by Nisioisin
The dumbass fell for it in a split second.
“And there I was, boorishly blathering about how ghosts don’t exist─when I was the one who was haunting them!”
Nice try.
Well, the truth was probably completely different─but even if this lie were the truth, Tsukihi was accommodating enough to go along with it.
“Okay, I’ll buy it!”
I’ll drink the Kool-Aid.
Or in this case, the tea.
And just like that, she seemed to forget about the whole thing.
“Hm,” Kanbaru wondered when I reported this outcome. “The other members of the club, or you─who was Tsukihi buying it from?”
001
What would Ogi Oshino have to say about roads? I’ve yet to hear her, this niece of Mèmè Oshino’s, say much of anything on the subject. Intersections and traffic lights, sure, but she’s kept mum on the topic of roads themselves. Well, she may have made some offhand remark about them in the course of one of our idle chats, but if she did, I don’t recall it. Her words have a strange way of disappearing from my memory─and not just her words: her behavior, her appearance, they’re all difficult for me to retain.
Gone with the wind.
Just like a rumor after seventy-five days─everything pertaining to her vanishes as if it had never been there.
However.
We did have a conversation that I do remember, not about roads, not about roadways, but about road construction─it wasn’t even all that recently, and yet I remember it like it was yesterday.
“Araragi-senpai─sorry if I sound political, but in our society, roads mainly seem to be a means of creating jobs and stimulating the economy, don’t they…what with all the maintenance, repairs, and construction.”
That’s what she said.
She, Ogi Oshino─in an all-knowing tone that reminded me of her missing uncle.
A philosophical tone quite unlike what you’d expect from a high school student, and your junior to boot─though her resigned air did set it apart from Oshino’s brand of incisiveness.
The desire to balance good and evil, positive and negative, light and dark, on the other hand─her insistence on maintaining neutrality, that was Oshino to a tee.
“Not so much a space for walking or running─the engineering project itself is what makes a road a road. In the modern world, the goal of roadways lies in the very act of opening up the path.”
It’s like living for the sake of being alive─she went on.
“Even if it’s a road that not a single person will ever walk down. It doesn’t matter, the act of creating a road where there wasn’t one before is enough to give it meaning.”
Building a road that no one will ever walk down.
Building a road that no one will use.
And then rebuilding it when it goes to seed or falls apart, as many times as is necessary, repairing it ad infinitum. Filling in every crack that opens, washing away whatever filth collects─maintaining it as a road.
“What do you think, Araragi-senpai? Do you think it’s meaningless─to build a road that no one will walk down?”
To build a road that no one will walk down.
Such a road─do you think it’s meaningless?
“Maybe you do at that─Araragi-senpai. After all, my uncle tells me you’ve got a tendency to look for too much meaning in everything. But I’m not saying that it’s meaningless. I’m just saying that it’s wrong.”
Wrong.
Did she mean wrong as in different─or wrong as in mistaken? I couldn’t tell, so I didn’t answer her question and instead turned it around on her.
What.
Do you think?
Was it, or was it not, meaningless to build a road that no one will walk down? Grinning cheerfully, she─
Ogi Oshino was all too happy to answer my question.
Unfortunately, as to what that answer was─I have absolutely no recollection.
002
“Winter’s really arrived, hasn’t it─feels like it might start snowing at any moment,” she remarked. “Even with all this talk about global warming, in the end, winter’s as cold as ever─we’ll never get eternal summer. What do you think?”
“I mean, it’s certainly cold, but…I dunno. According to the weather report, it won’t stay cold. The average temperature’s rising, even for winter. Maybe with how much hotter it’s been getting in summer, even if winter temperatures don’t drop all that much, we just experience it relatively as being as cold as ever?”
“It all becomes clear. Wise words indeed, Araragi-senpai. No wonder my uncle took off his hat to you─”
“Just to set the record straight, your uncle never once took off his hat to me. He didn’t even wear a hat…”
“Ha hah, it’s only an expression. I think it came from a time when everyone wore hats and took them off when someone important passed by… By doing so you’re acknowledging your inferiority, aren’t you? It’s like asking your opponent to play with a one-piece handicap in shogi. And you’re right, however much my dear uncle admired you, I don’t suppose he saw you as his superior.”
“…”
There’s a mountain in my town, and at the top of that mountain is a shrine. I call it a mountain, but it’s too small for anyone to care about climbing it, and I call it a shrine, but it’s too dilapidated for anyone to go worship there.
Still and all, a mountain’s a mountain, and a shrine’s a shrine.
Early morning, November first.
A few hours before I had to be at school, Ogi and I were ascending that mountain together─headed for the shrine at the top.
When was the last time I’d climbed this mountain?
That time with Shinobu, maybe?
And before that─Kanbaru and Sengoku and I came up here together.
Ogi doesn’t look all that buff, but she must have legs of iron because she was striding ahead of me, almost like a guide─with my vampiric power currently at a low ebb, I felt like she might leave me behind altogether.
“If my uncle ever used the expression ‘a one-piece handicap’ towards you, I’m afraid it would hurt both of your rankings─”
“Listen, Ogi. I really don’t care what happens to our rankings… Come on, won’t you tell me already? Why I’m out here on this trek with you?”
“Ugh, I’ve already explained it to you, haven’t I?”
“…?”
Had she?
I guess it rang a─nah, while I was leaning into my role as a character with a hopeless weakness for girls of late, I doubted I’d let myself be dragged out to a deserted mountain without knowing a thing about why, without asking, just doing as I was told.
She must’ve given me a good reason.
It’s just that I’d completely forgotten what it was─hmm, maybe I’d better ease up on the exam prep? At last I was getting used to memorizing reign names, but I needed to keep my priorities straight. I couldn’t fill my brain with school-related stuff at the cost of my regular memory.
Anyway, if she already explained it to me, I felt awkward asking her again at that point. I suppose I wanted to impress this junior of mine, whom I’d only just met─all the more so because she was Oshino’s niece.
…
Wait.
How had I even met her in the first place?
“Sorry, Ogi, but─remind me how we met?”
If I was trying to impress my junior, asking such a basic question was probably the worst possible way to go about it, but it just kind of slipped out.
“Ha hah. You’re spirited today, Araragi-senpai. Did something good happen to you?”
She’d replied without slackening her pace. When I looked at her feet, I saw that she hadn’t even bothered to put on sneakers though we were climbing a steep mountain path.
She knew we would be, and yet she’d come so unprepared─maybe this didn’t even qualify as mountainous terrain as far as Ogi was concerned.
She didn’t look it, but was she the Patagonia
type?
The path was in pretty rough shape…
“It was Kanbaru-senpai who introduced us. Don’t you remember?”
“Yeah? Oh─now that you say it, that sounds right. Um, remind me, Ogi, are you a freshman on the basketball team or something?”
“You’re full of questions today─are you that curious about me? I’m a bookworm, I’m not involved in sports at all.”
“If you’re a bookworm…how come you’re so good at climbing mountains?”
“Because mountains are homes to the gods, I guess? Right in my wheelhouse, unworthy as I am.”
I didn’t take her meaning.
Despite the fact that I didn’t, it was somehow convincing─the statement possessed a murky persuasiveness, and I couldn’t press the point. In that regard, she was every inch Oshino’s─that expert’s niece.
I kept quiet and listened to what she had to say.
As she stayed one step ahead of me.
“Because, well, mountains are like aberrations themselves─my area of expertise, in other words. I understand why people feel inclined to establish shrines at their summits. Then again, Kita-Shirahebi Shrine and this mountain have absolutely nothing to do with each other. I suppose jamming two unrelated things together is bound to create discord─”
“Discord?”
“Ah, forget it. I said ‘discord’ because I couldn’t think of a more appropriate word, but it isn’t as drastic as all that. Usually, any mistakes in the initial configuration aren’t hard to correct.”
“Are you saying that when they built this shrine here way back when, someone made a mistake?”
“Even if they had, is what I’m saying. I’m talking about trying that idea on for size. A first fitting. What I’m saying, Araragi-senpai─is something like this, for instance. Right now you’re feverishly devoting yourself to your exam prep because you want to go to the same school as your sweetheart, but say you and Ms. Senjogahara broke up. What would you do? Would you give up on your studies?”
“That’s an unpleasant for instance…”
The way she bluntly made insensitive remarks in spite of her impeccable manner of speaking really jibed with the notion that she was Kanbaru’s junior.
I frowned, but Ogi continued on without any indication that she cared─that is, she didn’t even turn around. “I don’t think you would. You might shoot for a different school, but I don’t think you’d throw away these long months of hard work. Or rather, I don’t think you could. Even if you blew it with your baby, I don’t think you’d throw the baby out with the bathwater. Am I wrong?”
“You’re implying that I made a mistake when I started going out with Senjogahara. Ease up, Ogi.”
“I’m afraid I can’t. I’m not an easygoing person─as you can see. Though if I’ve offended you, I’m sorry. It’s a purely hypothetical example anyway. I have faith that no what-if scenario can truly offend you, Araragi-senpai.”
“…”
Well, taking her to task over every little analogy certainly wouldn’t make me seem like a very tolerant senpai.
I assume the point Ogi was trying to make was that your original goal isn’t the be-all-end-all─to borrow her analogy, it’s true that I started my exam prep with the overriding goal of going to the same university as Senjogahara, but that doesn’t mean that’s still my only motivation.
Let’s say.
It’s an unthinkable “let’s say,” but even if things don’t work out between me and Senjogahara─I’m not sure I could ditch out on the grudging enjoyment I’ve found in studying.
Partly because I’d hate to let all my hard work go to waste, as in the Concorde Effect, but that’s definitely not the only reason.
“Hey, Ogi.”
“What is it? Are you angry, after all? That’s a real shame; I wasn’t trying to make you angry. In fact, I spoke with the best of intentions.”
“No, listen, I’m not angry…but what do you mean, the best of intentions? Uh, weren’t we talking about mountains and shrines, rather than my exam prep? This mountain, and the shrine at the top of it? A mistake in the initial configuration─”
“Yes, true,” said Ogi. “Only a malicious person would call it a mistake. Even if it was one, I think it’s safe to declare the statute of limitations long past on that─”
Though the trend in society seems to be toward abolishing statutes of limitations for the worst crimes, she noted─and here my guide did stop walking, and turned around to face me.
“I’ve come to fix that mistake.”
That’s what she said.
Her putative reason for currently climbing this mountain─okay, sure, that did ring a bell.
I felt like I’d gotten a more detailed explanation, even.
It was precisely because I’d found her reason convincing that I was there with her, having eked out a moment’s breathing room from my exam prep─and when I looked.
She hadn’t stopped so she could turn and face me. She wasn’t waiting for me because my pace was flagging. It appeared that we’d reached our destination.
Behind her stood a tumbledown torii.
Behind it, then, was a sacred path where neither worshippers, nor gods now, walked─and farther behind stood a crumbling shrine hall.
“…”
It wasn’t anywhere close to time for a traditional New Year’s visit, but at any event, our climb was at an end, and we arrived at that place of discord─at Kita-Shirahebi Shrine.
003
The subject of Kita-Shirahebi Shrine probably warrants a bit of extra explanation─fate has seen fit to bind me to the place in some strange way, as I’ve already mentioned, but above and beyond that, it’s a spot that lately─since spring break, to be precise─has become one of the hottest in town.
Since spring break.
Since Shinobu Oshino, in other words─since the vampire.
It was about half a year ago that she came to our town. The arrival of a legendary vampire, a demon beautiful enough to send chills down your spine. And the day the iron-blooded, hot-blooded, yet cold-blooded vampire arrived─was a momentous one.
I don’t just mean that it was momentous to me, nor is that some rhetorical flourish to indicate that the existence of vampires in the real world is itself momentous─the mere fact that such a mighty aberration was “on the move” was enough to be big news in the industry.
Maybe the analogy of a hurricane will make it clearer.
The category and trajectory, speed and scale of any given hurricane will dominate the news cycle for as long as it lasts. There’s a wealth of meteorological information out there, a wealth of meteorological phenomena, but is there any other kind of “weather” to which we give categories and even names?
That’s pretty much what it was.
Shinobu Oshino’s─the former Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade’s journey was in and of itself a type of disaster.
Which is why Oshino mobilized─and put everything he had into disaster recovery. During his time here, he did come off as a grubby expert, collecting local ghost stories, and urban legends and campfire tales, which is mostly how he makes his living, but he was also engaged in other work.
In fact, as far as it goes, I directly assisted him─first as a party involved in the vampire brouhaha, and then to repay my debt.
In order to return our spiritually disarrayed town to its normal state─it was terribly disarrayed by the coming of a legendary vampire─I was asked to help rectify the center of that spiritual disarray.
The center, or from what I heard.
More like an epicenter─and it was here, at Kita-Shirahebi Shrine.
People talk about urban air pockets, so borrowing that terminology, I guess you could call this place a rural air pocket: a gathering place for spiritual disarray, for all the “bad elements” that precede aberrations, but which can provide the raw material for their creation. A hangout, a haunt, you might say.
A dumping ground.
Not a bl
ade of grass survives where a vampire passes─such seemed the fury with which Shinobu struck, but if only that had been true. Because lo and behold, the byproducts, the after-effects she left behind turned out to be a real pain in the neck.
Given the horrors, physical and mental, that I went through during those two short weeks when I myself was a vampire, I’m loath to admit it, but I can understand why those vampire-expurgation experts went a little overboard in their enthusiasm to exterminate Shinobu.