by Nisioisin
Maybe the thousand cranes had been prepared ahead of time to be left in Kanbaru’s room, but as for these paper men, he must’ve folded them all right here for the clock system to function…and he’d filled the offertory box in only a few hours.
It hadn’t seemed like he was folding them that quickly, but…
“─What do you mean? Ms. Kagenui is cursed?”
“She carries a curse, and so do I. A children’s game of a curse never to set foot on the ground, for the rest of our lives.”
“You too?”
Well, true.
Sitting on the offertory box meant he wasn’t standing on the ground. And even after I showed up, he didn’t get down to approach me or anything.
Just like Ms. Kagenui.
And yet─
“Since we’re at a shrine,” explained Tadatsuru, “it might be easiest to compare it to the prohibition against walking down the center of the path to the hall…I guess. Ah, but calling it a curse might just be my persecution complex talking. I’m sure the person who laid it on us would call it a simple balancing of accounts. Yozuru and I got too big for our britches, and this is the price we had to pay─the cost of our actions.”
“Like…”
Like, for instance, how I didn’t have a reflection anymore because I abused my power as an immortal aberration─that kind of price? The price…forced out of me for going too far─if so.
Then this man.
And Ms. Kagenui… What did they go after─that was so out of their league?
No, hang on.
Didn’t I just hear that story? And if that was the cause─
“No, this is all wrong,” Tadatsuru said, shaking his head.
As though he’d suddenly noticed something.
“I didn’t do this because I wanted to chat with you─I abducted those near and dear to you because you’re an aberration, and I wanted to get rid of you.”
“Well, fair enough… I didn’t come here because I wanted to talk with you either.”
Even as I said this, I panicked at the abrupt turn the conversation was taking.
In fact, I’d come for precisely that purpose─to keep Tadatsuru busy while Ononoki located and rescued the three girls.
If I had my druthers, I wanted to hear more about this “curse.”
How far along the way was she?
How much time had passed?
Dammit, Ononoki had asked me to buy her five minutes, but I hadn’t checked my watch before the conversation─I had no idea how long I’d been talking with Tadatsuru.
Two minutes, maybe?
No, that was too generous─wishful thinking. But had one minute passed, at least? Please say yes.
“Why don’t you release the hostages? They’ve got nothing to do with this.”
“Nothing to do with it? Come on, you know that’s bullshit. Those precious girls of yours, especially that young lady Tsukihi─no.”
I’d hoped to buy a little more time with what seemed like the standard template for these situations, but Tadatsuru nipped that in the bud as well, shaking his head once more.
“No, this isn’t right, either.”
“…?”
“Listen, Araragi, there’s something I want to ask you. May I? I promise I’m not just trying to buy time─” What was the guy thinking, what did he mean by that? Seriously, what was he thinking─I was the one trying to buy time here.
Ah, okay, maybe he was talking about morning─about buying time until the sun came up? That would make sense. The darkest hour may be before the dawn, but once dawn comes, it’s morning. And once morning came, I’d be a whole lot weaker─no, wait a second.
It was more complicated than that.
How much did Tadatsuru know at that point?
Ms. Kagenui and Ononoki and I had talked about suspiciously good timing, about how contrived coincidences are the product of malice─but how much did Tadatsuru know about the timing of all this to begin with?
Did he know─that I had lost my reflection? Or was he under the mistaken impression─that I’d powered up by letting Shinobu suck my blood? Which was it?
Even if he knew that I’d been talking to Ms. Kagenui, did he have a handle on why?
Ouch, why hadn’t I thought this over more and analyzed it beforehand? If he didn’t know anything about it, I might’ve fought him, bluffing that I was at full power.
Could it still work?
Though my entrance had been too pedestrian to lend itself to that particular change of plans… Maybe I could ad-lib it somehow?
“What is it you want to ask me?” Whatever the case, Tadatsuru broaching a new topic was more than I could’ve hoped for, so I responded as calmly and steadily as possible. “Sorry to say there are some questions I can answer, and some I can’t.”
I tried throwing that tsundere line into the mix, but felt surprisingly embarrassed right away.
Tadatsuru didn’t comment on it, though, and with a look of feigned innocence, he asked, “What the hell am I doing here?”
That’s what he asked me.
“…?”
Huh? I’m sorry?
I wanted to drag out the conversation as much as possible regardless of what he asked me, like the parents of a kidnapped child in a crime drama who get a phone call from the culprits, but clammed up when this question came at me out of left field─even though that was the one thing I absolutely needed to avoid doing.
What the hell am I doing here?
Tadatsuru didn’t say another word.
Didn’t say another word to me as I stood there in silence.
I didn’t say anything either, so the silence dragged out.
I was going to have to be the one to break it.
“What does that mean? Isn’t it obvious what you’re doing here? Or no, if we’re going to split hairs, I don’t actually know what you’re doing over there. There are plenty of possibilities, plenty of potential scenarios. So that’s not a question I can answer. But how can you not know yourself?”
As I spoke, I started to get heated.
Maybe it was proof that Ononoki was right, that I wasn’t as grown up as Ogi thought I was.
Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, I didn’t know─
“You’re the one who took the initiative to kidnap my little sisters, the wild one and the worrisome one, not to mention my friend, and boy is she a handful─and now you’re just sitting over there like that. Give up the innocent act, okay? Let them go right now─”
Shut up. Stop talking like that.
Your interlocutor has gone to the trouble of sidetracking the conversation, but all impatient, you’re going to force him to get down to business? What the hell happened to your world-renowned Idle Banter skill?
Settle down.
You’ve already lost enough of your humanity─
That you can’t rely on your vampiric power anymore.
“Oh, right. Right, right─I’m the one,” said Tadatsuru.
Like he was sick.
“I’m the criminal here.”
“…”
“If it’s bothering you that I’m sitting, I’m happy to stand up─but listen, Araragi. I’ll still be in the dark, whether I’m sitting or standing. Even if I stand up, I won’t be able to stand it. Not knowing why I’m here, I mean.”
“What…”
What was he saying─was he making fun of me? But I refrained from voicing my uncertainty. Tadatsuru’s expression was too serious, he seemed too genuinely worried, for me to say that─for me to get angry about being mocked.
He was troubled.
Like a philosopher.
Like a pessimist.
Or maybe it would be more accurate to say, like he was worn out─it seemed like he hadn’t slept in days. It couldn’t possibly be from the origami, so what had made him so tired?
So thoroughly exhausted─like a dead man?
“I don’t understand. I really don’t understand. I don’t,” he complained.
I sounded pissed off, but also started to think this could be pretty great. I crossed my fingers, even. If Tadatsuru, an expert, was this wary of me, it meant he had the wrong idea─he’d misjudged the measly human being called me.
I said, “I don’t really know the particulars so maybe I’m speaking out of turn, but the only reason you’re here is to exterminate me. Right?”
“Right,” he agreed readily. “But I don’t understand.”
“What don’t you?!” my voice finally cracked into a shout.
“Why I would exterminate you.”
My confusion just kept mounting─I mean, if anything was obvious, it was that, wasn’t it? Ms. Kagenui had explained at length why Tadatsuru would exterminate me─
“I’m an expert, that much at least is certain. An expert who specializes in immortal aberrations─and a stray, an outlaw among outlaws, an expert who cares nothing for certifications of harmlessness, who acts on enmity not ideology, but who possesses a fully developed aesthetic sense, if nothing else. In other words, Araragi, you might say I’m the perfect choice to be cast opposite an exception like yourself.”
“…”
“Yes, cast─I can’t help but feel like someone else has cast me in this little drama. I’m simply the perfect choice to be here, now, to fight you, so I can’t help but feel like I’ve been selected for the role. Like I’m here to meet the exigencies of the situation. No, not just me, Yozuru, and Yotsugi─”
His muttering seemed directed at himself, and I couldn’t catch his mood. Talk about incomprehension.
Someone tell me what the hell this guy’s going on about.
No.
If I forced myself to think about it, it wasn’t such a mystery.
That is, when I looked at it in the light of my own sense of unease─wasn’t he describing exactly what I’d been feeling about this?
The timing.
The timing was too perfect, which meant it couldn’t be worse─wasn’t that how I’d been thinking about this suspiciously neat, made-to-order sequence of events?
The terrible timing of an expert who specializes in immortal aberrations kidnapping my little sisters on the very day that I lose my reflection─that twist of fate was a little too perfect to be ascribed to coincidence.
Coincidences are generally a product of malice, and I’d taken the source to be Tadatsuru, Tadatsuru Teori himself. I’d vaguely assumed so─and yet.
If he was experiencing the same sense of unease, then where was the malice coming from?
Whose malice was it?
“Tadatsuru. You’re an expert─whatever else you may be, you’re an expert, not a hunter. In other words, you did this because a client hired you, right?”
I said this recalling Ononoki’s theory that Ogi was the mastermind who’d hired Tadatsuru. Well, it made sense. I was there because Tadatsuru had summoned me, but he was there because someone, whoever, had hired him─
“A client. Yes, there’s a client involved, of course there is. But the reason for hiring me seemed like a put-up job as well─in fact, it’s as if things have been arranged just so, in just the right way. The client could very well have been an actor meant to produce the right plot developments, to create precisely this scene.”
“…”
“They say the gods don’t gamble, but I feel like someone’s been tossing me around the craps table─using my idiosyncrasies, my proclivities, as the raw materials for something. Don’t you feel it too, Araragi? Aren’t you standing there because you had no other choice, because you were compelled, even?”
That’s how I feel, at any rate, confessed Tadatsuru.
Gloomily.
Gloominess fit this slender man like a glove.
But his speech didn’t suit the occasion, and he failed to convince me. Obviously, I mean cut the crap.
“No other choice? What the hell, you trying to tell me you abducted people who’re dear to me because you had no other choice?!”
“Even this. Aren’t you angry right now because you’re supposed to be? Anger, to go along with the part you’ve been assigned─how are we any different? We’re both just doing what we’re meant to be doing. In the places we’ve been put, in the roles we’ve been assigned. No ad-libbing allowed.”
“What’re you talking about… Is this some all the world’s a stage crap? Keep your clever Shakespeare─”
“The world isn’t a stage. But that doesn’t mean that people don’t love a good story. Yes…people crave drama, don’t they? Almost like their bodies crave nutrition. But this drama seems too perfect, too labored─it’s hard for me to get into the spirit of the thing. Feels like the fix is in. There’s nothing worse than contrived drama.”
“What are you trying to say? I don’t get it, I really don’t─I mean, what is it you want from me?”
“What do I want from you?”
“You’ve taken hostages. So you must have a demand. Do you want me to meekly submit to my own destruction? Are you saying you’ll let them go then?”
It was my job to buy time, so up to that point I’d avoided bringing up the subject of the hostages’ wellbeing─avoided confirming that they were safe, but I’d reached the end of that particular rope. I couldn’t wait any longer.
The thought that this baffling guy held their lives in his hands was enough to make every hair on my body stand on end.
“Sorry to say I’m not such a coward… If I were the kind of person who would use those girls as a threat rather than a bargaining chip, if I were that aesthetically bankrupt, I’m sure I wouldn’t have been cast in this role.”
Since Gaen-senpai wouldn’t let that slide, he finished.
Gaen-senpai… He called her “senpai.”
Despite the fact that he was a stray, not part of her network─of course, the term’s sense was arbitrary. Maybe he’d just meant it ironically. But wasn’t “senpai” a word people basically used to express some kind of devotion?
“Araragi. Find Oshino,” Tadatsuru said.
Out of the blue, without preamble.
“If we can get him involved─I’m certain he can bring some balance to this tale. Not as part of the cast, not as anybody’s pawn, but as a neutral party. He’s the only one who can do it. Seems like Kaiki did manage to derail things, and thanks to him this shrine is empty again, but he’s too much of a contrarian. He’s all too proper about being improper─he’s so contrarian that he’s straightforward. Which is why it’s got to be Oshino.”
“We’ve already looked everywhere for Oshino.”
I still couldn’t get a read on Tadatsuru’s intentions─but I wasn’t lying. Back when everything was going down with Sengoku, we searched high and low for that Aloha-shirted bastard. Hanekawa even took the search global.
But we didn’t come up with even a single clue.
He’d dropped off the face of the earth, like maybe he was dead or something.
“No, we would’ve had a better chance of finding a clue if he actually were dead… I see, Tadatsuru. Seems like you’re friends with Oshino. That’s what I heard, anyway. So, by any chance, do you know where he is?”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t be here─I wouldn’t have had to do this. I wouldn’t have had to…”
Do what’s right and proper.
Or be right and proper.
With those words, Tadatsuru Teori’s motionless hands began to move again, folding little origami men. His dexterity was astounding. While I was considering how to respond, he also finished making the pants for the first one.
And slipped the assembled piece into the offertory box.
It─didn’t go all the way in.
It stuck partway out of the box.
The Origami Clock was full to the brim.
“Well, shall we get started? Though really, we’re finishing up.”
Tadatsuru Teori stood.
<
br /> Astride the offertory box─sitting cross-legged on it had seemed pretty disrespectful, but now as he unfurled his rangy frame to its full height, it didn’t even seem that way anymore. It wasn’t disrespectful or blasphemous, it was simply─a person standing on top of an offertory box.