by Nisioisin
“Which is why, now that things have kind of settled down for the moment, I was thinking maybe you could help me with some practice, Ms. Kagenui. I was thinking how great it would be if from now on, when I run into difficulties, I could deal with them as adroitly as you do, without resorting to my vampiric power─”
“A-ha,” she clapped her hands.
Squatting there atop the stone lantern.
“So that’s what you’ve got in mind. But I reckon you’d best forget it.”
“Really?”
Had I best forget it?
I appreciated her candor, but then why the hell did she just…
“Firstly, my way o’ doing things can’t be learnt overnight, and secondly, it’s not exactly the orthodox method among us experts. Not something I’m fixing to teach to a youngster.”
“…”
Ms. Kagenui may not be in her teens, but I’m pretty sure she’s still on the young side of things for her business.
And, just between you and me, part of the reason I wanted to learn her methodology was that she seems to employ the terribly simple and easy-to-understand negotiation tactic of “suppressing aberrations through violence”─though maybe it can’t be learned overnight for that very reason.
The simplest things are always the most difficult.
It’s the same with studying.
“And finally, if you’re keen to learn my methods through actual combat like this,” continued Ms. Kagenui, “you’ll be dead before you learn them.”
“…”
Yup.
That’s a plenty good enough reason for me not to take her as my sensei.
The course fees are a little too steep.
I was completely helpless against her even in vampire mode, so I had no hope of matching her when I was mere flesh and blood─as I considered this, I finally got my breathing under control and stood up from where I lay sprawled out on my back.
Godless as the shrine might be, I still felt antsy lying around inside its precincts.
“Not exactly the time for this kind of thing, is it?” chided Ms. Kagenui. “The big exam must be coming up, everything you’ve been studying for─this ought to be the time for your, whatchamacallit, back-up-private-school exams.”
“Unfortunately, my parents don’t have such high hopes for me. The only exam I’m taking is for my first-choice school.”
“Hmmm…takes a certain kind of grit, I’ll give you that. Now, what’d I do when it came time for exams─can’t recall anymore. Feels as though I just woke up one day and I was in college.”
“I somehow doubt that…”
“Then I woke up one day, and I had graduated, then I woke up one day, and I was in this line of work─beating the daylights of anyone who rubbed me the wrong way.”
“…”
If that’s true, then she’s a fucking prodigy.
When she says anyone who rubbed her the wrong way, I assume she’s talking about aberrations…or is she including humans in that as well?
Hmmm.
I’d come to beg for instruction, but turns out she’s really not the type of person I want to get too close to after all.
“It’s no good to push myself too hard either, though, is it. At this point, things’ll just turn out how they’re going to turn out.”
“Almost sounds like you’re throwing in the towel. Eh, now that you’ve gotten a bit of an extension on your remaining days, s’pose a gap year might be looking A-OK to you.”
“No, I’d really prefer to avoid that. For various reasons.”
“All the more reason you shouldn’t be up here at this godforsaken shrine trading punches with the likes of me,” said Ms. Kagenui─what we were doing wasn’t exactly trading punches, since I was the only one getting punched, but anyway, for once she sounded like a proper adult.
“Why do you reckon I had Yotsugi infiltrate your home? I was fixing to make things so you wouldn’t be bothered by any aberrations, at least for a while.”
“No, I understand that… It’s just, being protected by little girls and tweens is a pretty sorry lifestyle.”
“By little girl, you mean the former Kissshot, I take it? That’s a six-hundred-year-old aberration you’re talking about─and that tween, well, Yotsugi’s a corpse doll tsukumogami.”
“When you put it like that, I guess I’ve got some pretty amazing guardians…”
A life where nothing happens means someone’s watching out for you. Was it Hanekawa who said that?
“Which is exactly why─that one can’t act rashly.”
“That one?”
“That one, or anyone─but enough about that. If you want to learn something from me, how’s this: it’s best not to overreach yourself. Not that there aren’t some folk who’ve tried to do more or less the same, and not that I haven’t acted the teacher on a whim now and again, but it’s never once gone well.” Ms. Kagenui cackled as she spoke─and trying to picture just exactly what she meant when she said, “it’s never once gone well,” it didn’t seem like these disciples she’d taken on a whim had gotten off lightly…
Hm.
It seemed like a good idea, but maybe I’d jumped the gun─that is, maybe this was a lesson that I shouldn’t act on impulse all the time. Though calling it a lesson puts me in mind of that swindler…
“Ms. Kagenui.” Abandoning my vain notion of getting Ms. Kagenui to teach me, I asked her a question out of simple curiosity: “How did you get involved in this world?”
“Hmm? This world?”
“Well, I mean, aberrations, or tales of aberrations, that world…”
“To be honest, I’m not too keen on such distinctions─I just mess up anyone what sticks in my craw.”
More or less the same thing she was saying before.
This struck me over the summer too, but seems like she operates on an even simpler behavioral principle than I suspected.
The dichotomy between justice and evil.
No, not justice─good?
Then again, if you ask the likes of Oshino, this world is overflowing with unpleasant goodness and insufferable justice─though that means there’s an equal amount of eagerly anticipated and compelling evil.
Is Ms. Kagenui actually living on the straight and narrow in a world where nothing is straightforward?
“I reckon it all started back in kindergarten, when I slugged some uppity brat─though looking back on it now, perhaps that brat was possessed by some no-good something. This was in the days before I specialized in immortal aberrations, of course.”
“Well, I would be surprised if you’ve been specializing in immortal aberrations since kindergarten…”
Ms. Kagenui’s kindergarten days…
Something I absolutely can’t imagine─I wonder if I could’ve even beaten her in a fight back then.
I wish nothing but happiness for that brat who got slugged by li’l miss Kagenui.
“And, you said the reason you choose to take on immortal aberrations now is that there’s no such thing as going too far─right? Conversely, that must mean that you’ve gone too far on plenty of other occasions. Is that why you chose your particular specialty?”
“Well, I reckon it is─my, but you’re full of questions. I don’t suppose you’re fixing to let me join this Araragi Harem or whatever that I’ve been hearing so much about?”
“…”
Why does she know about that?
About the Araragi Harem─no, I mean, no such tacky-ass organization exists. She must’ve heard about it from Ononoki.
What a blabbermouth.
The information leak’s probably only getting worse since we’ve been living under the same roof─but maybe that’s also a good thing?
Since it’s definitely not a negative for me if Ms. Kagenui is kept abreast of the fact that Tsukihi is living a problem-free life.
“I’d love to be a big enough man someday to be able to make a pass at you─though forget about bigness, the way things are going, I’m
gonna end up not being a person at all.”
“And when that happens I’ll kill you dead, don’t you worry. Which is also why I’ve assigned Yotsugi to stick to you─I told her to show you no mercy if it seems you’ve strayed any further from the path of humanity.”
“…”
The path of humanity, huh?
I felt as if I’d walked the path of human decency in my own way, so how the hell did it come to this?
And the idea that Ononoki was an assassin…
The unbelievable truth slid into focus.
No, upon reflection it made perfect sense, I just hadn’t thought about it until she said it. It was easy to forget in the face of that adorable doll, but yes, Ononoki too was a professional who specialized in taking on “immortal aberrations.”
Ha─Ms. Kagenui laughed.
Still and all.
“I reckon there’s no need to be so negative─on account of if you can keep on with a normal day-to-day like this, you can live as a human being, no muss, no fuss.”
“…Even without a reflection?”
“Not having a reflection isn’t going to kill you. Turning to ash in the sunlight’s a whole other kettle of fish─it’d be scary if you didn’t know what was causing it, I reckon you might be crawling out of your skin, but you know perfectly well why it’s happening. And as long as your vampirification doesn’t cross the line, you’re fine.”
“Sure, I know all that, but─can I really live out the rest of my life like this without anything bad happening? It’s only been a year since I heard of aberrations for the first time, and already so much has happened─”
“It’s been mighty frequent indeed. That you’ve encountered trouble.”
“…”
One of those mighty frequent troubles was with her and Ononoki, but I’m not complaining. Even now we definitely aren’t what you’d call allies, but we’ve gotten to the point where she at least talks to me like this.
Giving me advice─is definitely not what was going on, but still.
“Well, no one lives out their whole life without some kind of trouble, do they? And yet most folk manage somehow, without becoming vampires─and without turning to heretics like me for help. They manage somehow or other, this, that, or the other way. To put it plainly, this awareness of aberrations and what not that you and I’ve ended up with makes us weak.”
“Makes us─weak.”
“We tremble in the face of the unknown, or we know that we can’t know what’ll happen. Or the unstable elements in our daily lives increase until we can’t concentrate on daily life. I reckon Oshino had the same worry.”
“Oshino…”
I can’t really picture Oshino worrying about anything.
I always think of him as a slaphappy happy-go-lucky chappy, that is, I’ve never seen him ruminating or anything like that.
Though, hang on.
It’s really just that I never imagined him that way─come to think of it, maybe his obsession with balance arose from his fear of the balance crumbling, of losing his neutrality.
Maybe he was afraid.
Pathologically afraid.
“Kaiki seems genuinely happy-go-lucky in that arena,” I remarked. “He just does whatever the hell he feels like, without a thought for the balance of the natural world.”
“Well, Kaiki doesn’t even believe in aberrations─though you might say he’s just protecting himself by adopting that stance. Hardly a lick of difference from Oshino’s balance-driven stance, really.”
Hardly a lick indeed.
Well, they did use to be friends back in the day─and while I’m the one who said it, there aren’t many men less suited to the word “happy-go-lucky” than Kaiki.
Happy-go-lucky is more or less the opposite of ominous, after all.
“But it’s impossible for folk like you and I to take such a stance, isn’t it. Be it balance or denial or what have you.”
“Impossible… How do you mean?”
“You yourself are something like an aberration─and me, I’ve got Yotsugi in my service.”
And maybe we’re more alike even than that, on account of you’ve got the former Kissshot in yours, Ms. Kagenui reminded me.
“Try as we might to maintain our balance, we lean toward the aberrations─we lean on aberrations. So any denial would be a denial of the truth of our own existences.”
“…”
What can I say, hearing it like that made my head spin.
Talking about the two of us as if we had anything in common─the brazen and supremely self-confident Ms. Kagenui, who enacts her eccentricity of never setting foot on the ground with neither shyness nor showiness, unwavering and rooted in her convictions; and me, flailing this way and that every time something crops up, going whichever way the wind blows, like a kite will if you cut it free, or a kite not cut out for free will… But maybe it was precisely because I unconsciously sensed that commonality that I came to Kita-Shirahebi Shrine to seek her tutelage, to this place I really didn’t want to come.
…Yeah.
Peppering Ms. Kagenui with so many questions like this, maybe it did seem like I was trying to persuade her to join the Araragi Harem─not that there is such an organization─but in spite of all that, if there was just one thing I wanted to ask Ms. Kagenui, maybe that was it.
Not how to fight aberrations with my mortal body─nor how Ms. Kagenui got involved in their world─nor how often she’d “gone too far” in the past, nor even how she knew about the existence of the Araragi Harem.
What I wanted to ask her.
What I wanted to ask Yozuru Kagenui was─
“Hey, Ms. Kagenui.”
“What is it?”
“What’s the deal with you and Ononoki?”
003
The expert Yozuru Kagenui.
The shikigami aberration Yotsugi Ononoki.
At this point there’s no need to reconfirm that the relationship between the two of them is that of an onmyoji and her familiar─the relationship between master and servant, between ruler and ruled. To Ms. Kagenui, Ononoki was property, a weapon to be used in the fight against aberrations, as well as a means of transportation.
If there’s anything else I can add to that, it’s that the corpse doll that provided the prototype for the tsukumogami Ononoki was apparently a sort of work of art, created in tandem by the Occult Research Club represented by Kagenui, Oshino, Kaiki, and Tadatsuru Teori, back in their college days─a work of art which Ms. Kagenui then took charge of, bringing us up to the present.
That much I know.
On the other hand, I only know that much─I have literally no idea why Ms. Kagenui and Ononoki have been acting in concert since then, after that point, up till now.
I mean, doesn’t it seem like kind of a contradiction? Ms. Kagenui, who specializes in immortal aberrations and considers them contrary to the natural order of things, carries on the fight against them night and day, or maybe every night would be a better way of putting it─for her to employ none other than an immortal aberration as her vehicle, as her good right hand, a being with no lifeforce, who wouldn’t even die if you smashed her into smithereens?
Isn’t that─just as much of a contradiction as me living life alongside the very vampire I sealed away because I couldn’t let her exist?
Isn’t that exactly the same thing, exactly the same contradiction?
At some point I heard something about how Ms. Kagenui uses Ononoki as her stand-in to avoid getting too involved in the world of darkness─but using darkness as a buffer against darkness, yup, that’s a contradiction.
I’ve tried to wrap my mind around it, but I’ve never come to any real conclusions─which is why I wanted to ask Ms. Kagenui directly.
Whatever the answer might be.
I had a feeling it might prove instructive down the line for me and Shinobu’s relationship─because her host body inching ever closer to vampiredom was, naturally enough, also having an effect on Shinobu hersel
f.
There was honestly no way of knowing for sure at this juncture whether that influence was positive or negative─but I wanted to hear what Ms. Kagenui had to say, to ensure I could make it a positive one.
An expert living alongside an aberration.
Maybe that was just my idealized image of her─though I assure you, it’s not that I harbor some dreamy dream of becoming a half-human/half-fey expert, not at all.