東方プロジェクト二次小説・オリジナル小説サイト
Preface/Prologue: Phantasmagoria of Flower View

During the spring of Gensokyo's 120th Season, the world became enveloped in a riot of blooming flowers. Cherry blossoms, plum flowers, azaleas, dogwoods and wintersweets are all common sights during spring in Gensokyo, and during their bloom, they are known to cover tracts of land in their glorious colors. There’s nothing unusual about people enjoying the flowers while drinking sake and eating dango in the springtime. Such is the beauty of nature.

But for cherry blossoms, hydrangeas, sunflowers, and cosmos to all bloom at the same time, is definitely not normal. This is the sort of situation that goes beyond 'irregular' and reaches the level of a bizarre phenomenon that can only be called an 'incident.' That was what occurred here in the spring of 2005 —regardless of season, all manner of flowers began blooming at the same time. Not in a greenhouse or artificial garden but all over the land, in every corner of Gensokyo, everywhere the warm spring sunlight could reach. It was a beautiful sight, but one that went beyond beauty and into the bizarre.

Despite the unnatural nature of this incident, there was no nefarious mystery here for us to unravel, however. Unlike with the Scarlet Mist Incident, the Spring Snow Incident, the Night Parade of 100 Oni Every Three Days or the Eternal Night Incident, this event seemed not to have been deliberately caused by anyone or for any particular purpose. There was no Remilia Scarlet pulling the strings, no Saigyouji Yuyuko hiding behind the curtain, no Ibuki Suika stalking through the shadows and no Yagokoro Eirin watching with steepled fingers this time. Each of those previous cases had been a man-made (or should I say youkai-made?) incident.

This spring, however, was something else. A naturally occurring, if highly unusual incident, the likes of which we had never seen before, with no mastermind and no sinister plot behind it. In fact if not for the reaction to the events that occurred by the denizens of Gensokyo, it could not have been called an incident at all, but merely a natural phenomenon, destined to occur once every sixty years.

This left my partner, the great detective Usami Renko, without a mystery to solve. There was no culprit to finger, no crisis to defuse and in all, no demand for the deductions of a great detective.

Or so I thought.

And yet, here I am, recording for you, dear reader, another record of an incident and another tale of the exploits of my partner and I. What would possess me to do so, you may ask? What was it about this incident that demands my telling of the tale rather than just leaving it for the history books? Well, there was something to these events that not even the Hakurei shrine maiden could find a solution to, a conundrum uniquely suited to the talents of a great detective.

But what was it, you may ask? Well that is a question I will return to you, dear reader. This prologue is in fact:

[𝐀 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐓𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫]

For this most unusual incident, I have a most unusual letter of challenge this time, arriving even before our story begins.

This is because the truth of this incident can easily be heard from Miss Kamishirasawa or read in the pages of Miss Hieda's 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑘𝑦𝑜 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑖𝑐𝑙𝑒. Both are well aware of the circumstances of this incident, meaning even if you can't afford a copy of the 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑘𝑦𝑜 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑖𝑐𝑙𝑒 of your own, you can hear the story from Keine as long as you don't mind a bit of a lecture.

What you won't find from them is the answer to these two questions I now pose to you:
• What was the inexplicable mystery that Renko found in the midst of this seemingly natural and unpremeditated incident?
• Who was the culprit behind the case with no culprit?
In the interest of fairness, I will give you the details of the story as we experienced it as usual, though you will not find any contradictions between my telling and that of the 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑘𝑦𝑜 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑖𝑐𝑙𝑒 this time. As I begin the story, keep these questions in mind, and see if you can find their answers before Renko does. In the spring of our second year in Gensokyo, flowers of every kind covered the land and a story unfolded behind the scenes in a barrage of revelry that blurred the line between battle and party.