by Nisioisin
She wanted to become faster because she hated her classmates.
She wanted to be by Senjogahara’s side─because she hated Koyomi Araragi.
Yes, it reads the backside.
Yes, it looks at the backside.
It sees into our unconscious desires.
The devil─sees through us.
She may not have regretted stepping away─but resented anyone stepping into that position. If someone could, why not her?
Why couldn’t it be me.
The Rainy Devil.
A devil told of in Europe since long ago.
It’s often depicted as a monkey wearing a raincoat.
In that sense, it might be correct to call that left hand a monkey’s paw─but either way, both the first and the second wishes had been Kanbaru’s own unconscious ones, clear but hidden.
Against the classmates who teased her.
And me.
Her classmates in grade school had gotten off with injuries, while I was nearly killed… Was that due to a difference in how strongly she felt, the volume of her negative emotions? What I’d posited about Kanbaru’s maturation as an athlete must have had something to do with it too, but there was also a greater psychological factor.
Well, anyway, Oshino was right.
Maybe I hadn’t given it enough thought.
If Kanbaru had really wished to the Rainy Devil to be by Senjogahara’s side, it didn’t make sense for her to feel concerned about my safety─given the grade school episode, her violent left hand would try to eliminate Koyomi Araragi, but how could Kanbaru, from her standpoint, know that for sure? Precisely how her left hand would grant the wish, in what unintended manner it would go about it, should have been opaque to her.
But she unconsciously knew what she unconsciously wished for.
She knew that I was in danger.
If the monster in the raincoat didn’t appear before me as soon as the aberration melded with her left hand, that was because Kanbaru was trying to control the impulse, according to Oshino. She was right on the edge, in conflict with it, struggling against it.
“Working hard to become faster is like the ultimate in self-regarding excuses. The paw wasn’t doing anything because she made her own wish come true─what a patently ridiculous idea. Missy herself might’ve believed it, might’ve wanted to believe it, and that was by no means wrong, but the wish the Rainy Devil violently granted was the backside rather than the front. Still, her stance of always having managed on her own had a good effect this time around…and while the aberration merged with her arm, she was able to suppress it. When you look at it that way, aberrations like these are really like items. The owner’s mindset is a factor…but to be realistic about it, in this case it’s just an arm, so the Rainy Devil must be unable to exercise too much of its power, a devil though it may be. It couldn’t draw out of her an unconscious to surpass her consciousness. In other words, her left hand didn’t activate while she was concerned about your wellbeing. All of her stalking since four days ago had exactly the effect she wanted, though it might not have been missy’s intention, since all of this occurred in the unconscious. But─yesterday, was it? She learned that you and li’l missy tsundere would be meeting all alone for a so-called study session. Until then, your dating was only a rumor, it might have been untrue, but that’s when, alas, missy became certain. And─she couldn’t hold back anymore. It’s exactly as you surmised, Araragi.”
The devil found an opening and wormed its way into her heart.
Oshino didn’t put it that way, of course.
He thoroughly despised that sort of spoiled weakness.
But─
It was jealousy, from beginning to end─and Kanbaru had been saying as much.
She’d been saying it.
“Mm, that ought to do,” I told Shinobu.
I’d had her suck my blood right up to the limit, locked in an embrace, and now I tapped her tiny back twice. Shinobu gently removed her fangs from the two holes in my neck─and licked clean the few drops of blood that dribbled in the process. Maybe I needed to start wondering if our embrace fell under Senjogahara’s definition of cheating, but since this was the only way the task could be accomplished, I’d have to beg her to let it go. Unlike during spring break, Shinobu’s figure was now so minute and helpless, and hugging her as I did felt like hugging fog or mist, there was so little in my hands.
“…Oops.”
I stood up from my crouched position─and felt a little dizzy. It was natural, of course, but I did feel almost anemic right after having my blood sucked─and this time, especially, I’d given her a lot.
Nearly five times more than the default amount.
I hopped up and down a bit.
Then again, my senses and bodily sensation didn’t feel much different from usual… All of my stats got raised across the board, so it wasn’t easy to discern exactly how I compared to my normal state.
Shinobu was already back to sitting on the floor.
Sitting there…with both of her arms wrapped around her legs as if to confirm her own presence.
She didn’t even look in my direction.
“……”
A good and kind person, huh?
I could insist that I wasn’t either of those things all day long, but when it came down to it, the prime victim was still this blond vampire… I supposed I couldn’t blame Oshino for his cutting remark.
Forget me. For Shinobu…
I grabbed her goggled helmet and gave it a good shake right and left. For a while, she ignored it and didn’t react, but it must have gotten legitimately annoying because she swatted my hand away.
Yeah.
Satisfied for the time being, I did as Oshino advocated and left without parting words, turning my back on her and climbing the stairs down to the third floor from the landing. I’d bring her a present next time, maybe donut holes or something, I thought as I bypassed the third floor and headed to the second.
Across from me, in front of a door on the opposite side of the hallway─awaited Mèmè Oshino, his arms crossed, leaning back against a wall, casually dangling one foot in the air.
“Hey. I’ve been waiting, Araragi. Looks like you took longer than expected.”
“Yup. I had a little trouble figuring out the limit. I might have shorted her…but it’s better than letting her go overboard. For me and for Shinobu.”
“Hmm. I guess that’s true, but you don’t need to be so sensitive about little Shinobu. Because her existence is bound by my name, nothing extreme is going to happen. Naming is taming. If anything, I’m more worried about her starving. You’re going to be grappling and fighting it out with a devil in a moment, Araragi, so you can’t afford such concerns, I don’t think? You don’t want to end up being the comic relief. Hitting the ceiling still wouldn’t give you good odds for this match, okay? Even if your opponent is no more than a left arm.”
…Our measure against the Rainy Devil.
An authentic exorcism is a major affair that takes lots of time and effort, and despite the Rainy Devil’s low ranking, it would be no cakewalk even for Oshino. This was coming from him, so I took it with a grain of salt─but I was convinced, at least, that he didn’t intend to partake this time.
Unlike with Senjogahara’s case.
You could call Senjogahara’s crab another kind of aberration that granted a wish─but that was a god, and this was a devil. Even an amateur like myself could tell it wasn’t going to be simple.
Kanbaru, with “god” in her name, and a devil.
It was not so much a hint as plain irony.
But─we didn’t have the time or the effort to spare.
If we didn’t hurry, my life might come to an end that very night. Me getting killed, or Kanbaru’s left arm getting cut off─unfortunately, I wasn’t so unattached to living as to accept the former manner of resolving the story. But cutting off Kanbaru’s left arm was flat out of the question.
Which left us with option three.
; “The contract, huh?” I said. “Well, I hope that’s all it takes for the devil to go back to its demonic or spiritual or whatever world.”
“The demonic and the spiritual aren’t different worlds, they refer to ‘here’─but the complicated stuff will start to feel like an argument we’ve already had, so maybe next time. It’s going to work, I’ll guarantee you that much, Araragi. If the contract can’t be fulfilled─it becomes void. I won’t call it a ‘cooling off’ period, but missy’s wish will be properly invalidated too. The poor incompetent devil who didn’t cut it will slink off without a word.”
The devil will slink off.
If it can’t fulfill the contract.
“In other words─if the devil can’t kill me.”
“Hyup.” Oshino chuckled. “Having given little Shinobu as much blood as possible only means so much, though… If you went about it like you had a mere tenth of the power you manifested over spring break, when you were actually a vampire, you’d still be overestimating your capabilities.”
“…That’s a pretty bleak fraction.”
“But you’re facing just the left hand of that Rainy Devil─you’d have no chance against the whole thing, but with the ‘dead weight’ of a human being on top of it, I’d say you have a ten or twelve or fourteen to one chance of winning,” Oshino assured most ambiguously.
The Rainy Devil is a completely different type of aberration from the Monkey’s Paw─the only trait the two have in common is that they grant wishes, and the devil, as you can tell from its association with a raincoat, has a full set of body parts (how you define ‘body’ is relevant here, but let’s leave that aside). Yet I was facing just the left hand─and it had been mummified, too, probably thanks to a reliable seal, according to Oshino.
“Missy’s mother’s lineage seems to have been the issue─could it also have been why they ended up eloping? Well, I don’t mean to expose or nose around a stranger’s family situation with an offhanded guess. A mummified devil is actually quite a feat, though I’ve heard of mummified mermaids and the like. Hm, personally, if it only went down to the wrist when missy got it, what happened to the remaining parts does make me curious.”
Mother…
Hitagi Senjogahara, Mayoi Hachikuji.
Both of their aberrations─involved their mothers.
Suruga Kanbaru was continuing that trend, then.
Apparently, just like her father, her mother had been disowned by her parents after eloping and Kanbaru was completely estranged from that side of her family, so there didn’t seem to be any hope of finding out more…
“By the way,” I asked, “what if this Rainy Devil had all of its body parts? Could it even beat Shinobu at her peak?”
“Not a chance. It’s a low-level fiend at the end of the day, toothless against a real vampire. We aren’t even talking about Mephistopheles here, so it’d take her no more than a couple of seconds. She’d pulverize every one of its assembled limbs, slurp up every fluid in its body, and that would be it. Have you forgotten that our little Shinobu used to be a fearsome, legendary vampire? Of course it’d be no match for her. Given the Rainy Devil’s ranking, I’d say that even li’l missy class president’s lust-besotted cat was easily stronger than it. Oh, but don’t try to have Shinobu help out, okay? That may let us defeat the thing, but we’d have to cut off missy’s arm for real. You, yourself, defeating it─that’s the whole point.”
“The Rainy Devil takes over a person’s body by granting wishes, right? Every time it grants one, you get closer to the devil… The mummified hand must have grown from the wrist to the elbow because it granted Kanbaru’s first wish, but then what, Oshino? If her second wish, her murderous hatred for me, and some third wish were granted, what would happen to her? At that rate, wouldn’t taking over her just mean growing up to her shoulder or so?”
“I can only reply to that question like a bureaucrat: there’s no precedent I can refer to. But considering the ratio, it seems reasonable to presume as you just did that it’ll only go up to the shoulder even if it takes over her. Still, Araragi, that doesn’t change anything. Being usurped up to your shoulder is the same as being usurped whole. It’s like a publicly traded company having thirty percent of its stock acquired.”
“…I guess.”
“Her soul would get extracted either way, and she’d be an empty husk. Oh, I’ll hold on to your bag and any valuables, Araragi. It’ll be hard for you to maneuver carrying all that.”
“Oh, yeah… Thanks. Could you take these, then?”
I pulled my cell phone and house keys out of my back and jacket pockets, tossed them into my backpack, and handed it to Oshino. Okay, he said, slinging it over his shoulder.
“But Araragi─can I ask you just one question?”
“What is it?”
“Why help even someone who tried to kill you? It might have been unconscious, the flip side of her wish─but missy hated you. She saw you as a hated rival in love.” His usual mean jabbing─didn’t seem to be what this was. “To begin with, why did you decide to hear missy out when you learned that it was her in the raincoat? Normally, at that point, there’d be no more need for questions or answers─you ought to have skipped her right then and come straight to me.”
“…Everyone’s going to have someone they hate. That’s part of being alive. I don’t have any interest in being killed, but if Kanbaru was doing this because she pined for Senjogahara─”
For every aberration, there was a reason.
If that was her reason─
“─I can forgive her.”
If I was right from the start as Oshino said, then nothing had changed. I’d just gone back to the beginning, and Monkey’s Paws and Rainy Devils didn’t have anything to do with it. True, I hadn’t imagined that she saw me as her rival in love, but even then.
Underhanded calculations.
Scheming persistence.
Maybe I was a good and kind person, but I wasn’t exactly pure and virtuous like Hanekawa.
Tsubasa Hanekawa.
The girl with a pair of mismatched wings.
…If I was jealous of anyone, it was her.
I really was─envious, even.
“Oh. Well, if that’s what you’ve decided, Araragi, then sure. It’s fine by me and none of my business. In that case, get in there and help missy out. I should caution you, once you enter, you won’t be able to leave until it’s over. The door absolutely won’t open from inside. Brace yourself because escape is not an option. Think very well back to spring break about situations from which there’s no turning back, and be prepared, understand? …And of course, whatever happens, little Shinobu or I won’t come save you. Don’t forget that I’m an inordinate pacifist and an ill-timed humanitarian. I’m going up to the fourth floor to get some sleep once I see you enter this classroom, so the rest is up to you. No need to say bye to me when you leave, neither you nor missy. Little Shinobu will be asleep by then, too, so just leave on your own.”
“…Sorry for the hassle.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Oshino moved from his spot on the wall to open the door.
I slipped in without hesitation.
As soon as I did, Oshino shut the door.
I couldn’t leave now.
A classroom located in the back of the second floor─it was laid out the exact same way as the fourth-floor classroom but was the only one in the entire ruins whose windows were sealed. That isn’t to say that there weren’t shards of glass all over the floor here too. Rather, numerous planks of thick wood were nailed over the empty window frames just like people used to do when hurricanes came along. So single-mindedly many boards that it made you wonder why. Once the door shut, not a ray of light shone in─it was already the middle of the night, but not even starlight.
It was pitch black.
But─I could see.
Just having given plenty of blood to Shinobu, I could see through the darkness. In fact, in my current state, I could see better i
n the dark─and I slowly took in my surroundings.
I found it in no time.
It was there, standing in the not-so-large classroom─
Raincoat.
“…Hey,” I called out to it, but there was no response.
It seemed she was already─in a trance.
The body was Suruga Kanbaru’s─but its left arm, and for now, its soul was the Rainy Devil’s… If you’re wondering about the raincoat, Kanbaru ran off to grab one from the nearest general store while I was having Shinobu drink my blood. You could say the raincoat wasn’t necessary, or at least it was an optional, non-essential item, but it served as per usual a ceremonial purpose to set the mood and scene.