東方プロジェクト二次小説・オリジナル小説サイト
Chapter 4:Urban Legend in Limbo

—10—


Let me skip ahead to the next day, in our office behind the Temple School after the end of the day's classes.

"Boss! I've come to borrow Miss Merry again. I need her to find that amanojaku!"

The person who had casually barged into our office while treating me like an object was of course none other than Sanae. When she realized that there were three people in the office instead of the usual two, however, she stopped in her tracks. I

"Oh! Please excuse me, I didn't realize we had a client! Welcome to the Hifuu Detective Agency! I'm Kochiya Sanae, a part-time assistant here. I'm part-time because most of the time I'm the wind priestess at the Moriya Shrine. If you haven't heard of the Moriya Shrine, you should come visit!"

Sanae nervously said all of that in one long, breathless expulsion. As she did so, the third person in the room, Mr. Fortune-teller (he still hadn't given us his real name) turned to face her, frowning in confusion.

"Ah, Sanae, welcome. This person isn't actually a client though..."

Sanae tilted her head to the side. "No? Why is he here then? He looks like an alchemist. Are you the sort of person who hates kids with good instincts, mister?"

It seemed Sanae was in agreement with us about Mr. Fortune-teller resembling the character from 𝐹𝑢𝑙𝑙𝑚𝑒𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝐴𝑙𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑚𝑖𝑠𝑡. We had read that manga at the Moriya Shrine to begin with though, so I suppose I should have expected as much.

"Who is this person you all keep comparing me to?" Mr. Fortune-teller asked.

"Don't worry about that," Renko said, waving dismissively. "Sanae, this man is a job hunter who came by for an interview. I'm considering him for the role of the agency's newest part-time assistant."

"What?" Sanae blinked in surprise, then her face suddenly contorted into a scowl. "No way, Boss! You can't! I'll fight you for it!" Instantly she drew her wand from her sleeve and leveled it at the fortune-teller.

"Whoa there, Sanae! Hold on!" Renko cried, waving her hands and getting up to move between the two of them as the man's eyes widened in shock. "There's no need for that! Are you trying to be Scar or something?"

"Miss Renko, what are you thinking? You can't bring a man into our organization! Especially not here in the office with you and Merry! It'll cause no end of fights! Straight ships can’t exist in a work that already has yuri or yaoi ships in it! It’s an absolute and unshakable law! I've seen entire communities tear themselves apart over these sorts of disputes online! These two worlds can never co-exist, they have to be segregated!"

I've known Sanae for a long time now, and I've read most of the manga at the Moriya Shrine, but despite that she still sometimes says things that make no sense to me.

She stopped mid-sentence at that point and gasped in shock, then turned to Renko with a horrified expression, her eyes watering. "Wait, does this mean I'm being replaced, Boss? Are you bringing in a man because you and Merry want children?"

"Sanae!" I may not always understand everything she's getting at, but I can tell when her train of thought has taken a wrong turn into a seedy alley.

"W-wait what? What are you implying?"

"Please excuse our part-timer," Renko said, turning to Mr. Fortune-teller. "She has a tendency to leap to wild conclusions."

Sanae groaned, still glaring angrily at Mr. Fortune-teller. Renko and I both had to work to calm her down enough that she would take a seat at the table, across from the fortune-teller. As she set down her cushion and plopped into place her cheeks were still puffed out and she was giving him a narrow-eyed stare.

"Well... as long as you're not a pervert like Mr. Kimura from 𝐴𝑧𝑢𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑎 𝐷𝑖𝑎𝑜ℎ, I guess you might be okay. Well actually that might be preferable since he's just a joke in that series... No, it's still no good. When Kouta kissed Shipon in 𝑆𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑙𝑣𝑖𝑎 it nearly broke the internet!"

"Alright, calm down Sanae. I know what you're imagining but It's not like that. The SOS Brigade has Kyon and Koizumi and they all get along just fine, right?"

"That's different! 𝐻𝑎𝑟𝑢ℎ𝑖 started out as a boy-meets-girl series right from the beginning! Adding a man to an already existing all-girl group is what causes everything to blow up!"

"Don't worry, Sanae, we'll be fine. Nothing's going to explode."

"I might! Ever since I joined this agency I've been watching the two of you work your way through a slow-burn friends-to-lovers idiots-in-love romance! You two have been in the yearning stage for years now! What kind of fan would I be if I let some random man come in and break that up before you ever get to the good part! Even I've barely been able to get between the two of you!"

"As I’ve been saying, it’s not like that, right Merry?"

"Don’t bring me into this, I don’t even know what she’s talking about."

"Hmm. Sanae, everything would be fine if the romantic tension between Merry and I was resolved, right? Merry, get over here, you're going to have to kiss me. For the good of the agency."

"I'm not doing that!"

"Oh, actually that does feel familiar. Try flirting more! That would make me feel more at ease."

"You hear that, Merry? Sanae's given us permission to be more open about it. We don't have to hold back in front of her anymore."

"I already said I'm not going to... gah! Renko get back on your side of the table!"

I shoved Renko away, as she had leaned over and rested her weight on my shoulder. I sighed and turned back to Mr. Fortune-teller who was looking distinctly uncomfortable.

"Is this how things are here?" He asked.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Renko replied with a wink. The fortune-teller shook his head, unsure of how to respond. Not that I could blame him. Actually, if he understood what was going on that might actually be worse.

"By the way Sanae, what was that you said about you barely being able to get between Merry and I? Are you saying you want to be the meat in our Hifuu sandwich?"

"No! I wasn't saying that! I can just stay here and watch while you two make out. I wouldn't want to get in the way!"

"Sanae! Alright! That's enough!" I declared, clapping my hands together. "No more nonsense!"

"Oh alright," Sanae said, straightening herself up and sitting properly on her cushion. Just like that, her personality seemed to reset and she was once again the very image of a proper, upright shrine maiden. "So," she began, turning to the fortune-teller once more, "Who exactly is this guy? Is he going to come back in the second half as a chimera with an upside-down face?"

"Wait, what? I thought Tucker died!" Renko blurted.

"The second half of the anime's completely different. I never got the last two volumes of the manga though. I wonder how that version ended?"

Moriya Shrine was indeed missing the last volumes of 𝐹𝑢𝑙𝑙𝑚𝑒𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝐴𝑙𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑚𝑖𝑠𝑡. Neither Renko nor I had ever seen the anime or read the series back in our own time either. That's not really important right now though.

Mr. Fortune-teller just looked at Sanae with obvious confusion. Renko sighed and began to explain. "Sanae, this is Mr. Fortune-teller. That's not his real name of course, but he hasn't felt like sharing that with us yet. He's a fortune-teller here in the village. Have you heard of the grandmaster who does readings in the tenement district? He's one of that man's apprentices."

"Oh sure, I know about that fortune-teller. I went there once to check them out."

"...I should mention that I am no longer an apprentice," the fortune-teller interjected. "I was officially expelled from training yesterday."

"So you're not even a fortune-teller any more? Well we can't keep calling you that then. Why don't you want to tell us your real name, anyway? Oh, is it because you like being a man of mystery? Are you like the Sage of Twilight? Are you going to tell me a bunch of secrets?"

"What are you, exactly? Is talking in unintelligible riddles part of your job?"

"I'm a wind priestess of the Moriya Shrine!"

"That's the shrine up on the mountain, isn't it? Why would that shrine's maiden be here?"

"Because I'm also a part-time assistant at the Hifuu Detective Agency! The position's full, so no further applicants are needed! No men allowed!"

"Sanae, just calm down for one minute and let me explain the situation, please. You'll understand why he's here once I do," Renko pleaded. For his part the fortune-teller remained silent and sullen. He seemed to be just as confused by Sanae's presence as she was by his.

Renko then proceeded to explain all about the request we had received from the Youkai Sage and how we had found, captured and then recruited the fortune-teller. Sanae listened attentively throughout, looking much like one of Renko's students during our classes, but I could see from the way her eyebrows knitted themselves together that there were several burning questions plaguing her. As soon as Renko finished her story, Sanae's hand shot up.

"Boss! Question!" She shouted, despite being the only person Renko had been talking to.

"Yes, Sanae?"

"I don't understand any of this. This guy is connected to your great aunt out in the Outside World, but what does she have to do with Yakumo Yukari, and why would she of all people ask the two of you to help her?"

"Those are all excellent questions to which we have no answer at all! They're definitely important parts of this mystery and if we could answer them, we'd be much closer to figuring everything out. Unfortunately, we have no idea what Merry's lookalike is thinking. I think it's pretty clear that it has something to do with the reason why Merry and I are here in Gensokyo to begin with though."

"But that still makes no sense, Boss. If Yakumo Yukari was the one who brought you two to Gensokyo, why'd she send you back so far? You two are both too early. You've been too early for years!"

"That's exactly what we've been trying to figure out."

Sanae blinked and then looked over at the fortune-teller again. "What makes this guy so special that Yakumo Yukari would want to help him?"

"That's another thing I'm trying to figure out. I was just in the middle of questioning him when you walked in, Sanae."

Renko turned to face the fortune-teller who sighed and leaned back on his cushion. "I have no idea why the Gensokyo's founder would take any interest in me. I've certainly never asked for her help."

"Really?" Renko asked, staring into the eyes behind the thick glass lenses.

The fortune-teller narrowed his eyes. "I’ve never asked for any sort of help from a youkai."

Renko grunted. "It might not be something you did, but it might be something Sumireko did, since you're the only connection to her in this world. Something you've done has got the Youkai Sage’s attention. Why don't you start by telling me how you first got in contact with my great aunt, then we'll go from there."

The fortune-teller scratched at his head then sighed, moving from a kneeling position to sit more comfortably.

"...Well, at first," he began, "it was nothing more than coincidence."


—11—


The reason I became a fortune-teller in the first place was due to my interest in the Outside World.

I wanted to see what a world might look like if it weren't locked into stagnation that keeps anything from ever changing like this village is. I had looked at pictures of exotic places and exotic people in the books at the rental bookstore and seen the bizarre tools of the Outside World at the curiosity shop. But just that wasn't enough.

The humans of Gensokyo can never leave this world. I began researching oracular techniques, in the hopes that I might at least be able to see the Outside World for myself. I had no interest in useless palmistry, reading the cracks in a tortoise shell or other such methods of divination. Conversing with the dead. Oracular visions. Astral projection. These were techniques I wanted to learn. Only I wanted to use them to speak to the Outside World, rather than the gods and spirits on this side.

In my search for anything that would allow me to communicate with the world beyond the barrier, I became an apprentice at the fortune-telling house. They had me study fortune-telling under the headmaster's tutelage, but it was all a ruse so that I could perfect my own research into a method to communicate with the Outside World.

It was only after I had been at that for some time that I realized just how stupid such a pursuit was. No matter how much I might seek to contact the Outside World it was pointless. Who could I possibly hope to hear if no one from the other side of the barrier was calling out to this side? And if I were to call out to them instead, who on the other side could possibly be listening? The odds of communicating with anyone were practically zero. Or so I thought.

It seemed hopeless to me. Trying to communicate with the Outside World was hopelessly stupid, with the only thing more stupid being the thought of living out the rest of my days as a fortune-teller in this village, listening to the meaningless worries of this village's pathetic inhabitants.

I suppose I still had some modicum of pride, because I continued to reach out to the Outside World in my spare time, not wanting all of the techniques I had learned to go to waste... but then...

Something I had thought was impossible happened.

I heard a voice. Calling to me from the Outside World. It was repeating nothing more than the chant from a child's game, but I unmistakably heard it all the same.

It was saying "Kokkuri-san, Kokkuri-san, please come in."

She introduced herself as Usami Sumireko, a 'psychic' from the Outside World.

She wanted me to teach her about Gensokyo.

So I asked her to teach me about the Outside World in exchange.

We arranged times to regularly meet and speak with each other.

And together, the two of us, both despising the worlds we each lived in, became accomplices, spies each operating on opposite sides of an impassable wall.

Well, I say that, but in truth neither of us had any valuable information to trade. We could only tell each other the obvious things about our worlds and what everyday life was like. I told her that this was a remote, walled-off village, hidden behind a barrier in a world filled with fairies, gods and youkai which had been created by the Youkai Sage. I told her that we humans lived in fear of these creatures, but had nowhere else we could go and no means of resisting them. We are trapped here, under the rule of monsters. I told her that this was a world without hope.

Despite the picture I painted, she seemed to enjoy listening to me talk about this horrible cesspit of a world. I don't think the concept of it was entirely foreign to her though. She seemed to already know something about this place, but her perceptions were always a little off in strange ways. She knew the names and personages of various people and youkai, but she had all of them a little wrong, as if she had only learned everything she knew about this world through hearsay. I can't remember all the names she gave me, but she was always eager to learn more, no matter how mundane.

As for what she told me, there were many stories. The Outside World is dominated by technology, and by knowledge. There are no youkai, no fairies, and no gods. There are countless humans. People lived in towers made of metal and glass, so tall that they blot out the sun and travel from place to place on mechanical carriages that move without horses. A vast miasma of magical power surrounds everything, allowing people to effortlessly communicate over large distances and giving everyone access to limitless information.

I was puzzled as to how someone who lived in such a magical, mysterious world could be so interested in such a boring backwater as Gensokyo. I think it might be because she was not very much like the other people of her world. If anything, she seemed more like someone who belonged here. She was an outcast without a purpose in her world, just as I am here.

Is that why I was expelled from the fortune-telling house?

No, according to the headmaster that was because I was using methods beyond what he had taught me. He felt that my divination had become too much like sorcery.

"Fortune-telling is not magic! If you want to mix the two then leave the village and become a magician like the Kirisame shop keeper's daughter! If you can't tell the difference between magic and divination then you have no place here!" —In short, he didn’t like how I was using what he had taught me. He suspected, I think, that I was using what I had learned for some other purpose and so he wanted to get rid of me before I ended up making contact with something dangerous.

I do not believe myself to be a magician. Usami Sumireko called herself a 'psychic,' but as far as I can tell that's just an Outside World word for a magician. If our communication was the result of magical power, then it had to be her power and not mine.

Am I still talking to her? No, I put an end to that.

Why? What would be the point of continuing? No matter what she tells me about the Outside World, I could never go there. It's no different than reading the books in that rental store. I realized that I only enjoyed talking with her because she was an outcast like me. That’s all there was to it.

And so I told her I wouldn't be contacting her any more. I've already gotten rid of the divination tools I had been using to contact her, and she's not expecting to be able to reach me, so no matter how much you threaten me there's nothing I can do to get you in touch with her.

Only she can decide if she will try to come here or not.

If she does, it will be of her own choice, not because I forced her hand.

I told her what this world was like, and she has the power to forge her own destiny.

Someone like me though... I lack the power to ever change anything.


—12—


The fortune-teller finished speaking and fell silent. Renko and I exchanged glances.

My initial thought was that, in all likelihood, he was still hiding something from us. It may or may not have been anything important but I was sure he hadn't told us everything about his conversations with Sumireko.

What could we do with someone like this, who had given up any hope for their future in Gensokyo? For the time being it didn’t seem like anything we could say to him. There was one other person in the room though. A person with a tendency to regularly complicate situations like this one.

"You should come to the Moriya Shrine!" Sanae suddenly declared, jumping to her feet. She was smiling kindly and extending her hand down toward Mr. Fortune-teller. "Our shrine was brought here from the Outside World, I have lots of Outsider things I could show you!"

"...That's exactly the sort of thing I wouldn't want to do. No matter what you would show me, it would still be impossible for me to go to the Outside World."

"I could take you there!" Sanae said that readily, as if it were a self-evident fact. "I'll pray to Lady Kanako and Lady Suwako about it right now. With their power, I'm sure we could do something. They brought the whole shrine and a lake to this world. Surely taking a human across the border for a daytrip would be easy." She smiled innocently.

Renko and I looked at each other, then at Sanae, our jaws dropping in shock.

"This is another joke, isn't it?" The Fortune-teller asked, looking from Sanae to Renko.

"No, it'll work. Probably. Lady Kanako, you can do something like that, right?"

"...It's a little much to request on short notice." All at once there was a fifth person standing in the room. A tall woman, with a large, looped shimenawa attached to her back like a wreath had instantaneously appeared just behind Sanae. For Renko and I, seeing Lady Yasaka suddenly appear in the middle of our office was only a minor surprise. To Mr. Fortune-teller, it was apparently quite the shock. He scooted away from Sanae, looking horrified and letting out a wordless grunt of surprise.

"Wha!"

"I was listening in on your conversation. You over there, you’re awfully quick to give up on life, don’t you think? Where’s your pride as a human?" Kanako stared down at the fortune-teller, her arms crossed in front of her.

"It's quite reasonable for a human to feel stuck in this closed world of illusions. Yearning to see the Outside World is perfectly healthy for someone your age. If young people like you didn't strive to change the world they grow up in, then society would never advance. Those are the sort of feelings that used to motivate you, why have you given up on them now? Show some backbone and resist a little if you think everything is so awful. The one making your life intolerably boring is you."

"What... What are you?" The fortune-teller stammered, leaning back, his hands braced against the tatami.

"Forgive me for not introducing myself. I am Yasaka Kanako, goddess of the Moriya Shrine and Sanae's patron deity. And you are someone who should know better than to wallow in self-loathing. You’ve identified something about this world that you want to change, but you’ve wastefully directed all your efforts into making yourself miserable rather than trying to do anything about it. So long as you fail to realize that, you have no hope of ever succeeding at all. If you want to find out who’s standing in the way of your happiness, look down at your own two feet."

The fortune-teller said nothing, continuing to stare wordlessly up at the goddess.

Kanako met his eyes for a long moment, then seemed to come to a decision. Striding purposefully forward, she grabbed the fortune-teller by the collar of his robes, effortlessly dragging him behind her as she made her way to the door and threw it open before stepping out in the yard beyond.

"Lady Kanako!?" Sanae gasped, hurrying after her.

Renko glanced at me for a moment then we both climbed to our feet and followed them out the door. We stepped outside to find Lady Yasaka standing in the school yard with her feet planted on the ground and Mr. Fortune-teller dangling from the end of her raised arm, held out before the goddess like an ornery cat she had found.

"I think you need to take a moment to cool your head before you do anything rash."

With that, Yasaka Kanako hurled Mr. Fortune-teller high into the air with all of her might. Renko and I stared upward with dumbfounded expressions as the fortune-teller's screaming silhouette became smaller and smaller, retreating nearly straight up away from us. Kanako then flew up, a fierce ring of wind and dust swirling away from her as she launched herself into the air, chasing after him at speed.

"Oh! Quickly, come on!" Sanae said, shielding her eyes from the sun as they both sped away from us, then offering Renko and I her two hands. We took them and then instantly the winds were swirling around us once again as Sanae manipulated the air and carried us into the sky in pursuit.

Kanako was flying quite a bit faster than we were and was rushing still higher by the moment. By the time we caught up with her she was standing in the sky, holding the fortune-teller up by his collar with one arm while his legs kicked uselessly in the air.

"Here now, look down," she said as we arrived. The fortune-teller had both of his hands clamped tight around the arm that Kanako was using to hold him up, but after a few moments he fearfully looked toward the ground below. We did the same.

Almost all of Gensokyo was spread out beneath our feet. Youkai Mountain towered over everything in the north, its long shadow falling over a boundless sea of wilderness expanding out from its slopes. To our east, the Hakurei Shrine was visible on its high and lonely hilltop, the red torii gate looking from this height as if it were made of matchsticks. In the west, the Forest of Magic was dark and foreboding, its impenetrable canopy streaming faint fingers of mist toward the lake. To the south, the Bamboo Forest of the Lost swayed slightly, an undifferentiated sea of green from above. Nearer to us than that was the Garden of the Sun. Directly below us was the human village, spread out like a carpet and swarming with miniature human figures, each seeming no larger than a bean.

For Renko and myself, this was a sight we had seen before many times when flying through the sky, either on Genji's back or with any of our friends who had carried us around on countless occasions. For the fortune-teller, however, the scene was entirely new. In the Outside World, getting onto the viewing deck of a skyscraper to get a view like this would only require paying a small fee. But here in Gensokyo this view was something special. A world reserved only for those powerful humans capable of flight and the many youkai who called this world home.

"What do you think?" Kanako asked imperiously. "This is the world in which you live. Does Gensokyo still look boring, when seen like this?"

The fortune-teller was silent, still grabbing at Kanako's arm and kicking his legs, but looking down as well.

"Does it look small to you? Then that just means you have ambition large enough to encompass the whole of it. Or does it look big, perhaps? If so then that means there's lots out there for you to explore and learn about. It doesn't matter which you think. This is your world, and you have the freedom to explore it as you please. Or do you perhaps feel nothing at all? I suppose there are some humans who would not be moved by such a sight. If that's the case, then life has nothing left to offer you, I suppose..." Lady Yasaka grinned at the man. "Perhaps in that case you should try dying just once."

Saying that, she let the fortune-teller go. He spun over backwards in the air, screaming as he plummeted toward the ground.

"Lady Kanako!" Sanae gasped.

"Don't worry, it's just a little shock therapy."

Kanako then floated over to us and took Renko's hand and my own, so that all four of us were joined together. "Hold on!" She advised. "And maybe close your eyes." Then she crouched and, drawing us down with her, dove toward the ground like a streaking arrow. Propelled by unseen winds, we were hurtling toward the ground, falling faster than freefall, the ground spinning and juddering as the air howled around us. I snapped my eyes shut, but even with them closed, if not for the sensation of Lady Yasaka firmly holding my hand I'm sure I would have screamed.

In mere seconds, we landed on the ground with a feather-light touch, and Kanako released both of our hands, raising her arms up as another fierce swirl of wind spun up between them. Moments later, the fortune-teller plummeted downward and was caught in the churning air currents and gently deposited in her arms.

"So." She asked as he stared up at her, ashen-faced. "How does it feel to die?" She lowered him to a standing position and released him, but his legs refused to hold him upright. He collapsed immediately, sitting hard on the ground.

He continued to stare up at her, trembling and silent, but some of the shadows haunting his eyes had vanished. There was terror in that expression, the look of a stunned child, staring up at something completely beyond his understanding that had him at its mercy.

"Oh," Kanako said appreciatively. "It's been a while since I've seen a face like that." She folded her arms and stared down at the fortune-teller, looking very much a god toying with an insignificant mortal. A being that existed beyond the bounds of human logic.

"Now tell me, human," she said, looming over him, "do you still want to die?"