東方プロジェクト二次小説・オリジナル小説サイト
Chapter 9:Double Dealing Character

At times like these, when a new character or element is introduced into the story, there's always someone who you can count on to immediately make the situation more complicated. Out of respect for that person's privacy, I won't mention the name 'Kochiya Sanae.'

"Who are you?" Sanae shouted into the storm, surging ahead of us and pointing her wand at the girl sitting on the drum. "You're some kind of evil youkai, aren't you? I'll exterminate you!"

Unexpectedly, the girl responded with a joyful bark of a laugh. "Hah! You recognize me as a youkai? That's awesome. You're the famous shrine maiden who exterminates youkai, right?"

"Oh, does the Moriya Shrine count as 'famous' now? That's right! I'm the wind priestess of the Moriya Shrine, Kochiya Sanae! If I exterminate you, our shrine will become even more popular!"

"Wait a minute. Moriya? Kochiya? That doesn't sound right..." the drummer twisted her head in thought. It seemed clear to me she had been expecting Reimu, at least by reputation. "Well whatever. Just so you know, trying to seal me would be useless."

"You're pretty confident. Why don't we have a danmaku match and see if it's useless or not!"

"Wait, Sanae! Hold on!" Renko interrupted, leaning forward and grabbing the hem of Sanae's skirt as she flew past.

"Huh? What is it, Boss?"

"You're acting just like Reimu here, rushing in to exterminate every youkai you see. Wouldn't it be better to follow Lady Kanako's example and handle things with a more mature, calculating approach? We don't even know what she wants here yet."

"Hmmph." Sanae turned and stared at the youkai hovering before the storm, one cheek puffing out as she huffed and pouted. She seemed dissatisfied, but comparing her to Reimu seemed to have worked to calm her down. I suppose when you have two people in the same line of work, differentiating yourself from your competitors is important.

"Now," Renko said, adjusting the collar of her trenchcoat and pulling down on the brim of her hat. "It's nice to meet you, Miss Drum Tsukumogami. My name is Usami Renko."

"Oh, how polite. I'm Horikawa Raiko, and as you guessed I am indeed a drum tsukumogami."

Renko took off her hat and nodded to her, bowing as best she could while sitting astride Genji. A strange look came over the tsukumogami’s face for a moment As she peered intently at my partner.

"Hmn?"

"What’s wrong?"

"Huh. Nevermind, I can worry about that later. Anyway, like I was saying, I'm here to help those two."

"You can help us?" Benben asked, moving forward as a curious note sounded from her Biwa.

"Help us! Help us please!" Yatsuhashi pleaded, rushing to draw up alongside her sister with both hands raised in the air.

"You two are losing your power bit by bit and if things continue as they have been you'll soon be turning back into regular objects, right? You worked so hard to become youkai and now you don't want to go back to just being tools, right? Well I can show you how to survive."

Both of the Tsukumo sisters' faces lit up at that statement. Renko looked intrigued for her part. The only person who looked dissatisfied was Sanae.

"Boss, you can't let her do that," Sanae said, turning to Renko. "This flying 𝐷𝑟𝑢𝑚𝑀𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑎 lady is trying to increase the number of youkai in Gensokyo! She's an enemy of humanity!"

"What's 𝐷𝑟𝑢𝑚𝑀𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑎?"

"Everyone knows 𝐷𝑟𝑢𝑚𝑀𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑎! 𝑃𝑎𝑅𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑎 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑅𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑟 is way better than anything Konami puts out though, and 𝑆𝑝𝑎𝑐𝑒 𝐶ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑛𝑒𝑙 5 was a masterpiece. Honestly, I think I should exterminate her just because she's 𝐷𝑟𝑢𝑚𝑀𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑎!"

What on earth was she talking about?

"You two humans riding the turtle over there, are you the owners of those tsukumogami?" Raiko asked looking straight at us.

"Us? No, no, we’re just acting as guides at the moment. These two tsukumogami don’t want to turn back into tools, so they asked us to find a way to prevent that."

"Oh, so our goals are the same then. Your name was Usami Renko, right? Can you just leave these two with me? I'll take care of them."

"Well that's a generous offer, but can you at least tell me what you're planning to do with them first?. For all I know you could be an evil youkai trying to take advantage of two innocent young tsukumogami."

Renko was fiddling with the brim of her hat as I tried to conceal my expression of surprise. It was rare for Renko not to dive into an opportunity like this head-first. I wondered if she was still thinking about Seija, who had deceived and misled Shinmyoumaru.

The Tsukumo sisters looked uncertainly from Raiko to Renko and then back again.

"That's fair. I wonder what I could say to get a human to trust me though?"

"Well you could start by telling us a little about who you are."

"Like I said, I'm a tsukumogami drum. I came into being as a result of the recent incident."

"You seem pretty advanced for a newborn tsukumogami."

"Thank you for saying so. I guess that means all my efforts paid off."

"And what efforts would those be?"

"I figured out a way for tsukumogami like us to keep on living as youkai, without any power from the source that originally brought us to life. Now I want to teach other tsukumogami how to do the same. Having to disappear and turn back into tools after we've been granted life just because the magic ran out is too cruel, don't you think? We should have the same right to live as any other youkai."

Did that mean that she knew about the Miracle Mallet, I wondered?

"Ah! You understand us!" Benben said, drifting forward toward Raiko.

"Please help us! We beg you, o savior!" Yatsuhashi cried, following after her.

The two girls both floated towards Raiko, who grinned as they took up positions on either side of her, floating just below her in the air. Raiko smiled as she leaned forward to pat their heads. "Don't worry. That's what I'm here for."

"Boss! Our clients just teamed up with the new youkai! What do we do?"

Renko waved dismissively at Sanae and continued her questioning. "Could you tell us how your method of surviving as a youkai works, exactly?"

"Hey, you are actually a human, right? I kind of sense the presence of another tsukumogami, but that’s just your coat, isn’t it. Did you know it’s on the verge of becoming one of us?"

"What? Oh! Trenchy! Do you still have a little bit of magic left in you?" Renko's coat, which as far as I could tell had been behaving normally ever since we had returned from the castle must still have had some small trace of magical power in it, I supposed, though I certainly couldn't see any sign of it.

“Should I turn it into a youkai as well?"

"No need to do that," Renko said, "but I would like to know what your method entails, if only for the sake of my own intellectual curiosity."

"Yeah? Well if that coat ever gets old enough to become a tsukumogami, send it my way."

"For now though, could you tell me how it works?"

"Yeah, I want to know too!" Yatsuhashi demanded.

"It's real, right?" Benben asked. "You're going to save us, right?"

"It's simple. All we have to do is replace the power you've been relying on with something else," Raiko said with an easy smile.

"Something else?" Benben tilted her head.

"Sure. A power from outside of yourselves is what turned you into tsukumogami in the first place and now that it's gone, you're fading away. So the only way to survive as a youkai is to find a new source of external power to sustain you."

"Easier said than done! Where are we supposed to find something like that?" Yatsuhashi cried, sounding panicked.

"Well that's the trick. Don't worry, I know of something that'll do." Raiko winked mischievously and kicked one of her feet against the skin of the drum she was sitting on, eliciting a peal of thunder as a bolt of lightning surged down from the clouds. "What you need is an external source of power like mine. Something strong."

"Something strong... From outside ourselves..."

"Think of it this way: the power of any tool is the power of its user. So what you two need is some new users. Strong ones. You'll need new bodies too though. Ones that can make use of this new power. Tsukumogami are divine spirits residing inside of tools, so you can change out your bodies. All we have to do is find suitable replacement tools to move your spirits into."

The Tsukumo sisters glanced at each other uncertainly.

"You're saying I'd have to throw my body away?" Benben asked looking worriedly down at her biwa, which thrummed a melancholy note.

"That and find a new one to replace it. One that doesn't rely on magic."


—26—


The idea of doing something like that is a staple in several subgenres of science fiction. There are countless novels, manga and movies that play with the idea of a human transferring their consciousness into the body of a clone, or a robot, or the body of a completely different person in order to rejuvenate. To do something like that one would have to make a radical assumption—that a person's self-identity was something entirely unrelated to their physical form, and thus that identity could be maintained regardless of changes to physiology.

The Tsukumo sisters seemed to be just as hesitant to accept that idea as I was, looking at each other with troubled expressions, clearly wary of the idea of discarding their own bodies.

Sanae too seemed to be instinctually distrustful of Raiko. "Boss, that 𝐷𝑟𝑢𝑚𝑀𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑎 lady has to be lying. A tsukumogami swapping out its body would be like Anpanman putting on a new head. I don't think youkai can do that."

"I wouldn't discount it right out of the gate, Sanae. At least from a theoretical perspective it sounds like it might work." It was a predictable response from Renko. She's always been more of a fan of science fiction than I am.

"You don't trust me?" Well I can understand that. I'm living proof that it can work though. My body used to be a taiko drum." It was as I had expected. She had to have been born from the missing drum that we had been asked to find. "If I had stayed as I was, then that magical power that animated me would have tried to control me. So what I did was find a drum from the Outside World and replace my body with that. After I had done it, I began to feel magical power from the Outside World flowing into me. Strong power. Much stronger than I used to have."

"Magical power from the Outside World?" Sanae blurted, her eyes suddenly going wide. "How could power from the Outside World cross into Gensokyo?"

"The Great Barrier doesn't matter to tools. Objects can pass through it just fine, and whoever the person in the Outside World is who owns the drums that I’m using as a body, they seem to have a lot of magical power."

I suppose what she was saying was plausible. Numerous objects from the Outside World do end up falling into Gensokyo from time to time. Many of them eventually ended up at Korindo or Muenzuka, so it was believable that she could have found a set of modern drums like she appeared to have floating around her, but I had no idea what she could mean by the 'magic of the Outside World.'

"Renko, that's nonsense isn't it? There's no such thing as magic in the Outside World."

Renko's fingers danced over the brim of her hat thoughtfully. "I wonder about that, Merry. Maybe there's a drummer out there somewhere with actual magical abilities. Or maybe the art of playing an instrument might be a kind of magic unto itself."

A part of me wished that I could accept such a fantastical premise as easily as Renko did. Could the ability to play the drums really count as a form of magic by itself?

"At any rate, the magic of the Outside World doesn't try to influence me like the power that created us did. My recommendation to the two of you is to find an instrument that recently arrived here from the Outside World that you could use as a body. Maybe something like a mandolin or a kantele."

"A mandolin?"

"A kantele?" Both girls spoke in unison, getting a feel for the foreign words.

As a fan of mystery novels the first thing to come to mind when hearing the word 'mandolin' is of course the murder weapon from Ellery Queen's 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑇𝑟𝑎𝑔𝑒𝑑𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑌, which you should pick up from the foreign language section at Suzunaan if you ever get the chance. The Kantele... I had heard of it before, I think... Was it a Finnish instrument?

"Yeah, or something like that." Raiko then turned her attention to us. "Do you think you could help them find new instruments they could use as bodies?"

"Eh?"

"You said you were trying to help them, right?"

"Well, yeah..."

"Good. Go find something for them, then come back here."

And just like that it was decided.

Renko fiddled with the brim of her hat for a moment longer, muttering to herself, then looked back at Raiko. "Alright, I'll do that."

"Alright then, see you soon." Having said that, Raiko once again looked at Renko, tilting her head slightly as she looked over my partner's face. She was wearing an odd, contemplative expression at that time, but she never explained what she was thinking to us.

—

Thus, the next day we found ourselves heading to Kourindou.

"Mr. Rinnosuke! Do you have a biwa? Or a koto? Or anything similar?" was the question Renko asked as soon as she threw open the door.

"Hello again, Renko. Another abrupt entrance as usual, I see," Rinnosuke said dryly without looking up from his book. Then, almost as an afterthought "...welcome."

We had come to the second-hand goods shop on the edge of the Forest of Magic without Sanae this time. She had still been uncomfortable with the idea of helping the Tsukumos, saying her job was to exterminate youkai rather than aid them.

"You're looking for string instruments, I take it? I'm afraid I don't have exactly what you're looking for, but I do have a shamisen, and this ukulele."

"Ooo, what do you think, Benben? Would you like to be a ukulele tsukumogami?" Renko asked.

Benben wrinkled her nose in a look of obvious distaste. "Ukulele..." she said, the word falling from her mouth as if it had a sour taste. One of the higher strings on her biwa twanged.

"Tsukumogami?" Rinnosuke asked. He seemed surprised, but not alarmed. "Ah, I see. I thought I hadn't seen your faces before, but that's because you're newborn youkai."

"These are the Tsukumo sisters, Benben and Yatsuhashi. They're a biwa and a koto. We’re looking for new bodies for them to use."

"New bodies for a tsukumogami? That's a rather unusual request. I had thought once a tool became a tsukumogami the original object was more or less their body."

"We have reason to believe it can be done. Do you have anything else that might work?"

"Hmm. Let me see..." Rinnosuke turned and began perusing his vast but cluttered inventory. While we stared blankly at the numerous odd knick-knacks and waited, the door to the store opened, and another customer walked into the cramped confines.

Rinnosuke heard the sound of the door opening and turned around to look. The girl who had entered the store was a familiar face. A slight, short girl with a trio of small, black-feathered wings. Two on her back and one sprouting from the side of her head. We had encountered this girl on several occasions, reading a book in front of Kourindou. Renko had tried to strike up a conversation with her each time, but she would always run away without saying more than a few words to us, so we had never had a proper conversation with her.

As she came in the door, her eyes widened at the sight of us. After a few moments of awkward staring she sidled quickly past the four of us and over to Rinnosuke, who bent down so she could whisper something in his ear.

"Ah, these girls are looking for musical instruments." He replied. The girl looked surprised by that statement and twisted her head in thought for a moment. Then she turned to whisper to Rinnosuke again.

"Oh?" Rinnosuke asked. The girl nodded. He turned to us. "Miss Renko, this girl suggests that you might have better luck finding what you're looking for if you were to visit that food cart run by a night sparrow youkai. Do you know the one?"

"Misty's Izakaya?" By 'Misty', Renko of course meant Mystia Lorelei. I believe she's appeared in these casefiles only once or twice, but Renko and I had encountered her numerous times as she ran a food cart outside of the village. We had visited her there on a few occasions, and 'Misty' is what most of her friends seemed to call her.

Apparently she and Kasodani Kyouko, the yamabiko from the Myouren temple, had formed a two-person youkai punk rock band recently. They were somewhat notorious for performing live and very loud concerts outside of the Myouren Temple, something which had gotten Kyouko scolded by Byakuren on several occasions. At the very least, it seemed that she might own a few instruments. I wondered how this ibis-winged youkai girl might know Mystia. Perhaps all of Gensokyo's youkai birds had a network of sorts?

"Yes, that's it." Rinnosuke said with a nod. "Apparently she collects old musical instruments. The whole while Rinnosuke was saying that, the gir standing beside him was nodding emphatically. I exchanged a quick glance with Renko. I suppose it was worth a shot.

—

We left Kourindou without buying anything and took flight once more, heading this time for the Myouren Temple. Neither Renko nor I knew where Mystia lived or where we might find her during the day when her cart hadn't been set up yet, but we knew where to find Kyouko at least.

"Do you really think we'll find anything here? I think that bird girl was just trying to kick us out of the shop," Yatsuhashi grumbled.

"I think we might have been in the way of something," Benben replied with a brief laugh that sounded like a chord.

I wasn't sure myself. The book-reading girl was a regular fixture at Kourindou and could often be seen there, but I have no idea if she frequented the place for its odd collection of mismatched Outside World books or for Mr. Morichika's company. If either was the case, she had odd taste.

Before long we arrived at the gates of the Myouren Temple. Sure enough, Kyouko was visible in the courtyard, sweeping the entranceway as usual. As we descended, she shouted a happy "GOOD MORNING!" up at us. It was already after noon at the time though.

"Good morning, Kyouko," Renko said as she climbed off of Genji's back.

"Are you looking for Miss Mamizou again? She's out today, but the captain is here."

"Actually, I was looking to talk to Misty today. Do you know where she is?"

"Misty?" Kyouko blinked in surprise. "Her food cart won't be open yet."

"That's alright, I'm not in the mood for lampreys or beer at the moment. I have some business I wanted to discuss with her."

"Um. I don't really know where she goes during the day. I think she mainly just kind of wanders around looking for things to do. I'll call her for you."

Kyouko took a deep breath. I took that as a signal to cover my ears. Renko did the same. Kyouko raised her head and cupped one hand to her mouth. "MIIISSSTYYY!!!" She shouted in a deafening blast worthy of a yamabiko. I felt the soundwaves pass through me as a palpable force like a full-body slap. I can't imagine volume like that would be appreciated by the other residents of the Myouren Temple. I looked up toward the sky where we had left the Tsukumo sisters behind to wait for us. They were staggering unsteadily in the air, their hands clamped over their ears. My apologies, Benben and Yatsuhashi, there wasn't time to warn you.

It didn't take very long for Mystia to come flying towards us.

"What is it, Kyouko?" she trilled as she landed. "I heard you all the way over in Muenzuka."

Kyouko greeted her happily then explained the situation. When she had finished Mystia turned towards us, tilting her head inquisitively.

"It's Renko and Merry. What can I do for you two?"

"Hello Misty, I heard that you've been collecting old musical instruments, is that right?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah, I've got a few. Why do you ask?"

"Do you have a biwa or a koto, by chance? Oh, and they have to be instruments that haven’t become tsukumogami."

"A biwa and a koto? I think I have some old ones from the Outside World that I found at Muenzuka recently."

Bingo. What a stroke of luck, and from such an unexpected place.

"Would you be willing to sell them?"

"I have a shakuhachi and a tsuzumi too, but you just want those two? Are you planning on starting a band with someone? If so, you should play with us some time. Human members are welcome in 𝐶ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑗𝑢𝑢 𝐺𝑖𝑔𝑎𝑘𝑢."

"Ah, that definitely sounds fun, but I'm afraid this is a professional inquiry. We've been hired to try to find these instruments on behalf of a youkai.

"This is to help a youkai? Well, I suppose I'm not using those instruments for anything at the moment. We can probably make a deal if the price is right..."

And so they began to haggle. After a lot of hard bargaining my partner managed to talk Misty down to 73% of the price that she had originally asked for.

"Alright, I'll bring them when I open up my cart tonight. Come find me at the entrance to the bamboo forest and you can pick them up."

"Thank you, Misty. We'll bring the money. By the way, what made you decide to start collecting instruments?"

"I was thinking 𝐶ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑗𝑢𝑢 𝐺𝑖𝑔𝑎𝑘𝑢 needed a backup band, but I don't know anyone else who can play music."

Punk music accompanied by traditional Japanese instrumentation? How avant garde. Well, from what we had heard, Kyouko considered screaming the heart sutra at the top of her lungs to be a valid punk song, so I suppose adding a little traditional flare wouldn't be all that out of place.

"Oh, well in that case, once I've delivered these instruments to our clients, assuming all goes well maybe I'll introduce you to them."

"Oh that sounds like fun! I can't wait to jam with them."

Renko and Mystia shook on the deal and our negotiations were concluded. I can't help but feel that the Tsukumo sisters were being bought and sold without their permission, almost in an almost literal sense.


—27—


Thus, we met with Misty at sundown and obtained the new (to us, anyway) koto and biwa she had brought before heading out the next night along with the Tsukumo sisters in search of Raiko Horikawa. Happily, when we had shown the instruments to Benben and Yatsuhashi they had deemed them acceptable.

Raiko hadn't told us exactly where to find her, but we figured that looking for anywhere a thunderstorm was occurring was probably a safe bet. Sanae was accompanying us tonight as well, having insisted on acting as our bodyguard, as in her opinion, Raiko seemed stronger than she had any right to be.

"I just don't think we can trust Miss 𝐷𝑟𝑢𝑚𝑀𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑎."

"Well she hasn't done anything suspicious yet, really."

"She's offering to help out other youkai for free! That's pretty suspicious on its own. Youkai are usually way more selfish than that."

"Well, free or not, she may just be trying to create more allies for herself."

"Whatever her motivations might be, I'm surprised that you're helping her, Boss. Aren't you worried that Miss Reimu will get mad at you for helping out a youkai?"

"We’ll talk her into overlooking this like we always do, don’t worry about Reimu."

Isn't that a problem? Not in Renko's mind, apparently. Reimu could hardly be blamed for it either. During both the Treasure Ship Incident and the recent incident involving Kokoro, we had definitely worked to assist youkai.

Anyway, as we flew toward some storm clouds gathered at the foot of Youkai Mountain, Raiko appeared before us just as before, making her way out of the dark skies as lightning pulsed behind her. Seeing Sanae scowling at her, the Tsukumo sisters looking nervous, and Renko and I holding a biwa and a koto, she nodded, looking satisfied.

"Awesome, looks like you're ready. I'll take the sisters and the instruments and we can get started."

"Why do you have to take them somewhere, couldn't you do the body swap here?" Sanae asked suspiciously.

"It takes a while and I won't be able to watch our backs while it's happening. I'm not gonna do that with someone who likes to exterminate youkai around."

Sanae got a particularly sour expression on her face and grumbled. I merely shrugged and looked over at the Tsukumo sisters. In the end the decision of whether or not to trust Raiko had to be theirs. The Tsukumo sisters looked at each other, then flew over and took their new instruments from our hands before floating over to Raiko, who welcomed them with open arms.

"Alright then. I'll take care of the rest."

"If the Tsukumo sisters are okay with that, then there's nothing more for me to say." Renko said as she fiddled with the brim of her hat.

The two of them glanced at each other then both nodded to Renko.

"...Thank you for all of your help."

"Thank you, humans!"

"Good luck to you both. Merry and I will be hoping for the best!" Renko said, waving at the three of them.

Sanae was still glaring suspiciously at Raiko, but Raiko ignored her, instead chatting happily for a moment with the Tsukumo sisters before suddenly raising her head.

"Ah, just one more thing I wanted to check before we go," Raiko said before flying towards Renko.

"What is it?"

Raiko suddenly leaned forward, reaching far enough that her face was less than a finger's length away from Renko's. She seemed to be staring intently at Renko's features.

Renko flinched back slightly. "If you're about to tell me that I'm irresistibly beautiful I'm afraid I'll have to inform you that Merry already—Ow! Leggo ob my cheek, Mebby!"

"Whatever you were about to say, just don't."

Raiko paid no mind to either Renko's stupidity or my well-deserved response. She kept staring deeply into Renko's eyes for a moment longer. Finally, she nodded to herself, seemingly satisfied.

"Yep, I'm sure of it," she declared.

"Sure of what?" Renko asked, brushing my hand away from her face.

"This drum is from the Outside World. Through it, I can see a little of what its owner in the Outside World sees sometimes. I wouldn't be surprised if they can see a bit of what I see too."

What she said next was completely unexpected. It struck as suddenly as one of Raiko's lightning bolts and had just as stunning an impact on the two of us, changing this otherwise perfectly ordinary incident from a story like any of the other cases we had been through into a personal story, an incident that was all about us.

"Your name is Usami Renko, right? Huh. You really do look a lot like her."

Renko stared at her, bewildered. "Like who?"

"A friend of the person who I'm connected to in the Outside World. If you were to wear glasses, I might not be able to tell the two of you apart. I'm pretty sure that she's a bit younger than you though. I wonder who your look-alike in the Outside World is…"

Of course there was one person who I thought of immediately. The only person I could imagine who would be living in the Outside World and would look a lot like Renko. A person who had been the start of everything we had experienced here. Renko's great aunt. Usami Sumireko.