by Nisioisin
In any case, I pedaled as hard as I could.
Apparently, bicycles can break the speed limit under Japan’s Road Traffic Act too, but I ignored that fact as hard as I could.
To me, some things are worth protecting more than the law. I count my own life among them.
I might run over a pedestrian if I barreled down the sidewalk at that speed, so I descended onto the road and began going even faster.
“Hachikuji!”
“Yes!”
“Check behind us! Is that thing following us?!”
“Um!” Hachikuji seemed to turn her head. After a moment or two, she cried, “Something is!”
Come to think of it, while I’d known Hachikuji for a pretty long time, I’d only ever chatted with her on the roadside for the most part and never seen her so flustered before.
Maybe the only other times were, well, when I assaulted her.
“Which is to say, every time we meet!” she quipped dutifully even on this occasion.
What a nice kid.
We could be lifelong friends.
“When you say something is─like how?!”
“Um, well, like it’s there when you notice. Like it’s not close, but not far…”
“?”
The phrasing was pretty ambiguous by Hachikuji’s standards. But I couldn’t blame her.
After all, that Darkness couldn’t be seen─in which case, its distance wasn’t to be fathomed accurately, either.
No, not just its distance.
Its size…its scope and scale, so to speak, were also an enigma.
We only knew it lurked there…or rather, “existed” there─and had to judge based on the surrounding scenery, but that could change in an instant if you shifted your angle.
Plus, we were moving at a high speed on a bicycle.
Of course her phrasing was ambiguous─but in any case, that it seemed to be coming after us was enough.
“Okay, got it! No need to check anymore!”
Instead of pedaling in a standing stance, I sat down. I was faster when I stood in terms of pure speed, but the cargo behind me, a young girl, made it a different story.
“Hachikuji! Grab onto my back!”
“No way!”
“Don’t refuse, you idiot! I’m off balance!”
“Tch!”
With a very unbecoming tongue click for a young girl, Hachikuji complied in what was probably a reluctant manner.
This combined our centers of gravity, letting me go even faster─not to mention, I risked flinging off Hachikuji if I pedaled at full speed while standing.
“Would it be better if I also threw away my backpack?!”
“Nah…”
To be honest, I’d have been grateful if she had. I wasn’t sure if the ghost girl had any weight or if I was just feeling it on my own, but real or not, heavier meant heavier.
In other words, like Hachikuji herself, the backpack felt as heavy as it looked. If she chucked it, I could expect to go even faster─still. That was a big still.
“You don’t have to throw it away!”
“But…I can come back for it later!”
“I said it’s fine!”
It was her own suggestion, and she was right that she could just pick it up later. Hachikuji’s idea was absolutely sensible, but it somehow felt wrong.
Our speed might actually fall if she did.
Or so I imagined.
It was just my imagination, after all, but I’ve lived my whole life faithful to whatever I imagined.
“Instead, Hachikuji, hug me tighter, like you’re trying to merge with me!”
“Okay!”
“Push your chest even harder into me!”
“L-Like this?!”
Perhaps because it was an emergency, once Hachikuji made up her mind, she docilely obeyed me.
Her body, ripe for a fifth grader’s, pressed unsparingly against my own─converting this joy into energy, I pedaled even harder.
“Hachikuji! With more of a grinding motion!”
“O-Okay!”
Hachikuji, probably a bit confused, was at my beck and call.
You never knew what life had in store for you, whether it was feeling Hachikuji all across your back or being chased by an inexplicable Darkness.
I may need to offer an excuse at this point.
Sure, it’s understandable to be frightened by a mysterious Darkness appearing out of nowhere, but why commit so thoroughly to flight? some of you may be wondering. Why desperately pedal away from something that, while unknown, might not be dangerous?
Allow me to reply.
Yes!
I thoroughly needed to take flight!
If you think that’s pathetic, then go ahead and think it all you want, but how often I’ve had to go through hell because I didn’t run when I should have like I was now!
I’m a veteran!
Having witnessed all kinds of “suspicious” since spring break and fought them, I can state that I was utterly, undoubtedly, one-hundred-percent following the correct course of action at that moment!
Now was the time to run!
By no means was I going to let myself face off against that Darkness!
It’d be one thing if only my person was on the line, but right now I had to protect my dear little friend Mayoi Hachikuji!
…Hm?
What’s my excuse for taking advantage of the chaos to savor that little friend with my back?
Well, I haven’t got any for you.
I’m not ashamed, at all.
“Mister Araragi!”
“What is it, pig-boobies?!”
“It’s coming after us!”
“!”
I’d told her she didn’t have to look behind anymore, but it seemed like she had─since there was no particular change in the sensation on my back, she must have contorted herself.
Like twisted her neck 180 degrees.
It was pretty scary to visualize.
“It might be getting closer!” she warned.
“I thought we couldn’t tell!”
“W-Well… I can’t, not the distance, but it feels oppressive…”
“!”
Hachikuji’s testimony made even less sense now─at this rate, maybe I had to turn around myself to check out the Darkness… But no, that might be a bad idea…
Recognition.
If the Darkness was an aberration, it needed to be recognized, but there were also risks to recognizing an aberration.
Quite big ones.
Some aberrations curse you simply for observing them─they “emerge” by being seen. Which is to say, the Darkness might be an aberration that activates when it’s spotted.
True, in that case, I’d already seen it, so maybe there wasn’t any point in averting my eyes now.
Maybe there wasn’t any point in ghosting a ghost.
“Hachikuji! Just stop looking at it!”
“B-But, but!”
“Be a good girl and kiss my back!”
“O-Okay!”
It was hard to say if my mysterious request was romantic or humiliating, but Hachikuji complied anyway.
It only got my shirt soaked with saliva, though, and felt yucky.
“Fshh, fshh, fshh. Lick, lick, lick… Mrrgh, mrrgh.”
“…”
Make that scary.
Don’t be eating my back.
I remembered hearing that snails have over ten thousand teeth, in fact… Was my back going to be all right?
My will isn’t so unbreakable that I have the right to criticize others, but it seemed like Mayoi Hachikuji was lacking in mental toughness.
Being this weak in the face of adversity was rare.
Actually, wasn’t it rare for any story character to be weak in the face of adversity? I mean, you wouldn’t have any stories to tell then.
Come on, show your brilliance.
Was your usual unflappable attitude all for show?
“!”
And
then.
I carelessly saw it.
The Darkness─it’s not as if I turned around.
But towns are funny, they have mirrors all over the place─whether or not that’s for Kamen Rider Ryuki’s ease of transformation, at traffic crossings for instance.
And it was in the mirror.
That I accidentally saw the Darkness.
It seemed to grow the moment I did─though it might’ve been my imagination.
My imagination?
Then─that was everything.
Gwip.
I turned the handlebars of my bike as if to escape not just from the Darkness but the mirror it was reflected in.
I was basically sliding on my tires and nearly fell over but somehow maintained my balance─leaning almost far enough to scrape my cheek on the asphalt.
It felt like I was at about a 170-degree angle.
I’m amazed I made it back up.
“Hachikuji! Are you okay?!”
“I snapped one of my feelers!”
“Isn’t that really bad?!”
And wait, did humans have feelers?
I guess that’d be the skin, but can you snap your skin?
“I misspoke! One of my pigtails came undone!”
“Oh…”
She’d frightened me for nothing.
“Also,” she said, “my blouse shoulder tore just a bit!”
“Are we okay?!”
“Yes, it’s just my clothes… But with part of my hair undone and my blouse torn, I look like I’m in the middle of being assaulted and abducted by you! That’s the picture!”
“That’s not okay at all!”
It was bad news for my future.
What was going to happen to me?
“…ck.”
But then another, more imminent danger approached me.
To be precise, I was approaching it.
At the end of our hard turn was a traffic light, of all things.
You know, one of those red, yellow, and green things.
No.
Not red, yellow, and green─it was red.
“…nkk!”
I had, well, two options.
It was ridiculous to be thinking about it, but two.
Either blow through the light, or don’t.
Looking around me as I flew forward, I saw neither pedestrians nor cars. Even if I ignored the signal, didn’t hit the brakes, and cut straight across the light, it probably wouldn’t cause any kind of accident.
It wouldn’t, but.
“Tsk!”
Once again─I turned the handlebars.
A red light.
Feeling Hachikuji against my back─I couldn’t ignore the light. Even if it wouldn’t lead to an accident, I couldn’t possibly─not while carrying Hachikuji, who’d died eleven years ago in a traffic accident, behind me.
But this is where I failed.
No, it’s hard to call part of it a mistake─since I couldn’t have made the turn, in any case, without hitting the brakes and slowing down.
The problem was my other failure.
Yes, I’d forgotten.
I was riding on the road─so the signals meant something different. If the light in front of me was red, any turn, whether right or left, was just as prohibited as going straight.
Stop on red.
Unable to uphold that rule─failing to do so with Hachikuji on my back, there was no room for mercy and heaven would punish me for it.
004
We turned and it was right in front of us.
The Darkness.
Almost like it was a pit─a trap waiting for us there this whole time.
“…nkk!”
I couldn’t tell our distance from it.
Or maybe there wasn’t any from the start─with this phenomenon.
As if it was always right there, and far or close didn’t matter─crap!
I couldn’t change directions now, I’d just turned my handlebars as far as they could go. Believing that I was fleeing single-mindedly, unwaveringly, I ended up putting a period to the game of tag by plunging straight into the Darkness.
Self-ruin. Autodestruct.
A completely pointless escapade.
Running, confounded, from a confounding thing, caught up to in confounding fashion─it was confoundedly over.
“Urrg.”
But.
But Hachikuji, at least─
“Mrrgh, mrrgh, mrrgh.”
Was still munching on my back.
I might have made her, but what a thing to be doing at the end of the line.
She was wrecking the serious mood.
But I somehow had to peel off Hachikuji, who literally had her teeth in me, and let her escape─escape!
This girl, at least─
“─Unlimited Rulebook.”
And then.
I heard a quiet, droning voice from somewhere─and was blasted away.
Not the Darkness lying in wait.
Me.
Us.
It felt like a giant hammer had sent us flying─and maybe that described the actual phenomenon.
A brutally physical aberration far more defined than the Darkness.
By the time I realized it, Hachikuji and I had been blown into the opposite lane. Some sort of thing had happened─and rescued us.
Only our wheels didn’t make it, and my granny bike seemed to be swallowed up by the Darkness─disappearing without a trace.
“…!”
After all this time…
Having survived one crisis after another alongside me, my granny bike finally exited this world… It was quite a shock.
I was so depressed that I could die.
What was I supposed to ride to school the next day?
“Kind monster sir─over this way.”
And there, suddenly─was Ononoki.
Yotsugi Ononoki.
An expressionless tween girl─whose terribly frilly, cute, and visually quite striking outfit was all thrown out of balance by her expressionlessness.
Like a doll trying too hard to act human.
She can’t help it, though.
While she isn’t a doll, she isn’t human, either.
She, too, is an aberration.
An aberration known as Yotsugi Ononoki.
A certain violent onmyoji sorcerer’s familiar─
“Huh? Wait, Ononoki… Why are you here?”
“What do you mean. I met you just yesterday.”
Did she?
She did.
Thanks to my time travel, those memories were out of sync with reality─was it like jet lag?
Ononoki had appeared just as abruptly as the Darkness─but judging by the situation, she seemed to have saved Hachikuji and me.
“Th-Thank─”
“It might be a little early to be thanking me,” Ononoki practically whispered.
She was absolutely right.
The menacing Darkness was still on the street─not having vanished or anything, it continued to exist right there.
A Darkness we couldn’t see continuing to exist is a pretty weird formulation─but then it was that kind of phenomenon.
“Kind monster sir, what…is that?”
“Huh?” I was the baffled one at her question. “Really, Ononoki? Isn’t your role to appear out of nowhere, save me, and explain everything?”
“I’m not sure I can handle your spoiled expectations…”
Expressionless as she was, Ononoki sounded overwhelmed.