東方プロジェクト二次小説・オリジナル小説サイト
Chapter 4: Immaterial and Missing Power

—10—

And so we soon found ourselves trekking through the woods at the foot of the mountain, following the path of one of the rivers that wound down the slopes to pool in Misty Lake.

"Getting to the tengu village won't be easy, it's not really intended to be accessible for people who can't fly." Meiling was leading the way, picking out a path for us over the uneven terrain. "There's a cliff we'll have to climb at one point, and higher up it can get chilly even in the summer. Frankly, you probably aren't dressed for it." She looked back at us with a frown, as if pleading with us to see reason and turn back. I shrugged at her, unable to contest her irrefutable experience, but Renko was looking about, taking in the scenery of the mountain forest happily, without the slightest wavering to her confidence.

During the previous incident, we had been as far north as Mayohiga, which rested in the foothills on the western side of Youkai Mountain, but this was our first time actually trying to progress this far on foot. The forest that surrounded the river here was dense, with straight, tall trunks rising solemnly like flagpoles all around us, as if to proclaim this land a foreign nation, separate from the domain of man. The gloomy shadows cast by the trees gave the place an air of solemnity, of mystery that seemed unlike anything Renko and I had seen in the Scientific Century. Walking through a primeval forest like this, you could understand how old legends and religious practices surrounding Japan's mountains might have come to be. Being here was a little intimidating, not because it seemed dangerous, but because it felt like we were intruding.

Or maybe that's just me. Renko seemed to be as carefree as ever, swinging her arms and grinning as she went. "So why did the mistress send you into the mountains last time, Meiling?" she asked.

"After that tengu reporter came to interview her, she started complaining about how they got to know all about us but we didn't know anything about them. Lady Patchouli got in on it too, asking questions about what sorts of knowledge they might have on the mountain." Meiling grunted as she smashed an overhanging limb off of a tree to clear a path. "Next thing I knew, she was telling me to go have a look at the tengu village and report back. I have no idea why she sent me instead of Sakuya."

"So it was all just the mistress' whim, then?"

"She makes unreasonable requests all the time. Usually she sends Sakuya though, so it was nice to have her actually choose me. I remember being pretty happy about it when I first set out."

"That trip didn’t go well though, did it?"

"Oh yeah. I was half-dead by the time I stumbled back to the mansion. Once I had recovered, the mistress had already lost interest in the tengu. 'Hey, gatekeeper, where have you been slacking off?' was the first thing I heard from her." She chuckled wryly. "I never actually got to the tengu village to collect information like she asked me to though, so I suppose I can't really complain."

As always, Meiling didn't seem bothered by any of this, either the beating she had received on the mountain or her mistress' mistreatment. I couldn't help but think that working for Remilia sounded like a pretty rough deal, myself.

"So when you went up the mountain last time, what route did you take? Were you flying then?"

"I didn't know where the tengu villagewas, so I just followed the river, same as we're doing now. I ran into a god of misfortune in the forest that time. Oh, and I ran into a kappa along the way too, but she ran away when I tried to ask her about the tengu."

"Wait, you said you met a god of misfortune?" I asked.

"Yeah, she had something like a big, gloomy cloud of bad luck all around her. I wonder if meeting her was the reason the tengu spotted me as soon as I got to the waterfall? At any rate, there was a white wolf tengu patrol watching the cliffs, and they kept finding me right away no matter where I hid. I could have tried to fight them, but I was only supposed to be scouting anyway. The last thing I wanted to do was cause any trouble with the tengu, but they came after me with swords anyway, and chased me right off the side of the mountain. Sakuya would've done much better, I'm sure."

"That sounds awful, Meiling, I'm sorry you had to go through all of that.

"I know, right?" Meiling asked, looking back over her shoulder at us and nodding enthusiastically.

With a face marked with her usual exuberance and not the faintest hint of reluctance my partner merely grinned in response. "Misfortune or not, a goddess sounds pretty cool. I’d like to see that."

"You called?"

An unfamiliar voice interrupted us. It had come from deeper into the forest, a bit away from the river, where the shadows were deeper. There was a figure standing there, and as she stepped toward us, the shadows seemed to darken all around us, as if the midday sun had suddenly disappeared behind a storm cloud. She looked like a girl dressed in the most out-of-place outfit I could imagine for the deep forest. A dark red dress decorated with frills and ribbons in a gothic lolita style. She was wearing a pair of heavy, thick-soled boots at least, but they were so tall they seemed to be more for the aesthetic than for practicality. Her hair was an inhuman tealish color and she wore it long, with twin plaits tied loosely together under her chin and decorated with ruffled red ribbons. Although she moved as smoothly as any living creature, her skin had an artificial porcelain-like paleness to it. In all, she looked like a living doll, even more so than Alice did. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "You're that youkai from the other day. And those other two people with you, are they... humans? I don't mean to be rude but it would be best for their sake if you were to turn back."

Paying no heed to the words, Renko charged ahead, walking right toward the newly appeared girl. "So you're a god of misfortune?" She asked tactlessly. "Interesting. Your appearance seems inspired by western-style dolls. Does that mean you're a foreign god? Are there even gods of misfortune in other countries?"

The girl backed away from Renko in surprise, floating several paces back as she approached.

"Oh, be careful! It's not safe for humans to get too close to me! I'm a Nagashibina doll, I absorb human misfortune... which means stay back! Please." This last bit she had had to shout with her arms extended out in front of her to keep Renko from marching any closer.

"A Nagashibina? Well that certainly explains the doll-like appearance then. Excuse me, I didn't mean to impose." Renko stopped in her tracks and removed her hat before bowing politely. "Thank you very much for looking out for us then."

The goddess had a look of worry on her pale face, which now also carried a hint of vermillion as if a faint blush had been painted onto the porcelain of her skin. I wondered if even gods, accustomed as they must be to exultation, could be embarrassed by praise.

"At any rate, going further would be unsafe for you. Aside from the kappa in the river, there are tengu ahead who fiercely protect their territory. There are also many wild youkai in these woods, some of which can be quite dangerous. Humans should stay in their village. Why are all of you out here anyway? And with a youkai leading your way?"

"I'm just here because I was ordered to escort these people," Meiling volunteered.

"A youkai ordered to escort two humans up Youkai Mountain? Who are you people?"

"Ah, apologies, I should have started with that." Renko grinned. "I'm Usami Renko, director of the Hifuu Detective Agency. That's my assistant, Merry."

"...It's Maéreverie Hearn, actually." I waved, keeping my distance.

"Hifuu? Detective?"

"As part of our investigative duties, we're looking for a tengu newspaper reporter, Miss Shameimaru Aya. Would you happen to have any connection to the tengu village?"

"No..." the goddess seemed utterly baffled.

"That's a shame. In that case, would you happen to know anything about the oni that used to live on this mountain?"

"Oni? First tengu and now oni? Humans used to come here to hunt them, but it's been a long time and you don't look like the sort to try that. I don't have any particular connection to the oni, I haven't even seen one in a very long time."

"I see, I see. In that case, how about the kappa, do you know anything about them?"

"Well, they're less dangerous than oni or tengu at least. I have a friend who's a kappa, she lives not far from here."


—11—


The name of the god of misfortune we had met turned out to be Kagiyama Hina. She guided us through the woods, keeping several paces ahead of Meiling, Renko and myself at all times, claiming that coming any closer would cause the misfortune she had accumulated to rub off on us.

"I thought your plan was to go and see the tengu, not the kappa." I grumbled as we walked along.

"When we talked to Miss Shameimaru before, she mentioned that her camera and the printing press she uses were kappa products, so finding a kappa to talk to is just chasing down a lead, Merry."

"I see." Being introduced by the kappa would at least have a better chance of getting us to see the tengu than just walking up to their village unannounced.

"Oh, I probably should have tried that…" Meiling muttered, tapping her chin thoughtfully.

"Well this is all assuming that the kappa that Hina is friends with has any connection to the tengu. There’s no guarantee of that."

We heard Hina calling from up ahead. She had reached the gravelly bank of the river and was waving her arm over her head, calling out "Nitooori!"

Looking in the direction she was waving, I saw a small green peaked cap floating on the surface of the water.

"Ah, Hina! Hi!"

With a splash, the cap had bobbed up out of the water to reveal the head of a very petite girl. Upon noticing Hina, she dived back down under the water and made for the shore, quickly swimming against the flow of the water to come splashing up onto the embankment. Standing beside Hina, I could see she was about the size of Remilia, and wore a light blue one-piece dress made out of something that appeared to be waterproof and was covered with small but bulging pockets that circled the hem. She had apparently been swimming fully clothed, with even her boots on, and a very large, overfilled green backpack strapped to her back. She didn't seem bothered by the exertion at all though. She came bounding out of the water, boots slapping wetly on the stones, but drew up short once she spotted the three of us behind Hina.

"Whoa! Humans!" She turned to Hina incredulously. "Why are there humans here?"

"I found them wandering the forest. They said they wanted to meet a kappa, so I brought them here."

"You can't bring them here!" She said, taking Hina's hand and bouncing nervously. "I thought you and I were sworn allies!"

All of the youkai we had met thus far in Gensokyo had looked mostly human, with only small features like horns or an unsettling aura to distinguish them as Youkai. This kappa girl had no such features --neither webbed hands, nor a beak. She wore her cobalt blue hair in two short, childish pigtails and while I couldn't be certain what was beneath her hat, it didn't look like her head was covered by a hard plate. Here in Gensokyo, it seemed kappa were more or less indistinguishable from humans.

Renko leaned out toward where the two of them were talking "Hello there, Miss Kappa. It's nice to meet you!"

With a squeak of alarm the small girl darted behind Hina, putting the goddess of misfortune between us and her.

"Hiiiina. It's talking to meee!"

Renko sighed and whispered to me. "Aya said kappa were shy, but I didn't think they'd actually be afraid of humans. It’s just like something out of 𝘐𝘯/𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘳𝘦."

"That series hasn’t even been written yet at this point in time. At least compare her to a character from Ryonosuke Akutagawa’s novel or something."

"Alright, what would he do if he was here?"

"Be committed to a mental institution, probably. He was not a well man."

"Well you already did that, Merry, so we should be fine, right?"

Sometimes it's alright to punch your partner in the shoulder, even if she's technically your boss at the detective agency you work at. This was one of those times. While Renko and I were bickering, the kappa had peeked out from behind Hina, and was glaring at Renko. "What do you humans want? If you've come to try to steal our technology, I won't let you!"

Hina fretted and tried to turn to look down at the kappa girl, who was maneuvering to keep her between us. "Nitori, calm down. They're just two humans and a youkai who were wandering, uninvited, into the forest for no discernable reason. They're probably not suspicious people. Well, not especially, anyway."

The kappa remained unconvinced. "Why would humans be with a youkai? And isn't that the youkai Momiji mentioned that tried to break into the tengu village a while back?"

Meiling stepped forward and bowed, rubbing guiltily at the back of her neck as she rose. "Oh, uh, yes. Um, sorry about that!"

The kappa shot Hina a look. "Definitely suspicious." She declared flatly. "You’re probably just here to spy on the tengu." I got the feeling that our already long and exhausting outing was about to become even more so.

Renko stepped forward to approach the kappa, who clung onto Hina's dress and took several steps backward, awkwardly dragging Hina ankle-deep into the river. Hina vacillated between trying not to stumble on the rocks, trying to pull away from the kappa's grip and trying to warn Renko off from coming closer.

"I'm Nitori of the Valley Kappa! Don't think you can come here just because Hina is friendly to humans!"

"We don't mean you any harm. In fact we were only going to ask you if you know a tengu newspaper reporter named Shameimaru Aya. We're hoping she can answer a few questions for us."

This was enough to grab her attention. She poked her head out from behind Hina's skirt, her pigtails drooping downward. "Shameimaru? Momiji's boss? Why would a human want to see the tengu? If you're hoping to complain about a newspaper article, it's useless."

"No, no, no, it's nothing like that I assure you," Renko pleaded. "We just want to ask her about the oni."

Nitori's eyes widened. "Huh? Oni? If you want to hunt oni, they're long gone. There haven't been oni here in over a hundred years!"

"Yes, I know that. We were hoping that the tengu would know where they went."

The kappa girl glared at Renko with a look that might have been intimidating if it hadn't been delivered from behind Hina's dress. "Are you supposed to be an oni-hunter? You don't look very strong."

"I'm more like an oni-friend. Well an oni-acquaintance, really."

"That's preposterous! There aren't any more oni in Gensokyo! Even the elders said so!" It seemed that at least to the kappa, Suika's presence was still unknown.

"I've met one, at least. Ibuki Suika, does that name ring a bell?"

"Ibuki? The dreaded Lady Ibuki is back in Gensokyo!? Are you serious?" Nitori shook her head rapidly from side to side, her eyes pressed tightly shut. "No, no, no! If she's really back this is a big deal! What should we do?" As she said this, Nitori was pulling on the hem of Hina's dress pleadingly. Hina was pinwheeling her arms to try to keep from pitching over into the river.

"Is she really that scary?"

"She's one of the Four Devas of the mountain! She and Lady Hoshiguma used to be the bosses' boss' boss! Lady Ibuki and Lady Hoshiguma were said to be so strong that even I know about them and they were gone before I was even born!"

Hoshiguma? I was pretty sure that was the name of one of the Four Devas of the oni under Shuten Doji in the old legends.

"Oh, so little Miss Melon was the leader of all of the oni here? Huh, who would have guessed?" Renko asked with a theatrical shrug. I suppressed a sigh. Of course it would turn out that the person my partner had drunkenly decided to give a childish nickname to would be someone like this.

"M-Melon? You call Lady Ibuki 'little Miss Melon?"

Renko just stood there grinning like an idiot. There wasn't much I could say, I thought it was almost as ridiculous a nickname as Nitori seemed to. I looked over at my partner, then turned to the kappa and shrugged. In my opinion the fact that Suika had been a remarkably forgiving oni didn't say much one way or the other about Renko.

The kappa girl let go of Hina's dress and stepped out from behind her, suddenly falling into a round-shouldered, groveling pose.

"Heeey. I didn't know you were friends of Lady Ibuki's. Uhh, I apologize for any rudeness. Umm, no need to mention any of this to her, I’m sure I can definitely help you out with whatever it is you’re doing here. If Lady Ibuki really has returned, the tengu will want to know about it. I think we'd better go tell them, Hina. It won’t be pretty if they found out we knew and didn’t mention it."

Although the sudden shift in Nitori's demeanor was surprising, we could hardly complain. Renko was more than happy to let her lead the way. And so, our little party became a group of five people, if 'people' is inclusive enough of a term to include humans, youkai, gods and kappa. We continued marching up the hills along the path of the river, this time led by Nitori, the kappa girl. It wasn't long before we came to a break in the trees which surrounded the basin of a sizable waterfall. Behind it, a sheer vertical cliff of angular stone rose almost straight upward, with the pounding water rushing down the cliff and pouring into a deep and turbulent pool. I looked up, craning my neck just to see the top of the sheer cliff and exhaled. Attempting to climb the cliff face would unquestionably be impossible. Even if we had the stamina or equipment needed to do so, I wouldn't. The stone was sheer and wet and high enough that it'd be a disaster if we fell off.

Meiling groaned at the sight of the waterfall. "This is where things started to get bad last time." Apparently, this waterfall marked the boundary between the kappa's territory and the tengu's.

Nitori bowed to Renko, saying "Here we are. I'll call the tengu for you right away." With that she turned and hollered up at the cliff. "Momiji! Are you there?" As loud as she was yelling, her voice was drowned by the roaring rush of the waterfall. I can't imagine that anyone standing more than a meter away could have heard her.

Despite this, a moment later the outline of a figure appeared behind the waterfall about halfway up. The figure stood watching for only a moment before leaping through the curtain of the waterfall, piercing the torrent in a glittering cloud of droplets that scattered the sun's rays. Then they were falling, diving directly toward us at speed. I barely had time to register that some of the blinding gleam that accompanied the figure had not come from the scattering droplets but from the thick, curved, meter long steel sword in the figure's hand before they fell forcefully almost right on top of Meiling.

Meiling had luckily seen the attack coming and had just enough time to leap backward, away from the cleaving blow. The sword struck sparks from the rocks as the figure, a girl dressed in white, landed and lined up a thrust aimed at Meiling's throat. The figure who had dropped on us was a slight girl, thin of limb, with delicate features framed by an unruly mop of snow-white hair. She also had a fluffy white tail that stuck out behind her. Two large canine ears protruded from her head, and between them she wore the same sort of small, tasseled hat that Aya had worn, probably a sign of her position as a tengu. In her left hand she held a gleaming metal shield emblazoned with an autumn leaf design, and in her right the heavy-looking blade she was aiming at Meiling.

"Coming back here again after being chased off means your life is forfeit," she growled.

"Wait, wait! I knew this was a bad idea!" Meiling looked at us pleadingly.

"No mercy!"

The strike was faster than a blink. The tengu had kicked the ground, scattering rocks and propelling herself into the air. With speeds almost too fast for me to see, Meiling had leaned back to narrowly avoid the sweep of the sword, then replied to the slash with a backhanded strike. The tengu had countered this, but doing so left her unbalanced, giving Meiling a chance to leap off the ground and drive a knee into the other girl's stomach with enough force to lift them both into the air. The knee strike rammed forward, but not fast enough —the tengu had managed to cover her stomach with her shield, leaving the blow to crash against the metal with a resounding clang that left Meiling wincing in pain as both girls landed a few meters apart and instantly dropped into fighting stances, grimacing as they sized each other up for another exchange.

Nitori rushed in between the two fighters, waving her arms. "Stop! Stop! That's enough!"

Both girls maintained their stances, but the tengu paused long enough to growl out a question. "Nitori, do you know this girl?"

"No, I've never met her before."

"Then stay out of the way. She’s tried to invade our territory once before. She and the rest of the people in that mansion at the foot of the mountain have been declared a threat to the tengu people."

"Well ignore that for the moment, there's a bit of a more complicated situation here."

"No, the situation is simple. She's returned after being run off once, so now I have to kill her."

Meiling interrupted, waving her hands dismissively "It's not like that! I'm not trying to snoop around this time. I'm just escorting these two humans!"

The tengu never relented in her stance for an instant, but spared a moment to cast a quick glance in our direction. "Escort? Nonsense. What business could humans have with the tengu?"

Nitori waved her arms to get the tengu's attention again, then rushed over to whisper in her ear. Between the height difference between her and the tengu and the noise from the waterfall she ended up having to speak loudly enough for me to hear though. "Those humans are friends of the dreaded Lady Ibuki. They say she's returned to Gensokyo!"

That was enough to break her concentration. For the first time, the tengu lowered her eyes to Nitori then turned to get a good look at us. Her sword and shield were still at the ready but no longer raised to attack. "That's impossible. Lady Ibuki and all the other oni disappeared into the Underworld long ago."

"They say they saw her a while ago and they're asking to meet your boss."

"Aya's not my boss."

"Well can you get her to come see them anyway? I wouldn't want to disappoint Lady Ibuki's friends, you know?" Nitori stared pointedly at the tengu.

The white-haired girl now relaxed her stance completely, allowing her shoulders to droop. "You know how Aya is, always flying about. Who knows where she is now?"

"Well then use your eyes to find her or something! Please! Nitori clapped her hands together in supplication, her head bowed.

The tengu girl turned to us. "I don't know what this is about, but I can't allow you into our village. If you wish to talk to Aya, then I can have her meet you outside of our lands, but be warned, this is no joking matter. If there's no truth to your words, then the consequences of your actions will fall upon your own shoulders."

"Sure, no problem. Now then, as I was about to say…" After the excitement of the sudden attack and struggle, my heart was still hammering in my chest. In the moment it took me to regain my composure, however, my partner had already stepped forward, as ready to dive headfirst into trouble as ever. "I apologize for not having introduced myself earlier, but we didn't really have a chance. My name is Usami Renko, of the human village."

"...I'm Inubashiri Momiji, of the white wolf tengu."

So not cute dog ears then, but wolf ears, I thought to myself, just a little disappointed.

"A pleasure to meet you, Miss Inubashiri. I had asked to meet with Miss Shameimaru simply because she's the only tengu I know, but if you can answer my questions, then there's no need to bother her."

"Questions about Lady Ibuki and the other oni, I presume?"

"That's correct. Hopefully you can help us out. Do you know much about the oni that used to live on this mountain?"

"…What do you want to know?"

"Well, for example, where did the oni go when they left the mountain? You said something about them going to the Underworld, didn't you? Where's that?"

Momiji stared silently at Renko for a moment. "You have a keen ear," she eventually sighed. "I don't have anything more to tell you though. I had simply heard that all the oni left for the Underworld more than a century ago.

"The Underworld. Presumably that must be somewhere underneath Gensokyo, right?"

"I couldn't tell you. All I've heard is that there's a city full of oni where they're free to riot to their heart's content undisturbed."

Renko laughed and clapped her hands together excitedly, a mad twinkle gleaming in her eyes.

"You hear that, Merry? A whole underground empire full of monsters! We've gone beyond mystery novels. This is becoming more like an adventure story, or a role-playing game. These are the sort of fantasies lost to the Scientific Century. We could end up mapping out a whole underground dungeon!

"Like in an Indiana Jones story! Or Ranpo's The Demon of the Lonely Isle? Or maybe Yokomizo's The Village of Eight Graves? Those stories are all about looking for a lost treasure though."

"What could be a greater treasure for the Hifuu Club than the truth behind the hidden secrets of the world?"

I sighed to myself. There was no stopping Renko now, the switch governing her sense of reason had already been flipped. She rushed over to the tengu, eagerness exuding from every fiber of her being. "How do we get down to this Underworld?"

"I... I don't know. Why would anyone want to go there?" The tengu inched back from Renko, a look of absolute confusion and horror on her face.

"Don't say that, you must have some idea!"

Before Momiji could respond there was an intense flare of harsh, artificial light. We turned in surprise in the direction the light had come from to see a familiar black shadow lounging comfortably on the bough of a tree, leaning up against the trunk and holding up a camera.

"Ayayayaya. I saw a bunch of commotion around the waterfall, but this is quite the unusual assortment to find here. Two detectives, the gatekeeper of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, a kappa and a goddess of misfortune. What in the world is going on?"

Shameimaru Aya fluttered down from the tree and landed on the single prong of one of her geta sandals with a pronounced click, a fearless smile on her face as she looked us all over.


—12—


"Ah, Miss Shameimaru! I've been looking for you!"

"I've heard. And from the sound of it you have some disturbing stories to tell me and some even more disturbing plans for the future, Miss Director."

Renko turned to approach the reporter, but froze in place as if she had been shot as Aya jabbed a fountain pen into her chest.

"Hold it right there. I wasn't allowed to get much of an interview last time, but this story about the dreaded Lady Ibuki, one of the Devas of the mountain returning to Gensokyo sounds like a good scoop to make up for that." Aya whipped a small notebook from a pocket and whirled the pen around to record Renko's answer.

"Well I'm honored you find me a fascinating enough subject to be worthy of another interview so soon."

"Don't take it as a compliment! Letting you turn my own interview around on me like that is a shameful mark on my record as a reporter, and I intend to have my revenge. Now, where did you meet Lady Ibuki?"

"Ah, my apologies, but that's confidential information, I'm afraid." Renko grinned.

"Ayayaya, I hope you don't think you can leave such an important question unanswered. As a reporter, I respect the privacy that you assure your sources, but this is a matter of national security for us tengu. I’m afraid my superiors won’t hesitate to use strongarm tactics to get the answers they want."

"Well I hope you wouldn't do anything ill-considered. Miss Ibuki asked us not to spread word of her location around. She didn’t mention anything about the tengu specifically when I was talking to her, but I didn’t get the feeling that she intended to come back here. You wouldn’t want that to change though, right? Probably best to just let her be for now, I’d think."

"Your sense of discretion does you credit, human, but you must realize that we of the tengu have to verify information before we can act on it. Merely taking your word on Lady Ibuki's return simply won't do. We'll need to interview her ourselves and verify the facts, which we can't do without knowing where she is. So spit it out."

"I dunno, if I start talking about her, she might show up, you know? She wouldn't be happy in that case, not with me for telling, and not with you for asking. You really think that's a good idea right here, on the edge of tengu territory?"

Aya's pen twitched in her hand for a moment. "Usami Renko was your name, wasn't it? You're bold, Miss Usami, but bluffing will only get you so far. You don't know where Lady Ibuki is right at the moment, do you?"

"Well not precisely, no, but that shouldn't be an issue for the fastest wings in Gensokyo and your unparalleled information gathering network, should it? It wasn't forbidden for me to tell you that she's somewhere in Gensokyo, so I imagine your investigative abilities as a reporter can take it from there."

Aya fumed for a moment then sighed. "All right, fair enough. I'll trace down your story by myself, and show you how fast a tengu can fly."

Renko pushed her hat back away from her eyes with one finger and smiled. "Now that’s more like it. That’s a proper attitude for an investigative journalist. Before you go though, there's just a few more questions I wanted to ask you. I know this is your interview, but we came all this way after all." Aya said nothing, but crossed her arms, waiting impatiently. "When the oni left Gensokyo, where did they all go?"

"Oh yes, you were asking about that, weren’t you? This sad excuse for a patrolman already let that much slip, so I suppose there's no harm in telling you. Besides, if I don't tell you you'll just go causing more trouble, I'm sure." She slipped the pen and notebook back into her pocket and instead pulled out a small hand fan in the shape of a ginkgo leaf which she pointed down at the ground. "As you heard, the oni who left the mountain moved down to the Underworld, into the ruined city of Old Hell beneath Gensokyo."

"Old Hell?"

I remembered that Suika had mentioned something about a 'place worthy of being called Hell' right before she vanished.

"Yes. There used to be several hells down there but cutbacks forced them to consolidate things and move somewhere else. As a result, the old capital city which is supposedly spread out underneath Gensokyo was abandoned. I've never seen it myself, but it was supposed to be a vast ruin, with no one to enforce any rules or stand against their strength. Their own lawless paradise beneath this one. They're probably not alone down there any more though."

"Oh? Why not?"

"After the oni left, stories of their departure abounded. As tengu society was establishing itself, lots of youkai who didn’t like the idea of living under the new order made their way to the Underworld to live with the oni as well. Some of them must have survived because when the great Hakurei Barrier was erected, a youkai sage also established a non-aggression pact between the surface world and the Underworld."

"A mutual non-aggression pact?"

"We stay out of their lands and they stay out of ours. That's the peace that the sages envisioned for Gensokyo."

The fact that some youkai had been segregated from this world and into caves beneath the earth sounded disturbingly biased to me. I wondered what criteria would qualify a youkai for banishment to such a place when activities like vampirism, necromancy, demon-summoning, and kidnapping were all considered acceptable on the surface. I didn't have an opportunity to raise any objections though, as Aya continued with her lecture.

"Now, I hope, you can see why it's so important that you not descend into the Underworld in search of the oni.Your trespass into their territory could cause all sorts of problems for us. Your presence might even be seen as a breach of the treaty. If that happens, what's to stop the oni from coming back up here? That would not only be a big problem for us tengu, but it would get the Youkai Sage involved too!"

"I see, I see," Renko said, still grinning with excitement. "But in that case wouldn't finding Suika be just as bad? That would mean that their side broke the non-aggression pact by coming up, wouldn't it?"

"Lady Ibuki is one of the Four Devas of the oni, she would likely know the Youkai Sage personally. Rules don’t apply to people like that. She might even be coming here specifically to renegotiate the treaty."

"Ah, so you think that either way, her presence here is a sign that things are about to change?"

"What I think, Miss Detective, is that I'll need to find either Lady Ibuki or the Youkai Sage herself to interview. Neither is someone I particularly want to run into though." Aya grumbled to herself while rubbing the back end of her fountain pen against her temple.

"One last question then."

"Ayayaya. Make it a quick one."

"Do you know why the oni left Gensokyo in the first place?"

"I'm sure it was a result of something the humans did to offend them."

With that, Aya turned away and spread her wings to their full span. "That's all I have time for now, detective," she called back over her shoulder. "I can appreciate your curiosity, but there are some stories in this world that humans are not suited to know the whole of."

"I'll try to keep that in mind." It's a little disturbing how my partner can lie so brazenly with a smile on her face.

"Right, enough chit chat. I'm off to conduct an interview! Oh, before that though, can I ask you to do a favor for me, Momiji?"

"What is it?"

"If you happen to spot Lady Ibuki before I do, tell me first. Don’t go to anyone else about it."

"I'm under no obligation to follow such an order."

"Ayayaya, is that how you talk to your superiors?"

"I don't recall you being my direct superior."

"You're so cold. Why can't you be nice to me like you are to your friend, that kappa?"

"I don't recall you being my friend, either."

"Ayaya. No respect for us crow tengu at all." With that, Aya thrust her fan at the ground at the same time as she flapped her wings, launching herself into the sky like a rocket as a powerful downdraft billowed around us, kicking up a storm of dust and grit. By the time I looked up, she was already too high to see. Momiji watched the sky for long after I lost sight of Aya, seeming to track her movements with a dark scowl on her face. The two seemed to know each other well enough, but clearly didn't get along.

"So what do we do now, Renko?" I expected her to immediately suggest something foolhardy like 'let's sneak into the Underworld!' or 'let's climb to the tengu village!' but instead she simply fiddled with the brim of her hat for a moment longer then replied sensibly.

"We should probably head back. It'll be getting dark soon."

"Oh? Not that I mind, but that's unusually reasonable. Is something wrong?"

Renko grunted and began descending back into the woods, pulling the brim of her hat down over her eyes as she did. "Mmmn. No, just trying to gather my thoughts." Deep inside Renko's brain, the image of a very different story than the one we had been told was forming. At this point though, I had no way of guessing its shape.