東方プロジェクト二次小説・オリジナル小説サイト
Chapter 5:Phantasmagoria of Flower View

—13—


—I'll leave any further unrelated and embarrassing details about that evening aside, as they don't concern the Incident at hand.

The next morning Renko and I were chatting over breakfast.

"I think we should go back to Hieda manor today," she said to me as I took a bite of my pickles.

I couldn't think of anything that we needed to do there. "To see Akyuu? You already heard all about the incident yesterday though, didn't you?"

"Well, I've been thinking about it since then. I still think our basic assumptions might be wrong."

"What basic assumptions?"

"It's about the phantoms." Come to think of it, she'd been saying something about that yesterday too. "I should have pressed the issue more yesterday. If my assumptions about them are incorrect then all the reasoning that follows from them is necessarily invalid too."

"What part of that do you think is wrong? Are you saying that the phantoms aren't really phantoms?"

"Well, I'm pretty sure they're disembodied souls, but are they human souls? Do phantoms have to be human?"

I blinked in surprise and let out a breath. "Oh. Hmm." When one thinks of a ghost, the image that comes to mind is certainly human and all of the ghosts we had met so far in Gensokyo had been of the human sort, but folklore was full of stories of ghosts of animals or things that might once have been human but had become something else. In a place like Gensokyo might there even be such a thing as a ghost of a youkai?

"All of our worries were predicated on the assumption that this sudden surge of phantoms originated from dead humans. If these aren't human spirits though, then that might explain where they come from despite there not being any major wars or catastrophes that we know of occurring in the Outside World. For example what if they're the phantoms of a locust swarm? Those come up at infrequent intervals then die off in huge numbers as part of a regular cycle."

"Then all your dramatic posturing and speculating yesterday was for nothing?"

"Well, it's still a possibility, but it's not the only one. Let's start by checking with Akyuu on what the definition of a phantom is, then we can discuss the implications."

"If you want to know about phantoms, wouldn't it be better to ask Youmu or Yuyuko?"

"I'd love to, but we don't have an easy way of getting to the Netherworld and back."

"That's true..." I thought for a moment that asking Keine might be less of a bother, but Akyuu’s explanation would undoubtedly be much more concise. Besides, I didn't imagine that as a historian she would have much information on the nature of ghosts.

"Alright then, as soon as we've finished breakfast, we'll go have a chat."

"Renko it's Monday. We have classes to teach at the temple school."

"Ah..." Renko's hand froze, chopsticks poised above her rice bowl. Mondays were the one day of the week where all three classes, Japanese, mathematics and history were all scheduled to be taught. "I was kind of hoping that the school would be closed with there being an ongoing incident."

"There's not really any danger, so I imagine it's business as usual."

"Okay then, I don't have students until second period. I'm going to take a stroll until then. Ask around a bit, see if anyone can give me a solid definition of what a phantom is, exactly. I'll be back before the bell rings."

"Suit yourself."

Renko put her head down and began rapidly shoveling rice into her mouth with great speed and a determined expression. I sighed and handed her my cup of tea to wash it down as she coughed and thumped her chest with a clenched fist.

—

For my class today, instead of the usual dictation, I administered a creative writing assignment as a skills test. Such exercises were a good solution for a day when the children were too distracted by all of the flowers to listen to a lecture.

The subject of the composition was simply 'what happened yesterday.' I imagined that with the flower incident having only begun the day before the children would find it an easy and enjoyable topic to write about. At the very least it would be interesting to hear about the incident from the children's perspective.

"Anything you want to write about is fine," I instructed the students, imagining I'd have lots of opportunities to highlight and focus on emotion words for my next lesson. "Just write as if you were talking to me and trying to explain how you felt. You could write sentences like 'the flowers made me happy' or 'I was sad because my parents were really busy' or 'I was bored because Miss Keine's homework was so long.'"

"Teacher, what did you do yesterday?"

"Me? Well, I had a lot of fun seeing flowers all around town with Miss Renko.

"I saw Miss Merry and Miss Renko chasing each other yesterday!" One of the students shouted aloud. I froze in place, and could feel the blood draining from my face. Had they seen my conversation with Renko? Had they heard it? I suppose in the end I had nothing to hide, but to realize that a private moment was being watched is always a bit of a shock.

"Were you and Miss Renko playing tag, teacher?"

"I wanna play tag with teacher too!"

"Okay everyone, let's talk about that later. Right now we need to be focusing on our writing, please. This is supposed to be about what 𝑦𝑜𝑢 all did yesterday, right?"

I sighed to myself, counting the minutes left in the first period as the children put their heads down and focused on their brushwork.

—

Eventually the bell was rung and the first period ended.

"All right, thank you everyone, please hand your essays to the front. Is there anyone who hasn't finished yet?" A few hands shot up. I made a show of deliberating for a moment. "Hmmm, what should I do? Anyone who can't finish their work in class probably needs to review with homework the most..." Several nervous faces grimaced up at me, one child shook his head side to side in an exaggerated display. "All right, just hand what you have up to the front and I'll collect it. No homework today." Sighs of relief filled the room, especially from those children who hadn't finished.

Writing has always come easily to me, and I remember as a child being confused when my classmates struggled with 400-word compositions in elementary school. For these children though, the most important thing was to foster a love of reading and writing in them. Making the assignment into drudgery wouldn't achieve that. Practice and repetition were the only routes to mastery and as long as they had written enough for me to spot any areas they were struggling with, it would suffice.

I collected the papers from the children, packed my things and left the room. Second period would be starting momentarily. I wondered if Renko had come back yet. I saw her exiting the staff room as I approached the end of the hall.

"Ah, Merry. Good work in there. Are those essays? You're working them hard today."

"Hey, Renko. Did you manage to see Miss Akyuu?"

"I tried, but she wasn't in," she said, slumping in defeat.

"There, there Renko. Go teach your class like a good girl and when you're done we can leave dismissal and cleanup to Keine today and both go try at the manor again."

"Okay, sounds good." She gave me a grin as we passed.

As I walked into the staff room Keine was reading something at her desk. I nodded to her and went to my own desk with the stack of essays to begin grading. "Hello Miss Keine, is the watch having any trouble with the ongoing incident?"

"The watch made an official announcement saying there was no great danger from this incident. The only things to watch out for were a few drunken brawls and a couple occasions of children wandering out of the village picking flowers, but other than that things are pretty peaceful. There's no particular need for me to be there at the moment."

At this point I had learned that Keine had suffered a rather unpleasant evening in order to defend the village against Remilia and her maid last fall. Not that it had been necessary, seeing as Remilia and Sakuya had never intended to attack the village.

"So then the increasing number of phantoms aren't considered a problem?"

"No, not really. People tend to avoid the sorts of places where the phantoms like to gather anyway."

"I guess even the people of Gensokyo really are afraid of ghosts then, huh?"

"Ghosts are one thing, but even most of those are harmless. These are just phantoms. Don't people in the Outside World become phantoms when they die?"

"Huh, that's difficult to answer. Some people certainly believe they do, but I had never seen one before coming here."

In the backwards days of 20th century science, the existence of the soul was generally denied. The science of the time denied the existence of a wide variety of mental and spiritual phenomena. The development of spiritual research and the development of Relativistic Noology as a discipline had led to a growing consensus among academics that these narrow-minded views were not necessarily correct. The end of the 21st century, where Renko and I had come from, was said to be an age where new and old views of scientific rationality clashed.

As two people involved in an occult circle, one would probably expect that Renko and I would subscribe to the views of 21st century science, but that isn’t exactly the case either. As a student of Relativistic Noology, I personally am very much of the belief that scientific consensus is more of a shared delusion agreed upon by the majority of people than any sort of empirical representation of the truth. My partner however, being a student of physics, had a much more conventional, twentieth-century way of viewing the world. To her credit though, I will say that since coming here it seems like her views have certainly changed somewhat.

"In the Outside World, although some people believe in ghosts, we certainly can’t see them like you can here."

"I see, so out there there's a clear boundary between the world of the living and the world beyond, is that it?"

"It’s something like that. At any rate it’s definitely different than Gensokyo. Here any child here could tell you what happens to the dead without question, right?"

"Right. When a person dies, their soul leaves their body as a phantom and is ferried across the Sanzu river by the shinigami. Upon arriving on the far shore they are judged by the Yama and sent onto their fate —reincarnation for most, rebirth in Heaven for those on the path to nirvana and condemnation to one of the hells for anyone whose sins are too numerous."

I suppose it’s only natural that Gensokyo’s views on death would differ from those found in the Outside World. Though beliefs here shared numerous concepts with religions found in the Outside World, it was completely unique in that no Outside World religion could offer proof of a soul's fate in the afterlife, or even that one existed. Here in Gensokyo, the afterlife was apparently a place you could visit, provided you had the means. A version of the Outside World where everyone knows what happens to a soul after death had even been the focus of a sci-fi novel in the 2010's, but that was where such a concept had remained —as a fictional premise.

I wondered if this particular aspect of the world provided relief to the humans living here. In Gensokyo villagers had to be kept alive to preserve their function as a source of power for the youkai. Despite that, humans living in the village were much closer to death at any moment than those in the Outside World. Taking even one step outside of the village walls was taking one's life into their hands. Perhaps having reliable knowledge of what happened after death helped to make the afterlife less scary as a concept.

When I explained this theory to Keine, she gave me that all-too-familiar look indicating that I had said something that loudly proclaimed my status as an Outsider again.

"It's not as simple as you're making it out to be," she said.

"Oh?"

"Most of us aren't the Child of Miare. Death is generally seen as a one-way door. Even if you might someday be reincarnated, once you're dead you'll become an inarticulate phantom, completely indistinguishable from any other, unable to speak. Past that, no one ever really knows just what sort of judgment lord Yama might deliver or what your fate might be after that. Even for the dead the idea of facing their fate is still scary. I imagine the dead fear it just as much as the living do."

It was an interesting way of looking at things. Being as I was used to thinking of the existence of an afterlife as uncertain, I had never thought about how the dead might view the idea of being ferried away to face their fate.

"Think of it this way," she continued. "I'm sitting right over here, living my life as a half-human, half-hakutaku. If I were to tell you that as of tomorrow you too were to become like me, and could never go back to being fully human again, that would be scary, right? You've seen that I can go on living just fine, but you still wouldn't want to give up what you have for something unknown and unknowable, right?"

I didn't know what to say to a question like that. It certainly hadn't been my intention to imply that Keine's current way of being should be considered in any way less valid than my own. As I looked down in shame, Keine smiled.

"Sorry, I made that into a bit of a nasty question. I didn't mean to accuse you of anything. My point is that when we see phantoms, it's not the phantom we're afraid of, but what they represent. They are unpleasant reminders of our limited time in this world, let's say. Nothing dangerous, but that doesn't mean our attitudes toward death are any different from yours."

I thought about that for a minute, then brought up a question that my conversation with Renko over breakfast had left tumbling around in my head. "Keine, what about things other than humans? Do they have phantoms to leave behind too? Animals and youkai and the like?"

She pondered that for a moment, tapping her chin with the back of her brush. "Hmmm, youkai I don't know about. Typically, if a youkai were to die, it would mean their annihilation.. Beasts certainly have souls as far as I'm aware. They're born, live and die just as we do. beast phantoms would probably be just like human ones though. They'd be indistinguishable from any other phantom, I imagine.

"So do animal phantoms like that actually exist?"

"They must, I guess. All living things die and undergo judgment eventually. That’s the providence of Gensokyo."


—14—


I was still grading the children's essays when Keine went out to ring the lunch bell signaling the end of second period. We said our goodbyes and Renko and I headed out toward the Hieda estate, hoping that Akyuu might have returned home for lunch. As we walked, I relayed my earlier conversation with Keine to Renko.

"So phantoms of beasts must exist, at least according to Keine. Your hypothesis appears to have been correct, Renko."

"Well that’s just Keine's guess at the matter. She may well be right, but it would be better if we could talk to an expert. I wonder if anyone would be willing to send us to the Netherworld?" Renko said as she fiddled with her hat.

I doubt that there are many living people other than my partner strange enough to want to go visit the Netherworld. I suppose as long as she doesn’t go so far as to suggest that we make a one-way trip to get there, such eccentricity is harmless.

When we arrived at Hieda manor, a maid informed us that Akyuu was still out and wasn't expected to return until evening.

"Well, where to now, Renko?"

"Hmmm, Keine would still be in class at the moment... Oh! I know!" she said, clapping her hands together. "We met someone yesterday who seemed to know a lot about the topic."

I thought back through yesterday's events. "Oh? Who do you mean? Miss Eirin?"

"No, it was someone who mentioned to us that poltergeists and phantoms are different, if you remember."

"Ah, the Prismriver Ensemble?"

"The very same. I want to ask that keyboardist to explain exactly what she meant by that."

I did remember the girl with the keyboard mentioning something like that, but there was a problem with Renko's suggestion which I didn't see a way around. "Renko, how do you intend to find the Prismrivers? We barely know that girl."

"I'm sure we'll figure something out. For one thing I know where they live. I heard it's an abandoned western-style manor house not far from the Scarlet Devil Mansion."

"Where in the world would you have heard something like that?"

"Sakuya told me a while ago that there's a house nearby that's always noisy."

"When was this?"

"Does it matter? We know the way, so let's go! It's time to go see the Prismriver Ensemble live and in person!"

"You sound like the sort of fan every performer dreads, Renko."

It was useless to argue, Renko had already set off toward the gate leading out of the village. Once again I followed along, her drive to discover leading the way and my own need for her companionship pushing from behind. Stuck there in the middle was me, being led by the hand and complaining ineffectively.

—

We headed out of the village on the road leading north, toward Misty Lake. Renko didn't know exactly where the house of the Prismriver sisters’ house was located, but we had never noticed it while walking to the Scarlet Devil Mansion, so it seemed reasonable to assume it must be off the path to the lake somewhere, tucked back among the trees of the forest.

As we arrived at the lake, we found it covered in a placid and uniform milky-white mist despite it being a few hours past noon. The flat non-color of the mist was a counterpoint to the hundreds of brilliant flowers that bloomed around the lake's shore, looking out of place in the cool, damp weather. There was no sign of any phantoms here, but their translucent forms could easily have been lost in the billowing mist.

"I figure Meiling will probably know where to find the Prismrivers' house" Renko reasoned. She was pushing ahead through the banks of fog that drifted over the shore of the lake and obscured the path circumnavigating the waters. Given the warmth of the day, the chill of the mist was surprisingly intense. Within just a few minutes of walking through it, I found myself shivering slightly with goosebumps covering my bare arms. Renko had been holding my hand the whole way, but as the chilly mist surrounded us, I drew closer and snuggled against her for warmth as we walked. Suddenly, a flash of movement out over the lake caught my eye.

"Hey Renko, look! Over the lake."

"Hmm? Where? Oh! Someone's playing danmaku again."

The two figures were so high up that with the mist shrouding us they were difficult to make out. Shielding our eyes from the sun, Renko and I peered up at them. One of the combatants was tiny, firing streams of glimmering projectiles in every direction at once regardless of where their opponent was at any given moment. The other was moving extremely fast, flitting instantly between gaps in the barrages but rarely returning fire.

"Hey Merry, is that Miss Shameimaru?"

"I think so. I don't recognize the other one. She's tiny though. A fairy, maybe?"

"Oh there's supposed to be a little ice fairy that lives on this lake. Maybe it's her!"

The moment Renko said that, a stray projectile came whistling down and splashed into the lake a few meters from us. It was a glistening, sharply pointed icicle. Where it pierced the surface of the water a small raft of ice bobbed to the surface a moment later. Anyone hit by one of those would have more to worry about than frostbite. I felt another shiver go through me, though not from the chill.

"Ah,looks like we have a winner!" Renko called excitedly while I was still staring at the sharpened point of the floating icicle. I looked up just a moment before the roar of a huge gust of wind washed over us, ripping the mist away from a huge, fan-shaped area of the lakeshore and bringing with it the diminutive body of what looked like a small girl followed by a small cloud of floating icicles that spread out from her back like a pair of wings. She rocketed down, propelled by the fierce draft and splashed through the surface of the lake with an impact that sent a shower of water droplets into the air which all rained down as fine snow. A moment later she bobbed to the surface, lying flat on her back, floating atop a child-sized iceberg. As the noise of the splashing subsided it was replaced by the whirr and click of a shutter as Aya mercilessly compounded her victory, flitting from position to position overhead as she snapped shot after shot of her defeated opponent.

Aya snapped a last picture and seemed about to turn away when she noticed us standing on the shoreline, in the broad stripe of land now devoid of mist and highlighted with colorful flowers. Upon seeing us she raised a hand in greeting and dived toward us, landing with clack of her geta on the stony shore.

"Ayaya, the detectives! Are you two participating in this flower incident too?"

"I don't know about participating, but we're investigating it," Renko said with a friendly grin. "I assume this is part of your coverage of the event?" She asked, gesturing to the fairy bobbing insensibly on the surface of the lake.

"As Gensokyo's most trusted purveyor of truth and information, of course I’m trying to get to the bottom of a major incident like this one. I'm seeking out a culprit among the many humans and youkai who have all been stirring up a fuss. I don't suppose you have any juicy leads?"

The two of us exchanged a brief look of surprise. Did Aya not already know the truth behind the nature of the incident? Given her close association with Akyuu that was a bit surprising. Even if the incident had last happened sixty years ago, it’s hard to imagine that it had been before her time.

"So how about it?" Aya prompted, "Any idea what's going on?"

Renko spoke up before I could volunteer anything. "Not a clue," she bluffed. "How about your information network, pursuing any leads?"

"I'm hot on the trail of a certain flower youkai. She's missing from her home in the Garden of the Sun. Rather suspicious, wouldn't you say?"

"You mean Kazami Yuuka?"

"Oh, you know her then? Apparently she's been flying around at random, tormenting any fairies or youkai she comes across."

"Yuuka? Tormenting fairies, are you sure?"

"Well she has a certain reputation as that sort of a bully, doesn't she?"

Our experience meeting Yuuka had certainly suggested otherwise, but who knew what she was like on a bad day? It was undeniable that she seemed like a powerful youkai, but it was hard to imagine a flower youkai being violent.

"At any rate, I should be going if you don't have any information. I've got leads of my own to track down."

Aya's wings stretched out from her back, but before she could vanish, Renko reached out to lay a hand on her shoulder. "Ah, just one moment, if I may. Do you happen to know where the Prismriver sisters live? We've been told it's somewhere in this area."

Aya blinked in surprise at the question then narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "The noisy poltergeist band? What do they have to do with any of this?"


—15—


Following Aya's directions, we found the Prismrivers' house with little difficulty. It was tucked a ways back into the woods, but was in no way concealed. In all, it was surprisingly easy to find, enough so to make me wish Eientei was as easy to get to.

"If the Scarlet Devil Mansion looks like the proper setting for a mystery, then this looks like the perfect place to film a horror movie. And here we are, two college girls willingly walking up to it."

"Renko, isn't this exactly how those old slasher movies always started?"

"Don't worry Merry, there were never just two girls in those. As long as we don't have a half dozen more people show up to party, we'll be fine." Somehow that logic seemed dubious to me.

My own anxieties aside, it was undeniable that the building was a ruin. There were visible cracks in the stucco that made up the outer walls which traveled halfway up the side of the house. Most of the façade was strangled by clinging ivy vines and some of the windows were broken. The entire building seemed to be on the verge of collapse. Judging by the exterior, it didn't look suitable for human habitation but I wondered if such things would matter to a trio of poltergeists.

Renko strode up to the house and across the creaking boards of the porch without a moment's hesitation, seizing the rusted knocker on the door and giving it a rap. We waited a full minute without an answer.

"Seems like it's not your day for calling on people, Renko. Maybe they're out playing a concert somewhere."

Renko gave the doorknob a twist and to my surprise, the door yawned open when released, creaking loudly as it did. An unlocked front door had to mean that someone was here, right? Either that or a trap for nosy humans without the good sense to turn back. More likely the latter.

"Pardon me, is anyone home?" Renko hollered as she pushed the door open and stepped inside.

"Renko! Don't you ever wait?"

"Relax, Merry. If they're not here, we'll just find someplace to sit and wait for them."

"If you end up getting possessed or killed, it's not my fault, Renko."

"That's the sort of thing a vengeful ghost would do. I have it on good authority that poltergeists are completely different. Now come on, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for an intimate backstage visit with star performers!"

"Hey, don't pull me!"

With that, Renko stepped boldly into the house, dragging me by the hand as usual. Moments after we entered, the door creaked slowly shut behind us. Directly before us was a large staircase leading to the second floor. The stairs went up to a landing before turning at right angles and splitting in two directions to complete the ascent. On the wall above the landing there hung a large, faded portrait of a young girl, the face of which was damaged and blackened by age and moisture to the point of being indistinguishable. The light streaming in through the windows and the occasional crack in the walls bounced off of the floors, providing enough illumination to see, albeit dimly. The carpet was ragged and threadbare and here and there bits of plaster were crumbling off of the walls. Beyond that though, there was no dust. No cobwebs or signs of infestation by rats or bats greeted us either. The house was unquestionably a ruin, but it was a beautiful one, a stately memory slowly sinking into nature.

"It's like the ruins of Odaiba in Tokyo, Merry. All those old empty skyscrapers and museums, slowly sinking into the bay. Nothing to be afraid of though."

"...I'm not scared."

That said, I couldn’t deny that I had been holding her hand a little tighter than was strictly necessary as we made our way through the foyer.

"Now, if I were a poltergeist, where would I be..." she muttered.

If this were a horror movie, it wouldn't have been unusual at this point for us to be startled by the sound of a piano —typically a discordant crash of something smashing against a keyboard. What we heard instead, however, was the unmistakable and sudden blare of a trumpet. It was no less startling. A single loud, high note reverberated from somewhere above us. The floors and walls of the house seemed to shiver with excitement at the sound, quaking in harmony. As the note faded, there was a pronounced wooden creaking from above us. I looked up to see a suspended chandelier rattling as it swung back and forth. Had it been a minor earthquake? As if in response to my question a picture frame on the second floor rattled then began to spin unnaturally in place and a vase on a table beside us toppled over and crashed to the ground.

"Renko..."

"What are you afraid of, Merry? We're experiencing an exclusive live performance by Gensokyo's most popular poltergeist band!"

After a moment of relative silence the sound of the trumpet resumed, much quieter now, and playing a soft, enticing melody rather than the single blaring note that had shaken the walls. The music was coming from upstairs. It seemed rather obviously like something intended to lure us further in. Renko paid no mind though, excitedly starting up the staircase, gripping my hand all the way. I was preoccupied enough with wondering whether the creaking stairs would support our weight that I didn't even notice anything near me until all at once I felt something soft and cold brush past my ear. I let out a small shriek of surprise.

"Agh! What was that?" I cried, looking around for what had touched me.

"There!" Renko thrust out an arm to point beside me. "It's a phantom! Hey little guy, did you come here following the sound of a trumpet?"

Sure enough, when I looked where Renko was pointing, a wispy, insubstantial white puff with a long tail was twisting through the air toward the top of the stairs. It wasn't alone either. Since the music had started perhaps a dozen of the small blobby things had appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. As we watched, another of the phantoms flew in through walls and windows. Bit by bit the temperature was dropping as more and more of the phantoms gathered. The scene was quickly becoming reminiscent of our time in the Netherworld. I wondered just how closely related phantoms and poltergeists might be.

All at once, a door opened on the second floor and a girl leaned out into the hall, a trumpet floating in the air just over her shoulder. She turned her head toward us.

"Whoa! Humans! Sisters, there's two humans here, did you call them?" She was dressed in pale pinkish-white, with short wavy hair hanging loosely about her young features. A moment later a violin bobbed into sight behind her, floating in the air and followed a moment later by another girl, this one wearing black, with a short blonde bob and a sleepy expression.

"I didn't call for any humans. Maybe they're just ghosts pretending to be humans, look how many phantoms they have surrounding them."

And that was how we came to meet the last two members of the Prismriver Ensemble, in a house filled with phantoms, with both parties staring at the other with a look of confused wonderment.