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

—Preface—


Hello again, readers. Today I begin my translation of the ninth book of Asagihara Shinobu's こちら秘封探偵事務所 or 'Welcome to the Hifuu Detective Agency.'

This book contains the story of Touhou Seirensen ~ Undefined Fantastic Object. There's little in the way of objectionable content this time around, but we're going to be touching on two topics that may not be common knowledge for most western Touhou fans - PC-98-era Touhou lore and Buddhism.

I'm not particularly well versed on either of those topics myself, so I wouldn't be surprised if I missed a reference here or there. I'll give a brief overview of the relevant materials for those who don't want to go browsing wikis on their own below. In both cases, this is only the most cursory possible examination, but it should give you what you need to understand the events in the story.

First off, the PC-98 Touhou era. In particular, we're going to be seeing a lot of references to the events of 𝑀𝑦𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑐 𝑆𝑞𝑢𝑎𝑟𝑒 here, a traditional Touhou vertical danmaku shmup that revolves around four playable protagonists setting out to the world of Makai to investigate why demons are pouring out of that world and into Gensokyo. In the end, the answer appears to be 'tourism.' Makai had been letting demons come to visit without thinking that maybe they should have told someone about that first. Your player character (your choice of Reimu, Marisa, Yuuka or Mima) confronts the so-called god of Makai, a six-winged demon named Shinki who claims to have created everything and everyone in Makai, and bullies her into submission. In doing so, they manage to set an entire city ablaze. Spell Card rules were an invention of the Windows era of Touhou, but the storylines and interactions of the PC-98 era were generally more silly and lighthearted, so fans are divided on just how big of a deal the collateral damage from this particular battle was. Depending on your interpretation, Reimu and Marisa might well be silly girls who had a flashy magic battle and yelling match above a town square, or teenage war criminals with a body count in the thousands. The ambiguity is part of what makes Touhou Touhou.

Next, onto Buddhism. This is, of course, WAY too broad a topic to be covered here, but the very, very, VERY surface level bits you need to know of are this: Buddhism consists of the teachings of the Buddha, which are collectively known as the Dharma and constitute a religion that focuses on the goal of teaching people the way to avoid suffering. The path to achieve this, according to the Dharma, is neither through strict asceticism nor wanton hedonism, but instead a mindful life of moderation infused with the understanding of one's place and duty in the world combined with a conscious effort to avoid becoming too attached to worldly things and ways of being. Buddhism holds that souls are reincarnated after death in a cycle called Samsara, and that the ultimate goal of a life well-lived should be to refine one's soul in pursuit of enlightenment or Nirvana which would ultimately lead to an escape from this cycle.

Exactly HOW one is supposed to escape Samsara and achieve Nirvana is a topic of much debate that has led to most of the schisms responsible for creating different sects within Buddhism. The Myouren Temple, which this story revolves around, is a temple of the Shingon sect, which is a very old form of Japanese Buddhism, closely related to Indian Buddhist practices that were later outlawed and forcibly exterminated in China. Shingon Buddhism is a particularly esoteric style of Buddhism, and holds as one of its main beliefs the idea that Nirvana can be achieved in a single lifetime, rather than being a project of countless reincarnations as many other Buddhist sects believe. According to Shingon, this quicker route to enlightenment can be achieved through the practice of Tantra, a series of rituals and meditative practices which invoke various divine beings such as Devas and Wisdom Kings to assist the practitioner in realizing the truths of existence. Many of these ritual practices are secrets shared only with the initiated, making Shingon something like a mystery religion.

There is another Buddhism concept that’s semi relevant in the story, that being the 18 Realms of Perception, as it relates to the name of the place that Byakuren was sealed in. Byakuren was sealed in an area of Makai that’s referred to as 法界 or Houkai/Hokkai (you might recognize the name from the stage 6 theme, Flames of Houkai). In the dialogue, this is translated as "World of Dharma", which while an accurate translation, does not work in the context that it is brought up in within this story. Here we have opted to translate it as Realm of Truth. To explain why we choose that, we must first explain what exactly Houkai is.

In Buddhism, there is a concept known as the 18 Realms of Perception, the idea is that we have 6 senses, each having the function of detecting 6 objects, which in turn gives us 6 different perceptions. Those 6 senses are the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, body and mind. The 6 objects are shape and colour, sound, smell, flavor, texture, and phenomena. The 6 perceptions are sight, hearing, scent, taste, touch, and thought. Houkai refers to the perception of thought, the world that one experiences in their minds. Though the mind and thoughts are things everyone has, it is said that the only ones who are capable of fully accessing it are those who have achieved enlightenment/satori (incidentally, this is why satori are said to be able to read minds, as they are capable of perceiving the mind and thoughts). Thus, Houkai is something only people who have attained buddhahood are able to perceive.

With the explanation that Houkai refers to "thought", you might be wondering why we went with "realm of truth", instead. This is due to how Shou’s explanation on Byakuren’s reasoning for choosing the name, in which she puts emphasis on the idea that the world that we perceive in the mind as being "true" reality, that being able to perceive thought is equal to perceiving the truth, Merry herself would also think about the "truth" of reality part of Shou’s reasoning. It is in service of that scene that we decided to render Houkai as "Realm of Truth" rather than "World of Dharma" or "Realm of Thought"

Finally, this story makes reference to the legend of the so-called "Flying Granary" or "Flying Storehouse," a story that comes to us from the 𝑆ℎ𝑖𝑔𝑖𝑠𝑎𝑛 𝐸𝑛𝑔𝑖 𝐸𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑖, a picture scroll that was made sometime during the 12th century, during the Heian Era. This illuminated manuscript tells the story of several miracles associated with the Buddhist monk Myouren. The pictures in this scroll were once accompanied by writing, but the ink for this calligraphy has faded over time leaving only the images. According to scholars, these images tell the story of how Myouren, being too busy helping the ill and infirm became too busy even to beg for food. Instead, in what is presumed to be a miracle, his bowl went and did his begging for him, flying around to the homes of farmers who he had helped and collecting offerings. As the story goes one day a farmer refused to fill the flying bowl and instead locked it in his granary. Unable to be denied, the bowl simply lifted the granary and flew it over the countryside to Myouren, much to the astonishment of many nearby farmers.

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


—Prologue—


As those who have read my case files up to this point would know, we here at Hifuu Detective Agency are frequently at the center of incidents, often long before the Hakurei shrine maiden gets involved. Perhaps this fate was assigned to us when we first arrived in Gensokyo and found ourselves deposited unceremoniously in the great library of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, just hours before the beginnings of the Scarlet Mist Incident.

Up until this point, however, our role in these numerous incidents had been strictly that of an observer, or at least something close to it. The biggest impact our presence had ever had on an incident to date was probably during the Scarlet Mist Incident, when my partner ended up enticing Remilia into action over the course of our investigation. As I have written before though, even without Renko's influence, I am sure something similar would likely have happened eventually.

Similarly, during the Eternal Night Incident I was taken as a hostage by the mastermind behind those events, however that time my involvement was a complete coincidence. Even during the events surrounding the arrival of the Moriya Shrine my partner was arguably responsible for sparking off the religious war between the two shrines that were at the center of those events, but had she not been present, the domineering presence of the goddesses of the Moriya Shrine would almost certainly have caused the same thing to eventually happen either way.

Thus, for the last several years that we have been living in Gensokyo, my partner and I have been in the strange positions of being involved in every incident even though we are neither in the business of resolving them nor are we acting as henchmen to those responsible for the chaos. Somehow, we just always end up always hanging around the sidelines, near the periphery of the incident's mastermind.

In the spring of the year that saw our detective agency venture into the Underworld for the first time, however, all of that would change. This is the story of a different sort of incident. It is the story of Myouren Temple, which was recently constructed just to the north of the village, near the cemetery on the road leading toward Misty Lake. It is also a story about the disciples of the heretical nun Hijiri Byakuren and how they struggled to free her from her imprisonment in Makai. Finally, it is also a story of three heroes - the Hakurei shrine maiden, an ordinary magician of the Forest of Magic and the wind priestess of the Moriya Shrine. To Hakurei Reimu and the rest of the heroes who opposed this change to Gensokyo's status quo, this incident came to be known as the Treasure Ship Incident. From the temple's point of view it is simply recorded as the story of the temple's founding. So that begs the question, what was our role in all of this?
Put simply, this time around the masterminds behind this incident were none other than the Hifuu Detective Agency: myself, Maéreverie Hearn, and my partner, Usami Renko. It was us who caused this incident of our own volition.

It goes without saying of course that this is not something we did intentionally, nor is it anything we achieved all on our own. Many people were involved, each with their own aims and agendas. In the end it was just a matter of our little agency working to help several different people that caused a situation that, from the point of view of the Hakurei Shrine, seemed like an incident.

Despite all of my equivocation and qualification of the facts, however, there is one point that I cannot deny: it was my partner, Usami Renko who both laid the groundwork for everything that happened and made the arrangements to set the the forces in motion that ultimately culminated in the incident.

Thus, no matter what our ultimate fate in this world may be, Renko and I will leave our indelible stamp upon the history of Gensokyo in the form of a record within the 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑘𝑦𝑜 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑖𝑐𝑙𝑒 in which our names will be recorded as the architects behind the Treasure Ship Incident.

This volume you are reading therefore stands not only as my confession, but a record of the events of an incident from the mastermind's point of view. It is a recording of what happened and why, and what the results of those events were.

It is also, of course, a record of my partner's grandiose and paranoid delusions, as had become typical of my writings.

It is the story of the living saint and powerful magician, Hijiri Byakuren who was sealed away in Makai 1,000 years ago by the Yama.

It is the story of a ship phantom and a nyuudo sorcerer, a tiger youkai who was a disciple of Bishamonten, and the mouse youkai who oversaw her.

And it is also the story of an unidentified youkai who interfered and confused events further for her own reasons.

Ultimately, it is a mystery story, whose central theme can be summed up in a single simple question:

"Why did any of this have to happen?"

So begins the story of the Treasure Ship Incident, an incident which was caused by us directly. These are the delusions that lead my partner to such ends, and the events that unfolded as a result.