Onimonogatari

by Nisioisin

  “Oh, by the way. Those ‘bad things’ not gathering during the year that Shinobu lived as a god doesn’t have any direct connection to the non-existence─it was just because she wasn’t there as a vampire.

  “No one witnessed Shinobu as a vampire, so she was able to escape those bad things’ notice too─that’s all.

  “In fact, it’d have been good if ‘they’ had come─but in any case, that’s it for my explanation.

  “The witnesses were eliminated.

  “No one was left to testify.

  “And the culprit’s lie was exposed─case closed.

  “What’s wrong with calling yourself a god? Is it really so bad that it warrants hundreds of people disappearing? How am I supposed to answer that?

  “Those are just the rules.

  “An aberration must never falsify itself.

  “You sometimes hear about the characters in novels or manga starting ‘to move on their own,’ but what I’m saying is that doing so is against the rules in this case.

  “I’m not sure what you think complaining about the rules is going to get you. It’s not like I have the power to change them, I just know them.

  “So in the end, Shinobu was judged.

  “I personally think the punishment far outweighed the lie she told, considering how her life unfolded after that.

  “No─it’s true that she just barely avoided her punishment, or her judgment, before it was handed down, but it’s also a kind of punishment and judgment to have every human around who’s attached to you slaughtered. It’s terrible enough to make you abandon your chastity.

  “She pretended to be a god and so met divine punishment─his words might have sounded like spite, but they were true in the end.

  “But that’s all over now.

  “It’s in the past─and you’re more interested in the present, right?

  “There’s no reason for Shinobu to be targeted now─while she’s lost her vampiric nature and can’t use much of her power, it’s not because she’s lying. That’s her actual power level. She’s not going to be targeted by the nonbeing.

  “It’s against the rules to falsify yourself, but it’s fine to change. You can change your characterization.

  “So she’s safe.

  “In that case you must know─who isn’t safe?

  “Mayoi Hachikuji.

  “It’s you─my little pretender.

  “So why don’t you start by getting up from your pretend nap!”

  031

  “Eek!” yelped Hachikuji.

  She jumped awake at Gaen’s sudden shout, which seemed to fill the air around us.

  No─Hachikuji must have already been awake.

  The whole time, just like Gaen said─or at least, at some point, she’d started to pretend that she hadn’t awoken yet. Which would mean─

  If she was only pretending to be asleep.

  If she was pretending to be asleep, just like the time I put my hands all over her body─

  “Oh, sorry to surprise you, Mayoi. I didn’t mean to say that so loud. It’s just that it’d have been a real issue if you kept pretending to be asleep like that.”

  “…”

  Hachikuji paused for a moment, still looking surprised.

  “Um─” she said. “Mister Araragi?”

  “It’s okay.”

  Stopping Hachikuji as she tried to say something, I grabbed her hand.

  No─we held hands.

  “Calm down. I don’t know what’s going on here, but I, at least, am on your side.”

  “Okay,” Hachikuji nodded. I nearly wanted to put her on my lap and hug her the way Gaen was doing with Ononoki.

  “Come on, you sound like you’re making me out to be the bad guy or something. Cut me some slack, Koyomin, and you too, Mayoi. I’m on your side, too,” a cheery Gaen assured.

  While her honesty wasn’t suspicious the way Oshino’s was, my sense of friendship wasn’t so feeble that I’d let someone get away with calling Hachikuji a liar to her face.

  “What do you mean? What kind of lie are you accusing Hachikuji of telling?”

  “I think you know.”

  “I don’t know… Neither what you’re saying now, nor what the hell situation we’re in.”

  Now that she’d told me, I understood the utterly strange and mysterious phenomenon─the Darkness─though only tentatively. And yet─the situation hadn’t improved one bit.

  It was still full of things I didn’t understand.

  It all felt like a gigantic waste of time─if this was how it was going to be, I’d rather go straight back to my town to see Shinobu again instead of talking to Gaen.

  I wanted to see Senjogahara and Hanekawa.

  I wanted to see Karen and Tsukihi.

  At the very least.

  I didn’t want to see─this truth of hers.

  “Then I’ll tell you, like some kind of famous detective who doesn’t mind bringing about an awkward scene─it’s the lie of her being there right now.”

  “…”

  “You should have left this world to go on to the next by now. Isn’t that right, Mayoi?” Gaen said directly to Hachikuji over my head. Then, despite pulling her into the conversation, she continued before Hachikuji got a chance to speak. “And yet you continue to be there. That is the lie you continue to tell. The lie that you’re right there. That’s a pretty good reason to be upset. You wouldn’t have to be a non-existence to tell you to knock it off.”

  “A lie? That’s not what I intended…” Hachikuji said. She looked brave enough as she spoke to Gaen, not staring at the ground or getting choked up─yet Hachikuji couldn’t meet her gaze.

  She was looking away.

  Just like she was looking away from the truth.

  “It’s not what I intended at all.”

  “Like I said, it’s already a lie once you’ve caused a misunderstanding─Mayoi Hachikuji,” Gaen pressed on with ruthless cheer. “It’s as if you’re a ghost of a ghost right now─and unfortunately, the world won’t accept such meta-existences. Beings like that are fated to be swallowed up by nonbeings.”

  “A ghost─of a ghost.”

  Hachikuji repeated the words and seemed to gulp.

  If I had to guess.

  It was because they resonated so deeply─but I still had no idea what was going on.

  “Miss Gaen? Could you please explain what you mean by that?”

  “I thought I was done already─in fact, I’d like to go home if I may. But if you’re requesting even more explanations from me, I’m happy to provide them. I do love to explain things.”

  “…”

  “Mayoi Hachikuji is a ghost who died in a traffic accident eleven years ago─Mayoi Hachikuji is a snail aberration known as the Lost Cow, to be exact.”

  The Lost Cow.

  An aberration that makes people lose their way.

  An aberration that hinders you from finding your way home. An aberration─that keeps you lost, never able to reach your destination, only spinning around and around like some vortex.

  “B-But that─”

  “Yes. But that was something that you, your girlfriend, and that novice Mèmè resolved for her─the Lost Cow Mayoi no longer had to be lost,” Gaen said. “And yet─that child is still there. What is that if not a lie?”

  “…”

  Well, sure.

  Everyone thought there was something weird about that.

  We wondered if that kind of thing really happened.

  It wasn’t as if we didn’t have our questions about Hachikuji staying for so long in our town, on its streets, when she should have passed on to the next world─but we’d all put our doubts aside.

  Actually, we didn’t even see it as a problem.

  We thought it was no problem at all and swallowed Hachikuji’s explanation that she’d been promoted posthumously.

  I mean, it wouldn’t have been good for some people otherwise.

  It seemed like a good thing, if anything─like
fun.

  I had fun chatting with Hachikuji when I met her on the street.

  That’s why─

  “That’s why it can’t happen,” Gaen declared. “Do you really think the world is going to allow something that convenient? What a ridiculous, happy end. Nearly hypocritical. I’ll admit that there are red lies and white lies in the world. I know that very well. But you see, Koyomin─there’s no such thing as an acceptable lie.”

  Not in face of the truth. Not in face of the rules, Gaen added.

  “That child is telling a lie by existing and happily chatting away with all of you─and that’s not acceptable.”

  “Why not…”

  “I’m not saying that I find it unacceptable. The world does─sure, the rules might change one day, but that’s how it is right now.”

  “…”

  “Aberrations aren’t allowed to stray much from their characterization─they can’t act like another aberration or do something that would cause them to be mistaken for one.”

  Ultimately.

  Ultimately, Mayoi Hachikuji is nothing but a Lost Cow.

  “I’m sure everything would have been fine if she’d taken off that backpack and turned into a plain ghost, the way a shellfish can devolve out of its shell─but she needs to send people astray if she’s a Lost Cow. She’s not, though. Not since you saved her─”

  I went to Senjogahara’s home together with Hachikuji.

  I never got lost when I was with Hachikuji.

  In fact─she’d sometimes shown me the way.

  That’s why I thought that Hachikuji was no longer a Lost Cow─that’s how I’d been seeing her.

  That’s how I’d been witnessing her.

  It’s how I’d been─deceived.

  “Just look at how she fooled you─but really, that was nothing new. Didn’t this child lie to you from the very beginning, Koyomin?”

  “No. Hachikuji’s─”

  I gripped Hachikuji’s hand. I held it tight.

  “Hachikuji’s never─lied to me. Not─once.”

  “Mister Araragi…” I could hear Hachikuji mutter behind me.

  But I didn’t turn around.

  I continued to face Gaen.

  “I guess so. You’re right. My mistake,” Gaen cooly retracted her previous statement─no, her question, in fact.

  She was just asking─for my opinion.

  “I guess it was to herself─that she lied.”

  “…”

  “Whatever the case, the reasoning, the tale you tell yourself doesn’t matter to a non-existence with no will or self-awareness of its own. So long as Mayoi has strayed from a Lost Cow’s path, she’s going to be judged and punished.”

  “Judged and punished─but that’s…” I tried to push back.

  I tried to contradict Gaen’s words.

  I was trying to prove something─that Gaen wasn’t only mistaken about what she’d just said, but about everything.

  “You don’t have any proof of that─we don’t know for sure that it’s after Hachikuji.”

  “Sure, it’s not like its rules are written out somewhere and its judgments are open to the public. If we’re talking possibilities, there was of course the possibility that it was after you or Shinobu for so vaguely resembling vampires. Just like she’d said earlier.” Gaen wrapped her arms around Ononoki, who sat on her lap, the way you might a stuffed animal.

  Ononoki stayed expressionless.

  I didn’t have any idea what she was thinking.

  “But, and while it might sound like I’m harping on this, that ambiguity is different from a lie. You and Shinobu have authentically changed into new kinds of aberrations. You transformed─you were altered. So while your story may sound unbelievable, it’s not untrue. You two have been faithful to the characters you are. Which means the only liar here─is Mayoi.”

  “…”

  “Well.”

  The truth had left me pale, and Gaen placed a hand on my shoulder. She had no reservations about doing this, as if we’d been friends for a decade.

  “It’s true that there’s no physical evidence, but aren’t there lots of circumstantial ones? The Darkness never came after you while Mayoi was passed out, did it?”

  “Huh?”

  My brain couldn’t keep up with the point she was suddenly making.

  But yes. Wasn’t that true?

  Right after it’d gone ahead of us to the other side of that turn at the light, right as Ononoki saved us with her Unlimited Rulebook─Hachikuji had passed out.

  And as a result─the Darkness stopped.

  It didn’t come after us once we’d escaped using the Disengagement Edition─I wasn’t sure about the accuracy of our conjecture that the Darkness is bad at dealing with vertical motion, but that wasn’t what mattered─it simply couldn’t follow us.

  The “consciousness” known as Mayoi Hachikuji was gone for the time being.

  “Yes, and as proof, didn’t the Darkness show up even in that abandoned cram school as soon as she was awake?”

  “Then what about when we were escaping through the mountains afterwards? Was it because she was tired and sleeping a lot? If it couldn’t come after us, then─”

  No, it didn’t matter how often she slept… It wasn’t like I’d carried her on my back the whole time…

  We’d been walking together through the mountains, so deep that just standing in them wore you out─as we escaped downward, not knowing where to go─getting lost again and again─

  “Oh.”

  “Right?” Gaen nodded at my realization. “Exactly. You can’t find your way right now─regardless of Mayoi’s intentions, you don’t have any idea of how to get back home… So we could say Mayoi is fulfilling her duty as a Lost Cow in this situation. Which is why─the Darkness isn’t appearing.”

  “…”

  Gaen had said she could guarantee our safety─so that was why.

  The Darkness wouldn’t appear by Shinobu.

  Nor would it appear by Hachikuji.

  Of course─that was why, when Gaen bragged to us earlier about her smartphones, she wouldn’t share our homeward route despite showing us our current location. Because the Darkness could appear at any moment unless I continued to be lost.

  Now that I thought about it, I wasn’t even sure if she was showing me where we really were at the moment─there was an extremely good chance she’d gone ahead and fed me false info to confuse me just in case I had asked someone in the village where we were…

  Gaen was a way bigger liar than Hachikuji…

  Not that I was going to criticize her.

  Naturally, I wasn’t going to criticize Hachikuji, either.

  They hadn’t done anything wrong.

  No one had done anything wrong.

  But─this wasn’t about right or wrong.

  What this probably was about─

  “On the flip side, Koyomin… That means Mayoi would lose track of her role as an aberration again if you went back to your town and home─she’d be violating the rules and the Darkness would reactivate. While I mentioned earlier that Shinobu was really lucky, I’ve got to say all of you are pretty lucky, too. I hope it rubs off on me.”

  “So?” I asked Gaen, who was making it sound like the dust had settled and the curtain was about to fall. No─I hounded her. “So now, what am I supposed to do?”

  “Huh?” She tilted her head, confused. She truly, genuinely looked like she didn’t see why anyone would ever ask the question. “What are you supposed to do? What do you mean?”

  “Well─okay, so I understand it’s very likely that the Darkness is targeting Hachikuji.”

  “Um, we’re kind of past talking in terms of possibilities here.”

  “So the question now is how to deal with it. Even if we’re lucky enough to be avoiding the phenomenon because we’ve temporarily lost our way─that doesn’t solve the basic problem, does it? I’m trying to ask you what I need to do to take care of this Darkness─”

&
nbsp; “I already told you─well, maybe I didn’t tell you, but you should be able to figure it out based on Shinobu’s example. Right, Mayoi?”