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

𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑗𝑎𝑟 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑥𝑖𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑖𝑚𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑏𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑚𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑜𝑟 𝑖𝑛 ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑝𝑎𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑒. 𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑎𝑦 𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑝𝑖𝑛𝑔, 𝑒𝑎𝑔𝑒𝑟 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑛𝑒𝑤𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝘗𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘒𝘢𝘨𝘶𝘺𝘢. 𝑈𝑝𝑜𝑛 𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑒𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑛𝑔 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑔𝑖𝑓𝑡 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑙𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟, ℎ𝑒 𝑘𝑛𝑒𝑤 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑠ℎ𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑑 𝑔𝑜𝑛𝑒, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 ℎ𝑖𝑠 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑡 𝑏𝑟𝑜𝑘𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑒𝑤 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤𝑙𝑒𝑑𝑔𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑏𝑒 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑡 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑙𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒. 𝑇ℎ𝑢𝑠, ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑢𝑚𝑚𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑒 𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑜𝑓 ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑙𝑜𝑦𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑡 𝑚𝑒𝑛, 𝑎 𝑚𝑎𝑛 𝑛𝑎𝑚𝑒𝑑 𝐼𝑤𝑎𝑘𝑎𝑠𝑎 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑏𝑎𝑑𝑒 ℎ𝑖𝑚 𝑐𝑎𝑟𝑟𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑗𝑎𝑟 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑥𝑖𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑖𝑚𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑡𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑆𝑢𝑟𝑢𝑔𝑎. 𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑎 𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡 𝑚𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑖𝑛, 𝑐𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑒𝑟 𝑡𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑘𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟, 𝑡𝑜𝑤𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑡ℎ. 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑚𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑜𝑟'𝑠 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝐼𝑤𝑎𝑘𝑎𝑠𝑎 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑏𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑗𝑎𝑟 𝑡𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑒𝑎𝑘 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑚𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑖𝑛, 𝑎𝑠 𝑐𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑜𝑛 𝑎𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑐ℎ, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑏𝑢𝑟𝑛 𝑖𝑡, 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑚𝑜𝑘𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑥𝑖𝑟 𝑚𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑐ℎ 𝑡𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑐𝑎𝑟𝑟𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑚𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑜𝑟'𝑠 𝑠𝑎𝑑𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑠𝑠.


—


"Is that the end of your story?" Eirin asked.

"Yes. Thank you for your attention." Renko nodded her head.

"I see. What is it that you hope to achieve by telling me this?"

Her eyes were narrowed.. I couldn't help but cringe away from her sharp gaze. Renko, however, was as unconcerned as usual. "If anything, I'm hoping you'll refute it. What I was expecting you might do is tell me a different story, some irrefutable truth that would shatter my theory to its foundations and disprove my hypothesis."

Eirin furrowed her brows. "You told me that whole long story just so I could reject it?"

"I don't claim to have any ownership of the one and only absolute truth. I’m working with incomplete information here after all. That’s why I was hoping that if I've made a bad assumption somewhere along the way, you'll point it out to me, and provide evidence to the contrary, or provide a truthful explanation that’s beyond my own ability to extrapolate."

"In that case, I suppose there is nothing more for me to say," Eirin admitted with a sigh. "Unless of course you're planning on relaying this story to Kaguya if I don't deny it?"

"Well if you could refute my theory I'd back down immediately. Even if you can't, there's no reason for me to tell any of this to her if you don’t want me to. I don’t have any way to verify my theory after all and telling Kaguya isn’t likely to give me one. She can go on believing what she does now for as long as you like."

"There won’t be an end for us. Kaguya and I will continue as we are now forever."

"Well, thank you very much then. I'm grateful to have had such a receptive audience." Renko stood and doffed her hat, then bowed again before offering a hand to help me to my feet. I rose and bowed to Eirin as well, following as Renko turned to leave. As she reached for the door though, Eirin called out to stop her.

"Your name. It was Usami Renko, was it not?"

"Yes, that's me."

"How would you feel about becoming immortal?"

Renko turned slowly at these words, easing her hat back onto her head as she did so. "That... is a very tempting offer. I'm going to refrain for now though."

My eyes widened in surprise. This whole time I had been thinking back to that conversation I had had with Renko so long ago on the terrace of the campus café. Back then, Renko's answer to the question of if she'd drink an elixir of immortality if she had the chance had been 'of course!'

"You’re rejecting my offer? Why? Having you live and die like any other earthly beast seems like a waste, don’t you think?"

"Coming from you that’s quite the compliment," Renko said, suddenly throwing an arm around my shoulders. I felt my face redden slightly as she pulled me closer. "But if I'm going to be around for all eternity, then I'd want to spend that time with Merry."

"Renko! Don't say things like that in public!"

She turned then, looking into my eyes with an excited smile. "Hey Merry, do you want to be immortal?" I turned away from the intense eye contact, looking down and willing myself to stop blushing as her question echoed in my mind.

I had never given it deep thought, as the question had always been an impossibility before. Having read story after story describing the misery of it, however, and even seeing how Mokou had dealt with it, my gut response would be to instantly say 'no.'

And so I did. "I don't think I'm crazy enough to make a snap decision on eternity, Renko. I don't know if I ever will be." I shook my head.

Renko released me and turned back to Eirin. "Well there you have it," she said.

"I see. If you ever change your mind, then come back and see me."

Renko flashed her a grin and tipped her hat. "I'll be sure to keep that in mind."

With that, the doctor turned her back on us and retrieved her writing desk. I wondered just how long Renko might intend to keep me by her side. If I had answered her question differently would she really have been ready to accept Eirin’s offer on the spot? This and other questions were circling around my mind, swirling without answers as we made our way back down the hall.

　　　　　◇

And so, that was the story of our involvement with the Eternal Night Incident. If you were to sum up all of my partner's delusions this time around, I suppose you'd call it a tragic story of two people who hoped to someday die by means of embracing immortality.

To those who live on the moon, both life and death are a foulness to be rejected and avoided at all costs. In search of a way to escape that deathless, lifeless existence, Eirin and Kaguya had come to Earth to live out their brief eternity and wait for the day in the unimaginably distant future when their souls might eventually burn out. That was the existence Eirin had chosen for them, a long, peaceful repose as they awaited the end of their slow double suicide.

Could such a paradoxical hypothesis be in any way close to the truth? Or was all of this simply a fantasy story created by my partner's overactive imagination?

Only Eirin knew the whole truth, and she had neither confirmed nor denied anything in the end.

　　　　　　◇

On our way out of the mansion grounds we were caught by Tewi and her inaba, who drew us aside to attend a moon-viewing party with Kaguya, who had returned from her visit to the shrine.

"Oh, it's the two humans from the other day," was how Kaguya greeted us. "Did you two get all fixed up by Eirin?"

"What do you mean by 'fixed up'? And what were you doing at the shrine, Princess?" Renko asked.

"Oh I was just inviting the people there to play a game."

"A game? With the shrine maiden? What kind?"

Kaguya giggled behind her sleeve. "Oh, you'll see soon enough. Until then, why not sit and watch the moon with me? It's very pretty tonight."

And so we all sat down on the veranda ringing the mansion, eating the mounded dumplings that Reisen brought out and looking up at the moon as Tewi and the inaba frolicked in the courtyard.

"Renko, didn't Eirin say you should avoid looking at the moon too much from now on?" I chided.

"Well if I go blind again then I'll get to have Merry take care of me again. These dumplings are delicious by the way."

"Maybe I don't want to take care of old granny Renko anymore."

"That's terrible, Merry. Who will provide for me in my old age?"

"That'll be decades from now, Renko. Do I still have to stick around you when I'm a wrinkly old hag too?"

"Absolutely, Merry. Loneliness among the elderly is a big concern. I need you to stick right by my side."

"Well it's not like there's anywhere else for me to go now that we're here anyway. Or was coming to this world a plot to keep me close at hand from the moment we first went into your aunt's room?"

Renko feigned a guilty expression and turned to Tewi. "Uh oh, she's onto me!"

Tewi laughed. Reisen was sitting behind them, looking unhappy as usual, watching the moon with a slightly nervous expression as her ears twitched. Tewi noticed and gave Reisen a friendly elbow in the ribs. "Come on Reisen, why the long face? You should be enjoying the moon viewing with us."

"I'm glad it's easy for you to enjoy. I had to prepare all these dumplings myself while you and the inaba disappeared," she grumbled.

Kaguya turned to smile at Reisen. "You really do seem down. Are you disappointed you didn't get a chance to return to the moon after all?"

"What? Uh, no, princess, it's not like that."

"That's good to hear," Eirin said as she emerged from inside the mansion. "Without Udonge we wouldn’t have anyone here to do the chores."

"Is that really all you keep me around for, Master?"

"It’s your fault that the intruders got in and broke all the seals keeping everything clean and unchanging in the first place, isn’t it? It's only natural that you should clean up after yourself," Kaguya added with a smile.

"You too, princess?"

"That's right," Eirin said with a nod. "We'll expect a lot of hard work from you going forward. Oh, unless you'd rather I use your body for experimentation."

Reisen's ears crumpled up, seeming almost to wither. "I'll work."

Eirin smiled as Reisen's shoulders slumped and Kaguya giggled behind her sleeve. After a moment Kaguya let out a sigh and spoke again. "My, I wonder what's taking them so long. I would have expected the show to have started by now."

All at once the inaba in the garden began to make a fuss, hopping around agitatedly. We turned to look at them and our eyes caught the flash and sparkle of colored lights on the far side of the garden wall, as if someone further on in the forest were playing danmaku.

"Oh goody, it's begun!" Kaguya said as she clapped her hands together. In the distance a spiral of red flame lifted into the air before exploding outward into a shape like a pair of fiery wings.

Could that be Mokou, I wondered as I watched the flames flicker in the sky. I turned to look at Kaguya and thought of what she had said about inviting the people at the shrine to play a game. Could she have incited them to attack?

"Now this is a proper spectacle!" Kaguya announced gleefully. "Let's watch Mokotan get exterminated while we enjoy these nice dumplings."

I looked over at my partner with concern. She looked worried as well, but with them already high in the sky and engaged in a flurry of danmaku, there was nothing we could do. Kaguya's joke may not have been to our tastes, but having either of us get injured by a stray bullet wouldn't make for much of a punchline either. Still, with Renko you never could tell. "Renko, don't go running off, you'll just get hurt," I chided.

She sighed. "Well the killer in this case is already sitting right beside me, so I've got nowhere to go. I don't like it, but since it's Mokou, I'm sure she'll be fine." An explosion boomed overhead, followed by a flare of light in the shape of a phoenix that sent a frantic storm of bullets twisting off into the night sky in every direction at once.

"The Earth can be very beautiful sometimes, don’t you think, Eirin?" Kaguya mused.

Eirin watched the battle, as flickers of red light highlighted her cheekbones and made the red half of her dress seem to glow. "I agree," she said placidly.

I looked over to see Kaguya leaning over, whispering something to Eirin behind her drooping sleeve as they both smiled. Eirin knelt down behind her and began lovingly combing Kaguya's long black hair. Watching the multicolored light of the danmaku washing over their smiling features, it was hard to think whether all of the machinations Renko had accused them of from so long ago might actually be true or not. At the very least, it wasn’t the sort of thing I could see myself ever asking them.

　　　　　　◇

After the moon-viewing and the danmaku viewing, we politely excused ourselves and left Eientei. We found Mokou not far from where she had left us with her shirt torn and singed, but she didn’t even look upset, much less injured as she led us back to her shack.

"So that was Reimu. And some others too, from the danmaku we saw. Are you okay, Mokou?" Renko asked.

"Yeah, that was them, alright. Kaguya tricked 'em into coming here, saying it was a test of courage." It seems it was much as we had suspected from our view at Eientei. "I'm fine though, it's not like I could die, so I don't really mind. Honestly, Keine was worse. Trying to calm her down after her work gets interrupted is nearly impossible." She gestured toward her shack, where I could just barely see Keine's sleeping form through the doorway. Her horns and tail had already vanished and she looked just as human as she ever had when teaching at the school with us.

"I guess there's a lot of interesting humans out there nowadays," Mokou muttered, then looked up at Renko. "You guys are pretty crazy if you're hanging around with people like that on a regular basis. Has everyone become like this in the last 1,300 years?"

"Well, not everyone, but that's progress I guess," Renko grinned.

"Huh, I don't know if that could be called progress. If everyone was to become as hard to kill as them then that would be the same as if everyone was immortal. The world would become stagnant."

"This world is full of humans who can die. But a human that can't isn't so different either. There are already youkai who can barely die, ghosts who are already dead and gods who don't even need bodies. Gensokyo has all of them. Would it really be so bad if you went out and made a few friends among them who can’t die?"

"I already have friends. Don’t remind me that you and Keine will both be gone someday."

"Ah, sorry. I'm just happy you're okay, Mokou." Renko bowed her head apologetically while sticking out her tongue.

Mokou sighed and stretched, reaching up above her head. Just as she brought her arms down, a hint of crimson at the very edge of the horizon signaled the first light of dawn.

"You know," she said, "for the past 1,300 years I've thought about what I'd do if I could find a way to die. Maybe I'd kill Kaguya first, or maybe I'd kill myself and leave her to suffer alone. Either way though, I thought I'd want to die as soon as I could. Right now though..." She looked over at Keine again, then back to Renko. "Maybe being alive isn't so bad."

　　　　　　◇

By now the Eternal Night Incident had fully ended. Perhaps, in the spirit of sticking to the subject matter of our detective agency's mysteries, I should end my retelling here as well. But for sake of completion I hope you allow me to include a few more words regarding our own story.

A few days after the last visit to Eientei, in the evening, just before we were about to close up shop for the night, we had an unusual visitor. When I opened the door to a knock, there she was, the red and white shrine maiden herself, a rare sight within the village.

"Reimu?"

"Hi. Sorry to bother you so late. What is this place, some kind of business?"

Renko, who was sitting at her desk, piped up. "The business just closed for the evening, so right now this is just the forward outpost and secret hideout of the Hifuu Club, where we work to reveal the secrets of the world."

Reimu blinked and stepped into our room. "I never understand the way you Outsiders think," she sighed. Helping herself to a cushion, Reimu took a seat across from Renko. I grabbed a cushion and had a seat beside her as well.

"So, you guys have been here for over a year now, right?" she began. We had first wandered into this world at the height of summer the year before, and it was early autumn now. We nodded in agreement. "Well it's a little late for this then, I suppose, but do you two have any intention of returning to your own world?"

We looked at each other without thinking. Could we even go back, I wondered? To the Kyoto of the Scientific Century? 80 years from now? Even with everything we had seen here, our situation was still difficult to accept. No explanation of how we had traveled back in time had ever emerged or even suggested itself to us in the time that we had been here. And yet, our having done so remained an indelible fact. It spoke volumes to how accustomed I had become to life in this world though that upon hearing the question from Reimu, my response had not immediately been 'Yes! Right away!' If the option to return home presents itself, I'd certainly want to keep it open, but right at the moment I can't say that I have a strong desire to find a way back no matter what.

Just as I was wondering if Renko might feel the same way, she responded to the question. "Is it possible for us to go back? To the time and place we came from?"

Reimu let out a sigh. "I thought you might ask that. The Scarlet Mist Incident, the Spring Snow Incident and now the Eternal Night Incident. Actually, come to think of it, you were at the parties with Suika too. That's four times you've shown up in the middle of an incident and ended up getting close to the masterminds behind the events before I did. Even with Suika, you found her first, didn't you?"

"Yes, that's right."

"Four times. I was willing to believe it was a coincidence the second time, but by this point, no way. Who exactly are you two and what do you have to do with all of these problems that keep occurring? Especially you, Merry." Reimu pointed her finger and glared at me, though at this point I suppose I should be grateful that it was just her finger she was pointing with and not her gohei. "You look just like Yukari, and you're at the center of every incident, but you seem to just be a regular human. What's your deal? Are you Yukari projecting a human illusion? Or are you working with her or what?"

I shook my head back and forth in a panic, grimacing. "No, no no no. Y-you’ve got it wrong! I don't have anything to do with Yukari and I don't want to."

Reimu glared at me a minute longer, then let out a heavy sigh. "As unlikely as it seems, I believe you. You don't feel like Yukari and you seem to be a completely harmless human. But youkai or not, you're still suspicious. You're not only from the Outside World but from the future as well. As far as I'm aware Yukari's never spirited away someone from another time before. That's why I asked her about you. Including if she could send you back to your own time."

Renko leaned forward over the desk. "Well, what'd she say?"

"She played dumb and said she wasn't the one who brought you to this world. Who knows how much we can trust anything she says though."

I thought back to the first time I had seen Yukari, at the end of the Spring Snow Incident. How she had produced the amber we had found in Sumireko's room from nowhere and had me deliver it. What connection could there be between the youkai sage and Renko's great aunt? What role had she played in bringing us here?

"When I asked her about sending you home she said 'Even I have difficulty manipulating the boundaries of time. Moving someone through 80 years of it would be very difficult.'" Reimu mimicked the Youkai Sage as she talked, speaking with her eyes half lidded and an imaginary fan over her mouth as she took on an airy, disinterested voice.

"So that means..."

"...That there's no way for you to return. That’s what I came here to tell you." Upon hearing that Renko threw her arms in the air overdramatically and I just sighed. I had more or less expected that that was the case. "That’s assuming we can trust her, of course. Yukari might just be lying and not want you to go back yet for some reason, though that's just a hunch. Do you have any idea what she might want from you?"

I tried to imagine it. What could someone like the Youkai Sage possibly want from the two of us? "Don't ask me to imagine what she's thinking," I pleaded. "I’m not her. Whether she's lying or not though, it looks like we're going to have to get used to living in the human village for the time being."

Reimu stood up from her cushion and glared down at both of us. "Exactly. In which case, I don't want you getting any more strange ideas."

Renko blinked and smiled sweetly. "Whatever do you mean?"

"Humans are humans." Reimu said flatly. "Don't get an idea into your head to try and be anything else." With that she turned and headed for the door. She waved without turning to face us as she walked out into the night. Renko went through the door a moment later, waving her arm over her head at Reimu's departing form before coming back inside and shutting it.

"You know, my life has gotten pretty messed up because of you, Renko," I said as she came back in. "Before I met you I managed to go more than two decades without once being attacked with a sword or being threatened by a miko or almost being flattened by an oni or being at risk of having my brain removed by a mad scientist."

"Well that's hardly my fault. If anyone, you should blame my great aunt. For now though, we should just enjoy the ride. The Youkai Sage may well change her mind once she's done with us. We just have to be patient."

Renko flopped over on the tatami and stretched out. If somehow we were to go back to our own time tomorrow I probably wouldn't be able to help missing Gensokyo at least a little. A year was all it had taken for a love of this world to seep into us. If we were to wake up in the Scientific Century tomorrow I wonder if we'd even remember how things worked? We'd probably feel like time travelers for at least a little bit, though I suppose my partner and I already were.

"Besides," Renko said, staring up at the ceiling, "if we went home now we'd be leaving so many mysteries behind! There's still a lot of this world I want to see."

"We've been pretty much all over at one point or another by now. What's left that you want to explore?"

"There's whole worlds we haven't explored yet! Like Makai or the Underworld. What about Heaven? The Dragon God has to live somewhere, right? We haven't even really gone that far up Youkai Mountain either. I'd like to see the tengu village, or wherever the kappa have their workshop. Oh, and of course there's the moon! We never got to go in our own time, but maybe we can have a moon tour here someday, Merry!"

"After everything we went through with Eirin you still want to go to the moon?"

"Hey Merry. Think about this. Eirin and Kaguya had been hidden on Earth in the place that would eventually become Gensokyo for a long time, but Reisen only came here a few decades ago. The Great Hakurei Barrier would have already been up by then. What do you think that means?"

I blinked in surprise and thought about it for a moment. "That means… that the moon here isn't the same one in the sky of our world. It's a different moon, one with a Lunar Capital on it somewhere. It's connected to Gensokyo, just like the Netherworld."

"That’s right! The moon we see in the sky here is the mysterious, magical moon that was forgotten by humanity in the 1960s, when it became just a barren hunk of rock in popular perception."

Saying this, Renko sat up stiffly from the floor, her eyes sparkling with wonder. It was the same sparkle that had drawn me into joining the Hifuu Club years ago, and it hadn't dimmed a bit. Despite the fact that I saw those eyes almost every day now, they were no less compelling. "I wish we could sneak back into Eientei to see if they had a way to go back to the moon. I need to find an excuse to go see Reisen again too. There's a lot of things I'd like to test with her eyes. She could be a whole new field of physics unto herself!"

"Hold it right there." I said, raising my hand, palm up. "Before you get lost down a mental rabbit hole we need to deal with a more immediate and pressing problem."

"And what's that?"

"Dinner."

As soon as I spoke the word Renko's stomach began to rumble. She blushed and covered it with her hands. "Betrayed by my own stomach! Bah, you can't reason when you're hungry anyway. Let's go Merry, there's a new place we can try."

"A new place? What's wrong with the old one?"

"I was reading about this in the paper. There's a night sparrow youkai who's been allowed to open a food stall that serves humans and youkai both just outside of town. Their specialty is grilled lamprey, how's that sound?"

"Lamprey? Those are the creepy fish with the horrible mouths, right?"

"Sure. I hear eating them is supposed to be good for your eyes."

I sighed as we walked out the door. "Alright, why not. What's one more life-threatening adventure?"

Thus, we closed the door of our detective agency much as I will close this story, with the two of us walking hand in hand, out into Gensokyo's mysterious night as the moon hung in the sky above, with all of its bright magic gazing silently down as always. The light of that moon no doubt fell upon many others that night, each of them with their own stories, desires, needs, wants and struggles, each of them an entire world unto themselves, filled with countless fascinating mysteries.

If one of those moon-mad mysteries inhabiting your own life should ever consume your nights, keeping you up in search of an answer, then feel free to stop by the storehouse behind the temple school some time. My partner and I will be eager to welcome you to the Hifuu Detective Agency.

[End of Book 4: Imperishable Night]

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Author's Afterword:

Thank you for reading through all of that. I am the author, Asagihara Shinobu.

The solution to this mystery, concerning Eirin, Kaguya and the Hourai Elixir is actually something I've included in some of my previous works. It shows up in both the full length story 'Umyonge!' and the short story "*****" published in other collections.

I would not want to just use the same ending over and over however, so this time I added a pair of new twists. I think they made things better.

The official setting and description of the moon keeps changing, much like the face of the moon itself. I hope you liked this particular fantasy, but if not, don't worry. Even Renko would tell you that the moon is full of mystery and shows a new face every 28 days.

Please continue to follow along on Renko's next grand delusion, coming soon.