by Nisioisin
“Not only that─it’s liable to get you into an even worse predicament than you’re already in, Koyomin.”
“Huh? An even worse predicament?”
“Heheh. Though it’s not like the current Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, being neither fully immortal nor fully a vampire, could guard you around the clock anyway─tough to prevent an assassination. To put it in shogi terms, that’s as crazy as trying to achieve victory without losing a single piece. Even the greatest shogi player of all time playing against a child who doesn’t understand the rules couldn’t win a game of shogi without losing a single piece. Even a proud, compassionate commander is forced to sacrifice pieces─that’s what we’re dealing with here, Koyomin.”
“Like, trying to protect a pawn and losing your king─that kind of thing?”
“Not necessarily a pawn. They say the fool prizes his rook over his king─but whether it’s a rook or a bishop, or even a gold or silver general, sometimes you’ve got to sacrifice them. The king is the only piece that can never be sacrificed.”
“…”
“Shogi’s an amazing game when you think about it─even if you lose every piece on the board other than the king, you can still win as long as your king is alive. That’s quite a balance for a game, don’t you think? It’s a good design. Or a good reflection of reality, maybe─now then, Koyomin. Do you think you’re the king?”
Caught off guard by the question, I didn’t have a chance to think at all before responding reflexively, “Oh, no─not a chance.” Maybe I should’ve given a more considered answer, but I’m not nearly cheery enough to be able to call myself the king. Even if the vampire is the king of aberrations. “The king? That’s absurd.”
“That’s what I thought, you’re such a humble guy. And at the moment, there’s no king in this town─you’re not the king, and neither is Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade. And Nadeko Sengoku─”
Just as she’d done before.
Ms. Gaen turned and looked at the shrine building behind her.
“─is gone.”
“…”
“Right now this town’s throne is empty─which is causing certain inconveniences. In other words, it’s like playing shogi without a king. Haha, I’ve heard of playing with a handicap of a rook and a bishop, but playing shogi with your king as a handicap is a rare bird. How would you even determine the winner?”
“In that case─no one would win, and no one would lose. Since there wouldn’t be any parameters for determining victory or defeat─”
“Exactly, a situation where no one wins and no one loses. That’s what you’d call anarchy… It’s not like the king has to be the strongest piece, it just has to be there. As long it’s there, the land is under control─even if that land is a battlefield.”
“Comparing the town to a game of shogi isn’t really enlightening me any. Let alone calling it a battlefield,” I told her how I honestly felt.
Expressing how I honestly felt was apt to─no, I’m not sure that was how I honestly felt.
Maybe I just didn’t want to be sure.
Vacancy.
I’m pretty sure it was─Kaiki who said something about the vacuum that precedes the chaos.
“Though that reminds me, Ms. Kagenui was talking about shogi as well…about how she and Kaiki and Oshino used to compose shogi problems for each other or something.”
“Haha. Shogi problems are tough without a king as well.”
“But with those, all you need is one king, right? It’s okay if the other throne is empty─”
“There are dual-monarch shogi problems too, but that’s neither here nor there.”
Perhaps instinctively sensing danger, I’d tried to nudge the conversation away from the topic at hand─but Ms. Gaen brooked no such digressions.
“The shogi metaphor was just me being pretentious. I wasn’t really trying to make it easier for you to understand,” she said.
“…”
“And comparing the king to a god is, well, pretty customary─there’s no god piece in shogi, after all. Now, if you’ll allow me to continue with what I was saying, Oshino tried to spiritually stabilize this town without filling that vacancy─but I tried to put someone on the throne, even if it was just for show. I entrusted you with that task, Koyomin, and you failed. That’s more or less how things went, right?”
“Well…I guess if you want a simple summary, that’s about the size of it. But all the stuff that’s been happening around me hasn’t been quite so simple─”
“Not simple, no, but not complicated, either. Or maybe I should say, it didn’t end up complicated. I thought putting Yotsugi by your side would make a good diversion if it went well─but it doesn’t seem to have gone all that well. Kagenui’s AWOL─Kaiki’s in hiding─and no one knows where Oshino is. We’re up against the wall, and the situation is untenable. So I had no choice but to act personally.”
“By act, what do you…”
Ms. Gaen was not one to act unless it was absolutely necessary.
It was the same when she came to our town before.
The fact that she’d been waiting there for me─meant there was some reason she absolutely had to do so. There was no chance in hell she’d come just to give me a nice, thorough explanation of my town’s current state of affairs.
Sure, I might be the kind of completely clueless guy someone would want to give a nice, thorough explanation to─but this particular person would never come all the way here just to do that.
“Casualties are mounting, Koyomin, and I want to put a lid on the situation. So maybe instead of act, I should say I had no choice but to put a stop to it. To stop you, in particular, from acting.”
“Me? No, I mean…I have no intention of acting. And isn’t that why Ms. Kagenui dispatched Ononoki to my place? As a bodyguard-slash…watchdog, or…”
“Yup. So even you managed to figure out that much, huh? But Yotsugi can no longer carry out that task, Koyomin. Now that the chain of command has fallen apart, you know? If Yotsugi can no longer protect you─then she can’t stop you, either. She’s literally a puppet.”
Uh oh, doesn’t the character for puppet have the character for demon in it too?─Ms. Gaen said.
“So you can act. You can act, now─and there’s no one to stop you. And unfortunately─when you act, they act.”
“They?”
“You don’t need to worry about who they are. ‘Someone,’ that’s all.” Ms. Gaen’s words put the kibosh on my train of thought. Then she continued, “The problem is─that it’s dangerous for you to act. Or rather, they’re waiting for you to act─it’s the kind of standoff where the first one to move loses. A dilemma of sorts.”
“A dilemma…between what and what?”
“The solution is clear, though it will cause me a smidgen of heartache.”
Solution?
Solution, to what?
Sure, all kinds of things had been going on around me─but ultimately, all that stuff got resolved.
Everyone who resolved those things was missing, and that was the problem, but─what action could I take?
“You worried about what it’s the solution to? Well, that’s got nothing to do with you anymore─”
Ms. Gaen moved.
One step, towards me.
She moved, came towards me─it must have been necessary, of course─but I didn’t know why.
I still couldn’t read her true intentions.
Right up to the end.
“It’s the solution to the problem of the Darkness that’s been coiled around this town for so long now─and the solution is for you to die.”
“Huh?”
“Sacrifice your rook to strike at the king─is not what I mean, though.”
“Huh? Huh?”
“Don’t worry, it’ll only hurt for an instant,” Ms. Gaen said as she swung her sword.
I felt like I’d seen that sword before.
No, not quite─not at all. I’d never seen that par
ticular sword before in my life, but it resembled one with which I was familiar.
Resembled?
That’s not right either.
That makes it sound like the one I know is the real thing─the sword I’d seen in the past, that’d I’d known in the past, that I’d cut and been cut with, was the replica.
While the katana she was presently swinging─was the real deal.
A katana─known as the Aberration Slayer.
The Aberration Slayer.
The original Aberration Slayer, supposed to have vanished long, long ago.
That katana.
That real-deal katana─slashed through me.
Through my fingers, my wrists, my elbows, my biceps, my shoulders, my ankles, my shins, my knees, my thighs, my hips, my waist, my belly, my chest, my collarbones, my neck, my throat, my jaw, my nose, my eyes, my brain, my scalp─it cut all of them.
Into slices.
In an instant.
I tried to scream─but my mouth, my throat, my lungs, had all been sliced into rings like the kind you use for a ring toss.
The instant part hadn’t been a lie, but Ms. Gaen had told one, and a whopper at that─because that sword moves so fast.
So blazingly fast.
That I didn’t feel any pain at all.
“…”
The sword was just suddenly in her hand.
Why does she have the Aberration Slayer?
Without finding out─I was pulverized, and spread about the grounds of the shrine. Hey, that reminds me, didn’t Sengoku do this to a snake at some point─cut it into slices?
With that recollection.
I, my various component parts, went flying every which way across the grounds.
“It’s a shame it had to come to this. I really do feel that way. But I want you to understand that I waited until the last possible moment─I waited until the day of your exam. Once the exam was over, your constraints would’ve been lifted, and I couldn’t be sure how you would act once you were liberated.”
I felt like I could hear her voice, but that must’ve been a delusion─how could I hear it, when my auditory organs and the brain that received their signals had been slashed to ribbons?
“No need to worry that Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade will be restored after your death─maybe that just sounds like empty consolation, but I’ll say it anyway. She’s already seen that ‘future’─that ‘world’ once before. So that action─that road is blocked. I don’t think she could go on that kind of rampage even if she wanted to. There’s no path for her to run amok, so even if she did─it’d be suicide.”
A suicidal vampire.
Not sure what kind of existence that was for an aberration─at this point I’m not sure if it was appropriate or not─but even if it wasn’t, maybe it didn’t matter when you were dying anyway? Though it wasn’t clear to me whether or not dying and getting swallowed up by the Darkness were the same thing.
“And this I can guarantee is not just empty consolation: I will personally take responsibility for minimizing the shock to your family and lover and friends when I tell them about your death.”
Ah.
As long as Ms. Gaen takes responsibility─it’s probably fine. Though that said─to devote the vast majority of my time to exam prep over the course of six whole months, and then see that come to nothing…that was a shame.
Just as Senjogahara had said, it wasn’t the exam itself that was the real hurdle for a guy like me, it was getting myself to the exam in the first place─and in that, I hadn’t made the grade.
So, like cherry blossoms, fell Koyomi Araragi.
006
The epilogue, or maybe, the punch line of this story.
Punch line?
I mean, isn’t me getting sliced up and scattered across the ground in pieces already enough of a punch line?
“…Huh?”
I was alive.
I wasn’t dead─the sun was directly overhead.
Which meant that six or so hours had passed, and it was already the middle of the day─instead of being sliced to ribbons, I was splayed out on my back beneath the rays of the noonday sun.
What the hell.
What’s going on?
Ms. Gaen’s gone.
Without a trace.
What’s going on─didn’t Ms. Gaen chop me into bits with the Aberration Slayer? Or did my vampiric immortality restore me from the brink of death? No, that’s impossible, I didn’t give Shinobu any of my blood to drink.
Ms. Gaen had aimed for a time when Shinobu would be asleep so as to prevent even an outside chance of that happening─but even if it had, if my body was possessed of enough immortality to restore itself after being chopped into such tiny pieces, I couldn’t survive being out under the sun’s rays like that.
It was almost as if─there was an Aberration Savior to go along with the Aberration Slayer.
What’s happening here?
What the hell is happening─no.
What─did Ms. Gaen do?
“Ah, you awake?” A shadow fell over me as I lay there with my arms and legs splayed out, still totally confused. “Or did I wake up the sleeping child─Mister Rock-a-bye-baby?”
“Don’t talk about me like I’m some kind of lullaby, my name is─Araragi,” I spat out reflexively.
At the girl standing over me─a girl with pigtails and a giant backpack.
But the last bit caught in my throat.
Not that I’d forgotten my own name, of course─
“So it is. Sorry, slip of the tongue.”
She grinned as she said this─showing me that sunny smile I had liked, had loved, so much.
That longed-for smile.
I had thought I would never see again─
“And, is the punch line that you failed the entrance exam because you didn’t even make it to the test site, Mister Araragi?”
“Come on, it can’t end with such a lame joke.”
Afterword
The concept of “foreshadowing” is an important element in novels, and in particular mystery novels; to give a crude explanation, it’s basically employed to make the reader think, “Oh, this is what that thing that time was all about!” But you know, it seems to me this sometimes happens in reality as well. Thinking back on it, this is what was going on; or, looking back now, this is what that was; or, too late now, but this is what that was all about. I imagine we’ve all had experiences like that, of reflecting on the past and realizing something along those lines. Which, how can I put this, seems like it’s probably accompanied by a certain amount of regret most of the time─like, if only I’d noticed earlier, this never would’ve happened? If foreshadowing ends up making us think, “I should’ve noticed then” or “If I were more observant, I would’ve realized what was going on,” then it makes a certain kind of inevitable sense that it would be accompanied by regret, but I wonder, is every recollection that makes us feel something akin to regret a product of foreshadowing? It certainly doesn’t seem like it. If you’re wondering whether an event in a novel that “in retrospect seems like foreshadowing” actually was foreshadowing, you can ask the author, and if the author is an honest person then he or she might even tell you. But in real life there’s no way of knowing. Human beings are prone to drawing all kinds of connections even where there are none, so depending on one’s interpretation, just about anything might be seen as “foreshadowing.” Not to bring up the whole “friend of a friend” thing, but there’s a theory that everyone in the world is connected by no more than six degrees of separation. This would seem to suggest that we live in a surprisingly small world, but is a “relationship” separated by six degrees really worthy of the name? Can you really say you’re connected to that other person? Can “a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend” really constitute some kind of foreshadowing in the tale of your life?
None of this foreshadows anything, of course, KOYOMIMONOGATARI being the second installment in the Monoga
tari Series Final Season. Originally, OWARIMONOGATARI: End Tale was going to be second, but this one inserted itself between TSUKIMONOGATARI and OWARIMONOGATARI because, after so many years and so many books, I’d started to feel like a disconnect had developed between the current story and the beginning of the series, way back in BAKEMONOGATARI. I thus conceived the authorial desire to look back over this year in the life of Koyomi Araragi and company and reaffirm the connection. And so this has been Calendar Tale, a work that took me one hundred percent by surprise: “Koyomi Stone,” “Koyomi Flower,” “Koyomi Sand,” “Koyomi Water,” “Koyomi Wind,” “Koyomi Tree,” “Koyomi Tea,” “Koyomi Mountain,” “Koyomi Torus,” “Koyomi Seed,” “Koyomi Nothing,” and “Koyomi Dead.”