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

As Renko concluded we at last heard a sound from behind the screen—the sudden scraping of a chair as Satori abruptly stood up.

"If you're finished, then may I ask you to leave?" was all that she said. The tone of her voice made it clear that no further answer to Renko's question should be expected.

Renko stood up as well and put her hat back on, tilting it low over her eyes. "My apologies, Miss Komeiji. I'm sorry to have offended you. I'll take my leave now, but I'd like to offer one more suggestion before I go. Reimu and Marisa, the two humans who invaded the Underworld yesterday, will likely be heading to the Moriya Shrine today or tomorrow to confront Kanako about recent events.If you want to spread Koishi's story among powerful and influential surface dwellers, why not send her to meet those two?"


Marisa might have trouble seeing her, but I expect Reimu will at least be able to sense her presence. Her whole line of business as a shrine maiden is listening to invisible spirits, so no matter what Koishi's nature is, I'm sure Reimu could be of help to her."

"...Are you going to tell Koishi to go meet those two?"

"Well, that all depends on if we happen to see her again. My hope is that since, according to Parsee, Koishi is down here somewhere, she might appear before Merry at some point before we leave. She's been seeking out children on the surface who can see her and she reached out to Merry as well, so my guess is that she may be lonely and longing to talk to someone who can perceive her."

Satori was again silent, her presence on the opposite side of the screen weighing awkwardly in the room.

"I’m sorry if what I’ve said has offended you. I hadn’t intended that as a criticism…"

"This conversation is over now. I’ll thank you to be on your way."

"We'll take our leave then. Come on, Merry."

With that I turned and bowed to the folding screen, then followed Renko as she made for the door.

◇

After leaving the room we made our way back toward the entrance of the palace. As we walked I looked over at my partner whose head was lowered contemplatively. A troubled expression played across her face as she marched, shoulders slumped and hands buried in her trenchcoat pockets.

"Renko, are you really okay with leaving things like this?"

"I was really hoping Satori would deny some part of it," she grumbled to herself, ignoring my question. Her hat was pulled low, hiding her eyes in shadow as she continued to walk on, staring down at the ground."

"I guess in the end it doesn't matter. Whether my theory is correct or not, the ultimate solution is the same either way - Satori needs to talk with Koishi. She can't keep leaving it to hired hands to deal with her sister." She continued to walk on. "I think the fact that Satori has been getting people like us and the Yama to look for her sister is her way of trying to reach out, but really it just shows how distant those two are. I think both of those girls would be happier if they could make an effort to close that distance. It’s sad to see the two of them separated like this. I’m a very empathic detective, you know?"

"Are you now?"

"Of course I am. But we can’t just sit back and hope things fix themselves on their own. We ought to try and help the two of them out, I suppose. Do you think you could find Koishi so we could tell her about Reimu and Marisa?"

I let out a sigh and looked all around the wide hallway of the Palace of the Earth Spirits.

"Koishi? Are you here? If you are, could I talk with you for a bit?"

Although I couldn’t sense her presence anywhere nearby, I was confident that if she was somewhere nearby, she’d find some way to make her presence known. After a moment of standing and waiting, I heard the distinct patter of running footsteps echoing off of the stone floors around a corner just ahead of us.

"Renko, wait here. I'll be back in a little bit."

"Got it. Be careful," she said with a small wave.

Turning the corner, I tried to determine exactly where I had heard the footsteps. "Koishi? Are you here?" A few more moments passed in silence, then a pale face loomed out of the darkness towards me.

"Here I am! What were you talking to my sister about?" she asked, cocking her head to the side.

"Oh, a whole bunch of things, actually. Why not go and ask her yourself?"

"She won't tell me." Koishi said, emotionlessly. There was no inflection to her voice, but it conveyed an unmistakable sense of loneliness. Koishi may have been the sister to close her third eye, but I wondered if Satori might have committed the deeper transgression in closing her heart to her sister. That's uncharitable of me to say though. I couldn't know what emotions or motivations might pass through Satori's mind.

"I see," I said, nodding and bending over to bring myself to eye level with the girl. "Well, I can tell you about a few of the things we talked about. Do you know what's been going on with your pet Okuu recently?"

"She got really strong! Do you know what that's about?"

"That's the power of Yatagarasu. It was given to her by a mountain god."

"A mountain god?"

"Mhm. Do you know the big, tall mountain on the surface? Well, half-way up that mountain there's a shrine. That's where the mountain god lives."

"Oh! Is that where the shrine maiden comes from? I watched her fight Okuu."

"Umm, she's actually from a different shrine. If you go to the mountain shrine in the next few days though, there's a good chance you might meet the same shrine maiden that Okuu did."

"Can I meet the god too?"

"She'll be there."

"Wow, neat!" Koishi bounced in place, wearing a smile that was an utterly thoughtless and momentary autonomic response. "Oh. But if I go, no one will see me." Her smile faded as she cocked her head to the side.

I smiled back at her, trying to appear comforting. "I don't think that's true. I was able to see you and I'm just a regular human."

"Yeah, that’s weird."

"Yeah, weird. …I think if you really want someone to notice you and you try to express that from the bottom of your heart, they'll probably notice you. You just have to reach out to them properly."

She looked back at me with a puzzled expression on her face.

"Really. Why don't you try it on my partner?."

◇

"Merry, where's Koishi? Did you find her?"

"I found her, but she ran away again."

In the end, Koishi had refused my proposal, declaring "No. Don't wanna," before bolting off. Though I think she might actually have been headed up to the surface to try and find the Moriya Shrine and meet the goddess who had been the source of Okuu’s power or perhaps to meet Reimu and Marisa.

I could only hope that what I had told her was right and that if she really wanted to be seen, Reimu, Marisa or even Sanae might be able to see her.

"She doesn’t seem to be interested in you at all."

"Well I'm interested in her! The idea of a youkai of unconscious thought is quite fascinating."

I shrugged at her. "I don't know what to tell you, Renko. I think I might have found a problem with your earlier theory though."

"What are you thinking?"

"Well, you mentioned that you thought Koishi might have been revived as a youkai of the unconscious mind after completely disappearing, but if that were the case, then how was I able to see her before I ever heard about there being such a thing? The first time I saw her I thought she was a ghost, or partially invisible or something, but I could still detect her. If she was really a new kind of unconscious youkai, wouldn't I have not been able to sense her until I knew that the possibility of such a thing existed?"

In terms of Relativistic Noology, my question made sense. That which cannot be subjectively recognized could be said not to exist, at least for a given individual. Conversely, since I was able to use my own powers of perception to recognize Koishi, rather than have the idea of her planted in my head by someone else’s words or abilities, she really must exist. She was not merely a concept introduced to me by someone else. Put simply, the fact that I was able to see Koishi before I had heard about her from anyone else meant that she had to exist as more than just the shared fantasy of all of the youkai living in the Underworld. She had a presence of her own, and had from the beginning.

Renko eased her hat back on her head, rolling the brim between thumb and forefinger contemplatively. "Hmmm, that's an interesting observation. I’d be interested to try to tease the implications of that out, but I’d just be changing the foundations of my original hypothesis if I were to do so. Maybe The Yama could have initially caused her to have an existence of her own when she judged Koishi to exist, for example. Or it could even be a specialized case of Sheldrake's theory of morphic fields. That's not really my field of expertise though."

Interlocking her fingers behind her head, Renko began walking toward the foyer again, looking up as she mused. "Actually, that's an interesting question for you, Merry. Setting aside the question of whether she's a youkai on the verge of fading away, or a newly created youkai for the moment, do you think any being could deny the very thing that defines their existence and still maintain their sanity? If a youkai can't have their mind read by a mind reader, can't be perceived by others and wanders around unconsciously can they even be said to be conscious?"

It was an old problem in the field of psychology. Basically, Renko was rephrasing the concept of a so-called 'philosophical zombie.' If you had a creature that had no conscious mind but reacted to stimuli as if it did, there'd be no way for an outside observer to determine if that creature was conscious or not, especially since the subjective experience of that creature, if it even existed, would be inviolable. In essence, it's impossible to know what another person’s mind or subjective experiences are like or if they even existed. Everything other people do could have been explained just as well if their responses had been determined ahead of time by an elaborate program of some kind.

Here in Gensokyo, where mind-reading youkai like satori existed, I suppose the question of the mind’s existence was settled. A mind-reading youkai could hardly exist without minds to read.

"...Personally I think that Koishi is conscious." I muttered, staring off in the direction she had disappeared. "In fact, I think I can understand how she must feel."

"Oh? How so?"

"Back when she was a normal satori, everyone around her would have hated and feared her because of her abilities. When you live like that it's a natural instinct to try to make yourself invisible. Even if you want to talk to other people, you find yourself retreating from them out of fear of rejection. On the rare occasion that someone seeks you out to talk to you of their own accord you find yourself running away before you can ever make a connection…Maybe Koishi isn't an unconscious youkai. Maybe she's just a shy, sensitive girl."

That was probably why she constantly fled from Renko. Any time Renko had seen me talking to Koishi she had asked something like ‘who are you talking to?’. That reaction is probably what had driven Koishi away.

I sighed and passed my hand over my eyes. Unpleasant memories of my own adolescence came unbidden into my mind. Memories that I had intentionally locked away long ago. I took a steadying breath and forced them back down, then looked back up at my partner. This arrogant girl, who had forced her way into my life without asking, taken me by the hand and pulled me along after her into a world of adventure and mystery, a world utterly different from the stoic, reserved life I had known before.

"Merry" she said, stepping close to me and raising a hand to my cheek. I closed my eyes and felt the warm softness of her fingers against my skin. Sighing slightly, I lightly pressed my hand over hers, holding it there. The feeling of our hands overlapping confirmed to me that I was here, and that with Renko by my side there was nowhere that I couldn’t brave visiting. No matter what happened or where I might get lost, it felt like Renko would always find me.

—

Well, it wouldn't be appropriate to put the brush down here. If I did, I'd never hear the end of it from Sanae. This isn't a love story about Renko and I. Definitely. And so my epilogue will continue a little longer.

—

"Oh! Are you done talking with Lady Satori, sis?"

"Yes, we are, Orin. Sorry to make you wait."

I had wondered where Orin had disappeared to ever since we left Satori's office, but we found her easily enough at the junction leading to the main hallway, surrounded by a dozen or so of the Komeiji sisters' other pets. They seemed to all be indistinguishable black cats, slightly larger than the average housecat, but otherwise identical. Although they had intimidated us before, now they greeted us with cute meows. I had to remind myself that as youkai, if we were to let our guard down, they would be likely to simply eat both of us.

"If you want to go back to the surface, I can take you now."

"Before that, I was actually hoping I might talk to Okuu for a bit," Renko said. "Does she ever come up here to the palace?"

"Okuu? Sure. Wait here, I’ll go get her for you. That’s better for you than trying to go down to the Hell of Blazing Fires again, right?" With that Orin bounded off and turned out of sight. I smiled and crouched down, reaching a hand out toward one of the cats. With even that faintest brush of contact though, I could feel that its body was hot. I hurriedly pulled my hand back. The other cats who had all been purring in a pile stood up and moved a short distance away. Perhaps an arm's reach was as close as humans and youkai ought to get. We spent a few minutes admiring the cats before a voice called out to us.

"Oh! It's... those people... um…. The humans I met the other day!"

Black wings flapping heavily, Okuu was flying down the corridor towards us. We had only met Okuu yesterday but apparently our presence was already almost a memory to her, only just barely registering in the corners of her mind. Orin was not far behind her, running to catch up and pushing one of her wheelbarrows, draped with a dingy-looking cloth.

Pressing her heels against the stone floor, Orin slowed to a stop, then tilted her head inquisitively. "Nya? When did you meet Okuu, sis?"

"Just yesterday," Renko said, rising to her feet. "We were introduced by the mountain god. Speaking of which, Okuu, I heard that you decided to give up on burning the surface world?"

"Yup. The shrine maiden and the witch live up there and they're really strong! So I gave up."

"Well, as a human who also lives on the surface, I appreciate your restraint. Now that you're not planning on doing it anymore though, do you remember why you had wanted to in the first place?

"Huh? I don't know."

"You were saying before you thought you'd be happy if the surface world were to become a new Hell of Blazing Fires, right?"

"Yeah!"

"Well, do you remember why it would make you happy?"

"Ummm, let me think... Hey Orin, why would things be better if there was a new Hell of Blazing Fires?"

"How would I know?" Orin asked, leaning forward with her hands on her hips and an exasperated expression on her face as Okuu continued to twist her head from side to side, pondering.

"Well, I can take a guess," Renko said, holding up one finger. "Okuu, Orin is your best friend, right?"

"Yeah!" Okuu answered excitedly, all traces of her pensive self-examination forgotten.

"And when Orin is happy, you're happy too, right Okuu?"

"Wait a minute, where are you going with this, sis?"

Renko ignored Orin's outburst and continued. "Now Okuu, your friend Orin is a kasha, right? Kasha are youkai who like to collect corpses, right?"

"Ah! I just remembered! If I burn the surface world, it would make Orin happy because there'd be lots of corpses!" Okuu declared that with a big smile.

Orin stared at her, jaw agape for a moment. "You were doing all of this for me?"

"Uh huh! It's a surprise!"

"Okuu, you're an idiot!" Orin said, leaping up to embrace Okuu and trembling as she did so.

"What's wrong, Orin?"

"It’s nothing.."

"Unyu? It’s okay, Orin," Okuu said, using her left hand to stroke the kasha's hair.

"...You dummy"

Seeing Okuu stroking Orin’s hair while she clung tightly to the hell raven, the scene was heartwarming, a perfect tableau of friendship between the two of them, lit by the glaring underlight streaming up through the stained glass windows set in the floor.

"Hey Renko, does this count as a happy ending?" I whispered.

"It feels a bit like reading Keikichi Osaka's 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑀𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝐿𝑜𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑜𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 but from the pig's point of view, isn't it?"

What an unpleasant comparison. I suppressed a sigh. I wish Renko wouldn't besmirch the name of such an important classic like that.

—

After that, we made our way out of The Palace of Earth Spirits without further delay. It didn't seem appropriate to interrupt the endearing moment Okuu and Orin were sharing, so we saw ourselves out without an escort. I was a bit worried about the prospect of wandering the city alone, but as it turns out we didn't have to. As soon as we left the palace and ventured into the plaza surrounding it we ran into Yamame.

"Heeey! Renko, Merry!" she called, waving us over. "Come back to the party with me, Yuugi's been waiting for you!"

And so we ended up following Yamame and making our way back to another booze-filled oni party in Old Hell. At this point I don't think I need to bother explaining what it was like, but I will mention that Yuugi regaled us with the story of her fierce battle against both Reimu and especially Marisa, who she seemed to have taken a real liking to. I could see why the two of them would be compatible, as both were straightforward, uncomplicated people who faced challenges head on.

In the end, we managed to get away from Yuugi without too much trouble. As we were taking a breather, I asked Renko about one last question that was still lingering in my mind.

"I assume you wanted to go see the hermit on the mountain because you figured that's who Yuugi was talking about?" I asked, thinking of the last time we had been up to the Moriya Shrine. "That hermit wasn't an oni though, was she?"

"Don't you remember the name she gave us, Merry?"

"Um... it was Ibarakasen, wasn't it?"

"Well that's pretty similar to the name Yuugi gave us. And the legends surrounding Ibaraki Douji say he got his right arm chopped off. That hermit's arm..."

"Was all wrapped up in bandages..."

"Exactly. If she really is the same person, then I’d like to find out how she ended up living on the surface as a hermit. Lucky for us that we have a connection with the Moriya Shrine. I don’t think it will be too hard for us to get in touch with her again."

Renko poked the brim of her hat back, away from her eyes, smiling cheerfully. For my partner, whenever there was a new mystery piquing her curiosity was when she was having the most fun. And of course for me that meant that wherever that curiosity led her is where I’d be following along.

"For now though," Renko continued, "we still have one more pressing bit of business to take care of. We need to go talk to the crew of the 𝐻𝑜𝑙𝑦 𝑃𝑎𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑞𝑢𝑖𝑛 again."

"You're really going to suggest that plan you came up with to them? Do you think it has any hope of working?" I asked, resting my head on my hand and regarding Renko with an unimpressed expression. She had mentioned a plan to extract the ship from the depths to me earlier, but I hadn't included it here as it was among the more ridiculous of her musings I had ever heard.

"Hey, what are you two scheming now?" Yamame asked, suddenly appearing over Renko's shoulder. She leaned forward and draped her arms over the both of us, clearly drunk on oni sake. "Let me in on your secret little conference over here." She wobbled unsteadily for a moment, resting her weight on Renko's shoulders, but then recovered her balance. Behind her, Kisume was floating in her bucket, tugging on the hem of Yamame's skirt.

"Actually Yamame," Renko said, smiling up at her, "I'm glad you're here, you're just the sort of person this particular crazy scheme could use."

"Oh yeah? Just leave it to Yamame, the super popular tsuchigumo in Old Hell! What do you need?"

Renko leaned over and cupped her hand to Yamame's ear, quickly whispering the specifics of her plan. After a few whispered back and forth discussions between them, Yamame nodded.

"It's totally insane, but I don't actually think it's impossible. Not if you do it right... Let me see what Don Yuugi thinks. Heeey Bosslady! Renko and I are gonna try something crazy, wanna help?"

This last part she shouted across the square after rising unsteadily to her feet.

"Oh? This oughta be good." Yuugi said, rising up from the mat where she had been drinking with other oni and lumbering over to us.

Yamame waved Yuugi down and cupped a hand to whisper into her ear, standing on her tiptoes as Yuugi bent over. As she related Renko's plan, Yuugi's expression went through several stages, at first doubtful, then confused, then finally, as Yamame finished, she turned and looked at both Yamame and Renko who were staring up at her hopefully and burst out laughing.

"Bwahahahah! That’s perfect! I love insane plans like that. Let’s do it!"

"So you’re okay with us doing this?" Renko asked, grinning up at her.

"I said it was good, didn't I? Oni don't lie. It might make a bit of a fuss for the youkai on the surface, but if it does, I'll just tell them it was your idea. Is that alright?"

"Sure, I’ll take responsibility for it," Renko said with a grin.

I sighed, muttering "another irresponsible promise" under my breath. Neither Yuugi nor Yamame seemed to share my concerns.

"Alright, when do we start?" Yuugi asked. "I can get everyone in the city to help you out if you need it."

Renko turned to me and shot me her cheesiest grin along with a big thumbs-up. I sighed and buried my face in my hand. I could only hope that whatever repercussions fell upon Renko for this wouldn't affect me as well, though honestly that seemed like a rather unlikely chance.

—

"Renko, Merry, console me. I just had the worst day."

Two days after our visit to the Palace of the Earth Spirits, Sanae stopped by our office, making this announcement as she came in the door, then proceeding to immediately collapse on the tatami mats and sulk by the brazier.

"What's wrong, Sanae?"

"Reimu and Marisa just came charging up to my shrine to have words with Lady Kanako again."

"And you decided to fight them again and lost?"

"I even tried out the new miracle you suggested!" Sanae moaned into the tatami. After saying all of that she sat up before warming her hands over the brazier.

"While all of that was happening, did you by any chance happen to spy another visitor to your shrine? She might have been hard to see, a youkai with a very weak presence."

"You know about her too?! I thought at first I had imagined her, but then she came up and shouted at me. She seemed to want to talk to Lady Kanako, but Miss Reimu and Miss Marisa arrived just after she did and got in a fight with her. Do you know her, Renko?"

"So you actually saw her?"

"Yeah, why wouldn't I?"

"Well, it's a long story to explain everything about her, but the important bit is she basically has something like a permanent version of [God's Accomplice] running at all times. For people like you and Merry who are good at seeing things that other people can’t she’s more like a Zetsu master though."

"So she's like Meleoron? Cool!" If you ever desire to understand what Sanae was talking about, you'll have to ask to borrow volume 23 of 𝐻𝑈𝑁𝑇𝐸𝑅 𝑥 𝐻𝑈𝑁𝑇𝐸𝑅 from the Moriya shrine.

"Basically, yes." Renko said, nodding along. "Her name's Komeiji Koishi. What happened after she fought Reimu and Marisa?"

"She went and talked to Lady Suwako for a while. Then she just left."

Renko folded her arms and nodded. I couldn't begin to guess what effect being recognized by Marisa, Reimu and Sanae as well as Lady Suwako might have on someone like Koishi.

"Oh, by the way Sanae, would you mind if we went back to your shrine with you? There's something I wanted to ask Lady Moriya about."

"Oh okay. I'll fly you there. What is it?"

"Nothing much, just a small civil engineering project." Renko replied with a mischievous smile.

Sanae blinked in surprise at that response, but didn't question it further.

—

And that, dear readers, is where this story ends. To go any further and explore the nature of Renko's plans or what became of them would be to step into the territory of the next case. It’s part of the whole business with the treasure ship, which was in full swing by the following spring and led to the creation of the new temple outside the village, as I alluded to in the introduction to this record.

From here, we have never heard any further details about the Vengeful Spirit Incident, or how it may have affected the lives of those living in the Underworld. In my mind though, I like to imagine that after fighting with and being recognized by Reimu and Marisa, Koishi would have wanted to tell someone about her adventures and she might have gone back home to the Palace of the Earth Spirits.

If there's any hint of truth to my partner's suspicion that this event was caused by Satori for her sister's sake, then I think such an ending would be appropriate, even if it's only my baseless fantasy.

I can see in my head exactly how it would go. After the sound of Koishi knocking faded, on either side of the door to Satori's office would be the two Komeiji sisters. The elder would have been waiting for her sister to come home and despite not being able to see her, might somehow sense her presence. Hesitantly, she’d call out, speaking words that the two of them had never needed before.

"Welcome home, Koishi."

The younger sister might then be able to finally start a conversation, finally saying things that the two of them had needed to hear from the other for a long time.

"I’m home. Sister, Listen…

[End of Book 8: Subterranean Animism]

—

𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐀𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝:

Thank you for reading this far. I am Asagihara Shinobu, the author. I hope you enjoyed reading the record of Subterranean Animism. It's the longest story I've ever written.

When I initially conceived of this story, I intended for Renko to solve a mystery for every one of the eight characters introduced in the prologue and the initial question which opens the story is a bit of a remnant of that.

I have a feeling that just about everything that can be done with Komeiji sisters has already been done in fanfiction, so you may have read a story like this one somewhere else before. If that's the case, then you have my apologies.

The next story will be for Touhou Seirensen, Undefined Fantastic Object, which will be released next month. Until then, thank you for your ongoing support of the Hifuu Detective Agency.