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

𝑇𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑠𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑜𝑟'𝑠 𝐹𝑜𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑑

Hello once again. I'm That-Which-Isn't, and this is my translation of the eighth book of Asagihara Shinobu's こちら秘封探偵事務所 or 'Welcome to the Hifuu Detective Agency.' Did you know there are links on this site to buy the book format of these novels?　You can find them on http://longnovel.com/goods/ and if you follow the link on the page of any of the volumes that leads to Melonbooks.jp (メロンブックス) you’ll even find the option to ship them internationally.

　This book contains the story of Touhou Chireiden ~ Subterranean Animism. It contains some threatened (but not enacted) torture and general discussions of Hell, damnation and corpses.

　This book also contains extensive references to the first three case files in this series and, eventually, spoilers for case 3, Immaterial and Missing Power. If you haven't read those stories yet, consider yourself warned.

　Finally, this book also contains some material that was canon-compliant when it was written, but has since been contradicted by official works, in some cases as recently as with the release of Unfinished Dream of all Living Ghosts, the most recent game as of this writing. None of it is anything too major, but you may find the geography of Old Hell and the origins and backstories of a few characters slightly different than you might expect. It's probably for the best, as if this story had been written now, I'm sure this book would have a half-dozen more characters and be double the length. Between Old Hell, New Hell and the Animal Realm, Hell's gotten to be a pretty busy place in Touhou.

　As we get into the later books of this series, which focus on works that hadn't been as thoroughly explored at the time these stories were written, this will happen more often. Such is the nature of fanfic for a series still in production, I suppose. Any such divergences from established cannon should not be seen as clues to any mystery.

　With those warnings in place, I will now step back and let the narrator guide you through the rest of our tale. I thank you for reading, and hope that you enjoy the story to come.


—𝑃𝑟𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑢𝑒—


After a summer of commotion and earthquakes, peace had descended on Gensokyo.　A peace that blanketed the land in a welcome, wintry silence.　As the seasons turned toward winter, that peace seemed likely to stay as life returned to its normal rhythms.

And stay it did.　Until one day, without warning, it was ended by a massive explosion that sent a geyser of water and steam rocketing into the sky, not far from the Hakurei Shrine.

I suspect that once again, many of the people in the village may be unfamiliar with the Incident I am describing.　After all, most of the incident took place completely separate from Gensokyo.　The only part of it that was visible to most people was the emergence of a new hot spring near the Hakurei Shrine.

Even a certain temple, which now, as I write this record, is quickly becoming a fixture of village life, would not have appeared if not for the events of this incident.　I'm getting ahead of myself though.　That temple doesn't even feature in this story, but rather in the next one.　I'm mentioning it too early here.

The tale I want to tell you here is about the incident that resulted in a hot spring bubbling up near the Hakurei shrine.　The events that would come to be known as the Vengeful Spirit Incident.

The main stage of this incident was the vast and mostly abandoned city that spreads nearly without end deep below the surface of Gensokyo.　It was a place that was once simply called 'Hell' and is now the home to only the most reviled and hated creatures in Gensokyo.　The vast breadth of that world is as large or perhaps larger than all of the parts of Gensokyo we had seen above ground.　In other words, it is a whole subterranean world —an Underworld, like the Hades of mythology.

Needless to say, as is always the case with the Hifuu Club, my partner's recklessness drew us even there, beneath the ground of Gensokyo, far beyond the reach of the sun's rays. In short, this is the story of the time the Hifuu Club went to the bustling capital city of Old Hell.

And of course this record is also the story of my partner's paranoid and grandiose delusions, as has become the hallmark of these books.　Just as with the previous story, the mastermind and the motives responsible for this incident are already perfectly clear.　The party responsible for these events identified themselves without any need for my partner's deductions.　It's an interesting story and the parts relating to the motivations of the mastermind is a touching tale of friendship, so I have no doubt that if one were to simply and directly record the events of the incident from their point of view and sell that book at Suzunaan, it would become popular in the village and become one of those beloved tales that everyone reads at one time or another.

All of that is only the visible part of the story, however. The duty of the Hifuu Detective Agency is to reveal the hidden truths of the world and therefore I will provide for you again a tale of the mysteries that our detective agency uncovered, complete with one possible explanation, as dreamed up by my partner to account for the events we witnessed.　In order to make the world more interesting. As always, I make no claim that anything she proposes is true.

With that said, let us now begin the story.　This will be the eighth casebook of the Hifuu Detective Agency, and it will take us to the depths of the snow-covered earth, to the city of Old Hell, the paradise of the despised.

There are eight suspects to meet in this tale.　There is the oni who keeps the peace in the ancient city, commanding order from chaos with an iron fist.　There is also the outcast hashihime who jealously guards the entryway to this hated realm, along with a popular but disease-bearing tsuchigumo and her tsurube otoshi friend, all typical residents of Old Hell, some boisterous and some reclusive.　Next, there were two youkai sisters who dwelled in a mysterious western-style mansion perched over the entry to the bowels of the great inferno, reviled even amongst the damned.　Finally there were the owners of a pair night-black raven wings and a pair of flame-red cat tails, who dwelled amidst the scorching flames of the Hell of Blazing Fires itself.

If you as a reader wish to pit your mind against my partner's, then as we begin this tale, you must occupy yourself with this question: who among these eight suspects was the one for whom my partner's delusions would derive a mystery to solve?