東方プロジェクト二次小説・オリジナル小説サイト
Chapter 5: The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

Five

𝘚𝘪𝘹 𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘭𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘳 𝘣𝘰𝘺𝘴 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘢 𝘩𝘪𝘷𝘦;
𝘈 𝘣𝘶𝘮𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘣𝘦𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘯𝘦
𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘧𝘪𝘷𝘦.


—13—


Hiding behind furnishings and the thick stone columns that protruded from the walls at regular intervals in the basement, we followed Meiling's back, keeping as far back as we could without losing sight of her around corners. I don't have any experience tailing someone, but here in these hallways, it was easy to predict her movements.

"Hey Renko," I whispered. "Even if Meiling is heading to go see the mistress' sister, why is it Meiling? Why not Sakuya? Isn't Meiling the gatekeeper?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe Sakuya's busy, or there's some kind of special circumstances—"

While we were hiding in the shadows of the furniture, whispering such things to each other, Meiling had stopped walking and turned. We held our breath and froze in fear. After a moment though, it became clear she hadn't noticed us, but had instead stopped to regard a particular spot on the wall. She reached out to touch it, then disappeared, seemingly walking right into the wall itself a moment later. A hidden door? We looked at each other, then crept silently up to the spot she had disappeared from.

At first glance it was an unremarkable section of the wall that lined the corridor, crimson-painted plaster and dark wood polished to a shine. But looking closer... I had to close my eyes to not be dizzied by the rippling surface of a powerful barrier that had been set here. This barrier was different than any I had seen in my world before. It was powerful and immaculately crafted, its structure designed to be durable and self-reinforcing. It couldn't be natural. Someone had put it here for a purpose, and seeing how easily Meiling had passed through it, it didn't seem intended to keep things out but rather to keep something in.

"Renko, there's something here."

"It looks like it. There must be a latch, or a hidden hinge somewhere...."

Renko probed at the wall. Her finger caught on something, a soft section like an indentation or hole covered with cloth. She hooked her finger into it and moved her hand aside, and the wall slid soundlessly out of the way, revealing a passage into darkness.

"...Bingo."

"A sliding panel. How did you find it so easily?"

"I've got the knack, I guess."

In the darkened passage beyond the false wall, I could just make out the very edge of a stone staircase descending even further down into the earth. It was much different than the stairs we had followed into the library, which, while dark, had been carpeted and accented with ornate balusters and rails of finely polished wood. This was a narrow wedge of bare stone that disappeared into an inky abyss, without ornamentation or any hint of comfort.

"What do you think we'll find, Merry? Oni or snakes?"

"An oni of course. Vampires are a type of oni, aren't they?"

"I suppose you're right. But as for this particular oni... I'll pass for now." Much to my surprise, Renko pulled the door shut again without entering. I was even more surprised when she immediately grabbed my hand and tugged me behind her across the hall to the nearest door she could find. She opened it and, finding a laundry room, darted into it, dragging me after her. She swiftly shut the door, sealing us inside. The room was lined with shelves on all sides loaded with clean bed linens, but still big enough to walk around, though much of the space was taken up by baskets strewn with sheets and other laundry.

"I thought we were following Meiling?"

"There's no guarantee that we'd have enough room to maneuver around her at the bottom of those stairs, is there?"

"Oh, you're right."

"If you ask me, Meiling must be headed for whatever's at the bottom of those stairs and will probably come back up the same way once she's done whatever she has to do down there. If we followed her, we might not be able to find a place to hide when she does, so let's just stay in this closet until then."

Renko stood with her ear firmly pressed up against the door, listening for any noises in the hallway. I sat on a basket as best I could and flipped through the pages of 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘞𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘕𝘰𝘯𝘦. I wondered what Renko planned to do if Meiling didn't come back for hours.

Suddenly Renko jumped back from the door and whirled around to face me. As she did so, the doorknob twisted. Someone was coming in! As soon as I was able to realize this, Renko was suddenly on top of me, half-stumbling, half supporting me as she wrapped an arm around my waist.

"Merry!"

"Renko, wait!"

Suddenly Renko's face was right in front of mine. I could feel her breath on my neck as she stared at me. An intense flush spread across my face as she laid one hand on my cheek while her other supported the small of my back. She held the pose, with me wrapped in her arms and our faces held next to each other while I heard the door opening behind her. My thoughts raced with questions, and objections, and general confusion at the suddenness of the situation, all in one jumble I couldn't hope to catch up with.

There was a gasp from behind Renko as the fairy maid who had opened the door stiffened upon seeing Renko on top of me in a compromising position. Standing in the door now, her position was rigid and her face was rapidly turning a boiling red.

"Sorry to have disturbed you!" she shouted as she threw the basket of laundry she was carrying into the air and instantly flew out of sight of the doorway. Bed linens and stained aprons rained down across Renko's back. Somehow I had the feeling we'd been grossly misunderstood.

Renko let go of my body and moved far enough back to give me space to stand again. Once I had regained my footing and my breath I glared at Renko with my mouth agape. Just what did she think she was doing manhandling me like that? My heart was hammering in my chest, a nervous heat like a fever suffusing me as a result of the surprise of Renko's outlandish behavior.

"What the hell was that, Renko?"

"Just a bit of a ruse."

What a pain this girl was. To use me so harshly as a prop to throw off suspicion! "Just close the door already, we're supposed to be hidden in this closet, aren't we?"

She reached out to take the knob and gently shut the door. As soon as the doors were closed though, she turned around. And smiled like the Cheshire cat. "Oh, I didn't think you were so aggressive, Merry. Wanting a private space to ourselves again so soon? Are you going to finish what we just started?"

I was speechless. I found myself opening and closing my mouth like a goldfish several times in an attempt to decide what to say. After a moment, I settled on hitting her over the head with the hardcover book I was carrying instead, right in the front of that stupid hat of hers. Hardcover novels make excellent blunt instruments. "No, I'm not!"

"Gah, my precious grey matter. Be gentle with me, Merry!"

"No big loss, as your brain is clearly defective."

"What a thing to say! I could have been the next Planck if not for you, and to abuse a first edition Christie in such a way!"

"Personally I've always preferred the new school of Japanese domestic mystery to the old western classics."

Before I could retort, Renko raised a finger to her mouth. "Shh, I think I just heard Meiling come back through the hidden door."

Holding her breath, Renko gently and silently pushed the door open just a crack. Through the gap between door and frame, I caught a glimpse of Meiling disappearing into the hallway.
"Come on Merry, let's go."

"Yes, yes. Just manhandle me like a sack of flour then expect me to trot along after you. That's how it goes, isn't it?"

Renko was already halfway across the hall. With resignation, I followed her out of the laundry room. Renko hooked her fingers on the wall again and slid the hidden door aside. The stairs beyond were in total darkness. I gulped involuntarily.

"We can't stop now, Merry. We're almost to the final boss!"

"We'll be lucky if it's just the final boss. This seems more like a hidden extra boss."

Renko flashed her troublesome grin and started down the narrow staircase. Thus the quest of Renko the Brave and Merry the Magician entered its final phase, I thought to myself. With that pathetic thought as potentially my last, I followed her down into darkness.


—14—


In the still darkness of that stairwell, our footsteps rang like gunshots. Renko was using the light on the back of her phone to illuminate the path as we descended the stairs. In this pitch-black underground passage, the weak light of a single LED hardly made a dent and stark shadows crept and spread everywhere the light couldn't reach, hungrily advancing whenever the beam swayed to one side or the other. Being unable to see ahead of us and having to concentrate to find every step made me think that mankind's instinctive fear of darkness was probably a survival adaptation. As we descended deeper and deeper, my footing became less sure, and I couldn't tell if the shaking in my legs was from exhaustion or nerves.

I found myself clinging to the sleeve of Renko's trench coat. Both for comfort and to keep track of where to step. Normally, Renko wouldn't have missed an opportunity to tease me over such a display on my part, but this time she said nothing and kept a steady pace so as not to get away from me. I wondered if the darkness was making her nervous too.

"Oh, we've reached the bottom." Renko stopped short. If she hadn't warned me, I'd have overstepped onto the landing and tumbled into her. I turned and looked behind us, but I could no longer see any hint of the passage we had entered through. Renko closed her slim fingers around my hand and we started walking again. A little ways further along the passage it intersected a stone corridor, narrower than the hallways above, and not nearly so opulently equipped, but lined at least with dimly glowing lanterns that put out a low but steady reddish-orange light. It was a relief to be able to see anything again, even by the faint light of these lanterns. Renko switched her phone off and put it away to conserve the battery.

"Should I call out?" Renko asked.

"What would you even say? Miss sister, miss sister, please come out?"

"Little pig, little pig let me in?"

"I don't think we're the big bad wolf in the current situation."

Sharing such meaningless jokes with Renko might not have been the most prudent move, but the conversation helped to calm my nerves. Proceeding forward, we followed the corridor for a while, our footsteps echoing on the cold stone. After a short distance, it bent sharply to the right. Renko peeked around the bend, and I peeked around her, trying as best I could to stay hidden. There were no more lanterns down this next arm of the corridor and it disappeared into a murky gloom.

"Merry, there's a door there."

"What? Where?"

Renko, who is accustomed to looking to the stars and moon to know the time and place, has good night vision.

"Now let's go meet the little sister." She took my hand and led me along the passageway. I wondered if she might actually be crazy, to be so willingly walking into danger like this, but I didn't have the guts to go back up that dark staircase alone, so I had no choice but to follow. Before long, I could see the outlines of a door vaguely emerging from the darkness. The door was made of thick wood, banded with iron and painted crimson. Squinting at it in the half-light coming down the corridor, I swallowed a shudder of dread.

Upon this door was a barrier stronger than any I had ever seen. A plainly magical working of complex, interlocking parts, a nested thatch of barrier upon barrier, each serving to reinforce the others. To me, the message conveyed by that barrier was unmistakable—DANGER, DO NOT ENTER. It could not have been clearer if it had been painted in capital letters.

"Renko, I don't think we should open a door like that."

The most frightening part about the seal was that it was shaking, rippling, as if straining under an unseen force. Perhaps it was only because Meiling had just passed through it moments ago, but I could see the edges of the boundary fluctuating, miniscule rifts forming and collapsing over and over in a loose ring around the door handle. I had no desire at all to see what lay on the opposite side.

I whispered as much to Renko, trying to keep my voice inconspicuous amidst the deep silence of this underground corridor. She sniffed and pondered for a moment. "So if it is the younger sister on the opposite side of this door, then all of this exists to conceal her. Something about her existence is such that she must never be shown to the outside world. —I see."

"You see what, exactly?"

"Isn't it obvious? For something to be sealed away to this degree, behind this level of obfuscation? We have to uncover it, Merry! We're the Hifuu Club, those who reveal the secrets of the world. We can't not go in!"

"I knew you would say that. When we die, I'm going to haunt you, and spend my afterlife complaining about this."

I clung onto Renko's coat and she reached for the handle of the door... but nothing happened.

"It won't open." Renko shoved against the door with all her might, then tugged with both hands against the handle, but it wouldn't budge in the slightest. Was it the barrier, I wondered? A spiritual barrier strong enough to seal a physical boundary? If any seal could do such a thing, it would be this one. Renko looked back at me with a pleading expression. I sighed and took her place in front of the door. It was always my job to get us past obstacles that had been sealed by supernatural or spiritual means. That hadn't changed since our first trip to Rendaino. Once more, it was the same old Hifuu Club as usual. I reached out to the tiny rifts encircling the door handle and watched them stabilize and widen as my hand drew near. All I had to do was reach through and hook my finger on the edge of the tear, opening it a little wider, just enough to fully encircle the boundary....

The door pulled open with a creak.

"Meiling?"

From the darkness beyond the door, came the voice of a very young girl. As the door swung fully open a figure took shape in the darkness. An array of bobbing, rainbow-colored crystalline lights, floating in the darkness, and in the center of them, not outlined by their glow, but shining with a searing light from within—two fierce red eyes.


—15—


"Good evening, miss. Nice to meet you. I'm sorry to disturb you, but would you happen to be the sister of Lady Remilia?"

My partner had stepped into the room and taken her hat in hand, bowing deeply to the red eyes shining in the darkness. My eyes strained to pick out a silhouette against the background dim, but with time I began to make out the details suggested by the faint glow coming off of the floating crystals suspended on either side of the pair of eyes. She was even younger than the childlike Remilia, with golden hair framing a cherubic face. Her eyes were large and doll-like, and would have looked sweet if not for the bloody glow they gave off. Her hat and style of dress were similar to Remilia's, but less decorated, and whereas Remilia had worn white with red accents that highlighted her eyes and nails, this girl wore the same crimson that decorated the walls of the mansion, serving only to call attention to her unnatural pallor.

"Who are you? Not Meiling, and not my sister. Are you one of Patchouli's familiars?"

The girl looked up at us curiously, with her head tilted to one side.. Her innocent expression would have been adorable if not for the coldness of her stare. Her eyes were those of a predator, taking in everything before them in an appraising, hungry light. I shuddered a little. Innocent though she might appear, it was nearly certain that this girl was a vampire too, a creature that killed to live and slaked its thirst with human blood.

"Unfortunately, you are incorrect. We are.... well..." Renko glanced my way, just long enough to flash me a troublesome smile. "A great detective. And her assistant."

What madness was she spouting now? The girl stared at Renko with a flat, cynical expression, belying her apparent age.

"Did my sister get herself killed? Am I supposed to be the culprit?"

"No, no, there hasn't been a murder yet, we're not here on a case."

"Oh? Isn't it rather strange for a great detective to visit when there's no case? Did you come to catch me before I could commit a crime then?"

Renko's lies were the sort of nonsense I might expect, but this girl had picked up the thread immediately. I wondered which one of them was playing the other's game.

"You sound like you expect to be caught, are you suffering from a guilty conscience, perhaps?"

"I've already been caught though. Aren't I in a prison right now? I'm not allowed to leave this room."

We looked at each other. I wondered if the powerful seal placed on this room could really have been just to contain this small girl.

"Although, I don't really want to go out anyway." As if to demonstrate, the girl turned away from us and plopped onto an elaborately decorated four-poster and canopied bed that sat in the corner of the room. Laying on her belly she reached out from the edge of the bed and turned a knob on a small lamp that sat on a table next to the bed, filling the room with warm, dim light and long, deep shadows.

On the back of the young girl lying on her stomach on the bed, two very strange wings were quivering, bobbing in time as she kicked her feet. The wings looked to be artificial rather than organic, and almost ornamental. I wondered if they were wings at all. They extended up and backwards, and moved as if they were a part of her, but they seemed to be made of flexible bone or wood and were completely without membrane or feathers covering them. Instead, large, angular gemstone decorations in every color of the rainbow were suspended from the branch-like wings, each swinging like a pendulum on a short chain. Each of the jewels glowed faintly. They and Flandre's eyes had been the only illumination in the room when we entered, making me wonder if she had turned up the lamp to see us better, or just for our benefit. Perhaps she enjoyed showing the ornamentation off. The jeweled wings were certainly beautiful in their own right, but moving as they did and protruding from the back of a living creature, they seemed distinctly unearthly.

I looked around the room. The place was not the dungeon cell I might have expected, but instead had the air of a luxurious ruin. The walls were stone, but painted to resemble the ones in the mansion, and decorated with overlaid dark wood paneling. This was cracked or splintered in various places, with deep gouges and fissures running along the walls and ceiling at random points. Stuffed animals and cushions were scattered haphazardly around the room, all of them missing limbs or heads, or with gouges through which their cotton stuffing poked out. A number of small mirrors were framed high on one wall and looked strangely new compared to the rest of the room. They say that vampires don't reflect in mirrors, which made me wonder what the series could be for.

Renko made her way closer to the bed and found a cushion that didn't look too badly damaged to sit on. As I followed suit, something came fluttering down on my shoulder and I looked up to see a large indentation in the stone of the ceiling, with a hair-fine crack running from it to one of the walls, from which some dust had just rained down. Could the shaking I felt earlier have been caused by this girl breaking her ceiling? Were vampires that powerful?

If Meiling had had to come down here to subdue this girl after she had gone berserk, then she must have done it very quickly. The time that had elapsed between us coming down the stairs from our rooms and making our way to this chamber can't have been more than 15 minutes, by my estimate. Doing my best to ignore a creeping sense of danger, I settled into position across from the young girl.

"I'm sorry, I didn't get a chance to give my name earlier. I'm Usami Renko, the peerless detective," my partner began. "This is my assistant, Merry. What's your name, miss?"

"Flandre."

"You're Remilia's younger sister, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am. I've been living here since my sister made this room for me, about 495 years."

"495 years?!" My voice overlapped with Renko's. That length of time was unimaginable to the two of us, maybe to any human. Vampires are said to be immortal though. I wondered if at the age of 500 or so it might be normal for them to seem to be children.

"Hey, detective Renko, right? Have you met my sister?" She smiled sweetly, her chin propped on both hands.

"Yes, though I only just got to say hello to her once. She seemed to be in good spirits the last time I saw her."

"Of course, that's just like her". It was a strange thing to say, but her smile seemed genuine. I wonder what her opinion of a sister who had ordered her locked up for 500 years might really be.

"So why are you both down here?"

"Well, we had heard that the mistress had a sister, but we hadn't been introduced, so we came to say hello."

"But why come to this mansion at all?"

Renko glanced at me. "We just happened to wander in, I guess you'd say. I suggested a bit of fun to Lady Remilia and she said we could stay here for a while."

"Oh, so you're guests." She gazed at Renko impudently. I wondered where us being guests invited by her sister put us in her estimation. "But this is the first time a guest has ever come to visit me in my room. How did you get here?"

"Miss Meiling came by earlier, didn't she? We were just following her."

"Meiling came here about a week ago."

We looked at each other. If Meiling hadn't come in, that would explain why she had come back so quickly, but if she hadn't come to see Flandre, where had she gone?

"Does Miss Meiling take care of you, Miss Flandre?"

"I guess. She brings me snacks and plays with me sometimes." A youkai playmate for a vampire. A better option than a mortal human, I supposed.

Flandre's eyes suddenly settled on me and I flinched involuntarily. "What is it...?"

"What's that you're holding?" she pointed to the hardcover clutched on my lap, 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘞𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘕𝘰𝘯𝘦.

"Oh, it's a book..." I stammered. Why couldn't I have brought something more appropriate with me, I wondered. The last thing I wanted was to put this girl into a bad mood.

"I know what books look like, I mean what kind?"

"Oh, it's uh, Agatha Christie's 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘞𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘕𝘰𝘯𝘦. A first-edition original copy."

"What kind of story is that?"

I wondered how much I should say. The story might not be appropriate for the child Flandre appeared to be, but for a 495 year old vampire? At any rate, I was relieved to see her more interested in the story than either of us. "Let's see... Ten people are called to an isolated island house at the invitation of a mysterious person named U. N. Owen. Each of them is someone who has killed in the past, but never faced punishment for their crimes. Then, as a form of justice, each of them are killed one by one, with no one able to figure out which of them is the killer."

"Is there a great detective?"

"No, no detective in this story, but it's still considered a classic of mystery fiction."

Her predatory eyes locked with mine, cold, cruel and commanding, glowing with a bloody light.

"Read it."

"What?"

"Read me that story."

"Uh... alright, but it's a bit of a long story to read."

"I have all the time in the world."

I suppose spending a few hours listening to a book wouldn't matter much to a girl who had been locked in a room for almost 500 years, but I wondered how long it would take to read the whole thing.

"This is the original version... in English."

"That's okay."

Flandre scooted over on the bed and patted the space she had vacated. I looked over at Renko, then got up and moved over to sit down next to her.

"Sometimes I get Meiling to read to me like this when she comes down to bring me a snack."

"What about your sister?"

"She never comes to see me." Flandre stared up at me with those cold, luminous eyes. Could her sister be neglecting her? I wondered just what kind of family drama I had wandered into. "Now read it already."

"O-Okay, sure." I looked nervously up from Flandre to Renko, who had rearranged her legs and was now sitting comfortably on the cushion, waiting attentively.

"Merry's storytime!" she chirped happily. How could she be so calm in this situation? I felt like a hostage, even though not the hint of a threat had been spoken to either of us. Something about this girl just radiated a sense of danger.

At any rate, I opened 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘞𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘕𝘰𝘯𝘦, smelled the old paper, traced the roughness of the ink on the page, and began to read.



It wasn't long before I was interrupted by the sound of the door opening. We had just finished the first chapter. I turned to look at the door, and saw Patchouli standing in the entryway with a puzzled look on her face and her eyes blinking rapidly in the dimness.

Patchouli stared at us with half-lidded eyes, not bothering to disguise the annoyance in her tone. "You two. What's all this about?"

I wondered if I could play innocent? After all, we were just reading a book to the Mistress' sister... though sneaking into this hidden room to do so was probably enough to warrant her glare on its own.

"We were just exploring a bit and happened on this room by chance," Renko replied blithely.

"By chance!?" Patchouli's eyebrows lowered. She was clearly angry, but more than that she seemed confused. "I can understand how you found this basement, that was probably the gatekeeper's carelessness. But how did you manage to get through the seal on this room?"

"Oh, that was me." Without thinking, I raised my hand. Patchouli's eyes widened and she regarded me with a serious expression.

"You broke my seal? How?"

"No, I didn't break it, there was just a slight imperfection in how it was affixed to the door and I just sort of..." I hooked my finger and made a yanking motion.

Patchouli stared at me, mouth agape. Before she could say anything though, I heard a small growl from beside me. Flandre had propped herself up on one elbow and extended her right arm out toward Patchouli. As Patchouli's eyes widened she began to squeeze her fist shut. With surprising agility and a terrified look Patchouli dived back out of the door as if fleeing from something.

A moment later, the stuffed bear that had been sitting on a shelf behind where Patchouli had been standing exploded. It had literally forcefully burst from within without warning, torn to clouds of cotton fluff and rolling scraps of fabric that tumbled along the floor.

"Flandre!" Patchouli called, exasperatedly, from the hall.

"Merry is reading to me right now. Go away." Flandre's voice was surprisingly rough, with a piercing coldness to it. Had Flandre caused the bear to explode just now, I wondered? What would happen if she had directed that power at Patchouli. Or at me?

I glanced at the stuffed animals scattered around the room and the fragments of disarrayed wreckage of what had once been furniture or bits of stone. I realized that the cage Renko and I walked into contained a deadly beast, and now that we had awakened it, we could neither flee nor fight, only freeze in terror as it prowled.

"I don't recommend you two stay in this room too long." Patchouli said, with a sour tone. Then she closed the creaking door with a solid thunk.

Without waiting a moment, Flandre looked back up at me expectantly, as if begging me to continue. If I refused, would my fate be any different than that of one of her stuffed animals? I had no choice.

I sighed, and began to read the rest of the book. Unless I finished the last page or the young vampire fell asleep in the middle, I couldn't imagine how else I might escape from this minefield of a situation. I resigned myself to my fate and suppressed another sigh in my chest when I looked at Renko, who was regarding me with a bemused half-smirk and pressed on.


—16—


"But if that happened, who could have killed the others?"

I had never read to a child before, but now I had spent hours at it, answering questions and explaining the occasional English word throughout. When I finally finished the story, I was thirsty. We were on the last chapter now, just before the final confession of the murderer. Looking around, I didn't see any source of water nearby and I didn't like the thought of what might come out if I asked Flandre for a drink.

"Really, there's no one left, so who could it be?" Flandre looked up to me with a puzzled expression on her face.

"I know," I said. "When I first read the book, I knew the plot but was mystified as to who the culprit could be at the end."

"Well, who was it?"

I was about to tell her, when Renko interrupted me with a cat-like grin. "Who do you think it was, young miss?"

"The last one, the one who hanged herself."

"Couldn't be," Renko said. "They didn't find the chair she used as a step stool. Someone had to have cleaned that up afterward."

"Hmmmph." Flandre puffed out her cheeks and fell into her bed in a heap. "Do you know who did it, Renko?"

"She's a great detective, you know" I teased. I wouldn't mention that Renko had read the book so many times she probably had it committed to memory. I'm sure if I had, she would have just replied "I guessed the murderer on my first reading!"

"Aaah I don't know! I don't know! Who was it?" Flandre rolled over on the bed and looked over at the book in my hands. "Was that the end?"

"No, the next chapter is the confession of the murderer."

"Read it!" Her eyes were aglow with excitement. I opened the book again and was about to commence when we were interrupted once again by the sound of the door creaking open.

"I'm sorry, but that's it." Patchouli glared at us as she opened the door. "Usami Renko, Maéreverie Hearn, I'm going to have to ask you to leave this room."

"Can I just—"

"I'm going to seal this chamber again. Unless you want to remain in here for a few hundred years, this is your last chance to leave."

I looked to Renko, who was rising from the cushion with an uneasy expression on her face. She was looking at Flandre, and when I followed her gaze, the expression on the child's face made my breath catch in my throat.

"I'll just break it," She said, glaring at Patchouli. There was a crack and the squealing of metal. Behind Patchouli's back, the door twisted and rocked from two small explosions as the hinges suddenly burst, tearing uneven gouges in the stone wall.

This time, however, Patchouli was unmoving, staring Flandre dead in the eyes. "That's quite enough of that, young miss." Patchouli opened the grimoire she was carrying and began an incantation. In an instant, wards around every inch of the room began to shine and sparks leapt from the complex sigils. To my eyes, the barriers that suddenly coalesced into existence wound themselves around Flandre like a geometric web, encircling and encapsulating her as the crystals ornamenting her wings glowed in seven colors, as if resonating with the spell.

Flandre's arms snapped to her side, pinned as the invisible web closed around her. She snarled and screeched at Patchouli threateningly, but Patchouli merely walked up to the vampire and silently placed a finger on her forehead. A sigil glowed to life where she touched and the next moment, Flandre collapsed onto the bed.

Patchouli turned to us, her eyes urging us out of the room. "She'll sleep for now." Her statement was flat and her intent plain—leave, or we'd be the next to be put to sleep. No, it would be a blessing if being put to sleep was all she did.

I rose from the bed and Renko and I nodded at each other with only our eyes. It was we who had snuck into this room in the first place, and we had no position to argue with her commandment from. If she had accused us of a crime, I wouldn't have had a word to say in my defense and unlike Renko, I'm a sensible enough person to understand when a cause is hopeless. For now.

"Sorry about that. You'll have to read the last part for yourself," I said to the sleeping young vampire's childlike form. I bent down to gently place the copy of 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘞𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘕𝘰𝘯𝘦 on the bed beside her. Then we allowed Patchouli to herd us from the room. As she left, she gestured at the door, which righted itself and snapped into position as the shattered fragments of its hinges leapt from the floor and flitted themselves back into place, cold iron and splintered wood knitting themselves neatly back together as if nothing had happened. The heavy door gave one last creak and settled into place, leaving the stone corridor as silent as a tomb.

Satisfied with her repairs, Patchouli rose into the air and glided past us, toward the stairs.

"So what happened?" Renko asked. She was walking with her arms crossed behind her head behind Patchouli, who was gliding through the air ahead of us.

"Two rats snuck into the young miss's bedchamber."

"What a scandal." I could hear Renko's irreverent smile even if I couldn't see it.

"It doesn't matter, I suppose. Honestly I'm impressed that anyone other than Meiling could have survived spending that much time in there. What sort of interlopers are you two any way? I wouldn't expect a normal person to be able to break my seals."

"You could call us those who uncover the secrets of the world, I suppose," Renko said with a theatrical gesture.

Patchouli whirled in the air, turning to face us, while still continuing to float backward down the corridor, her pace unaffected. "I don't suppose it matters to you if that's rather inconvenient for the ones whose secrets you're exposing."

"Can I take that to mean that this mansion still has other secrets to hide? If you tell us, we won't have to go looking."

"Enough. If you insist on pushing your luck further, I'll see to it that you do end up in Remy's pie, guests or not. As much as I would love to scold you, now is not the time for this. I've got to get back to the library. You two should follow Sakuya and find someplace to hide. I doubt that gatekeeper can hold the line for long."

"Hide?" I asked.

"Are you under attack by vampire hunters?" Renko blurted.

Patchouli answered aloofly. "You're not too far off the mark. It seems that the Hakurei shrine maiden and another human interloper are on their way here, stirring up an unholy ruckus as they come."

The Hakurei shrine maiden. The words were unfamiliar, but somehow hearing them caused a strange stirring in my heart. It would be a long time before I discovered why.





―Intermission―



It was late in the afternoon when a suspicious-looking mist had spread from the direction of Youkai Mountain, risen from the valley and wrapped its spectral tendrils around the grounds of the Hakurei Shrine.

Hakurei Reimu, who had been relaxing on the shrine's veranda, leaning up against a pillar while sipping her afternoon tea, knew from the start that it wasn't any ordinary fog. Aside from its color, the mist held an ominous presence, the kind of unsettling youkai aura that could drive an ordinary human mad if they were exposed to it for a prolonged period.

She had noticed the mist appearing to cover the foothills of Youkai mountain the day before last, but now that it had spread this far, it was beginning to cover the sun and block the summer heat. As the clouds billowed ever higher it began to become chilly. It was hard to pretend at this point that it was someone else's problem.

Reimu sneezed once and rose to her feet, having decided to bring in the laundry that had been hanging out in the yard. After folding and putting it away, she glanced, irritated, at the mist. The summer heat could be annoying, but being cold in the summer was somehow even more irksome to her. Moreover, if the fog persisted, she wouldn't be able to dry her laundry. By this point it had covered the shrine grounds. If it had reached this far from the mountain, it wouldn't be long before it reached the human village. If that happened, the effects would be unpredictable. But probably also annoying, she decided.

Who would be foolish enough to cause such wide-scale mischief? She supposed it might fall under the purview of the Hakurei shrine maiden's job to find out. She sighed and went to the set of drawers where she kept neat bundles of paper charms and her purification rod. Her intuition told her the lake at the foot of the mountain was the most suspicious place.

Blanketed in the mysterious fog and guided only by her intuition, Hakurei Reimu set out to find the source of the strange phenomenon.

◇　◆

At the same time, Kirisame Marisa was flying over the forest of magic to return home, when a red gleam in the distance caught her eye.
"Huh? What the heck is that?"

The forest of magic spreads over much of the western half of Gensokyo. Now, its northeast corner, where it approached the foot of Youkai mountain, was buried under a thick curtain of scarlet mist. The lake near there was regularly covered in clinging fog, but both the volume of the mist and its bright red color were striking.
"Isn't that about where I saw that weird red mansion the other day?"

Misty Lake was mainly an elongated oval, but there was a spot on its northern side where the shore was concave, making for a substantial peninsula that jutted out into the water. The mansion had stood, as she recalled, backed onto that peninsula, with the water shimmering behind it. No one really lived out this way, but as near as anyone could remember, the mansion had simply appeared one day, right about at the location that would be the center of the mist billowing into the forest right now. She had always wondered why anyone would build something in such an out-of-the-way place.

Could the red mist be the doing of the sort of eccentrics who would go to the trouble of living half-way out to the middle of a lake?

Marisa looked around. At its easternmost expanse, the blanket of fog extended toward the hill on which the Hakurei Shrine stood, carried by the wind. If the shrine were to be covered by fog, then Reimu might already be on the move.

Hakurei Reimu. The shrine maiden was Marisa's childhood friend. The witch knew her well enough to understand that the protector of Gensokyo's order would rarely acts unless a problem inconvenienced her directly. If the mist hadn't blown her way and affected her sphere of life directly, she would have ignored it until someone came from the village to complain. Marisa thought to herself that she might be able to get this mystery wrapped up before Reimu even arrived.

Grinning, Marisa pulled her floppy hat into place over her eyes and turned her broomstick toward the setting sun and the remembered location of the western-style mansion on the lake.

"May as well go have a look too," She announced as she rocketed away.