by Nisioisin
Yes.
Finally, ultimately, I guess what I’d been relying on wasn’t my own strength as a vampire, but Shinobu’s─or more than that, maybe I had just been counting on my partner Shinobu Oshino.
The things I’d taken for granted.
And in so doing lost, and betrayed─
“It’s kind of funny, though, isn’t it?”
“Hmm? What is, young man?”
“Well, over spring break I’d wanted to seal away Shinobu’s power─and yet, suddenly, I was using that power to deal with all sorts of problems.”
I joined Ms. Kagenui in looking down at my shadow. Despite the fact that it was my own shadow, unlike Ms. Kagenui I couldn’t discern anything within it. Though I’m pretty sure Shinobu was in there. And would stay in there.
“How can I put this… The power that I thought I was using only as a last resort, as an underhanded makeshift means of getting me through this or that situation, the temporary power that I thought I was just borrowing─suddenly I was exploiting it as though it were my own, without a second thought… Maybe this divine punishment was only to be expected.”
“Divine punishment?”
It was Ononoki who reacted to my words.
Yotsugi Ononoki.
“I wonder─you’re obviously reaping what you’ve sown, kind monster sir, but I’m not sure that it’s divine punishment.”
“…? What do you mean?”
“Well now,” Ms. Kagenui took over for Ononoki, “I reckon she’s saying the timing is a little too good for it to be divine punishment─and when the timing is too good, assuming it’s not simply a coincidence, more often than not it’s been orchestrated that way.”
It’s the work of people, not gods.
“For your sisters and your friend to be abducted by an acquaintance of ours on the very day your reflection ceases to be, the day your vampirification exceeds the limits of your humanity, so to speak─now that’s just a little too much of a coincidence.”
“…”
Well.
It’s not like that didn’t make sense─it rang a distant bell, in fact.
Hadn’t Deishu Kaiki once said something similar to me? Oh yeah, it was the first time Ms. Kagenui and Ononoki came to town. Over the summer, on Obon.
He said something like, “Coincidences are generally a product of malice”─but then again, in that case it was Deishu Kaiki himself who was the malicious source.
I said, “It hasn’t been all that uncommon for my bills to come due all at once these days─I mean, lately it’s been nothing but, endlessly paying for my own tomfoolery. All the stuff that’s been piling up, the stuff I’ve been putting on the shelf, has come crashing down on me at the same time─”
“Been brought crashing down, more like, wouldn’t you say? Like a game of Jenga. At least according to what I hear from Gaen-senpai─and from Yotsugi here.”
“…”
By what she heard from Ononoki, did Ms. Kagenui mean that thing with the “Darkness”─or the thing with Mayoi Hachikuji? Now that was the ultimate example of something I put on the shelf.
And the ultimate example of something that came crashing down.
“Can I ask you something, Ms. Kagenui?”
“What is it.”
“It’s… This might sound strange, but is this Tadatsuru Teori guy the kind of righteous person or whatever whose ideology won’t allow for any indiscretions or iniquities? Who believes that there’s a proper form to the world, and that the world ought to be in that proper form─that just as the Earth turns on its axis, so too should the globe inscribe an ellipsis through the cosmos, that kind of thing?”
“Ideology? Ha─”
What a hoot, replied Ms. Kagenui.
Though she wasn’t smiling at all, not even a tiny bit.
She wore the most serious expression imaginable.
“He’s utterly divorced from such things. And by such things I mean anything like righteousness, or a proper form. Not only that, he’s utterly divorced from anything resembling an ideology at all. Enmity doesn’t constitute an ideology, does it? Other than our mutual focus on immortal aberrations, he and I have nothing whatsoever in common.”
“…”
That almost made it sound like her own violence stemmed from some kind of ideology, but if I brought that up now the argument might go on forever, so I decided to keep things on the subject of Tadatsuru Teori for the time being.
Though all I really wanted to know was Tadatsuru’s stance on aberrations─because if he was anything like that “Darkness,” that black hole swallowing up all errors─then my friend and my little sisters, or at least two out of the three, were in real trouble. They were in for a rectification of all their indiscretions, all their monkey business.
The thought made my blood boil, and I wanted to pour all that boiling-hot blood down Shinobu’s throat, to mobilize all my heightened senses and search for the girls.
If I did, I could have them safe and sound in a few hours at most─I don’t know.
The idea was massively appealing, but the immediate presence of Ms. Kagenui and Ononoki, very much not my sworn allies, was a reliable deterrent.
Calm down.
That’d be the wrong move.
That’d be like taking out another loan to repay your current one─then I’d really be in hot water, like I was trying to keep a failing business afloat once all its liquid assets had dried up. Acquiring power came with a price, which lent a certain sense of self-sacrifice to that course of action, and as long as I was the only sacrificial victim, it felt like it was worth a shot─but it wasn’t that simple.
I had to keep in mind, I had to be clearly, overtly self-aware.
That if I ceased to exist, if this human being ceased to exist, there were people who would feel a deep sense of loss, if nothing else─I.
Needed to be thoroughly aware of that.
I needed to realize that.
If I became blinded by that spirit of self-sacrifice in the course of this rescue mission because I didn’t care what happened to me, I’d be depriving them of the part of themselves that I represented─I’d be tearing off one of their limbs, almost.
If push came to shove, it still might come down to that.
But it wasn’t time to make that decision yet.
“Supposing Tadatsuru did have something like an ideology, it would have to be based on─aesthetic curiosity, I reckon. Though I’m a mite hesitant to apply the word ‘aesthetic’ to that man.”
“Hunh?”
Aesthetic curiosity?
Not a phrase I was used to hearing.
Intellectual curiosity, maybe, but─
“He’s possessed of the sense that it’s precisely what God did not create that is beautiful─that the existence of aberrations created by humankind is beautiful. He fancies himself an artist. That’s his failing.”
“…”
Fancies himself an artist.
She─didn’t mean it in a positive way, did she?
“I’m keen to take on immortal aberrations because, as you’ve seen for yourself, I despise them for their wickedness─but from what I’ve heard, Tadatsuru is the exact opposite.”
“The exact opposite…”
“He loves them for their beauty.”
I may not be the most perceptive guy, but even I could tell that the preface, or the obviously unnecessary annotation, from what I’ve heard, was a lie. And Ms. Kagenui didn’t even try to pretend that it wasn’t. But by lying about how close she and Tadatsuru were, she was indicating that she didn’t care to divulge the truth.
“Even if it’s not an ideology, though, he is very particular, so your sisters and your friend are still safe. Safer than they’d be if I was gunning for them, at any rate.”
“Well, that’s not saying a whole…”
I trailed off because it seemed like finishing that sentence might deprive me of any modicum of safety I might have enjoyed until then.
“But if
he possesses this sense of the aesthetic worth of aberrations, why does he take them on? I guess it’s not the same as being the Aberration Roller or the Aberration Slayer, but in the end, isn’t he still exterminating aberrations?”
“His position is more like Oshino’s, I reckon. Rather than exterminating aberrations, he makes his living as an intermediary or…a neutral mediator, I suppose? An art dealer understands the value of art and appreciates its beauty, but buys and sells it with plain old money. It’s like that.”
“…”
An art dealer isn’t an art collector, was that it? Or maybe was it more like the contradiction inherent in an animal lover working at a zoo, where they lock animals in cages?
Actually, I didn’t think that was a contradiction.
People who love to read books become writers─and if you really think about it, that’s a grand contradiction, but the world is founded on such contradictions, it’s positively foundering in them, so contradictions become normalized until finally they aren’t contradictions anymore.
Then again, if you ask me, although on the surface the old chestnut about the unbeatable spear and the unbeatable shield seems like a clear example of a paradox, the underlying assumption is a little bit strange.
The unbeatable spear. The unbeatable shield.
Either one is already a contradiction in terms─because the moment a decidedly not unbeatable human being is wielding something, it stops being unbeatable.
Like how I couldn’t get a handle on Shinobu’s vampiric power─and ended up overindulging.
Like how I betrayed Oshino’s expectations, betrayed his faith in me─and ended up losing my humanity.
It’s based on the assumption of a human being who’d be unbeatable even without those things─and no such person exists. They do not exist.
“Sounds like this expert Tadatsuru is the perfect opponent for me to face as I am now.”
“…”
My potentially masochistic-sounding line apparently didn’t sit well with Ms. Kagenui, who, after a pause, said, “Don’t wallow in it.”
She abandoned her usual Kansai dialect and said this with something closer to the intonation of standard Japanese.
“That’s not power. That’s self-infatuation.”
“Self-infatuation…”
Infatuated─with myself.
Even if it wasn’t self-sacrifice…
“Don’t wallow in the tragedy of the situation, you hear? The long and the short of it is that your sisters and your friend were kidnapped by some mysterious fool, nothing more. In regard to that, at least, you are one hundred percent the aggrieved party. If by some one-in-a-million chance you actually invited something like divine punishment, it was for pushing it until you lost your humanity. It has nothing to do with the fact that those three were targeted. Isn’t that so, Yotsugi.”
“Yup, it is.”
For some reason Ms. Kagenui wanted Ononoki to back her up on that point, and the shikigami nodded meaningfully.
It seemed weird to seek approval from your own familiar, and it was also weird that the response seemed so pregnant with meaning.
Then again, their relationship was just kind of weird─to the point that it struck me as the real paradox here.
“Well then,” I said, “no choice but to save those three girls who have nothing to do with it…for me, anyway. Whatever else happens. Ms. Kagenui, you…”
Man, it was hard to say.
A terribly brazen request─but I had to ask. For my own sake as well, so I wouldn’t get lost in myself and wallow in self-sacrifice or self-infatuation.
“Will you help me? In this, we might say, dramatic rescue?”
“I will, since Gaen-senpai told me to─I’ll take the liberty of going along with her wishes. But let’s get one thing straight: I can’t involve myself directly. My power is exclusively geared for defeating immortal aberrations, so it’s no good against a human being.”
“…”
“Don’t look at me like that, young man. However aggravating Tadatsuru may be, I reckon you’re more my enemy than he is. So don’t look at me like that─I’ll let you keep borrowing Yotsugi─and I’ll lend you my wisdom as well. Anyhoo, the first thing we need to do is take a looksee at those cranes. If they are a message, I reckon they’re a message for you.”
“For me?”
“I can’t say for sure how thoroughly he understands the situation, but─Tadatsuru’s ultimate target is definitely you.”
“Me? No, wait, Tadatsuru’s target─”
“You, and the former Heartunderblade. The harmless certification that Oshino requested for you is only good within Gaen-senpai’s network, it has no currency with an outsider like Tadatsuru.”
Then this really couldn’t have come at a worse time─someone gunning for me and Shinobu, just when we’d lost the ability to fight.
Artificially.
Intentionally.
Maliciously─bad timing.
“So if that hypothesis is correct, Kanbaru and my sisters are being held as hostages, to be used against me.”
“That’s about the size of it. And if the real target is the two of you, then I reckon those girls are even more likely to be safe. For now, anyway.”
Somehow that didn’t make me feel one iota better.
That is, all it did was make me more impatient.
I was worried about my sisters, of course, but I also felt super-guilty about Kanbaru─I sent my sisters to her house because I thought it would be a safe zone, since she was related to Ms. Gaen, related to her by blood. But now I’d gotten her mixed up in this. If nothing else, I should at least have explained to her what was going on. Why the hell didn’t I?
True, while Kanbaru may not be an immortal aberration, an aberration had taken up residence in her left arm, so she could conceivably find herself in an expert’s crosshairs… Given the timing of her abduction, however, it seemed much more likely she’d been taken hostage because of me.
“Well, this is no time to stand around jawing. First off, let’s see those cranes. If there’s no message there, I reckon that changes things.” And with that, after refusing to take them from me the entire time, Ms. Kagenui finally accepted Tadatsuru’s cranes.
014
How well do people know their own towns? Like, if you asked people how well they know the town they live in, I imagine that most of them would say─well, I may not know it like the back of my hand, but I’ve got a pretty good sense of it.
That’s how I’d respond, at least.
I live there, after all; at the very least I wouldn’t say, I don’t know anything, I don’t know a thing about it, what in the world does town even mean─I couldn’t feign that much ignorance, and the fact is that I do have a pretty good sense of it.
And yet, maybe it depends on how you define “town.” One short year ago, I didn’t know about that cram school building─I had absolutely no idea it existed until Shinobu brought me there.
Nor did I know about Kita-Shirahebi Shrine.
I knew nothing about that ophiolatrous shrine.
That forgotten shrine, bound so deeply to snakes, and to a serpent aberration─and to Nadeko Sengoku, until I visited it with Kanbaru at Oshino’s behest.
“I don’t know everything, I just know what I know”─class president Tsubasa Hanekawa’s catch phrase. Hitagi Senjogahara, approaching this from the standpoint of set theory, says she’s just telling it like it is, but if you understand Hanekawa’s statement as a kind of reminder, a self-admonition, the implications go beyond “just telling it like it is.”
In other words, human beings.
Can be self-aware about the boundaries of what they know─however, they can’t always and in every circumstance be self-aware about the boundaries of what they don’t know.
By way of example, I can state with certainty that I don’t know French─no question about it. This is an example of “knowing” what I “don’t know.”
But let’s say the
re’s a country somewhere that I don’t know about because I’m a lazy student and I’m weak in world history, and a language that’s only ever spoken in this country (call it “Araraginospeakese”). Naturally, I wouldn’t know that language─but wouldn’t even know that I didn’t, because I wouldn’t even know that it existed.