Bakemonogatari Part 2

by Nisioisin

“Ah. You’re right, cutting off my arm isn’t something to impose on people. It’s not a favor you can carry out just because someone asked, is it? Okay, I’ll think of a way on my own. I’m sure it can be done with the help of a car or a train.”

  “That’s─”

  A car or a train?

  That amounted to suicide.

  It wasn’t suicidal─but plain suicide.

  “If she wants to cut it off, there’s a good way, isn’t there,” Oshino interrupted with a reminder. “Why aren’t you telling her, Araragi? How inconsiderate of you when someone’s clearly in distress. You just have to get little Shinobu to cooperate. A heart under her blade─with that prized sword of hers, we’d be able to sever that left arm with no time for missy to feel any pain. Little Shinobu’s blade might not have the edge it once boasted, but cutting off a slender arm would be as easy as pie, or slicing tofu─”

  “Shut up, Oshino! Hey, Kanbaru! Stop tormenting yourself about this! You shouldn’t be feeling responsible, not one bit─isn’t that obvious?! This is all because of the Monkey’s Paw…I mean, some aberration called the Rainy Devil─”

  “The aberration only granted her wish, didn’t it?”

  Oshino wasn’t shutting up.

  Eloquently, loquaciously, he weaved his words.

  “It only gave her what she wanted, yes? Wasn’t it the same with li’l missy tsundere? It’s not like what happened to you over spring break, Araragi. It’s nothing like little Shinobu’s case─Araragi, you didn’t wish upon an aberration.”

  “……”

  “Which is why─you don’t understand how she feels. Not her remorse, and not her regrets. Not in the slightest,” he told me. “By the way, in the original ‘The Monkey’s Paw,’ after having a first and a second wish granted, the third wish of the first person to use the paw was to die. I don’t think I need to explain the full significance of that?”

  “Oshino─”

  What he said was right.

  But, Oshino, you’re mistaken.

  Facing off against Raincoat─immobile like we were in a standoff, I took my time recollecting.

  Because I actually do understand.

  So much that it hurts, that my wounded heart hurts.

  Hitagi Senjogahara’s feelings.

  And Suruga Kanbaru’s, too, okay?

  No, maybe I don’t, after all.

  Maybe it’s nothing more than a conceited and misguided notion.

  But─

  We bear the same kind of pain.

  We share it.

  Who’s to say you won’t use a wish-granting item that presents itself to you? Like with my spring break, though it might not have been wished for. Even the pure and virtuous Hanekawa was bewitched by a cat due to the slightest discord and torsion─

  At its base, my relationship with Shinobu was no different from Senjogahara’s relationship with the crab, or Kanbaru’s with the devil.

  “I don’t mind, Araragi,” she said.

  “Well, I do─how could I not? What are you saying? And what about Senjogahara? I wanted you and her to─”

  “I’m done. About her too. I’m done now.” Her words must have literally pained her. “It’s fine. I’ll give up.”

  No way.

  Giving up isn’t fine at all.

  Make your own wishes come true─that’s why your mother gave you that mummified devil. It couldn’t have been to teach you to give up on your dreams─

  So don’t make that face.

  Stop looking like a deep pit where your face should be.

  You can’t ever give up on anything on the verge of crying like that.

  A rainy devil─and a weepy devil.

  Its origin is said to be a child who ran away from home after getting in a fight with his parents over nothing one drizzling day. He got lost in the mountains and was killed and eaten by a pack of wild monkeys. Mysteriously, no one from his family or settlement could recall the child’s name─

  “…Bastard!”

  Unable to take our standoff, mentally─unable to bear the shadow play of thoughts that beleaguered me, I charged Raincoat. Including the night before, it was the very first time I went on the offensive instead of just reacting. You could say that the pressure of maintaining an interceptive posture was getting to be too much.

  Staying on our feet wouldn’t do. Even if I trapped its left arm again, a kick would follow without delay. I needed to go at Raincoat with a mind to pin it down like this was judo or wrestling─

  I spread my arms out as though to clamp down on Raincoat, but I couldn’t catch it─had it moved left or right, I might have been able to respond, but that’s not what it did. Yet it didn’t back away, either─in that case I would have only needed to take another few steps.

  Raincoat had jumped.

  It jumped─and with both of its feet stuck to the classroom’s ceiling─stayed up there and dashed. Tup, tup, tup, tup, tup, tup, it defied gravity─and dashed across the ceiling, ignoring the universal law.

  Then it came down─and landed on the floor.

  And jumped sideways next.

  And landed on the rickety blackboard─and jumped again─and landed on the thick planks sealing a window shut─and jumped again─and was back on the ceiling.

  Every which way, plus a few more.

  With bewildering speed─Raincoat jumped.

  Like a pinwheel firework, it went from wall to wall, from wall to ceiling, from ceiling to floor, from floor to wall─jumping on its two legs. Raincoat was jumping around on Suruga Kanbaru’s practiced legs.

  Or like a super ball fired at high speed.

  A raucous dance of reflected angles.

  Bounding, then bounding again.

  My eyes couldn’t keep up.

  It was moving faster than my eyeballs.

  It was accelerating like a body in free fall and going faster and faster, gradually, boldly picking up speed with every jump─the difference between rubber boots and sneakers a quaint detail, it gradually and boldly and unmistakably toyed with my vision.

  Simply going from two to three dimensions had such a huge effect─the classroom had been turned into a sealed boundary by Oshino to limit the damage and to ensure a decisive outcome…and also out of a straightforward calculation that a narrow field offered advantages over a wide one in fighting the quick and agile Raincoat─but it was the complete opposite. That was totally backfiring.

  Backfiring.

  How could we not have foreseen it?

  The reason Kanbaru had joined the basketball and not the track team─was that her legs shone most brightly as a weapon that made her faster than anyone else on the narrow field that is a basketball court! Despite her height and build Suruga Kanbaru had the jumping chops to dunk the ball with ease, and what did that mean in a constrained space with a low ceiling?!

  It was backfiring, everything was.

  I couldn’t have miscalculated more flagrantly. What was I, stupid?

  I never gave up a good chance to be wrong.

  As Raincoat jumped around making a fool of me, my heels seemed nailed to the ground and I couldn’t take a single step. In particular, the vertical movements from the floor to the ceiling, and from the ceiling to the floor, confounded me─it was a design issue in that the human eye was physically capable of handling lateral movement but wasn’t as prepared to shoot up and down. My vision couldn’t keep up with Raincoat’s movements.

  Rapidly getting around behind me where I stood─

  Raincoat jumped from the ceiling toward me at last. Spinning its body midair, heels over head like in a Sepak Takraw roll spike, it drove the tip of its foot into the crown of my head with the momentum it gained─I felt my skull collapse. As I lurched forward from the force of it, Raincoat, having already landed, met my jaw with a Muay Thai knee. The consecutive blows, the Sepak Takraw-Muay Thai combo, were nearly simultaneous timing-wise, and the impact of being sandwiched by a virtual pincer strike, something that exceeded pain, assaulted me. My brain f
elt dented along with my head, and I lost consciousness for a brief moment─suddenly comatose.

  But I didn’t die.

  My wounds healed immediately.

  Man, it was hell.

  Sañjīva, the Buddhist hell of revival.

  Crushed into dust, then mended and restored by a gust of wind, crushed again, mended again, crushed, repeatedly, into dust, crushed for eternity, one of the eight great hells─it was exactly like my spring break.

  “Tsk…”

  I extended my arm─and Raincoat evaded me. Then it cocked its fist, and I reacted─no, I didn’t, my reflexes did. I’d focused on that left arm for so long that I was overly sensitive to its motion. What I ought to have taken more deeply to heart was Raincoat’s earlier attack, consecutive kicks delivered by choice despite its left arm being free. Or what the abrupt onset of its bewildering high-speed three-dimensional disruptive acceleratory movement, that terrifying footwork, meant. The significance of using not just the Rainy Devil left arm but all four of its limbs to maneuver.

  Play with the devil and become the devil.

  Forget whatever coming true, selling your soul, bodily possession, and all that─

  Wish upon the devil and become the devil.

  The left fist was a feint.

  Only having mounted linear attacks at first─now Raincoat was finally employing footwork, combos, feints, that is to say, combat techniques.

  No, not a feint.

  A fake, was more like it. Because the tactic wouldn’t have been accessible to Raincoat without Suruga Kanbaru’s cooperation─

  Bracing myself for the left fist fatally exposed my opposite flank, and the tip of Raincoat’s toes connected, thrice this time, and in the same precise location─and as my body folded in a sideways V thanks to an attack that contradicted the theory of relativity and struck the same coordinates simultaneously three times in a row, the sole of Raincoat’s other foot shot through my chest.

  Like a catapult.

  Overpowered, I fell over backward, but placing my hands on the floor as if to perform a back roll, I spun myself upright and put distance between myself and it─Raincoat immediately closed in.

  The kick had struck one of my lungs.

  It had probably collapsed.

  It hurt to breathe.

  Dammit, it wasn’t healing right away─did it mean that Raincoat’s kicks now had more power, more destructive potential than its left fist?

  Did Kanbaru’s thoughts surpass the devil?

  Jealousy.

  Hatred.

  All her negative emotions.

  Why not me, then.

  “…Because you just,” I said─with my still collapsed lung, “because you just won’t do, Suruga Kanbaru─!”

  No one can ever replace someone else, and no one can ever be someone else. Senjogahara is Hitagi Senjogahara, and Kanbaru is Suruga Kanbaru.

  And Koyomi Araragi is Koyomi Araragi.

  The difference between me and Kanbaru.

  Whether or not we knew Oshino.

  Whether or not we stepped away.

  Whether it was a demon or a monkey.

  Random encounters, chance.

  It did give rise to feelings of remorse.

  I was remorseful, towards both Kanbaru and Senjogahara. But when it came to trading places if I could, I didn’t feel that way─I had no desire to cede my position.

  Right.

  If I’m your hated rival in love─then you were mine, and I’d have done better to hate you, Kanbaru.

  Maybe my remorse sprang from there too.

  I hadn’t considered Kanbaru my equal.

  I’d condescended.

  Made light of her.

  Deigning to mediate between Kanbaru and Senjogahara to bring about their reconciliation, while I rested on an absolutely secure perch with consummate ease─how thoroughly repulsive a deed was that? Such a good, kind person. Such a bad, callous person.

  If a wish.

  If a wish is something you fulfill on your own, then─

  Giving up on your own ought to be fine.

  Giving up, provided you don’t forget─ought to be fine.

  “…! …! …!”

  Relentless attack after attack splashed across my body, each impact so intense it actually remolded me─I wasn’t able to dodge even one in four anymore. My body repaired and regenerated itself, destroyed part after destroyed part, but Raincoat’s assault now outpaced the process.

  Before I knew, I was trapped in a corner of the classroom. As if invisible strings were binding me, I couldn’t move back or to either side. Raincoat no longer bothered with any footwork─if this were boxing, you’d say it was fighting on the inside, legs planted, and unopposed at that. No matter how nice the sneakers, the friction from the sustained, impractical acceleration would wear out the rubber soles, I’d vaguely hoped based on nothing, but even my optimistic projection was now bankrupt. Every permutation of fists, elbows, shins, toes, and heels tormented my body all over in quick succession. I wasn’t even allowed a moment to scream out in pain, it was the ultimate combo chain.

  It no longer fell under the rubric of strikes.

  Pure pressure.

  It wasn’t just my bones breaking; the spots where I got hit were tearing, my skin and muscles were ripping and sundering. Raincoat’s stance was that much more rooted and weighted forward than before and seemed to add to its left fist’s destructive power by the moment.

  Still─

  Not to the extent of Suruga Kanbaru’s legs...

  “Uni…form.”

  My body may have been immortal, but my clothes weren’t.

  They’d been torn to shreds by that point.

  Ugh. I’d ruined yet another one.

  My high-collared jacket, when we were only a few days away from changing into our summer uniforms…

  What excuse was I going to offer my sisters this time?

  “Guh…kk.”

  At this distance…

  At least, at this distance, if Raincoat offered me the slightest opportunity, I could render it immobile by hugging Kanbaru’s body…and force it down to the ground with all I was worth and turn around the fight.

  I still had a path to victory.

  Even now, while I was trapped in a corner in positional terms, I wasn’t actually cornered─attack me as Raincoat might, I had nothing to fear as long as my regenerative healing abilities were kicking in.

  It was only painful.

  Like Kanbaru’s heart, it was only painful─

  Being in pain meant I was alive.

  “I hate you.”

  I heard a voice.

  “I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you.”

  It was the voice─of Suruga Kanbaru.

  From the deep pit under the raincoat’s hood, as though appealing directly to my psyche, it resonated─and I heard:

  “I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you.”

  “………”

  Hatred─more hatred than any one person could bear.

  Malice, hostility.

  The negative emotions of a positive junior.

  It seemed to swirl─to be brimming in Raincoat.

  Its surface tension stretched to the limit.

  “How dare you how dare you how dare you how dare you.”

  Along with the strikes, the voice continued.

  The voice of hatred continued.

  “I can’t stand you I can’t stand you I can’t stand you I can’t stand you I can’t stand you I can’t stand you I can’t stand you I can’t stand you─”

  “…Kanbaru, sorry.”

  Out loud again.

  I apologized to Kanbaru.

  “Me, I haven’t the least bit trouble standing you.”

  Rivals in love though we may be.

  You and I might not match up at all─but, you know?

  Can’t we be friends at all?


  “…■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■!”

  Some sort of piercing shriek came from the deep pit─and Raincoat’s kick penetrated my abdomen. Penetrated. It wasn’t just that my organs ruptured, but rather, perfectly ignoring my joints and muscles, crushing my ribs and spine, it literally and non-figuratively penetrated clean through my belly so that the heel reached the wall behind me. I was skewered.