Onimonogatari

by Nisioisin

  She might actually be understanding enough to laugh off me “cheating” on her and even turn it into a joke… Too bad she wasn’t ready to overlook a dalliance with Hachikuji, too.

  Well, if Shinobu was going to be an adult, I needed to act like one too.

  Instead of grumbling that I was the victim or that there was no evidence and sour my relationship with Shinobu, I’d apologize straightaway. I’d make her see that she really was the only partner for me.

  “Um, Shinobu. I’m sorry, it was my─”

  “Not any of my concern,” she nipped me in the bud.

  Cut off at the best possible moment.

  I had a pretty good line in mind, too!

  “Thou art constantly flirting and pawing at the girls around thee, after all.”

  “You’re going to regret this for the rest of your life, Shinobu… You just missed out on the most beautiful dogeza in the world.”

  “I’ve no interest in seeing my master on his hands and knees while he’s in nothing but his underwear, regardless of how beautiful it may be… ’Tis taken me long enough, but to answer thy question as to when I first awoke, ’twas the moment ye shared a kiss with that tsukumogami girl. Aye, the exact moment. Thy heart was pounding and throbbing, beating as though ye’d just sprinted with all thy might, and I awoke, alarmed.”

  ’Tis as if my heart had a vibration feature installed in it thanks to our shared senses, Shinobu laughed.

  Wait, hold on a second.

  Don’t make it sound like I got so impossibly shaken and excited about kissing a tween girl that it was enough to wake you up.

  She was making me sound so naive and inexperienced.

  “And so I understand little of the situation,” she continued. “What exactly is going on here? At first glance, the only explanation seems to be that ye’ve kidnapped a young girl and a tween girl, imprisoned them, but allowed the tween to escape when a kiss provided an opening.”

  “How can you interpret it like that, you’ve got a filthy mind.”

  “’Tis thy hands that are dirty here…”

  “Anyway, listen.”

  Going any deeper into what just happened with Ononoki would be psychologically taxing, but the bigger issue was learning the true nature of the Darkness.

  Even if Shinobu doesn’t know, I’d said to Ononoki…but only as a possibility I couldn’t quite rule out. I was pretty sure that she’d know.

  In which case, I wanted to find out as soon as possible. I wanted her to tell me.

  The Darkness.

  Appearing out of nowhere and following us like it was giving chase─it suddenly got ahead and swallowed my cherished bicycle. That Darkness.

  If Ononoki hadn’t shoved us off that bicycle, the two of us might have been swallowed up as well, it wasn’t difficult to imagine─no, I didn’t dare imagine it, and to be frank, it defied my imagination.

  To begin with, I wasn’t certain that the Darkness swallowed up my granny bike and caused it to vanish─it’s not as though I witnessed the moment.

  I was just linking the phenomenon of its disappearance, simplistically, with the fact that the Darkness was ahead of where my bike was going.

  I couldn’t stop associating the Darkness with a black hole, so the bike seemed to have been sucked in… But even that was something I couldn’t be sure of.

  I understood so little of it.

  During spring break, during Golden Week, with Senjogahara and Hachikuji and Kanbaru, and everything else since then, the phenomenon itself was quite clear─like a vampire on the verge of death or a cat monster on the prowl in town.

  But this time, I wasn’t even clear on the phenomenon itself.

  Sure, you might remind me that aberrations are, fundamentally, symbols of what’s less than clear… And I’d agree, but couldn’t you also say that, through them, “what’s less than clear” comes to exist in a “clear form”?

  Then the Darkness, from the very outset─wasn’t consistent with what an aberration should be.

  It seemed to be a symbol, but of the most heterodox sort.

  Nothing but blackness─

  “It’s not like it’s a soot sprite,” I muttered.

  “Hrm? What’s that?”

  “Oh, nothing… I definitely wasn’t talking about Ghibli movies.”

  “Liar. Ye just made a reference to My Neighbor Totoro. I ought to warn thee I’m quite fussy when it comes to Totoro.”

  “I’m begging you, please don’t get us off topic…” I never thought the day would come when I would be the one making this request.

  “Huh, I was hoping to do impressions of all the lines, of all the characters.”

  “That’d take an hour and a half.”

  “The real sight would be how the anime adaptation deals with it. The rights issue will be fairly complex.”

  “Don’t worry, they’re not going to adapt this far into the series…there’s just no way. I assure you, unlike the novels, the anime will follow the original plan and end at Nise.”

  “Excuse me? What a rude thing to say to the leading actress of a feature film.”

  “…”

  Miss Leading Actress of a Feature Film was clearly getting carried away.

  You didn’t get to speak a single line during the anime’s first season, did you now.

  “I can hardly wait,” she said. “The scene where I stick my hand in my head to search my memories─I cannot wait to see how it unfolds on screen.”

  “Going out of your way to mention a scene that’s sure to get cut… And why are you leading with this stuff? Just listen to what I’m trying to tell you.”

  “Hmph. I refuse, fool. For all of thy usual chattering on with girls, the conversation must move forward without idle talk now that thou hast a topic ye wish to discuss? Heaven may forgive such smarm, but not I. The next hundred and fifty pages or so shall promote the Kizu anime, and the rest of this tale will be summed up in bullet points, I hope thou art prepared to─mrrgh?!”

  I shut her up with a kiss.

  Wrapping my arm around her back and pulling her toward me.

  I was clearly the instigator, and there was no fudging the picture.

  “Wh-What art thou doing… A-Are ye Italian, my master?”

  “Just listen. To me. Something bad happened─actually, I don’t even know if it’s bad, but please listen. I need your insight.”

  “W-Well, if thou dost insist…” she reacted bashfully, fidgeting and fiddling with her blond hair and blushing. It was this kind of thing that made her so cute.

  She’s so naive that you’d never think she’s lived for six hundred years─where was her mature and understanding personality from a moment ago?

  “I shan’t refuse to listen. Now talk.”

  “Making it back with you from all of that time travel, I met Hachikuji right after we climbed down the mountain.”

  I felt like I moved the story forward at a fast pace, but the preamble still ended up being pretty long. I glanced at Hachikuji, still sound asleep (if anyone, maybe she was the one pretending to be asleep?), and started explaining everything to Shinobu.

  Telling her about it would let me get the story straight in my own mind, too.

  That is─if there was anything in this tale to get straight.

  “Ah. ’Tis almost too convenient.”

  “Um, I think it’s too early for that line… Anyway, Hachikuji left her backpack in my room yesterday, and she was looking for me in order to get it back… In order to return it, we headed to my house together, in a friendly, friendly, so very friendly manner.”

  “Why art thou emphasizing the friendliness?”

  “…”

  I wasn’t going to tell her that Hachikuji’s utterances today betrayed an odd antipathy toward me. I had nothing whatsoever to gain from showing my partner (any more than I already have) just how fragile my heart is.

  “And, well,” I said, “we didn’t run into any trouble in particular up to that point. I was able to ret
urn her backpack normally… I handed over to Hachikuji, who waited outside my house, a backpack that hadn’t been searched through at all.”

  “Every aspect of thy story exudes remorse. ’Tis as if I’m conversing with a sordid, petty criminal.”

  “Can you not compare your partner to a petty criminal? Wait, how far did I get into the story?”

  “Up to where ye schemed to bring her into thy home somehow.”

  “Right, and just as I was about to break out every trick in the book…nope. I never said anything of the sort. As any older person would for a younger person, I kindly offered to take her out to lunch, to promote her physical development.”

  “Yet a ghost shan’t ever develop. And ’twas only fast food.”

  How was she so sure it was fast food? How was she able to read me so well? Way too sharp of her.

  “And that’s when─it appeared out of nowhere,” I said, lowering my voice.

  Not even I could mix jokes into the story from here on─suddenly, the Darkness appeared near us.

  Our immediate flight. The chase.

  How we were saved by Ononoki, who just happened to be passing by, and finally, how we got away from the scene with the Disengagement Edition of her Unlimited Rulebook─I eloquently, if I do say so myself, rattled off everything that happened, speeding through to the end.

  I’d hoped recounting the story would help me get it straight, and as you might expect, I was completely wrong. If anything, the more I talked, the more confused I became.

  Now that I thought about it, even needing to run away screaming with Hachikuji seemed dubious… Instead of telling a jumbled story to Shinobu, who must still be only half-awake, shouldn’t I go home and call Senjogahara and Hanekawa to apologize? That’s how dubious it all started to seem.

  “…There we have it, but what do you think? If it doesn’t bring anything to mind, it doesn’t bring anything to mind, of course,” I naturally started sounding deferential by the end. You know, I think I even felt a little embarrassed.

  “…”

  Yet─despite my almost servile attitude, Shinobu met me with a serious look. There wasn’t a hint of her trademark gruesome smile.

  Actually, the more she heard my story, the more I spoke about the Darkness, the more her expression turned grim.

  She looked like she was enjoying my story at first…but by the time I got to the end, she almost seemed mad at me.

  Could she have been thinking, What a tedious account ye’ve forced upon my ears, brat, ’tis a vulgar ghost story, no tale of an aberration…?

  I mean, I guess I’d get mad, too, if someone woke me up while I was sleeping to tell me about some weird hallucination that wasn’t particularly harmful─

  “What a tedious account ye’ve forced upon my ears, brat.”

  Then, as I was thinking so, she spoke the exact line I thought she might─but the nuance was a little different than expected.

  Pretty different, in fact.

  “─Ye’ve reminded me of something unpleasant.”

  “Hm?”

  “No… I am merely venting. The responsibility lies not with thee… If anything, this is my fate. Or perhaps my karma… Then the one it was after was…”

  Shinobu mumbled on, not making any sense. She looked lost in thought…or rather like she was trying to remember something.

  If it were still available to her, she might have used that mnemonic technique of hers and stuck a hand in her head and rummaged around her brain.

  “What, Shinobu… So you have some idea what it is?”

  “Hm? Some idea… Aye, I do… Nay, I am uncertain as to whether I can say that I do…”

  Indecisive words─rare for Shinobu, whose stock in trade was speaking directly to the point of having a declaration habit.

  Then again, recently…during our time travel, she sometimes did show a similar indecisive attitude, but we’re talking different cases here.

  This time, all she’d done was sleep in my shadows.

  “What’s the matter, Shinobu? We promised not to keep secrets from each other, remember? If you know something, then tell me. It means you have an idea if you’re acting that way, right? You must know what this thing that I’m calling the Darkness really is.”

  What kind of aberration it is.

  You must know─

  I ended up hounding her with my questions, but neither surprised nor intimidated by my vehemence, she said, “Well,” maintaining her ambiguous demeanor. “If thy question is whether I know, then I suppose I do.”

  Some part of Shinobu’s attitude, however, still felt like…anger? Wrath? At first, I’d thought she was mad at me, but that wasn’t it, she seemed to be irritated by something more undefined.

  “Tsk… What a bother. Thinking upon what is to come makes me naught but melancholic… Why must I encounter this trouble after, and I say this without exaggeration, saving the world? But this, too, must be my lot…”

  “Um, like I was saying, Shinobu─”

  “I know not.”

  Her expression clearing at a moment’s notice, as if she’d taken all of the threads of emotion tangled around in her and snipped them loose at once, she turned toward me and spoke those words. Quite the opposite of what she’d said earlier.

  “What? But… You just told me that if the question is whether you know, you do.”

  “I mean I’ve no clue what kind of aberration it is.”

  “Huh?”

  “As ye’ve half-noticed thyself, this Darkness is no aberration─the Hawaiian-shirted boy would likely say the same. That ’tis no aberration─that ’tis not on the order of a mere aberration.”

  “…?”

  Well, yeah, maybe Shinobu’s answer wasn’t that surprising. I, myself, had wondered if the Darkness really was an aberration… I thought it could be something else, a different kind of phenomenon.

  So it wasn’t anything to be surprised by.

  It wasn’t─but it certainly didn’t mean I could go, Ahhh, I see. What a relief, case closed!

  To begin with, the way Shinobu put it was weird─for her, the king of aberrations, to say that it wasn’t on the order of “a mere” aberration?

  “My goodness… What a hassle. Nay, I’m appalled. That absurd phenomenon─had yet to end?”

  “Yet to end? What do you mean, had yet─”

  “That phenomenon has no name.”

  No room for argument.

  Whether she was finally reclaiming her mojo or just finally waking up, she said it with no room for argument.

  A declaration.

  “It, which ye term the Darkness, is something I have seen in the past─and that is what I’ve recalled.”

  “Recalled… You did say you were reminded of something unpleasant… But by past, how long ago do you mean?”

  “Four hundred years, mayhap.”

  “Four hundred years? Isn’t that when─”

  “Indeed,” confirmed Shinobu.

  Soberly, solemnly─putting aside the assertive tone, such an expression was extremely rare on her.

  “When I last visited this land.”

  “…”

  “In other words─when I created my first thrall.”

  Back then.

  I was caught up in that Darkness─Shinobu said.

  “Nay─I suppose I should say swallowed up.”

  “Swallowed up─”

  “Shamefully enough.”

  I was young then, she explained, despite looking like a little girl.

  “Hm. I feel no nostalgia at all─nor the desire to speak of this, but under the circumstances I suppose that is not an option. Now that it has appeared, doing naught about it could, in the worst case─bring ruin to the entire town.”

  “T-Town?”

  And so they began.

  Shinobu Oshino─scratch that.

  The iron-blooded, hot-blooded, yet cold-blooded vampire.

  Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade’s recollections, from four hundred years a
go, like it was better late than never.

  007

  “Now, then. ’Tis been quite some time since I’ve last thought of those days. Once one reaches my age, new memories are a rarity─to say that I live only in the moment would be a nice-sounding way to put it, but really, ’tis a transient, hedonistic existence.