by Nisioisin
It almost felt like an accusation─even an interrogation, like she really did have something against me.
Why?
What was her problem with me?
“I thought about it a lot back when I was in middle school. Never found an answer, though.”
“I’ve thought about it constantly since the day I was born. Or more precisely, since the day I died? No, I’ve thought about it constantly since the day I was reborn. About how there must be some kind of meaning─and if not, how I perhaps shouldn’t be here.”
“…”
Because you’re an aberration.
Because you’re abnormal, irrational.
Every aberration has its reasons─was that something that Mèmè Oshino said?
Even if humans aren’t born for any reason, aberrations are…
“Or maybe it’s really the meaning of my death. I thought maybe you’d be able to answer me. You seemed to have some pretty badass stuff to say to sister, after all.”
“No…I don’t have an answer to that,” I said, choosing my words carefully. I said to the expressionless aberration sitting next to me eating ice cream and asking tough questions, “I don’t think Hachikuji could answer you, either. If that’s the reason you asked me how she became a ghost.”
“Of course that’s why.”
“She didn’t become a ghost because she wanted to, just like I didn’t become a vampire because I wanted to. Things simply happened as they did, that’s all.”
“Sure, same for me.”
“Not really. It sounds like in your case, it was thanks to Ms. Kagenui’s resolute intent.”
“Sister’s…”
“It didn’t simply happen… It wasn’t just the way things went, there was resolute intent. Although what her intent was, I can’t even begin to imagine… Is it really right for an immortal-hunting ghostbuster to go around raising the dead, anyway?” When she’s asked why she specializes in immortal aberrations, apparently Kagenui replies, Because there’s no such thing as going too far─(in my opinion, she did go too far even so)─and yet Ononoki, a familiar in her service, has experienced death. “Maybe raising the dead doesn’t create an immortal aberration? Feels like an arbitrary, or…convenient rationale.”
“It’s like I told you. When a dead human comes back to life, that’s very much not immortality.”
Which is why I want to know, she continued.
The reason I came back to life.
The reason I was reborn.
“Why sister─resurrected me.”
“I can’t answer that question, but I really don’t think you’d be satisfied whatever the reason, or meaning,” I said. This was a problem that didn’t have a correct solution, but at least─I could give a sincere answer. I said sincerely, “There are no satisfying answers to the big questions. Because life is just a parade of absurdities.”
Even if you haven’t become an aberration.
Regular life is preposterous enough.
Total incomprehensibility─that’s the world for you.
“Maybe,” conceded Ononoki. “It may well be that the world is absurd and preposterous. But if so, is there any reason to keep on living in such a world through death, through rebirth…besides some lingering attachment? That’s what I wonder.”
Ononoki had finished her ice cream bar─but kept chewing on the stick as if she was making sure of the flavor.
Bad manners, just like a kid.
And expressionless, as always.
But perhaps it also signified that she was getting irritated.
She added, “It feels like when a series that should have ended just keeps grinding along forever, like you’ve already watched the final episode but suddenly there’s a sequel.”
“What on earth could you be referring to…”
Why beat yourself up about it?
Why not just call it Season Two?
“I just can’t bear to watch a show go on when it seemed like it had wrapped up so nicely. Don’t you agree, kind monster sir?”
“Do I agree?”
That was a hard question to answer.
For a variety of reasons.
“If you’re asking me whether it’s better to go out on a high note or to tarnish your legacy, I’d go with the former, but maybe that’s just me. Speaking for myself, it’s not like nothing good has happened since I became a vampire.”
No.
In fact, there’ve been plenty of good things.
It terrifies me to imagine my life ending with spring break─what a lonely life that would have been.
I didn’t become close with Senjogahara or Kanbaru until after I became a vampire─and if I had died during spring break, I never would have been reunited with Sengoku.
And.
Meeting Hachikuji─
“So, what you’re saying, kind monster sir, is that Hachikuji became a ghost so she could get to know you.”
“No, it’s not like that at all… How does that figure? She had her own reasons, she got lost, lost in this world─though she already dealt with those reasons, achieved her goal, over three months ago…”
“Oh yeah? Then why is she still hanging around as a ghost? If she doesn’t have a reason, doesn’t have any lingering attachments?”
“Well…”
I really don’t know anything about that.
Seems like she herself doesn’t, either.
Or maybe it’s just an act.
“Come to think of it, my beloved class president said something… What was it, what was the occasion… That all life, not just human life, is the result of someone, or something’s, fervent desire.”
“The result of─desire.”
“Whatever it is, the feeling ‘I want that to exist’ gave birth to it─so saying you wish you hadn’t been born, or were different, misses the point entirely. Even if it’s not the result of your desire, the fact that it is there, in the way it is there, is the fulfillment of someone’s desire.” Was it over spring break? Or Golden Week? Or maybe after the culture festival? Tsubasa Hanekawa─said something like that. “A car driving along a road is there because someone wanted there to be a car─an airplane flying through the sky is there because someone wanted to fly through the sky.”
Ononoki was here because a violent onmyoji wanted her to come back to life.
Although I’d said things just happened as they did, that it was just the way they went, in that sense, I became a vampire because somebody wanted me to.
And Hachikuji─Hachikuji…
What about Hachikuji?
Even if she had been waylaid by a snail─of her own volition.
The fact that she is as she is now─whose desire─was being fulfilled─her own, in the end?
Or.
Then again.
“Reeks of hypocrisy, don’t it?”
Seemed like Ononoki wasn’t satisfied, after all. She was so unsatisfied that her speech got cruder.
Don’t say “don’t it.”
Young lady.
“I guess it’s less hypocritical than preachy. Just like something a class president would say. She should be class president for life, don’cha think?”
“Who’re you supposed to be? Go back to the way you normally talk.”
“Everything is the result of somebody’s desire─well, maybe it is. Even wars start because someone wants them to. It’s not just battle mania like with sister; someone’s profiting. Don’t you think?”
“Well… If you insist on putting it unpleasantly, then yeah, something like that.”
“Same goes for Backpack Girl.”
“Well,” I replied honestly, giving voice to what I’d been thinking, “I really don’t know. But by that logic, it must be the result of someone’s desire. Whether it’s an aberration or a ghost, nothing is born unless someone wants it to be.”
“Hmmm.”
Still sounds hypocritical, Ononoki objected.
“All right then, kind monster sir. Next time you see that girl, ask her for
me. When you return her backpack, or on your next bedroom date.”
“Ask her what for you?”
“Haven’t we been over this?” Standing up, Ononoki said, “Whether she’s happy as a ghost.”
Like it was time for her close-up, she said it with a dashing look.
Still expressionless, of course.
003
In the end, I never found Hachikuji.
In the end, Ononoki asked me for directions, and even after we parted (that is, after her remark “I always want something salty after I eat something sweet” prompted me to buy her a rice cracker at the same store in the way of a souvenir. What an expensive young girl), I kept on searching for Hachikuji. But she eluded my grasp, right down to the tips of her pigtails.
Seemed like she’d already gone home.
Or─gone home doesn’t sound quite right, seeing as she had neither a home to go to nor a way to get there.
So should I simply say she went?
Or that she left?
Or even, bluntly, she vanished?
Makes me sad to think about.
Helplessly sad.
It wasn’t because of Ononoki’s interrogation─I was always thinking about it. All the time.
No matter how brave a face she put on, no matter how sunny her disposition, those feelings were headed down a one-way street, not even passing by anything, and Mayoi Hachikuji, that no-longer-living girl, was steeped in tragedy.
After all is said and done.
Death is harsh.
Death is a massive, towering barrier.
Take me, for instance. Over spring break when a vampire sucked my blood and I was stripped of my humanity, I gained an absurd amount of power and became absurdly weak in the face of the sun or a crucifix, and even now the after-effects linger absurdly in my body, and I keep absurdly engaging these aberrations─that’s not at all what I’d call happiness.
Am I happy? I can’t say that I am.
Of course, this body has saved my life, and to be honest those after-effects do come in handy─but there’s no way around it, misery is misery.
I was maybe putting on a bit of a show for Ononoki when I said there were good things about it, and there really had been good things, but you still can’t just spin misery into joy─not every cloud has a silver lining.
The sadness of giving up your humanity─I understand it better than anyone.
But after-effects and partial immortality aside, at least I still have a body.
I possess flesh.
Hachikuji doesn’t even have that.
Let alone a body and a mind─it’s doubtful that she even has whatever it is that we call our heart.
If anything, I’d call her a shadow.
Yes.
All she has is her abnormality, which is why her existence is irrational.
She is an aberration.
Not a living aberration─a dead aberration.
On that Mother’s Day when I started going out with Senjogahara, Hachikuji was released from a sort of curse thanks to Oshino’s clever scheme, but nevertheless, her current situation still doesn’t seem proper.
I have no idea what to think about it.
No idea at all.
Passing on doesn’t necessarily mean happiness for a ghost─I don’t really know, but everyone seems to think it’s inevitable, that it’s a milestone like getting married or getting a job or something, but maybe it isn’t like that at all.
Wandering isn’t always bad.
It can be good to lose your way.
It suits some people, like Oshino, to drift forever─and maybe I’m even less moored to any religious outlook since I became a half vampire, but I can’t help thinking that, for Hachikuji, to pass on is no blessing.
Depending on how you look at it, the idea that it’s proper to pass on is really high-handed.
In fact, going on as a kind of guardian angel for the town as she has been might be a form of happiness.
It’s meaningless to insist on what’s proper. What’s the point?
At least now, she seems to be having fun.
She seems happy.
…And I do understand how meaningless it is to think about all this stuff.
What I think, how I feel.
What I may know has nothing to do with it.
I’m not speaking rhetorically, I’m not being tactful. They really, truly have nothing to do with it.
What matters is how Hachikuji feels─what she thinks about her situation, what she’s feeling, that’s what’s crucial. How I feel, or even how Hanekawa (who’s quite taken with her) feels, is all completely irrelevant.
It’s sad.
Just how irrelevant it is.
If she enjoys going on not as a place-bound ghost but as a wandering ghost, chatting with people who talk to her on the street─that’s good enough for me.
No need for anyone to butt in with his opinion.
That expert I mixed it up with the other day, Ononoki’s “sister” and so-called embodiment of “justice” Yozuru Kagenui, sees “immortal aberrations” like vampires as her enemy─and roundly condemned “it” as wrong.
She may have a point.
I certainly didn’t get it when we were facing each other, but looking at it more calmly now, I understand what she was trying to say.
Not because Ononoki is cute─I do think so, deep down.
Whether I want to or not.
It’s so simple, even I can comprehend it.
Neither extreme logic nor extreme sentimentality yields great meaning─if you probe people’s principles to their conclusions, you arrive at “good things are good” and “bad things are bad.”
At the very least, I don’t want anyone to pity me for this half-immortal body, much less commiserate with me.
The only person who’s allowed to grieve for me is me.
So if a technocrat like Kagenui, or Oshino, showed up─or maybe this example will be easier to understand─if that God guy showed up and said, “I’ll turn you back into a proper human being”─I would just silently shake my head. Thanks but no thanks. To put it bluntly, that would be an unwelcome gift.
I’ve set myself on this path.
A lifetime’s burden, a lifetime’s journey.
Not even God can tell me otherwise.
So─it’s the same with Hachikuji.
Of course, it would be another story if she asked me to help her fix her current situation, but─I really have no idea what she thinks, about anything.
Not a thing.
Not one iota of mutual understanding has come out of our pleasant banter and fun talk.
The most important question remains unasked.
I’m sure I won’t be able to ask her the question Ononoki wants me to─I can’t ask her anything.
Because she won’t tell me anything.
What do you want to do?
What are you feeling?
Isn’t there anything I can do for you? I so desperately want to know the answers, but the questions remain unasked.
I want to help you fulfill your wishes, but─
“Then help her fulfill them. Why the pretense of concern, thou cretin? Art thou still going through puberty?”
“…”
After dinner I went back to my room to think things over, and before I knew it, what you might call the dead of night had arrived, and a little blond vampire girl had appeared right in front of me, like a light with a sensor that switches on automatically come dark.
Well just make yourself at home, why don’t you.
Not a speck remained of her original taciturn, inactive character.
“Feh, I couldn’t bear to watch. Bringing that girl over here, making kissy face all day long.”
“Enough with the outdated lingo.”
“A thousand pardons. My Edo-period habits die hard.”
“Not that outdated.”
“Wilt thou hear my impression of Ietsugu Tokugawa?”
“Who? I don’t kno
w anything about the, what, seventh Tokugawa shogun?”