by Nisioisin
“Me and Yotsugi?”
Asking about their relationship may have been kind of intrusive, but Ms. Kagenui didn’t seem particularly put out, only surprised─if she was put out, she might put me out of my misery, so upon reflection I had risked my life by asking that question.
And her surprise seemed to be surprise that I was asking her after all this time─like, We haven’t already talked about that? or You haven’t heard about it from someone else?
“As you well know, we’re master and s─onmyoji and shikigami.”
“Were you about to say slave?”
“I was about to say serenade…”
“Master and Serenade?” Sounded like the title of a crappy musical maid anime. “No, I mean, of course I know you’re onmyoji and shikigami…but look, Ononoki calls you ‘Big Sis,’ right?”
“That she does.”
“So I just kind of wondered if you guys had a sisterly relationship.”
“Well, when it comes to it, I reckon she calls most people big brother or big sister.”
She calls Oshino “Big Brother Oshino,” and she calls Kaiki “Big Brother Kaiki.”
“’Course, she does call Ms. Gaen ‘Ms. Gaen,’ but she’s an exception.”
“I see─but.”
Calling Kaiki “big brother”?
Bold…
“She calls you plain old ‘Big Sis,’ though. And me, she just calls ‘kind monster sir,’ or ‘monstieur’ for short.”
I cannot believe that nickname has stuck.
“But you’re the only one who’s just ‘Big Sis.’”
“Hmm.”
Finally getting the point of my more or less pointless question─Ms. Kagenui lapsed into a pregnant silence. Or, I thought she lapsed into silence. I thought so, and in fact she did, but she did something else at the same time─she leapt from atop the stone lantern.
So suddenly that for a second I saw an afterimage, her motion faster than the human eye could follow─I say she leapt, but from my perspective it was more like she just vanished.
Which stands to reason.
Since the place she leapt to was the top of my head─she was squatting just like she’d been squatting on the stone lantern, but now on the crown of my head.
“Um, Ms. Kagenui?”
It had really bummed Shinobu out that time Ms. Kagenui had landed on her head, and now I understood: having someone sitting on your head really does carry a piquant feeling of defeat, distinct from simple humiliation…
And thus was Araragi awakened to a new fetish.
Then again, she was nullifying her weight as she had on that previous occasion, so it’s not like she was a burden or anything…but isn’t manipulating your weight usually a skill for aberrations, like Shinobu?
Ononoki just explained away this habit of Ms. Kagenui’s with one word: “special”…
“An impressive reading─or intuition, maybe? I expect you must be acing the multiple-choice sections of your practice exams.”
“Nice of you to say so, but it’s just the opposite.”
“Hmm. Well, I reckon getting them all wrong is just as amazing, statistically speaking.”
“I don’t need that kind of amazingness in my life.”
“So, what do you think?”
“What do I think? Right, well, I’m really hoping your backstory is that the doll you and Oshino and Kaiki and Tadatsuru Teori used as the prototype, the model, for making Ononoki was fashioned out of the corpse of your actual little sister.”
“I’ll thank you kindly not to foist such a heavy past on a body.”
She ground her heel into my head.
It hurt.
True, while pain is pain, I have to say I got off lightly given how horrible my hope, I mean my conjecture, had been.
“Well, you guys don’t look like sisters anyway─though Ononoki has no facial expression, so it’s kind of hard to tell. Since expressions are even more important than faces in determining whether people look alike─”
“Ha. If that’s your deduction, you haven’t a lick of intuition after all. At this rate I’ll warrant it’s a sure thing you fail your entrance exam.”
“I mean, Ononoki’s origins and what not definitely won’t be on the exam.”
“Hm. Well, it’s nothing what needs hiding, I might as well tell you, but─” Atop my head, Ms. Kagenui looked to be giving it some thought─she was on top of my head, so I couldn’t actually see what she was doing. “─I dunno. Being asked all formal-like, it makes a body feel snooty. Not sure I want to tell you now.”
“…”
Whaaat.
Since Ms. Kagenui was such a straight shooter, I’d been under the assumption (in addition to being under her) that she wouldn’t try to extort money from me every time I asked a question, but I seemed to have accidentally brought out her contrary side.
Makes sense…
No way someone in the same cohort as Oshino and Kaiki would be a straight shooter through and through─not wanting to answer formal questions is an easy-to-understand disposition in its own way, though not an easy one to get along with.
If only I’d asked more casually.
If only I’d woven it in there with the rest of my barrage of questions─especially since she was all too happy to acquiesce to my request for a sparring match without even a guess as to the reason.
“So, you won’t tell me?”
“I never said that. Nor do I have any intention of squeezing you for work or money in return, so don’t you worry your pretty little head. By the by─how’s about the rest of our battle?”
“Huh?”
The rest of our battle?
Don’t be ridiculous.
Wasn’t our battle already…
“What, are you saying that if I beat you, you’ll tell me the truth about Ononoki? Because hold on a second there, that’s crazy, by which I mean, batshit bonkers…”
I’d sooner pay Oshino five million yen, or let Kaiki fleece me for every last red cent─based on my experience over the summer, and my experience of this duel, I was dead sure that I could never beat her in a billion years.
A billion years.
Even a vampire can’t live that long.
If I’m being honest, I did have a pretty strong interest in my housemate Ononoki’s origins, but I didn’t want to know badly enough to throw my life away when it’d just been spared.
“Hold your horses, I wasn’t fixing to suggest any such thing. I’d not demand that you do something no one else has ever accomplished.”
“…”
Wait.
Was she lifetime undefeated?
When Shinobu and I challenged her, did she just let us off the hook?
What a precarious path I’ve been treading…
“Once is enough,” said the lifetime-undefeated expert.
Still atop my head.
“If you go toe to toe with me─and hit me even once, I’ll give you the skinny on Ononoki.”
004
“And that’s why it’s your turn, Karen!”
“Um…what’s why what’s what?”
I thought I could win her over with enthusiasm, but apparently the magic formula “and that’s why” doesn’t work on Karen─after I got home.
I called her to my room and immediately got right to the heart of the matter. My other little sister Tsukihi was, at present, playing with Ononoki in the next room.
Ononoki was nothing more than a doll as far as Tsukihi was concerned, so the playing “with” takes on something of a different meaning, but either way, considering their relationship and how fate had brought them together, it was a pretty unsettling combination for a playdate.
I could’ve just asked Ononoki herself before bringing the matter to Karen, but it felt kind of against the rules to ask the chattel something that her owner wouldn’t tell me.
This seemed like it might be a good time to apply my principle of not acting on impulse─in other words, questions should be asked o
f the people you should ask them of.
Though Ononoki (in her present character) was pretty uncooperative in her own way, so I didn’t think she’d tell me even if I asked her…
Plus, someone whose “life began when Big Sis brought me back from the dead” might not even have a handle on the truth.
“It doesn’t matter, Karen. There’s a reason why I can’t tell you the whole story, but there’s this person who’s as strong as a demon, who I’m basically helpless against, and I just want to land a single punch. Isn’t there some good way of doing that?”
“What do you take me for, bro…” Karen looked dubious─and when I say dubious, I mean annoyed. “I’m a martial artist who follows the way of the martial arts. Even if I did know some method for exercising violence, I’d never teach it to a novice like you. Not based on such a half-assed explanation, anyway.”
“Don’t be like that. From now on, I’ll fondle your boobies whenever you want.”
“Yeah? I see. Well, in that case, I’m ready to entertain the not…on your life! I don’t ever want you to fondle my boobies!”
She flew into a rage.
Man is she short-tempered.
As her older brother, it’s very embarrassing.
“No, think about it, Karen. Which would you prefer: having your big brother fondle your boobies whenever you want, or having him fondle them whenever you don’t want?”
“Hm? Oh, definitely when I do want! No contest! You really are smart, big brother!”
“…”
You really are stupid, Karen.
As her older brother, it’s very worrisome.
“It’s settled, then. I have a policy of not taking on disciples, but I’ll make an exception for you, big brother. You can be my brotégé. Wait, did I say that right? Now I’m all confused!”
“It’s protégé, obviously. Though I’m not talking about becoming your disciple… If it were you, what would you do? If you wanted to land a single punch on an opponent who’s clearly stronger than you─what would you do?”
“Can’t be done!” she answered peppily.
Why so peppy.
“No, seriously,” she insisted. “I say this without knowing all the details, but judging from your request, landing even a single punch against that opponent is going to be tough, right? Landing any at all through their guard, let alone a clean hit, right?”
“Uh huh. Like I said, I’m helpless.”
“If there’s such a big gap in ability, you shouldn’t fight. The true martial artist runs away from an opponent like that.”
“…”
Karen’s words were totally reasonable.
And yet, I’ve witnessed her rush in blindly millions of times against opponents she had no hope of beating─and every time, it’s been do-or-die trying to restrain her. I mean that literally, if I didn’t do, someone was going to die.
Do as I say and not as I do, but man, she really was dispensing advice she’d never be able to take herself.
“Then there’s always the question of what’ll happen afterwards, even if you do somehow land a punch. Like, if you land a lucky hit against an opponent whose superiority is clearly clear and they get pissed off, then what? They’ll probably retaliate and beat the shit out of you.”
“Hmm…you’re definitely not wrong.”
Even supposing I managed to land a blow on Ms. Kagenui by some fluke, she’s not the type to clap me on the shoulder and say, “Nicely done!” More likely she’d say, “What the fuck!” and tear my arm off at the shoulder.
I only have the most general sense of Ms. Kagenui as a person…but somehow felt like the risk was too great for the information I was after. Yeah, scheming to try and hit her when she might not even keep her promise…
The wiser course of action might be to forget about going along with Ms. Kagenui’s suggestion, which was only a game to her anyway, and just beg her, groveling and scraping with my hands pressed together, to “forget about all that and tell meee!”…
Hm.
“Karen. What would you do? If there were someone you wanted to hit no matter what.”
“Someone like you, you mean?”
“No, someone bad, like the polar opposite of me. If you were facing someone like that, who you knew you had no hope against, how would you approach it? Does anything strike you?”
“I told you. Nothing strikes me, and nothing’s going to strike them, either. If anything, well, I’d say you should take the long view. Start training, so you can beat them somewhere down the line.”
“Training…”
I was a little short on patience to take the long view…
I didn’t care enough about learning about Ononoki’s past to train to become a fighter─okay, the whole reason I went to see Ms. Kagenui in the first place was that I wanted to learn to fight with my mortal body, so there was a certain overall consistency there, but…
“Once you land a hit the battle’s begun, so you have to go into it intending to win,” Karen said. “A lethal blow would be another story─but if you’re good enough that you can kill someone with one punch, then the fighting part shouldn’t be a problem in the first place.”
“Hmm, when you think about it like that, ultimately the martial arts are a set of skills for becoming stronger than your opponent, a technique for becoming stronger than the strong, rather than a way for the weak to defeat the strong─”
“My sensei always says that as long as you still think of the martial arts as a technique, you’ll never become strong. And, well, that’s the unavoidable reality, because in the end the mindset we seek in martial arts is that with great power comes great responsibility. Which is why I cleave to justice.”
“And when someone shows up who you can’t cleave with that justice?”
“There’s no one who can’t be. My justice is a waterjet cutter!”
“You’re a slippery one, aren’t you…”
I thought you guys were the Fire Sisters.
Though lately my little sisters have been acting independently most of the time.
They’re going to be in high school soon… Terrifying.
Then it struck me. Even if I got Karen to reveal the innermost mysteries of karate to me, there was definitely the danger that when I showcased them for Ms. Kagenui, she’d just beat the living shit out of me instead of telling me about Ononoki. But that assumed the kind of power gap, the kind of disparity that existed between me and Ms. Kagenui.
Did I necessarily have to be the one to hit her, though? No, I could bring in a ringer.
What if I got this waterjet cutter here to stand in for me─I couldn’t let Ms. Kagenui get anywhere near Tsukihi, but she and Karen had somehow passed like ships in the night that one time.
In which case, how about.
“Hey, Karen.”
“What is it, brother.”
“Feel like fighting on my behalf?”
“Nope.”
Didn’t even have to think about it for a second.
“How could I beat an opponent that my big brother couldn’t even touch?”
“…”
Your confidence in your big brother is frighteningly misplaced.
“I mean, from everything you’ve told me, big brother, there’s some person who’s going to answer some question for you if you can hit them, right?”
“Mm-hm, exactly. You’re really on the ball, aren’t you, Karen.”
“Don’t you think this person was just letting you down easy?”
“…”
“Like, you asked an impertinent question, didn’t you? So don’t you think this person was just putting you off without ruffling any feathers? I guess you could call it the ol’ bait-and-switch… All of a sudden you’re entirely focused on hitting your opponent instead of thinking about whether or not your question is going to get answered, right?”
“Damn…”
I was at a loss for words.
Loss in a very visceral sense, like the loss of a rela
tive─it was such a shock that I felt like I might never speak another word for the rest of my life.
A loss so mournful that it seemed like the scene where I got my speech back should be the moving climax of the story─there were two reasons for this shock.