by Nisioisin
Yozuru Kagenui had vanished from Kita-Shirahebi Shrine─suddenly, without so much as a fare-thee-well, and in the blink of an eye just about an entire month had passed.
Without incident.
Uneventfully.
Under the circumstances, it seemed correct to assume that, having finished her business in this town and lacking a fixed abode to begin with, Ms. Kagenui─like Oshino─simply drifted on. But that wasn’t the case.
No way.
No, unlike Oshino, Ms. Kagenui hadn’t done any of the things she was here to do─though I say that based only on my own limited knowledge and narrow view of the situation, so maybe she had after all. Maybe she’d finished whatever she came to do… Knowing her, maybe she’d taken down some great evil in the course of that single night before she disappeared, but even if she had.
Ms. Kagenui─the onmyoji Yozuru Kagenui.
Would never leave her familiar Yotsugi Ononoki behind.
“Wouldn’t she, though? Big Sis is pretty all over the place when it comes to that kind of thing. One time she left me in the bottom of a ravine in the middle of nowhere and forgot all about me.”
Well.
Ononoki herself might say so…and I’m truly stumped as to how she could forget her at the bottom of a ravine, but…
“Even so, even if Big Sis would leave me at the bottom of a ravine, I don’t think she’d leave me at your house, Monstieur…”
I was a little upset that my house was being compared unfavorably with a place as dangerous as the bottom of a ravine, but anyway, Ononoki had her doubts too.
Though she really didn’t seem concerned.
True─for me it goes without saying, but even Ononoki wasn’t enough of a badass to be in any position to be concerned about Ms. Kagenui.
Ms. Kagenui was, in a certain sense, a more fearsome person than either Oshino or Kaiki─probably the only individual in the world who could solve anything and everything through violence.
Why would someone like me be concerned about her? Could I be? Didn’t she just leave on a whim? After all, all she did was break her promise to meet me at the shrine.
…And then never come back.
I’d tried telling myself this a million times in the ensuing month, but I didn’t know when to quit, didn’t know when to give up, didn’t know when to sist and decease─and I ended up visiting the shrine every day. Almost like I was making a hundred-day pilgrimage.
“Wait, sist and decease doesn’t sound right, now that I think about it…”
Uh oh.
Today’s the exam, and I’m losing my confidence─well, anyway, Senjogahara got recruited so she’s all set for college, and she said she’d escort me to the campus for the exam, so I’d better get back down the mountain in time to meet up with her.
The fact that she thinks I need an escort means she doesn’t have much faith in me, but thus spake Senjogahara: “Look, you know the expression ‘the wayward dog will meet the rod’? Well, the wayward Araragi always seems to meet an aberration.”
Wiser words were never spoken.
That’s my sweetheart, always keeping her eye on the ball─and keeping an eye on me.
“Your scores are already good enough to pass, and as long as you can avoid missing the exam itself, campus life is within your reach.”
That’s what she said.
I didn’t know how much to believe the part about being good enough to pass, but if she was more worried about me failing to take the exam than about how I’d do on it─I must’ve been responsible for leading a pretty irresponsible life.
Well.
Going mountain climbing on the morning of my exam was pretty damn irresponsible─
“And after the exam, it’s finally graduation time, huh? Can’t wait to see how this turns out,” I muttered to myself as I climbed the now thoroughly familiar and not particularly burdensome steps. Shinobu was there inside my shadow, of course, but apparently she was pretending to have gone to bed early, so there was no reply─since Shinobu and I were together 24/7, strictly speaking I guess I never said anything just “to myself,” but well, if she wasn’t listening, then close enough.
Can’t wait to see how this turns out─by no means implied some kind of rosy outlook for my future. When you get right down to it, the implication was more one of despair, that it might be impossible for me to lead anything like a normal campus life in the first place.
A campus life or any other kind of normal lifestyle, given my close association with an aberration, and being somewhat of an aberration myself─me, oh my.
It’s not like I was relying on her, but in that regard it was pretty discouraging when Ms. Kagenui disappeared─it had been a real support to have her there to talk to when I realized that I, myself, was an aberration.
The fact that that support had been completely removed.
Was perhaps another reason I was making this daily pilgrimage─maybe I was just pretending to be worried about Ms. Kagenui, like it was no big deal, and really I was just worried about my own precious self.
It’s not like she’d done much of anything about the transmogrification of my body, nor was she going to…but her oddly bold, supremely self-confident attitude was a comfort to be around─as one would expect of a self-proclaimed champion of justice, she never wavered.
There was some overlap with Karen in that regard─no, it was more than that.
In being constrained never to set foot on the ground thanks to some curse I don’t know anything about, yet managing to keep her cool and live her life, Ms. Kagenui might’ve become a kind of role model to me─so if that “cool” could possibly come under threat, it was no wonder I was scared.
“Though…it’s hard to imagine who, or what, could threaten her in the first place…and even supposing there was such a thing, there’s still the question of why. Could it have something to do with everything that’s going on?”
…
Everything that’s going on─it was uncertain at present how applicable that phrase really was. Some might argue that the present tense, “going on”─should be replaced with the past tense.
In the month since Ms. Kagenui disappeared, at least, nothing─not a single mysterious thing, has gone on in this town.
A month passed uneventfully, without incident─that’s not just a turn of phrase, it’s a plain fact.
No aberrations.
And no Darkness.
No urban legends.
No word on the street.
No secondhand gossip.
And obviously no school ghost stories─none of it.
Nor had there been anything Oshino would’ve been interested in collecting if he’d still been here─nothing mysterious, nothing weird, nothing out of the ordinary.
As if it was all over.
It was as if it was all over.
“I guess if there’s anything at all I can point to, it’d have to be the lingering mystery of why Ms. Kagenui went missing─”
And.
As I got to the top of the steps and went to pass under the torii at the entrance to Kita-Shirahebi Shrine─I saw her.
Standing within the grounds of the shrine.
Smack in the middle of the ceremonial path─striking no particular stance, and with no air of awe or reverence, on that path meant for the gods alone.
In her baggy clothes.
With her hat down over her face─her identity and age impossible to determine at a glance.
“…Ms. Gaen.”
A month without incident.
A daily pilgrimage turned routine.
Well, it seemed like my hundred-day pilgrimage hadn’t turned out to be such a colossal waste of time after all.
Something was about to happen.
Something decisive─or no.
Maybe something was about to stop happening.
004
“’Sup, Koyomin─g’morning,” said Ms. Gaen.
Ms. Izuko Gaen.
Just a normal greeting, nothin
g out of the ordinary─I get the sense she greets people like that no matter where or when she runs into them, whether she’s walking down the street or at a shrine on top of a mountain.
It’s doubtful anything qualifies as a special location or special circumstance for her─for all I know, maybe nothing in this world is special to her.
Since if you know everything─then everything’s the same, it’s all blasé.
“Been a while─when did we last see each other? Oh yeah, that time in September, right? Heheh, though I’ve heard a thing or two about what you’ve been up to since then.”
“…Good morning.”
I gave a quick bob of my head.
Well, we’d been through a thing or two ourselves─but basically, I owed her a lot. Just as I did her junior, Oshino.
No.
It wasn’t just about returning a favor or something. Insofar as I’d been pretty damn ungrateful─betrayed her, even─I owed her an even larger debt than I did Oshino. Even if I wouldn’t go so far as to call it guilt, I can’t deny that I felt awkward, or sheepish, around her.
So to be confronted by her like this, without warning─nope, couldn’t look her in the eye.
By contrast, Ms. Gaen didn’t seem to harbor any ill will whatsoever and was grinning same as she had been the last time we met─though her grin never slips even as she uses, abandons, and bleeds dry the people around her, so that part didn’t make me feel any better.
And considering what happened to Sengoku and Hachikuji─Nadeko Sengoku and Mayoi Hachikuji, it wouldn’t have been a surprise if I were angry at her…but some part of me knew that that anger would’ve been misplaced.
Part of me, but.
“Seems like you went through some serious shit─physically, I mean, Koyomin.”
“No…I mean, it wasn’t that serious.”
“Heheh. Guess you’re right, I mean, considering everything you’ve done, the crazy crisis you’ve been through, maybe your current physical situation…your state of health, isn’t something to be all that worried about. I guess if anyone’s situation is serious─”
Ms. Gaen looked behind her.
The only thing behind her at the moment was the brand spanking new shrine building─though it was just an empty structure, with nothing doing in the object-of-worship department.
In which sense, it wasn’t all that different from that shed thing I’d made in class way back when─though the carpenters who built the shrine might be pretty offended by the comparison.
“It’s Yozuru.”
“…”
“Yozuru Kagenui─my dear junior. The very idea that someone would go after her─I mean, this is unexpected. Even for me.”
“I didn’t think that was possible?”
Go after her.
I couldn’t let that flagrant phrase go without some kind of reaction─but hearing the word “unexpected” come out of Ms. Gaen’s mouth was way more startling.
No, not startling.
It just seemed like a lie.
“I thought you knew everything.”
“Come on now, you going to be sarcastic towards a friend you haven’t seen in so long? Koyomin. Nobody actually knows everything. That’s just rhetoric. A bit of a bluff, to be honest─”
“…”
I couldn’t get a read on her true intentions.
I also couldn’t figure out what Oshino was thinking most of the time─and Kaiki and Ms. Kagenui were both somewhat unfathomable to me, but she really took the cake, as befitted their senpai.
No…
She was kind of, different, somehow.
Ms. Gaen was unreadable in a different way from Oshino and the rest of them─hers was not the same type of unreadability at all.
Even if I can’t put it clearly into words, the junior class all had something in common─Mèmè Oshino, Deishu Kaiki, Yozuru Kagenui.
I didn’t know what they were thinking.
And so─I couldn’t read them.
But…with Ms. Gaen, it wasn’t just that I didn’t know what she was thinking─I didn’t want to know.
And so─I couldn’t read her.
I wouldn’t read her.
I didn’t want to read her─though I’m not saying I “didn’t want to read her” because her mind was full of abominable malice or something.
On that score, it’s Kaiki’s mind I’d much prefer not to read─it’s simply that the inside of Ms. Gaen’s head is too convoluted and strange, and if I tried to get a read on it my own brain would blow a gasket.
Which is why.
I didn’t want to read Izuko Gaen’s true intentions: as a means of self-protection, so to speak─in the same way that no one would choose to take a punch from a heavyweight boxer if they didn’t have to.
But…this was maybe a situation in which I did have to.
Coming here like this.
Coming personally to see me─since if she came to see me, there was something she needed to see me about at the very least.
Whatever the case, Ms. Gaen was lying in wait for me, taking it for granted that I’d come to the shrine regardless of the fact that it was the day of my exam, almost as if we shared a Google calendar or something─I would’ve felt much more at ease if she’d said “there’s nothing I don’t know” as usual, rather than informing me at this late date that “there are some things I don’t know.”
In fact…it freaked me out.
Rather than knowing there was something afoot in our little backwater that even Ms. Gaen didn’t have a grasp on─I would so much rather believe that that part was just rhetorical, just a mean little joke among friends…or plain old humility.
Please let me believe that.
“Don’t look at me like that. That’s no way to look at a friend, Koyomin─when I say unexpected, well, when you roll a die with 1’s on five sides and it comes up 6, that’s unexpected, isn’t it. You know perfectly well that it’s statistically possible for it to come up 6…but one thing I do know is that it’s hard for statistically unlikely things to happen.”
“…”
“I never would’ve expected there to be someone who would take action against Yozuru Kagenui, violence personified─which is exactly why I sent her here to cope with the abnormal situation occurring in your body.”
“Someone who would take action against her─is a phrase that doesn’t sit well with me, I have to say.”
In response to this doubt that I nervously, and (in my own way) cautiously raised, Ms. Gaen cocked her head with a theatrical hm?
“What do you mean, Koyomin?”
“No, uh…I’m very grateful and everything that you sent Ms. Kagenui here on my behalf.”
Yes.
Grateful to the point that I should’ve thanked her for it the second I saw her─though, with the Ms. Kagenui in question missing at present, maybe I should’ve apologized instead.
The blame for the fact that Ms. Gaen’s junior was currently M.I.A.─could certainly be laid at my feet. At least, if it weren’t for me, I doubt Ms. Kagenui would’ve ever come to this town again.
But right now, more than apologies or gratitude.
I had questions.
“Hahaha, gimme a break, Koyomin. They say a hedge between keeps friendship green, but come on, you and I can dispense with the formalities. So, what do you mean?” Ms. Gaen danced around my words and repeated her question, totally focused on the topic at hand. It felt more like protocol than the art of conversation, though.
“Someone who would take action against her─seems out of line with my impression of Ms. Kagenui. I was just thinking that in her case, it’d have to be more like someone who would take her out.”
“A-ha. Sounds like you’ve got absolute faith in Kagenui’s strength─seeing as you’ve actually fought her, maybe you’re in a position to raise that doubt. You recklessly challenged her over the summer, so in that sense, there was already someone who took action against her.”
“…”
“Co
me now, you can’t have forgotten about that─but I don’t have quite as much faith in Kagenui’s strength as you seem to. Another thing I know is that there’s always someone better─or rather, that there are no absolutes when it comes to strength. Even if it’s statistically unlikely─you know?”