東方プロジェクト二次小説・オリジナル小説サイト
Chapter 8:Imperishable Night

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘌𝘮𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘰𝘳 𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘴 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘗𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘒𝘢𝘨𝘶𝘺𝘢, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘗𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘒𝘢𝘨𝘶𝘺𝘢 𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘴 𝘩𝘪𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘴𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘦, 𝘴𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘌𝘮𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘰𝘳 𝘥𝘦𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘴𝘢𝘥𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴. 𝘐𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘩 𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘩 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘳𝘥 𝘺𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘢𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘰𝘺𝘢𝘭 𝘷𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘵, 𝘗𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘒𝘢𝘨𝘶𝘺𝘢 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴 𝘶𝘱𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘶𝘭𝘭 𝘮𝘰𝘰𝘯 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘴𝘢𝘥𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘱𝘢𝘪𝘯, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘗𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘒𝘢𝘨𝘶𝘺𝘢 𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘴 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘧𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘰𝘯 𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘴 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘰 𝘳𝘦𝘧𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘵 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘥𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥


—22—

"Welcome to my trap, Earthlings." Yagokoro Eirin said this as she spread her arms wide. The human they would have expected to see cradled in her arms had vanished. Instead, she again held the long, asymmetrical bow in one hand, and a pair of arrows in the other. There was no sign of Maéreverie Hearn anywhere.

"What did you do with her?" Marisa shouted.

"The human? I left her hidden away back in the corridor, where she'll be safe."

"How convenient. That means we can dispatch you without hesitation," Sakuya said, moving forward and fanning a set of knives between her fingers.

Eirin laughed fearlessly. "Yes, there’s no need for me to hold back either."

"Why are you doing all of this in the first place?" Alice asked.

"Cause she’s crazy," Marisa interjected. "People from the moon have gotta all be lunatics, right?"

"Why would you think that?"

"When people go crazy it’s usually because of the moon. That’s all."

"That’s right. The princess, myself and Reisen all came from the moon. But we can’t go back now. Ever."

"It doesn’t really matter to us whether you go back or not. Did you hide the moon because you thought we’d try to stop you from returnin’?"

"This false moon makes the Earth a locked room. No other moon will be visible, meaning that no pursuers from the moon will be able to follow us here and no curious Earthlings will be able to invade the moon. It’s the best solution for everyone."

"No one here was trying to go to the moon though! We just liked looking at it and now you’ve ruined that," Remilia interrupted, her arms crossed as she glared at Eirin.

"Your moon will be returned after tomorrow’s full moon. This illusion need only last until the passage between worlds has closed."

"What a relief, Milady, it seems that whether we win or lose the full moon will be returned to normal."

"Hold on, if we don’t get our moon back before the full moon, what’s the point? Nobody does almost-full moon viewing parties," Marisa interjected.

"Agreed," Remilia sneered. "Letting her treat us like this would be undignified. We need to get the moon back before the sun rises."

"As you wish, Milady."

Alice stood with her hands on her hips, her combat dolls spreading into formation around her. "Besides, there are people on Earth who’ll suffer without the moon’s presence too. Did you really think there wouldn’t be any retaliation if you stole the full moon from the Earth?"

Eirin looked the four of them over, a wry smile quirking the corners of her lips. "Hmph. What brats. Children like you don’t stand a chance against an immortal like me. All that history that you’ve built up amounts to nothing when divided by my own eternity. From the point of view of an immortal, your lives are all but the blink of an eye."

"Oh, look Milady. It’s not often you fight someone older than yourself. Perhaps you should respect your elders."

"You’re younger than I am, Sakuya. Respect me first and let me worry about this hag. I’ll put an end to the mischief she’s causing."

"You’re the one stopping the night though, are you not? I hope you haven’t upset the princess with all of your mischief. Perhaps the best medicine for you would be a good beating."

And thus, in the space before the brilliant glow of a false moon, another beautiful danmaku battle began. A battle between a Lunarian’s pride and the resolve of four Earthlings. Of course I wasn’t around to see any of it, unfortunately.


—23—


Since you are already indulging me in my use of a third-person perspective, I hope you will not be offended by my choice to now rewind time, and move our story far away from the confines of Eientei. As always, such subversions of my own testimony are present only for the sake of creating a consistent, chronological narrative from the jumble of events that has become my life.

We go then to the Netherworld, the land of the dead separated from Gensokyo by a barrier that prevents the living from entering and the dead from leaving. There, in the eternal and unchanging silence, stood the mansion Hakugyokuro, home of Yuyuko Saigyouji, Administrator of this realm.

In the courtyard of Hakugyokuro, Youmu Konpaku, bodyguard, gardener and servant to Yuyuko sat on the edge of the veranda, looking up at the same distorted moon hanging in the sky. For the last few days, something had seemed wrong about that moon to Youmu, in a way she couldn't put her finger on. Looking at it set her on edge, as if there were a half-remembered sense of danger to it or a vague inkling of future dread. It was the same feeling as having left the house and realizing that you forgot to douse the fire or the like but it occurred only when looking at the moon, which made little sense, as Youmu had never been to the moon, and certainly had never lit a fire there. Now she was looking at it again, feeling the same half-sensation and trying to discern what it was about the heavenly body that was so off-putting.

"I wonder if lady Yuyuko has noticed it yet," she sighed to herself.

Yuyuko had been going about her business as usual, seemingly without a care in the world. Asking her about the moon would be risky —if she had already noticed but decided it wasn't important, she would tease Youmu for making a big deal over nothing. If it was important and Yuyuko hadn't noticed, she would scold Youmu for waiting several days before telling her. Or, more likely Youmu feared, there would be some secret, third option she hadn't considered and wouldn't understand. That was how things usually went with Yuyuko.

Youmu was too lost in thought to notice Yuyuko approaching from behind, floating without a sound a few centimeters above the ground. Yuyuko followed Youmu's gaze, looking up at the moon and letting out a sigh of her own. "Youmu are still ignoring that?"

Youmu scrambled to her feet and turned to face her mistress. "Ah, Lady Yuyuko! What exactly do you mean by ‘that?’"

"The moon, Youmu.. Weren't you aware? This is why people make fun of gardeners for being insensitive."

"Do people make fun of gardeners for that, or is that just you, and just now? And if you've noticed, then what do you make of it? Do you think this is... an incident?"

"Oh Youmu, it should be obvious how important this is."

"So it is an Incident then? You feel like something terrible is going to happen too?"

"Absolutely. If the moon never becomes full, then we can't have our moon-viewing party, and that would mean no dango."

"What?"

"So I'm going to go get the full moon back."

"You? Yourself?"

"Me."

Youmu blinked in surprise. There was no part of this she understood, from the moon, to the dango to why Yuyuko would go herself. The one steadfast rule she had learned in her years with Yuyuko though was not to ask for more information. That always only made things worse.

"Well, if you're going, lady Yuyuko, then I'll accompany you."

"Oh my, really? I had only said I would go because I thought you were too unreliable. After all, you hadn't even noticed how strange the moon was."

"But that's— I had noticed it, I just thought that—"

"It's fine, Youmu, this isn’t the sort of thing you could handle alone. If you’d like to accompany me though, I won’t stop you."

Youmu nodded. A serious expression on her face as her hands automatically checked that both of her swords were properly secured. A moment passed, both of them seeming to expect the other to do something.

"Ummm, Lady Yuyuko?"

Her eyes were still smiling above the fan. "Yes?"

"Do you have any idea where we should be going?."

"Of course♪"

The fan closed with a click as Yuyuko vanished it back into her sleeve. She still wore the same careless smile, but her eyes had narrowed. "We're headed to see Yukari"

—

A few hours after those two left Hakugyokuro, someone else was also seeking the full moon, though at this point all they had managed to do was get themselves thoroughly turned around by trying to fly through the Bamboo Forest of the Lost in the dark.

Hakurei Reimu thrashed her way through a leafy branch she hadn't seen in time, fishing a narrow twig of green bamboo out of one of her sleeves and discarding it along with a few curses. When she had recovered her equilibrium she slowed to a hover and looked around, trying to find the path she had been on. She couldn't see it anywhere, or rather everywhere she looked under the moonlight looked just as likely to be correct, with every direction choked with dense columns of swaying bamboo. She wondered if she would get in trouble for just burning the whole thing down.

"What the hell was all of that about, anyway?" She asked herself angrily. In order to put an end to the eternal night, she had already had to fight four people. Finding that the vampire and her maid were behind the long night hadn't surprised her. They already had a record of doing this sort of thing and had been her first suspects. She hadn't expected them to have the support of Marisa and Alice though. The thought of the two magicians getting tangled up in the vampire's plot had surprised her. She had been even more surprised when all four of the culprits had come after her at once, a clearly unsportsmanlike attack that had caught her off guard and given them time to disappear into the trackless wilds of the bamboo forest. The two magicians weren’t normally the sort to cause an incident on their own, but they had definitely been part of the scheme, saying something about the moon during the fight…

"Whatever, I just have to find them and then I can pay them back."

Reimu pushed herself onward, trying to pursue them through the forest they had disappeared into. She was resolved not to be surprised by such a tactic again, but all she had to show for her efforts thus far were the twigs and splinters tangled in her hair and the leaves in her teeth. Being beaten by the oni a few months back had bothered her, more than she liked to admit. Now she had been defeated by the masterminds behind a second incident. The fact that it had only been through an unfair four-on-one assault hardly mattered. Failing to resolve an Incident twice in a row was exactly the sort of negative publicity her rarely-visited shrine didn't need.

Reimu forced herself to take a centering breath and refocused her mind. All she had to do was find where those four had flown off to. Let her intuition guide her, watch out for branches, and kick some more butt for good measure when she found them. The same as always. The duties of the Hakurei shrine maiden were straightforward and unchanging. Steeling herself, she moved to fly off again.

—and stopped as something reached out to grab her arm.

She looked down to see a graceful hand gripping her wrist. The hand reached back into an eye-filled void that hovered beside her in mid-air, attached to nothing.

"Yukari! What are you doing here?"

The gap widened and the head and shoulders of Yakumo Yukari emerged, smiling suspiciously. "Hello Reimu. Did I catch you at a bad time? You seem to be in a bad mood."

Reimu shook off Yukari's grip and backed a few steps away, resting both hands on her hips. "I'm busy right now, I don't have time for your games."

"What a shame," Yukari quipped. "Reimu can't make time for me even on an endless night. It's not just me you're disappointing, Reimu. I know someone else with a wealth of free time of her own as well. Maybe we could lend you some." The gap widened further and retreated until it revealed all of Yukari, who then reclined against it in the air, as if it were a hammock. She cast her eyes upward, above Reimu, towards the moon.

Reimu turned to follow her gaze. There, two familiar figures were flying through the air, straight towards Reimu. "You two! What are you doing here?"

"Whatever do you mean?" Yuyuko asked, covering her mouth with a fan as she and her gardener drew to a halt before Reimu. "We're here to help you resolve the incident."

"If Reimu's already handling it, are we even needed here, lady Yuyuko?" Youmu asked.

"Reimu won't be helping us with this Incident. She's already failed." Yukari said with an overdramatic pout. "We'll have to resolve this one ourselves."

"I didn’t fail!" Reimu shouted. "I know who the ringleaders behind the eternal night are, I just got blindsided by all of them attacking me at once. It won't happen again though, so all of you go home already."

"Eternal night?" Yuyuko and Youmu glanced at each other. "Oh dear. She hasn't noticed yet. I suppose she's only human though."

"What are you talking about?" Reimu barked at the ghost.

"The problem isn't the long night, it's the missing full moon."

"That's probably Remilia and the others too, isn't it? I was just on my way to find them and beat them to get them to stop that as well."

"Why make that maid stop, Reimu? I love seeing others do my work for me. She's saving me from having to manipulate the border of night and day myself."

"Hold on. Why would you make the night longer too? Do you 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 me to exterminate you again, Yukari?"

"You're still focused on the wrong thing, Reimu. The night doesn't matter. It's more important that we restore the missing moon."

"What are you all talking about? The moon isn't missing, it's right there! All we have to do is find the masterminds again and beat them into making it stop looking weird, and I can just follow my intuition for that."

Yukari's smile broadened, even as her eyes narrowed. "My my, Reimu is clearly wrong about everything, and yet somehow still right. All we have to do 𝘪𝘴 to find the masterminds responsible and beat them up. Her intuition will likely even guide us right there if it's gotten her this far."

"If you're just here to make fun of me, then just go home, all of you! Resolving incidents is the duty of the Hakurei shrine maiden."

"And the duty of the Youkai Sage is to maintain Gensokyo's order. I'll be following you, Reimu."

"Fine, but what about them?" Reimu gestured at the Netherworld pair with her gohei. "They can go home at least!"

"I told you, we're here to resolve the incident," said Yuyuko. With a smile she turned and began to float away, deeper into the forest.

"But if Reimu and Yukari are both already looking into it, surely that's enough, Lady Yuyuko. There's no need to put yourself in danger." Youmu's pleas fell on deaf ears.

"Perhaps, but I'm bored, and going home now wouldn't be any fun!"

"Wait a minute, Lady Yuyuko, don't wander off, you could end up someplace weird."

Thus, Hakurei Reimu, Yakumo Yukari, Saigyouji Yuyuko and Konpaku Youmu also mounted an assault on Eientei that night. Reimu still thought of this incident as one concerning an eternal night, and Yukari followed along, content to let the spell proposed by Sakuya do her work for her. Having Yuyuko and Youmu tag along was less than ideal, but Reimu was hardly concerned about the safety of a ghost and a half-ghost. Little did she know that these two girls following her, one a resident of the land of the dead and the other its administrator, were both about to meet two people for whom death held no terror at all.


—24—


You may be wondering, what was I doing while all of this was going on? To begin with, I was being poked.

No longer of any use, even as a hostage, I had been roughly discarded and thrown to the wayside of the corridor like a bit of litter as Eirin raced to draw Marisa and the others into her trap. I awoke to find Tewi crouched over me, prodding me in the cheek with an outstretched finger.

"Hey, are you still alive?"

I groaned in response and opened my eyes. My head and body both felt heavy. I had absolutely no memory of where I was or how I had arrived here —my consciousness showed a clean break between the moment Eirin's hand passed over my eyes and the moment Tewi poked me, without any hint of a single sensation in between. I didn't even have any idea how long I'd been out.

Slowly I sat up and turned to face her. "What happened?" I asked. My words came out slower than I intended.

"Master is fighting the intruders further back down this eternal corridor. Reisen got beaten and is off sulking. The princess is still fine."

I shook my head to try and clear the cobwebs.

Intruders... yes, Marisa, Alice, Remilia and Sakuya. An odd quartet to be sure, and with no sign of the incident-resolving shrine maiden. If Eirin was already fighting with the four of them, then my role was over. Whatever Eirin had intended for me to do was done now, one way or the other.

"Master drew them all into her trap. They can fight there and create as much noise as they like without bothering anyone else, so I suppose that'll be the end of it." As Tewi said this, one and then both of her floppy ears began to twitch, at one point rising straight up like an antenna. She turned away from the distant terminus of the corridor where she had been staring to face me, a mischievous smile on her face.

"Ohh, I hear your girlfriend is looking for you."

"What? You mean Renko?"

"Ooo, do you have other girlfriends too? Who else, I wonder?"

That was enough to snap me out of my daze. Renko was probably still blind. With my obligations here fulfilled, I was needed at her side far more. I stood up, immediately regretting it as a wave of lightheadedness washed over me. With determination I kept my feet and began slowly stumbling along the hallway toward the light I could see in the distance.

"You're a big worrywart, aren't you?"

"My partner's recklessness tends to bring that out in people."

"Better than being timid. Though she may not live as long."

I grimaced at that and did my best to increase my pace as Tewi stayed behind, whistling tunelessly.

All of Reisen's work had clearly been undone. The way back through the corridor was dark, but no longer than normal. After walking in the dark for a few moments, I began to feel rabbits scurrying past my feet, brushing against my ankles and hopping ahead, as if urging me on. I followed them forward for a ways as the light in the distance grew nearer. Before much longer I heard a voice calling out.

"Merry? Merry?"

"Renko!" I shouted back.

"Merry, is that you?"

I saw her form silhouetted against the light of the entryway, at the point in the hallway where the lights began to fade. Heedless of the rabbits underfoot or the darkness, I ran for her, somehow managing to avoid breaking my neck. She was standing in the middle of the corridor, arms outstretched, feeling at empty air and still wearing her eye mask. I ran to her and took her in my arms as her hands patted at my cheeks.

"Merry? Is it really you?" she whispered.

"What are you doing out of bed, Renko? You're blind! You shouldn’t be walking around on your own!"

"I heard some noises then realized you weren’t in your bed. I made my way here using all of my senses except eyesight, but then my head started hurting."

"You were told to rest your brain, Renko. You should be listening to the doctor."

"I came all this way to find you, walking blind the whole time, and that's the response I get? I was worried about you, Merry!"

"And who do you think I'm worried about, Renko? You're injured and stumbling around blind!"

"Sorry," she said simply, and hugged me close.

"Yeah, sorry I yelled," I said and hugged her back.

I let out a slow sigh of relief. "It looks like my role in all of this is over now, at least."

"Oh really? Then what exactly is going on? I want to hear all about it."

I sighed over her shoulder. "It would be a long story to explain."

"It had something to do with the moon that blinded me though, right?" I pulled back to look at her face, wondering how much I should tell her.

"From your silence, I take it I hit the nail on the head. You've been keeping things from me, Merry. Probably out of concern, but you should know me well enough to know that would only make me more suspicious. Even what little information I had was incongruous enough to provoke my detective's instincts. Why was I being treated here rather than sent home? It’s pretty suspicious that there’s a doctor living in the woods who just happens to know how to treat me, don’t you think? The only way any of it makes sense is if she's wrapped up in the whole affair. Beyond that, even if I were being hospitalized, there's no reason for you to stay here. Miss Mokou's place isn't so far from the village that you couldn't have gone home and still come to see me when you wanted. You're being held captive here, aren't you Merry?"

"How did you manage to get that much already?"

"I'm just blind, Merry, not sick. My mind's as sharp as ever and I've had nothing but time to think for the last week, though I admit it hurts a little to do. That medicine I've been taking helps with that well enough though so there's no reason for me to be here, we could have just taken the medicine home. Despite that, I'm still here, and what's more, so are you. The only conclusion I could come to is that this doctor is holding me here as a hostage in order to somehow make use of your abilities, Merry. Even in a world where people fly and shoot lasers around, your abilities are still unique and noteworthy. Every time someone powerful discovers what you can do, you can see the gears in their heads turning, thinking about how they could make use of you."

I sighed. I suppose it's the fate of a great detective to never be able to stop discovering nefarious plots, even when confined to bed and ordered to rest. Even knowing that, I had still underestimated my partner. If I had been in her shoes, solving mysteries would have been at the very bottom of my list of priorities, but Renko wouldn't have been Renko if she ever let safety trump curiosity.

"So unless I miss my guess then, all of this clamor is probably a result of Reimu coming to ruin whatever you've been involved in these last few days. There’s an incident involving the moon, right?"

I smiled. So she wasn't infallible. "Bzzzt, I'm sorry detective, but that's incorrect. It was Marisa, Alice, Remilia, and Sakuya this time. No sign of Reimu. They're fighting Eirin right now."

She tilted her head in confusion. "Marisa I'm not surprised about, but the other three? Maybe Remilia was bothered by the moon in some way too. Maybe it even affects Alice?"

As Renko was saying this, the rabbits at my feet suddenly pricked up their ears, then started to hop up and down, chittering excitedly. I heard the sound of a door sliding open behind me and turned my head to see Reisen step into the hallway, surrounded by a crowd of rabbits and acting like she was trying to talk to a dozen people at once.

"Okay, okay, I get it, there's more intruders coming. I can... Can you just... Wait, they're where now?" She was a few steps into the corridor before she noticed us. "You two? What are you doing here? You Earthlings shouldn't be in the mansion. Especially the sick one!"

Renko raised a hand from off my back, holding it up like a student in class. "One question about that, before we go. What are these intruders like? They might be acquaintances of mine."

Reisen blinked several times then raised a hand to press one of her ears against her head. "They say one's a human... red and white, with a big stick. And the other is.... what? No, that human is still right here, it must be someone else. What? Are you sure...? Ok, just come back here then. Fall back. Everyone, back to the hallway."

Reisen's expression seemed deeply confused. "You two need to get out of here, right now." She said as she walked past us, heading further down the corridor.

"Why?" I asked, trying to think what the quickest way back to the annex might be from here. "Who's coming?"

"I don't know, what the inaba are saying doesn’t make any sense. They say it’s someone who looks just like you."

There was no need to guess. At this time of night, in the middle of an incident the red and white human could only be Reimu. As for someone who was flying with her that resembled me, that could only be…

"Oh come on, seriously!?" Renko demanded, incredulously. "The Youkai Sage? Here!? Now? How is that fair?"

"They're coming here to attack!" Reisen said over her shoulder. "You need to get out here, now." With that she stared at the entranceway at the opposite end of the corridor and immediately everything in front of me distorted, stretching as if it were racing away from me. I had seen the distorted corridor several times, but never watched it be formed from scratch before. I staggered, nauseated from the distended phantasmagoria.

"Merry? What's wrong?"

I couldn't have explained it if I wanted to, which at the moment I definitely did not. How could I portray to Renko, who was blind, the maddening disruption of my boundary vision? Even if her eyes were working she would only see an endlessly long hallway, not this nightmare stretching of visual space that looked like a headache-inducing Dali painting.

"You're seeing something, Merry, aren't you? Something only your eyes could see. What is it? What's happening?"

"Ugh, Renko, I..."

"Wait, that's it! Don't tell me, Merry, just show me!" She traced her hands along my arm until she was holding my palm with both of her hands. "Just touch my eyes! My eyes don't work, but yours are fine! Better than fine, even!"

"Renko, I really don't want to look at that right now."

"Come on Merry, just try it, I haven't seen anything for almost a week!" Renko hooked a thumb under a corner of the mask and peeled it off, tousling her hair. Beneath it her eyes stared back at me, two orbs of utter black. Devoid of their function as lenses, Renko's eyes had become like glossy marbles, ink-black and glassy, but devoid of light, two featureless pools of night.

She grabbed my hand as I stared at her in wonder. "Come on, Merry, let me see!" Her eyes were fathomless, I felt as if they were pulling me in. I looked away as I placed my palm lengthwise over her eyes, just as we had done so many times before in Kyoto.

Instead, I looked down the hallway toward the entranceway on the opposite side. The view had stabilized now, becoming the same endless hallway I had helped Reisen create earlier in the day. To me the distorted view was stale, but to Renko…

"Whoooah! I can see, Merry! ...But what am I seeing? What is all this?"

"I don't know what you're seeing, Renko. I know what I see, but we can never know if the stimuli experienced by someone else match up with the interpretations provided by our own subjective thought processes."

"Damn it, Merry, not now! I'm not interested in discussing the inviolability of subjective viewpoints or Relative Psychology for once. I'm asking why everything in this hallway looks all stretched out for you!"

"Oh. We're seeing the same thing then. Reisen's doing that. It's some sort of trap to delay or confuse intruders. She can manipulate phases, I think."

"The girl who brought me dinner? She’s able to warp space? Or is it just our perceptions that are affected? Huh, there's more to this doctor's office than meets the eye, I see. Interesting! Alright, Merry. Let's go."

"Yes, we should get you back to the sick room and out of harm's way. Do you think you can manage walking this way?"

"Forget the sick room, Merry. With you doing this I can see just fine. We need to head deeper into the mansion. Now that I know something unusual is going on, I can't shirk my duty as chief investigator of the Hifuu Detective Agency. We need to investigate, Merry! We're real late to the starting line on this one, so we've got a lot of ground to cover!"

"Renko, that's insane! You're still blind and you're supposed to be resting your brain, remember?"

"As long as you keep your hand here it's fine. My head doesn't even hurt with you like this. It's just like our club activities —I had no proof of the supernatural at all until you and your eyes came along, but when I borrow your eyes, I can see the truth!"
Five days worth of frustration, suspicion and suppressed curiosity was bursting out of her like a torrent. There was no way I could stop her, and she already had her hand pressed over mine, holding it to her eyes.

"I'm seeing through your eyes, so we'll have to walk close or it'll be disorienting. Here, put your arm around my shoulder and cover my eyes that way." She pressed her body up against me, snuggling under the crook of my arm and slapping my hand in place as she leaned her head toward my shoulder. "Alright Merry, now we'll have to walk together, so march!"

And so, with one hand pressing my hand to her eyes and the other wound around my back she shoved me along with her toward the darkened recesses of the corridor. It was odd trying to walk this way, with one arm proceeding much more bravely than the rest of me and the other straggling behind. Nonetheless, it was somehow the same feeling as always. Renko's familiar hand on mine, the two of us hurrying toward danger, impelled by curiosity. Even with only one set of functioning eyes between us, we were the same old Hifuu Club as ever.

As she pulled me along into the hallway, I turned and glanced behind us.

And there I saw them.

Four figures, rushing through the front doors of Eientei, into the warped hallway. The first face I saw was an unexpected one. A serious expression framed by curtains of silver hair cut in a short bob. She was wielding a sword in each hand, both glowing with reflected moonlight as she charged ahead and her wispy half-phantom followed behind. Behind her Yuyuko, the lady of Hakugyokurou came floating, a dangerous smile on her face, her frilly kimono billowing around her as she soared through the doors. I wondered if either of them could see us as they rushed into the corridor, plunging immediately into the folded space of Reisen’s trap.

A moment later a stream of curses echoed through the door followed by the red and white figure of the Hakurei shrine maiden. She drifted into the doorway, taking a moment to survey the hall before she charged ahead.

And then, in the doorway, I saw her. A youkai who looked a lot like me.

A fluffy swarm of several dozen bunnies suddenly materialized, flushed from their positions and rushing ahead of Youmu, straight towards me. The avalanche of rabbits stampeded down the hall in a mad rush, falling upon us and swarming over my feet. I stumbled, pulling my hand from Renko's eyes and clamping it on her shoulder as I reeled, trying to keep my balance.

"Ah, Merry! I can't see." Renko stumbled as well, her foot falling on one of the many rabbits cascading around us and bringing a squeak of pain. She hopped back and her foot came down on top of mine. With a shared cry we both ended up in a heap.

I looked up to see Renko reaching out, groping to find me in her blindness and behind her, the four intruders sailing down the hallway. Youmu glanced back at us as she soared past, chasing the tide of bunnies deeper into the mansion.

Reimu slowed as she approached us, regarding us with a mixture of surprise and dismay. She opened her mouth, whether to scold or question us, I don't know, but the Youkai Sage behind her spoke first.

"Reimu, this isn't the time to be concerned about some wandering humans. Leave them be."

"Wait a minute, this is way too suspicious. How did these guys end up in the middle of an Incident again?

"That's just the way things are, no need to question it." the sage said, dismissively.

"What?"

"Let’s move along, Yuyuko, there’s nothing here but these rabbits."

"Okaaay~" Yuyuko said with a cheery smile. "Follow the leader, Youmu." You'd never guess they were in the middle of conducting an assault on an enemy stronghold.

The four figures passed by us, proceeding into the darker sections further down, where Reisen had disappeared to lay in wait. They filed past without another word spoken to us.

As the Youkai Sage passed into the darkness though, she turned her head to glance at me. Our eyes met for a moment. I couldn't begin to guess the meaning behind her gaze or the expression on her face.

"Hey Merry, was that the Youkai Sage? Where are you? Let me see her!"

Yukari turned and vanished into the gloom.

"That's just the way things are," I repeated to myself in a daze.

What could she have meant by that? Why had she turned back to look at me? And in the brief moment that she looked over my partner and I, what had brought that pained look of loneliness to her face?