by Nisioisin
“Though it be safe for the moment, it might prove the type of poison to extend its malign influence to thy descendants, my lord.”
“No, if Senjogahara poisoned me like that, she’d be screwing her own descendants.”
“Pshaw, be not certain that thy house shall flourish with Miss Tsundere.”
“…”
Well.
Given my current situation.
Maybe I ought to stop running away from reality and start considering how to save Senjogahara, even if I can’t save myself.
As for Shinobu, though…it might come down to a double suicide.
“Hence I shall dig in my heels about continuing the poison inspection.”
“Dig in your heels? Should that be head over heels?”
“Nay, leave the matter entirely in my hands! Four more samples for comparative analysis should be enough to yield the answer.”
“Four? Shinobu-tan, from what I can see there are exactly four donuts left in the clip.”
“Is that so? What a coincidence. Just what the doctor ordered.”
“More like made to order. That’s how you came up with that number. Now hand over the plate.”
“Impossible. As thy valet, my lord, ’tis my duty to protect thee from even the most insignificant risk.”
“You can’t play the valet only when it suits you!”
Play the valet.
Hell of a ring to it, especially for something I came up with on the spot.
“Hand over the plate.”
I tried saying it again, but Shinobu was clutching the plate to her and showed no signs of letting it go. Well, strictly speaking she wasn’t clutching it to her─she was holding it loosely in one hand.
As a ruse, naturally.
One false move on my part could overturn the entire plate; she’d brought us to an obvious stalemate.
If I tried to take it by force, all four donuts would end up on the floor, and we’d be left with nothing─having lost her power as a vampire, all she could rely on was her wiles. Tough luck for me.
“This is my final warning. Shinobu. Hand over that plate right now.”
“Kakak. Thou art a poor negotiator,” she scoffed, her grip on the donuts precarious at best, “with thine uncompromising attitude, thy single-minded insistence: give it to me, hand it over. Is that not the very reason that the talisman entrusted to thee by the ringleader of those experts was stolen?”
“Urk.”
I mean.
Absolutely.
But was that really something to be talking about in the same breath as this tug-of-war over some donuts? Consider the dire situation that I am in, that you are in─not to mention others around us who’ve gotten roped in thanks to the theft.
“If thou hadst acquitted thyself more admirably in that parley, we would not be in such grave circumstance. Thy level of introspection leaves much to be desired.”
“…”
I feel like there’s no arguing with anything anyone has to say to me about that case, but at the same time, you’re the last person in the world I want to hear it from.
Sure, I was careless, but you were pretty goddamn careless yourself.
“Nay, I speak to thee in all earnestness.” The little blond girl with a plate of donuts in one hand, who was apparently speaking to me in all earnestness, puffed out her chest and continued in a haughty tone. “In order that such a tragedy not befall thee a second time, my lord, I prithee take heed of the lessons learned from the accumulated days of thy life. Dost truly think that if thou canst not win me over here, ’tis still possible that ye might win over the snake god?”
“Nnnn…”
Well.
What can I say to that?
Obviously I’m going to try and avoid this tragedy─but if that’s so obvious, then she’s right, I’d better start thinking about what comes after.
Because if my subpar diplomacy really was to blame for the mess, that’s a flaw I need to overcome. I’m not going to acquire Oshino’s eloquence and skill at bridge-building negotiation overnight, of course─but if I can’t do it overnight, all the more reason to work at it every day, like now…
“Nay, thy logic is skewed.”
“Feh. You noticed?”
“Didst imagine I wouldn’t?”
“Why should I need to be some master negotiator just to keep you from eating my donuts? Just give them to me. Give them back. If I insist on it, just hand them over. This is a purely private affair, it doesn’t involve anyone but us.”
“The matter of the snake god is also a private affair, though, is it not?”
“Last time I warned you, I told you that was it, but I’ll say it just one more time out of the goodness of my heart. Out of single-minded insistence. Shinobu, hand over that plate.”
“If ’tis naught but the plate thou desirest, then I have no objection.”
“Naught but, my ass.”
“Once poison hast ate, finish the plate, as they say. I shall eat the donuts, and my lord shall eat the plate. It seems a fair apportioning to me.”
“Not only is it as unfair as it could get, you’re still presuming that Senjogahara’s donuts are poisoned. Cut the shit already.”
We hadn’t been on the same page for a while now. I figured our relationship would be a long one, but some intertribal barriers were proving more difficult to overcome than I’d expected.
Shinobu apparently felt the same way, because she made no attempt to hide a drawn-out sigh of discouragement.
She might as well have held up a sign that said, I’m disappointed in you.
Well, we were on the same page about that, at least, but most of the time it felt like we weren’t even reading the same book.
“In my estimation, thou hadst already failed the moment didst reveal these donuts to me. Thou wouldst have done better to eat such as these before I could discover them. To eat them in secret without waking me. If hadst done so, this pointless trouble would have been avoided.”
“You’re the one causing this pointless trouble… Talk about a problem neighbor.”
There was absolutely no way I was going to be eating these without being noticed by my neighbor, that is, by you down there in my shadow─what could I do, if the smell alone was enough to wake you up.
“Mm, in that case…before we work on thy negotiation skills, my lord, perhaps ’twould be best to polish thy flair for secrecy.”
“Secrecy?”
“Aye, if hadst been more adept in secreting that talisman, ’twould never have reached the stage of negotiation, and we would not now be brought to such dire straits. ’Twas the fact that thou didst secrete the talisman in such an easily found place which gave rise to this tragedy.”
“Uh…well, it’s not like I can’t see where you’re coming from.”
Maybe the whole problem is that I engage in this kind of discussion in the first place. Could my lack of skill at negotiation stem from the fact that I actually listen to what other people have to say?
“But you agree that finding a place to hide it was a problem, right? I mean, being handed that kind of, well, weapon…”
Handed.
Or more like backhanded.
“Letting it out of my sight was risky, but carrying it around with me was even riskier… Ultimately, I don’t see what else I could’ve done but hide it in a place like that.”
“Yet is that not why ’twas found so easily, o he who if he were a tarot card would be the Fool?”
“Why go to all the trouble of bringing the tarot card part into it? Calling me a plain old fool would be just as good.”
Though it wouldn’t be good.
You think a college hopeful is going to take that lying down?
“Were I a tarot card, wouldst be the Moon.”
“No, I’m pretty sure the tarot deck already has the Devil or Death or something. Wouldn’t that be more like a vampire?”
“I am the Moon. The proof lies in the fact that, had it been me, the
talisman would have found a fitting hiding place. As would these donuts. Know thou, my lord, that thy present circumstance is entirely of thine own foolish making!”
“…”
Man, she pisses me off.
At the same time, if you can’t turn a blind eye to your own shortcomings, maybe you don’t survive as long as she has.
Last time she couldn’t do it, she tried to kill herself, after all.
As for my present circumstances, even if we had to wait and see if our measures against the snake god would pay off─if I didn’t resolve the donut issue soon, I was never going to get my exam prep back on track.
This was something of a critical moment.
“Go ahead and tell me then, Shinobu. Forget about the talisman for a sec─if it were you, how would you have kept the donuts secret?”
“’Tis difficult to put into words. Hm, easier said than done, they say, but aye, perhaps ’twould instead be easier in this instance to show thee than to tell thee of it. Avail me of but five minutes, and I shall make these donuts disappear from before thine eyes like magic. Thou shalt never find them.”
“Five minutes… No, hang on, five minutes is plenty of time for you to eat four donuts. It’s absolutely against the rules to eat them then say, ‘Look, they’re gone.’”
And of course it would be against the rules to hide them in my shadow─if I had that kind of method at my disposal, not only would I have been able to hide the talisman, you never would’ve known about these donuts.
“Kakak. Dost truly think I would be so duplicitous?”
“You? Definitely.”
Holding Senjogahara’s donuts hostage was already pretty underhanded.
“Perhaps I cannot keep all four from thee─but one or two, at least, I shall hide such that they never be found. What sayest thou, dost fancy a challenge? Canst find in five minutes that which I take five minutes to hide?”
“…”
“The rule shall be that any donuts thou dost not find, I may consume. Should my lord find all four, it shall be his right to eat all four.”
“Hm…”
I wasn’t wild about the idea of gambling for donuts that were mine to begin with, that is, if she didn’t look like a little girl, I’d have an overwhelming urge to smack her…but in order to get back to my exam prep as soon as possible, I had no choice but to go along with it.
“All right, I’m in. But let me repeat, eating them doesn’t count as hiding them, okay? You can’t hide them in your stomach, okay?”
“Aye, aye, ’tis understood. Nor shall I hide them in my cleavage.”
“You’re a little girl, you don’t have cleavage.”
More likely she’d hide two by stuffing her bra with them─though that would still leave two more.
“If you tried it anyway, there would be the problem of how to recover them… I mean, if you eat them behind my back, it’ll be too late no matter what I say.”
“Thou hast too little faith in me.”
“Right, here’s what we’ll do: I’m adding a rule that if you do something illegal, the punishment will be that I stick my hand down your throat and make you throw up.”
“I shall break no rule, so thou mayest invent whatever punishment pleases thee, my lord, but dost intend to eat any donuts that I might throw up?”
She was acting horrified.
Don’t look at me that way, I’m your partner in crime, we’re in the same boat, our lives are inextricably linked.
“But Shinobu, there’s one other problem. A practical problem, it’s got nothing to do with preventing you from cheating.”
“Namely?”
“You’re bound to my shadow, right? So isn’t it going to be pretty hard for you to hide something so it’s hidden from me?”
Hide something so it’s hidden is a weird phrase, but─when her only territory was my shadow, I didn’t see how she could hide anything from me if I wasn’t asleep. Even if I was asleep. There had been a period when our pairing, or tethering, had been severed, but…
“Well, I guess I can just close my eyes…for five minutes, or until you say you’re ready.”
“Nay, for if thou dost break thy promise and open thine eyes, the game is ruined. Thou wilt surely open them a little. Rejected. Dost the nincompoop think I have so much faith in him?”
“…Seeing as how up in arms you were about me doubting you a minute ago, don’t you think you should take it down a notch?”
“As punishment for such a transgression I shall, let me see, I shall stick my hand into thine eye socket and gouge out thine eye.”
“Take it down a notch!!”
“Well, if that be out of bounds, then there is nothing left but to employ a blindfold,” said Shinobu Oshino, readily taking off her leggings.
004
The epilogue, or maybe, the punch line of this story.
“Huh? You’re doing what, Araragi?”
“No, Hanekawa. The thing is…”
“Any way that anybody slices anything, this is no time for you to be doing that. How can you be playing around with Shinobu?”
“No, I mean, I totally agree, that’s exactly what I thought─”
“You know perfectly well that you need to be studying for your exams right now, Araragi.”
“…”
That’s what you meant?
I mean, sure, that too, I guess.
“Using leggings as a blindfold? Pervert.”
She let me have it, point blank.
Not gonna forget that one anytime soon.
“Let me explain, Hanekawa. It’s not like I wanted to be blindfolded with leggings. Blindfolding me with leggings, stuffing leggings in my mouth, it was all Shinobu.”
“In your mouth?”
“Slip of the tongue.”
Should’ve left them stuffed in my mouth.
No?
“H-Hanekawa. I’m sure there’s a whole heap of things you want to lecture me about, but international calls are expensive, aren’t they? You probably can’t─”
“Don’t worry. I can.”
“…? Oh, well, in that case there’s something I want to ask you. Where do you think Shinobu hid the donut?”
“That’s what you want to ask me? Not about my search for Mister Oshino?”
“We’ll get to that later.”
“Amazing. You’re quite a guy.”
“Ooh, appealing to my vanity, are we?”
“Your inability to recognize sarcasm is even more amazing.”
“I found three of the donuts she hid, but I couldn’t find the last one─we’re talking about just my room. There are only so many places she could’ve hidden it.”
“Hmmm.”
“So all I can think of is that she ate it… Though given everything she said, I have a hard time believing she would’ve broken that rule.”
“That does seem like the most likely possibility─but it sounds like you have faith that she wouldn’t cheat. In which case I guess she must’ve gone with the second most likely possibility.”
“The second most likely? You mean I overlooked something?”
“How come you have faith in Shinobu but not in yourself… If it’s me, I’d say the likelihood that you’ve overlooked something in your own room is pretty low, Araragi.”
“Wow. Your confidence in me is pretty high, Hanekawa!”
“A low likelihood isn’t the same thing as high confidence.”
“…”
Harsh.
Hanekawa is harsh on perverts… No, most people would be.
“Then what’s this second most likely possibility?”
“What happened to the three donuts you did find, Araragi?”
“I ate them. That was the deal. Which means that me and Shinobu shared the donuts in a 3:2 ratio.”
“Were they good?”
“Yeah, just like Shinobu said. Is that…important?”
“Nope, the flavor is irrelevant. I was just thinking how much I’d like to taste
Senjogahara’s handiwork as a pastry chef─4:1.”
“Huh?”
“It’s 4:1, the donut ratio. The sharing ratio. You ate four of them, Araragi.”