by Nisioisin
“Hey, human.”
“What is it, cat monster.”
“Seems a lot happened after ya battled it out with me─between you and us.”
“What, did Oshino tell you?”
Did he talk to her while he kept watch?
It would be like him. He did like to talk.
“Yeah,” I said. “A crab, a snail, a monkey, and a snake.”
“That myakes a Nue!”
“Only the monkey and snake part… What about the crab and the snail, where did those go? And wait, stop saying whatever pops into your head.”
My image of Hanekawa was growing worse and worse.
I wished she’d show me at least a glimpse of her intelligence.
“And I’m─a demon.”
“Hm. Meow,” Black Hanekawa said. “Human─you call us aberrations, but…what do ya think about them?”
“What do I think about them?”
So her nocturnal nature did make her a little more coherent at night… It was the same way last time, too─but the changes weren’t drastic.
What could the question mean?
It was a vaguely worded sentence.
“Well, human, if ya think you’ve gotten nyused to us─I need to drag ya by the scruff back to reality. Aberrations are aberrations, humans are humans─nyever together. They can’t get along, nyo matter what.”
“I…don’t really understand. What is it you’re trying to tell me?”
“Well, that’s because you’re stupid.”
“No one could hurt me more with those words than you!”
“Hmph. You nyow what they say about hurt feelings… Meow? Err, what do they say.”
“Don’t run your mouth if you can’t come up with anything! It’s painful to watch someone incapable of a snappy line trying to say something smart!”
Our conversation was going nowhere.
What we were even talking about, anyway?
“So are you trying to say that it’s impossible for me to get used to aberrations? I guess I do feel that way… I’m left speechless and looking like a loser every time I deal with one. It’s as pathetic as it gets. Things never go for me like they do for Oshino.”
Mèmè Oshino.
A professional─an authority on transformed creatures.
It was strange when I thought about it. How did he ever start down that path? I knew next to nothing about his background. Oh, maybe he said something about having gone to a Shinto university… But I didn’t know how much of his resume I could believe. He was the sort who made things up to suit the occasion.
“Nyo, that’s nyot what I want to say─for example, human. Can ya imagine why that vampire could’ve hightailed it?”
“…Not at all.”
“Ah. So that’s how little ya understyand about us… And that’s purrobably why Hawaiian shirt tends to be right. He─nyows the difference.”
“Knows the differ─”
“He nyows what he’s nyot.”
“……………”
Offer a hand without knowing what you’re doing─and you’ll get burned.
Was that what she meant?
I hadn’t just offered a hand, I’d offered my neck. In that case, there really wasn’t anything I could do. I was at the whim of the waves─I couldn’t claim to have gotten used to anything.
Especially─when it came to Shinobu.
A legendary vampire─descended from a noble bloodline.
“Did you─hear about me and Shinobu from Oshino? You say all that, but do you really understand our relationship?”
“Nyot that well─I may have heard, but I already furgot. I don’t understand, to say the least.”
“Well, that’s awfully casual of you.”
“Maybe, but I get it in large part─but when I say ‘large part,’ I’m not meowing about my myaster’s breasts, mrowkay?!”
“……”
I couldn’t detect the slightest bit of intelligence from that joke…
She wasn’t being dirty, she was just being vulgar.
“Aberrations understand aberrations best─we’re the same, after all.”
“The same…” They seemed like very different types of aberrations. They were the same in that both were inhuman? No, that wasn’t it. “The same, being aberrations, huh?”
“I’m nyot saying anything difficult─I can’t say anything difficult, anyway. Listen, human─that word ‘aberration’ says it all,” Black Hanekawa asserted. “Aberrations─creatures that are aberrant, meow. Different from humans─that’s why ya can’t get used to us. If ya did, there’d be nyothing aberrant about us anymore. People need to believe in us, fear us, dread us, loathe us, revere us, respect us, hate us, shun us, and pray to us─that’s why we exist.”
“……………”
“But get used to us? Nyot gonna happen.”
If you want to treat us like friends? Nyo thanks─
Is how Black Hanekawa summarized it.
For some reason, it felt like I’d been warned. But when I thought about it, she was right… The boundaries between us might have become fuzzy for me because I’d once become more than half aberrant myself. Being overly conscious of it was an issue─but not being conscious of it at all was also an issue.
Shinobu.
Somewhere down the line─hadn’t I started treating her as a simple kid?
I’d never refer to her as human.
But─hadn’t I been thinking of her that way?
“Hey… Wait, hold on… Don’t tell me, is that why?”
“Meow?”
“It’s because I saw Shinobu in that kind of way─that Shinobu, as an aberration, decided to disappear? ”
A vampire.
But─a mockery of a vampire.
It would have been a challenge to her identity.
And strangely enough, Oshino had said something similar. A journey of self-discovery.
Did Shinobu─no longer know who she was?
She─couldn’t comprehend herself.
“Purrhaps, or purrhaps not. I wouldn’t know those kinds of details─I might be the same, but I’m also different. But, human, there’s one thing you should remeowmber… What was it again?”
“You forgot it yourself!”
“Right, that’s it. We might be here as a myatter of course─but as soon as people think that’s a myatter of course, we become mere reality.”
Demons─would be mere blood disorders.
Cats─would be mere multiple personalities.
Crabs─would be mere illnesses.
Snails─would be mere lost children.
Monkeys─would be mere slashers.
Snakes─would be mere pain.
Aberrations─would be mere reality.
“And we’d end up saying something dull like ‘There’s no room in our scientific society for aberrations’?”
“Nyope. We just wouldn’t be able to maintain the same forms─we’ll be here, always and forever. So long as you humans are around.”
“And that’s how─you’ve come all this way alongside humans.”
“Purrcisely.”
Precisely, she said─the Hindering Cat.
“Still─I haven’t gotten a sniff of her.”
“Hm? Oh, you’re talking about Shinobu’s scent… No tracks, either?”
“I should pick up on it in nyo time at all, she’s got a unique scent… Hey, human. Are you sure that vampire really left?”
“Yeah… I’m sure of that much. She’s been spotted at least once.”
“Oh. So nyo chance she just purrtended to leave and hid inside those ruins…”
“That’s pretty smart, coming from you… I never considered that one.”
“What if she left once, then came back? That place is so full of her scent she could cameowflage herself there.”
“I’m pretty sure Oshino would notice if that was the case…”
Camouflage─huh.
Hm? Hold on, I thought, I’m about to come upon something�
� What was it? I lost the thread… How could I complain about the cat monster at this rate? It really was going to become a contest to see who was the bigger idiot.
Did I have the intelligence of a cat?
Umm.
“Oh, right─why don’t we try going to where Shinobu was spotted? It’ll take us off this path, but we can head to the Mister Donut…and then we just have to follow Shinobu’s scent from there.”
“Hrmm. I’m nyot exactly following her scent, though─strictly speaking, I don’t rely on the intensity of a scent.”
“You don’t?”
“To be honyest, I went to look for the vampire alone after sneaking out of the building─so I probably went by that Mister Donut, too.”
“Seriously? You need to tell me that kind of thing sooner.”
So we needed to change course. If we were searching for her scent, there was no point in searching a place that had already been searched.
“Sorry, I furgot.”
“………”
Now I felt an urgent need to obstinately go back and forth along our path, checking it again and again.
“The scent…vanished along the way,” Black Hanekawa said.
“Vanished?”
“It wasn’t possible to follow her any further… So, human. A question. How much of her vampire powers can that vampire use right nyow? If she can disappear, reappear, and turn into shadows and darkness─then I’ll be honest. I won’t be able to find her.”
“It’s safe to assume that she can barely use any of her powers as a vampire right now. They’re close to fully limited─and even if she somehow manages to use them, she only can when I’m around. She’d be able to do a little bit, since I fed her my blood at the beginning of this week, but if I’m not around, she’s just─”
Just a kid.
Not an aberration.
Reality.
But that understanding─was wrong?
“Hmm. In that case…” Black Hanekawa muttered to herself. She seemed to be thinking, not that it would do her any good. “But if we look at it that way, it’s nyot very…”
“What is it? Stop leaving me out of this. We have a saying in our world, you know. ‘Gather three men and you shall have the wisdom of prajñā─”
“I see. What’s prajñyā?”
“………”
What could it be?
I’d been using the word without ever knowing.
“There aren’t three of us, anyway,” she said.
“Yeah, you’re right.”
“One man and one cat─meow.”
Not two men─one man and one cat.
She wasn’t saying that because she could only count to one─right?
“Anyway─human. Nyow I don’t think that vampire can be found with just ordinary meowthods.”
“So she might have left town? I know this is just the flip side of what I just said, but well, if she’s that far away from me, I don’t think she─”
I’d be going too far if I said she couldn’t do anything.
But if she tried, there was a possibility she’d no longer be able to maintain her existence.
“The reason vampires suck blood─meow.”
“What?”
“Vampires suck human blood─but it means different things when they suck it for food and when they suck it to make companyans.”
“……”
I knew that.
I heard that during spring break─but why did this cat know? She only had the intellect of a cat… Oh, of course. Intelligence was different from knowledge. Despite the difference between Hanekawa and Black Hanekawa’s intellects, they probably shared some degree of knowledge.
“Myaybe that’s why she ran off…”
“Huh? How so?”
“…Mrow, you’re so dense,” Black Hanekawa said, sounding flabbergasted.
“Dense? What do you mean?”
“I’m saying you’re obtuse.”
“Well, I’ll agree I’m not the best at reading people’s minds…”
“I’m saying you’re obtusely angled.”
“Don’t tell me you’re going to need a protractor.”
“I’m saying that ever since she met ya during spring break or whenever, that vampire has seen ya getting involved with one aberration after anyother. Myaybe that didn’t feel so great.”
“You mean, seeing all of those different aberrations, yourself included, made her feel less special? That’s why she couldn’t stand being around any longer─”
“So dense,” Black Hanekawa repeated.
Dense… I didn’t like the word, for some reason.
She added, “They say beasts separate themselves from humans when they realize the time has come for them to die─myaybe vampires are the same way?”
“Don’t say ominous things like that.”
“Are ya really mewing about omens to an aberration? But what are ya going to do if ya never find that vampire?”
“What am I going to do? Well, I’d be in trouble. Hanekawa wouldn’t be able to turn back to normal, plus─”
“But that’s the only problem? If you ignyore my myaster─wouldn’t ya be better off if that vampire wasn’t around?”
“……” What was she trying to say? It didn’t make any sense to me.
“You still have the vague scent of a vampire because she exists. Ya let her drink your blood or something─that’s what ya said, murright? So you can go back to being a simple human if the vampire disappears.”
The demon─would be a mere human.
I could go back.
All I had to do was abandon Shinobu.
“You can’t─expect me to do that. I could never abandon her. I─”
If Hanekawa was my savior.
Then Shinobu was my victim.
“She could kill me,” I continued, “and I still wouldn’t have any right to complain. What I did to her was that bad.”
“You say that, but are ya sure ya just don’t want to give up your immortal body?”
“That’s not it. If she dies tomorrow, I’m ready for my life to last just as long.”
“…Hm. I see.”
That’s your empathy speaking, Black Hanekawa said.
If you’re going to put it like that, then sure─it was just unilateral sentiment. I couldn’t complain if Shinobu saw that as annoying or irritating.
Or maybe that was why─
It could have been why Shinobu left.
“Also, cat. The premise of your hypothesis is flawed to begin with. How could I ‘ignore’ your master? It’s impossible. Sorry, but we need to get you back into the deepest reaches of herself─I’m not going to have another Golden Week.”
“Oh. But, human─I wouldn’t say it’s impossible at all. There’s a way to get me back deep inside of her without relying on that vampire at all.”
“…There is?”
There was a way?
If it was quick─that’s exactly what I wanted.
Ten days was our limit─in other words, it’d be fine so long as we could bring everything to a resolution within nine days in the worst case, just like last time.
“If ya want to talk about Golden Week, it was the same then, too. I’m a nyavatar of my myaster’s stress─get rid of the root of the stress, and I’ll disappear once again.”
“Hmm…”
When this Hindering Cat sent Hanekawa’s parents to the hospital using her energy drain, Hanekawa became aware of what was going on as herself for a brief moment─probably because doing so considerably relieved the stress she felt. It wasn’t enough in the end, given all the stress that had piled up and up inside of her, so Black Hanekawa reappeared right afterwards─
So. The root of her stress.
“Oshino brought that up too, but we don’t have the time to pin down the root of her stress,” I said. “It doesn’t seem to be her family this time, plus─”