by Nisioisin
“Sure…though the standard is pretty ambiguous, monstieur. Depending on how you interpret immortality, you could even say that Big Sis is a general practitioner.”
“…”
Well.
Sure, fair enough.
Since the one saying so, her familiar, was a corpse tsukumogami, an immortal aberration you might expect to be a target for Ms. Kagenui in the first place. Because of that contradiction, or failure even, maybe her area of expertise was surprisingly fuzzy.
Intuitive, so to speak.
And it was Kaiki, of all people, who’d described Ms. Kagenui and Ononoki’s specialty as “narrow”─maybe I’d made a real fool of myself taking what he said at face value.
I was mortified.
“The fact is, I’m not the only expert who specializes in immortal aberrations─though it’s true enough that there’s only one other who’s as keen as I am to kill them, no matter what the cost.”
“So there’s someone else, huh?”
Somehow that didn’t sit well with me.
As someone she’d tried to kill─as an immortal aberration she’d tried to roll, with that ferocious fanaticism─no matter what the cost.
“Keheh, that someone else is a bit of a recluse, though, so don’t fret about it, young man─even went astray from Ms. Gaen’s group, that one, a real stray dog,” said Ms. Kagenui. “No need to take that into account. As to why a body specializes in immortal aberrations, well, it’s because no matter how much you smash them or how hard you hit them, you can never go too far─hm? Don’t I recall telling you this before?”
“Yeah, I’ve definitely heard that part before, but…”
But I didn’t think that could be the only reason.
Did she really set herself against all immortal aberrations─for that reason alone? It seemed like an all-too-perilous way of life…
She was a street-fighting woman, maybe that was reason enough?
Like she was intentionally selecting the highest difficulty level or something─though other than the bigger of my little sisters, I’ve only ever encountered that kind of character in boys’ manga.
“What, young man? You hankering for the spinoff about how I got started down this path?”
“No no no, I’m not such a nosey parker… It’s just, to be honest, I’m bothered by how much it bothers me. Oshino was the first one of you I met, and his area of expertise barely seemed to amount to anything… But ultimately I guess the same is true of you and Kaiki, and Ms. Gaen too.”
“What’re you on about? You ought to be more worried about Yotsugi’s reasons than mine, anyway.”
“Huh?”
The thrust of my question suddenly deflected, I turned towards Ononoki─but she was just looking at me, expressionless as always.
Blankly, vacantly.
Looking at no longer fully human me.
“Ms. Kagenui, what do you mean─”
“Hm?”
Apparently her smart phone vibrated as I was about to pursue the matter. She’d gotten a call while she was still in the middle of composing that message to Ms. Gaen.
Ms. Kagenui checked the screen, which I couldn’t see from where I was standing, and scowled─then pressed the button to pick up the call.
“Hello, Kagenui speaking,” she answered like nothing was going on.
Well, it’s not like it was such a race against time at this point, so I wasn’t particularly worried about being interrupted.
What did worry me, though, was Ms. Kagenui’s ebullient mood souring somewhat.
Her expression changed visibly.
“Uh huh… Hang on a minute. Hang on. I was just now telling the young man about… That can’t be. Senpai, that’s just too awful─”
Senpai?
Senpai─there’s only one person in the world Ms. Kagenui calls senpai, so that meant she was talking to Ms. Gaen, Izuko Gaen. In which case her change of expression made sense. Even Ms. Kagenui had trouble with Ms. Gaen’s unique brand of “presumptuousness.”
For my part, my first reaction was that you’d expect no less─to call just as there was a break in our conversation, in fact just as Ms. Kagenui was composing a message to her─you’d expect no less of Ms. Gaen, and yet─
Something, somehow, seemed strange…
“Uh huh… Uh huh. But right now, Tadatsuru… Really? Okay. I’ll let Araragi know─that’s all we can do right now, I reckon. And we’re okay as is? Just keep going with the flow?”
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, Ms. Kagenui nodded two or three times, then said, “Goodbye,” and hung up. She did know how to say a proper farewell, I thought to myself.
It was, frankly speaking, no time for such frivolous thoughts─but I had a bad habit of comparing Ms. Kagenui and Kaiki, and Ms. Gaen, to Oshino.
“Young man. The worst news has come at the worst time.”
“Huh? Th-That call was from Ms. Gaen, though, wasn’t it?”
No.
There was no doubt about that─but hang on, Ms. Kagenui hadn’t told the other person a thing about the current situation, that is to say about my condition.
In other words, she hadn’t delivered any of the report that she’d been preparing, that she’d been composing in written form─which meant, naturally, that the conversation had been about something Ms. Gaen had on her mind.
And that conversation concerned this “worst news”?
In which case, why would this be the “worst time”? To begin with, any time you get the worst news, whenever it is, that moment, that right now automatically becomes the worst time, doesn’t it?
“I’ll lend you Yotsugi for a spell. Now hurry, there’s not a moment to lose.”
“Hurry…to where?”
“To Suruga Kanbaru’s house. To the house where Gaen-senpai’s sister Toé’s daughter lives─hurry up and go find your little sisters,” Ms. Kagenui said with a sharp glare, her tone sharp─altogether sharply. “Though they may not actually be there anymore.”
012
Yotsugi Ononoki’s finishing move.
The finishing move of the shikigami employed by expert and violent onmyoji Yozuru Kagenui was known as the “Unlimited Rulebook” (rules consisting mostly of exceptions)─I don’t know the origin of that bizarre name, but this no ifs, ands, or buts secret technique involved instantly and explosively enlarging one part of the body to attack the target, an extremely up-close-and-personal melee offense of unlimited power incongruous with Ononoki’s outward appearance.
Though even if it didn’t seem appropriate for a tween girl, it was appropriate enough for Ms. Kagenui’s shikigami… The amazing thing about the move was that it was possible to use it for defense as well as offense. Well, defense might not be the proper term─more like evasive action.
If need be, one could use the reaction, the recoil from instantly and explosively enlarging one’s body to travel at high speed in any direction─forward or backward or right or left, even up. If you could stand on the ceiling, I imagine it would be possible to use it to travel straight down as well.
So really you could just call it “movement” instead of “evasive action.”
To put it in RPG terms, it was simultaneously both a ranged attack and a movement spell─what I’m getting at, in other words, is that even as the crow flies it was a fair distance to Kanbaru’s house from the vacant land, er, wasteland where the ruins of the cram school had formerly stood, but with Ononoki’s power, we could make the trip in just a few seconds.
Shinobu, however, grumbled, “At the height of my power, I too could accomplish such a feat.”
Which was an understatement, to say the least. At the height of her power, when she was known as a legendary vampire, Shinobu could circle the globe seven and a half times in a single second. But unfortunately, she was at present not a legendary vampire at the height of her powers, but an eight-year-old girl at the nadir of her powers, so she was forced to sink into my shadow and ride along.
I wrapped my arms tight around Onono
ki’s waist, squeezed my eyes shut, and seconds later─I was standing in front of Kanbaru’s night-enshrouded home.
“Shall we, kind monster sir?”
“No…hang on…a sec…please.”
Ononoki was definitely a pro; she was ready for action the second we landed, but the pertinent question was whether or not I was up to it. And I wasn’t.
It stood to reason. We’d taken an aerial shortcut, blasting off like a rocket, but the motion itself wasn’t the problem; I was in no shape to handle the changes in atmospheric pressure and oxygen level.
I was dizzy, and couldn’t catch my breath.
Altitude sickness mode, I was surprised I didn’t pass out.
Though I guess I should’ve been glad just to arrive in one piece.
It probably would’ve been even worse if I wasn’t already partially vampirified─though if it’d been through Shinobu’s power instead of my own like the last time I experienced this kind of movement, the whole thing would’ve been no big deal.
“…Urk.”
Yup.
At the time I hadn’t thought I was relying so flagrantly on that power, which is to say I’d suffered from a certain lack of self-awareness, but now that I’d been told all of a sudden that I could never use it again─I was painfully aware of what I had lost.
Even though it didn’t actually mean that I’d lost anything, and in fact, I’d been steadily losing some vital part of my humanity every time I did it.
“You okay, kind monster sir?”
Ononoki hurried over to me, seeming totally unconcerned.
Being a corpse and all, differences in air pressure or the oxygen level naturally had no effect on her.
“Do you need me to give you mouth-to-mouth?”
“Um… I’m in no condition for that kind of joke right now…”
Hmm.
I hate to say it, but if I, Koyomi Araragi, was in no condition for that kind of joke, then I must’ve been in terrible shape indeed.
But I couldn’t huddle there forever─no point in staying hunched over on the ground. Whatever my condition, this was no time for huddling or hunching.
“Shinobu… Sorry, but let me lean on you.”
“If it must be so,” she replied, appearing from where she lurked in my shadow.
Sinuously.
I started to wonder where she’d been while Ononoki and I were gliding through the sky, since I wasn’t casting even the faintest shadow on the ground while we were airborne; as I considered such trivial questions, Shinobu threw my arm around her neck and propped me up.
It was night, so her little girl’s body had that much strength, at least.
A little-girl power character and a tween-girl power character.
“Now…Ononoki. I’m sorry but I’ve got another job for you.”
“You’re a real taskmaster. Giving me plenty to do, aren’t you, kind monster sir. Well, we’ve got Big Sis’s approval this time, so I’ll help out any way I can. But won’t it kill you if we jump that high again?”
“No no no, no one’s saying anything about that… Listen, Kanbaru doesn’t live alone, you get me?”
Her place is a bit of a mansion.
A real mansion, in the traditional style.
It’s surrounded by a high wall, and you can tell at a glance that they’re a wealthy family─there’s even a grand gate. You can’t see it from outside, but they’ve also got a stately rock garden with a koi pond and everything. What do you call that kind of garden, karesansui or something?
Whatever, the point is, it’s sprawling.
Sprawlingly sprawling.
Maybe that’s not the appropriate term to use for such a noble home, but sprawling is the only word I can come up with─and the only people who live there are Suruga and her grandparents, just the three of them with all that space.
So what, you say? Well, if we attempted a frontal assault through the front gate and ran into her grandmother or grandfather, it’d definitely count as trespassing─and while marching up to the front door and ringing the doorbell merited some small measure of consideration, it was a tough sell at that hour. Such boorishness would be just as bad as trespassing.
So I hoped to find a shortcut to Kanbaru’s room that avoided both the front door and an affront to her family─and shortcuts were Ononoki’s specialty.
I wasn’t envisioning jumping thousands of feet through the air, I figured we could just leap the wall encircling the mansion.
“Well…we didn’t end up having time for the test, but how vampiricized do you think you are right now, kind monster sir? You’ve got a healing factor, though it seems to be incredibly weak, but what about your physical strength─it’s nighttime, don’t you think if you really put your mind to it, you could jump over this wall?”
“It has nothing to do with whether or not I put my mind to it. There’s bound to be an alarm on a place like this. If I blew it and accidentally touched the wall or something, I’d set it off.”
“So what if you did… If what Ms. Kagenui, or really Ms. Gaen, said was true, then the inside of this house is already a warzone, or the aftermath of one anyway. It’s a totally appropriate time for alarms to be going off.”
“…”
No.
Ononoki was talking like she knew what was going on─if what Ms. Gaen said was true─but unless she really, literally had a telepathic connection with Ms. Kagenui, I didn’t think she actually had a grasp on what was going on at the Kanbaru residence. So how could she talk so confidently about it?
And yet Ms. Kagenui had been very persistent─Hurry up already, you’ll find out when you get there, so…
It didn’t seem like she’d said “there’s not a moment to lose” just to encourage us to hurry, she meant it literally─she didn’t even take the time to explain the situation properly.
I imagine she hadn’t accompanied us because, however un-human her violent capabilities, her body couldn’t withstand the shortcut. Though the fact that she used Google Maps to show Ononoki the location of Kanbaru’s house was a pretty contemporary, that is, an all-too-human form of wisdom.
“Okay. Hold tight, monstieur.”
“Uh huh.”
“And it’s not that kind of joke.”
“Any way you want it.”
“You too, Big Sis Shinobu.”
“I decline to hold tight to the likes of thee,” Shinobu brushed away Ononoki’s offer and sunk into my shadow. My partner’s determination to be hostile to Ononoki was unrelentingly deep-seated.
“Ready for takeoff.”
“Do it.”
“Unlimited Rulebook.”
I felt like she didn’t need to be quite so diligent about announcing the name of the skill, since if she made a little jump like that at full power she’d almost certainly overshoot the mark─but I didn’t even get a chance to finish this train of thought before Ononoki and I had successfully infiltrated the Kanbaru family’s courtyard.
Just like Lupin the Third.
“Just like Lupin the Third,” said Ononoki.
Boy are we in sync, I thought. But when she added, “I mean, it’s like we’re sneaking into some little cutie-pie’s boudoir,” I was instead floored by our low synchronization rate.
How could we have such different images of Lupin the Third?
“Not sure how I feel about the term ‘little cutie-pie’… Plus I don’t think Lupin the Third does that nowadays. Anyway, we’ve got to hurry to Kanbaru’s room. Su casa es mi casa.”
I may have been overstating the case, but I was confident that I knew Kanbaru’s bedroom better than she did.
I was confident that I knew it inside and out.
After all, despite the fact that it was exam-prep season, despite the fact that it was crunch time, I still came to tidy up Kanbaru’s room twice a month. Her room was a smorgasbord of mess, like it had a rewind function so that no matter how much cleaning I did it was buried in crap again in short order. I knew where every single thing in
that room was.
I’d sent my two little sisters to Kanbaru’s place largely because I’d been there just the other day to clean her room. Under normal conditions, I’d never have let my adorable little sisters anywhere near it─not without a lifeguard. They’d drown in garbage.
With my arm still over Ononoki’s shoulder, I tiptoed across the grounds─thanks to her unexpected and unwelcome comment, I felt like I actually was sneaking into my junior’s boudoir, but anyway, I took off my shoes and stepped into the hallway─the security in these old Japanese manors was far too lax. They ought to do something about it, I thought, conveniently disregarding the fact that I was the one breaking in.