by Nisioisin
I preferred to avoid a fight scene.
It would be an unmitigated disaster if this turned into a battle. I’d much prefer if we could figure things out calmly and maturely, without incident indecent or otherwise.
That sentiment, that laudable sentiment, might have gone to shit the second the pair showed up, but─anyway.
We left the department store arcade and headed to that ruined cram school so redolent with memories.
That ruined cram school.
The adjective “ruined” had taken on a slightly different nuance after summer break─before, the spot had been occupied by “an abandoned building that used to be a cram school,” still standing even if it was totally rundown (it was inside that abandoned building that Ms. Kagenui and I, and Shinobu and Ononoki, had done battle); but at the end of August, it had burned to the ground, and been reduced to ashes, leaving no trace behind, not even a ruin─so at present, it was what you might call a vacant lot.
Empty land with a “No Trespassing” sign.
Either way, though, visiting that place at night was not for the faint of heart. That much, at least, hadn’t changed─but it was also still devoid of human activity and remained a good location for a confidential conversation.
On the way there, I sized up Ms. Kagenui as she walked ahead of me─or didn’t walk, didn’t set foot on the ground; she rode the whole way on Ononoki’s shoulders.
When you were little, didn’t you play that game on the way to school where you pretend that “the ground is an ocean, and if you step on it you’ll drown”─and the one rule is that you have to stay on top of walls or benches or whatever?
I didn’t know why she did it (I was pretty sure she didn’t really believe she’d drown), but Ms. Kagenui absolutely would not set foot on the ground─the first time I met her, she was standing on top of a mailbox.
At that moment she was riding on Ononoki’s shoulders─not the way I’d been carrying Shinobu a little earlier, but standing dexterously on tiptoe astride them.
When I saw it for the first time over the summer, I was floored by Ononoki’s inhuman strength, but having now personally experienced Ms. Kagenui’s ability to nullify her weight, I realized she was the extraordinary one. Granted, Ononoki was by no means ordinary herself, but─that said.
Whatever impression it might leave me with and however it worked, aside from her decidedly oddball habit of “taking the high road,” which was pretty much impossible to leave aside, the impression I got of Yozuru Kagenui was the same one I’d gotten when I first met her: that of “an attractive woman who was my elder.”
Like a dignified teacher.
Or a diligent businesswoman.
At least, she didn’t appear to be of the same ilk as the middle-aged man in the Hawaiian shirt and the ominous guy in the funerary suit─she didn’t look at all like she would’ve been friends with them in college.
She didn’t, but strictly in terms of dangerousness, she far outstripped either Oshino or Kaiki─far transcended them. Unlike Oshino, who was open to conversation, and Kaiki, whose attention could be bought, there was no dealing with Ms. Kagenui.
And that made her more trouble than any aberration or anyone else─which was precisely why she was an aberration-slaying, aberration-employing onmyoji, I imagine.
The fact that her very appearance on the scene could drive the former Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, once the king of aberrations even if she had lost her power, into hiding so easily, so disappointingly quickly─forcing her back into my shadow, spoke to the extent of Ms. Kagenui’s true power.
Shinobu was the Aberration Slayer.
But Ms. Kagenui was an expert, known as the Aberration Roller─and specialized in immortal aberrations.
“I─” I began when we reached the vacant land, er, wasteland where the ruins of the cram school had been. There’d been an awkward lack of conversation on the way there. Though maybe I was the only one who found the total silence awkward. “─bid you welcome. You. To my place. Ms. Kagenui.”
“Mm-hmm. Kakakak.”
Her policy of “taking the high road” seemed to allow walking inside buildings (the floor isn’t the ground), but this was just a wasteland, very much the ground, so while she stopped, she didn’t alight from Ononoki’s shoulders, and when she responded she did so from that position.
Ms. Kagenui herself had suggested this place for our talk, and I figured it had probably been her idea of a “fair suggestion”─conducting our consultation in an open space where she couldn’t touch the ground created a “difficult combat environment” for her, so there’d be no sudden eruptions of violence─though if push came to shove, it seemed like that ball was entirely in her court.
Or maybe I was just overthinking it.
But this lady─
“I go wherever I please, my young friend─where I please throughout Japan or this here entire world of ours. Slaying immortal aberrations, as is my wont.”
“…”
Yup.
All this lady wanted to do was kill immortal aberrations.
I didn’t understand why, I didn’t know why, and in fact I didn’t even know if there was a reason in the first place, but Yozuru Kagenui hated immortal aberrations with a passion─despised them.
So consulting with her on this matter was extremely risky, even if I kept various aspects of the situation to myself─she’d come to see me personally, but I’d have felt much more at ease if she’d just sent Ononoki to act as a kind of carrier pigeon.
It’s a sad fact, though, that human beings know the things they hate better than the things they love, which meant that at the moment, whatever form this might take, Ms. Kagenui was unmistakably the most appropriate and logical choice for a consultation.
She of all people could do something.
About my unnatural transformation into a vampire.
Naturally I had high expectations.
“Though of course I’m here now because Gaen-senpai was keen I should come─you’ve caught her fancy something fierce, I reckon, young man. What’d you do?”
“Nothing…worth mentioning. I haven’t done anything, or, I don’t remember doing anything. In fact, it’s more like she did a bunch of things to, I mean, for me…”
No good.
I sounded way too nervous.
I was obviously on my guard─that is, I was shaking in my boots.
Over summer break, Ms. Kagenui had beaten the living shit out of me right here, though at a different altitude, and I guess my body hadn’t forgotten.
Well, since I was asking her for help, I was in no position to be anything but humble towards her, whether I dragged our past enmity into the present or not…
“Hmm… Well, fair enough, I reckon. No need to fuss ourselves over it. You have yourself whatever relationship with Gaen-senpai your little heart desires. And yet, a body─never mind.” Ms. Kagenui gave a little shake of her head.
Like she was about to say something but thought better of it.
Or like she cut herself off?
“Enough of that, I’ll not speak on it any further. Whatever plans Gaen-senpai may have, whatever her motives─a body’s just keen to slay immortal aberrations. So long as I’m allowed that, I reckon I’ve no complaints.”
“…”
I doubt she was going to say anything good, but it always nags at me when someone breaks off in mid-sentence, you know?
“Well then? What seems to be the trouble? I find I’ve yet to hear the whole story─I heard tell of an immortal aberration in these parts, so I just dropped everything and hightailed it here.”
“Oh…”
She was operating on some seriously vague information.
To put it another way, this lady seriously wanted to kill some immortal aberrations─she seemed less like an expert and more like an executioner.
Though when it comes to facing a vampire─just like with that trio of specialists─maybe that’s only proper.
But this was r
eally going to make things tough, just like it had been with those three.
“It’ll take a long time to explain everything…or maybe not actually all that long, but can I ask you something first?”
“Anything you please,” Ms. Kagenui said with seeming satisfaction, her overwhelming gaze pouring down on me from on high. Just the difference engendered by Ononoki’s height was enough for it to feel plenty oppressive, and I was like a deer in the headlights.
I had half a mind to call for Shinobu and cajole her into coming out of my shadow so I could make myself taller than Ms. Kagenui, but I gave up on the idea. I could see at a glance that even if I stood on Shinobu’s head, I wouldn’t measure up to Ms. Kagenui.
“You and Ononoki are, well, experts?”
“I reckon we are. Though strictly speaking, it’s me that’s the expert, and Ononoki here is a shikigami, my subordinate, you might say.”
“Which means that you have─a price, don’t you?”
A price.
Oshino used to talk about it all the time.
Not that he was an extreme miser like Kaiki, but when it came to the price of his labor, Oshino was severe, or you could say he lacked a spirit of volunteerism, or maybe that he was a stickler─he pretty much never did anything for free.
Ms. Gaen wasn’t after money per se, but she demanded payment in kind, which was an even more troublesome bargain than money─and this time was no exception. Her price was returning the favor─a price of some sort or another was the rule in their business, as far as I could tell.
And if it was a rule, I assumed that even the iconoclastic Yozuru Kagenui would abide by it.
“I won’t beat around the bush… How much will you need? To be frank, I don’t have all that much money.”
“Eh? I’ve no use for filthy lucre, what’s more trouble than it’s worth. I reckon I’m no good with such fiddly calculations. It don’t make no nevermind to me, so get on with your jawing.”
“…”
Total anarchy!
What the hell kind of attitude was that?!
Even an easy-breezy lifestyle has its limits!
Not having to pay was a godsend for a student like me (whatever Shinobu might say, using up a thousand yen on the UFO Catcher was a hard blow), but danger lurked in that unsociability, and I didn’t want to accidentally get too close.
It wasn’t that she had no material desires.
She was wearing classy clothes, after all.
Ms. Gaen’s payment in kind was plenty frightening, but this “make no nevermind” attitude was frightening in its incomprehensibility. Kaiki’s obsession with money was “insufferable,” but insufferable was something I could wrap my head around─this was simply “inscrutable.”
Insufferable, and inscrutable─similar according to the Nuance Proposition, but…
“Young man, seems as though you’ve been spending a good deal of time with Yotsugi here, which is plenty good enough for me. But if that won’t do for you, then, well, I’d reckon it a kindness if you treated her to some ice cream again next time round.”
“Häagen-Dazs.” Ononoki had remained silent up to this point, but here she unexpectedly joined in─no need for her to give in to her desires quite so fully, but yeah, when you just come right out and say it like that, it’s clear as day. Easy to get.
Made me want to throw in a Klondike Bar along with the Häagen-Dazs.
I wonder, though.
In that sense, Ms. Kagenui’s “desire” seemed to me like nothing but the overt bloodlust of wanting to kill immortal aberrations─which was maybe what freaked me out.
“Do you also have a favorite food or anything, Ms. Kagenui? If you do─”
“I don’t. So long as it’s edible, I’m not fussed about it.”
“…”
There was no way in, that is, she acted disinterested in a way that made me think, She really isn’t interested in anything but “that,” is she.
When most people say they don’t have any preferences when it comes to food, you’ll turn up an ingredient they really like or a something that puts them off if you hassle them about it long enough, but Ms. Kagenui’s curt response gave no such impression, not even a crumb.
Ultimately, she was “scary” not because she was violent or hard to talk to─it struck me at that moment that it was because she lacked the little things that make people human.
Un-human─was that it?
In which case, closing the distance through small talk or attempts to create a friendly atmosphere would be totally futile with her… Sure, not paying a price, not needing to, made me feel ill at ease, but forcing money on someone who didn’t want it would be no less weird.
Deciding that my malaise was a personal problem that I would just have to deal with (along with treating Ononoki to some Häagen-Dazs sometime. And I’m not talking about a cup, but a cone), I broached the real subject with Ms. Kagenui.
“It’s mirrors.”
“Huh?”
“Mirrors─there’s no reflection. Of me. In them.”
“…”
From that point on, Ms. Kagenui listened to what I had to say without giving any polite encouragement, but also without making fun of me, basically with a serious expression─she heard me out about my half-baked transformation into a vampire that didn’t correlate to Shinobu Oshino.
The Aberration Roller was totally absorbed.
“Now I’ve got the picture,” she nodded, after I finally finished speaking. “Your sister. Your little sister. Sounds like she’s fit as a fiddle. Tsukihi Araragi, little Tsukihi.”
“Uh, no, that’s not the point…”
“After listening to you jaw on about all that, how could a body not be concerned about your deviant bath time with little sis? That’s one long bath, I reckon.”
But that aside, said Ms. Kagenui, changing the subject even as she jabbed me where it hurt.
It seemed that even she couldn’t resist quipping about The Battle for the First Bath, but apparently her interests really were confined to immortal aberrations, because she changed the subject almost immediately.
“I’m fixing to ask a few questions, that all right with you?”
“Please do. Ask me anything at all.”
“Just answer best you can remember. When was the last time you reckon you saw your reflection in a mirror?”
“?”
“Listen here, there was likely a mirror in the changing room─when you stripped down to your skivvies out there, did you have a reflection? And in the bathroom itself, surely the mirror wasn’t fogged up right from the get-go. What about when you first got in there? When you were giving your sister a pompadour, for instance, you reckon there was anything then? Or if you don’t remember that too well, how’s about before bed last night? When you were brushing your teeth, or─”
“…”
Now that she was asking these questions, I realized I should’ve thought of them right away. I was so fixated on the mysterious phenomenon of my lack of reflection─that I hadn’t thought about when in the world, when in hell it had started.
Even if I was panicking, that was still pretty negligent of me.
I searched my memory.
I searched─but came up empty. Humans take “having a reflection” for granted, after all, so we don’t pay it any mind.
Even if we’re aware of it in the moment, it’s not going to form a lasting memory─though of course, if I hadn’t had a reflection while I was brushing my teeth the night before, you’d think I would have noticed then and there. I figured we could say I’d still had a reflection at that point.
And probably also when I undressed in the changing room─if I hadn’t had a reflection then, I would’ve noticed. So, I guess.
“We should assume that the last time I had a reflection was right before it happened…I think. Before the mirror got fogged up… So I think the moment in question was the first time I didn’t have a reflection.”
“Hmm…your toenails
.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Your nails. Let’s see ’em.”
I let my hands droop like a ghost’s and displayed them to Ms. Kagenui─who grimaced in displeasure and said, “Your toenails.”
Oh right.
Why would Ms. Kagenui be interested in my nail art?
They weren’t even decorated in the first place.