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

𝑻𝒓𝒂𝒏𝒔𝒍𝒂𝒕𝒐𝒓'𝒔 𝑭𝒐𝒓𝒆𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒅:


Hello again. I go by That-Which-Isn't and what follows is my attempt at translating book 2 of the Hifuu web novel こちら秘封探偵事務所 or "Welcome to the Hifuu Detective Agency." The series is written by Asagihara Shinobu, and began in 2015.

This book is the story of Touhou Youyoumu ~ Perfect Cherry Blossom, and contains discussions of corpses, suicide, self-harm, death and a suggestive allusion to incest. In general, the story is usually pretty PG and treats such topics in the same surface-level way the folklore Touhou is based on does.

This volume also opens each chapter by quoting a short poem, most of them by the famed Kamakura era poet Saigyou. While many of Saigyou's works have been translated into English, not all of the poems used in this story were in anthologies that I could find. As such, I've done my best to translate these poems in such a way as to try and preserve the feeling I experienced from reading them, but I am neither a professional translator nor a famed poet. You have my apologies for anything I may have butchered.

Chapter 4 also includes 2 passages from a short story by Japanese writer Sakaguchi Ango, 𝘐𝘯 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘍𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵, 𝘜𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘊𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘐𝘯 𝘍𝘶𝘭𝘭 𝘉𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘮. You can read the story by googling the title and clicking the link to the internet archive's translation.

With all of that said, I will now step back and let the narrator guide you through the rest of the story. I thank you for reading, and hope that you enjoy the story to come. My hope is to continue updating this story with new chapters monthly.


𝑷𝒓𝒐𝒍𝒐𝒈𝒖𝒆

Where do I even begin to talk about the Spring Snow Incident?

Even though this is the second time I've attempted to record the story of a series of events that I was witness to, I still find it difficult to try to condense the reality of what I experienced down into a coherent story. Stories, after all, have beginnings and ends, but reality, as we perceive it, is one long continuous chain of events, with consequences building on history and changing future outcomes, making it nearly impossible to determine when any given situation can be said to be 'over' until long after the moment has passed.

Still, I will try my best to establish a narrative. This is the story of the first case that my partner and I had actively sought out after establishing our detective agency. I remember the sweetness of otherworldly cherry blossoms in full bloom. The desolation and eerie stillness of the Netherworld. The deceptive cheerfulness of a carefree princess and her hard-working servant. The requiem played for the living by an ensemble of spirits. The beautiful danmaku battles that unfolded once again in the skies above Gensokyo. And my encounter with a strange woman who looked a lot like me.

—

It was last summer when I, Maéreverie Hearn and my partner, Usami Renko, opened a detective agency in a disused storehouse behind the temple school operated by Miss Kamishirasawa Keine. As Outsiders to this world, displaced in both space and time, we bumbled cluelessly into Gensokyo and ended up getting ourselves involved in the Scarlet Mist Incident, which occurred around that time.

Almost half a year had passed since then, and our office, which at first had been deserted and used only for us to sleep in at night, was slowly beginning to receive more consultations as people came to us one by one to share their problems. The sorts of mysteries we had been seeing, however, were rarely the sort to satisfy my partner's curiosity. Putting aside the circumstances that lead directly to our involvement for the moment, I'll begin by telling you how I came to teach reading and writing at the temple school and my partner began teaching arithmetic, for that story is not wholly disconnected from how this Incident began.

And so, to put aside all the parts that wouldn't make sense yet and all the things which were occurring at the same time but who's relevance we couldn't yet begin to suspect, I suppose I would say it all started with a tail.

A fox's nine, poofy, golden tails, to be precise. Fluffy, soft, warm tails that invites you to bury yourself in them and never leave. If one were to simply clutch even one of those tails in one's arms, they would find their heart at peace, and all the troubles of the world melting away. Tails that, if only you could—perhaps I'm getting a little carried away here. It should suffice to say that it was those very tails, which belonged to a nine-tailed fox, that got us involved in the Spring Snow Incident.

—

Of course, this is not just a story about the fluffy tail of a golden fox. This is the story about the truth of the Spring Snow Incident, as revealed by the great detective, Usami Renko.

Why did Saigyouji Yuyuko attempt to steal spring from Gensokyo and force the Saigyou Ayakashi to bloom?

Why did Konpaku Youmu's grandfather, Youki, disappear before the start of the incident, and how had he predicted it all?

Why did the Administrator, the fabled Youkai Sage charged with upholding the balance of Gensokyo, allow the event to occur?

And who exactly is she?

—

As before, this is just another story that has arisen from the fantasies of wandering Outsiders. If you were to ask the official chronicler of the human village, or you were to read the histories compiled by Kamishirasawa Keine, they would supply you with the authentic history of Gensokyo, which might look very different from the story I will tell, for the secrets that Renko uncovered are nothing more than an interesting grain of subjective truth buried between the folds of recorded history. Whether or not you choose to believe such a tale and make it a part of your own subjective interpretation of this world is up to you.

With that said, let's begin. The story of the splendid battle that would unite Hakurei Reimu, Kirisame Marisa and Izayoi Sakuya unfolded beneath the heavy skies of a Gensokyo robbed of its spring and amidst the still and stagnant air of a Netherworld where cherry blossoms danced on the breeze. Let me tell you the other side of that beloved story.