東方プロジェクト二次小説・オリジナル小説サイト
Chapter 7:Subterranean Animism

—19—


After saying goodbye to Satori we left her room and returned to the broad and echoing hallway of the Palace of the Earth Spirits.

"Well, what do we do now, Renko?"

"I think we pretty much have to start looking for that girl Satori was talking with you about, Komeiji Koishi. Since it seems like you can see her better than most people I'm going to be reliant on you for this one, Merry. Maybe if you share your vision with me I could help you search."

"I'd have to cover your eyes to do it, so we'd only have one set of eyes looking either way. I don't think there's much point to trying."

"I suppose you're right. This is a job that requires a top-of-the-line boundary detector. It's all yours, Merry. Good luck."

"How convenient for you..." I muttered, looking around at our surroundings. I wondered if Koishi really was somewhere in the mansion. She had led us here, after all. If she was willing to show herself to me then that would be one problem solved, but if I had to go looking for her then she might have wandered off to anywhere by now. Assuming that we could find her there was also still the matter of getting her to come back to see Satori with us. Other than my eyes I was just a regular human being. I could hardly be expected to track down a youkai that didn't want to be found, especially if she decided she'd rather not cooperate.

"If you can get me close enough to talk to her, then you can share your vision with me and I can negotiate with her."

"I wouldn't be so sure that it will be that easy. What do you think Satori meant when she said that Koishi has the ability to manipulate the unconscious mind?"

"To answer that, we'd have to define the limits of consciousness. Exactly what constitutes the conscious and subconscious parts of the mind tends to vary depending on what field of study you’re looking out, so that’ll be tricky. Hmmm…" She grumbled and fiddled with the brim of her hat. "Since she's Satori's younger sister and a satori herself, I think it's safe to assume she's also a mind-reader. Maybe reading the subconscious is just an extension of that or a more developed form of the same power. Like some sort of special technique."

"What do you mean?

"Come on, let's look around while we talk." Renko picked a direction seemingly at random and began walking down the spacious corridor. I tried calling out Koishi's name, but of course there was no response.

"I mean like what Satori did when we were talking to her earlier. She was able to read our thoughts or see images that we were thinking of and she basically held the entire conversation by herself, but she still asked us a bunch of questions, right?"

Now that I thought about it that was a good point. 'Why did you come here' and 'How can you see my sister?' had both been questions that she had bothered to speak at one point or another.

"I don't think she can go rooting around freely in our heads. She seems to only be aware of things that we were consciously thinking of. Anything that wasn't on our minds or which we didn't remember she had to ask us about out loud. I think the reason that she kept talking without giving anyone else a chance to speak the whole time was to keep our conscious minds engaged and thinking about things she wanted us to think about. It's not that different from how Terrence D'Arby has to ask his Stand questions out loud."

"...So in that case Miss Satori wouldn't be able to know something like what I had for dinner last night without asking me about it first, right? She'd have to make me remember."

"Exactly. But if you had a stomach ache and were thinking about all the things you might have eaten to cause it, for example, then she would probably know right away."

I supposed that made sense. Her ability would be to read the conscious parts of the mind then. "So when she said that Koishi could manipulate the unconscious..."

"She was saying that she can affect something that Satori can't read. The parts of the mind that are deeper than conscious thought... Or that's what I'm guessing, anyway. Though reading a part of someone's mind and interfering with part of it would seem like different things to me. I wonder if Koishi's a mutant or something."

I groaned. If she could disappear from people's sight by affecting the parts of the mind that people weren't even aware of…. "This is turning into a real conundrum from a Relativistic Noology perspective. I wonder if her ability to disappear is due to an alteration in the process of cognition or if she's affecting the mind's ability to link meaning to signifiers."

I thought back to what Satori had said. Koishi’s presence was so faint that even if you were looking right at her it was difficult to perceive her. If Koishi’s power worked by just erasing her presence, then there wouldn’t have been any need for Satori to mention that she had the ability to manipulate the unconscious. Somehow her imperceptibility had to be tied to her ability.

"What do you mean, Merry?"

"The basic underlying premise of Relativistic Noology is that experience is subjective and the reality that each person experiences is shaped and made unique by that subjectivity. What makes the subjective reality of one person different from that of another is how each individual associates meaning with different concepts and with the things they perceive. For example, in my mind the concept of 'Renko' is connected to the concepts of 'My Partner in the Hifuu Club' and 'My Coworker at the Temple School' and 'The Person Whose Problems I Always Get Caught in the Blast Radius of.'"

"Oh come on, Merry, you can connect me to better concepts than that. How about 'The Most Important Person In the World?'"

"You're confusing your own subjectivity with mine. The point I was getting at was that concepts are connected to each other, and those connections form the basis of our judgements. I see you one way, but to the youkai in the streets here, they have no concept of 'Renko.' Looking at you they would only be able to connect you to the concept of 'A Weird Human Who Showed Up in the Underworld.' Or to the students in our classes, you would be connected to the concept of 'Math Teacher'"

"Ah, I see, so then the way you can pick someone you know out of a crowd is because upon seeing them the brain connects those concepts to the stimuli it's perceiving and generates and understands the context associated with that person, right?"

"Exactly. And if you don't have any associated meanings to attach to something then that concept basically doesn't exist for you. If you were looking for someone you know in a crowd then all of the people who weren't the person you were looking for would just be visual noise. You'd have a hard time remembering anything about any of them afterwards. When Koishi disappears, it basically works the same way: she prevents you from associating her with any sort of meaning."

"But even if you didn't know anything about them if you spotted a child all alone in the middle of a crowd they'd still stand out, right?"

"That sort of recognition is still tied to context through cognition though. A university student wouldn't be noticeable on a university campus, but if you saw an elementary school student wandering around one with a backpack, you'd wonder what they were doing. If you see something that would otherwise be unremarkable in a context where it doesn't belong, that inconsistency stands out on a subconscious level, drawing our attention."

"Huh. So we're all actually going through the process of recognition and contextualization subconsciously all the time. That's weird to think about. If Koishi is able to cut off all subconscious recognition of herself then I could've been seeing her all this time, but just failing to attach any meaning. Hmmm, I suppose that makes sense."

Renko pondered in silence for a moment, thoughtfully rubbing her chin then spoke up again. "Wait a minute. If that's the case, how are you able to see her, Merry? It's not like Miss Reisen's ability to shift phases or Nitori's optical camouflage, right?"

"That's right. Reisen shifts the phase of the area in front of her and then hides in the shadow of that distortion so I can see the place where everything's been shifted. For Nitori, it’s more that I’m able to see the boundary between her camouflage and reality. When Koishi spoke to me though, I could see her perfectly well, at least until I looked away. I'm not sure why, but it was definitely something different."

"And you said Koishi was surprised by that. Other than your boundary vision is there anything different about you that would allow you to see her when I can't? Maybe her ability to affect the subconscious doesn't work on you."

"It still works on me, I'd say, just not as well. It was hard for me to be sure she was there even when looking right at her."

"Very interesting, Merry. You're just full of mysteries. I wonder if your study of Relativistic Noology has strengthened your unconscious mind or something." Saying that, she took a step ahead of me and turned around, staring deep into my eyes. I stopped short and stared back at her. I wish she wouldn't do things like that with no warning. "This sounds like something right out of a Chesterton story, doesn't it Merry?" she asked with a grin.

"Oh, where context determines the meaning of an action you mean?"

"Of course we don't have the strictures of English society of Chesterton's time to provide a set of background assumptions for the criminal to transgress here."

There was more to that conversation, but if I were to record it here, it might spoil a true classic of detective fiction for you. If you ever get the opportunity, look for a copy of 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐼𝑛𝑛𝑜𝑐𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝐹𝑎𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝐵𝑟𝑜𝑤𝑛. They have it at Suzunaan.

"Well, there you go then, Merry. Even if this case doesn't call for a boundary detector, it seems I'll still have to leave it to you."

I sighed heavily. Suddenly, a voice called out from behind us.

"You two are really interesting."

I turned around in surprise and there she was, looking up at me from beneath the floppy brim of her sun hat. The girl with next to no presence. Komeiji Koishi.

"Ah! Were you there the whole time?"

"Yep, I've been right behind you all along!"

It was a rather unsettling thing to hear, even from a girl who was smiling up at me with a thoughtless, vacant look on her face. I opened my mouth to say something when...

"Merry, who are you talking to?" Renko asked, peering around me to look where I was looking.

The second Renko looked her way, Koishi turned and ran, disappearing around a corner.

"Wait! Don't go!" I called after her, but she had already turned the corner and vanished.

"Merry, was Koishi there?"

"Yes! She was right behind us the whole time!"

"Whoa, that sounds like the ending of some creepy urban legend or something. Which way did she go?"

"Umm, that way, I think. Around the corner."

We dashed after her, our footsteps echoing on the polished stone of the hallway. Rounding the corner, I caught sight of her again, then immediately lost her once more. She seemed to be disappearing and reappearing at points further along the hallway, as if guiding us somewhere again.

It wasn't a long chase this time, though the path was winding again, twisting and bending through rooms and passageways. Before long we reached what appeared to be our destination. At the end of a dead-end corridor a set of stone stairs descended further underground.

"Renko, those stairs lead down..."

"And below the Palace of the Earth Spirits is..."

She looked back at me. We said it at the same moment. "The Hell of Blazing Fires."

"Renko, this is a bad idea."

"We've come this far, Merry. We can't turn back now."

"We don't have Satori's permission to go down there."

"If she finds out then we’ll cross that bridge then. Besides, we can't be blamed if this is where her sister led us, right?"

Going down these stairs would obviously be a conscious decision on our part. Moreover, it was likely that if Satori asked us about it, she would see that we stood here at the precipice and made the decision to go down of our own free will. But in the end, none of that mattered. Renko wasn't about to turn around and give up and I didn't want to be separated from her. And so, I took hold of her coat and peered into the darkness.

"Alright Renko, let's go. Together."

"That's my Merry, nerves of steel. Let's do this! The Hifuu Club is going to the depths of Hell!"

And with that, we began our descent.


—20—


Hot. Or perhaps 'scorching' would be more appropriate.

The heat in the oven-like stone corridor had increased steadily as we descended, but here at its bottom the temperature was very nearly unbearable. The air rushed steadily past us as, in the vast, bowl-like chamber of raw bedrock found at the bottom of the stairs, a wide and twisting column of searing flame spiraled upwards from an undulating ocean of flame that stretched as far as I could stand to look. The brightness of the flames was such that it was completely impossible to tell what exactly might be burning. We were still standing a good distance away from the pillar of flame but even at this distance the heat of the air alone was enough to make breathing painful. There was no question that even just staying here, on the lip of the inferno would be lethal after prolonged exposure. It was the literal Hell of Blazing Fires though, what else could one have possibly expected?

"I wonder if this is what Mount Magmageddon felt like in 𝐷𝑟𝑎𝑔𝑜𝑛 𝑄𝑢𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑉?" Renko shouted over the roaring of the flames.

"Renko, what was the name of that story that starts with a monk performing a fire ritual for a national TV audience? The one where you have to stare into the fire from so close it almost burns your eyebrows off?"

"That was Nakajima's 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑃𝑖𝑔𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝐺𝑎𝑑𝑎𝑟𝑎, wasn't it?"

"I feel like we're doing that."

"Apparently entire professional baseball teams used to do stuff like this during the off season to maintain mental discipline."

"Well I don't have a baseball season to win, so I'm heading back. We can't stay here, Renko."

"I think you're right, Merry. I don't want to burn to death either."

I was actually mildly surprised to hear that response. My partner, who is usually the world's foremost leading authority on the cutting edge of recklessness and boneheaded ideas, was actually suggesting a reasonable course of action. I suppose in the face of an unquestionably lethal danger like this one though, any living being would have the sense to turn back. It wasn't like she could hope to fast-talk a fire or negotiate her way out of being burnt to a crisp.

"It feels like the mastermind behind this incident must be just ahead. If only Sanae were here with us maybe we could wrap this whole thing up."

"Come on, Renko! Any longer and your hat will catch on fire," I insisted, tugging on the hem of her coat. Renko turned and walked along with me. We moved away from the edge of the rocky outcropping overlooking the blaze and started up the stairs.

We had barely taken a single step back towards the stairs when a large black cat dropped down onto the path before us from the shadows. Eyeing us coyly, the cat stretched, then sat down directly in our path, meowing loudly. We both stopped for a moment, surprised by the sudden arrival of the creature, but being as there was only one of them in our way, I went to step forward. As soon as I did, it meowed once again and then suddenly began to shine brightly, giving off a bloody red light that contrasted garishly with the flickering orange of the fires behind us. As it shone, both of its two, red-tipped tails ignited with small, candle-like flames.

The light swelled, then receded and where the cat had been there now stood a girl in with a pair of black cat ears perched atop her head over two long, swaying, red braids. She was wearing a cute one-piece dress in very dark green tied with black ribbons, and seemed to be accompanied by both a handful of floating, ominous-looking bluish fireballs that floated lazily in the air behind her and a small, rickety-looking wheelbarrow set on the ground in front of her and draped with an oddly-bulging cloth. My immediate impression was that she must be a youkai cat like Chen. That didn't explain the presence of the creepy-looking phantoms circling her though. They looked more likely to be vengeful spirits....

"Ta-daah!" She said, posing with her arms raised. "You got here real quick, surface-sisters. I wouldn't have expected you to catch on so fast. You don't look very strong though. If you're going to go any further, I better test your abilities, nyah?" She smiled at us with a carefree expression, but then squinted her eyes, looking closer and sniffing. "Actually, you don't look strong at all. Like, at all, sisters. How'd two humans this weak make it all the way down here?"

"You've caught me," Renko said, raising her hands, palm up. "I'm just a regular human with no fighting ability at all."

The girl tilted her head at us, causing her braids to hang asymmetrically. "What would someone like that be doing at the entrance to the Hell of Blazing Fires? Didn’t you meet Lady Satori? She should have warned you about this place."

"I take it that you're one of the pets from the palace?"

"That's right, I'm Orin, a flame cat. Who are you and the quiet sister over there?" she asked, jerking her chin at me.

"I'm a detective from the human village on the surface. My name's Usami Renko, and this is my partner, Merry. We initially came down here to investigate why Earth Spirits were escaping from a recently opened geyser on the surface, but just at the moment we've been asked by your master to locate her younger sister."

"You're looking for Lady Koishi? Down here?" the flame cat asked, looking confused.

"Well that would take a long time to explain. If you don't mind, could we answer that question upstairs? It's awfully hot here." The sweat standing out on our foreheads disappeared almost instantly in the dry heat.

The cat-eared girl narrowed her eyes suspiciously, making no indication that she was about to let us past. "You said you came to investigate the Earth Spirits, right?"

"That's right," Renko said with a nod and a smile. "I take it you know something about them?"

"Mmmaybe," she replied, reaching both arms out in front of her and stretching her back. "But since you're working for Lady Satori now, if I told you anything you'd run right back and tell her, wouldn't you?"

"Well, it's a detective's job to deliver information to their employer."

"Too bad, sisters," the youkai said, with a smile that was all teeth. "That means I can't let you leave here alive." Her eyes flashed with a cruel, playful mirth as she stepped around her wheelbarrow and approached us. "Look on the bright side though, I'll cart your corpses into the flames, so you won't be eaten and you'll get to perform a useful public service, so you can rest in peace."

"That doesn't make it okay!"

"Well, there’s no point in crying about it. You two are the humans who decided to descend into Hell. Did you really think you'd come back out alive?" Still smiling, the girl raised her claws, fingers curled to reveal the dagger-like points of her burgundy-painted nails as she silently stalked toward Renko.

I squeezed my eyes closed. I didn't want the last thing I ever saw to be my partner getting her throat torn out. I couldn't hear the girl’s soft footsteps as she advanced, but I was certain she couldn't be more than a few seconds from pouncing.

"Ah, I get it now. You've been working on something you don't want your master to find out about, haven't you?"

I opened my eyes to see that the cat-eared girl had paused, frozen cartoonishly mid-step in the act of stalking towards us, her claws still raised, but with a stunned expression on her face.

"If we were to go back to see Miss Satori, then you know that she'd read our minds and see what we've seen here. You're afraid of that, aren't you? Moreover, you said something about us getting here surprisingly quickly. I'm betting whatever it is you're working on went out of control, and you sent up a few Earth Spirits you could find as a kind of SOS. Am I wrong about any of that?"

Despite the situation, it was Renko who was wearing the cat-like grin as she smiled down at the hunched-over redhead. "Looks like I'm right on the money again, I take it. That's a difficult situation for you. You're counting on someone powerful from the surface coming down here to clean up your mess, but you haven't asked for your master's permission to do any of this, much less call someone down to clean it up. That doesn't look good at all."

"Your problem must be something that you can't take care of yourself, but that you wouldn't want your master to know about either. There's someone you're trying to protect, isn't there? Another of the palace pets, maybe? You had mentioned wanting to test our strength. That means you specifically were looking for someone powerful from the surface. I'm betting you figured if you let a few Earth Spirits out then someone from the surface would come down and exterminate whoever they thought was responsible. If they were someone who doesn't live in the Underworld they wouldn't think to tie you to whatever was going on, nor would they bother reporting anything to your master. Is that all about right, Orin?"

The cat-eared girl, who had advanced nearly to striking distance before, was backing away now, eyes wide and ears laid flat against her head as she looked up at Renko. "H-hey, how'd you know all that? What kinda mind-reading youkai are you, sister?"

Still grinning her cat-like grin, Renko poked her hat back on her head. "I'm just an ordinary great detective."


—21—


Renko had managed to convince Orin that we might be able to do something to help her with her problems and, at my insistence, we had escaped from the oven of the underground stairwell and returned to the first floor of the palace.

"Are we safe from being discovered here?" Renko asked, hanging her coat and hat on a rack near the door.

"As long as we don't get in Lady Satori's field of vision we should be fine," Orin replied. It seemed as though there were at least some limits to Satori’s abilities.

Orin then turned and glared at Renko. "What about you though? You're not a satori, so how did you know about my plan?"

"I didn't read your mind, I just deduced the truth from your words and actions."

"Deduced?"

"It means I figured it out by making logical guesses. Reasoning things out in this way is the most fundamentally human activity. The ability to put oneself in another's shoes and imagine their motivations or predict their actions is the glue that holds society together."

"...Renko, that sounds positively deep. Who are you quoting?" I asked.

"It's an original Usami Renko thought! Courtesy of the great detective herself."

As a mystery fan, I can't help but think it sounded more like a pretentious paraphrasing of P. D. James' 'The greatest mystery of all is the human heart.'

"I’m a youkai though, how would that work for someone like me?"

"Ultimately, human reasoning and youkai reasoning aren't all that different. That's probably a result of youkai being creatures created from human fear."

Orin wore a look of confusion on her face as she crossed her arms, seemingly trying to make sense of Renko’s words. I suppose I can understand why someone would be unsatisfied with Renko’s explanation. For one of Renko’s long and rambling deductions to be correct without some sort of extraordinary explanation seemed practically impossible.

"I'll take your silence as confirmation that my previous deductions were correct. As you noticed, my partner and I aren't in a position to be able to physically overpower your friend. For Merry and I though, our most powerful weapons are our brains. If you can give me all of the details regarding your friend's case, we'll do our best to come up with a clever solution that can leave everyone happy. The Hifuu Detective Agency will do everything in its power to resolve your issue."

"Hifuu Detective Agency?"

"We have an office in the human village on the surface. We're always on the lookout for new cases and new ways to make the world more interesting."

Orin stared at us for a moment then groaned and scratched her head. "How did I end up with these two weirdos?"

"Why don't you start by telling us about your friend." Renko said as she leaned forward with an earnest, open expression.

Orin stared Renko in the eye for a moment then sighed in resignation. With an expression like she had just swallowed a fly, she started to explain. "My friend's name is Okuu. She's a hell raven. Hell ravens are ravens that are native to the Hell of Blazing Fires. Usually they just spend their time picking at the carcasses of the dead who were thrown in. She and I have been living down here since the beginning. When this mansion was built, Lady Satori and Lady Koishi started living here and we became their pets. I was in charge of looking after all of the Earth Spirits and Okuu was in charge of managing the heat of the Hell of Blazing Fires. That was pretty good for a long time. But then everything went wrong when that goddess appeared."

"A goddess?"

"Yeah, a mountain goddess, from the surface. She dug a big hole all the way down here, and just popped out on the edge of the sea of flames. She gave Okuu something really strange to eat."

There was something about her description of the mountain god that immediately filled me with a sense of familiarity.

"What was it exactly?"

"Okuu said it was a 'Yatagarasu.' She ate it, and when she did, she changed. She became way more powerful, and able to control some kind of divine fire. That's way too much power for someone like Okuu though. She's just a hell raven."

"A 'Yatagarasu?' Isn't that the name of one of the messengers of Amaterasu, the sun goddess?"

I tried to imagine what it would mean for an animal to take on an aspect of Yatagarasu. A second sun beneath the surface of the world sounded like something out of a hollow earth conspiracy theory.

"So then is Okuu planning on using the power of Yatagarasu to do something sinister?"

"Yep, that's right. She's been talking about doing something crazy like trying to turn the surface into a new Hell of Blazing Fires! I know she used to talk about how Hell of Blazing Fires got really lonely since they moved Hell... but burning the whole surface world is going a bit far, ain't it? Even worse, she’s so riled up right now thanks to the Yatagarasu's power that she might try it, and if she does there’s no way I can stop her!"

Orin clenched her fists tightly at her side, shaking slightly. "Okuu stays in the Hell of Blazing Fires all the time. She doesn't really know what other youkai are like. She's really strong, but she’s not strong enough to fight everyone living on the surface at once! She couldn’t even fight everyone in the the city if they got serious. Okuu’s a birdbrain though so she doesn’t get that. She thinks she can do anything she wants now that she’s got Yatagarasu’s power. What do you think Lady Satori’ll do if she finds out that’s what Okuu’s thinking about?"

"I see. Even if Miss Satori could understand your dilemma, she couldn't keep it a secret from the oni."

"That's right! If she finds out what Okuu's planning, she'll probably get rid of her for trying to overthrow the order of Underworld society. And there'd be nothing I could do about it!" Orin pounded her fist into the floor in frustration. "Okuu is my friend! We’ve been down here together forever!! Because of that stupid goddess she's in danger now, and she's too stupid to know it! She's pure-hearted and innocent though and because of that she's either going to blow up the world or get herself killed. That's why someone needs to stop her. I just want someone to convince her that invading the surface would be impossible. I needed someone strong, that’s why I..."

"...Sent those Earth Spirits up through the geysers created by the intense heat Okuu was unleashing to try and attract some attention, right?"

Orin said nothing more, just nodding with her face turned down toward the ground.

Renko pondered the situation for just a moment, muttering "So that's what she meant when she said she had succeeded in generating power recently." Then stood up and walked over to where Orin was perched to lay a hand on her shoulder. "Orin, I think we can help you. We have no hope of stopping Okuu by force of course, but I think we can successfully come at this situation from a different direction."

"A different direction? What do you mean?" Orin asked, turning her face up to look at Renko.

"Tell me more about this goddess you met. The one who bestowed Yatagarasu on Okuu. What did she look like, for example?"

"She had a big rope on her back, somehow."

Renko sighed and I placed my palm over my face. Neither of us were surprised to hear it, but somehow it still hurt to have our suspicions confirmed. "I was worried that might be it," I groaned.

"Yeah, when I heard it was a mountain god, I suspected as much..."

"What is it, sis? Do you know that goddess or something?"

And so, in the sense that the anomalous phenomenon that had initially brought us down to the Underworld was the presence of Earth Spirits above ground, you could say that Orin was the mastermind behind this incident. But if your question was who should bear the blame for the events that set the whole affair in motion? There could be only one suspect. A mountain goddess that the two of us knew very well by this point.

"Yes, Orin, I'm afraid we do," Renko said. "I'm afraid we're quite well acquainted with Yasaka Kanako indeed."