東方プロジェクト二次小説・オリジナル小説サイト
Chapter 7: Immaterial and Missing Power

—19—


The next day, the ninth party at the Hakurei Shrine was held.

The same crowd as usual was in attendance, with everyone now seeming worn out, tired and irritable. I am not accustomed to drinking by nature, and had taken to severely watering down my drinks at this point. Renko, of course, had reverted back to her natural behavior of gulping down rounds with abandon.

One thing, however, was different from any previous party.

"What's her problem anyway?" Reimu was sitting on the edge of the veranda, grumbling to herself with a bottle in hand. She looked miserable.

"Oh? What's up Reimu? You seem even grumpier than normal," Marisa said, grinning as she took a seat next to the shrine maiden. "Did some youkai ambush you or something?"

"Ambushes don't bother me." Reimu grumbled. "If I get ambushed, I just turn around and beat them up head-on."

"Then could it be... that you finally noticed that weirdo who's been hangin' around the edges of the party? I think she's been gettin' stronger as time goes on. Don't tell me you got beat up too?"

"What?" Reimu turned to Marisa with an expression of shock on her face. "You know about her?"

"Yeah, I found her near the end of the party before last. She whipped my butt good though. How'd you do?"

Reimu narrowed her eyes and glared silently into the fog for a moment before answering. "...she totally flattened me. What the hell is she?"

Marisa laughed, leaning back on the stoop and kicking her legs. "Hah! So even Reimu loses to an incident's mastermind sometimes!"

"Does this even count as an incident?"

Marisa shrugged and looked over at us. "Who knows. If the shrine maiden whose job it is to end incidents can't end it, does it still count?"

"You're asking me?" Renko shrugged. "It's a chicken and egg problem, that's semantics, not detective work."

"That sounds complicated either way. I take it you already knew about her then?" Reimu glanced around the gathered faces.

"You mean little Miss Melon, right?" Renko grinned. "I'm pretty sure we were the first one to find her. We didn't fight her though, of course."

"That's probably why Alice stopped comin'," Marisa opined. "She figured out somethin' was up. What about the rest of you?"

Sakuya was bringing a fresh plate of appetizers from the kitchen. "All of us from the Scarlet Devil Mansion have met her at least," she said, smiling elegantly.

"So then you all lost too? Patchouli, Remilia?" Reimu was looking more irritated by the second.

"Unfortunately." Patchouli grumbled, without looking up from her book. Remilia said nothing, but sniffed imperiously and turned away from the conversation, a faint blush of color showing on the pallor of her cheeks.

"That 'Myon' girl has been acting all twitchy too. Well if everyone knows about her, this hidin' is pointless. Let's call her out," Marisa said. She cupped her hands around her mouth and hollered. "Fortune out! Oni in!"

The next moment, a change took place in the mist surrounding the shrine. The clouds of haze, which had been drifting lazily to and fro, began to billow and shift, circling rapidly about, with much of them suddenly rushing toward a single point and coalescing into the form of a small figure. With no further warning Suika appeared, right in the middle of the party.

Reeling drunkenly from side to side, with her small face dyed red by alcohol, she thrust the stoppered gourd she was holding into the air. "Woooh! Everyone having a good time?"

Her joyous whoop was met with stony silence as everyone present immediately tensed up. Remilia was the first to react, standing up and smiling ferociously. Sakuya instantly appeared at her side, expressionless, a trio of knives protruding from between the fingers of her right hand. Patchouli also joined them, clutching at her box full of roasted beans. Youmu rose to one knee, her hand gripping the hilt of her sword. Only Yuyuko and Reimu seemed undisturbed. Reimu continued to sip from her sake dish and Yuyuko had flitted over to the plate Sakuya had put down and was helping herself to more appetizers with a broad smile on her face.

Exhaling a cloud of alcohol vapor, Suika leaned forward, unsteadily. "Oooh, that's a pretty nasty reception. Any of you wanna go?" she grinned, reeling.

"Hold on, hold on." Marisa said, rising to her feet and stepping between Suika and the rest of the group. "This is still a party. Playing danmaku here would be rude." Remilia and Youmu took their seats again, but all eyes remained glaringly on Suika. "So, everyone's already met. Good, then let's have a toast. It's Gensokyo's way to solve disputes with danmaku and let go of grudges with parties. Let's all enjoy ourselves and forget the past." The atmosphere hardly seemed party-like, with everyone so tensely watching the newcomer, but no one raised an objection. "Alright... Now then what was your name again?"

"It's Ibuki Suika, the oni." Suika said, looking a little confused.

"Alright! To Suika then! The last oni!" She raised her cup. Everyone else followed suit. As the listless cries of "Cheers!" echoed over the shrine grounds, I remember the expression Suika wore. She had raised her gourd and cheered exuberantly, but as soon as the word had left her lips, a look of sadness and confusion had washed over her face, or so I thought.

Looking back, I think it was Marisa's words that truly marked the ending of the incident. From that point onward, there were only a few more parties and they were held less frequently. Eventually, the sudden, purposeless parties ceased altogether, as if Suika's goals had already been achieved. For the remaining parties, Suika attended normally, not as a mist, but in person. These parties proceeded as normal, which is to say noisily and drunkenly, but without danmaku matches or the air of tension and hostility that had pervaded the prior gatherings.

Suika was a rambunctious guest, and liked to rile others up, but other than encouraging people to drink and perform foolish drunken dares, there was nothing noteworthy about her presence. So instead of detailing that, I will tell you about the conversation Renko had with her at the end of this party.

—

As the evening drew to a close, the party began to break up naturally. Sakuya and Youmu were collecting empty dishes. Patchouli was attempting to rouse Remilia, who had fallen asleep on her lap after challenging Suika to a drinking contest. Reimu was reclining on the veranda, rubbing her eyes sleepily beside Marisa who was laid out spread eagle beside her, snoring loudly with her hat on her face. Such was the lonely, sleepy atmosphere at the feast's close.

Renko had walked over to approach Suika, who was sitting alone near the edge of the shrine grounds, quietly sipping sake and observing the scene. I had followed dutifully in my role as assistant to the agency's chief inspector, suspecting that this conversation would be worth recording.

"Oh, it's you two. Come drink with me, you hardly look smashed at all, and I could stand to have a little more. That vampire's a lightweight."

Renko grinned as she approached. "That's a tempting proposition," she smiled and sat cross-legged on the grass, looking up at the little oni girl. "Since we're drinking though, I thought I might tell you a story."

"A story? What kind?" Suika fished a bottle of human-strength sake out from a pile and poured the last dregs from it into Renko's cup.

Renko downed the sake in one gulp then turned to Suika. "It's about why you caused all these parties."

Suika's eyes went wide, followed by her mouth as she tilted her head back to laugh. "Why would YOU be telling ME why I caused the parties? Besides, I told you already, I started them because I wanted to have a party. Oni aren't complicated."

"Yes, that's what you said, but that's not the whole story, is it?"

"Isn't it? What else was I planning, then?"

Suika looked at Renko, expectantly. Renko grinned and tipped her hat in thanks, taking a breath before beginning.

"Well for one, you were hoping to call forth your friends who were sealed in the Underworld back to Gensokyo and re-establish the rule and empire of the oni."

Suika laughed loudly, rolling backward. "Well I guess you found out, but saying they were 'sealed' down there or that we ever had an 'empire' is a bit of an exaggeration. I had hoped if we had enough parties, the oni might be drawn to them. If everyone came back we could have fun like the good old days. A night parade of a hundred oni every night!" She smiled at the thought, but there was a tinge of loneliness to her eyes.

Renko looked to Suika with an expression almost like pity on her face and nodded her head. "That's what I thought. In that case I just have one more question for you my dear Miss Melon."

Suika grinned at Renko's audacity. "Yeah?"

"You're really a human, Suika. Aren't you?"


—20—


Suika's smile faded. Renko nodded to herself. "How about that story then?"

Suika nodded stiffly, grunting an uncommitted affirmation as she poured sake from her gourd into Renko's cup.

"After we met you, we did a lot of research on oni. We even went to Youkai Mountain to talk to the tengu. The more we looked into things, the more things didn't line up."

"Didn't line up? Like what?"

"Well first off, there was your name. Ibuki Suika, seemingly a clear reference to Shuten Douji through his birth on Mount Ibuki. According to legends, he had four other powerful oni beneath him, who were together known as the Four Devas, but here you are alone while the other oni have all disappeared. Then there was the question of sustenance. Oni are supposed to require the fear of humans, but all the oni had disappeared somewhere where there weren't any humans, and no one knows why or how they're surviving. Everyone just had some vague idea that they had left because of humans."

Renko took a sip of her sake, then continued.

"So I got to wondering, if none of the details made sense, which of my assumptions might be mistaken? The first one to come to mind was the question of your identity. Could you really be Shuten Douji? For one thing, you're a girl, but I ignored that, since youkai are known to change their forms. Putting that aside there was still something that didn't make sense though."

"What's that?"

"When we talked to the kappa and the tengu, they both called you one the devas of the oni. That's not right though. Shuten Douji wasn't one of the Four Devas, he was their leader. How did the leader of the oni get demoted to one of his own guards in their mind, I wondered?

Suika let out a chuckle along with a puff of stinging breath. "I never said I was Shuten Douji, did I?"

"Hmm, I suppose not, but you seem to have wanted to give people that impression, having named yourself Ibuki. It may not be a lie, but that seems an odd course of action for an oni that hates falsehood, I'd think. It doesn't matter though, there's a bigger issue. If you were really Shuten Douji, then how does no one know why all the oni left? Minamoto no Yorimitsu was said to have slain Shuten Douji almost a thousand years ago, but schoolchildren still learn his name. Gensokyo was still dealing with oni just a century ago. If humans had really managed to drive off all of the oni in Gensokyo, it would have only happened 120 years ago. We’d still have records of whoever managed to do that."

Renko took a gulp of her sake to punctuate her thoughts.

"So you're not Shuten Douji. But you still might have been an oni. But the oni all left for the Underworld. Why? Well it wasn't because of humans, so it must have been because of something else. Something they'd have to leave the entire surface world behind to get away from. At first I thought it must have been the doing of the Youkai Sage. Gensokyo had been sealed with the Great Hakurei Barrier, meaning that the oni would have no one to prey on but the human village. So to protect them she seals the oni and the most dangerous of the youkai deep underground to protect the humans."

Renko stared at Suika for a moment, as if trying to gauge her reaction. Finding none, she continued.

"But that idea didn't sit right with me either. If the Administrator had sealed the oni away by force, then there's no way she would have let you get away with your attempt. If you were successful, then the returning oni would disrupt the balance she had created here, so she either had to make sure you failed or keep you from trying —but she didn't! She hasn't interfered at all! So that means the premise was wrong. The oni didn't disappear into the Underworld because they were banished or chased out. They went there of their own volition. And stayed there for the same reason. Why, I wondered. What could they be doing down there? Then I figured it out. They're not down there WITH the dangerous youkai, they're down there BECAUSE of them. They're there to keep the youkai who wouldn't play by Gensokyo's rules from returning! Like the gatekeepers of hell they were supposed to have been in legends. They were probably working hand in hand with the Administrator to do it. She gets safety for the human village, and the oni get a job to do that gives them plenty of powerful, raucous heads to smash. But then if the oni are given a job by the Youkai Sage, why is one of them up here throwing parties?."

Suika said nothing, but put her lips to the gourd and took a long pull. Her eyes had narrowed, watching Renko carefully.

"So that just raised more questions. You're not Shuten Douji, but the tengu and the kappa both recognized the name Ibuki as one of the devas of Youkai Mountain. Your name, which you had obviously taken to at least suggest that you might be Shuten Douji, inspired enough fear that even kappa who had never met you were terrified of you. Well, terrified of you and one other. Hoshiguma Douji. Now supposedly that was one of the Four Devas —Shuten Douji's subordinates. Why the discrepancy, I wondered?"

Renko paused to refill her cup.

"And that brought me back to these parties. These parties full of powerful people that you kept holding, but then hiding from as a mist. But you didn't hide that well. Enough not to be obvious, but not well enough that sooner or later people wouldn't catch on. You just had to keep doing the same thing until someone got fed up and figured you out. One by one, they all did. Marisa, Sakuya, Patchouli, Remilia and Reimu for sure, and probably Alice, Youmu and Yuyuko as well. That was just what you wanted though. The more people like that who found you and lost to you, the more you established your presence as a youkai. One by one, you drew them in, staggering drunk and barely able to fight, and then you knocked 'em down. Creating a reputation for yourself as you did. Feeding on their fear, and becoming stronger after each one. THAT was the real reason behind these parties right? So everyone would come to remember you, and think of you as a terrifying, powerful oni. Because if you didn't, you were right on the edge of turning back into a human, weren't you?

In response to Renko's question, Suika returned only silence.


—21—


"So, Suika. Since you're not an oni, this all starts to make sense. Your goal here was to get the name Ibuki Suika once again known and feared as a fearsome oni. After all, if no one in Gensokyo can remember you as anything else, but the legend of the terrifying oni Suika Ibuki was remembered by all, then that's who you would become. That's why you left the Underworld. Your friends down there knew who you really were, and their perceptions of you were weakening your presence as an oni. Making you closer to a human. Down there, you'd never be a true oni, no matter how powerful you became since there would always be someone who remembered your true nature. Here though, with no one to know the truth, you could be the oni you always wanted to be."

Suika stood up with a rattle of her heavy chains and slouched toward Renko. From a mere step away she stared into Renko's face. "Ya know," she began, "whether or not I'm Shuten Douji, even in this little story of yours I'm strong enough to rule over the tengu and have beat up everyone at this party. Pretty bold of you to be so rude to someone who could squash you like a bug. Honestly though, it’s so bold I kinda like it. It’s hard to be mad at someone for saying something that ridiculous no matter how rude it is."

"Well then in that case, since you’re not angry, I ask that you bear with me a little longer. I'm nearly at the end of my story."

"Oh? Do you really think you have any idea who I am?"

"Yes, of course." Renko grinned her most troublesome grin, meeting Suika's stare head-on. "Since oni need human fear to maintain their presence, there must be humans living in the Underworld too. As an ex-human yourself, you must have faced some level of discrimination down there, just as humans with youkai blood experience here. You wanted to become 100% oni, an oni the other oni would accept as one of their own. That's why you held the parties here: being recognized as an oni by someone as important as the Hakurei shrine maiden was key to your plans. Who better to proclaim you an oni than the closest thing to an oni-hunter left in the world, Gensokyo's own youkai exterminator? It couldn't be that simple though. If it were, you would have just lost to Reimu after starting this incident. Then you would have gone down in the 𝘎𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘰𝘬𝘺𝘰 𝘊𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘭𝘦 as the oni mastermind behind an incident. If you did that though, it would have been a breach of the agreement between the oni and the sage. So you had to do something that let you fight and defeat the people you needed to, but was so difficult to understand that no one could be sure if it even was an incident or just a drunken dream. This way only a few people would know about you, but as long as they were the right people, that was enough."

Suika put her hands on her hips with a rattle of hanging chain and leaned away, swaying. She shook her head from side to side, eyes closed as her horns traced arcs through the air. "That's a crazy story. I almost respect you for coming up with something so twisted."

Suddenly she staggered back, spinning around before dropping, cross-legged, back onto the mat. "Still though, what if any of this story were true? If you had me all figured out, why tell me any of this? Do you think I'm more likely to admit it, or to just wring your neck out like a towel?" The smile that spread across her face then was one we had never seen. A smile that belonged to the greatest enemy of humankind, the terrors of Gensokyo. Looking at her, I could suddenly see the oni of legend staring back at me from my position behind Renko.

Renko, somehow, remained calm. "I don't expect you to do either," she said coolly. "What I want is for you to prove me wrong."

Suika blinked rapidly. "Wait, what?"

"If I were to tell this story of mine to someone else and you were to laugh it off and prove me wrong, then that would prove that it's only a story. A mere delusion without any merit. That would cement your reputation as a true oni beyond any shadow of a doubt. So what we need to do, my dear Miss Melon, is work together to find the evidence needed to make a laughing stock of me."

Suika was dumbfounded, staring silently at Renko for a moment. Finally, she averted her eyes and spoke.

"You really are one strange human."

"Now, let me get to the end of my story. I was just about to tell you your identity. The legends say that when Yorimitsu and his retainers snuck into Mt. Oe to exterminate the oni there, in order to win the trust of the oni, they all had to partake in the oni's feast, and in so doing consumed human flesh. Their willingness to do so, to gain the trust of an oni at any cost pushed them beyond the bounds of humanity. In that act, they became youkai themselves."

It was the same story I had told the children in my class for Setsubun (including the details I had left out). I thought back, trying to recall the names of all of the humans who had been present there. There had been six in all, if I recall...

"From there we can narrow it down. You had to be a human who had some connection to Shuten Douji, and one of the ones that had eaten human flesh. That leaves six potential possibilities. You liked being known as one of the Four Devas well enough that you kept that title when you ruled over the tengu along with Hoshiguma Douji, but you weren't an oni yourself, so that narrows it down to four people. Among the human Four Devas, however, there was one who in legends is often depicted as a young boy, but some versions of the story claim was actually a young girl. The beast child whose prodigious strength won them a place as one of Yorimitsu's retainers despite their young age. Even here in Gensokyo, their story makes them the children's favorite."

Renko smiled mischievously and spoke the name. Whether she was correct or not, only Suika can truly know. I will write it here, but the choice of whether or not to believe Renko's theory is up to you.

"Suika, your real name is Sakata Kintoki. You are that same beast child of legend, the famed 'Kintaro the Golden Boy.'"