by Nisioisin
“Anyway, I don’t think it’s something we can figure out based on past cases, kind monster sir… After all, you’re a mockery of a vampire, not a real vampire. My personal view is that since you’re practically human, you shouldn’t have any trouble begetting a child.”
“Begetting…”
That word.
It sounded both indirect and very to the point.
“If it was with a human, I’m sure the child that’s born would be more human than you, at least… Oh, kind monster sir, I’m sorry.”
“Huh?” I tilted my head when Ononoki apologized to me out of the blue. Did she make some kind of faux pas just now?
“I was assuming that you’d have a family with a human woman, but that’s not necessarily going to be the case. There was the possibility that you’d have one with the Aberration Slayer. In that case─”
“Stop it. Talking about begetting a child with a little girl is enough to creep even me out.”
“Fine, then we’ll use my humble self as an example. Though it would be an instance of necrophilia.”
“Come on, you should be using Hachikuji as the example here.”
“Why would you be fine with me?!”
In any case, down the mountains we descended, loaded with unresolved anxieties─there was no sign of any town or village no matter how many hours we walked, even after dawn. But during one of our many breaks (I lost count of how many we took), we found ourselves blessed by a stroke of good luck: a single bar but a bar all the same of reception on my cell phone.
Of course, I knew that sometimes you could accidentally pick up some kind of signal when you were actually still out of service… I heard there were spots like that in the mountains, so while talking might be hard, I might at least manage to get out a text message if I tried enough times.
“You said we could get in touch with Kagenui by texting, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I forget, Ononoki. Do you carry a cell phone?”
“No… I don’t, just in case. I do remember her contact info, though.”
“…”
Carrying a cell phone just in case would make sense, but I didn’t quite understand why you wouldn’t carry one just in case… In other words, was she wary of dropping her phone or having it stolen?
If so, Ononoki lived in an even harsher world than I’d imagined─she couldn’t so much as walk around with a communication tool?
I wanted to continue down the line of thought if I could, but I didn’t have room for it─I just punched the string of letters and numbers Ononoki gave into my cell and thought about what a cold, uncaring person I am.
“What should the message say?”
“Make sure it includes our secret phrase… Oh, and the cipher saying you’ll wait for her reply. It’s probably better if you don’t include any specifics. She might not want to deal with us if she suspects that we’re in too much trouble.”
“Is she that hardhearted? If anything, I thought she was the type to come charging head-first into a dangerous situation.”
“That’s only when she’s dealing with immortal aberrations…”
Other times, Sis is just a regular person for the most part, Ononoki said. “And actually, it’d be dangerous if she came charging head-first. If my sister is too excited when she arrives, you might end up getting exterminated, kind monster sir─oh, or maybe not. You’re losing your power right now, aren’t you…”
“In any case, I’d rather not make any more enemies than I already have…”
I know I shouldn’t frame it this way, but while I was at it, I also sent messages to Senjogahara, Hanekawa, Karen, and Tsukihi to let them know that I was okay.
Though I wasn’t in reality, they’d feel at ease knowing that I was in a situation where I could text them, at least.
I didn’t want them to worry about me.
Heh. I’d become a considerate kind of guy.
Sending five texts in total took a bit of time, but I figured I’d think of it as a nice little break.
“Mister Araragi.”
“What, Hachikuji?”
“I realize it’s too late to be saying this, but the email you sent to Miss Hanekawa and the others read ‘Dot worry.’”
“Yeah, it is too late! Why didn’t you tell me earlier?!”
“I don’t know if you want them to worry or not, but the normal reaction to a message written that poorly would be to worry…”
“…”
Hmm.
It’s true that you’d be hard-pressed to call me an expert at using cell phones, but what an elementary blunder…
I turned off my phone, not to cut our conversation short or to avoid follow-up questions from Hanekawa and the others, but to preserve some of my valuable battery power. We then continued down the mountain, taking occasional breaks, and eventually reached the bottom the next morning.
August twenty-third, in other words.
Climbing down ended up taking more than a full day─and it was less like climbing all the way down the mountain and more like reaching a village within the mountains─in any case, we were wiped out.
It wasn’t just my legs that felt stiff, but my whole body.
Was this how branches always felt? Must be tough.
Since we had been hiking unsure when the Darkness might show up out of nowhere, our level of mental exhaustion was incredible as well─it never did, fortunately, but the fact that it didn’t meant that it might have appeared where Shinobu was, fomenting its own kind of anxiety.
“Well, kind monster sir, I guess the fact that we didn’t run into a bear or anything that deep in the mountains should be reason enough for celebration… How’s the reception on your cell phone?”
“I tried turning it on, but…hm, still not much. At least it’s not out of service.”
“I guess we got lucky earlier.”
“I don’t know about that. It looks like we haven’t gotten a reply from Kagenui.”
That I hadn’t gotten any from Hanekawa or the other girls was weighing on my mind as well… Were they mad after all? Maybe they assumed I was dead already.
“Hmm… In that case, it might just be better to go ahead and call her. We can bother one of the homes around here and ask to use their phone. If cell reception is weak here, they must have land lines.”
“Yeah…” I said, glancing at Hachikuji on my back─I was carrying her now after she’d run out of stamina and willpower halfway through.
Ononoki had her backpack on.
Now that I was back to normal, walking around with someone on my back was pretty tough, even if that someone was a ten-year-old girl… Actually, I doubt I’d have been able to carry anyone on my back down a mountain unless she was a ten-year-old girl.
What exactly about that was normal?
I was living dangerously.
“Will a direct call reach Kagenui if she’s done with work by now?”
“Well, it will sometimes, and it won’t at others… It’s pretty random.”
“What do you mean, random?”
“My sister always says that it’s risky to fall into patterns as you go about your life.”
“…”
Wondering about that, I walked down the unpaved path into the village─only a little bit further. In fact, I was just glad there was a path at all. We’d been walking on dirt and stones until just moments earlier.
“Now that you mention it, Oshino didn’t establish any patterns in his life either─is that like some kind of shared rule amongst their old occult research club?”
Oshino and Kagenui had gone to college together where they belonged to the same club─it also counted Kaiki among its members.
How serious of a lineup could you get?
Of course, while they said they were researching the occult, it sounds like they just played Japanese chess all the time.
“But shogi seems to me like a game where established tactics are especially important… Maybe that’s just a precon
ception of mine?”
“Izuko Gaen, too,” Ononoki muttered. “Now that you mention it, she seems to have been a member as well.”
“What? Really? So she knows Oshino, too─Oshino and Kaiki… That’s kind of a strange connection.”
“I think I heard she was their senior. From my sister… She said Izuko Gaen was a mean-spirited senior.”
“She’s mean-spirited?”
I couldn’t believe it.
Wasn’t there a single person in that club with a decent personality?
“Yeah. I heard her personality was worse than my sister’s, worse than that Oshino guy’s, and worse than Kaiki’s.”
“Can someone like that be allowed to exist? Are you sure she’s not imaginary?”
If I was being honest, I didn’t want to ask such a person for help, now that I’d heard about her… I wished I hadn’t.
“Can we find a residential map? Probably not here. Where the heck am I?”
“You sound like Ryoga Hibiki saying that.”
“Why do you even know.”
“As weak as the signal is, you’re getting something, right? In that case, can’t you use your GPS to figure out where we are?”
“I don’t really know how that kind of thing works… I just know how to use my phone as a phone.”
“Yes, you do even mess up your texts. Dot worry.”
“You’d better not turn that into a running joke…”
But now, I wanted them to worry.
I hadn’t thought it would take this long to climb down the mountain… To be honest, I was starving for some Senjogahara, Hanekawa, and little sisters in my life.
Given our situation, I couldn’t quite lose myself in cheerful banter with Hachikuji, either… My only hope was Ononoki now.
But Ononoki was cold.
Cold as a corpse.
She was a frightening tween girl whose most fundamental skill was her ability to ignore things.
“Which house should we go to for a phone?”
“A lot of these homes don’t have door phones… Which is better, though, a home with a door phone, or knocking right on their front door… I guess you’d go with the latter if you were a salesman.”
Which was exactly why I felt so guilty.
The fact that I was planning this out made it seem like I was doing something wrong. Well, wrong might be an overstatement, but something devious…
No, this was quite frankly no time to be prevaricating… It didn’t matter who answered, I needed to sound sincere so they’d lend me their phone one way or another.
So I could be reunited with my partner.
My lifelong partner.
“Still, I’d prefer a home with a young girl, preferably in her teens… It’d make it easier to convince her.”
“What a monstrosity of a line, kind monster sir. It seems that the monstrous parts of you are still alive and well. Bravo, well done.”
We ended up picking a home more or less at random, one that kind of seemed like it had a nice entrance gate─I’d wanted to try the first home we reached, but we had to give up after their pet dog went wild barking at us.
The home didn’t have a door phone, so I knocked on the front door.
“Excuse me. I’m a traveler. Please give me something to eat… Sorry, no, um, could you please let me borrow your phone─”
I explained what I was doing there, nearly spilling how I truly felt (It was easier for me to get hungry now that my vampiric nature was fading. I’d gnawed on twigs in the mountains to keep my hunger at bay, though).
I continued to knock.
“Excuse me, I’m a traveler─”
I continued to knock, thinking about just how suspicious my introduction sounded.
“I’ll be right there~”
But no matter how suspicious my knocking, it couldn’t have been anywhere close to the suspicion I felt at hearing the terribly aloof reply.
It was a very young voice compared to the home’s appearance.
Very young, though not in its teens─but I wasn’t tired enough to start thinking that I’d come across an opportunity or something.
“Thanks for waiting!” the voice said before the door opened.
It rattled to the side on unsteady rails.
Just as I expected, I guess─the person there was young.
A woman in her late twenties─and she had a youthful sense of fashion, too.
She wore a baseball cap turned to the side, baggy jeans, an XL, no, XXL-or-so-sized shirt, and accessories all over her body, necklaces, rings, et cetera─I was kind of surprised that she wasn’t wearing sunglasses.
She didn’t match the home’s aged façade at all.
If you’ll forgive me for sounding rude, she looked really fishy.
“Um…”
“Actually, while I said ‘thanks for waiting,’ I guess I was the one doing the waiting─nice to meet you,” the peculiar woman remarked jokingly as she introduced herself with a smile. “I’m Izuko Gaen. The lady who knows everything.”
028
The home obviously wasn’t Gaen’s registered domicile─coincidences that big don’t happen.
It was exactly like she said. Gaen had been…
“Waiting.”
For whom? For us─of course.
I think it goes without saying that her words made me think of Oshino.
“It’s amazing just how kind countryfolk are. When I told these people I was here waiting, they invited me in and said, ‘Well, in that case, why don’t you have something to eat?’ I don’t know what ‘case’ they were talking about─oh, it’s enough to make you go soft. Not even Kaiki would try to defraud the people here─”
“Where are we?” I inquired as we headed back towards the mountains─but in fact there was something else I wanted to ask her. What I needed to ask─was why she knew we’d knock on the door of that home.
“Don’t tell me you can’t use an iPhone, Araragi. Here, just take a look. We’re right here, this dot. If you’re curious, that means we’re two prefectures away from your town.”
“That’s closer than I imagined…”
I wasn’t sure how to feel.
Yes, I was relieved that I’d be able to take a train home… I was scared of airplanes since I’d never been on one, and I didn’t have the money to travel by air in the first place.
“Want to check on an Android?” Gaen said, taking a second phone out of another pocket. “Oh, this one’s out of service─too bad.”
“How many cell phones do you have?”
“These are called smartphones. I have other cell phones, too. I guess five in total?”
“…”
While her words had just reminded me of Oshino, Gaen was very unlike him in that she was pretty tech-literate.
What was her deal?
Still, I did have to admit that she felt like his senior─except for the fact that she looked too young for that…
“Th-Then I guess you can instantly look up our way home using that smartphone, too?”
“Hmm, well. I guess it could do that, if everything works out right─yes, if everything does─”
For whatever reason, Gaen tried to dodge my wishful thinking.
“Um, Miss Gaen…”
“Oh, whatever. We can skip the greetings─it’s not like we don’t know each other.”
She said this with a comforting smile, but she did know it was our first time meeting, right?
I couldn’t know someone less.
“That’s not true. You knowing about me is one thing, but I know about you─didn’t I tell you already? I know everything─so I’d at least know every detail about you.”
“…”
“Okay, let’s talk around here,” Gaen said, sitting down on an old bench that had been placed, who knows why, near the base of the mountain we’d just descended.
Almost as if she knew it’d be there─she sat down on this bench that blended into the scenery so well that I’d failed to not
ice it when I’d passed it by earlier.