Burials in Gensokyo are generally performed in public cemeteries created outside the village. Many have also been going wild in those places. However, the newly-made Myouren Temple graveyard has a reputation for burials being relatively well-managed. Relatively well-off humans seem to have been buried there willingly, and continue to do so.

However, some strange things have been going on at the Myouren Temple for the past few days, and the aforementioned well-off humans seem to be growing worried. A guardian has suddenly appeared in the center of the graveyard. That guardian is said to be driving away people that get close.

The guardian is the corpse of a human, and as if her brain has rotted, there is no way to communicate with her at all, and there are no clues as to what her motives are in the slightest. The youkai at the Myouren Temple have worked out a plan, and have brought in a youkai from underground in order to talk to the corpse.

"Hmm, this corpse? It says it's not really planning on harming anyone."

Explains our translator, Rin Kaenbyou (Kasha). She is an expert on dead bodies. There is no one around that can handle the treatment of human corpses better than her.

"Her name is Yoshika Miyako. She says she doesn't remember much more than that, and that she suddenly got the feeling that she really needed to defend this place no matter what. I think that her obsessions from her past life made her uneasy, and caused her corpse to be reanimated. I have narrowed down her area which she is defending for a bit, so you can probably just leave her here to rot on her own if it wouldn't be a problem!"

After she said that, she took a few corpses from the graveyard as a reward and returned to the underground. From what she said, the corpse started to move around alone, and there isn't really a meaning to her movements. It seems that the Myouren Temple has begun to keep an eye on her under the premise that even corpses have rights.

However, it is an unexplainable reality. First of all, it appears that there was no one named Yoshika Miyako buried in the Myouren Temple graveyard to start with. Considering that the people working at the Myouren Temple would probably have realized this easily, it seems there must be some hidden elements to this story. What exactly it is that Yoshika Miyako is guarding? I have a feeling that a lot of things still haven't happened yet.

(Aya Shameimaru)