東方プロジェクト二次小説・オリジナル小説サイト
Chapter 9: Perfect Cherry Blossom

Nine

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘯𝘦𝘹𝘵 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥; 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘴𝘪𝘯-𝘭𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘯 𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘳𝘺 𝘣𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘴.
𝘜𝘯𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦; 𝘶𝘯𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘢𝘨𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩.

—25—


As if to make up for lost time, Gensokyo had become filled with spring overnight.

As soon as the melting snow receded, new flowers exploded in its place. Within days, all traces of the long winter had vanished and a riot of new growth had sprung up instead. I heard from Akyuu that the fairy herald of spring was charging all across every corner of Gensokyo with reckless abandon, spreading warmth and life far and wide.

At the eastern edge of Gensokyo, where the Hakurei Shrine stood, the cherry blossoms had already reached the height of their bloom. It was Akyuu who had invited us to see them with her, as she was planning on heading out once again to get a report on the events of what had been deemed the 'Spring Snow Incident.'

And so, morning found Renko, Akyuu and myself, escorted by Keine, making our way on foot to the Hakurei Shrine. There was no trace of snow on the ground and the spring sun was pleasantly warm, enough so that Renko had opened her trench coat.

As we climbed the stone staircase leading to the shrine, we could see a beautiful sea of soft pink blossoms but also... phantoms? Just as in Hakugyokurou, there were countless wispy, transparent blobs flitting about in a puffy perfusion. As if buoyed by the lively spring, the phantoms were darting to and fro, seeming to enjoy themselves.

"What's going on here? It's full of phantoms," Keine muttered, frowning as she took in the scene. "Well, as long as Reimu's here, it should be alright... I'll come by to pick you up later," Keine said, before turning back towards her duties in the village.

The three of us who remained made our way to the back of the shrine under a sky full of cherry blossoms and phantoms dancing madly about. There, Reimu and Marisa were sitting on the edge of the veranda. As we approached, they noticed us and Reimu grimaced. Addressing Akyuu, she said "I guess you'll be wanting an interview?"

"What's up with all the ghosts?" Akyuu asked, not bothering with the usual formalities.

Reimu's shoulders drooped. "With the barrier to the Netherworld broken, these things keep coming out. It's not my fault."

"Well the barrier being broken is at least half your fault isn't it?" Marisa was grinning just as much as Reimu was frowning. Apparently in the course of resolving the Incident Reimu had had to break through the barrier that kept the Netherworld separate from Gensokyo.

"I already told her to hurry up and fix it." Reimu groused.

Another voice spoke up in reply. "What’s the matter with leaving it as is♪"

Looking past Reimu and Marisa, I was surprised to see Yuyuko sitting by the table inside the shrine building.

"Oh, what a surprise," said Renko cheerily. "Is it alright for you to come to this world?"

"It seems to be!" Yuyuko laughed, covering her mouth with her fan. "It's been a long time since I've left Hakugyokurou." Looking at her, the phrase 'free spirit' came to mind, in more ways than one.

"Just go home and take all of these phantoms with you. They’re scaring away my visitors" Reimu said flatly.

"I’m gettin’ pretty tired of of both flower-viewings and ghost-viewings, myself." Marisa announced with a snicker.

"They’re all tickled pink to see the world of the living that they left so long ago. It’s just sightseeing, which they don’t get to do very often," Yuyuko replied.

"Well, it’s nice that the shrine is finally gettin’ so many visitors."

"None of the visitors are leaving donations though."

Another voice chimed in "But even your regular human visitors never put any money in either." Alice emerged from the kitchen carrying a tray of teacups. So she was here too.

"You could always make a donation yourself."

"I'll leave one of my dolls here with you then."

"I don't want a cursed doll."

"None of my dolls are cursed. Though they are packed with gunpowder."

"That's even worse!"

Ignoring Reimu, Alice handed out the mugs of weak tea then took a seat on the porch beside Marisa.

Reimu jerked her head back toward the interior of the shrine, pointing toward her kotatsu with her chin. "So should we go inside then?"

"No thank you. As long as we're here for the interview, let's enjoy the cherry blossoms," Akyuu suggested.

"Right, right. I'll go get you a mat." Reimu grumbled. She rose to her feet, but then paused and turned to look at my partner and I. "By the way, what were you two doing in the Netherworld? Alice said something about it not being her doing, but I don't see how else the two of you would have ended up there."

I shrunk away from her harsh, piercing glare, but Renko laughed and pushed up the brim of her hat. "It's fate, I guess."

"Ugh, you sound like Remilia."

"No vampires involved this time," Renko replied with a grin. "We were brought there by the whim of the great Youkai Sage."

"The Youkai Sage?" Reimu glowered. "Humans like you shouldn't be spending time with so many youkai. You're going to get eaten."

"I'll be sure to keep that in mind." Renko smiled broadly.

I gave Renko the side eye. The day she puts any consideration for her own wellbeing before satisfying her own curiosity is the day pigs fly. Renko just smiled even broader, unoffended. Reimu sighed and withdrew, heading back into the shrine.

I won't spend too much time reviewing the cherry blossom viewing party at the Hakurei Shrine. The blooms surrounding the shrine in the clear mountain air were lovely, but I had had my fill of cherry blossoms after our time in Hakugyokurou.

Akyuu poured sake for Reimu and coaxed all the details surrounding the Incident that she could out of the shrine maiden. Marisa regularly interrupted to highlight her own exploits or correct a detail, and Alice stared on, dumbfounded at their antics. Renko and I, for our part, had a relaxing afternoon, leisurely sipping from our cups and watching the blossoms fall as we sat shoulder to shoulder as Yuyuko sat on a mat on the other side of the yard, gazing blankly at the swaying cherry trees. It wasn’t long before the party was in full swing. After making sure that Reimu and the others were completely occupied with their own discussions, Renko turned and whispered to me. "Reimu's attention seems pretty well diverted. Shall we go and get some answers out of Yuyuko?" I nodded, then stood up, following the line of her gaze to see the lady of Hakugyokuro sitting alone beneath a tree. Apparently Renko had only been waiting for the right moment to uncover the truth behind this Incident and sate her curiosity, it seemed.

"Hey Renko?"

"Yes?" She smiled down at me. "What is it?"

Before the great detective could solve the case, there was one thing I wanted to ask her. "What's the point of solving this particular mystery?"

Renko seemed to think for a moment as she pulled her hat down over her eyes. "Well there’s my pride after failing to solve the Incident before it happened for one, and simple curiosity for another. But beyond that there’s still a lot we don’t know." Renko turned and began to walk around. As she looked back over her shoulder at me, she was smiling thinly, but her eyes might have been trying to laugh or cry. "I guess you could say it's my way of mourning."

"Mourning? For whom?"

"For the person everyone was trying to revive, of course."



There is, of course, no Saigyou Ayakashi at the Hakurei Shrine. As such, the cherry blossoms that fell on Yuyuko were of the most ordinary sort as we approached her under the tree. Soft, pink, and peaceful.

"Lady Saigyouji," Renko called out. Yuyuko turned slowly to regard us, her head tilted slightly. "I'd like to ask you a few questions about the Incident the other day."

Yuyuko's eyes narrowed and she spread out her fan, covering her mouth. "What is it?"

"Well, there are a lot of things," Renko said, sitting down cross-legged on the mat beside her. "But let's start with something simple." Renko coughed softly and looked up at the falling blossoms for a moment, staring toward them, but not seeing, as if her eyes were focused elsewhere, on the truth that had been buried beneath the petals in the Netherworld.

Renko narrowed her eyes and turned back to Yuyuko, her gaze now piercingly intense. "The real reason you caused that incident was to try and resurrect Konpaku Youki, correct?"


—26—


All traces of expression disappeared from Yuyuko's face.

Seeing this change, my partner nodded, then continued to speak. She spoke like a true great detective, laying out the facts and connections underpinning the truth of the Spring Snow Incident.

"The reason I suspected the truth was because the cover story was too well set up. The youkai cherry tree Saigyou Ayakashi, the lady who calls herself Saigyouji, the poet monk who died beneath the cherry blossoms and the record of 'Fujimi's daughter'. Every single detail points back to Saigyou. It just lines up too perfectly. You being Saigyou's daughter, the tree becoming a youkai as a result of Saigyou's death, then being sealed by the dutiful daughter, who undertakes an eternity of purgatory in Hakugyokurou to forever watch over the Saigyou Ayakashi and keep it from harming anyone else. But the cause and effect line up too neatly for a story that's supposed to be so old. All the details are perfectly preserved, and everything's explained. Nothing's lost to the vagaries of time. It's almost as if someone were telling us a story. Maybe I'm just too skeptical of a person, but it never sat right with me. I felt there had to be something more behind such an easy-to-understand story. That's when I realized that there was one thing that wasn't neatly tied up. A little extra. A completely superfluous presence in Hakugyokurou."

Yuyuko looked bewildered. "An extra presence?"

"It's the Konpakus. Youki and Youmu. They're not a necessary part of your little story. They don't fit in, so why are they here? Why include them if they don't support the tragic story of the dutiful daughter of Saigyou? Even beyond that, who are they? Konpaku Youki, the man old enough to have seen the Saigyou Ayakashi in full bloom, who serves his lady then disappears, after never once leaving her side and rarely speaking until one day, he just up and vanishes, with no one the wiser. Or Youmu, who's supposed to be Youki's granddaughter, but has no parents around between herself and Youki. What happened to them, I wonder? And then it hit me, it all points to one answer."

Renko lifted the brim of her hat, settling it back on her head, away from her eyes.

"Saigyou was originally a samurai named Satou Norikiyo, a rather prestigious one at that. The mysterious Youki, who seems to have been around for 1000 years, and was skilled enough to act as bodyguard and sword master. The connection between the two of them is very simple. Konpaku Youki is Saigyou himself, isn't he?"

This was the premise of the hypothesis that Renko had shared with me that day while watching the battle between Yuyuko, Reimu and all of the others from the garden of Hakugyokuro. Youki = Saigyou. A simple enough equation, but with tremendous implications.

"Once I realized that, a not-so-funny story started to emerge in my mind. It's a story that explains everything, all the inconsistencies of your lost memories, Youmu's missing parents, and the fact that Youki, who had witnessed the full bloom of the Saigyou Ayakashi 1000 years ago, had only been the groundskeeper at Hakugyokurou for 300 years. And it was something unpleasant, something that people would want to hide, burying it under the nice little fiction you cooked up about Saigyou and his lovely daughter. I'll tell it to you if you like —but you may find it a little offensive, I'm afraid."

"My goodness, what kind of story is it?" Yuyuko's voice was the perfect representation of careless amusement, but her eyes weren't smiling as they peered out from over the top of her fan.

Renko met her gaze with a sigh, but continued. "Well, if Youki was Saigyou himself, and you were Saigyou's daughter, then where does that leave Youmu, who described herself as half-human, half ghost?" Renko paused for a beat, but when Yuyuko didn't protest the implication, she continued.

"The simplest explanation, without need to include any other suddenly vanished personages, is that Youmu is the child born of a union between Youki and yourself. A literal half-human, half-ghost, born of a human father and a ghostly daughter. By human standards, that would be incest, but given the time timelines involved and the fact that your memory was sealed to the point that you wouldn't even have recognized your father, I wonder if it could really be seen as a sin on your part?"

"You loved Youki, and bore his child without ever realizing that he might have been your father. But it couldn't last forever. Sooner or later, you discovered his identity and so in order to spare you the pain of your realization he turned to the great Youkai Sage. Either he or the sage herself then sealed your memories. Youki bore the shame for this act, and agreed to renounce his role as husband and father, instead becoming servant and grandfather, so that he could still be a part of life of the woman he loved and the newborn daughter she didn't recognize. That must have been about three hundred years ago or so, I figured."

Yuyuko laughed softly. "Well I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but I clearly remember the day about fifty years ago when Youki first brought Youmu home, saying. 'This is my granddaughter, Youmu.' I don't know who or where her parents are, but I've never asked."

"Yes. When Youmu told me that she was born around fifty years ago, that hypothesis fell apart. She couldn't have been your daughter by Youki, so who was she? I found the answer in these records."

Renko took the ancient book from out of her coat, handling the volume carefully. "They weren't really records though. It was the 5th volume of the 𝘚𝘦𝘯𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘩𝘰, a collection of Saigyou's works. Something that would have been odd to think of as a historical text unless this copy was written by Saigyou himself, as a sort of memoir. Regardless of that though, there was a rather curious tale in here, about Saigyou's attempt to create an artificial person."

"If this volume was Saigyou's own memoir, then Saigyou knew a method of creating a living being from inanimate materials. He had failed in his attempt once before, but that had been hundreds of years ago. He had since learned the proper method from someone else but decided not to use it. What if he eventually changed his mind though? What if he could create something that was indistinguishable from a regular human being?"

Renko cut herself off, stopping for a moment to consider. She took off her hat, running her fingers around its brim as she took a single step closer to Yuyuko.

"By the way, Lady Saigyouji." she continued.

"Yes?"

"You started the Incident after reading the passage in this book about 'Fujimi's daughter' didn't you."

"Yes, that's right."

"How is it that you hadn't considered the possibility that you were trying to resurrect your own corpse, which, as a ghost, would mean the annihilation of yourself? A possibility that we, despite being Outsiders, came up with immediately upon reading this text."

Yuyuko didn't respond, her eyes downcast.

"Lady Saigyouji. You knew, didn't you? You knew that the passage about Fujimi's daughter was a forgery, an addition penned by the Youkai Sage, in order to keep you from ever attempting to unseal the Saigyou Ayakashi."

Yuyuko remained silent.

"When I asked a historian in the village to appraise this text, she found that the passage about Fujimi's daughter was added in the recent past. Why, I wondered? It's clear that 'Fujimi's daughter' must refer to you, and it's a deduction anyone would come to think that, if they read and believed that passage, unsealing the Saigyou Ayakashi would at the very least endanger your current peaceful life. So the passage existed to stop you from trying. It was a warning, put there for you to find. But you knew that. And you ignored it and tried to break the seal anyway. Why?"

Renko didn't even wait for a response that seemed unlikely to come. "Well, you had told me that someone's corpse was sealed inside the Saigyou Ayakashi, so that had to be the reason one way or the other. If you knew who that corpse was, and you knew it was your own, then you'd have no reason to try to resurrect it. No reason, that is, unless that corpse wasn’t your own.

"You see, your corpse had been sealed inside the Saigyou Ayakashi, but it's just the key. A key to the lock that binds the tree itself. If you were to release the body inside the tree, it would in turn release the seal placed upon the Saigyou Ayakashi, allowing the tree to bloom freely, and you wanted that, even at the risk of destroying yourself. You wanted to let the youkai cherry tree loose, no matter what the cost, right? What could be so important about that youkai? What demon were you so eager to release?"

Yuyuko remained silent, glaring at Renko over the fan.

"I came to the answer with a simple shift in thinking. Why was the cherry tree called the Saigyou Ayakashi? Who named it? Well, if you knew that Youki was Saigyou, and you assume that you were trying to unseal the tree to resurrect Youki, then there's only one explanation: The Saigyou Ayakashi is, itself, the corpse of Youki."

Renko looked up at the cherry blossoms and sighed.

"My guess is that the poet Saigyou, wanting to die under the cherry blossoms beneath a spring moon, did not, in fact, manage such a romantic end. Consumed by the unfulfilled wish to die beneath a cherry tree, Saigyou was unable to move on, becoming a ghost tied to the world by his desires, and eventually a youkai. A youkai cherry tree to be exact, the Saigyou Ayakashi itself, luring others to their demise."

"But it wasn't doing that when we saw it," Renko continued. "After all, it wasn't in bloom. It couldn't have been, as it had been sealed. Sealed to keep something out. Saigyou's soul. When the tree was sealed, the barrier was placed so that the soul of Saigyou could not return to reanimate the tree. Instead, it was trapped outside of the youkai's body. A disembodied phantom, just floating about on its own. Until someone gave it a body, that is. Using the same technique Saigyou had mastered, a body was created for that spirit, giving it a new form. That form was Youki Konpaku. That's why he gave himself such a poetic name. He was the soul of Saigyou mourning what he had become."

"As for how it was done, it was through the art of removing souls and imbuing them into objects."

This time, Yuyuko's eyes widened in astonishment.

"I have a theory. It's just a little story I've made up, purely out of my own imagination. I don't have any evidence to support this one, just a guess at what might make sense. It would have happened about a thousand years ago, when the Saigyou Ayakashi last bloomed. Just before then Saigyou would have been alive, and I imagine he was living with you—when you were alive. Old and infirm, he wished to die under the cherry trees. When he passed on, his unfulfilled wish caused him to be bound to this world. Unable to move on, he eventually became a youkai in the form of a demonic cherry tree, luring people to their deaths with his beauty. When you learned of this, you resolved to put an end to it, using the techniques of soul manipulation you had been taught by him. Your plan was to allow it to draw you in and use your own corpse as a vessel to house Saigyou's soul, forcing him out of the tree so that it could be sealed. It didn't work though. You were drawn into the tree, died, and your body was swallowed by the roots. Saddened by your failure to bring Saigyou peace, you then became a ghost too."

"The Youkai Sage came across the Saigyou Ayakashi, with the two intertwined souls and your corpse sealed inside it and was moved by the tragedy of your and Saigyou’s existence. She moved the Saigyou Ayakashi to the Netherworld, where it would never kill again. She created a new body for Saigyou, an artificial person to house his soul, pulled him from the Saigyou Ayakashi, and sealed the tree with a barrier so he couldn't return. Hakugyokurou, and your role as Administrator of the Netherworld were to be an eternal rest of sorts. A peaceful, quiet existence after an afterlife filled with so much tragedy and death.

Yuyuko was silent for a moment. When she spoke, it wasn't to Renko, but to herself, her eyes on the reed mat strewn with blossoms. "...was that how things were supposed to go?"

"It couldn't last forever though. Youki was the soul of a youkai in an artificial body. The body itself would decay over time. Likely he had to perform the act of creating a new artificial body for himself many times over the centuries. If Youki's soul was ever allowed to escape its body, it might re-enter the Saigyou Ayakashi. Eventually he realized that he couldn't keep up the process forever. Sooner or later, his artificial body would fail unexpectedly, or else the ritual for creating a new body would fail, and his soul would return to its true home, breaking the seal on the youkai cherry tree."

"That was maybe 300 years ago that Youki realized this. Having just created a new body for himself one last time, he asked the Youkai Sage to seal your memories. He then became your servant, someone who you wouldn't miss if he were to vanish suddenly. He continued to live with you in this role as long as he could, but eventually, as this body began to fail, he prepared to take his leave. He couldn't bear the thought of leaving you all alone though, so using the same technique he had perfected to make his own bodies, he created Youmu. That’s why Youmu’s a half-phantom. She’s an artificial person, just like he was."

Yuyuko said nothing, but stood up and turned away, looking out to the edge of the shrine grounds, over the whole of Gensokyo spread out below.

Renko continued, speaking now to Yuyuko's back. "But some part of you still knew. Or knew part of it anyway. You knew you had forgotten something. You knew that the Saigyou Ayakashi couldn't bloom, and when Youki vanished, you knew that somehow it was connected to the tree. That's why you tried to make it bloom. To bring back Youki. To—"

"...To find out what he was to me. I remembered that he had been more than a servant to me once, but what it was, I couldn't give a name."

Yuyuko's voice was soft. Soft enough to nearly be erased by the rustling of the cherry blossoms on the wind. A whisper spoken to the falling petals. A moment later, a gust of wind picked up and that secret was scattered, carried out over the edge of the hill to vanish into the shining sunlight. The cherry blossoms whirled around Yuyuko, and for a moment, it looked as if she might disappear along with them.


—27—


The illusion lasted only a moment. When the gust died down, Yuyuko was still there, even if the petals had all blown away.

"So that was your real motive," Renko said, rising to her feet.

Yuyuko turned back to face us, a calm but unmoving smile on her face, her eyes closed. "You're quite a scary human. I didn't think you would see that much. Maybe that's why Yukari sent you to me."

"Well, I'm very flattered that you think so, but whether we met the Youkai Sage's expectations or not, she probably intended for us to stop you from attempting to break the seal on the Saigyou Ayakashi in the first place. There must be a reason why she couldn’t intervene directly as she seems committed to using the most roundabout methods possible. First that ambiguous warning disguised as a historical document, and then sending us to Hakugyokurou, likely in the hope that we might help you understand the warning. That said, even if we had talked you out of it, you would have eventually found another way and tried all the same, wouldn't you?"

"Of course."

"I think the sage must have known that. If so, there had to be some other purpose for her interference, and some reason she took such a roundabout approach. Perhaps she expected us to understand your motive before you could act on it. If that's the case, then I'm sad to say the great detective, who chose to wait and see how things turned out, has missed her chance. If that was her intent, then I will concede that I had failed her challenge."

Yuyuko laughed softly from behind her unfolded fan. "Yukari is so lazy, always getting others to do her work for her, even though it's impossible to perfectly manipulate others. How did you discover my purpose though? Did you think it all up just from realizing the true identity of Youki?"

"No, not entirely. The other clue was Youmu."

"Youmu?"

"Yes. While we were at Hakugyokurou, we never saw her eat once."

Yuyuko opened her eyes, an expression of surprise once more playing across her face.

Renko opened the worn volume she was holding. "The story here suggests that part of the ritual needed to create an artificial person involves fasting for seven days. Youmu always appeared too busy to eat, but that wasn’t just because of her duties —she was preparing to bring Youki's soul into another artificial body, wasn't she? You going off to fight Reimu and the others was a smokescreen to allow Youmu to perform the ritual unobserved."

"In fact, the whole plan of gathering up spring from Gensokyo was a great camouflage. By gathering spring, you could not only break the seal on the Saigyou Ayakashi —which I imagine you could probably have accomplished any number of other ways, but you would also both conceal your true intention in breaking the seal and keep the Youkai Sage out of your hair, as you knew she'd be unavailable to stop you during the winter. Was all of that part of the plan? If so, well done."

"I'm sorry to receive such a compliment. In the end though, Yukari managed to ruin my plans all the same. Youmu was no match for her, and the ritual failed. Even though I broke the seal, Youki's soul wasn't released."

Yuyuko sighed, suddenly looking much older than her timeless looks would suggest. "I wonder what Youki meant to me before I lost my memories. I don't know if your little story can be believed or not. I can't recall at all. If he was my father, what was I to him that he would turn his back on me and seal away my memories? Both Youki and Yukari must have worked together to hide everything about him from me, but why would they? Whether the truth is beautiful or horrible isn't it up to me to determine if I like it or not?"

"Well perhaps, but releasing his soul could have cost you your existence. Unsealing Youki's soul would also have revived your corpse, right?"

"No, there's not a chance of that." Yuyuko turned her gaze toward the shrine's kitchen, where Youmu was trying to carry plates of food while shooing away numerous phantoms. "Even if the tree were to be completely unsealed, there's no danger of my corpse being revived. When Youki decided to leave, he took out an insurance policy to 'protect' me in case I ever tried to release his soul."

Renko and I took a slow breath and looked at eachother. "...Lady Saigyouji, is Youmu's body made from your corpse?"

Yuyuko continued to watch, but never answered.



After that we parted ways with Yuyuko and returned to the picnic with the others beneath the trees behind the shrine. Renko wasted no time in locating Alice and made a beeline to sit beside her.

"Oh there you two are. We were wondering where you had disappeared to," she said as we approached.

"We were just exploring around," Renko said vaguely. "But now that I've found you, do you mind if I ask you something?"

"Me? What is it?"

"If a dead person's soul were to be attached somehow to another dead person's corpse, would that create the sort of autonomous doll you're looking for, Miss Alice?"

Alice's eyes widened in shock, taken back by the suddenness of the question.

"It might work, I suppose, but it's not at all what I'm looking for. That would just be the pre-made soul of someone else."

"Ah, and you intend to create a soul itself with your own hands, right?"

"That's right. That's what it means to create a truly autonomous doll to me."

So that's why she had been going into the Netherworld and following Youmu whenever she could. She wanted to see how Saigyou's artificial person worked.

"She looks like a human in every way, and thinks and acts as a servant of her own accord. It turned out to be nothing more than a simple body replacement though. Meaning there's nothing left to interest me in the Netherworld now."

Saying this, Alice stood up.

"Oh, are you leaving?"

"Yes. I've had my fill of this drunken revelry. There's nothing more for me to see here. Good day to you." With a swoosh of her long skirt, Alice turned and walked away. I watched her go, then turned to Renko.

"There's one thing I don't get, Renko."

"Oh? What's that?"

"Saigyou supposedly became a monk at a young age in hopes of reviving his best friend, right? That's what you had mentioned to Miss Keine before. Or possibly as a result of a broken heart. That was Miss Keine's theory."

"Right."

"Who do you think that person that he lost was? Do you think that 'friend' or 'lover' might have actually been..."

I shook my head. I couldn't bring myself to suggest it.

Renko finished the thought I couldn't. "Saigyouji Yuyuko. I think you're probably right. She was probably Saigyou's lost love in life. That's why she named herself Saigyouji, and why that passage added to the record referred to her as 'Fujimi's daughter.' To hide the fact that their relationship was anything more than familial. The two were separated early in life. Saigyou's first attempt at creating an artificial person was intended to recreate the lover he lost, whether that was because she had died, I can't say. My guess is that at some point he went about creating an artificial person again, and this time succeeded in creating Saigyouji Yuyuko. After which point…"

Renko popped her hat back on and continued her explanation.

"If Youmu's body is made from Yuyuko's corpse from when she was still alive, then that begs the question of whose soul Youki put in it. When Youmu arrived, she was just a baby, so it would have had to be the soul of someone who died very young, I imagine. It could even have been..."

"Their child?”

"Well if the two of them did reunite toward the end of Saigyou's mortal life, whether Yuyuko was still in her original body or not, it's possible that they might have conceived a child. If Saigyou's death was a result of a sudden unexpected illness rather than a gradual decline, he might even have died before the child was born. If Yuyuko gave her life to seal the Saigyou Ayakashi while pregnant, then the soul of that child might have been trapped in that tree as well."

She exhaled heavily, her shoulders falling like the levers of a bellows.

"Ultimately, it's all just a story. A fantasy to join all the other illusions in Gensokyo. Only a mute, withered cherry tree sealed in the Netherworld and the elusive Youkai Sage know the whole truth, and I couldn't make a guess as to which would be harder to get an answer from. No matter the backstory though, I think in the end Youki just wanted Saigyouji to be happy. That's why he did what he did and sealed her memories. I don't know if it was out of love, or a sense of guilt or what, but that sort of thing is beyond the realm of even a great detective. Right, Watson?"

She pulled the brim of her hat up from her eyes and looked up toward the horizon, off to the west, out over the panorama before the shrine, where the sun was beginning now to descend.

"Besides," she said. "I wonder if Youki might actually not be sealed up in that tree at all."

"What?"

"Well we know he planned to leave after creating Youmu, and that roughly 50 years after creating her he did. But we only have conjecture as to why. It might have been that his artificial body was failing, as I suggested before, or it might have been something else. I wonder how many times a soul, removed from a body can survive being put into an artificial shell? Or how long a soul can live without being reincarnated. Maybe it wasn't his body that was giving out, but his soul. Or maybe something in the process of binding a soul to a body still wasn't quite right. Either way, I think Youki lost hold of who he was. Losing his memories to time may even be why he asked the sage to seal away Yuyuko's memories, so that she could be free of him when he forgot her. I think Youki might have lost his sense of self, and eventually become no more than a typical phantom."

"You're thinking about that time you grabbed Youmu's half-phantom and she didn't notice, right?"

"It was following her around, but it wasn't part of her. It could have been anyone. But it could have been Youki. A lie to cover a lie to cover a lie. Lift one illusion, only to find another."



—And that is the end of the story of the Spring Snow Incident.

Though, I have one more story to tell you. It was during this flower-viewing party that the nine-tailed fox appeared in the Netherworld, and started a fight with Reimu, a brawl which led to another disturbance. And to my first meeting with 𝘩𝘦𝘳.