~Hakurei Shrine~ > Patchouli's Scarlet Library
Songs of the Illusionary Veil
Achariyth:
The Sea of Stone
***
The border of the Great Moon Palace was always being churned under by the motion of spreading stone and regolith. It had always been so, or so it seemed, from the days when Reisen's namesake had been a birth-blind bunny, and the scholars in their tall caps whispered that it would always be so, until the rocks finally buried the Great Moon Palace. Indeed, if a rabbit were so inclined, she could watch the slow creep of stone chew away at her home. Only from the Palace side, of course. The other side was nothing but airless desert, and, again, the scholars whispered that it would always be so.
None of the auguries ever explained just how the deadly excess of earth swept all life away, but back at the proscribed eight spans of eight strides from the desert, Reisen read her book in safety. It would take a year and a half for the desert to reach her. She'd be finished with the series before then, and that included the visits to Earth to hunt down the sequels. For the moment, the serene quiet allowed her to imagine what might have been and what might yet be.
The lop-eared moon rabbit peeked over the top of her book and licked her lips. A young scholar-in-training, built like a blacksmith's apprentice instead of an aesthete, knelt by the regolith and charted its spread. Perhaps he would prove to be as attentive to poetry and anatomy at night as he must be to the ancient classics in the day. Reisen pursed her lips and watched. Would he respond to a coltish maiden, or would the brash coquette catch his eye?
"Reisen, darling!"
Or would another come by and steal him away? The moon rabbit cringed and turned towards her name. With a wan smile, she greeted her master. "Hello, Princess Toyohime."
The radiant Princess of the Moon, with her flowing hair and wide-brimmed hat, glided towards her. Princess Toyohime's eye caught the scholar at the border. "I was worried about why you would stay out here in the shadow of death. Now I'm sure that it isn't death that you are seeking. Have you tried to play hard to get?"
"It won't matter now." Reisen closed her book and rocked to her feet. The young man hadn't been attentive until Princess Toyohime had arrived.
"Two centuries ago, I would have agreed." Lady Toyohime turned her back to the scholar and raised her voice. "Alas, I am now a respectable woman, and must only console myself in my husband's arms."
The scholar turned quickly to his work, occasionally casting a glance at the two moon women. Reisen combed out her white ears and arched her back. To her delight, the young man found renewed enthusiasm for his duties even as his eyes wondered more. She glanced over at the princess, who stared forlorn out at the sea of stone and shuddered. "Princess?"
"How do you stand it out here?" Princess Toyohime whispered. She held a hand atop her hat as a gust blew through the grey rock border. "The gardens would be more suitable to pleasure and courtship than this desolation. How can there be joy here, where the mechanical age grinds wonder into dust?"
Reisen shuddered and crept away from the slow churn of regolith. The mechanical age had been the lament of the Moon for centuries. Wonder had slowly died as the humans on Earth poked into the strange and made it familiar, and the familiar, contemptible. The ancient tales, flayed and diagrammed for all to see, no longer reigned in the imagination, so the ancient wonders on Earth and above it, such as the Moon Palace, faded.
The moon rabbit looked up at the blue and white marble in the sky. Following her namesake's footsteps, she had floated upon a moonbeam with a mooncloth robe, and found wonders of her own in a hidden valley. Reisen pursed her lips and gathered her thoughts.
"Some say I should enjoy the decline and chase the dragon with love and wine until I no longer notice what is being stolen around me. Others, that we must return to the Earth and embrace the cycle of life and death that we rejected centuries before. Still others, that we must flee to the stars, ever doomed to an eternal procession of lost homes." As the princess bared her soul, her face grew to match the encroaching rock. "I'd wager that if we asked your scholar, he would tell us to embrace the ways of the anchorite in austerity and venerate the ancient tenants. Yet the old philosophies offer no consolation
"What room is there for wonder in these clockwork days?"
Reisen's breath caught in her throat as two tears slid down the princess's cheek. The moon rabbit swallowed and chose her words with the care of a jeweler sorting stones. "Before I met Sanae, Wind Priestess of Youkai Mountain, I would have thought the same."
Princess Toyohime wiped away her tears. "What does the rival of my sister's reluctant apprentice have to do with the Moon Palace's fate?"
"I've read through a few of her books, the ones she brought from the greater world outside of Gensokyo. They were full of heroes rescuing and rescued by maidens, mighty deeds, and breath-stealing spectacles. Sages commanding Nature herself across countless strange lands. Just like in the tales of old. The mechanical age did not destroy the old myths, but just changed their clothes." Reisen tapped the book in her hand.
Princess Toyohime leaned closer and ran her finger across the book's spine. "Dressed them up in rags, you mean."
Reisen shook her head. "Who among the ancients dreamed of building a ring in the sky larger than any star? Or would seed the night sky with new diamonds, each a home to a new nation? Remember, it was wonder that drew Apollo's arrows here to the moon."
The princess tapped a fan to her lips. "I thought it was because of a competition between nations."
"They still chose the Moon for their quest, constructing devices that still cause the gods of the forge to tremble." Reisen looked and scrunched her shoulder so as to hide her neck from an executioner's blade. The Apollo excursions still wounded the pride of the Moon Palace. "Your Highness, perhaps we have confused wonder with worship."
The Moon Princess's face had turned into an inscrutable stone mask leveled at Reisen. Princess Toyohime reached out with the same fan that had driven the Apollo astronauts from the moon and tapped her servant at the base of her neck. "Explain."
"It is true that the Earthlings have forgotten us. Read about their heroes, though. Watch as they control fire, water, wood, wind, and metal. Can you tell me that, even in this mechanical age, that you cannot see echoes of the gods in their knights? In their aliens, our angels and demons? In their planets, the uncharted lands where once was written 'Here Be Dragons'? Can you tell me that people have truly forgotten wonder?" Reisen trembled underneath the paper fan but refused to shrink away.
"I would, but I have yet to read the tales of which you speak."
The moon rabbit handed over her book. Toyohime, Princess of the Moon, stood on the shore of a sea of stone and the tales written by dreamers from another world. She turned over a page, and then another, unmindful that Reisen squeezed next to her, until with two final words, she closed the book. "I must show this to my husband."
"You will give that back, right?" Reisen asked as the book vanished into her master's pocket.
The princess nodded and, with sudden mirth, pointed to where the young scholar finally walked away from the regolith. "I think he's delayed his duties as long as he can." Princess Toyohime spun Reisen about and shoved her in the young man's direction. "Better hurry!"
Late that night, after the Earth had set, a scholar-in-training had found delight in a coquette's kisses, and a husband counsel from his wife, the regolith waves ground to a stop. For the first time in centuries, the sea of stone ebbed away from the Moon Palace's lands.
Achariyth:
Queen of Clubs
***
I didn't care what bullshit rambled from my lips. It didn't matter anyway. Strip all the fluff away from lurid tales and stories of old, and the core of my spiel was simple. Look over here at what I want you to see so you can't see what I'm really up to. It doesn't take much to palm a red ball from under a cup when no one watches.
Listen, only a sucker plays the shell game. You might have seen it around your city. Three shells or cups or whatever and one ball. Place the ball under one, and around and around they go. Where it stops, any sharp-eyed mark thinks they know. Pick the cup, and double your money. But you never will. I make sure of that. And when you walk away, broke, another will take your place. The lure of easy money always draws a crowd.
Call me Bandit. Many already have. I drift from place to place so you'll never have a chance to call me a second time. Give me nothing but a three cups and a ball, and I'll be back on my feet in no time. Give me a pack of cards, and I'm golden. Since I've made a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in the Village that Time Forget, this is a good thing for me.
The Way Back Machine had dropped me into a valley that wouldn't be out of place in one of those old samurai movies. There's a strange mix of peasants from before the Meiji, Western dress, and grown adults wearing animal ears. Not that it mattered. Whether human, rabbit, cat, or wolf, their yen still spent the same.
I raked in another pile of coins. The fools in front of me never seemed to learn that the ball that should have been where their money was had vanished into my hand. This next round, however, I'd leave it to chance. The occasional win would keep the crowd's greed stoked. Afterwards, I might even persuade a few to a friendlier little game of cards. High stakes or even odd ones, of course.
A couple days ago, that wheedling had been bountiful. I felt my smile brighten as I spun the cups. A pretty young librarian succumbed to charm instead of common sense. She'd walked into my rented room with a purse of yen. She ran out with nothing but an incandescent body blush, no match for a deck stacked colder than a glacier's heart.
I told you to call me Bandit.
The crowd cheered and pressed against the winners, a tall, lanky merchant with ash hair and a pretty blond in a strange take on the little black dress. Too many frills for my taste. I'd seen the look in their eyes before. Bandit had them hooked. Give me enough time, and I'd have both the merchant's shop and the girl on his arm.
Once again, the familiar spiel rolled out of my mouth. The shells swirled on the little board pressed against the edge of the dirt road. He followed a cup with his eyes, ignorant that my quick fingers had done their job once again. The ball would appear inside another cup, after he lost his money, of course.
The merchant set a stack of coins down in front of the center cup. Part of me expected the number in the frilly dress to protest, but her eyes were even hungrier than her boyfriend. Sorry, sister, the First Bank of Bandit always wins. I'll be the only one doubling, tripling, quadrupling his money today.
I lifted the center cup, watching for the exquisite moment when hope shattered. But the couple's smiles grew wider and the crowd cheered again. A single red ball sat beneath it, a twin to the one I'd slipped into my pocket moments before. Faking a smile that could mask the grinding of my teeth, I slid a large chunk of the day's gains next to the merchant's bet. A quick brush against my pants reassured me that I had indeed removed the ball from play.
At best, I had an amateur cheat on my hands.
The crowd groaned as I announced the end to my peculiar brand of streetside theater. I didn't care. Time to leave.
Take a tip from Bandit. If you find someone cheating, leave. Don't try to figure out the trick and, by the Crooked Warden, don't be a dumbass and confront the cheater. If you're lucky, and steel isn't tickling your ribs or you haven't had the sudden need to learn how to catch a bullet in your teeth, you're going to meet the hired help. Skull kickers, face smashers, brawlers, and brutes. I say this as someone who has hired his own collection of highly regarded and expensive unsavories on a regular basis. Save Bandit the need for these, and you might just save yourself an expensive set of medical bills.
As I tied the cups and coins inside a thick bundle, I couldn't help but watch as the merchant's girl stood on her toes and whispered in the ear of her friend, a honey of a honey-blonde tall enough to grace the streets of Tokyo, New York, or Paris. This honey laughed, and then cast her eyes towards me.
I'd seen her kind before. There's a type of young woman of a certain age that needs to be bound to their mothers' apron strings before she dives headlong into trouble just to prove she's no longer a girl. Had Mama Honey just seen that smolder in her daughter's eyes, she wouldn't have let her out of the house ever again. There's no way the tall blonde in the blue dress learned that from her mother. I'd make sure keep an eye out for her. And one more for that cheat.
***
"Isn't there some way we can keep playing?"
"I could buy something off of you..."
"But I don't have anything to sell."
"Perhaps that caplet?"
"You'll give it back after the game?"
***
Her name was Elysse or Alice; I couldn't tell which. Her lips did delightful things to vowels that no proper Japanese woman could match. It didn't matter anyway. Girls like her, so willing to plunge headlong into trouble, never used their real name.
I didn't set out to find this honey-blonde with the smoldering stare. She found me, Your Honor, I swear. I did keep a deck of cards, a candle-lit room, and soft sheets ready just in case opportunity came knocking with blonde hair, a model's body, and a sea of white frills and red ribbon.
I knew her type after all. And I knew how she'd act when a two pair revealed that a caplet, no matter how cute, doesn't cover much of a young woman or her debts. She turned her face, but her eyes met mine as she tugged on the laces of her dress. I slid a stack of chips over, and the fabric around her neck began to part.
I turned my back as she shimmied out of her dress. There's a dance to this. The more dignity now, the less likely she'd be to run out of here. So I pretend that I'm not that interested in her delicate state of undress, and she pretends that she doesn't know what the sight of her in a thin white shirt and petticoat does to a man. Meanwhile, we both ignore that she's taking off her clothes in front of a stranger. We're playing a game after all, and just doing what the cards tell us to do. Elysse doesn't realize, though, that the cards speak with my voice.
You really think I'd rely on blind luck with an adventurous young woman's body on the line? Are you kidding me? OF COUSRE I CHEAT! So does every red-blooded man that plays this silly game. Marked cards? Please, I'm a professional. Amateurs ink and rough up cards, and never as cleverly as they think. Professionals shuffle their way to success. I'd rather spend thirty seconds shuffling than a week doctoring cards.
Elysse folded her dress and set it on the table. Then, with a little twirl that spun the hem of her petticoat just enough to reveal a flash of toned thigh, she sat down in her chair. She made no effort to cover herself as she slid the cards toward me; if I hadn't seen her in her street clothes, I would have thought she was wearing a regular white dress. Not that she'd wear that for long. I'd purposely set the blinds high enough that it was essentially one garment each round.
I picked up the cards and smiled. There's a special hand I deal when it's time to discard a young woman's modesty, complete with a suite of Bandit's special lies. Two pair can be a great hand, especially when the high pair holds the Queen of Hearts and the Queen of Diamonds. I'll leave it to your imagination what sweet nothings you can whisper with those cards in mind. Too bad my hand's three of a kind.
See, there's more to Bandit's heart than larceny. There's a smidgeon left over for poetry. A little poetry sweetens the scam, after all. That three of a kind? All knaves. That's jacks, for those of you using Vegas-style decks. Not one ing?nue has picked up on that little flourish; she's too drunk on the constant refrain of crazy, sexy, and beautiful.
I slid the deck towards Elysse. The pretty little thing, now only in white, cut the deck in a straight cut. None of this dozen little piles nonsense. It doesn't work, trust me. The longer cards slip and slide past each other in my hands, the better I can stack the deck in my favor. This time, I shuffled the cards just long enough to hide her losing hand at the top and my winning hand at the bottom. Meanwhile, the small talk chattered on.
The betting was over in a heartbeat. I pushed the beat a little harder than seen in a friendly game, just enough for a second piece of clothing. It was time for the lace round, after all, and I wanted to put to bed this silly nonsense that there weren't legs under that shift.
She smiled as she set down her hand in a tidy stack. One by one, she flipped the cards over. A pair of fives, then the queens. I stopped her right there with some soothing saying about the cards revealing her fate. "Artistic modeling," if that three of hearts I slipped into her hand is to be believed. The last card turned over.
The Queen of Clubs.
How the hell did she get a full house? No card shark worth their salt would ever lose track of cards like that.
I let the next hand go, too shocked to really pay attention to my cards. I should have stopped right there, once Elysse had earned enough cash to buy back her lost clothing. But hand after hand, it just got worse. A pair of sixes beaten by a pair of eights; three fours by three sixes. I even got beat by a queen high hand. Clubs, again. No matter if I dealt or she did, I still lost by narrow margins. With the blinds so high, I was soon down to only my skivvies.
A black-hearted trio of queens robbed me of even that.
Elysse scooped the cards up and tapped them into a deck. Cards rippled past each other as she gave them a quick but thorough shuffle. She flipped over the top card. The Queen of Clubs vanished back into the middle of the deck. Another quick shuffle and the first card again was the queen. Then she shuffled frantically, turning over cards at random, yet only the Queen of Clubs stared back at me. Whether second dealt, bottom dealt, or even pulled from the middle of the deck, the same card appeared over and over as Elysse gave a master's class in the art of the card shark, complete with tricks that I had never seen. She slapped the deck against the table and cut the cards into five piles. Dainty hands revealed the top of each. The Ace of Spades. The Ace of Diamonds. The Ace of Hearts. The Ace of Clubs. And you guessed it, the Queen of Clubs.
Proof positive that I'm the sucker at this table. Time to pay. I stood up and looped my thumbs through my waistband. Elysse stood up and help up her hand while another slid my pile of clothes off the table.
"I'll leave you with more than you left Patchouli." My brow furled until I remembered the librarian from earlier. I couldn't help the leer; in another place and another time, artists would have begged her to model for statues that would have made the de Milo gnash her teeth in envy. I got to see that show for free, courtesy of fifty-two assistants.
The blonde girl slammed her hand against the table. "Focus. You have only a couple hours to reach the border before nightfall. Leave now and you might make it."
"You're throwing me out like this?"
Her eyes narrowed. "My friend had even less when she ran out of this room." Shadows rippled behind her.
Fair enough. "So what happened if I don't make it to the border?"
"The cats around here remember a time when they stalked people for food and sport. Some of them long for those days of old." I gulped as I reached for the cards in front of me. The stacks flared in eye-searing gold flashes and vanished. "I said 'leave,'" she said. Steel filled her voice and her hands.
I'd seen longer knives, but hands that deft would make sure those points dug into something vital. "I'll let myself out."
***
The wind had already grown cold long before the sun ducked behind the mountains, but the darkness just pushed it into my bones. I'd even stopped shivering. With no sight of whatever border that blonde devil woman had mentioned, I'd need shelter and a fire. I'm no mountain hermit or survivalist, so I just stumbled through the thick forest.
Leaves rustled behind me. A figure padded out of the darkness. A human, thank the Crooked Warden. And while the night covered her face, it couldn't shroud the girl-next-door dress she wore. Not the most elegant of outfits, but, right now, I was in no shape to criticize.
"Hey, mister, let's play a game," the girl purred. She moved out of the shadows, and the moonlight caught the two cat ears poking out of a mass of braids.
***
Author's notes:
I find it interesting what different languages can do to the same name. Portuguese, for instance, pronounces Alice as Elysse...
I spent too much time watching Ricky Jay shows the night before coming up with this.
Achariyth:
Howl
***
"'In her house in Mayohiga, dread Yukari lies dreaming,'" Ran Yakumo muttered. She lurked next to her master's four-post bed, shadows hiding both the fox woman and the giant pillow in her hands. Smothering her master now would quiet the jet engine roar howling from the sleeping youkai's mouth by a factor of a thousand. Too bad that the resulting buzz saw whine would still be a hundred thousand times shriller than Yukari's normal pleasant, yet cryptic, speech.
Ran wished she could spend a moment to figure out down to the last digit exactly how much the feather cushion would silence Yukari's snoring. The vixen loved numbers to the point that her master often called her a living computer. With a little coaxing, they could tell her much about the world and how it worked. For instance, she had only ten minutes before Chen woke up to add her own caterwauling to the mix. Sleeping through that cacophonous duet, Ran knew from hard-learned terror, would be impossible.
Unless you were Yukari Yakumo.
The Buddha taught that to desire is to suffer. Limiting desire would end the ceaseless pain of existence. But even the Enlightened One would crave a night of uninterrupted sleep. especially if he had spent the past week stealing little cat naps around the Doomkitten's fits.
The vixen's hands twitched as she crept away from the mountain of ruffles and silk. "Even Reimu would forgive me," she whispered. The cushion dangled from Ran's loose grip until the fox hugged it tight against her body.
Unlike humans and beasts, breathing down would not kill Yukari. Assuming that the blonde youkai would even deign to notice the inconvenience, Ran figured that her master would be 33% likely to just roll over and moan Aya's name. After that, Ran was 100% certain to smother her for real. That left a 67% chance that Yukari would wake up raring for a full-contact pillow fight where she owned all the pillows. Yet no matter how Yukari applied the switch of correction, Chen would sleep away, oblivious. After the ruckus, Ran then could get a few hours sleep, at least until Yukari's feral snore awoke once more to murder all chances of rest. If the vixen acted in the next nine minutes and seventeen seconds...
...sixteen...
...fifteen...
Ran cast her burning bloodshot eyes about for any way to silence that infernal snore. Merely waking Yukari for anything short of Yuyuko's yearly banquet or Reimu and Marisa kicking down the door to Mayohiga would earn the fox a swat or ten.
Some days Ran wished that she had never agreed to become Yukari's familiar, but she'd never step away from the wonderful world of numbers her master had introduced her to.
Her eyes lit on the small portal by the bed. Yukari kept one nearby the bed as a chamber pot. Ran normally wished that her boss would get out of bed and walk to the bathroom like anyone else. Anything for a respite from the rasping snarl belting from Yukari's bedroom. However, her master loved convenience dearly, and Ran suffered on.
"In for a penny," Ran said. Her tails swished behind her and she flashed a toothy predatory smile. She ran towards the bathroom, opening herself up towards her master's power. Warmth flooded through her body, reminding the fox woman of running through fields on a midsummer day.
The vixen burst into the shrine to brass, porcelain, and beauty products. One swift kick spun the dial over the tub, flooding it with cold water. Meanwhile, Ran seized in both hands the portal hovering over the toilet and channeled her master's power into it. It took every bit of the warmth within, but the fox dragged the portal over the tub and pulled it just wide enough for an eternal seventeen year old.
Ran stepped back, watched the water fill the tub, and pursed her lips. Dashing out of the room, she reappeared minutes later, dragging a bag of ice as long and as full as one of her tails. Swinging it around, she smashed the ice against a wall before dumping the bag into the water.
Two minutes and thirty-eight seconds before the Doomkitten's yowl, Ran stood again by her master's bed and gripped the underside of the mattress. Lightning quick calculations told her how hard, how fast, and how high to life. With a minute to spare, and a bright smile on her lips, the kitsune trickster hauled her side of the bed high into the air. Yukari tumbled over the side, and a pleasing splash filled the air.
"RAN!"
And Chen slept on.
***
Yukari huddled against the porcelain tub, shivering inside a heavy terry cloth robe. Her teeth chattered as she flipped through a phone-book sized manual in her hands, stopping only to wipe sodden blonde strands out of her eyes. "Why is my familiar misbehaving?" Yukari read.
Your Kitsune 9.0 familiar is acting out in an attempt to bring your attention to her needs. The manufacturer recommends that you sit down with your Kitsune 9.0 and work your way through the following questions until you are able to diagnose and correct the underlying need causing her misbehavior.
Yukari scowled, her lips twisting into a moue of disgust as she read on. Flinging the thick book against the wall, she reached for a small pamphlet atop a stack of scattered magazines and books by the toilet. Titled "Familiars for Dummies," this single sheet folded three times had been written by Yuyuko Saigyouji and distilled the ghostly courtesan's wisdom into a series of pithy sayings. Where the Kitsune 9.0 manual had reams of paper devoted to troubleshooting, Yuyuko's philosophy could be reduced to two sentences.
"Equipment that can't work is replaced. Equipment that won't work is abused until it can't or it does," Yukari read aloud through blue lips. The waterlogged youkai grinned and reached through a portal, grabbing a familiar wooden switch.
Achariyth:
Dark Matter
Hidden inside a basement recording booth beneath a steel and glass box building at Tokyo University, Sumireko Usami yawned and rested her head against her computer desk. Ignoring the flashing scarlet warning from the On Air signal lamp on the wall, she set her glasses by the phone switchboard near her head. "Just fifteen more minutes, Mom."
"I'm not your mother and the first commercial break is in fifteen minutes," Ruri Himeyuri called out over the intercom. Separated from the recording booth by a pane of glass, the slight recording engineer reigned over the upcoming radio show from her perch in the sound booth. "Dead air won't pay for our tuitions."
Sumireko waved away Ruri's concern before melting against her desk. A howl of shrill feedback squealed from the recording booth's speakers. The dark haired girl leapt to her feet and fumbled for her glasses.
The On Air lamp flickered one last time before bathing the booth in a steady red glow. After a short explosion of clicks and pops from the speakers, the intro to Sumeriko's radio show started playing.
"From Godzilla's Playground on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, good morning, good evening, wherever you may be. Welcome to Tokyo University's most listened-to late night talk show, Dark Matter."
As the recording of a communications student pressed into the service of Tokyo University's only late night talk show rattled off the phone numbers for the call-in lines, Sumireko spun around and stuck her tongue out at her sound engineer. Ruri laughed and pointed Sumireko back to her chair, the red light giving her elfin features a devilish cast.
"Slavedriver," Sumireko mouthed. She took her seat and placed a set of mammoth tin-can headphones over her ears. She flipped the page on the daily calendar and groaned. For every show Sumireko hosted about magic, telepathy, and lost civilizations like the Turtles of Pararakelse, Dark Matter needed two shows on UFOs, government cover-ups, and cryptid sightings, complete with the cringe-inducing refrain of "Aliens!", to pay the bills. Only engineering students would be calling in tonight.
"?and now, here is your host, Sumireko Usami."
She unmuted her headset microphone and read from her prompt. "Three years ago, the space station greenhouse TORIFUNE malfunctioned, flying from low earth orbit to Lagrangian Point 4, some 384,000 kilometers away from both the earth and the moon. At the same time, the crew vanished, leaving what should have been Japan's lush green ark floating derelict through the night sky. The newspapers have all told their version of the story over the years, but tonight, on this Phone-in Friday, I want to hear from all you True Believers on what really happened out there in space."
Sumireko rolled her eyes as Ruri added a deepening echo to the word "space." Glancing down at the switchboard, she saw a constellation of phone line light up. Picking one at random, she read from the display. "Tokyo University, you're on the air."
A syrupy voice bubbled from the speakers. "Hi, I'm Karin-"
"No real names. You never know who might be listening."
"Can I be called Spooky Girl?"
"We do have two others calling in by that name," Sumireko said.
"They'll just have to choose new nicknames."
The radio host stifled a giggle. "So, Spooky Girl, what's your take?"
"It's obvious. Aliens."
Sumireko rolled her eyes and waited for more. After thirty seconds of silence, she cleared her throat. "That's it?"
"It'd be more fun if it were ghosts, but I wouldn't expect a ghost to know what happened to a space station. It would make for an amazing tale for your ghost story show, though. When's the next one?"
"Next week."
"Oh. I'll call back then. I've got the perfect story. No space stations, I promise."
"I'm looking forward to it." The twintailed host toggled her switchboard. "Hello, Lake Suwa, you're on Dark Matter with Sumireko Usami."
"Good evening, Sumireko. Call me Inari. I'm a long time listener and a first time caller," a matronly woman said. Sumireko could hear pages rustling in the background as though Inari was correcting papers while she spoke. "You are right not to listen to the newspapers."
"Tell me why." Sumireko steeled herself for the certain cry of "Aliens!"
"Look at the delta-V and the distances. Numbers don't lie," growled Inari.
Sumireko shuddered. The respite from the engineering dorms had been short lived. "I hope you're not asking me to check your work, because I'm not a physics major, thank the gods."
"Fine. Let's start with a simple claim, that TORIFUNE was moved to the L-4 point for the purposes of recovery from earth."
"That is where the astronomers found it."
"True, but for recovery? With what?" Inari gave a sharp laugh like a fox's bark. "TORIFUNE is as far from both the earth and the moon as they are from each other. It's been forty years since humanity had the capability to fly that far, and the Apollo program is now nothing more than a museum piece. Soyuz and the Space Shuttle could only reach TORIFUNE when it was in low earth orbit. There is no recovery at L-4 possible without designing a new spacecraft from scratch.
"Furthermore, there wasn't enough fuel on TORIFUNE to move the station the 604,442 kilometers to the L-4 point, much less in a single day. You'd need a rocket the size of the station to do that, and you'd kill all life aboard in the process. Since the camera feeds from the onboard greenhouses still send back pictures of the plants and animals, we know that didn't happen.
As Inari lectured on, Sumireko jotted down notes on scratch paper. Math wasn't her talent, so she would need to copy tonight's show off of Ruri's hard drive so she could have Renko check the claims. Her cousin ate up math problems as complex as the ones Inari described. "Those numbers say a lot."
"The numbers don't lie," Inari said.
"Do they say who moved TORIFUNE to its new orbit?" Sumireko waited for the inevitable refrain.
"No." Inari sighed. "You can't tell that from the numbers alone. But the L-4 point is a hint. Not only is it too far away for anyone on Earth to reach, it's one of two points in all of space where a space station can remain over the same point on the moon's surface without drifting."
An emerald light flashed atop her switchboard. Sumireko looked over her shoulder towards the glass window that divided the recording booth from the sound engineer's domain. Inside, Ruri held up two fingers. The talk show hostess nodded and reached towards her switchboard. "You've given us a lot to think over, Inari. Thank you for calling." She toggled the switchboard to line two and read the identifier. "Mount Yatsugatake, you're on Dark Matter."
"Sumireko, darling, it's Cherry," a husky voice crooned into Sumireko's earpiece.
Ruri pointed to the clock and mouthed, "Keep her talking."
Smiling, the radio host flashed a thumb's up at her engineer. The coquette was a favorite of the audience and Sumireko alike. "I wasn't expecting to hear from you tonight. You usually don't call in during our space shows."
"I couldn't bear to think that you might replace me with that vixen that was just on the phone," Cherry cooed.
"Wait, you know Inari?"
"Honey, I get to meet everybody." As Cherry giggled, the switchboard filled with calls. Between shows, Dark Matter's audience flooded the suggestion line with demands for callers to talk to Cherry while she was on. Sumireko and Ruri were adamant in their refusal. People dialed in to listen to Cherry vamp her way across the air waves. Horny engineering students and drunken frat frats stumbling over the latest pick-up line would tank the show's rating faster than a night of commercial reruns. "She should know better than to slip her leash like that."
"Have you met someone who knows what happened to TORIFUNE?"
"Several of the darlings. If you do meet them, don't look in their eyes."
"Let me guess." Sumireko braced herself. "Aliens?"
"No," Cherry chirped, "moon bunnies."
Sumireko cast a glance at her calendar. It was indeed the night of the full moon. "Aren't they the same?"
"Hardly, dear. The only saucers those precious girls use are for tea. Haven't I told you about my visit to the moon?"
"For a month with your gardener, right?"
"You do remember. Excellent! But maybe I should retell it for all of the True Believers listening?"
"Maybe next time." Sumireko ignored the pounding against the recording booth's glass. "We'll make an entire show out of it." That would mollify Ruri. The advertisers would pay five times the going rate just to have Cherry simper her way through the phonebook on the air. And after Ruri finished her newest extortionate shakedown of the advertisers, they would pay six times more.
"It's a date," Cherry purred.
"Looking forward to it." Sumireko coughed and tried to hide her burning cheeks in her hand. She cleared her throat. "Tell me about these moon bunnies. What do they look like?"
"Like you or me, but with long white jackrabbit ears."
Sumireko shook her head, trying to banish an image from her mind. "TORIFUNE was stolen by Playboy Bunnies?"
"Nothing that crass, dear. Trust me, you'd understand if you saw one. Just don't look in her eyes."
"You've said that already."
"I always forget if I've said that. But then again, I forget a lot after the moon bunnies visit for some reason," Cherry said.
"When did you last see them?"
"Last evening, while I was watching the sunset underneath my cherry tree. Such delightful girls. I did mention not to look in their red eyes, right? Anyway, after a stiff shot of spirits, their leader started bragging. You see, the Moon is a garden, and the moon rabbits need new plants. You humans were so kind to ship up a special delivery to your neighbors. Who could resist that opportunity?"
"Why didn't they just take the station to the moon? What's so special about the L-4 point?"
"You know, she didn't say, but I think the answer to the first has something to do with purity. As for L-4, didn't you listen to that vixen? That's the only place where you can park it overhead on the Moon and have it stay there, which makes it easier for the rabbits to travel to it. With proper care, the seeds and cuttings from TORIFUNE will last for millennia."
Sumireko whistled as she mulled over Cherry's revelation. "Well, an interplanetary heist makes more sense than most of the stories I hear on the show. So what did the rabbits do with the missing crew?"
"No, silly girl, the rabbits were the crew-" A shrill whistle on the phone line cut Cherry off. Sumireko flinched and covered her ears, forgetting about her headphones.
"Seiran, terminate the phone call from T-7," an aristocratic woman ordered over the phone.
The line went dead.
As the disconnected tone pulsed like a heartbeat in her headphones, a wild-eyed Sumireko caught her breath. "Cherry? Please call back. Let us know that you're all right." She hung up the call and tapped the "return phone call" button on her switchboard. Once again, the monotone disconnected signal rang out into the night. "True believers, I don't know what just happened, but we'll try to get Cherry back during this commercial break."
She muted her microphone. As the red On Air lamp faded away, Sumireko unplugged her headphones and charged into the sound booth. "Ruri, did you hear what just happened?" A squeal escaped her lips as she froze in the doorway.
Behind the soundboard and laptop of the sound engineer's desk sat not the petite wunderkind Ruri, but an athletic schoolgirl in an amber crop top, shorts, and a battered newsboy's hat. The stranger chewed on a long wooden skewer as she pried the hard drive out of the computer with a screwdriver. Two white rabbit ears hung out of her cap like twintails.
Cherry was right. A chill ran up Sumireko's spine.
A willowy woman in a white dress stepped out from behind the door. A white derringer with bunny ear sights rested on her hip. Sumireko shrank away from her, for, like the yellow stranger clutching her prize, the lavender-tressed woman sported a pair of snowy bunny ears, like a March hare's. The white rabbit grabbed Sumeriko by the wrist and pulled her inside the sound booth.
The door slammed shut behind her.
Sumireko clenched her eyes shut, just as Cherry advised. "Where's Ruri?"
The white rabbit shrugged. "She had a sudden errand to attend to."
"At three in the morning?"
"She didn't say before she left."
"She's going to be furious that you're messing with her computer."
"I don't think she'll remember." The willowy woman caressed the radio host's cheek. "Neither will you. Try to remember to leave the hidden things alone. If you can."
Sumireko pulled away from the electric touch, wide-eyed. She looked up at the white rabbit and whimpered. Despite the warnings, despite her will, Sumireko grew mesmerized with the woman's glowing red eyes.
Author's notes:
ZUN put a lot of time into getting the astronomy of TORIFUNE and Trojan Green Asteroid right, even down to correct distances, to the point that a reader could figure out that the station had been moved to one of only two specific points in space. The rocket science, however, leaves a little more to be desired?
Karin Sasamori and Ruri Himeyuri are borrowed from ToHeart2 by Aquaplus.