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

"Earth Spirits?"

"Yup. They're coming out of the geyser along with the steam."

"This sucks. All I wanted to do was make an onsen, but apparently that's too much to hope for."

Reimu was moping around the front of her shrine, while Marisa stood on the veranda, leaning up against the wall. A few days after the geyser had erupted we had again braved the cold to make our way to the Hakurei Shrine and see how things were progressing.

"What exactly is an 'Earth Spirit?'"

"They're vengeful spirits that are supposed to be sealed beneath the earth."

"Oh, that sounds like something I'd like to see!" Renko declared, immediately stepping forward.

I grabbed my reckless partner's sleeve. "Renko, it's a hole in the ground spewing evil spirits. You can't go poking your head in something like that, it's dangerous. That's basically asking to get haunted."

"It's just ghosts, Merry! We've seen plenty of those by now. What do you think, Reimu, are they dangerous?"

"I don't know. They're just spirits corrupted by being sealed away. They're not that big a deal..."

"They're not a big deal to you, Reimu, but I think they would be for normal folks like Renko and Merry."

"No one's going to come to an onsen that has Earth Spirits gushing out of it along with hot water are they?" She asked morosely, squatting down beside the empty offertory box as she sighed.

"So they're coming up from below, eh? Hmmm." Renko returned to my side, fiddling with the brim of her hat and ruminating. "I heard once that there's supposed to be a big city underground somewhere that used to be part of Hell. Supposedly that's where all the oni and unwelcome or uncontrollable youkai went. Could the spirits be coming up from there?"

"Oh, Miss Suika did mention something about that once. She used to live there, right?"

It had been a long while since anyone had mentioned anything on the topic, but this was indeed something we had heard about before, during the Night Parade of One Hundred Oni Every Three Days. We had never gone underground to look for the rumored city, a bit of common sense that most people probably wouldn't consider unusual, but something for which I was rather grateful given my partner's typical inclinations. Supposedly, the inhabitants of that place had agreed to maintain a separate existence in a treaty signed by the Youkai Sage more than a century ago.

"Wait a minute," Reimu said, suddenly raising her head and knitting her brows. "Are you thinking this is Suika's fault? Could she be trying to sabotage my onsen? I'm going to exterminate her."

"Eh? Someone call me? I feel like I'm being falsely accused," said a slurring voice from somewhere above us. We looked up to find Suika standing on the snow-covered roof of the shrine, looking cold. She raised one bare arm to take a long pull from her gourd before jumping off of the roof and landing beside Reimu with a clatter of heavy chains.

"Oh, you've saved me the trouble of finding you," Reimu said, as she pulled her gohei out of her sleeve. "Now I can exterminate you properly. Are you ready?"

"Hey, hold up a sec. I don' mind fightin' you, but what am I being accused of here? I don' remember doin' anythin' to you recently."

"Oh Little Miss Melon herself! It’s been a while since we’ve seen you. Where have you been?”

"In Heaven, it's cold here. Did I hear you say that Earth Spirits have been popping up? That's strange."

"Strange how?" Reimu growled.

"It would go against that non-aggression pact signed way back when that says no one's allowed to travel back and forth between the Underworld and the surface. There should be people down there in charge of preventing them from coming up."

"Well, clearly there are some exceptions to that rule. I mean you're here, Suika."

"Enh, you worry too much about details. Someone should be stopping the spirits though. You got me curious now, I'mma go have a look at that geyser."

Without another word Suika turned into mist and dispersed, blowing away in tatters as if carried by a wind. It was hard to know where to wave as the shreds of her form blew away.

"What are you going to do, Reimu?" Renko asked once Suika had gone. "Do you think this is an incident?"

"Ugh, I hope not," She groaned, "The Earth Spirits haven't attacked anyone yet, they're just sort of floating around. Maybe I could just dig a trench and we could channel the water to a pool a little ways away. The spirits shouldn't bother anyone if they just stay over near the hole, right?"

Reimu seemed solely focused on finding a way to make the geyser into an onsen.

"Would that really count as resolving the incident?"

"Incidents are a huge pain. As long as I get my onsen it doesn't have to be one, right?"

I suppose I should have expected that answer. Despite the fact that she’s the one charged with the duty of resolving incidents, Reimu has a well-known reputation for never taking action until a problem affects her directly.

"Isn't this already preventing you from getting your onsen? Having to draw the water from the mouth of the geyser to somewhere far away sounds like a lot of work."

"Suika or Tenshi would be the ones doing that work, so it's no different to me, really. Ah! I forgot to tell Suika to make a pool for the spring!"

"I see. Well, what about you then, Marisa? Do you think you could take this incident on?"

"Hm? If Reimu’s not doin’ anythin’ about it, why should I? Besides, how would I get to the Underworld? Suika might be able to turn into a mist and slip through tiny cracks in the earth, but I don't think I could."

It was a good point. While incorporeal Earth Spirits might be able to find their way up through a geyser, there was no way a human could navigate a narrow crack in the earth filled with scalding steam. While it might be possible to make the hole bigger so that a human could go down and have a look that would probably just cause more problems.

"Aren't there any other entrances to the Underworld that you could use to go investigate?"

"Probably, but I don’t know where any are."

"Me neither."

"This sort of problem might go away on its own eventually, like that flower incident did."

"Come to think of it there were a lot of disembodied phantoms floating about back then too, weren't there?"

Marisa was referring to an event from several years ago, the Sixty Year Cycle Great Barrier Incident. Renko had her own theories about why all the spirits had vanished at the conclusion of that incident, but I won't bore you with them here. Read our agency's fifth case file, if you're interested in the details.

"By the way," Marisa said, "Is that green girl not with you today?"

"You mean Sanae? She hasn't been coming by our office much. I think she's busy with something up on the mountain. She's only a part-time member of our agency, after all."

Renko turned her head to look up toward Youkai Mountain as she said that. We hadn't seen Sanae since just after the geyser had erupted. As far as we could tell from our conversations with Kanako through the branch shrine outside our office, it wasn’t that Sanae was sick or anything, she had just been tied up working on plans involving the Moriya Shrine’s recent breakthrough with electricity. It seemed their plan was to try to bring the convenience of the Outside World to Youkai Mountain, but I couldn't help but worry that they might go too far and attract the attention of the Youkai Sage or cause some other sort of problem.

Realistically though, I shouldn't have been worrying about such concerns. I had a much more pressing threat to my safety sitting right beside me, after all. I looked over at the eager, troublesome smile on my partner's face.

"Renko, would you like me to predict what you're thinking again?"

"Oh is Merry the Magician going to read my mind again? Or are you just doing your best impression of a mind-reading youkai?"

"You're planning on trying to find an entrance to the Underworld on your own and sneaking down to see what's going on, aren't you?"

"Merry, peeking inside my head like that is kind of lewd."

"Of course you'd see things that way. Renko, how do you plan on getting down to the Underworld if not even Reimu or Marisa know of any way to get there?"

"I've got some ideas," Renko said, grinning as usual. She leaned in close, cupping a hand in front of her mouth and whispering in my ear. "We could try asking Aya to start with, she seemed like she might know where such an entrance was."

As she leaned over to whisper to me Marisa watched us with open suspicion. "What are you two whisperin' about now?"

"Don't mind us, I was just whispering 'I love you.' Merry's a romantic." Renko said with an idiotic smile.

I reached over and grabbed her cheek, twisting the flesh as she yowled and batted at my hand. Reimu looked over at Marisa, then frowned at the two of us. She seemed like she might have been about to say something when suddenly another voice interrupted us and another pair of feet touched down in the snow behind us.

"Oh, Reimu. You are still alive." The line had been spoken calmly by Sakuya, who was now standing just before the torii.

"That’s pretty rude for a greeting." Reimu replied, turning her eyes to the maid.

"I noticed that there were phantoms near the shrine so I thought perhaps you and Marisa had died. Oh, hello there Miss Usami, Miss Hearn. Nice to have seen you again," she said, turning to leave.

"Hey, don't just assume I’m dead at the drop of a hat! And how come those two get a pleasant greeting? Are you only being rude to me?"

"It’s only natural that I should address people who were polite houseguests and befriended the Mistress and Young Miss differently than two people who broke into the mansion and stole books from the library." She said nonchalantly. From the way the two of them bantered, I couldn't tell if Reimu and Sakuya had actually become friends or not..

"Well, I see that you're alright, but if, by chance, any of those phantoms outside belong to someone you killed, do let me know, Miss Reimu. I could offer you a reasonable fee for a fresh human corpse."

"I haven't killed anyone. There's a geyser that came up just north of here that's releasing Earth Spirits from the Underworld."

"From the Underworld? Oh, I'll have to let Lady Patchouli know. She'll be pleased to hear it."

"Huh? What would she want to know for?" Marisa asked, stepping away from the wall.

"She's been curious about the city of the oni ever since first met the one at those parties."

"Hey, you don't think she'd come here in this cold wanting to see it, do you?"

"I suspect she will once I tell her that there would also be an opportunity to retrieve her missing grimoires from the thief who stole them."

"Right, about time I should be goin' then." Marisa said, collecting her broom from where it had been leaning against the shrine.

"Oh, there she goes. You just chased a visitor away, Sakuya." Reimu groused as Marisa straddled her broom and leapt off the veranda, racing away on a trail of glittering stardust.

"Well then, I'll just excuse myself as well. Good day, Reimu. Try not to get killed by an Earth Spirit. If you think you might be though, try to let me know first. Milady would love to have you for dinner."

"Just leave already." Reimu growled.

Sakuya bowed elegantly and turned again to leave. Before she could, my partner suddenly whirled around, raising a hand and calling to Sakuya.

"Oh! Miss Sakuya! Actually, if it's not too much trouble would you mind flying us to the Scarlet Devil Mansion with you?"

She turned her head, looking back over her shoulder at us. "I suppose I could. The mistress and her sister will still be asleep at this hour though."

"That's alright," Renko said, poking her hat back on her head with one finger. "I happen to have some urgent business to conduct with Miss Patchouli."

Sakuya narrowed her eyes suspiciously but said nothing.


—5—


"Well if it's urgent, then please hold on." Sakuya said, holding out both of her hands daintily.

The moment we had both grabbed Sakuya, we found ourselves standing in front of the Scarlet Devil Mansion's gate. If having Sanae fly us from place to place was convenient, then travelling with Sakuya would be a whole order of magnitude moreso. Only for us through. If she had had to fly all the way here in stopped time dragging us along with her like Dio carting Polnareff around, I imagine that would have been the opposite of convenient for Sakuya.

If that reference didn’t make any sense to you, by the way, that’s probably because I was referring to a scene from that vividly illustrated old manga that I had first seen in the library of the Scarlet Devil Mansion and since read after borrowing it from Sanae. It seemed that all of the residents of the mansion had read that same series at one point or another, but I wondered how Patchouli had managed to get her hands on a copy of it in the first place.

Meiling was leaning with her back up against the pillar beside the gate as usual, snoring softly. Sakuya lazily tossed a knife at her with an underhanded flick of the wrist and she jumped as it clattered off of the brick beside her head.

"Gah! Miss Sakuya! Oh, and welcome to the both of you," She said, scrambling to bow.

After passing through the gate we were led by Sakuya into the mansion. Since Remilia and her sister were still asleep, we headed straight for the library in the basement. We found Patchouli sitting at the same large table we had seen her reading at in the past. As we arrived, Sakuya bowed once more before saying "I'll make some tea," and promptly vanishing.

Patchouli noticed us as soon as we approached, briefly looking up from the book she was reading.. "Remi and her sister are still sleeping, so I take it you two are here looking for a book. Just let me know before you take anything."

"Actually," my partner said, "there are a few things I wanted to talk to you about, Miss Patchouli."

"Does it have to be me?"

"Well you're the one who I suspect would be most interested in what I have to say."

"If you're wondering if I'd hire you to get my books back from Marisa, I’d be open to discussing it later."

"It’s nothing like that. I actually wanted to ask you about the Underworld."

"The Underworld?" Patchouli inserted a bookmark into the heavy tome she was reading and closed it, before turning towards my partner. "What would humans want to know about the Underworld?"

"Well..." Renko began to explain about the recently erupted geyser near the Hakurei Shrine and how so-called Earth Spirits were now gushing out of it. Patchouli listened intently, and half way through Renko's retelling, Sakuya appeared to deliver three cups of steaming black tea and a porcelain dish of fancily-decorated cookies. "I saw them too," she said. "There were a number of suspicious looking phantoms hovering in the area around the shrine just now."

Patchouli frowned, shifting in her chair with a rustle of her layered robes. "That shouldn't be happening. It's a violation of the mutual non-aggression pact between the surface and the Underworld. That one oni already broke the rules and came up though, so who can say if that pact is still enforced..." She took a sip of her tea, clearly savoring it for a moment before exhaling. "A few disembodied earth spirits are no cause for concern in and of themselves, but if all of the youkai down there were to start coming up whenever they pleased, that would be a real problem for Gensokyo's status quo."

My partner snorted derisively. "That sounds like a line from the Youkai Sage, Miss Patchouli."

"What's wrong with that? Yakumo Yukari seems to be perfectly competent in her role."

"I'm just a bit surprised to hear you so concerned about maintaining Gensokyo's balance of power."

"That's a bit disappointing to hear," she said, "I'm very invested in protecting the peace of Gensokyo." Given Patchouli's disposition, that statement might seem surprising to you. If you think so though, I'd refer you to the first of our agency's casefiles. If there was any grain of truth to Renko's theories, then Patchouli had good reason to want to keep everything in Gensokyo just as it was.

"I won't be able to say whether this news is concerning or not until I have a look at this geyser myself. I'll have to think about countermeasures as well." She said, nibbling a bite of cookie. "Perhaps this might be an opportunity to learn more about the Underworld."

She stopped suddenly then raised her head and looked me directly in the eye. "I don't suppose I could ask you to contact Yakumo Yukari for me?"

"The Youkai Sage? I don't think I can call her directly. I might be able to get in touch with her shikigami for you."

"That would suffice. I may need to get a message to her. Could I ask you to take care of that for me?"

Renko took a long sip of her tea then smiled at Patchouli, the usual cat-like grin blooming on her face. "Well, she's not an easy person to get a hold of. If you'd like to hire us for a job like that, I think we should discuss payment first. For a small, off-the-books assignment like this one, I don't think payment in gold would really be appropriate. Instead, there's a bit of information I'd like to get from you in exchange."

Patchouli's eyes narrowed suspiciously as she regarded my partner. "Ah yes. I suppose this would be what you actually came here to discuss. Well what is it you want to know?" She asked, with a hint of a wheeze.

"Just one question." Renko replied. "How can we get down to the Underworld?


—6—


And so, as usual, Renko had decided on a path and forged ahead without any input from me. After this many recurrences, I suppose it would be foolish of me not to blame myself. Despite all my complaining both on these pages and in person, I always ended up following along behind Renko. It was years ago now that I spoke with the Yama and she had warned me of the necessit of acting as a brake for my partner. I still wasn't any closer to figuring out exactly ℎ𝑜𝑤 I was supposed to achieve that though. Without having found any better options, I continued to raise my easily-ignored worries and keep my complaints largely in my head, which is exactly what led to situations like the one I found myself in now.

"Whoa. That's... really deep." Renko said, staring into the yawning abyss before us.

"Renko, you can't really be serious about this, right?"

Directly before us was a vast, gaping pit which stretched endlessly downward, well beyond the limits of what the sunlight angling into the shaft could illuminate. Where the light couldn't reach, the darkness was absolute. Looking into it even while standing well back from the rim gave you the distinct sensation that you were slowly being sucked inside.

"Does this shaft really go down all the way to the Underworld, Miss Patchouli?"

"Well, I haven't dived down myself, so I can't be certain. It might just be a deep hole, but if it does lead the Underworld and I were to go down there to confirm that, it would be a violation of the non-aggression pact."

It was a very uncertain story. We couldn't really be sure of anything except for the location of this giant hole. I'll not include that information here though, both to prevent anyone from doing anything that might endanger the non-aggression pact and because the shaft was entirely impassable for anyone unable to fly. I strongly discourage anyone from seeking the location out. If you can't fly, the fall would unquestionably be lethal.

"What do you say, Merry? Ready to descend into the Underworld?"

"How? There's no way a regular human could possibly survive going into something like that."

Renko peered over the edge of the void and swallowed. The spectacle of the chasm was so dizzying that I tried not to look at it. Seeing my partner standing near the edge was enough to make my blood run cold. She paused for a moment before lowering herself onto her stomach and sticking her head over the edge into empty space.

"Heeey, c'mon out!" she shouted, echoing the words from the famous Shinichi Hoshi story. She waited a moment, but there was no echo to be heard. "You try Merry, I can't get loud enough to reach the bottom."

Why would she think that I could yell any louder than she could? What would I even scream that loud? 'Renko is an idiot?' That was the sort of information anyone who had met her would already be aware of.

—

Perhaps I should rewind a little, back to our conversation in the library within the basement of the Scarlet Devil Mansion.

"Why would you ask me about that?" Patchouli asked in response to Renko's request. Renko leaned forward across the table, a mix of excitement and cunning playing across her face. Patchouli recoiled as my partner drew close.

"Because it just so happens that you are the only one I can ask, Miss Patchouli. With the balance of power as it currently stands, both the Child of Miare and the Youkai Sage wouldn't be likely to give me straight answers, if they give me any answers at all. The tengu are so afraid of the possibility of ever seeing an oni again that they might kill me just for asking. You’re the only person I can think of who fulfills all three of the necessary criteria: You're interested in the Underworld, you're a youkai who wasn’t directly involved with the creation of the non-aggression pact. In addition, your predilection for collecting a vast and all-encompassing knowledge of the world means you're both likely to already know of an entrance to the Underworld."

Patchouli looked up at Renko as she leaned across the table, glaring as she huddled deeper into her lavender robes. "I can't guarantee there is even a way to get there. The denizens of the Underworld are supposed to be sealed such that they can never return, so the path is sure to be blocked up or guarded. Even if I were to show you what I know, there'd be no way for you to use it."

"I don't believe that, Miss Patchouli. After all, Miss Suika is here on the surface with us now. She's what got you interested in the Underworld in the first place, isn't she?" Patchouli glared silently at my partner. "Since she's here Gensokyo and the Underworld can't be considered completely cut off from one another anymore, can they? Even if the hole she came through has been resealed, I happen to have the assistance of a top-of-the-line barrier detector capable of finding a way through nearly any seal."

"Renko! Don't volunteer me for this crazy scheme without asking!"

"Come to think of it, you did bypass the wards on the Young Miss’ room didn't you?"

I had opened my mouth to scold Renko further, but upon looking across the table at the way that Patchouli was already appraising me, I found I lost the will to speak.

"Miss Patchouli, you've been wanting to find out more about the Underworld since the kerfuffle with all of those parties, haven't you?"

"Yes..." she muttered, looking at me in a way that felt like she was staring straight through me.

"That was quite a while ago. The fact that you are still interested in what's down there suggests to me that you've never tried going there yourself though, correct?"

"Of course not. Even trying would be enough to violate the non-aggression pact. Like I said, I have an interest in maintaining Gensokyo's status quo."

"You have my sympathy, Miss Patchouli, I can only imagine how frustrating it might be to be looked upon as Gensokyo's most learned scholar, a veritable personification of the concept of knowledge, but to be bound to uphold the very thing that prevents you from learning more. That must be a terrible source of regret for you."

"You couldn’t be planning to…" Suddenly she froze in place and her eyes went wide. She looked up at Renko, who smiled as she reached across the table to take hold of both of Patchouli’s hands. "Miss Patchouli, infiltration, investigation and information gathering just happen to be the three specialties of the Hifuu Detective Agency. If you really want to know more about the Underworld, then I highly advise you to engage our services. The mission of our agency is to reveal the hidden secrets of the world!"

Patchouli stared up at Renko for a moment with a stunned expression on her face, then broke into a fit of dry coughs. Shaking her hand away from Renko's grip, she took a sip of tea then caught her breath. "No, no. It's utterly ridiculous. Sending you down there would be acting within the letter of the law, but we can't go against the spirit of the non-aggression treaty."

"Don't the Earth Spirits coming up from that geyser already count as denizens of the Underworld? The other party has already broken the agreement. At this point it would almost be strange not to send a human down to investigate the situation. If anything you'd be working to maintain the treaty, and staying within the bounds of the agreement to do so."

"...No, no, that's just a flimsy excuse. We can't..."

"Can't violate a treaty between surface youkai and Underworld youkai? That's who signed the pact in the first place, right?"

"Exactly."

"So it's just a treaty between youkai then. Humans aren't even subject to it!"

—

—And so now you see how Renko's follies had compounded, one atop the other until we were left here.

"As far as I know this is the only opening in the ground large enough to possibly lead to the Underworld. Given that there are vengeful spirits coming out of the geyser at the Hakurei Shrine it might be more reliable to try to dig a hole there though. At any rate, I've told you what I know now. Will you be going down?"

"We should have called Sanae before coming here..." Renko muttered, still staring into the abyss.

"That would just be causing trouble for the Moriya Shrine. We can't get them involved in this, Renko."

Patchouli looked us both over and sighed in exasperation. "Well, I won't force you to go. The whole idea was a longshot to begin with." she said wheezily.

"No," Renko said, rising up from the ground and dusting off the front of her shirt. "The Hifuu Detective Agency has taken the case, and I intend to deliver what we can. This is just an issue of logistics. I'm sure between the three of us there's something we could figure out. Is there some kind of magic that could get us safely to the bottom, Miss Patchouli? Like the time you teleported us from the library to the outside of the mansion."

"Teleporting to a place you've never been is much harder, and harder still if you're sending someone other than yourself. I can try it if you like, but how do you feel about materializing inside a rock?"

"Eugh, I'd rather avoid that. Would it be possible to conjure an extremely long rope ladder or the like?"

"That's not how it works. Summoning magic isn't that convenient."

"In that case, I don't suppose you'd be willing to just fly us as far as the bottom and just drop us off then?"

"If I could do that much, I could investigate this myself. Going down there might well be counted as a violation of the treaty. It doesn't explicitly specify what the border between the surface and the Underworld is supposed to be."

Renko sighed, rubbing at her head. "Well, I guess we'll have to go get Sanae then. I don't know how to rock climb and I don't think we could find a rope long enough to safely lower ourselves down."

"Even if you could, people have to train to go down holes on ropes, Renko." I interjected. "If you try to go down there by any means other than flying you'll die for sure. You might not even die instantly if you end up with two broken legs at the bottom of the shaft, waiting to die of thirst."

"There’s that too, I suppose. Arg, I wish we could fly, it would really make things much easier for us."

"Just give it up, Renko. We’re just two ordinary humans."

"You'll have to figure it out on your own." Patchouli said grouchily. "If you can find your own way down, I'll pay for a report on what you find down there. Can you at least find your own way home from here? I'd like to go inspect the shrine."

"We'll manage." Renko said. "Thank you for showing us this entrance."

"It's a fair trade. You said all I'd need to summon the Youkai Sage's shikigami is some fried tofu?"

"That's right." Ran loves fried tofu. We'd been able to get her attention a few times in the past by leaving some out of her. Though sometimes it would vanish without us ever seeing her.

"Very well. I wonder where one could get such a thing. I should have asked Sakuya."

"There's a tofu shop in the village..." Despite being well informed on a broad range of topics, Patchouli seemed occasionally to lack the sort of common sense anyone might be expected to guess at. I suppose that might be a result of never leaving her underground library. Patchouli grunted in acknowledgement of Renko's advice and floated off of the ground, turning towards the Hakurei shrine.

We were left to our own devices as she flew off. Renko stepped up to the lip of the hole and looked down again. "No doubt about it, Merry. We'll have to find another collaborator."

"Actually, shouldn't Ran be watching us right now?" Theoretically, if the Youkai Sage really was concerned with maintaining a non-aggression pact with the Underworld, then surely Ran should show up at any moment to stop us from doing anything that could endanger that pact.

"Maybe she's busy. I don’t really feel like she’s been keeping all that close of a watch on us, to be honest. Well that's to our advantage anyway. What we need to do now is find someone who could bring us down to the bottom of this shaft. Ideally a human."

"That would pretty much have to be Marisa, wouldn't it?"

"Yeah, probably. She'd likely be interested in the idea, but I don't know if she could fly us both down and back up on that broom. Maybe we should talk to the kappa. Do you think they could invent some kind of technological solution?" While Renko mused she absentmindedly kicked at a clod of earth, dislodging a half-buried stone and propelling it over the edge of the pit.

Suddenly there was a sharp thud as the section of earth Renko was standing on abruptly shifted a few centimeters downward. "Huh?" she said stupidly, pitching toward the edge and pinwheeling her arms as she attempted to regain her balance.

"Renko!"

I lunged forward. I saw my fingers weave between hers as we heard the rattle of gravel crumbling away. If this had been a fictional story, some action movie or adventure tale, then what would have happened is she would have been left dangling by one arm as the ground collapsed and I scrabbled for purchase. Renko would have hung, suspended over the abyss in a thrilling and tense scene while I tried to haul her up with one arm. Somewhere, Sanae would have been watching, cheering me on.

Reality was much different. My fragile arms could never suspend the weight of an entire person dangling off of them. Moreover, in lunging for Renko I had already shifted my center of balance forward and thrown my momentum toward her, and the hole.

And so what happened was not either of us twisting in the air and grabbing the edge of the pit with our fingers as we fell, or snagging our clothes on a precipice and crawling out or landing in the canopy of an oh-so-convenient tree growing horizontally out of the edge of the chasm. Even if that had happened, there was no one nearby who could have rescued us, so we'd have only succeeded in delaying our fate by a few seconds.

No, all that I accomplished was to pitch myself forward and wrap my arms around Renko, imparting a momentum that sent us tumbling end over end as the ground gave way and we both plummeted into the fathomless blackness of the shaft, making inarticulate screams that were not even words.