by Nisioisin
“Well, Mister Araragi, why am I the only one with anything to say? It’s your turn now. Initiate some interesting small talk, please.”
“Geez, get off my back. I’m out of fun trivia.”
“Whaaat?” Hachikuji looked displeased. “Don’t be such a stick in the mud. Educate me. Something math-related, your forte, would do nicely.”
“I tried that with my sister this morning and bombed.”
“Ah, say no more.” Hachikuji’s grumpy expression turned smug. “Since you’ll be getting more attention thanks to the anime, you’re distancing yourself from all the anarchic banter. Basically, you’re selling out.”
“What a nasty way to put it!”
“Hey, why not, right? If that’s what you want, then by all means, go ahead. Excuse me for getting in your way. Here, I’ll butt out, so why don’t you continue with the plot? You’re through with any kind of silly banter if it’s not foreshadowing anything, yes? Go on, practice your oh-so-lofty craft and fashion your noble, moving masterpiece, if that’s what interests you.”
“What did I say to deserve all that?!”
I was being subjected to such a tongue lashing just because I couldn’t think of a good math story to share?
Hmm, knowledge─so important. Maybe I should have discussed root numbers.
“But Hachikuji, trying to be clever can backfire. You don’t want to get too convoluted in your approach.”
“I suppose you have a point. But if small talk and riddles are off the table─hmmm. Okay, how about this?”
Hachikuji suddenly straightened up. She looked serious, the smile disappearing from her face. With a vulnerable, lonely, and yet fulfilled air, she nodded.
“Mister Araragi. I came here today to say goodbye.”
“You’re gonna make me cry!”
That line, alone, almost made me bawl reflexively like a little mallet testing my nerves!
“You know, Mister Araragi… I always liked that side of you.”
“My tear ducts! They’re going to burst!”
“The truth is, I was supposed to go back to my town a long time ago. I was so worried about you that I ended up staying this long… But it’s fine now. You’ll be fine on your own, now.”
“No! You mean it was all for me?!”
“Please find happiness with Miss Senjogahara. And don’t be such a burden on Miss Hanekawa, okay? And…every now and then, could you please think of me? Don’t forget that you once knew a little girl named Mayoi Hachikuji─who was a very good friend.”
“You might as well kill me!!”
I was past tearing up and sobbing my heart out now.
Yeah, forget it!
That bit of foreshadowing could remain a loose end!
Or else, even if there were a million of me, I’d die a million sobbing deaths.
She could go on making small talk as an excuse to mispronounce my name.
“Hey, Hachikuji, now that it’s come to this, why don’t you just live in my shadow with Shinobu? That way, you’ll never get lost again.”
“Living face to face with her sounds pretty nerve-wracking…”
Then─
And then.
Like always, just like always, it was right in the middle of such lax, nonsense banter with Hachikuji, in the midst of a silly, fun chat that could go on for a thousand more manuscript sheets─
Like eight trumpets announcing the end of comic relief, another voice inserted itself, as if it had found an opening.
“Hello, kind monster sir. Do you know how to get where I’m going? Tell me if you do─he said with a dashing look.”
The speaker wasn’t standing on a mailbox or speaking in Kyoto dialect, but I immediately sensed that the kid, who looked about Hachikuji’s age, was something to that lady, Kagenui, from earlier.
“There’s supposed to be an Eikow Cram School that shut down… You don’t happen to know where it is, do you, kind monster sir?─he said with a dashing look.”
“……”
Despite the last bit, the kid’s face was expressionless. It was a flat, inanimate, and inorganic expressionless that reminded me of how Senjogahara used to be.
And despite the choice of pronoun, the child was dressed in an orange drawstring blouse paired with a cute tiered skirt.
A girl who used the male pronoun!
So they really existed!
I’d thought it was an anime invention!
Once I recognized her as such, her colored-tights-and-mules combination filled my heart with joy.
Next to me Hachikuji muttered, “Seeing you dance on your heels at the sight of a little girl makes it hard to put much stock in your assertion that you’re not a loli-lover…”
Be quiet!
Hmm? Huh?
When it came to shyness, Hachikuji gave even Sengoku and pre-change Senjogahara a decent run for their money. The fact that she was still standing next to me instead of running off after being accosted by a stranger was pretty unique.
Did Hachikuji know this girl? No, that didn’t make sense.
“My name is Yotsugi Ononoki,” the kid went on to introduce herself.
Doing so without being asked was another thing she shared in common with Kagenui.
Maybe they were together after all─in fact, didn’t the lady mention something about a little girl in parting?
Ononoki?
That was an odd name…and pretty stalwart sounding. Ono meant axe, and as with the axe-man that had just come up─it had a ferocious or virile ring to it.
On the other hand, Hachikuji might mispronounce my name that way.
Ononoki, huh?
“─he said with a dashing look.”
“……”
What an obnoxious verbal tic.
It was way too long for rounding out a sentence.
And where was the dashing look, anyway?
It made for a pretty lackluster performance.
“I see. I’m Koyomi Araragi.”
“Nice to meet you, kind monster sir─he said with a dashing look.”
“Uh, same here.”
She didn’t get it, did she?
And why was she referring to me like I was a character from some children’s show?
Unlike the time with Kagenui, I wasn’t riding on my sister’s shoulders or anything, so why call me that?
I was pretty sure “monster” wasn’t one of my nicknames.
Unless Ononoki had witnessed my failed attempt to sexually harass Hachikuji as per my usual custom?
“Let’s see, Eikow Cram School…”
I’d explained how to get there just a while ago, so I barely needed to think.
Too bad. If I didn’t remember, I could call Hanekawa again.
Yozuru and Yotsugi.
Their first names sounded similar. Maybe she and Kagenui were sisters on vacation somewhere nearby, and they got separated and were meeting up at an abandoned building?
That seemed pretty improbable.
Unlike their first names, their last names were just different, and they didn’t look like each other, either. Furthermore, our town wasn’t exactly a popular vacation spot, and what sort of travelers chose school ruins as a rendezvous point for when they got separated?
Kagenui, herself, had said something about setting up base.
In any case.
It wasn’t my place to pry.
I just needed to answer her question.
When Kagenui stopped me it had resulted in a lucky accident, namely an unplanned exchange with Hanekawa, but right now I was having a fun chat with Hachikuji. Maybe it was rude, but you could say I wanted Ononoki to move along.
Besides.
Although her blank face made it difficult to tell if she was really in trouble, she wasn’t standing on a mailbox or anything, and I had no reason to think twice about helping her.
I could dismiss her weird verbal tic as just a juvenile attempt to stand out.
Not that I thought it was working out for her, but
it was hardly my responsibility to dispense such advice.
In fact, I didn’t even need to ascertain if she and Kagenui were really together.
Coming to deeply regret not finding out their relationship while I had the chance─didn’t seem like a possibility.
“Hmm, I see. You saved me, thank you, kind monster sir. You too, li’l miss snail─he said with a dashing look.”
Apparently having understood the complicated directions on her first try like Kagenui, Ononoki spoke those words quietly in response to my explanation. Then she turned her back on us in a fairly cold manner. Her words of thanks were accompanied with a deep bow of her head but came off sounding perfunctory, and she barely said goodbye.
She somehow didn’t strike me as disagreeable, though.
How to put it─what she seemed to be lacking weren’t mere manners, but on a larger scale, any sense of culture.
She wasn’t a stranger to feelings, but rather, to means of conveying them─that was the vibe.
In that sense, the kid really did resemble the old Senjogahara. In Senjogahara’s case, the traits had been acquired, but I got the feeling that Ononoki’s personality was innate.
To tell the truth.
She didn’t seem human─or even biological.
A chunk of iron imbued with personhood.
Or maybe even a blade that was a person─a little girl.
Wait.
“Huh?” A question floated into my mind only now that Ononoki was gone. “Hachikuji… Didn’t she refer to you as ‘li’l miss snail’?”
“Hm? Ah, yes, she did.” Hachikuji nodded, so I hadn’t simply misheard. “What’s the matter? You shouldn’t be so petty, Mister Araragi. Don’t you know by now that jealousy leads nowhere? As grateful as I am for the inimitable love you shower on this puny, that is to say, lola-cious body of mine, is a little girl my age talking to me any reason to scowl?”
“Well, I do find it unforgivable… But that’s not what I meant.”
Hmm. It was weird, wasn’t it?
Kagenui─Yozuru Kagenui─had called me “fiendish” as well and added something about Karen.
Something about bees or hornets.
“Monster? Fiendish?”
A fiend.
Monstrous bloodsucker─vampire.
I couldn’t help but glance down at the shadow the summer sun cast─as usual, as ever, there was no response.
“Mister Araragi, as far as I could tell, though, that girl looked really competent. My master might be an even match.”
“Except you don’t have a master.”
006
Later, after returning home: “I’ve something urgent to discuss with thee. Can we parley for a moment?”
I’d actually already eaten at Kanbaru’s─I meant to head straight home after dropping Karen off, but before I could leave, Kanbaru’s grandmother propositioned me.
To stay for lunch, I mean.
Kanbaru lived with her grandfather and grandmother. It was just the three of them─as you would expect from the impressive mansion where they lived, her grandfather, the breadwinner of the family, had the type of job with no mandatory retirement age, and he was rarely in the house during the day.
Today’s “matchmaking” had been so sudden that it hadn’t occurred to me, but when I stopped to think about it, noon meant lunchtime. Kanbaru’s grandmother had already prepared extra meals in addition to her granddaughter’s.
Which is how I wound up being invited to partake.
I figured since I had come all this way, I might as well be polite and stay for a little while. Maybe I’d troubled them, though, like a guest who didn’t know that it was time to leave. But Kanbaru’s grandmother was an iron chef in the kitchen, and I couldn’t quite resist the temptation. Because it was still Obon, I guess, it looked like she’d put more effort into it than usual. My stomach certainly appreciated the proper, home-cooked traditional Japanese repast.
While I ate, I couldn’t help wondering when Kanbaru’s grandmother had grown to trust me so much. Maybe she just couldn’t neglect a strange older boy who came over twice a month to clean up her granddaughter’s room…
Still, though. I knew she was my younger schoolmate’s grandmother and was pushing well past sixty, but my heart skipped a beat over the fact that I was eating alone with a woman, just the two of us.
Putting that aside.
I imagined she was worried about Kanbaru’s left arm─about her granddaughter.
But as Kanbaru said the other day, her grandmother…and grandfather couldn’t poke in their noses too far. Thanks to all the business with Kanbaru’s mother.
If Grandma Kanbaru felt beholden to me somehow on that score…I’m afraid her gratitude was misplaced. Like Senjogahara, Kanbaru─got saved all on her own. There was nothing I could do, or did do, in the matter.
So let’s just assume that she’d invited me to lunch simply to be welcoming.
Just in case, I exchanged phone numbers and email addresses with her (unlike Kanbaru, she was a whirling dervish with her phone, a regular Cyberspace Granny) before heading home─which is when I had my hanky-panky with Hachikuji and that girl Ononoki asked me for directions.
Thus, walking through our front door, I went straight upstairs to my room to change, ready to study with renewed vigor without dallying. As soon as I sat down at my desk, however, a budding young girl with golden eyes and hair emerged from my shadow.
“……”
Shinobu Oshino.
A vampire who had lived for five hundred years─the aberration who had died for as long.
Ironblooded, hotblooded, yet coldblooded.
She was also the monster who, over spring break, plunged me, an ordinary high school loser, into the deepest depths of hell and ruthlessly forced me to writhe there on my belly─or rather, the husk and dregs of that monster.
She was my former master─and my current servant.
Koyomi Araragi became a vampire from being attacked by Shinobu Oshino, and Shinobu Oshino ceased to be a vampire for attacking Koyomi Araragi. Much transpired, and much was lost. Indeed, all was lost. There wasn’t a lot more to say about it.
These days, Shinobu was sealed in my shadow. In turn, so long as she remained there, she could utilize her vampiric skills to a certain extent.
Shinobu was also free to enter and leave my shadow as she pleased.
She had no problem ignoring me when I wanted a reaction out of her, but now that I was trying to study, lo and behold, she dares to show up.
“Hmph…”
I swiveled my chair and faced my desk.
Hm? Where was my pencil?
Ah, right, Karen had made me break my five-sided pencil. I’d just have to use a mechanical one for now. I could buy a new lucky charm for myself another day.
“Are ye deaf, ye clotpole?!”
Shinobu grabbed me from behind in a sleep choke and began relentlessly crushing my windpipe with her wan, thin arms… Hey, I thought vampires used striking techniques!
“I give, I give, I give! Let go, let go, let go! We can talk this outch!”
Shouting the famous line from the May 15 Incident (I had all the studying to thank for that, but having messed up a word, I didn’t get full points), I desperately tapped Shinobu’s elbow. Ah, of course, I realized, this morning Shinobu must have watched from my shadow while Karen “draped herself over” me.
While my sister hadn’t meant it as a chokehold but was probably just being playful (to butter me up so I’d introduce her to Kanbaru), all I could think about on the receiving end was whether she was going to break my neck. That concern, or rather panic, must have been transmitted to Shinobu via my shadow. That explained why she was doing this now.
Yet by that logic, if we were connected by my shadow, when Shinobu choked me she was choking herself as well. She probably just hadn’t thought that far ahead. Removing her arms from around my neck, she began coughing and hacking a little, in pain.
Talk about dumb.
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