by Nisioisin
Despite the fact that we were in the middle of a fight, her jovial attitude had barely changed─or rather.
According to her, our fight started the moment we were born, so it was only natural that her attitude wouldn’t change now.
She didn’t stop at always being ready for combat.
When she asked me for directions standing atop that mailbox, she was already standing on her battlefield.
“Do you reckon you know why it is I specialize in immortal aberrations?” Kagenui opened her mouth wide and lewdly licked her lips. “It’s because you can never go too far─”
“……nkk.”
I thought I was back to square one, but with one sentence, she broke my morale.
What was up with this lady?
The world was a big place… I’d never dreamed that it contained so intense a human.
I’d come here intending to fight and all─but only pictured a contest of unique skills.
Not that I’d doubted Karen’s guarantee that Kagenui was intense─but I thought once I was more than half vampire again, it would be a fair fight at the minimum.
And yet─what was this melee?
What was with the brute force?
This Kyotoite onmyoji was overwhelming an aberration─via sheer physical strength.
“Huff, huff, huff, huff…”
Regulating my breathing, throttling the thundering beating of my heart, I desperately tried to think.
No, don’t think. Remember.
This─right…
The former inhabitant of this room, the slacker in the Hawaiian shirt─if Mèmè Oshino had wanted, he could probably have gone nuts in this way, too.
He just didn’t.
He─no doubt could.
Even Shinobu at the height of her power had seen something in him. Whether it was the crab or the snail or the monkey or the snake, he probably could have dealt with them in a simpler way. The only aberration that had truly been too much for him to handle was probably Hanekawa’s cat.
Oshino.
“Ms. Kagenui… How do you know─Oshino?”
I wasn’t just trying to buy time.
Indeed, I was pretty sure that the only chance an amateur like me had against a pro like her was to try for a quick, decisive victory─but one way or another, this was something I needed to ask.
If I didn’t ask her─I wouldn’t be able to focus on the fight.
It would nag at me.
“You’re acquainted with that dude in the Hawaiian shirt…Mèmè Oshino?”
“Huh?” Kagenui cocked her head at my abrupt question. “What, you mean he’s still wearing those shirts? I thought that was just to flesh out his character, but I guess they really mean something to him if he’s still keeping the faith.”
“……”
“Well, nothing special─we’re just old mucks. Me, Oshino, and Kaiki were in college together.”
What?
Oshino was one thing─but Kaiki?
Kaiki?
Did she just say Kaiki?
“By Kaiki…do you mean Deishu Kaiki?”
“Sure, Kaiki. We were in the same department and the same club. There was one more of us above our year, and we used to play four-man shogi.”
“Shogi…”
Come to think of it… Kaiki had gone on a little digression with me and Senjogahara on the topic of shogi. I remember thinking it seemed a little strange for him…
“Kaiki never tried to win. He always fixed for profit. They say it’s bad luck, but he loved to get his pieces in a column.”
“……”
Why did he have to be ominous in every way?
That was worse than a stalemate.
“Oshino loved solving shogi puzzles. He was mean and loved to torment us with two-king problems. It wasn’t Microcosmos, but he did reckon up many a near-stalemate.”
“I don’t imagine that earned him a lot of friends…” So Oshino had been like that even way back in college. What an ass. “So the club you mentioned was a shogi club?”
“No, the occult research club. Though I reckon the only ones who took it seriously were Oshino and our sempai. We played so much shogi we forgot to recruit new members. Once we were finished, I’m pretty sure the club went under─I say finished, but Oshino and Kaiki both dropped out. The only one to actually graduate was me.”
“O-Oh…”
Only the one who seemed least likely to had graduated.
But putting that aside─she knew not only Oshino, but Kaiki as well.
Naturally, that meant Oshino and Kaiki─knew each other as well.
It was unexpected, but it also made sense─there’d been something odd about the way Kaiki spoke of Kagenui and Ononoki.
So after bilking me, a high schooler, out of my money, Kaiki didn’t even given me accurate information?
That is even less believable, he said… As long as you’re on the straight and narrow, you’re even less likely to get involved with them than with me, he said…
That son of a bitch.
If I’d known they were acquainted, I’d have asked more questions.
“Actually, it was Kaiki who kindly let us know that we had prey in your sister.”
“Kaikiiiiiii!”
So this whole thing was another one of your scams?!
This was all your doing?!
That ominous sack of shit was such a hopeless scoundrel.
“Of course, he set us back something fierce as is his wont. I figured it was all a bucket of pish before I got here, but I guess even Kaiki tells the truth sometimes. Fancy me pink.”
“First you take money from her, and then you take money from me? Business sure is booming, isn’t it, Deishu Kaiki?! Maybe next time we should crack open some champagne!”
What was it he said? “Coincidences” as they’re generally understood are a tricky affair─and, by and large, a product of malice.
A product of his own malice, clearly!
Playing dumb and spouting that line, when he knew damn well!
At this rate, Shinobu and I just happening to run into Kaiki at Mister Donut must have been intentional─malicious, even.
Kaiki was a conman, but he was also an expert. Maybe he knew just around when we would visit Mister Donut and was sitting there eating his muffins waiting for us, almost like Oshino─and come to think of it, the fact that he’d returned during Obon while Senjogahara was away also seemed a little too convenient.
“Dammit…I can’t believe it. Seriously, bastard?”
It made sense now how Senjogahara had gotten tricked by him back in freshman year─let alone a pair like the Fire Sisters, Karen and Tsukihi.
He played us like a fiddle.
Even Kagenui and Ononoki were dancing on the palm of his hand─it was so grand it wasn’t nasty anymore.
I should have never called him small-time.
Deishu Kaiki was biohazard level.
No wonder Senjogahara didn’t want me to have anything to do with him─in fact, I had to hand it to her again for mustering the courage to face Kaiki a second time despite her unpleasant experience with him.
“In fact, Kaiki was the source behind Yotsugi’s name─which I linked to his. The ki in Ononoki comes from Kaiki.”
The character meant tree. “You mean─you bound her with that name?”
“Right. Unlike Oshino, I haven’t the courage to bind an aberration using my own name.”
Ononoki.
So it wasn’t a mispronunciation of Araragi, after all.
What a yucky web─there was some twisted backstory and karma behind the battle going on beneath us now between Shinobu Oshino and Yotsugi Ononoki.
“Still─Karen and I met Kaiki, but I’m pretty sure Tsukihi, who’s at the center of this, never came face to face with him…”
“Kaiki was always obnoxiously clever. He’s in his element at seeing hidden angles─seeing two of three siblings was probably enough for him to sound out the third. Until today, I never
reckoned there might be a connection between the vampire Oshino certified as harmless and Kaiki’s shide no tori. Unlike me, Kaiki must have known she was your sister, eh?”
“Well─probably.”
Right.
Unlike Kagenui, Kaiki didn’t think Karen and I just happened to have the same name─he was perfectly aware that she was my sister.
I doubted he grasped definitively that there were actually three of us─but it wouldn’t be so strange if he had.
“He’s cunning as ever not to have told us, fiendish young man─in fact, instead of just keeping it a secret, I suppose he actively led me into believing that you two only happened to share a name. Intentionally planted noise in his information. He probably reckoned that way he’d gin some money out of us both.”
I had to agree with her.
Araragi was an uncommon name, and it was pretty unnatural not to suspect blood ties─there had to be intent and malice at play.
It wasn’t by chance.
“You probably know this by now, but Kaiki’s specialty is fake aberrations… The shide no tori may fix under my specialty, but it fixes under his as well…”
Kakak, Kagenui laughed lightheartedly even though she’d been deceived by an old friend.
“The cleverest of us, though, was Oshino. Even though he was also the least serious, always messing with different girls, what a joker. No one ever saw him do any studying to save his life, but we all reckoned he was the biggest genius the club had ever seen. Even Kaiki kept his distance when it came to Oshino…”
“……”
That was amazing.
I had Oshino all wrong.
I could give two shits about him being clever or a genius or whatever, but if he could make Kaiki think twice, then the man had my undying respect.
But…messing around with different girls?
I found that unimaginable.
I didn’t want to be too hard on him because he’d been young back then, but men should strive to be honest and faithful with girls, you know?
Shame on him, I say.
“Heh, I can get ahold of Kaiki every now and again, but I never seem to get together with Oshino these days. Part of the reason I came to this building first is, I missed my old muck.”
“So when Kaiki was setting up shop in our town, he must have known Oshino was here…”
He just wanted to keep his distance.
But maybe I just didn’t know, and there’d been some contact.
Maybe the two old friends had met up.
The Gaen family, Kanbaru’s mother’s side, had something to do with this whole field─Oshino had known about them, and as for Kaiki, it was in front of Kanbaru’s house that we’d first met.
Plus, Oshino had mentioned some nonsense about having staved off a great yokai war during his stay─and it was right after he left that Sengoku got mixed up incidentally in Kaiki’s machinations.
In which case…
Perhaps something had happened─between those two.
Of course, even if it had, there was no way for me to know─Oshino didn’t tell me anything, nor did Kaiki.
It was less than half a day since our encounter at Mister Donut, but Deishu Kaiki must have left our town for real this time. After all, he’d already pulled off his revenge scam against me (actually, I doubt he was motivated at all by feelings of revenge, he just took what was there for the taking).
Geez.
We were all handing him our wallets.
“Well, this is a place of power─just the kind I can see Oshino fixing to make himself at home.” Kagenui glanced behind her at the makeshift bed made of school desks. “And then─there’s you. A sot who starts reminiscing in the middle of a battle seems like exactly the kind of body to be saved by Oshino.”
“Saved…”
“But I suppose he would have said, ‘I’m not saving you, you’re gonna get saved on your own.’ You know, fiendish young man…” Kagenui turned a sideways glance my way, as if changing gears. “I doubt even X-Ray Oshino realized your little sister is a fake─if he’d known, what do you reckon he might have said?”
“Oshino…”
For the three months he was in our town, he never once came into contact with the Fire Sisters. In fact, I wasn’t sure I had ever mentioned them to him─I didn’t think so.
Even someone as insightful as Oshino (I wonder if X-Ray Oshino had been his nickname in college) had no way of knowing something we had never even talked about.
Perhaps meeting me had something to do with Kaiki figuring out Tsukihi’s true identity, but I imagined his meeting with Karen was the bigger factor─the Fire Sisters.
The Araragi sisters were a set.
Since Kaiki had been targeting middle school students with his scams, naturally he must have picked up some of the rumors about these “defenders of justice.”
But, hypothetically speaking.
If Mèmè Oshino had known about Tsukihi Araragi while he lived here─if he’d noticed the existence of the Shidenotori, how would he have reacted?
What might he have said to me?
Mèmè Oshino’s approach.
Mr. Hawaiian Shirt always remained neutral and strived only to balance things out even if it meant becoming a double agent─
“Who knows?”
Asked by Kagenui, and pondering the question myself─I squared off into a fighting stance.
The time for talking was done.
I had already asked what I wanted to know─and this was obviously no time for another comic-relief segment.
I was ready for the battle to get well and truly under way.
“It doesn’t matter what Oshino would have said. If our opinions clashed, Oshino would have become my enemy. It’s that simple.”
I no longer claimed to be on the side of justice.
I was ready to be the enemy of justice or of whatever else.
In fact, ever since the last day of spring break─I was always my own enemy.
Not a day had gone past.
Not a single conversation.
During which I ever forgave myself!
“Ms. Kagenui. I am on my sister’s side.”
“Your sister is a fake.”
And not your real sister, Kagenui underscored─spreading both her arms wide as though to provoke me, unfazed by the fact that I had assumed a fighting stance.
“Not just a fake but a shide no tori, of all things. An aberration, a bird of omen. Hototogisu versus Araragi, the poetry of it is a damn hoot─how many years has it been? You’ve been deceived all this time by a filthy shape-shifter.”
“What does it matter to you?”
“It doesn’t. Only, cheers to my bumbling─or rather, cheers to Kaiki keeping the relationship between you two, the fact that you’re siblings, a secret, you’ve discovered the shide no tori’s true identity. I reckon that a huge mistake on my part, a grave error─but.”
Kagenui adopted a mean, testing tone to lob the question.
“Knowing that the dear little sister you thought was real is a fake, can you still love her like you did before today?”
“I can. In fact, I’ll love her even more,” I answered without hesitation, like Karen might have.
I dropped my hips low for a moment─and then rocketed forward, flying towards Kagenui with my hands outstretched in raking claws, screaming at her as I went.
“Because if she’s a step-sister─that’s just so moé!”
Screaming, body and soul, screaming as long as my voice would hold, I charged Kagenui.
Then I tried to clamp my arms shut in a pincer, with all my might─this was no time to hold back.
Unbridled devastation.
I was returning devastation for devastation─forestalling devastation with devastation.
I was ready to sponsor devastation day and night─however.
“Fine, then…”
Neither parrying nor dodging my arms, but instead grabbing my wrists head-on, Kagenui neutralized my atta
ck.
Catching me, arresting me, foiling me─through sheer force.