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

—16—


"I apologize for entering without permission. We found the door open."

"Just because a door is open doesn't mean you can barge into someone else's house."

"It's fine ♪ It's been a long time since there were any humans in this house♪" said the girl with the trumpet.

Renko doffed her hat and introduced herself, exchanging polite and formal pleasantries with both sisters as the phantoms drifted lazily in the air. The girl with the violin seemed annoyed at our presence, but the one with the trumpet was quite welcoming, with a cheerful smile always at the ready. There was no sign of the keyboardist at any point during their discussion. I wondered if she had gone out hunting sounds again. I willed myself not to worry about such things right now and turned my attention back to the ongoing conversation.

"Welcome to our manor, home base of the Prismriver Ensemble. I'm Merlin, and this is Lunasa," the girl with the trumpet said. "You two were both at Hakugyokurou and the parties at the Hakurei shrine, right?"

"You remember me?" Renko asked excitedly. "I've always been a big fan of your performances."

"Who wouldn't remember a pair of live, flesh-and-blood humans hanging around in the Netherworld? You kind of stood out."
"Oh, you're friends of the lady of Hakugyokurou? I thought you looked sort of familiar." said Lunasa.

"I'm Usami Renko, this is my partner, Merry." Renko said as she held out her right hand, which Merlin took in greeting.

"Always happy to meet a fan. What can we do for you today? If you're looking to book a live performance, I'm afraid our schedule is pretty full right now."

Renko shook her head and waved her hand dismissively. "No," she said, "It's not that." Looking up she pointed a finger at the phantoms drifting around the entryway. They were no longer coming into the house, but mainly seemed to be staying in the general area of the stairway, near to where they must have last heard or felt the music of Merlin's trumpet. There were still enough of them around to make the room noticeably colder. "I just happened to notice a bunch of phantoms gathering here in this seemingly abandoned house and got curious as to what they were doing."

My partner happens to be a very skillful liar: believable, spontaneous and utterly shameless. Lunasa looked over at Renko suspiciously. "First we find you in the Netherworld, now you're following phantoms around. Are you sure you're a live human?"

"Yep, plain old human, live as can be. Why are you guys collecting up phantoms though, I wonder?"

Renko made the accusation into a question, delivered just as amiably as one might ask about the weather or some other triviality. In response, Merlin and Lunasa looked at each other, sharing a confused expression before turning back to Renko.

"We're not collecting them, they just gather up on their own."

"Phantoms always flock to our music because they're the embodiment of particular temperaments. You saw that at Hakugyokuro, didn't you?"

"Ah, that's right," Renko said, adding in a fake chuckle. "I’ve heard that cheerful sounds attract cheerful phantoms and melancholy sounds pull in the gloomy ones, if I recall, yes?"

"Yes, exactly," Merlin said. "My sound is manic, so it calls to cheerful spirits. Lunasa's sound is depressing, so it calls to gloomy ones and… makes everything cold, was it?."

"They don’t make things cold, they just lower the pressure a little. More importantly though, neither of our sounds are something living humans should be listening to without Lyrica around. It can be dangerous for humans to hear either of us alone."

It was the same story we had heard from Lyrica yesterday. Her music acted as a sort of filter for the dangerous extremes of her sisters' sounds, conducting their playing in a way that made it safe for humans to listen to.

"Ah yes. Speaking of your sister, where is she?" Renko asked.

"Lyrica? She's downstairs, isn't she?" Lunasa asked.

Merlin clapped her hands together. "Since we're all here together with guests though, why don't we move into the living room and have some tea?"

Lunasa shrugged her shoulders. "Sure, why not."

—

Thus, we ended up having a rather odd tea party in a parlor surrounded by phantoms, in an abandoned mansion haunted by three poltergeists. Lyrica, who I had initially thought wasn't home, had appeared after being called by Lunasa.

"Oh, it’s you two again! What brings you here?" She asked upon walking into the room.

"Hello again, Miss Lyrica. Have you finished collecting new sounds?" Renko asked amiably.

"Oh Lyrica, you know these humans?"

"I just happened to bump into them yesterday is all. You saw that though, didn't you? You were following me after all."

"We were really far away, we didn't notice anything like that," Merlin said nonchalantly as she brought in tea and cake. The table, chairs, plates and silverware all seemed to be clean and in good condition. I wondered if the decaying state of the house was merely an aesthetic choice.

"It seems just like the lady of Hakugyokurou, poltergeists still enjoy meals," Renko commented.

Lunasa narrowed her eyes. "Of course," she said. "Why wouldn't we? We're different from the lady of Hakugyoukurou but we still eat. Humans really don't know anything about the differences between different types of spirits, do they?"

Lyrica frowned and added "Yeah, she said something like that yesterday too."

"Well I supposed it can’t be helped, they don’t know any better," Merlin said, waving dismissively.

"My apologies," Renko replied smoothly. "It's not my intent to offend. Merry and I are Outsiders, you see, and woefully uninformed on some of the things people take for granted here in Gensokyo. Would you be willing to explain the differences to me?"

Lyrica and Merlin both turned to Lunasa expectantly, who glanced at them each in turn, then sighed, turning back to Renko. "Alright, alright. This is all very basic, but the first thing to be aware of is that ghosts and phantoms are both just embodiments of human temperament. Temperament is a part of the soul that determines a living creature's reaction to things, like the way some people see a glass as half-full and others as half-empty, or how some people like melon while others hate it. That's the effect of a being's temperament and phantoms are the embodiment of that."

"So phantoms aren’t souls then?" Renko asked. "I had thought ghosts and phantoms were just souls without bodies."

"Well, you’re not exactly wrong, but souls and phantoms aren’t exactly the same thing either. It’s possible that when a person dies multiple phantoms might be born from a single body."

"Oh? How does that work?" Renko asked, leaning in with interest.

"The soul is the foundation of any living creature. It not only includes multiple different temperaments all bundled together, but also everything else that makes up a person. Memories, sins, consciousness, stuff like that."

Lunasa's already narrowed eyes seemed to grow even more suspicious. "You, for example, seem to be a very curious person. If you were to die, the majority of your soul would probably stay with that curiosity, making for an extremely curious ghost. Other aspects of your personality might give rise to other phantoms though. Someone who seemed bossy to others but was really timid at heart would give rise to a cowardly ghost and maybe a phantom that was domineering. The soul would stay with the part that was their true nature though."

"That's a pretty frightening story for a human to hear."

"Well most ghosts are indistinguishable from each other to humans so they don't usually bother mortals no matter what their nature is."

I glanced sideways at Renko. Morbid as the thought was, I couldn't help but wonder what part of her essence might be the most central to her being. If she were a ghost would she actually be a purely curious one? Or merely a purely reckless one? Or perhaps a purely megalomaniacal one? All options sounded like a headache. I'd have to make a point of not getting haunted. For that matter, what sort of ghost would I become if the tables were turned, I wondered?

"The part of a being that contains their soul is what crosses the Sanzu river to be judged by the Yama. Any leftover phantoms that broke off just fade away eventually," Lunasa continued.

"So does that mean when humans get reincarnated they keep their most essential traits?"

"I’m not sure about that. They might, they might not. In any case, there are all kinds of phantoms. Beasts and birds and fish all give rise to phantoms too, and they all have their own natures and temperaments that could split off. Some things even come into existence only as phantoms, momentary partial souls that exist briefly then fade away."

Could something really be born as a ghost? Isn’t that the opposite of being born?

"You're talking about the souls of places, right? The atmosphere of a room, for example."

"Yeah, something like that, maybe."

Ah, that made more sense. A room might develop something like a temperament if everyone in it was being very serious or very boisterous. Any gathering or even just empty places can develop an atmosphere that makes a place have a certain feel to it which is immediately apparent upon entering it.


“In any case, that’s what phantoms are. The lady of Hakugyokuro is like that too. She’s a phantom that contains a soul and is held together by some unfulfilled desire powerful enough to let her assume a human form as a ghost. That's also why ghosts are almost always human. Few other creatures can have desires or regrets strong enough to tie them to this existence."

"In other words, humans are the only creatures self-centered enough to deny their own mortality?" Lyrica asked with a wry smile.

"You mean like us?" Merlin chuckled in response.

"So that's ghosts and phantoms then. Where does that leave poltergeists like yourself and your sisters," Renko asked, cutting to the chase. Lunasa sighed again, resting one cheekbone on her hand as she began her explanation. As she did, Merlin cut the cake and handed out slices to everyone.

"My sisters and I are neither the souls of the dead nor portions of souls, and we’re certainly not the temperament of a location. We're creations born from a girl’s wish. We exist in the way she imagined us to be. Poltergeists is just what she called us."

"And what girl would that be?"

"Someone who is gone now. Oh, your tea is getting cold."

With that, Lunasa took a bite of her piece of cake, as if to signal the end of the story. Renko took a sip of her tea and looked over at me.

"Well that was a downer," Lyrica said, shifting in her seat.

"Anything I say always ends up coming out sounding depressing." Lunasa sighed.

"Ah well. Would you like another cup of tea?" Merlin asked brightly. Her voice was the vocal equivalent of her trumpet, lightening the mood as she spoke. It seemed every word to fall from these girls' mouths was another part of the sounds they made, each with the same emotional effect.


—17—


After getting the answers my partner wanted, we enjoyed a peaceful, friendly chat. At all times Merlin was the one to get a conversation going, followed by Lyrica, who would add a comment or two. Every once in a while Lunasa would also chime in with a word or two here or there. All in all it was just as Renko had said: an intimate version of the same sort of performance one might experience at a Prismriver Ensemble concert, performed live, for whatever value of 'live' applied to a trio of poltergeists. After my partner had sated her endless curiosity for the time being, the topic of conversation turned to the two of us.

"A detective agency?" Merlin asked.

"Yes, our purpose is to investigate and uncover the secrets of this world. Right now my partner and I are working to discover the nature of this current flower-related incident."

"Visiting the Netherworld and getting involved in the shrine maiden's business... You sure keep busy" Lyrica noted.

"But those are awfully reckless things for a human to be doing, don’t you think?" Lunasa asked.

"Well, I thank you all for your concern. I'll try to keep your advice in mind. While we're on the topic though, do any of you have any idea what's causing this flower phenomenon?"

The three of them looked at each other in surprise at the question.

"Why would it matter?" Lyrica asked. "It doesn’t really affect us much one way or the other."

"Maybe sometimes phantoms and flowers just forget about seasons and boundaries and have some fun," Merlin suggested.

Lyrica had pondered the question for a moment before responding, but Merlin’s reply had been nearly instantaneous. Lunasa spent the most time in consideration, only speaking after the other two had with her chin resting on an upturned hand.

"If you really wanted to know, you could just go to Muenzuka. There's someone there who likes to preach and lecture a lot, but if you don't mind having your ear talked off, I'm sure she could explain it."

"Muenzuka?" Renko asked.

"It's just past the Forest of Magic, alongside the Road of Reconsideration."

I had never heard of such a place before. I guess I shouldn't be surprised though, since getting through the Forest of Magic wasn't something most flesh and blood humans could do.

"Oh, Lunasa, do you mean that pompous lady from yesterday?" Lyrica asked. Lunasa nodded. It seems the three of them must all have met the same person yesterday.

"Oh, you should go!" Merlin said. "You can see flowers there that can't be found anywhere else. Some of the flowers are a little spooky though."

"And flower-viewing while receiving a lecture is no fun," Lyrica added.

"We can’t guarantee she’ll still be there though," Lunasa concluded.

"Who exactly is this talkative person with so much to say?" Renko asked.

Lunasa narrowed her eyes again and gave Renko a faint, mischievous smile. "It's the Yama," she said simply.

—

Shortly thereafter the tea party concluded with the Prismriver sisters departing to prepare for an evening performance at The Garden of the Sun.

"Come and see us perform some time, I'll be sure to get you movin'!" Merlin said as we left.

"Thank you for the invitation, but I think our first order of business will have to be finding a way to go to Muenzuka as you suggested."

"We'll be playing in the garden every night until the end of the month, so be sure to come check us out!" Merlin called as the three of them soared over our heads.

We waved as we watched them depart into the brilliant afternoon sky, then I turned to my partner.

"Were you serious about heading to Muenzuka, Renko?"

"We've pretty much got to, Merry. An incident involving an abundance of misplaced souls and the person who's supposed to be in charge of judging them suddenly shows up? There's no way those two things aren't related. Maybe she's got some sort of problem and all the souls we're seeing here are overflowing from one of the afterlives rather than from the Outside World or something. If that's the case, then we don't need to worry about the fact that we don't know of any suitably calamitous event in 2005 to explain it."

"Somehow, if the hells overflowed every sixty years I suspect it would be a bigger deal. We have a more immediate concern though," I said, looking out across the lake to the border of the Forest of Magic that stretched from the foot of Youkai mountain to as far to the west of Gensokyo as we had ever seen. "How do you intend for us to get somewhere that's on the opposite side of the Forest of Magic?"

We had been deep into that forest only once before, to visit Alice's house, and at that time we had had to wear filter masks she had loaned us in order to keep from breathing in the hallucinogenic spores that covered much of the forest in a drifting miasma. It wasn't the sort of place one could just walk into unprepared, despite the fact that a few people we knew made their home within it.

"You see, Merry, this is where having a good support network becomes critical to a detective. Every good sleuth knows when it's time to lean on their connections."

"By 'connections' I assume you mean Alice?"

"Oh, she'd be good too if we can find her but there's no predicting when she'll come into the village to put on a show. I was thinking of the other resident of the Forest of Magic we know."

"Marisa? You want to cram the three of us onto her broom again?" I thought back to the last time we had ridden on Marisa's broom. That had been almost two years ago now. Time flies.

"Even if you wanted to take your life in your hands riding with her, she lives in the Forest of Magic herself. It's not like we can walk to her house any more than we could with Alice."

"Ah, but unlike Alice, Marisa regularly leaves her house. All we have to do is be waiting for her somewhere she's likely to go." Renko gave me a sly wink.

"And where would that be, the Hakurei shrine?"

"Well, that has potential, but it's in completely the opposite direction from where we’re heading. That’s a big detour. We need somewhere she's known to frequent and which is as close to the forest as we can manage.

I thought for a moment. "You mean Kourindou then?"

"Precisely, Merry. Our next step on the road to see the Yama is Kourindou!"


—18—


I suppose I should be grateful that we set off today in such good spirits. If not for that, I'd probably be feeling even worse after having walked from the village, halfway to the Scarlet Devil Mansion and then back again only to immediately leave from the west gate and walk all the way to the edge of the Forest of Magic. If you considered our path, it would almost form a right triangle, where the distance we had traveled along the perpendicular sides was greater than the distance one would have had to walk if they had set out for Korindo directly from the Prismrivers' house. There was no road going that way though and forging a path through the trackless wilderness, even in the middle of the day was a move foolish enough that even Renko hadn't suggested it. Gensokyo was a small place, but it was a long way to hike.

"I’m starting to envy humans like Reimu who could simply fly wherever they needed to go."

"You're getting tired already, Merry? This is what you get for being such a hikikomori," Renko called from somewhere ahead as I trudged onward.

"I'm coming, I'm coming." I said, hustling up to her side. Maybe I really am a hikikomori at heart, but walking for hours under the sun was not my idea of fun. I think I've become more fit than when I was back in university since coming to Gensokyo, but this much walking was still quite tiring. "Renko, it's starting to get close to evening. If you plan on trying to get to Muenzuka today then we're going to end up being late getting back to the village again and Miss Keine will get mad at us."

"That's why we need to find Marisa quickly. Pick up the pace, Merry."

I sighed as Renko came back down the path and took my hand. I let her pull me along, trying not to think about the muscle pain I'd surely be facing tomorrow.

And so, we marched on. From the Prismrivers' house back to the village along the north road, out the western gate, along the path that eventually led to the store that stood outside the walls of the village at the edge of the Forest of Magic, just alongside a road that disappeared into the foreboding gloom. We had arrived at Kourindou.

The grounds around the shop were littered with whatever treasures the owner had dragged home but not managed to find a place for inside, making for a junkheap of tanuki statues, steel road signs, old tires, broken bicycles and other assorted rubbish gathered in drifts around the door. The piled detritus gave the place a look that was closer to the administrative office of a landfill. Just looking at what had been allowed to gather up outside, one got the strong impression that the owner of this store was more concerned with collecting whatever items from the Outside World he could, with little, if any, thought given to being selective.

As we approached the shop, we saw an unfamiliar figure sitting on a bus stop bench that had been placed just outside the door. It too must have been an import from the Outside World, but in a place where no bus would ever come and with the pole listing the routes and schedule leaning against a tree several paces away, it looked somehow lonely. The girl sitting on the bench was clearly a youkai of some sort, with a trio of birdlike wings with striking black and red feathers. Two of the wings sprouted from her back as might be expected, but one stood asymmetrically on the side of her head, giving her an unbalanced look. She was sitting and calmly reading a thick hardcover book, oblivious to her surroundings. Seeing her reading with calm focus, I somehow felt a kinship with her.

As we approached, she heard us coming and looked up. Seeing us, she narrowed her eyes suspiciously and clutched her book to her chest. It was another rare occasion where a youkai seemed, oddly enough, to be afraid of me.

"Hello, shopping at Kourindou today? What's that you're reading?" Renko asked, doffing her hat and smiling amiably as we drew up.

The youkai girl shied away from us, edging toward the far side of the bench and clutching onto the book as if her life depended on it. Could any book found here really be that valuable?

"Hey, easy there, I'm not going to take your book."

The girl looked like she was about to respond, but her eyes suddenly went wide as she spotted something in the sky behind us. Following her gaze, I turned around to see the familiar shape of a witch on a broom zooming toward us, wearing an oversized pointed hat. Immediately the girl on the bench scrambled to her feet and bolted like a hare, flapping her wings as she lifted off of the ground and disappeared into the forest.

"Ah, where are you going..." Renko called, reaching an arm after her. It fell limply to her side as the girl vanished into the shadows beneath the trees.

The next moment Marisa Kirisame, the very witch we had come here to see, circled overhead, turning her broom in a tight orbit before dismounting in midair and dropping down to land right in front of us.

"Hey, you two. You both stickin' your noses into an incident again?" Her grin was a twin to Renko's, though with a slightly manic edge.

"Marisa! Just who we were looking for! We've been looking for you," Renko replied.

"Oh? Not often a detective comes after me. Did Patchouli finally put a bounty on my head?"

"Have you really stolen enough books to warrant a bounty?"

"I haven't stolen nothin'. I'm just borrowin' 'em for a while. My lifetime's a fraction of hers, so she can afford to be a bit less stingy. 'Sides, if anyone were going to end up with a bounty placed on 'em, I think it'd be you two."

"Us? We're just two human girls from the village, harmless as can be. What would someone want with people like us?"

"You've done enough to get Reimu suspicious just by showin' up in the middle of every incident. Just a friendly word of warning, you really don't want to be on her bad side."

Come to think of it, at the end of the Eternal Night Incident, Reimu had come by our house to say much the same thing herself. Even if we did often find ourselves in the company of the masterminds behind incidents, it was merely a series of coincidences that had led us there. I could see how that wouldn't seem like much of an excuse though.

"Well that'll happen, I suppose," Renko said, with a bravado that bordered on foolishness. "After all, I'm a great detective whose job it is to solve supernatural mysteries."

"If there were an incident that you could solve on your own, I don't think it would really count as an incident. What you do is stir up more trouble after the fact. So what did you two want with me anyway?"

"Ah yes. We want to go to Muenzuka. Do you think you could give us a lift on your broom?"

Marisa's eyebrows raised in surprise as she cast a glance northwest over the forest. "Muenzuka? Really? I was just thinkin' of goin' there myself. What d'you two want with it though? It's a dangerous place, 'specially for you. When Outsiders wander into Gensokyo, that's usually where they appear. There's a lot of youkai who hang around nearby, hopin' for a chance to gobble up a human who doesn't count as a villager."

In other words, it was a place where Outsiders like us were a regular part of the local menu. I wouldn't have thought so at the time, but we were lucky to have emerged in the library of the Scarlet Devil Mansion when we arrived in this world.

"Well, I think it'd be obvious what we want with it," Renko said as she pressed her hat back onto her head and fiddled with the brim. "We're investigating an incident, same as you, right?"

"Not the same as me. You can't fly and you can't fight. All you've got goin' for you is curiosity and guts, but that won't get you very far without power to back it up."

"Marisa, I'm surprised at you. Don't you know that curiosity and brains are the two greatest weapons in mankind's arsenal?"

"I know there's a sayin' about curiosity, but I don't think that's how it goes. Somethin' about dead cats, if I recall."

"Well we're not cats, so no problem then. If anything, Reimu's the catty one."

"Hmm, catty I'll grant you, but she's not very curious so she's fine too. Wait, what were we talkin' about again?" Marisa twisted her head in consideration. "Ah whatever, it's fine. There's flowers everywhere and I'm in a good mood so I don't mind, but three is too many for this broom. Farthest I could take you would be the Road of Reconsideration, then you two'll be on your own."

"The Road of Reconsideration, where exactly is that?"

"It's the road that goes from the Forest of Magic to Muenzuka. You'll know it when you see it. Come on, hop on up if you're comin'" She twirled the broom with a flourish before setting it parallel to the ground where it hovered in place before us.

Renko snapped her fingers victoriously and grinned wider than ever. "You bet!"

And so once again, for the first time in a long time, the three of us crammed ourselves onto Marisa's broom. It was nice to not be thrown into the air without time to properly find my seat this time, but that didn't make hurtling through the sky, clinging onto your support with only the grip of your thighs on unpolished wood any more comfortable. As before we rose into the air with only the faintest sense of momentum and a seeming absence of the pull of gravity. Once Marisa set the broom in motion, floating felt like the natural thing it should do, rather than a contradiction of all the laws of physics we knew. I wondered if Renko and I were to abandon our belief in Newton's laws and somehow completely cast aside all knowledge of the rules of gravity as we understood them if we would be able to fly in the sky too?

"So do you two know anythin' about this incident then?" Marisa asked as the dense canopy of the forest raced by beneath us.

Renko was sitting behind Marisa, with one hand wrapped around the magician's waist and the other clamping her hat in place. "Well, I have my theories," she shouted over the rushing wind. "But I can't be certain yet. How about you, Marisa, what do you think?"

"Hey don't answer a question with a question," she chided. "I asked first."

"Sorry, but unveiling the truth before you've even seen who's pulling the strings would be a spoiler."

"I dunno what a 'spoiler' is, but you've got a weird way of lookin' at things. Alright though. I thought this was a flower incident at first, but now I think it's a phantom incident. I went to the Netherworld already and everything looked normal there, so I think it's gotta be a problem somewhere else. Spirits leakin' outta Higan, or somethin.'"

"I see."

"What about you now?"

"My thoughts are mostly the same. It's just..."

"Just what? Don't hold out now."

"I can't say yet. There's some details that I have doubts about. I'm hoping they'll be cleared up once we get to Muenzuka."

"Like what?"

"I can't say yet."

"Quit bein’ so pompous all the time."

"It is a great detective's right —nay, their duty to be pompous, right Merry?"

"Don’t put words in my mouth, Renko. What about Miss Reimu? Has she gotten involved?" I asked.

"She's been huntin' around. I don't think she knows any more than I do though, just beatin' up every youkai she comes across."

If that were the case then it would mean Akyuu hadn't shared her knowledge of this incident with Reimu, just as she hadn't with Keine. I wondered what her motivation could be there. Even if this incident presented no threat, wouldn't it have been beneficial to warn the villagers that it was coming ahead of time? If it really happened every sixty years, wouldn't someone have remembered stories from their grandparents about the last occurrence? Sixty years was a long time for an individual to remember something, but not for the oral history of a village to do so.

"Hey, there it is," Marisa called out, pointing downward. "The Road of Reconsideration."

I looked down and gasped in surprise. Beneath me the world had turned bright red. Beyond the far edge of the forest the ground was covered in a sea of undulating, out-of-season blooms —thousands upon thousands of scarlet spider lilies, as red as a sea of blood, waving softly as the breeze sent ripples cascading along it.

"Oh wow, it looks like the edge of the Tokyo Metropolitan Expressway around the autumn equinox," Renko breathed.

I remembered clearly the time that Renko had taken me to the top of Tokyo Skytree to look out over the city. Seeing the bloody tint of the old path of the Tokaido highway winding its way into the elegant ruins of that magical old city. That day Tokyo had seemed just as supernatural and mysterious as any of the worlds in my dreams.

This scene was different though. In addition to the unending waves of blood-tinted flowers, there were countless phantoms here, more than we had seen anywhere else in Gensokyo, flitting translucently between the plants, appearing and vanishing randomly. In the far distance I could see the glimmer of light off of the surface of a broad stretch of water that must have been the Sanzu river. Looking down at the sight below us though, it would have been impossible to guess which shore we were on.