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

—Translator's Preface—

Hello, everyone. Today at long last I am beginning my translation of the fourteenth and final volume of Asagihara Shinobu's こちら秘封探偵事務所 or 'Welcome to the Hifuu Detective Agency.' This volume does not directly correspond to a specific game in the touhou line, as it includes elements of 𝑈𝑟𝑏𝑎𝑛 𝐿𝑒𝑔𝑒𝑛𝑑 𝐼𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑚𝑏𝑜, 𝐿𝑒𝑔𝑎𝑐𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝐿𝑢𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑐 𝐾𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑑𝑜𝑚 and a fair bit of both original content and things taken from 𝐹𝑜𝑟𝑏𝑖𝑑𝑑𝑒𝑛 𝑆𝑐𝑟𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑟𝑦.

This is the final volume of the long-running series and as such there's not really any further concern over spoilers at this point. The events and endings of every previous casefile will be discussed here, and the writing generally assumes you've read all of the books leading up to this point as aspects of this story will build on events and descriptions established in every previous volume to date. If you've skipped over any volumes leading up to this point, this is your final warning.

As far as objectionable content goes, this is probably the darkest story in the entire series. There will be discussions of suicide, murder, depersonalization, de-realization and the death of canon characters. As usual though there's nothing overly graphic or explicit here.

Re-reading every previous volume to get the details of each case fresh in your head is not a pre-requisite for enjoying this story. Like every other volume, this story is self-contained mystery. I don't recommend anyone go through the ordeal of trying to consume all 1,000,000+ words of these stories before reading this. If you fancy a re-visit, then I'd recommend you do so after finishing this volume—you may find things there have double-meanings you wouldn't have expected before.

With all of that said, I will now step back and leave the rest of the storytelling up to our narrator. I hope that you enjoy the finale to come.


—Prologue—


Before we begin, there's something I'd like to make clear.

The story you are about to read is quite different from any of the other casefiles. Like the other volumes in this series, it is still a story of my partner’s megalomaniacal delusions.

Also like the other stories, this record details the events of an incident that affected all of Gensokyo. Specifically, it records the story of the Urban Legend Incident. But that story isn't just something we became involved in, as was the case with all of the other incidents we've been a part of.

What’s different this time is that this incident is one that's all about us.

—

One day, in the Tokyo of the 2080s, the two of us found a notebook and a chunk of amber containing a preserved insect within the bedroom of Renko’s great aunt. Because of that event my partner and I found ourselves spirited away to Gensokyo.

A long time has passed since then. We had accepted the fact that we would be trapped in this world for the rest of our lives, and the mystery of how and why we had been pulled out of our own world and into this one had lain dormant for more than a decade. Now it has suddenly returned, and this is its story.

Why were the two of us invited to this land of fantasies, and by whom?

In the future that we came from, why had Renko's great aunt fallen into a coma while she was in high school and then later died?

Just who is Yukari Yakumo, the Youkai Sage who has haunted me since my arrival here in this world but never appeared in front of Renko?

These are the questions that this record will be mainly focused on answering this time around.

—

I say that, but even as I write this introduction, there are still many questions to which I don't have answers.

I can't really even say with any certainty if this was our story to begin with.

What's more, I can't say if the conclusions we came to were right or wrong. I'll probably never know. Most likely it would be impossible for me to know. Everything about this case remains an illusion, the sort of fantasy that lies on the border between dream and reality.

However, as a student of Relativistic Noology, I would like to begin by making a declaration. I would like to define myself and this story with an utterance first spoken by my partner long, long ago, when we were both living in Kyoto in the Outside World.

𝑂𝑝𝑒𝑛 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑒𝑦𝑒𝑠! 𝐷𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑚𝑠 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 𝑚𝑎𝑑𝑒 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑜 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑦. 𝐿𝑒𝑡'𝑠 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑑𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑚𝑠 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑡𝑟𝑢𝑒!

Maybe, if you were to condense this whole story down into a few brief lines, that is what it would look like.

—

Forgive me, readers, I may have grown a bit unnecessarily poetic. I'll attempt to leave such self-indulgent ramblings behind and get on with the story I've promised you.

This is the story of me, Maéreverie Hearn, assistant to the great detective, Usami Renko.

It is the story of our occult hobby circle, the Hifuu Club.

It is the story of an encounter between people who were never supposed to meet.

It is the story of someone searching endlessly for someone she can't meet.

—

It all began one year before what's commonly recognized as the start of the Urban Legend Incident, in a beautiful spring during which all of Gensokyo was abuzz over the widespread and destructive attempts by multiple parties to capture a fugitive amanojaku. It began with a case brought to the Hifuu Detective Agency by the Youkai Sage herself.