東方プロジェクト二次小説・オリジナル小説サイト
Chapter 6:Hisoutensoku

—16—

"Daidarabocchi?"

"Yeah! Haven't you heard yet, Miss Merry? Someone saw one!"

About a week had passed since the end of the kappa's bazaar and suddenly these rumors were all the children at school could talk about.

"What's this? We creaky old grownups are behind the times," Renko said, from beside me. "Why don't you tell us all about it?" Almost immediately a dozen or so children gathered around us, all shouting over each other to convey the latest information.

"I heard it's a GIANT youkai. WAY bigger than any grownup."

"I heard it's so big that it causes earthquakes just by walking around!"

"I heard it's super mean and attacks everything it sees."

"I heard it has a giant weapon!"

"I heard it never moves its face just staring blankly as it chases down its victims"

"I heard it’s actually the servant of an even scarier evil youkai."

"I heard it's hiding in the forest."

"I heard it chopped up a whole bunch of fairies already!"

"I've heard that it's the soul of someone who died and went to Hell."

"I heard it's an incarnation of the giant catfish that causes earthquakes!"

"I heard it's not really a youkai, it’s a weapon created by the kappa!"

The conflicting stories were being shouted from every angle, each over top of the others. It was nearly impossible to pull a complete picture out of the overlapping descriptions.

"Whoa, hold on, hold on," Renko said, stretching her arms out to quiet the shouting children. "Are you all just talking about Hisoutensoku?"

"No, teacher, this is completely different. The daidarabocchi is in the Forest of Magic!"

"Yeah, it smashes fairies and eats them! Like WHAM!"

"Do you think it will get bored of eating fairies and come here looking for food?"

That last line was spoken by one of the older children, and caused several of the younger ones to scream.

Everyone seemed to agree that this was a completely different giant monster from Hisoutensoku. Certainly all of the children here had seen Hisoutensoku so there's no way they would mistake it for anything else.

Renko folded her arms and tucked her chin to her chest, lost in thought. "Hmm, a giant youkai that appears in the Forest of Magic, eh?" Hearing Renko put it that way, it sounded worryingly familiar...

"Where did these rumors come from?" Renko asked, looking around. "Does anyone remember who told you about the daidarabocchi first?"

The children all looked from one to another, murmuring amongst themselves. Eventually, one child spoke up.

"My dad said he saw the Hakurei shrine maiden walking through the forest looking for it."

"The Hakurei shrine maiden? Reimu?"

Renko and I exchanged surprised looks at the unexpected mention.

—

So, as you might expect, as soon as classes were over for the day we made our way hurriedly over to the Hakurei Shrine. The grounds of the shrine appeared deserted as usual, but I made a point of dropping a few coins into the offertory box before we went around back to look for Reimu. We found her right where we might expect to, sitting on the veranda at the back of the shrine, with her feet dangling into a bucket of cool water while she drank hot tea. Would that even be effective?

"Hello, Reimu."

"Oh, it's you two. Welcome, I guess. Do you want some hot tea?"

"No thank you, though that does look like a nice way to beat the heat you've got set up. Actually Reimu, there's something I wanted to ask you."

"Hmn? You two are sticking your noses into something weird again, aren't you?"

"Actually we wanted to ask what 𝑦𝑜𝑢'𝑣𝑒 been sticking your nose into. What have you been investigating recently?"

"Me? I haven't been investigating anything."

"No? All the kids at school seem to think you've been hunting a daidarabocchi in the Forest of Magic."

"Ah, that." Reimu put her teacup down and stretched her arms over her head before letting out a small sigh. "That whole thing was a waste of time. I should have known better than to listen to Cirno."

"Cirno? The ice fairy? Was she the one who started the rumors about a daidarabocchi?"

"Yeah, that moron came to the shrine the other day and told me that she saw a daidarabocchi in the Forest of Magic."

"When was this?"

"A while back, when the kappa bazaar was still going on."

"Then do you think she was just seeing Hisoutensoku?"

"That's what I figured, and I showed her the tengu newspaper, but she said it was something else, so I went to check it out. No one in the forest had seen anything though, and even Marisa said everything there had been normal lately. That idiot fairy is the only one who claimed to have seen anything. Why are you guys asking about this now?"

"Well there's a lot of different rumors of you hunting a daidarabocchi in the Forest. Kids at the Temple school are saying stuff like 'it causes earthquakes' or 'it's eating all the fairies' and ‘it’s coming to attack the village.’"

Reimu groaned. "That's not good. Do you think the rumor is spreading because of me? If rumors like that start to gain momentum in the village, it could be bad."

"What do you mean?"

"Youkai are born from human fear. If enough people start believing that there's something out there that causes earthquakes and eats fairies then sooner or later there eventually might be."

Could something really come into being just because a rumor was spreading? This really is a world where the principles of Relativistic Noology take precedence over the laws of physics.

"If people start believing that there's a huge youkai like a daidarabocchi out there it'll be a pain. It's pretty hard to erase a rumor once it gets started though. You guys are teachers, right? Can you yell at the kids and get them not to spread weird rumors or something?"

"Well we could, but if a bunch of adults tell the kids not to talk about a daidarabocchi all of a sudden then they really are gonna think something's up. No better way to make something seem interesting than to have a bunch of grownups tell you not to talk about it, right?"

"So what then, we have no choice but to hope the kids get bored and move onto something else?"

"Maybe. These rumors are probably on everyone's mind because they all saw Hisoutensoku so recently. Now that the kappa bazaar is over, if there's nothing to see in the forest then the rumors will probably die down soon."

"Hmmm... Next time I see Suika I'll tell her not to grow huge for a while."

That was probably good thinking on Reimu's part. If a giant Suika was wandering around she could easily be mistaken for a daidarabocchi. In fact, if the origin of the daidarabocchi rumor was what I thought it might be, then all of this could have originally been started by Suika, even if she wasn't aware of it...

"Oh, is someone talking about me?" There was a voice from above us, and we looked up to see Suika lounging lazily on the roof of the shrine.

"Oh, Suika, you're here? Can you please not turn huge for a while?"

"What? You can't just tell me not to use my powers."

"Shut up. It'll be a pain for us both if someone mistakes you for something else."

"What are we even talking about here? I heard you talking but I wasn’t listening. Renko, explain."

"There's been rumors of a daidarabocchi living in the Forest of Magic, Little Miss Melon."

"A daidarabocchi? You're not talking about that kappa balloon, right?"

"Nope, there's rumors of a different giant youkai in the forest."

"Oh, I see. That could be kind of fun. It might be nice to have a daidarabocchi to fight with if it does end up manifesting."

"If one actually appears, I'm going to exterminate it and you. If you fight one, you might end up flattening the shrine again."

"If I did that, I'd just build you a new one. Besides, your place is earthquake-proof now. It'll probably be fine."

"I'm more worried about a drunk oni than any earthquake." As Reimu said that she whipped an ofuda at Suika, who launched herself off of the roof and twisted in the air, dodging it.

"Whoa there."

At that point a lively danmaku battle broke out, so the two of us were forced to make ourselves scarce. As we made our way down the stairs and back toward the path to the village though, I couldn't help but feel a twinge of pity for Reimu. It must be a terrible burden to be a youkai exterminator who, just by investigating a rumor, might cause a previously non-existent youkai to come into being.

—

As we chatted and walked along the main street back towards our office, I noticed a sizeable crowd of children gathered on the street. In the middle of their congregation was a familiar face with doll-like features framed by golden hair. It was Alice, putting on one of her puppet shows for the village children.

"Oh, what fortunate timing!" Renko said as she noticed Alice. "I was hoping to talk to her. Let's wait till she finishes, Merry.". I shrugged as I took my place beside her.

The thought that the daidarabocchi that Cirno saw might just have been Alice's Goliath Doll spell in action had occurred to me. Being as it was spotted in the Forest of Magic, it seemed plausible, and even some of the rumors we had heard from the children sounded like they might actually be describing a doll under Alice's control.

In due time the puppet show ended and the children cheered then dispersed. We approached Alice, who looked slightly surprised to see us.

"Hello again, Alice," Renko greeted her.

"Hello again you two. It's nice to see you again. Since you’re coming here from that direction, were you two just visiting the shrine?"

"Yes, that's right."

"Were you by any chance there to ask her about a giant youkai?"

Renko's eyes widened in surprise. "Now hold on here, Alice, I thought I was the detective."

She laughed softly. "The children were all talking about a giant rampaging somewhere in the forest when I arrived. I figured that would be the sort of thing Reimu would want to look into."

"Ah, I see."

"If Reimu's looking into it then I suppose there must be some degree of truth to it. I don't think I trust her to handle the matter in a timely fashion if there's already a youkai like that so close to my home though. I need to hurry up and perfect my Goliath Doll spell."

Alice said that with a serious expression on her face. Had it not occurred to her that her giant doll research might actually be the source of the daidarabocchi rumors?

"Umm, Alice. About that spell..."

"Yes?"

"By any chance did a little blue fairy pay you a visit during the time the kappa bazaar was running?"

"Oh, do you mean the ice fairy who lives on the lake?"

"Yes, that's Cirno. Did she by any chance happen to see your giant doll?"

"Yes, I had her help me with an experiment. Why?"

Renko and I both heaved a sigh at the same time.

"Nothing, that's probably fine."

"Good then. You two should be careful about venturing out of the village for the moment though. If there really is a giant youkai in the forest, it could probably crush humans without even meaning to."

"Uh, right. We'll try to be careful."

"Speaking of giant youkai though, did you two happen to visit the kappa bazaar?"

"I suppose you could say that."

"I went there too to have a look at that enormous doll they had there. Do you know what they did with it after the bazaar? I’d like to buy it, but I don’t know who has it now. I was hoping you might."

"Oh, that's Hisoutensoku. You should try asking at the Moriya Shrine about it. I think one of the goddesses there has it, and she probably hasn't disposed of it yet."

"Really? That's a big help, thank you."

"Alice, are you planning to add even a doll that big to your collection?"

"I collect all sorts of dolls. Thank you for the information, I'll see you later." With that, Alice turned and flew off before we could say another word to her.

There was little doubt in either of our minds that Alice's giant doll was likely the source of the children's rumors but as she sailed off into the sky, there was nothing either of us could do about it.


—17—


Afterwards, Renko insisted we hike over to Misty Lake to try and talk to Cirno. We managed to find her, but it was still a complete waste of time.

"That's right, I saw it! A whole daidarabocchi!"

Cirno readily told us that, but we couldn't get any more details out of her. Perhaps that's just the way a fairy's memory works.

"Alright, Cirno. It doesn't matter what it looked like really, but if you saw the daidarabocchi again, would you recognize it?"

"Of course, it'd be the one that looks like a daidarabocchi!"

At least if we could find a way to show Alice's Goliath Doll to Cirno, we should be able to determine if that was what she had seen or not. After that, we had quite enough of dealing with fairies for the day, and the two of us finally headed home.

—

"So what's next, Renko?" I asked her over dinner.

"Hmm, I wonder," she said casually, staring into space as she sipped at her bowl of miso soup. "I know it would cause more work for Reimu, but I kind of want to see a giant youkai like daidarabocchi really could be created from just a rumor."

"Renko, you're being irresponsible again."

"Hey at least we can definitely say if a daidarabocchi appears, then that won’t be my fault. I’ve got nothing to do with any of this.."

"Are you sure about that? Even if the daidarabocchi that Cirno saw was actually Alice's Goliath Doll, why would Cirno have been in the Forest of Magic in the first place?"

"Hmm? What are you getting at, Merry?"

"Even if Cirno recognizes Alice's doll as the daidarabocchi that she saw, she must have had a reason to go into the forest to begin with. I don't think Miss Alice would have told Cirno that her doll was a giant youkai, especially since she's been calling it 'Goliath Doll' this whole time."

"So you think that Cirno must have seen something completely different and followed that into the forest and then seen Alice's doll and assumed they were the same?"

"That's what I'm thinking. And if that's the case then what was the original daidarabocchi she saw to begin with?"

"...Hisoutensoku, right?"

"Which means that all of this started with you."

"Even if that's true, I never told anyone to make a giant youkai-shaped balloon. This would be the Moriya Shrine's incident if that's true. Or maybe the kappa's." Saying that Renko took a bite of her pickles and chewed loudly before stopping to tilt her head. "Though now that I think about it... Meiling also said she saw something around then. Something she was certain wasn't Hisoutensoku. What was it that she called it, Taisui Xingjun?"

I remembered that Meiling had said something like that. At the time I had disregarded that, thinking she must have just mistaken Hisoutensoku's shape in the fog...

"...So does that mean there really is a daidarabocchi in the Forest of Magic? Something that's not Hisoutensoku or the Goliath Doll?"

"I don't know. I wouldn't think so though. If there was something like that, someone would have noticed it by now."

"Maybe it was Mr. Unzan? He can get pretty big."

"Yeah, maybe..."

After that we stopped discussing such things and drifted off into idle chatter. I won't bore you with such trivialities, dear reader, especially given what happened next.

—

It happened later that night.

To be precise it happened just after Renko and I had both succumbed to sleepiness. In other words, it happened in the world of dreams.

I remember becoming suddenly aware that I was dreaming. Even for me, it was odd to have such a clearly lucid dream.

I was in a rather strange place. It was a broad, perfectly flat plain of pitch-black earth, divided up into a regular grid by lines of glowing red light. The plain appeared to extend infinitely in every direction. I found myself reminded of the featureless surface of Houkai, where Byakuren had been sealed.

"Hi, Merry. What are you doing here?"

I turned around to see Usami Renko standing nearby.

"Hi, Renko. Is that you, or are you just part of this dream?"

"Ah, I knew this must be a dream. Merry, are you touching my eyes in your sleep?"

"How should I know? I'm asleep."

"I wonder where we are? Could this be the Dream World you were talking about?" Renko looked around curiously, fiddling with the brim of her hat. "There's really nothing here. It looks like the world of 𝑇ℎ𝑒 500 𝑀𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑌𝑒𝑎𝑟 𝐵𝑢𝑡𝑡𝑜𝑛 or something."

"Don't say that, I don't want to be trapped here with you for 500 million years!"

"I, on the other hand, would be happy to spend 500 million years alone with you, Merry."

"At any rate, this is the first time I've ever seen a place like this in my dreams."

"Then maybe you've crossed over into another world in your dreams again, Merry. Since this seems to be a world in which our subjective experiences overlap, that makes it interesting from the point of view of a physicist. An environment like this could be the perfect testing ground from which to deduce the laws of perception as a physical force in Gensokyo. If this is a world where consensus reality is controlled by just the two of us then it really is proof of Shelldrake's theory of morphogenetic fields!"

As Renko was saying this, growing increasingly excited, I became aware of the sound of footsteps behind me and turned to face them.

"Wow, even while you're asleep you never shut up, do you?"

The girl who had said this was wearing an odd, two-colored dress in black and white paired with an almost comically long Santa Claus-like hat. Her eyes were half-lidded, looking somewhere between amused and sleepy, and though she was walking with her feet scuffing the ground beneath us, she seemed to be completely weightless, more propelling herself along and floating towards us than properly walking and resting her weight on her legs.

"Usami Renko, Maéreverie Hearn. Good evening to you both. Do either of you remember me?"

Looking at her, I felt the vaguest sense of familiarity. I had seen her before, probably, but somewhere I could only just barely remember.

"...I think I met you once in a dream..." I began, uncertainly.

"I don't remember you at all," Renko said without hesitation. "But might I hazard a guess and ask if you might be a baku?"

"Oh, ding ding, very good. I'm Doremy Sweet, a baku, and Administrator of the Dream World."


—18—


"Oh wow! A real, live baku. Have you come to eat our dreams?"

"Nope. I came here to thank you, and to correct you and to warn you. I don't usually do things like this, but seeing as I need to talk to both of you, it's easier to just connect both of your dreams together and meet you here rather than to try and arrange things in the normal way."

"Thank us, correct us and warn us? About what?" Renko asked, echoing the questions in my own mind. I couldn't imagine what a baku might be thanking us for.

"Well I'll thank you first, though you both probably have no idea what I'm talking about. You've saved Gensokyo from a real crisis, though you probably didn't even know you were doing so."

"Eh? A crisis? Us?"

"You hadn't realized? Too bad, detective. I'll move on to the correction. You two were thinking that the phenomenon you noticed of numerous people having the same dream in different beds was some sort of warning sent by me. It was not. I had nothing to do with that."

"Ah, I see."

"However, you were right about most everything else. Which brings me to the warning."

"Warn us? About what?"

"I can't tell you. If I were to, the act of me doing so would make it worse. It'll have to be something you figure out outside of a dream, but I trust your brains. Please use the hints I give you to reveal the nature of the crisis that is about to befall Gensokyo and stop it before it happens."

"It almost sounds like you're trying to hire us, Miss Sweet."

"I suppose you can look at it that way if you want, detective."

"Well then, in that case, let's hear your story," Renko's eyes were sparkling with excitement.

"As I said, I can't give you all of the details, but I'll tell you this much. You were speculating about multiple people sharing the same dream earlier and what it could mean. Well you were on the right track except for one thing. The bit you missed is that I wasn't involved. I couldn't have been. I was busy cleaning up the incident you already averted."

"Ah, I see. The situation must in some way be inconvenient or undesirable for the Administrator of the Dream World, yes?"

"You could say that. You guys have just averted a real crisis for me and all of Gensokyo, but another one is already brewing. Right now, if things are left as they are, then the crisis you've prevented will return, and things will be worse than they otherwise would have been."

"Should I take that to mean that there is a mastermind out there for us to find?"

"Hmmm, no comment from me on that one." Doremy said, closing her eyes. "In fact, I can't say anything else. I've given you what I can. If you think about the sort of place Gensokyo is and use your brain you should be able to figure it out. I hope that you do, it's a real nuisance for me to have to interfere in the affairs of your world."

"Ah I see. I take it from the fact that you're engaging us that this isn't the sort of crisis that could be left to the Hakurei shrine maiden?"

"I'd prefer to leave it to you. I'm sure the Hakurei shrine maiden could resolve this but there would be a lot of collateral damage in that case."

"Well what if we brought the Hakurei shrine maiden here to the Dream World?"

"I’d prefer to avoid that. For me to interfere in the waking world, or even let you dream while you’re aware that that's what you're doing, has a negative impact on reality. My role is to protect dreamers, so I'm stretching the boundaries of that a little by helping you out while you're having a lucid dream, but that's as far as I can go."

"I see, I suppose that's how it has to be then. Is there anything else you can tell me?"

"Sure. Sweet dreams, detective."

And just like that the dream ended.

—

I awoke in our familiar bedroom, to the pleasant sensation of warm sunlight on my face. I sat up and stretched as on the futon beside me Renko's arms drifted sluggishly to rub at her eyes.

"Good morning, Renko," I said, seeing her stir.

"Mmm. Good morning, Merry. I had a really strange dream. You were in it."

"Oh? You were in my dream too. Along with Doremy the baku."

"Wait, what?" She asked, suddenly alert and rising to sit up. "Did we really just have the same dream?"

"I don't know why you're so surprised Renko, that's exactly what Doremy told us was happening."

"Yeah, but I'm not like you, Merry, I'm a materialist. Quick, tell me what your dream was like, I have to see if they were really the same."

I proceeded to relate every detail I could remember. The unavoidable conclusion we reached once I had was that we had both shared the exact same dream.

"This is weird, Merry. Two subjective worlds overlapping into an alternate objective reality while we're asleep. I feel like I just discovered something central to the existence of Gensokyo."

"Well that's all well and good Renko, but what about the crisis Doremy mentioned? Shouldn't we do something about that?"

"About what, you mean that riddle she was going on about?"

"Yes, she said a crisis was approaching Gensokyo..." Honestly I had been a bit skeptical about her whole speech. What crisis could we possibly have averted without realizing it? My partner, however, was smiling from ear to ear.

"Oh that? I already figured that out while I was dreaming."

"What?"

"This is our official duty as the Hifuu Detective Agency, Merry. If all of the things that have happened so far this summer have been driven by the logic of Gensokyo then obviously you and I will need to use that same logic to fight back to prevent the coming incident before it starts."

As Renko was saying this she had already gotten out of bed and was hurriedly digging through her pile of clothes. She began putting on her usual attire; a white blouse, black skirt, red tie and—even though it was midsummer, a trenchcoat and her worn black hat. She ran her fingers once along the brim of the hat and smiled, extending a hand down to me.

"Come on, Merry, get up! We've got an incident to resolve!"


—


[𝐀 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐓𝐨 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫]

Well once again it's time for the challenge section of these books. As for questions, this casefile may be the fairest one yet as the questions I will ask of you are essentially the same ones that Doremy asked of Renko. In other words, dear reader, the question to answer is what sort of delusion did my partner, the great Usami Renko come up with. More specifically:

• First, you must determine the nature of the crisis that was approaching Gensokyo.
• Second, you, like Renko, must determine how it can be averted.

These two tasks are all I will ask of you, dear reader.

The incident that Renko worked to resolve is not one recorded in Gensokyo's history because the Hakurei shrine maiden never became aware of it.

Which means, Renko can't really be thought of as an incident resolver as there was never actually an incident to resolve.

That said, this incident still marks the Hifuu Detective Agency’s first attempt at actually resolving an incident ourselves. For that reason alone, I felt the events of this summer were worthy of being recorded as a casefile.

But I have already done my part. Now it's time for you to do yours. What was the so-called 'incident' that my partner, the great detective Usami Renko discovered, and how did she resolve it?