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

—4—

"Hime, I'm back!"

"Kagerou!"

Walking ahead of us, Kagerou had called out as soon as we reached the shore of the lake after having followed the trail of the river back down from the mountain. Upon spotting her, Wakasagihime had surfaced and waved excitedly. Kagerou ran to the shore and leaned over the water as Wakasagihime leapt partially out of the lake, high enough to give Kagerou a tight hug and offer a view of her shimmering gray tail.

"Are you alright? Did you get hurt at all up there? Did the kappa try to pull anything out of you?"

"I'm fine, I'm fine. You worry too much, Hime."

"But what if..."

"It's fine. Nothing happened." Kagerou pulled back, lifting Wakasagihime up to where she could lounge on the shore then sitting and stroking her hair as the mermaid continued to fret.

Seeing the care that Kagerou displayed toward Wakasagihime as they leaned into each other was heartwarming, but at the same time it filled me with regret to think of what we had interrupted to drag Kagerou up the mountain in service of one of Renko's mad whims. As for my partner, she was smiling broadly, idly fiddling with the brim of her hat without a care in the world.

Sighing in exasperation, I looked away from Renko, toward the pocket of distorted space my eyes saw behind her. It was a small disruption, not a gap in space or even anything that threatened to become one, but more like a bubble or bulge in the surface of reality. I had noticed it some time ago, on our way back down the mountain. It had been following behind Renko for a while now, being careful not to make a sound. Neither Kagerou or Renko had shown any sign of noticing it and I had pretended not to notice either. After how selfishly Renko had acted, I figured she deserved a bit of a scare.

"...So Renko, what should we do about that person who's been following you since we came down the mountain?" I asked conversationally.

"Huh?" Renko asked, turning to me in surprise.

"Yeek!" shrieked the distorted space behind Renko.

There was a blurred streak of motion that I couldn't tell if I was seeing with my boundary vision or my more mundane sight, or perhaps both at once. The streak resolved into a head floating in the air disconnected from anything else, and bobbing as the person it belonged to staggered backward and collapsed into a heap on the ground. Looking closely, the head didn't seem detached, rather it looked like a person where everything beneath their neck was invisible, or at least very hard to see. The face, however, was familiar. It was the same kappa girl we had met on our last trip up the mountain. Beneath her head the rest of her body was a colorless blur, or maybe a blur exactly the color of whatever was behind it. At any rate, it was very hard to determine the shape of.

"Oh!" Renko gasped.

"Ah! My optical camouflage suit!"

Renko turned in surprise, leaning away from the kappa as she scrambled to her feet, hurriedly reaching behind her head to draw a hood made from the same colorless whatever-it-was over her face. As soon as she did so she vanished again, once more becoming a crumpled bulge in the fabric of reality to my eyes, exactly mimicking the appearance of whatever scenery was behind her. I wondered what she looked like to Renko. To me it was laughably obvious where she was hiding, huddled in her colorless raincoat and standing rigidly still but outlined clearly to my eyes by the boundary between her invisible camouflage and the visible space surrounding it..

I waited a beat before saying "I can see you, you know."

"Huh? Why? No fair!" cried the shapeless distortion.

Seeming to realize that I was following her with my gaze, Kawashiro Nitori appeared on the spot, an annoyed expression on her face, wearing what looked like a long, hooded raincoat made of what appeared to be the same waterproof pale blue material as her dress. Renko grinned and approached her, whistling appreciatively. "Now that's an impressive bit of tech! What is it, exactly?" The kappa twisted away from Renko, trying to keep her garment out of arm's reach.

"You can't have it! It's mine!" She cried, glaring at Renko.

"Your name was Nitori, right?" Renko said, halting her advance a few steps in front of the kappa. "Long time no see."

"H-Hi..." Nitori seemed flustered, searching her mind for a name and coming up blank. "Lady Ibuki's friend."

"Hey, no reason to be afraid, I'm not going to call Suika. Did you say that was an optical camouflage suit? Does that mean technological inventions that are just pipe dreams in the Outside World exist in Gensokyo too? Can you show me how it works?"

"It's top secret! Confidential kappa tech! But how did you see through it? It should be working perfectly!"

"Merry, you can see it just fine, can't you?"

"Sort of."

The kappa sighed. "I guess it's still got a long way to go. Full-spectrum active camouflage is tricky…"

Renko smiled and reached out a hand to pat Nitori on the shoulder. She flinched away. "Merry has weird eyes. I wouldn't worry about it too much. I bet it would fool most people just fine." Renko calling my eyes 'weird' was the last thing I wanted to hear. My shoulders sagged in disappointment.

"Oh! It's the kappa I met up the river! Hello!" Wakasagihime waved from her position near the shoreline.

Nitori blinked, peering around Renko toward the lake. "Oh, you're that mermaid I saw.—Do you normally hang around this many humans? There’s a lot here."

"Are you just now noticing that?" Renko asked, pushing the brim of her hat back on her head with one finger.

Looking surprised, Kagerou turned back towards us, with Wakasagihime still hanging off the front of her. "Do I count as a human too now?" She asked

"Between the two of us, we add up to one whole human, right?" Wakasagihime asked with a smile.

Renko grinned at that then turned to Nitori, "May I ask why you were trying to follow us invisibly, Miss Kappa?"

"It was just a little reconnaissance. You know, scouting? Information gathering? I saw two of my dear friends coming up into the mountains and talking to a tengu. That doesn't happen every day so I wanted to know what was going on. I thought maybe something had happened in the human village."

"Ah, I completely understand. The human village is fine, I assure you. We were just coming up to the mountain for much the same reason, we were concerned that the tengu we know up there might have been caught up in the recent commotion."

"You mean the newcomer god?"

"Oho! Do you know something about them, Nitori?" Renko asked, leaning forward with excitement.

Nitori flinched away from her, taking a few quick steps back and gasping in alarm. Why was this kappa girl so afraid of humans, I wondered? "I-I only saw them from a ways off! They appeared overnight and seem to be trying to gather faith from the youkai who live on the mountain, but that's all I know!"

"You got a look at them though, right? What did the goddess look like?"

"Uh, like a human mostly, I guess. She's tall and wears some kind of huge rope in a loop on her back. There's a human who lives there too."

"A human? Oh, maybe something like a priest or a shrine maiden to the goddess?"

"Maybe. If everything's okay in the village though, I've found out everything I need to here. Goodbye, dear friends, I need to go work on this optical camouflage. Next time you see me you'll see what a perfected invisibility suit looks like!" Saying this, she quickly pulled the hood up over her head again and vanished once more, bolting off toward the mountain like a hare. There was no time to mention that if she was able to create a perfect optical camouflage we probably wouldn't see it at all.

Kagerou stood up a moment later and turned towards Renko. "I guess that means that you and Merry are going to head to the Hakurei Shrine now?" She asked, narrowing her eyes.

"That's right," Renko answered, "but we know the way well. We'll manage fine on our own, don't worry."

Kagerou sighed. "I don't think two humans should be so careless about leaving the village. I can't imagine Miss Keine would be happy to hear about this."

"It's nothing she's not used to. Thank you though for escorting us into the mountains. I'm deeply grateful to you for taking the time to see us safely up and back." Renko had taken Kagerou's hand in both of hers as she said this, smiling her thousand-watt smile.

Kagerou turned away from Renko, looking down sheepishly and muttering. "Anyone would have done the same..." From where I was standing, I could see Wakasagihime glaring at Renko and Kagerou with a rather scary face. Renko can be charming but she really needs to learn when to reign it in.

"Well we'd better be off. Come on, Merry. Let's get going."

"Yes, let's. Thank you both for your help."

I bowed and hurriedly followed along behind Renko. Somewhere behind me I heard Wakasagihime calling out sullenly for Kagerou.

Kagerou responded, sounding worried. "Huh? Hime, what's wrong?"

I picked up my pace, counting myself lucky that we had managed to escape before my partner's usual cluelessness caused a scene. "Hey Renko, do you ever think before you speak?"

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"...Forget it." I sighed and shook my head while Renko regarded me with a look of confusion. I had always envied Renko's ability to seemingly befriend anyone in an instant, whether here or back in Kyoto, but in a world with a different culture and different social expectations, I shouldn't be surprised that her particular brand of overt and aggressive friendliness might lead to misunderstandings.

It might well be that Renko's obliviousness and inability or unwillingness to read obvious social cues is why the two of us had become friends in the first place. I had never made friends easily, myself, but seeing Renko treat others with the same warmth that had initially broken down my own defenses made me feel like a small shard of something sharp had become lodged in my heart. Was the way that Renko treated me any different than the way she had charmed any of the youkai we had met? Or did she see me just as she saw all of these others, just someone to help her in her senseless and never ending pursuit of hidden secrets? I, for one, am smart enough to leave such questions alone. I resolved not to think about it any further as the two of us made our way south.


—5—


The safest way to go from Misty Lake north of the village to the Hakurei Shrine far to the east of it is to return to the village via the north gate, then take the trail to the shrine. This path is a long and arduous one though, and just as before I wondered if there might be a way to make a quicker, straighter path. It didn't seem likely to happen though. The only people other than myself and Renko who I could imagine ever making use of such a trail were all able to fly.

It was already lunchtime by the time we had made it back to Misty Lake, so Renko and I stopped beside the river before returning to the village and ate lunch. Afterwards we made our way back to the village and turned left at the central square, proceeding along the road to the east and eventually, after lots more walking, we came to the stone steps set into the hill that lead to the Hakurei Shrine. I had heard it said that the stairway and torii gates leading out of the shrine faced directly away from the village, toward the Great Hakurei Barrier. Despite that, the stairs and gate of the shrine could be seen or reached by walking directly east down the road that led out of the village’s eastern gate. For both of these things to be true the Great Hakurei Barrier had to be distorting the space around the shrine in some way, though the barrier itself was too large and too solid for me to see.

Looking up at the stairs climbing the hillside before us, I suppressed a sigh and forced my tired legs to march forward through will alone. Renko was already a dozen steps ahead and looked back over her shoulder. "Come on, Merry, we've been doing this climb for years now. How can you still be this weak?" In my opinion my stamina had improved significantly since our time in Kyoto, but I won't pretend I wasn't relieved when Renko descended a few steps and offered me her hand.

Hand in hand, we ascended and passed through the proud uprights of the torii. As usual, the shrine appeared deserted, with no sign of any worshippers. Reimu herself had said that her main source of income was money offerings from visitors to the shrine, but I wondered if that could really be enough to support someone at a shrine so far removed from the village. Exactly how she managed to care for herself was one of Gensokyo's enduring mysteries.

"Do you suppose Reimu went back to the mountain with those newcomers?" Renko asked. "I don't hear anyone around."

"Well, let's just have a look around to be sure. And you should put something in the donation box either way, Renko. I'm sure that would make Reimu happy, and a happy Reimu would be much easier to interview than a grumpy one, I bet."

"Good idea, but I'll consider it the cost of an interview rather than a prayer for good fortune," Renko said with a nod as we walked toward the shrine building. Just before she reached the veranda, she stopped and flipped a coin off of her thumb and through the slats of the wooden offertory box, where it landed with a clatter.

"Huh? Who's throwing coins?" called a voice from behind the box. Renko flinched back as a distinctive horn rose up from just behind the donation box as the head it was attached to rose up and turned to regard us blearily. Suika Ibuki blinked twice, scratching at her scalp lazily. "Renko and Merry? What are you two doing all the way up here? If you're looking for Reimu, you'd better not, she's in a pretty bad mood right now."

"Oh? Did something happen, I wonder? You wouldn't happen to know, would you Suika?"

"Sure I do, I was hiding in the mist. A strange person came flying in from Youkai Mountain and made a bunch of complaints."

"Oh yeah?" Renko was practically bouncing with excitement. "What were they like?"

"I dunno, a weirdo. She a friend of yours?"

"No, we've just been hearing rumors about her all day. Apparently she's part of a group of newcomers that appeared suddenly on top of the mountain. Including a goddess! Have you heard anything about them?"

"A newcomer goddess on the mountain, huh?" Suika made a dubious face and took a pull from her gourd.

"Ah, that's right, the mountain was once your home as well. Do you still feel some attachment, perhaps?"

"Nah, I don't care about Youkai Mountain. I haven't even been back since coming above ground. Those tengu find ways to make everything stuffy and boring. I'm sure if I went back there'd be nothing but drama. I think the one who came must not have been the goddess though, she looked like just a human to me. She said she was here to take over the Hakurei Shrine. I don't really think it would matter much if she did though, it's not like this shrine has any —Ow!"

Suika cried out as a softball-sized sphere of solid red and white in the shape of a yin-yang hurtled through the air to collide with the side of her head. We turned in the direction the orb had come from to see Reimu standing there, arms crossed and fuming, looking more annoyed than I had ever seen her.

"You two! What are you here for now?" Reimu demanded.

"We heard some mysterious figure had attacked the Hakurei shrine, so we came to check on you."

"How could you possibly have heard about that already? Either you're a tengu or you’re as nosy as Yukari."

"We're just two normal humans. What happened to the assailant?"

"She left already, a little while ago. But not before ordering me to close the shrine and 'cease all operations.' Who does that priestess think she is!"

I looked over at Renko. I'd never heard of a shrine receiving a cease and desist order before. I wondered how the Hakurei Shrine could even comply —I wasn't aware of much that would classify as business that got done here.

"That's certainly very suspicious," Renko said, leaning in and cupping her chin with one hand. "Can you tell me exactly what happened?"

"There's not much to tell. A shrine maiden in an outfit a little different than mine flew over from the mountain and said she wanted to talk to me..."

The following is the story of Reimu's interaction with this other shrine maiden, as she relayed it to us:

◇　◆

"Is this really a place where humans worship? It's so isolated and run down. Everything about it feels abandoned."

"What a rude thing to say! Who are you and what are you doing in my shrine?"

"I'm a divine messenger. I've come to bring you a message from the god of the mountain."

"God of the mountain? Is there a god living on Youkai Mountain?"

"She's only just arrived here in Gensokyo. I heard that this was a shrine where some people worshiped, but... What sort of god is enshrined here?"

"The god of this shrine? It’s umm… Well, the specifics don't really matter, do they?"

"What? How could they not? How can you attract faith if you don't know what sort of blessings a god offers or what sort or rituals or tributes it prefers? Is this place deserted because of a lazy shrine maiden who ignored her duties? That's bound to make the gods unhappy."

"What? Did you come here looking for a fight? Because you're about to find one."

"If you have no intention of properly worshiping the god enshrined here, then this shrine has been profaned. I must ask you to cease your operations immediately, before the god this shrine was built for becomes angered by your negligence. You must cease playing the role of a shrine maiden immediately and allow this shrine to be reclaimed by nature."

"Wait, what?"

"Oh! Or better yet, we could devote this shrine to the goddess of the mountain and use it properly! If we do that then this shrine would miraculously be renewed! Its blessings would increase, benefitting the humans of the village. In time, humans would flock here, garnering faith, earning more donations and eventually making this a spiritual center. This could be the beginning of a spiritual revival, for humans and gods alike!"

"Hold on, will you shut up for a second and listen? This isn't your shrine, it's mine!"

"I'm not saying you have to leave immediately, of course. You just have to hand the shrine over to us when you're ready. Then we can change the god who's enshrined here and make it into a center for human worship. If you like, we could even keep you on to operate this branch shrine. The number of worshippers coming here would increase and the faith and donations invested in our goddess will grow. Everyone involved will benefit, that's what they call a win-win relationship, right?"

".…What was that about more worshippers?"

"It would be great, wouldn't it? I bet there would be a line up all the way back to the village to come and visit this shrine!"

"Worshippers lining up to come visit....?"

"Sounds nice, right? You don't have to give me your answer right now. I'll come back tomorrow and we can start planning things out. It'll be fun! I'll see you then."

◆ ◇

"...and then she flew off." Reimu finished, gesturing vaguely toward the mountain.

"And you just let her leave after that?" Renko asked incredulously.

"What sort of villain do you think I am? She was just a human, and all she did was run her mouth. I can't just start shooting over just something like that. Do you take me for some sort of violent thug?"

I refrained from commenting.

"Besides," she continued, "it was a bit of a rude surprise, but maybe it wouldn't be that bad if the god who lives in this shrine was replaced."

"You just want more worshippers and more donations, right?" Suika asked, leaning towards Reimu and leering.

"No one asked you!" Reimu shouted. Somehow the stone orb that had hit Suika earlier had made its way back to her hand. She hurled it overhand, striking Suika in the face with a perfect fastball.

Renko sighed in exasperation. "I don't know, it sounds a little fishy to me, don't you think?"

"Hmm? How so?"

"Well, whoever heard of one god ousting another from a shrine? There's lots of Shinto shrines in the Outside World that are said to house multiple gods. Trying to force the god out of this specific location instead of building a new shrine somewhere else almost sounds like they're trying to cause an incident of some kind."

"Hmmm. My intuition isn't warning me about anything just yet, but you're right that it sounds suspicious." With her arms crossed, Reimu tucked her chin to her chest and grumbled, mirroring Renko's pose from a moment earlier. I imagine that the thought of attracting more worshippers to the shrine had to be tempting for Reimu.

"I think you should be careful, Reimu. From the way you described her, this other shrine maiden sounds like a sweet-talker. By the way, what was her name?"

"Her name?"

"Didn't you ask?"

"Why would I?"

Renko sighed. Thus, the identities of both the newcomer shrine maiden and her patron goddess remained unknown.

—

Before much longer we headed back to the village as there didn't seem to be anything more for us to learn at the shrine.

"So after all that walking, we're still no closer to knowing who they are."

"On the contrary," Renko replied, "we know a bit about their motivations. That tells us more about the mastermind behind this incident than a name or a face would."

"I don't see how. We know that a goddess has appeared on the mountain and is trying to take over the Hakurei Shrine and gather faith from the humans in the village, but we don't really know the reason for it. Is it a religious crusade? Or would this count as something more like the spread of a faith to a new land? For that matter, where did the new goddess come from?"

"Hmm, if it is a goddess from the Outside World I don't think it could be one of the more famous ones as they wouldn't be easily forgotten. We'll just have to find out the answer to that question for ourselves. Our next goal is to find a way to pay her a visit on Youkai Mountain." We were discussing such things as we walked down the stairway leading away from the shrine when suddenly we were interrupted by a voice from behind us.

"—I could introduce you, if you like."

Renko and I both whirled around to look behind us. There, standing on the steps, about halfway up to the shrine, was a girl we had never seen before. She had long, slightly curly greenish hair in which she wore a pair of frog and snake ornaments and was wearing an outfit just as unusual as Reimu's —a vest-like white robe, a long, printed blue skirt and a pair of voluminous white sleeves cinched around her upper arms and worn as separate garments.

"Hello," she said with a small wave. "Nice to meet you. Are you two humans from the village?" Her smile was almost blindingly brilliant. "If you'd like to come visit Moriya Shrine, I think I could probably fly you both to the mountain. I'd appreciate it if you could spread word of our blessings in the village for me."

Renko recovered from her surprise quickly and returned her smile. "You're the shrine maiden of the mountain goddess, I assume?"

She bowed deeply, still smiling brightly. "I'm not a shrine maiden, but I guess my role is kind of similar. I'm Kochiya Sanae , wind priestess of the Moriya Shrine."


—6—


"A wind priestess?"

"A religious servant dedicated to the goddess of winds. You can think of me like a shrine maiden if that's more familiar, but I don't serve as many gods and I don't have them possess me directly."

She looked us both over, considering for a moment before tilting her head. "You two are both human aren't you? You seem a bit different from the other humans I've seen here."

"We're humans, just slightly unusual ones. I'm Usami Renko," my partner said, nodding and grinning.

"I'm Maéreverie Hearn. Just call me Merry."

"Miss Renko and Miss Merry. Got it. Just Sanae is fine for me."

Sanae had been looking Renko over from the moment she had turned around. Now she looked even more closely, taking in every detail from head to toe. "I like the look," she declared. "very hard-boiled. Is it some sort of cosplay?"

"Not quite, but you're close. I'm a genuine detective. I run a detective agency in the village."

"A detective agency! With femme fatales and shady gangsters and all? Wow, I didn't know detective stories were real in Gensokyo too." Sanae was bouncing on the balls of her feet, nearly quivering with excitement I couldn't imagine the source of. "You look like something right out of Raymond Chandler!"

"Really? I was going more for V.I. Warshawski than Phillip Marlowe. Or maybe Hamura Akira."

"Warshawski? I don't really know..."

"You haven't read Sara Paretsky? How about Wakatake Nanami?"

"Er... no, sorry."

"Ah, you're missing out. There's a rich history of female gumshoes too!"

Listening from the side I could only sigh. Most people would have made the same assumption, I'm sure. The idea of a hard-boiled, hard-drinking, Chandler-style P.I. with a five-o-clock shadow was probably the most common conception of a detective. At least she hadn't expected Renko to show up wearing an inverness coat with a deerstalker cap and sporting a pipe and magnifying glass. Though picturing Renko in such a getup in my head was enough to make me smile.

"Uhh, I know Matsuda Yusaku, but you don't really look much like him."

"From 𝐷𝑒𝑡𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑆𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑦? That's really old stuff. Merry, wasn't that from the 1980's or something?"

"I'm not sure Renko. I'm not much of a TV buff. Sara Paretsky and Wakatake Nanami were both old too"

"Both of those writers are still writing at this point in time, aren’t they?"

Hamura Akira had gotten a TV series made about her too. I had binged it all back in high school.

Sanae looked at the both of us with a puzzled expression. "How do you two both know about the Outside World? I had thought that Gensokyo was sealed, with no way back out."

"Ah, that's because the two of us have something in common with you."

She clapped a hand over her mouth, gasping in surprise. "You're from the Outside World! When did you come here? I can catch you up on what's happened since you left!"

I looked at Renko. If anything, we'd be the ones in the position to catch her up, being as our knowledge of the Outside World was around 80 years more advanced than hers could have been. I leaned over and whispered to Renko. "What do you think, Renko, should we tell her?"

"No, let's not yet." She leaned away from me and raised her voice from a whisper to speak normally again. "We're more interested in you and your goddess at the moment, Sanae."

"Oh, of course!" she said, her smile giving way to a slight nervous blush. "I should take you to see our shrine. Can either of you fly?"

"Ah, afraid not. We're just ordinary humans."

"In that case, please take my hand, and hold on tight." Sanae extended a hand to each of us. I looked at Renko for a moment before taking it. Renko did the same. "Okay," Sanae said, exhaling and closing her eyes. "Let's go."

The next moment the wind suddenly began to blow fiercely. I could hear the rustling of the branches of nearby trees for a moment then all at once the roar was deafening as a vortex of whirling air swept up around us. Renko and I both instinctively grabbed for our hats and squinted our eyes against the sudden sting of wind and dust. Then all at once our bodies rose up. It was not as if the wind was blowing with the cyclone force that would have been necessary to fling us into the air, instead it was much like flying with Reimu, just noisier. Gravity had simply released us in an utterly impossible way and we had risen into the sky, standing vertically on a cushion of air that felt almost solid beneath us.

The wind died down somewhat, from a deafening howl to a low, steady roar. Sanae shouted over this. "Whatever you do, don't let go of my hand, okay?" We nodded. "Alright then, next stop, Moriya Shrine!" Beneath her feet a pentagram twinkled to life, glowing in midair. She kicked it and the winds shifted, blowing us now from behind. We began to glide through the air, picking up speed as we did, soaring faster and faster away from the hill on which the Hakurei Shrine stood.

I watched Sanae flying ahead of me, the wind rippling her green hair like the waves of an ocean. Sanae was an Outsider, just like we were. How had she learned to fly like Reimu, I wondered? I can't imagine that in the twenty-first century there were humans in the Outside world who could fly like this. Maybe that had something to do with why she was here in Gensokyo now though.

Sanae Kochiya, the green priestess who commands the wind itself. We had only just met her, but already something seemed off.