東方プロジェクト二次小説・オリジナル小説サイト
Chapter 3:Phantasmagoria of Flower View

—7—


"Oh my, what is all this?"

Kaguya and Eirin had eventually made their way to the same courtyard the rest of us were examining. Upon discovering the strange scene of flowers and phantoms, Kaguya's reaction had seemed to be more one of surprise and amusement than alarm.

"Oh dear, Eirin. I don't know if we should have a flower-viewing party or a ghost-watching party."

"I'm sure we could do either, princess."

"Why not both, then?" She clapped excitedly, smiling as if she hadn't a care in the world.

Eirin seemed unworried as well, but at least appeared to realize that something was not as it should be. "Udonge," she called.

Reisen hurried to her side. "Yes, Master?"

"Go see if you can find out what's happening."

"Understood!" Reisen responded before hurrying off down the hall.

"I suppose I need to go figure out what sort of preparations one makes for a flower and ghost-watching party." Eirin said, and retreated back inside. Only Kaguya remained with us, extending a hand to poke at one of the drifting phantoms.

Reisen returned a minute later, standing rigidly as she addressed Kaguya. "Excuse me, Princess. I'm off to go investigate this situation."

"Yes, go ahead. You'll have to hurry though, the other inaba all already have a head start on you."

"What? When did Tewi leave? What's she going to —never mind."

I looked around. Sure enough, Tewi and the other rabbits had all vanished when I wasn't looking.

"You, humans," Reisen called, turning now to Renko and I. "You're not going to try to follow me again are you?"

"Oh, can we?" Renko asked excitedly.

"Absolutely not!" She said, and without another moment's hesitation leapt from the veranda, soaring clear over the low stone wall that stood before the taller bamboo one. As a human, any thought of following her after a leap like that was hopeless.

"Ah, she's escaped again," said Renko limply.

"So much for your plans, Renko. What do we do now?"

"Well, given the circumstances, I think it would be wise for us to go and find Tewi. She's probably not gone far. If you'll excuse us then, Princess." Renko bowed politely to Kaguya.

"Oh, are you leaving already? The flowers are so beautiful today, why not sit and enjoy them with me for a bit?"

"Thank you for the invitation, but I have a hunch we're going to see a lot more of these flowers where we're headed. Come on, Merry."

"Oh, yes. Please excuse me, Princess." I nodded to Kaguya and hurried along after Renko, who was already making her way back to the entrance.

"Have a nice day you two," came Kaguya's shout from behind us.
Outside the gates of Eientei, we were greeted once again by a wealth of beautiful blossoms. Here, most of what we could see on the ground was the torch-like plumes of flowering ginger, but overhead nearly every branch of the dizzying canopy that spanned our view was laden with the sweet-smelling bamboo flowers. The cloying sent in the air was nearly overpowering. Bamboo flowers were a rarity and beautiful to see but for the whole scene in front of us to be so completely transformed was a bit alarming.

"Those jasmine flowers bloom in the shade in the spring, so I'm not surprised to see them blooming here at least..." Renko said, looking around.

"It didn't look like this when we arrived..." I muttered, taking it all in. To think that this many plants could have all bloomed in just the time we were inside the mansion seemed almost impossible.

"If there were a botanist or a nature photographer here with us, they'd be weeping with joy."

"So is all of this your doing, Merry?"

"Me? I haven't done anything, Renko." Aside from the rare flowers, there were also things blooming at the wrong time of year. "Bamboo flowers, Irises, moss and autumn cosmos should never bloom at the same time, regardless of the season, but especially not in the spring!"

"There's definitely more going on here than just a lot of flowers opening at once. I wonder if it's like this everywhere or just here in the forest. Maybe other things are blooming out of season elsewhere."

"Like sunflowers, you mean?"

"Great idea, Merry! The Garden of the Sun isn't far from here. We can head there and find out. If it looks like it did last summer then it's definitely an incident. Come on, let's go take a look!" Renko tugged at my hand as she began to stride away from the gate.

"There's just one problem with that idea, Renko," I said, holding my ground as Renko tugged. "We have no idea how to get out of this forest. Didn't you want to go look for Tewi first, anyway?"

My partner stopped dead in her tracks. Although we had come to Eientei several times at this point, we'd never found our way without the aid of an experienced guide. Usually we arrived by following Reisen or Tewi, and either Mokou or Keine would lead us back out after we were done.

"Right. First we find Tewi, then we go to the Garden of the Sun. Let's go, Merry!"

"Yes, yes. Lead on, Sherlock." Sometimes it would be nice if my famed great detective of a partner would devote a little of her genius to planning.

Just then a familiar figure pushed their way through the leaves of a stand of bamboo a little ways ahead and began making their way toward the gates of Eientei.

"Hey Mokotan, is that you?" Renko called out when she spotted the figure.

"You've been hanging out with the princess far too much," Mokou said as she approached. "Don't call me Mokotan, especially when I don't know it's you saying it." She stuffed her hands into the pockets of her pants and looked us both over with a grumpy expression.

"Mokou, did you come here to pick a fight with the princess again?"

"Well, not specifically, but there's something weird going on in the forest," she said, gesturing to the blooms surrounding us. "I thought maybe that quack was testing some sort of new drug or something..."

"Ah, a reasonable guess but this time I'm afraid that's not it."

"Oh? Do you know what's going on then?"

"No, but neither do they. Both the princess and Eirin were with us when this happened and they seemed genuinely surprised."

"That doesn't mean anything. It still could have been them."

"That's true, but it's just as likely that it's someone else. There's no evidence either way. A good detective can't let their personal biases color their judgment."

Mokou crossed her arms. "Alright then, detective, who do you think did this then?"

"Well even I can't work that fast. We've only just noticed this situation ourselves. We were about to go check out the Garden of the Sun for the time being."

"The Garden of the Sun? You mean that big sunflower field near the village? There used to be a powerful youkai who loved flowers living there..."

"Kazami Yuuka, right?"

"I don't know, to be honest. It's a youkai who carries a parasol. I never learned her name. A long time ago I wandered in there in the summer, and thought I might as well pick a few flowers for Keine, since it was quite a sight. She came out of nowhere and warned me not to pick any that were still alive. I didn't fight her, but she seemed like a real nasty character."

Mokou scratched her head uncertainly. We didn't know much about Kazami Yuuka either. We her only met her briefly last summer but she seems to know miss Akyuu, and I heard from the daughter of the owner of the village's flower shop that she sometimes comes into town.

"As a flower youkai I thought she might have some idea what's going on," Renko reasoned.

"Or, given this situation..." Mokou grumbled, "she might even be the mastermind behind it."

"Hmmm." Renko crossed her arms and tucked her chin to her chest in consideration. "At the very least, she's a suspect, but I don't have enough information yet to come to a conclusion. Well, either way, we'll need to go to the Garden of the Sun next. Mokou, I don't suppose I could ask you to guide us out of the forest, could I?" Renko held up one hand pleadingly, hunching and nodding.

Mokou shrugged. "I don't mind. I just hope you're wrong and this is all Kaguya's fault. It would be a waste to have burned all the flowers around my house like that."

"Oh, you'll have to be careful," I interjected. "If you start another fire, you might get your face in the newspaper again."

Mokou frowned. "Ugh, I hope not. Damn that crow tengu..."

Last year, not long after the Eternal Night Incident, Mokou had taken her revenge on Kaguya for sending Reimu and Marisa after her. The result of that battle had been a sizable brushfire on the edge of the bamboo forest near Eientei, which had been reported in the 𝐵𝑢𝑛𝑏𝑢𝑛𝑚𝑎𝑟𝑢. If I remember correctly, Mokou had claimed the fire was the result of an improperly disposed of cigarette at the time.

At any rate, future worries aside, Mokou led the way out of the forest. It was a more difficult trip than usual with every step needing to be carefully placed to avoid treading on the ubiquitous flowers of every kind that were blooming from every plant in sight. Among the stalks and flowers, phantoms were also drifting randomly about and a higher-than-normal number of fairies seemed to be present, playing with the phantoms and frolicking among the flowers. I wondered if the fairies had come because of the flowers, or if the flowers had bloomed because of the fairies. Either way, neither option explained the phantoms.

"Where are all of these coming from?" Renko asked as she reached out to grab a passing phantom. It wriggled out of her grip and floated away. "Do you think the barrier to the Netherworld is loose again?"

"Well, it probably wasn't a massacre at the human village. There's too many here for that," Mokou responded. I blanched. Such a horrible thought hadn't occurred to me, but it goes without saying that all of these disembodied souls had to be coming from somewhere. I wonder what it was like for Mokou, who might just go on living forever, to see so many dead souls swarming about, awaiting reincarnation. Would she be envious? Or glad to not have to endure such a thing? I was lost in such thoughts when Mokou suddenly thrust her arm out in front of me, saying "Wait. Hold up."

I bumped into her thoughtlessly. As I was about to apologize she placed a hand on my head and pushed me down. "Just get down already," she whispered hoarsely. Awkwardly, I crouched into a bush as she hid behind a stand of bamboo and Renko squatted beside me.

Renko peeked her eyes above the bush for a moment, but apparently wasn't able to see anything. "What is it, Mokou?" she whispered.

"Up ahead. Someone's playing danmaku."

Sure enough, we saw the two combatants darting about in the air, weaving through the bamboo at the edge of the forest and around ground cover as they exchanged waves and rings of light bullets. The youkai Tewi was fighting was a night sparrow who I had seen before, but only behind the counter of her food cart which sold grilled lamprey eels. Renko and I had gone there for drinks with Mokou. I think her name was Mystia Lorelei.

"It looks more like they're playing than fighting."

"Yeah, they're having fun. Oh, she got hit."

Mystia had sent a stream of glowing bullets streaking towards her opponent. They collided with Tewi and she was sent tumbling into a patch of waving jasmine flowers. It seems Mystia had won.

The night sparrow trilled musically, singing "Everywhere I go, the scenery doesn’t change at all~♪" as she circled then soared away.

We rose from our hiding spot and carefully approached. Almost as soon as we did, Tewi's head popped up like a spring from the bushes.

"Oh, hello there. Did you all enjoy that show?" She said with a lilt of laughter in her voice.

"Tewi, are you alright?"

"No big deal," she said, brushing off her skirt and turning to Mokou. "You, you're the princess' nemesis. I should tell you that this flower incident isn't her or the Master's doing."

Mokou scoffed. "Of course you'd say that. I don't suppose you could tell me who's doing it?"

"Nope!" Tewi chirped happily. "Does it matter though? At a festival like this it's a waste of time if you don't try some of the games." Saying that, she bounded into the air well over Mokou's head, with a half dozen of her inaba appearing from the grass and following after her. Singing and dancing, she and the other rabbits disappeared back into the forest.

Mokou sighed as she vanished between the stalks of bamboo. "Now the youkai are all worked up too. It's been a while since this happened."

Renko turned to her in surprise. "A while? This has happened before then? How long ago?"

Mokou closed her eyes and massaged her temples with a groan. "Hmmm, I think it's happened before, or something like it. It's been a long time though. Maybe a human lifetime or two? I definitely remember the bamboo grove being full of flowers but... enh, it's no good. I don't remember any details."

Renko and I glanced at each other. Could an incident be the sort of thing that would repeat itself?


—8—


Shortly after that, we parted ways with Mokou and made our way to the Garden of the Sun. We had initially planned to go together, but our plans changed when Kaguya and Eirin showed up.

"Oh, Mokotan! Why don't you come with us to go flower and ghost watching?"

"Why the hell would I go with you?

"Because it’s lonely with just Eirin"

"Why the hell would I care if you’re lonely!?"

It was at that point that Renko and I had elected to leave the three of them to their friendly (?) discussion and made our way to the Garden of the Sun alone.

The path leading there from the crossroads south of the village was now lined with countless flowers, in a plethora of colors and shapes. Sunflowers, dandelions, and white clover were the most common, but chrysanthemums, autumn cosmos, and hibiscus were all in bloom as well, regardless of the season. Along with the flowers covering everything were more phantoms than I had seen since the flower-viewing at Hakugyokurou. It seemed the bizarre conditions we had noticed were not confined to the bamboo forest.

"So it's not a localized phenomenon. It seems to be the same everywhere, regardless of place or season."

"There's a lot of phantoms here too. It almost feels like we're back in the Netherworld. With phantoms on the loose and the seasons out of control, wouldn't it be natural to assume this is the same as the Spring Snow Incident all over again?" I asked.

Renko rested her chin between her finger and thumb and grunted. "Hmmm, during that incident, winter was only prolonged here because all the spring had been gathered and taken to the Netherworld."

"Well, maybe we're at the center of it this time. Someone here in Gensokyo might have liked Yuyuko's idea and started gathering up all of the seasons other than winter at once."

"Who knows? Maybe the Netherworld is all frozen right now."

"Gathering everything into one place all at once sounds sort of like Suika. Maybe there's already a big boozy party happening somewhere."

We continued discussing such possibilities as we continued down the path. After a few minutes of walking, we came to the bowl-shaped valley in which the Garden of the Sun lay.

"I thought so," Renko concluded, looking at the splendor arrayed before us.

As might have been expected, the garden was breathtaking. Sunflowers stretched as far as the eye could see. Simply looking at the sea of lambent gold swaying gently was enough to make you forget the season, so replete with the feeling of summer were the flowers.

"All right," Renko said, taking it all in. "Let's go find Miss Yuuka." She took my hand and began to lead the way down the slope.

"Do you think this is a good idea, Renko? She seemed nice enough before, but I kind of doubt she'll remember us. She only saw us for a few minutes last time."

"I'm sure it'll work out. Strong youkai are known for being polite, right?"

"This doesn't seem like a particularly well thought out plan, Renko."

"Well, if it doesn't work I'll think of a new one."

"That's what worries me." As usual my partner's recklessness was by far the scariest thing to deal with in this world filled with supernatural monsters.

We spent some time looking through the dense maze of sunflowers for any sign of Yuuka, but there was no hint of her or her parasol anywhere. It was hard to be sure with the visibility in the maze being close to zero, but I got the feeling she wasn't around —all around us birds continued to sing and the voices of fairies could be heard giggling and squealing from time to time.

"I don't think she's here, Renko" I said after a few minutes of searching.

"Do you think I should shout for her?"

"I'd rather you didn't."

Renko suddenly looked up, seeming to notice something above my head. I turned to look as she waved her arm toward the sky. There, a familiar figure was flying by, looking down. Noticing Renko's wave, Konpaku Youmu descended and dropped into the field beside us.

"Hello Youmu." Renko said cheerfully.

"Oh, it's you two. What are you doing here?"

"We're just having an out of season flower viewing. How about you?"

"I came here on an errand and found everything like this, so I was having a look around. Do you know what’s going on here?"

"Not a clue, I’m afraid. Is everything normal in the Netherworld?"

"The Netherworld? Nothing’s changed." Youmu’s eyes widened in surprise at the question.

"The barrier hasn’t been weakened and your seasons haven’t been stolen or anything, have they?"

"I don’t think Lady Yuyuko has been doing anything recently…"

"Were any flowers blooming out of season there?"

"I don’t think so, at least not when I left."

"You're not missing..." Renko gestured expansively "a whole bunch of phantoms, by chance?"

She glanced around for a moment, as if trying to count the numerous drifting blobs. "I… I don’t think the barrier’s the problem."

"I see," Renko said, pressing her hat down on her head. "Well, thank you for the information, it would have been very hard for us to get to the Netherworld on foot. I won't keep you Youmu."

Youmu nodded and began to rise back into the sky saying "Right. I should go have a look around." Before she could fly off though, Renko called out to her.

"Oh! Youmu! Just one more question."

She turned around in midair, looking down toward us. "What is it?"

"Do you remember if anything like this has ever happened before?"

She tilted her head in confusion. "Anything like what?"

"Nevermind," Renko said with a barely audible sigh. "Thanks again, Youmu."

Youmu nodded and rose higher into the sky, sailing off toward the Bamboo Forest of the Lost, presumably on her way to Eientei.

My partner watched her go for a bit, before turning to me wearing a Cheshire smile. "This is getting interesting," she said. "If the phantoms aren't missing from the Netherworld, then they must have come from somewhere else. Where do you suppose that might be? The Sanzu river? Hell? And what do the flowers have to do with it all? Mokou mentioned this had happened sometime before, but Youmu didn't know about it, which means it must have happened before she was born—Ah, I've got it! Our next step to understand this incident will be found somewhere in the annals of history!"


—9—


After that we headed back to the village, adding even more distance to our walking total for the day. The whole way back the road was surrounded by mounds of flowers and drifts of phantoms floating lazily between them. At this rate I imagined that even inside the village flowers must be growing everywhere. It was probably a moment of crisis for the local florists. I wonder if Keine and the other members of the neighborhood watch were being besieged by complaints.

"Hey, look!" Renko said, nudging me out of worry about such thoughts and directing my attention toward the sky. "Someone else is fighting too."

Sure enough, a ways ahead and far up into the sky I could make out two darting shapes flitting here and there between clouds of glimmering projectiles. Projectiles that looked like...

Knives. "I think that's Sakuya." I said.

And glowing, semi-solid floating musical notes. "I think that's the keyboardist from the Prismriver Ensemble."

Sakuya definitely seemed to have the upper hand. Despite the keyboard girl sending out wave after wave of warbling, interlocking notes, Sakuya was able to simply move to a clear spot in an instant, raining down a seemingly endless downpour of knives that never seemed to quite reach the ground. The keyboardist was forced to rapidly retreat under the onslaught, until, in a last desperate ploy, she turned at the last second and charged headfirst toward Sakuya.

Sakuya deftly skirted the charge and the pianist rushed past the point where she had been a moment before, hurtling to earth and crashing into a bush not far from where we were standing.

Sakuya looked down for only a moment, then waved her hand dismissively and flew off without a word. She must have been investigating the incident too. If she was looking into it, Reimu and Marisa were probably off fighting somewhere too. This was getting to be a big deal.

"Hello?" Renko called out to the pair of belled, red, curl-toed shoes poking out of the top of the bush.

Groaning,the keyboardist righted herself and emerged, blinking, from the bush. "Oh my, I didn't know I had an audience. I hope this doesn't ruin your impression of our live performances."

"No, not at all. We were just passing by and happened to see you. You’re a part of the Prismriver Ensemble, right?"

"The name’s Lyrica. Remember it when you’re listening to our music."

"I’ll do that. Sorry about that, are you not with the rest of your band today?"

"I'm playing solo at the moment. I was looking for some good sounds to sample. The trumpet and the violin have so much character on their own, but a keyboard only copies other sounds. I was hoping to find something to make my playing stand out. Do you think the sound of flying knives would make good music?"

Thinking back to the performances I had heard at the Scarlet Devil Mansion and later the Netherworld, it was indeed the trumpets and violins that stood out most in my mind. The keyboard had a more subdued presence. Replacing that with the sound of knives sounded a little too avant-garde for my taste though.

"Probably a little too edgy," Renko replied with a grin. "You seem to be better at collecting phantoms than sounds anyway."

"Collecting phantoms? I came down to see the flower view but I suppose I’ve seen more youkai and phantoms than anything else."

"I heard you and your sisters play at Hakugyokurou once. I remember your performance drew phantoms from all around to come listen. Could something like that be going on now?"

"Ah, that would be Merlin. Happy ghosts are attracted to the sound of her trumpet. Or maybe Lunasa. Gloomy ghosts like her violin. I'm just the conductor between the two."

"A conductor? What do you mean?"

"Merlin's music is manic, and Lunasa's is depressing. Either one of them alone would be overwhelming, so I use my ability to mediate between them and make it into something humans can hear. In other words, I’m the most important member of the group!"

"I see. So all of those phantoms were drawn to you because of the sorts of music you were playing, not just because you’re all ghosts."

"We’re poltergeists, not ghosts. Ghosts and phantoms and poltergeists are all completely different. It's very insensitive of you to lump us all together." Lyrica's expression as she glanced over at us was more than a little sulky. "Oh, by the way do you have any good sounds I could sample?."

"Us? Um, no, not that I can think of," I blurted, surprised at the sudden change of topic.

"That’s too bad." Lyrica floated up, turning back to us one last time before she flew off. "Please check us out in concert next time♪" With that she was gone, headed up into the clouds. Everyone seemed to have places to be.

A moment after she flew away I noticed two more flying figures trailing her, one black and one white. "Renko, aren't those the other two Prismrivers?"

She peered up as they passed overhead, shielding her eyes from the sun with one hand. "I think so," she said. "I wonder if they're trying to meet up with Lyrica or stalking her. Either way, she didn't seem to know they were behind her. It doesn't matter though, we can rule out the Prismrivers as suspects too."

"You were suspecting them of playing the role of the pied piper of Hamelin to these phantoms?"

"Something like that. But from the sound of things it doesn't work that way. I've heard people call them a poltergeist band before, but what exactly is a poltergeist? She just told us they aren't the same thing as ghosts, so then what are they? For that matter, what are all of these phantoms?"

Renko grew silent for a moment, hunching in on herself and running her fingers along the brim of her hat as she contemplated. "There’s just too many of them," she declared at last.

"... Well there certainly are a lot of them," I said, looking around. "I wonder how they all got here?"

Renko paused for a moment, cradling her chin in her hand as she thought. All at once she looked up and started marching toward the village, faster than before. "Come on, Merry, let's go," she said. "I think I need to re-examine my assumptions."

I turned and jogged to catch up to her. "Your assumptions? About what?"

"Our tacit assumption that all of these are phantoms."

At this point my partner had made a critical mistake, though of course we didn’t know that yet. The Prismriver Ensemble consists of three sisters, Lunasa, Merlin and Lyrica. Three musicians who play the violin, trumpet and keyboard. Three poltergeists who wield the powers of depression, mania and delusion.

They too were the culprits behind this unusual incident.