Tsukimonogatari

by Nisioisin

“…”

  That might be a “feasible” strategy for a UFO Catcher, but Shinobu’s phrasing made it a cheat without an ounce of affection for the doll in question.

  Trundle.

  “Well, I guess that’s the only hope we’ve got left…but I’ve only got seven coins left. I wonder if seven’ll do it?”

  “My lord. By the by.”

  “What is it?”

  “It appears thou mayest play four times if dost insert three coins at once.”

  “Why didn’t you say so sooner?!”

  The battle certainly didn’t get any easier from there on out. We’d figured out a back door, but of course things didn’t go according to plan, and time and again the arm banged ineffectually against Ononoki’s body.

  Her lack of reaction was somehow painful to look at.

  It was just too pitiful.

  Even when I did succeed, the distance she moved was so incremental that it was extremely unlikely I could pull it off with the coins, the credits, I had remaining─seven coins meant nine plays.

  My coffers were slowly but steadily dwindling.

  Trundling towards oblivion.

  “Hrk… What am I gonna do when these credits are gone…”

  “Change another thousand-yen bill. Thou art carrying that much, art thou not?”

  “What’s with the lukewarm comeback? Heat things up for me, like in an arcade manga in CoroCoro Comics.”

  “Dost such manga still exist?”

  And while this banter was going on─at last.

  At last, with my final credit, I succeeded in using the arm to nudge Ononoki into the hole─she landed in the retrieval drawer with a thud. It was more than just a dull sound, though, it sounded like something somewhere in there broke.

  “I did it, Shinobu!” I pumped my fist, pretending I hadn’t heard that sound. “It’s a happy ending!”

  “Why do I feel as though our original goal hath been forgot…”

  “Original goal? Wasn’t our original goal to get Ononoki?”

  “Nay.”

  “That’s ridiculous. What higher goal could there be in this world than to win a tween girl?”

  “If that is all thou desirest, my lord, then there, take the lassy and go. ’Tis nigh on the time for this store to close its doors.”

  She was right.

  I’d thought we had plenty of leeway, but all of a sudden it was past 7:45─any second now they were going to start playing “Auld Lang Syne” over the speakers.

  Obviously not having forgotten my original goal─of dealing with the mysterious phenomenon afflicting my body─I moved to retrieve Ononoki. I mean, whether or not I’d forgotten, either way we weren’t going to get anywhere unless I got her out of there.

  I pulled the handle on the drawer.

  “Mph… It’s stuck, I can’t get it open.”

  “Grit thy teeth and pull with all thy might. She may lose an arm or a leg, perhaps, but even so.”

  “You think I can just ignore that ‘perhaps’?”

  Ononoki, probably a little too big for the opening, had gotten hung up… If this was an ordinary prize, I could just call over an employee, but that didn’t seem like such a good idea if it was the real Ononoki.

  Jiggling the handle back and forth, I pulled the drawer out little by little─kind of like sifting flour into cake batter.

  That’s purely a metaphor, I’ve never actually baked a cake before─but nonetheless, my stratagem worked, and I was able to get the thing open.

  Ononoki was stuffed in there in a crumpled heap─like one of those sponges that regain their shape when you add hot water.

  “Yo-o-otsugi,” I tried calling to her.

  Like I was on a children’s television program, for some reason.

  …No reply.

  The expression like a dead body was a little too fitting for Yotsugi Ononoki given that she’d been made from a corpse, but there you go.

  “What took you so long?”

  Finally she replied.

  In a placid, emotionless voice that reminded me of the way Hitagi Senjogahara used to be─though it differed from Senjogahara’s voice in being totally mechanical, artificial in every way.

  “How long could it possibly take to win me? You suck at games.”

  “And you’ve got a big mouth for a doll…” I said, pulling Ononoki out and flipping up her skirt to make sure everything underneath was okay.

  “Chop.”

  Ononoki’s karate chop came down on the back of my neck.

  And it was a backhand, like in tennis. A chop that wove skillfully between Shinobu’s legs.

  “Don’t get fresh, kind monster sir. Monstieur.”

  “No no no, I was just wondering what’s going on under the skirts of beautiful girl figurines like this one. I just thought I’d check.”

  “If that’s your excuse, at least get it out there before I’ve spoken. While there’s still the possibility that I’m just a common doll.” This fierce retort was delivered in an endlessly placid voice─a monotone so unnatural it was almost like it was processed. “That is, I’m not just a common doll─but I am a doll. An uncommon doll, dolled up to look like a real person.”

  “…”

  “Yaaay,” she flashed a sudden sideways peace sign.

  A sideways peace sign that said, To hell with the flow of this conversation. Her pose was ludicrously, lethally cute, but her expression was expressionless, totally unconcerned, and totally unchanged from when she was in the glass case. The gap was surreal.

  Not gap moé, surreal moé.

  “Anyway, haven’t seen you in a while, monstieur.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Haven’t seen you in a while either, sis,” Ononoki said, raising her gaze from my face to the space above my head─where I imagine it came to rest on the little blond girl riding on my shoulders.

  “Address me not as sis. What meanest thou, what thinkest thou our relationship to be?”

  “My apologies. I’m not ashamed to admit that I forgot what our relationship was like, Ma’am Vampire.”

  “’Tis more like it, thou forgetful lout,” spat Shinobu.

  I guess that first impression had been seriously negative, and Shinobu’s attitude towards Ononoki was severe─the little girl really knew how to hold a grudge.

  While we’re on the subject, the tween girl standing before me didn’t hold onto much of anything. That is, her character was unstable. I knew as much from the time we’d spent together up to that point, but─her personality was totally indefinite.

  Blurry as all hell.

  Although she did have something approaching a characterization every time I saw her─or it appeared that way, anyway, but it could diffuse at a moment’s notice, evaporate like mist, and transform into something else entirely.

  Which in a sense just marked her as an aberration, and maybe blurry wasn’t a very precise way to describe her.

  Now then.

  What the hell kind of character was she at the moment? Seemed like she had an acid tongue, or a bad attitude…

  “Ah. I don’t suppose, Ononoki. Miss Yotsugi Ononoki.”

  “What is it, monstieur. Kind monster monstieur.”

  “Too much monster.”

  “Aren’t you playing Dr. Kawashima’s Monstrous Training?”

  “Since I’m studying for exams I do have an interest in the game, but forget the monster connection. Don’t connect us. Anyway, I don’t suppose,” I brought the conversation back around.

  To my baseless supposition.

  “That you’ve seen Deishu Kaiki recently?”

  “I haaave,” Ononoki replied with a calm nod.

  Interesting…

  Ms. Kagenui had told me that the “ki” in “Ononoki” came from Kaiki─from that ominous swindler’s name.

  This was apparently because he’d had a hand in her “production,” but I didn’t know much more than that.

  So my conjecture had been more or less pure guessw
ork. But, to my surprise, bingo.

  Not that it was a bingo I was pleased by.

  Quite the opposite.

  That swindler, exerting his malign influence on this innocent young girl.

  “Well, fine. I’ll let that go for now.”

  Influence was nothing but influence, after all.

  Even a malign influence was still just influence.

  Light-years better than the man himself.

  “Haven’t seen you in─it actually hasn’t been that long, has it, Ononoki.”

  “You’re right. How long’s it been, I wonder. And since the three of us were all together─oh, yeah, when snail girl─”

  “…”

  “Hm?” Ononoki cocked her head.

  Not in response to her own insensitive words, seemingly─but that time, that time that brought together the little girl and the young girl and the tween girl, was definitely very memorable.

  In various senses.

  In many senses─in every sense.

  Very memorable indeed.

  “Well, we’ve got a lot to talk about. We’ve got a lot to talk a lot about, but this is no time for chitchat, is it, monstieur. I’m not here to hang out with my friend this time, I’m here on business. I’d forgotten, sorry sorry sorry.”

  “Ononoki.”

  I was secretly thrilled that Ononoki casually made it clear she thought of me as a friend, but it pretty much turned to ashes in my mouth with that last “I’d forgotten.”

  I guess I’m a forgettable friend, I thought─but it was definitely true that this time around, we weren’t just hanging out and eating ice cream together.

  To the outside observer, a teenager standing in the arcade at a department store with a little girl and tween girl probably appeared to be their babysitter (god help me if it looked like anything else), but that wasn’t the case.

  I was there to ask this girl.

  To save me.

  This expert─this expert’s familiar.

  This tsukumogami, Yotsugi Ononoki.

  “So, Ononoki.”

  “What is it, what is it? Yaaay.”

  Even with Kaiki’s influence, her absurdly sunny disposition remained relatively intact, making Ononoki’s personality even more frustratingly complicated and strange, but I aimed my words between the spread fingers of that sideways peace sign. “There are two things I want to ask you.”

  “Ask me anything. I want to answer my most favorite monstieur’s questions even if he doesn’t ask them.”

  “…”

  I hated to think that this part of her personality might derive from Deishu Kaiki…but it was the kind of frivolous thing he might very well say.

  The same line could have a completely different effect coming from this lovely young girl’s lips rather than from that ominous man in his funerary suit, though.

  There would be nothing charming about Kaiki saying it…

  “Ononoki, why were you inside the UFO Catcher?”

  “I was waiting for you. We had an appointment. Isn’t it common practice for businesspeople to arrive five minutes early?”

  “Well…”

  “Or are you an advocate of Hakata time?”

  Hakata time refers to being slightly late for an appointment (apparently).

  “Or heading a little further south, do you hold to Okinawa time?”

  Okinawa time refers to being very late for an appointment (apparently).

  “Sorry, monstieur, I don’t mean to brag, but I was here fifteen minutes early. Big Sis is like a drill sergeant when it comes to practical life skills.”

  “Practical life skills…”

  What I’d wanted to know was how she got inside that glass case (and furthermore, why she thought it was a good idea to wait for me inside a UFO Catcher), but before I could get an answer, the words “Big Sis” forced me to move on to my second question.

  My second question.

  Big Sis.

  “Ms. Kagenui, she─” As I spoke, my glance darted casually all around. “Isn’t here, is she? In other words, you’re alone, right, Ononoki?”

  “Nope,” she said, pointing her finger at me.

  Why’s she pointing at me, I wondered, but her finger arced smoothly upward─to indicate Shinobu.

  Which raised the question why’s she pointing at Shinobu, but Ononoki wasn’t pointing at her either.

  That finger.

  That finger, the vehicle for Ononoki’s finishing move “Unlimited Rulebook” and therefore potentially a most lethal weapon, wasn’t pointing at me, or at Shinobu─but even further above us.

  Further above us.

  Above us?

  But there’s just empty space above Shinobu─I thought as I raised my eyes. The human body isn’t constructed so that you can look directly upwards, but it can look “almost directly up,” which in this case was enough.

  Shinobu Oshino, riding on the shoulders of Koyomi Araragi.

  A vampire, riding on the shoulders of a human.

  And above them both─her.

  Yozuru Kagenui.

  The latter-day, ultra-violent onmyoji.

  Standing on one leg atop Shinobu’s blond mane.

  Ms. Kagenui hadn’t even bothered to take her shoes off.

  “Make yerselves at home.”

  You’re welcome.

  009

  Shinobu might have lost her power, she might have become a little girl, but in spite of it all she was still proud of her blond hair, and having it trod upon so rudely must have been quite a shock because she ended up sequestering herself inside my shadow.

  You could also say that by ditching me like that she was abandoning her role as my buddy, or bodyguard, which would be inexcusable behavior for my trusted partner, but when I considered what a shock it must have been, I didn’t have the heart to blame her for it.

  Shinobu had been interposed between us, but even if she hadn’t been, I’m not so fragile that I’d feel insulted by a woman standing on my head. Nevertheless, the fact is that I was startled─the fact is that I was so startled I jumped.

  I’d shot up, shrieking gaaah, but Ms. Kagenui’s balance hadn’t been thrown off in the slightest, she’d remained perched atop Shinobu’s head with a composed look, not moving a muscle─

  But hang on, she didn’t weigh a thing.

  It was like she was floating.

  Not like when I say, Shinobu’s so tiny, she’s light as a feather─nor like Senjogahara, when she’d been stripped of her weight─it just seemed like Ms. Kagenui didn’t weigh anything at all. This might not be a particularly apt metaphor, but it was like physically experiencing trompe-l’œil.

  If Shinobu was made of paper.

  Ms. Kagenui was a paper balloon.

  Maybe as a master of the martial arts she can erase her weight by shifting her center of gravity─indeed a match for Karen’s sensei, I thought, trying to force the situation to make sense, but it felt too illogical.

  The reasoning was unreasonable, unremittingly unrealistic.

  Well.

  This was an illogical person I was dealing with.

  Despite being more human than anyone─

  She was more un-human than anyone.

  “First off, mightn’t we up stakes and take ourselves someplace else, young man─seems this department store’s fixing to close. And darn if I don’t have just the place. The ruins of that cram school where you and I had a ball slaughtering each other─”

  She didn’t seem to be psyching herself up or prettying things up as she said this in her Kyoto dialect─even the disturbing part about “slaughtering each other” came out of her mouth as naturally as could be.

  I guess that’s how it must be for her…

  That’s how it is.

  Just another day.

  Good enough for me, I decided to go along with her suggestion. Having a conversation about aberration-related phenomena after hours in a department store seemed somehow unappealing─it would be a hell of a setting for a ghost
story. But the security guard would be coming around, so we couldn’t stay there either way. Well, I imagine Ononoki and Ms. Kagenui could, but…