captain Murasa there, sweeping the entryway. She looked up as we approached and greeted us warmly.

"Merry! Renko! Ahoy there!"

"Hello again, captain. It's been a while."

The captain stepped forward and exchanged a high five with Renko, as high-spirited as we had ever seen her. "Have you come with all of the other villagers to join our temple?"

"Oh, uh, no, we're not here to join up, I'm afraid."

"Oh, really?" Murasa asked, sounding disappointed. "Hijiri brought a whole bunch of people back from the village who wanted to join today, so I thought maybe you were coming along too. You should give it some thought, you two are always welcome here."

"Well if I ever get sick of the secular world, I'll think about it. What happened to all of those people who Hijiri brought here though?"

"Oh, they're in the main hall with Hijiri and Big Shou right now, listening to a sermon. I wonder if Shou's been able to stop crying yet? When she saw that many people coming here with Hijiri, she started weeping, being all 'It's a miracle, saint Hijiri's teachings have reached so many people!' I wonder if she's okay?"

Shou Toramaru, the Myouren temple's second-in-command, seemed to be just as devoted to her master as ever.

"Ah, I see, Captain, do you know why so many villagers came to the temple to hear Hijiri speak all at once?"

"You mean do I know that they were all doing a crazy dance in the street before she brought them here? Yeah, I'm the one who told her about it."

"Oh really?"

"Yeah, I was walking along the bank of the river near the village and I heard a bunch of people singing a sad, pessimistic song.. I didn't know what it was about, but I ran to tell Hijiri since it looked pretty serious. She rushed right out to see for herself. I never expected she would have come back with a whole bunch of new parishioners to our temple though. When she came through the gate leading a crowd like that, Nue got so scared she ran away again!"

"Oh, poor Nue," Renko said, shaking her head. "Well, I'm sure she'll be back. What about Ichirin and everyone else, they've all been here the whole time?"

"Ichirin is helping out Byakuren. Naz is out somewhere though and Kyouko's gone back home for a bit."

"What about Miss Mamizou?"

"Mami? She's out at the moment too. While she's staying here at the temple, I wouldn't really consider her to be a member. She's probably gone into the village to drink and gamble with humans again. I hope she doesn't end up getting excommunicated."

Futatsuiwa Mamizou was a bake-danuki and accomplished shapeshifter who had been brought to the Myouren Temple from the Outside World by Nue as a response to the resurrection of Prince Shotoku. Hearing that she was unaccounted for at the time of the twin uprisings in the village was enough to make Renko and I glance at each other warily. We had begun watching her in connection with Reimu's request to keep an eye on Kosuzu for one simple reason—she was known to often assume a human guise and frequent Suzunaan.


—5—


✱ ✱ ✱

"You two know Mamizou, right?"

It had been winter, a little while after Reimu had first asked us to begin keeping an eye on Kosuzu, when she had asked us this. She had shown up at our office unexpectedly one day and asked this question. As Renko responded to her, I offered her a mug of hot tea which she accepted with a nod as she settled down to chat.

"From the Myouren Temple?" Renko had asked. "We've met her, but that's about it."

"Did you know she has a habit of disguising herself as a human and entering the village?"

"It's the first I've heard of it, but I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. She's a bake-danuki, after all."

We had seen numerous other youkai in the village from time to time. There was Ran, of course, who frequented the village's tofu shop. We'd also seen Kazami Yuuka come into town once or twice to visit the florists, and Reisen made regular, bi-weekly visits to peddle medicine.

"Normally I don't mind that, as long as she follows the rules and doesn't hurt anyone in the village."

"But since you're telling us about this, I'm guessing she did something bad?"

"It's not that she has, it's that I'm afraid she's about to..." Reimu frowned, resting her elbow on the table and supporting her cheek with her hand. "She's been visiting Suzunaan a whole bunch lately."

Renko snapped her fingers suddenly. "I've got it, she's that lady with the spectacles, isn't she? I knew I hadn't seen her around town before!"

Thinking back to our last visit to Suzunaan, I could picture exactly who Renko was thinking of. I had seen this woman come in once or twice and thought she was odd myself. There had definitely been something about her that had seemed noteworthy, and like Renko, I couldn't remember ever having seen her face anywhere in the village other than Suzunaan.

"Probably," Reimu replied. "I think she's aiming to get her hands on Kosuzu's collection of youma books. Did you guys hear anything about the rumors of foxfire being seen around the village in the last few weeks?"

Rather than having heard about the rumors, it would be more accurate to say that Renko and I had investigated the cause. After a series of strange lights and noises had been reported at various locations both inside and outside the village in the middle of the night for several days, Renko had dragged me away from a warm bed to stand watch in the dark and the cold and try and find the source. It was from that outing that we had discovered that the origin of the noises and marching lights was a night parade of several dozen small tsukumogami carrying torches. Our efforts had ultimately been in vain however, as they had left the village before we could catch them. Renko had wanted to continue the stakeouts further, but I had caught a cold from being outside in the weather all night and so our club activities had been placed on hold. By the time I recovered, the strange nighttime apparitions had ended on their own.

"The one that turned out to actually be a night parade of tsukumogami?" Renko answered.

Reimu frowned at her. "I'm guessing Marisa told you that?"

"Was Marisa looking into it too? No, we discovered that much on our own. It stopped happening before we could find out who the mastermind responsible for it was though."

"There wasn't a mastermind." Reimu said with a frustrated sigh. "The cause of it all was a 𝐻𝑦𝑎𝑘𝑘𝑖 𝑌𝑎𝑔𝑦𝑜 scroll with multiple youkai sealed inside it that Kosuzu has. I think Mamizou is trying to get it off of her. I went and told Kosuzu not to sell it to anyone, but especially not to her."

"I see, so now let me make another guess. You're here to ask that in addition to keeping an eye on Kosuzu to make sure she doesn't break the seals on that or any other youma book, you want us to watch Mamizou at the same time to make sure she doesn't find a way to trick or coerce Kosuzu into giving that scroll up."

"That's more or less it. Do you think you can watch them both?"

"Well I wouldn't mind it, but that seems like a rather roundabout solution to me. Why not just tell Kosuzu that Mamizou is a youkai?"

"That would make it look like I'm friends with a youkai! People would start asking questions about how I could let someone like her get into the village in the first place. It's my job to exterminate youkai, remember? It'd be bad for my image if people thought I was soft on them."

In my opinion it was far too late to salvage her reputation on that front.

"Well then how about I tell her?" Renko asked. "We could say I figured it out, then you can swoop in and kick her out of the village. That'll help people's impression of you, won't it?"

"I don't want to do that either. Kosuzu is way too curious about youkai. If she catches on that there are other youkai living in the village in disguise, I'm worried what she would do."

"Ah, I see. In the worst case scenario, she might decide to seek them out on her own."

"As the Hakurei Shrine Maiden, avoiding that scenario is my number one goal. I don't want to have to exterminate Kosuzu if she turns into a youkai. It's fine for her to be a human who's a little curious about youkai but I don't want her to end up like you two, villagers who are completely engrossed in the world of youkai."

"Hey, come on Reimu, you're acting like Merry and I aren't ordinary humans any more."

"You're both the most abnormal humans I've ever met." Reimu replied without missing a beat, glaring at each of us in turn. I cringed away as she turned toward me, but Renko just smiled and shrugged.

"In any case, Keep an eye on both of them, and let me know if anything seems dangerous."

✱ ✱ ✱

And so, we began keeping an eye on both Kosuzu and Mamizou. That said, the woman we assumed to be Mamizou never happened to be in Suzunaan while we were there from that point onward. It felt to me like we weren't really keeping an eye on Mamizou at all, but it's possible that Mamizou had realized that we were on to her and was simply avoiding visiting Suzunaan during any of the times we were there. If that was the case then you could say that just by visiting Suzunaan regularly, we were minimizing the risk of something dangerous happening to Kosuzu… I'd like to think that, at any rate.

All of this historical information is just background though. In the present, we had just turned down Captain Murasa's invitation to come in for a cup of tea and were walking along the road back to the village's northern gate. Immediately beyond the gates on the north side of town were the twisting streets of the village's entertainment district, which consisted mainly of bars. It was on these streets that one of the outbreaks of ecstatic dancing had occurred earlier, but there was no sign of any disturbance now.

The streets were quiet and sparsely populated as this district really only became lively once the sun went down. Seeing a large number of people dancing through these streets singing and chanting in the afternoon must have been quite a bizarre scene. I was lost in thought trying to picture what it would have been like when Renko, who was walking alongside me suddenly stopped and turned. Without a word she jogged off, chasing something I hadn't seen.

I turned to follow her. She was hustling over toward someone who was walking away from us on the street, headed in the opposite direction with a ribbon in their hair. Was that...?

"Hey Banki! Wait up!" Renko shouted as she ran up behind the girl and tried to tap her on the shoulder. The girl quickly dodged, twisting their shoulder out of Renko's grasp and purposely ignoring her as she continued walking away from us at a slightly quicker pace. Renko overbalanced and caught herself then shot me a grin before taking a deep breath and shouting again.

"Hey, rokuro—" Renko started to shout.

The girl she had been chasing froze in the middle of the street and whirled around to glare at her. "Don't call me that in public!" the girl hissed.

The person who had turned around to face Renko with an unhappy expression on her face was named Sekibanki. She's a rokurokubi who, despite being a youkai, lives in the village full time. I think this is probably the first time I've mentioned her in these records, but we actually met her a while before this.

Sekibanki is one of the very few youkai who has chosen to live in the human village by disguising herself as a human. In order to maintain that ruse, I'll avoid giving you a detailed description of her here, but she's a rokurokubi, which is a sort of youkai whose only purpose is to scare passersby on the side of the road late at night. She appears completely human for the most part, but she's able to detach her head completely, a trick she uses to scare people by either making them think that a headless human is walking around, or by having a grisly severed head surprise people by flying right at them. Being as she's the sort of youkai who survives by surprising humans, pretending to be a human in her daily life was probably convenient for her.

I suppose it's inevitable that two people as prone to wandering around at night as Renko and I would end up meeting her eventually. We had first encountered her standing by the edge of one of the village's canals at night, looking out over the water. Suddenly a severed head had flown out at us. Renko's immediate reaction had been to start asking the floating head questions. Ever since then Renko had made a point of greeting Sekibanki whenever we saw her out and about, something Sekibanki seemed to find extremely annoying.

"You again. How many times do I have to tell you to leave me alone?"

"Don't be like that. You're friends with Kagerou, right? Well we are too, so that practically makes us your friends!"

Being another youkai (or half-youkai, anyway) living in the village, Keine had apparently taken it upon herself to check in on Sekibanki from time to time. Through her, Sekibanki had apparently come to know the werewolf Imaizumi Kagerou as well.

"You're not my friend and neither is she! Why does everyone in that were-hakutaku's orbit think they're my friend!?" Sekibanki shouted before turning and sprinting into the deserted alleyway behind her.

Renko seemed to have anticipated such a reaction and was quick to chase after her. It wasn't long before we caught up. Hearing us trail along behind her, she stopped running and turned around in frustration.

"Just what do you humans want anyway? You're not even youkai exterminators."

"I just have some questions. You're an interesting person. I'm just a human with only one head, but I've seen you operate several at once. How does that work for vision? Or for thinking for that matter?"

"Why would any of that matter to a human? Why do you want to know about me?"

"Humans are curious creatures. We want to know things even if we don't have any use for the information. That said, we're also capable of combining information together, so it makes sense to know as many things as you can. You might be able to combine useless facts into something useful later."

"Well I have no interest in being useful to you."

"Oh come on, answering my questions could be useful to you too!"

Sekibanki had been about to turn away again, but turned to scowl incredulously over her shoulder at Renko. "How?"

"Well, if I could better understand your ability to multitask, I might be able to help you make use of it. For instance with three heads, maybe you could learn new things three times faster than a human could. Wouldn't that be amazing? You could do something much better than just surprising humans if that were the case."

Sekibanki remained silent, glaring at Renko.

"It's a shame that you only have one body, but with multiple heads you have the best power possible for intellectual tasks. Honestly, I'm a little jealous, I'd love to be able to take in information that fast. If you could make full use of your heads, you might become as knowledgeable as the Youkai Sage. Wouldn't that be something?"

Sekibanki had turned around now and was just staring at Renko.

"If you put your mind to it, the rokurokubi could even become the symbol of knowledge, renowned as the smartest youkai in Gensokyo. You could use that knowledge to control the human village as the puppetmaster behind the scenes and bring all of the other youkai under your control. If you did that, then everyone would have to respect you."

There was a long pause as Sekibanki looked Renko over. "...You're trying to trick me, aren't you?"

"I'm being serious! Aren't you the least bit dissatisfied with your station in life? You're a youkai with the intellectual capacity to be known as the Sage of the Human Village, capable of overwhelming anyone through sheer knowledge! All of Gensokyo could be bowing down to you, if only you applied yourself. Tengu. Oni. Shinigami. Celestials. All it would take is some study and you'd be the one on top, looking down on everyone else and snorting. You'd be able to dismiss all of those once-powerful youkai while muttering 'fools' and they couldn't even claim you were wrong! You'd be able to completely reverse the hierarchy across all of Gensokyo. Doesn't that sound like something you'd want to try?"

There was a long pause, and Sekibanki almost seemed to be thinking it over, drawn in by Renko's earnestness as so many other youkai had been.

"N-no! No way! I'm not going to let you deceive me!"

"I'm not trying to deceive you," Renko said, with a shrug of her shoulders. "Why don't you just come by the school sometime after hours? We sometimes hold classes for adults there, you'd fit right in."

"I don't want to end up with that were-hakutaku always poking around and looking after me!"

"Well then how about we give you some private lessons at our office. Would that be better?"

"That sounds even worse!" Saying that, Sekibanki turned to leave once more.

"Wait Banki, just one more question," Renko pleaded, reaching out to her. "Did you notice any sort of commotion around here earlier today?"

"You mean all those humans dancing all crazy?" she asked, pausing for a moment. "I had nothing to do with it."

"Oh, I never suspected you, but we're conducting an investigation right now and I just wanted to know if you saw anything odd while it was going on."

Sekibanki turned to face Renko again, then suddenly let out a hearty laugh. "...You don't know anything about what's really been going on here, do you?"

"'Going on?' What do you mean?"

"Do your own thinking. I bet you'll never figure it out, though." Saying that, Sekibanki dashed away from us, further down the alley and around a corner.

Renko and I were left alone, staring at each other and wondering what she could have meant.


—6—


After that, we made our way back to our office behind the temple school, where Renko opened the door, removed her shoes in the entryway and then promptly collapsed face-first onto the tatami mats. I entered behind her and took the time to hang up my cloak before lowering myself to sit beside her with my chin resting on my writing desk.

"Banki knows something..." Renko grumbled into the floor.

"Well I don't think there's any way she'll tell you about it now, Renko. She clearly finds you annoying."

"That just means I have to stalk her even more relentlessly and be even more annoying until she coughs up the info!"

"Just stop."

Renko is the sort of person with an innate, natural ability to slip past people's defenses and become a part of their lives before they can even realize it. Some people can't stand that sort of brazenness, and it seemed that Sekibanki was likely one of them. Back when I had first met Renko, I was probably the same sort of person, but now... I wonder if I had really changed or was I just misremembering how things were?

"Renko, you're a great detective, aren't you? Why not just deduce what it is she's hiding?"

"I suppose that's not a bad idea. Just the fact that it's Sekibanki who knows it does give us some hints. Let's see..." she muttered, rolling over onto her back. "It would have to be something that neither we, nor Keine nor Akyuu would have learned yet. Her abilities must allow her to have learned something that none of us could have."

"You mean something only a rokurokubi could learn? What would that be?"

"I don't know, Merry. Let's try and reason it out. The biggest difference between Sekibanki and any of us is that she's a youkai. A full youkai, despite living here in the village, unlike Keine. She also seems to live on the north side of the village rather than here in the market district. Then of course there's the fact that she can have multiple heads at once, all of which can fly, so it's safe to assume she can watch over more of the village at once than any of us can. And then finally, as a youkai, she'd be most active at night when the rest of us are asleep..."

Suddenly Renko sat up and blinked repeatedly. "...That must be it. The quickest way to find out what she knows is to see what she sees. We need to find her in the middle of the night."

"Why then?"

"Something must secretly be happening then when youkai are active and humans are asleep. Maybe a youkai is doing something that affects the village the next day. If that's the case then it would make sense that no one noticed anything amiss by searching in broad daylight."

"So you're saying we should stake out the entertainment district all night? We have classes to teach in the morning. We can't do that."

At least it wasn't the middle of winter like it had been during the incident with the strange marching lights.

"We'll have to make do, Merry. If we delay, then the burden on Keine is just going to get worse with all the things she's dealing with. If Keine collapses from the stress of having to deal with these disturbances on top of her duties as a teacher, we'll only have ourselves to blame for it."

"Why are you so good at making these things sound reasonable?"

These are the sorts of hard-to-deny justifications my partner is great at thinking up. I could try and oppose her, but she'd just come up with more and then I'd end up going with her anyway. Instead, I merely nodded, saying "Yes, yes" as usual and planned to take a nap before dinner so that I could at least get a little rest.

—

And so very late that night, the two of us found ourselves hiding in a dark and narrow alley in the entertainment district. Even most of the bars had closed by this point, but a small number still had a few lights on. Those would be the sorts of establishments that stayed open all night to cater to youkai. Standing here, cloaked in shadows with no lantern and watching a building across the way, we must have looked pretty shady.

"What do you suppose we'll see, Merry?"

"Probably nothing. Even if there is anything going on late at night, why would you think it would happen here?"

"It's the most probable location. Banki lives around here. If she witnessed something in the middle of the night, it was probably while she was out looking for someone to scare. The easiest sort of people for her to target would be drunks leaving the bars and walking home in the dark. So it stands to reason that whatever she saw probably happened somewhere near here."

It was nothing but speculation on top of speculation. I could see exactly how this was going to play out now. The punchline to this farce would come with the sunrise, at which point it would become clear that nothing was going to happen. Then we'd head home and either encounter Keine on the way and get scolded, or end up too sleep-deprived to properly teach our classes. Either way, Keine was sure to find out and we were bound to end up regretting this tomorrow (which was actually already today.)

As I sighed, imagining just how badly this was going to end, Renko was glancing up at the sky, trying to find a break in the clouds through which she could view the stars. Looking up at the overcast sky I sighed and checked my pocketwatch instead. "It's about the hour of the ox."

The dead of night, in other words. No better time to be on the lookout for something strange, I suppose. "Pay attention, Merry," Renko said, nudging me. "Set your boundary detectors to maximum. We don't want to miss anything."

"Yes, yes." I said, sighing again.

I wish my partner would stop treating me like nothing more than a useful tool. Dutifully, I kept my eyes on the doorway of the bar and watched as a man stumbled unsteadily out into the street. There was nothing in the least bit unusual about him. Standing there, straining my eyes to follow him in the dark, I could barely see him over the visions dancing in my head of the warm, dry futon that, this very minute, was waiting for me back at home.

—

.
.
.
.
.

—

We suddenly came to our senses. I was standing in the night as I had been just a moment ago, but I was no longer in the alleyway beside Renko.

"...what?" I found myself blurting.

"Merry? What's wrong... wait, what?" Renko asked from a few steps away.

We both looked around in wonder, trying to confirm what our senses were telling us. We were standing in front of our home in the market district. As far as I could recall we had been by the north gate in an alley across from a bar mere seconds before.

"Why are we back home?" Renko asked.

"Why... We were just somewhere else, weren't we?"

"We were definitely in the entertainment district across town just a moment ago..." Renko clutched at her head as if hoping to shake a memory loose. I tried to think back and recall the most recent events as well, but after entering the alleyway across from the bar with Renko, there was an uncomfortable blank haze in my memory. It was a similar feeling to walking into a convenience store in the Outside World and forgetting what you had come there to buy.

It definitely felt like time had passed and I had a vague recollection of having been walking toward home with Renko, but now that we had arrived at home I don't recall either of us having ever decided to give up our stakeout.

"Did we give up and decide to come home because nothing was happening?" I asked hopefully.

"Does that sound like something I'd do?"

I checked my pocketwatch again as Renko was staring up at the sky. "It's just after three in the morning." It was about a thirty-minute walk to here from the entertainment district, so we must have left there around two thirty. That would have been just after the hour of the ox. If it had been Renko who had decided that we should go home, she would have had to have given up uncharacteristically quickly. If coming home early had been my idea, I would have remembered that.

I should state for the record that neither of us had had anything to drink that night. And yet, both of us had a conspicuously blacked out period of roughly an hour in our memories. What could that mean?

"...something's happened to us, Merry," Renko muttered while fiddling with the brim of her hat. "This is definitely weird! I could see one of us nodding off and missing part of the stakeout, but not both of us! Someone did something to us! It's a conspiracy!"

"Conspiracy or not, it's past three in the morning and we have classes in a few hours. I'm going to bed, Renko." I said, walking over and opening the door.

"How can you be thinking about sleeping now? Aren't you bothered by the fact that we're missing time? We have memory loss! Isn't that weird?"

"I'm sleepy, Renko. Maybe I started sleepwalking and you caught it from me. Are you coming inside?"

"Sleepwalking isn't contagious, Merry."

I ignored her pouting, incredulous face and slid the door shut. Let her stand outside in the cold if she liked. For some reason I was extremely tired, enough so that all I could think about was collapsing into my futon. I was barely able to keep my eyes open long enough to find it. The last thought I can remember having before falling asleep was just how tired I was.

—

In actuality, that was our first brush with a strange anomaly, a little-known incident that was concealed behind the flashier spectacle of the summer's religious wars. At the time, however, Renko and I didn't even know what we had encountered. It would be a while before either of us realized this anomaly was part of something bigger.