Kabukimonogatari

by Nisioisin

  “Hold, there is one more thing.”

  “What? Don’t try to stop me now that I’ve mustered up the foolhardiness to fling my body against this black wall.”

  “Thy watch.”

  “Huh?”

  “Thy watch. The one ye affect to wear round thy right wrist even though thou art not left-handed. Give it here a moment.”

  “No need for the lengthy description, I know which watch you mean. Anyway, why do you want it?”

  “Just give it over,” Shinobu said, thrusting her hand towards me.

  I didn’t know what she intended, but, well, if I accepted that the gate (lol) was going to close in one minute like she warned, there wasn’t any time to be explaining why.

  So, just as she asked, I took off the watch that I affected to wear around my right wrist even though I’m not left-handed and placed it in the palm of her hand.

  “Hmm, an antique.”

  “It was a gift. Didn’t I tell you how I got it?”

  “Aye, thou didst.”

  Which is the whole point, added Shinobu, and no sooner than she put it in the pocket of her dress, she thrust her hand at me again.

  I cocked my head in confusion, whereupon Shinobu prompted: “Why dost thou hesitate?” Extending her arm a little further, she took my hand in hers and entwined her fingers in mine as lovers do.

  “Oh? Ohh? Ohhh?”

  “No need to be so flustered. If ye get all worked up, it will be transmitted to me and I too shall become embarrassed. We go to the toilet together, bathe together, live together round the clock.”

  “But holding hands with someone of the opposite sex will always make a sober gentleman like me get all flustered─”

  “Silence. Come, and let us leap in straightaway. My sense of time is poor, so I must needs rely upon thy skill at cornering.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  So that was it. She couldn’t do it on her own.

  I was wondering why she hadn’t made use of time travel in any number of situations before now if it was so easy for her, but if she needed a partner, then it all made sense.

  All right then, come with me, Shinobu!

  To an unknown world!

  Although the one we were jumping into was more known than unknown, being the past and all, that was how I psyched myself up as I stepped into the black wall within the torii.

  Without an inkling of what it meant.

  006

  I have to confess, when I actually stepped into that black wall─when I actually enacted that delusional nonsense about time travel, I only half believed in the daydream that I was enacting.

  What am I saying? I didn’t believe in it at all.

  Not even a tiny bit.

  I’m truly sorry if that ruins the mood.

  But it’s not like my disbelief was groundless. Nothing worth spinning into a tale, but Shinobu had spouted reckless claims any number of times, and knowing them to be reckless, I’d gone along half in fun, in what you might call the spirit of play.

  Like, I created perpetual motion.

  Or, I violated the Theory of Relativity.

  Or, Let’s go through the looking-glass.

  That kind of play, make-believe.

  So I can’t deny that I downplayed this little adventure as another one of those. The unvarnished truth is that I underestimated Shinobu.

  They say you can get used to anything.

  But nothing is as dangerous as getting used to something.

  Shinobu Oshino. I should’ve kept it in mind, but I completely forgot─that she was an aberration and the aberration slayer, a vampire, the iron-blooded, hot-blooded, yet cold-blooded Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade.

  Even if she’d lost her power.

  Even if she’d assumed the form of a little girl.

  I should have remembered what she was.

  In other words, wanting to run away from the reality that summer break was already over and I had yet to touch my homework, I’d accepted Shinobu’s proposal much as I might feel, in the face of impending exams, the urge to clean my room or take a trip─my mental state was already in the neighborhood of damn-the-torpedoes.

  You could just call it desperation.

  You could even say I’d given in to despair.

  So.

  So I didn’t for a second trust in some overblown occult nonsense like time travel.

  While I was passing under that torii, rather than believing something as convenient as “returning to yesterday,” I was thinking once more about─Shinobu would likely tell me again that I was stuck in perpetual puberty─Hachikuji.

  Today─yesterday now?─she’d made an exception and left “the streets” to come hang out in my room, but the streets were basically her home; she was always there.

  And she was always the same.

  Whether or not she, always the same, was happy─I have no idea.

  What did happiness mean for her?

  What was a “good thing” for her?

  I had absolutely no idea.

  I also had no idea what her hopes and dreams were─in fact, few people speak as little about their true feelings as she does.

  Few aberrations.

  She’d been telling nothing but lies from the start─she hadn’t told me a thing about herself.

  She kept it all inside.

  Shut away inside her shell.

  Like─a snail.

  …But who am I to talk.

  I’d been the same way.

  Before Hanekawa helped me see the light over spring break, I’d been shut away in my shell─I can’t even imagine what kind of person I would be, what my personality would be like now, if I hadn’t met her.

  I don’t even want to try and imagine.

  Of course, I wasn’t contemplating anything so outrageous as becoming to Hachikuji what Hanekawa was to me─I’d never be so presumptuous.

  That would be the height of conceit.

  However─I couldn’t keep myself from wondering if there wasn’t something I could do for her.

  It had been three months since May.

  When I thought about the solace I found in that adorable young lady─I just wanted to reciprocate a little bit.

  Now that─is an unwanted favor.

  Maybe I was being presumptuous.

  But.

  “Oi, rouse thyself! Ye must not faint at such a trifling shock.”

  “…”

  My body was being shaken─and I opened my eyes.

  I came to.

  “…Ah,” I said, “so it was all a dream.”

  “Nope.”

  Shinobu kicked me.

  She was a harsh little girl when it came to half-hearted jokes.

  She didn’t spare the rod.

  “What the hell?” I complained. “I unveil my novel, unprecedented ‘it was all a dream’ idea, and of all things, you kick me in the head with your mules?”

  “I wish I was wearing heels. Thou canst not tout such a famous ending as thine own creation.”

  “Mm… Hang on.”

  I was staring up at the sky─it seemed as though I had toppled over and was lying face up.

  The sky was pure blue─in other words, like it was daytime.

  Daytime?

  Did you say daytime?

  “Um… What time is it?”

  “’Tis twelve. Noon,” Shinobu answered while looking at my watch, which she was wearing now, since I didn’t know when. It was wrapped firmly around her right wrist─was she making fun of me, or something? “There seems to be a certain amount of deviation in time travel, after all. Perhaps ’tis impossible to go back precisely twenty-four hours.”

  “…”

  When I surveyed my surroundings─well, at that moment, laid out upside down on my back like I’d been stranded in the mountains, I was in no position to survey my surroundings. Odd. I was sure I’d been on the grounds of the Kita-Shirahebi Shrine…

  Why did it feel like I was lying on stairs?

 
“Leaping through the torii with such vigor, ’twas inevitable that ye should tumble down the steps. Kakak, I thought maybe we had switched bodies.”

  “When did you even watch that movie?”

  The scene was more famous than famous, so I knew it, but I hadn’t actually experienced the film myself.

  Did Oshino tell her about it?

  No way they had a Blu-ray player in those ruins…

  But she was right.

  I’d dashed with considerable vigor to leap through the black wall, and I guess that amounted to hurling my body down some stairs.

  Suicidal!

  “To attempt the triple jump on such steep steps… I was surprised, I admit. I must inform thee, however, that I am a victim also. I went rolling down along with thee.”

  Look, Shinobu said, pulling up the hem of her dress.

  Her kneecaps were scraped.

  Yikes, they’d scabbed over…

  “That looks painful… If it was my fault, then frankly I have no choice but to apologize.”

  “’Tis nothing for which ye need apologize.”

  What a lenient little girl.

  Though she could stop hiking up her dress already.

  “But can’t you heal up a little wound like that in no time?” I asked. “Even if you’ve lost your power, you’re still an aberration.”

  “I can heal it if I so choose, but I figured it might make for a good fetish.”

  “It’s your pitch?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “If that’s what you were thinking, then there was no point in apologizing.”

  “Which is why I told thee ’twas nothing for which ye need apologize.”

  With that, Shinobu let down the hem of her dress.

  This hid her kneecaps─and now that they were hidden, I realized how much I’d enjoyed them.

  Geez, finding a little girl’s scabs so endearing felt wrong, inhuman.

  When I looked myself over, I was scraped up a bit as well─my vampire nature was weak at present (it has its own biorhythm), so it wouldn’t heal quickly.

  Well, normally, that’s how things went. It hurt and everything, but I could take it.

  “Where are we…part way up the mountain?” The steps were like a vague game trail, with no landings (it might be more accurate to call it a bumpy ascending path), so it wasn’t immediately clear, but that seemed to be more or less the case. I’d really made a go of tumbling my way down. “Did we really succeed at traveling through time? Here in the middle of the mountains, it’s impossible to tell if there’s been any change.” The scenery wouldn’t be all that different between yesterday and today─or to be honest, it appeared completely identical.

  “Naturally we succeeded.” My doubts drew a disdainful scowl from Shinobu. “Since the day of my birth, never have I met failure.”

  “You’re one hell of a braggart.”

  Where on earth did she get that kind of confidence?

  It’s because you’ve failed over and over again that you’re in your current state─I mean, you’re sealed in the shadow of a completely average high school student in a remote eastern island nation. That, all by itself, seems like a massive, irredeemable failure for a legendary vampire.

  “Nay, it is absolutely impossible that I have failed. I guarantee it.”

  “She guarantees it…”

  “If indeed I have, then I shall have no qualms about letting thee call me Shinobu the Blunderer from now on.”

  “Don’t go making any rash promises…” You’d think someone who’s been alive so long would be mindful of the consequences of her actions. Or maybe if you’ve been alive so long, you weren’t? “Anyway…I wonder. Now that you mention it, I feel like yesterday─or I guess now the day before yesterday?─the day before yesterday, August nineteenth, the weather was clear like it is now… Are you sure I wasn’t just unconscious for twelve hours because I fell down the stairs?”

  In that case, I was in real trouble. It meant not only having skipped my homework, but totally blowing off the opening ceremony for the new term.

  Hanekawa would kill me…

  Tremble.

  “I am at a loss. Why art thou so hesitant to trust me?”

  “Yeah, I wonder.”

  “Verily, I have done things to thee, but never yet have I hurt thee by design. When I have done evil, it was ever with thy good in mind.”

  “Let’s start with the ‘done evil’ part.”

  “Rather, why dost thou speak to me as though we are equals? I am thine elder, and thou shouldst speak to me respectfully. Respectfully, I say.”

  “Now you’re saying this?”

  Granted, you’re 600 and I’m eighteen.

  But what a time to teach me to respect my elders…

  “Under the circumstances, ’tis already deplorable that thou art disposed to doubt me from the start. Before considering whether I have succeeded or failed, first thou shouldst give proper thanks for my good intentions.”

  “Huh…”

  “‘Thank you very much, Ms. Shinobu.’ Go on, try it.”

  “Your character has been all over the place right from the beginning of the series…”

  I don’t think it’s as simple as just saying that she’s an aberration who’s easily influenced by others or by her environment… Hachikuji is an aberration too, and she maintains her character unswervingly.

  Why the difference?

  “The difference is whether or not the aberration in question is paired with thee.”

  “Don’t act like it’s my fault.”

  “But it is emphatically thy fault.”

  “No, no, no. Even if it is, I’m telling you not to act like it is.”

  “What a way to avoid responsibility.”

  Such lily-livered diplomacy, denounced Shinobu.

  What a horrible thing to say.

  Didn’t she learn when she was little that some things are better left unspoken?

  “But you’re absolutely right. I can at least trust that you did this with the best intentions.”

  The truth is, there’s nothing in this world as precarious as a deed carried out with the best intentions, and no words so overbearing as I did it for your sake, but there was no time to waste on such childish arguments at the moment.

  Senjogahara told me that whether or not you can abide overbearing good will is a mark of adulthood─and if Senjogahara can say that, then she’s growing up.

  As her boyfriend, nothing could be more pleasing.

  So I was going to do some growing up, too.

  Even though I didn’t feel grateful for anything, I’d thank Shinobu.

  “Thank you very much, Ms. Shinobu.”

  “Thy smile is most suspect…”

  True.

  I didn’t need a mirror to know that it couldn’t be more saccharine.

  “So what? Saccharine is sweet, and you love sweets!” I retorted. “Who doesn’t love a sweet smile? Love, sweet, smile─not a suspect word among them.”

  “The more thou carryest on, the more thy words smack of deceit. Love, sweet, smile, one is enough.”

  “If I have to pick one, then…love.”

  I hugged Shinobu.

  Ardently.

  No holding back.

  “Hahahah,” she laughed merrily. “You adorable little thing. Oui oui. All right, I’ll let thee off the hook, and forgive thee for thy previous insolent speech.”

  She didn’t mind it.

  Moreover, she forgave me.

  She was a little too lenient.

  “C’mon, you’ve got to fight back, like Hachikuji. If you don’t stop me, I won’t stop, will I? If you don’t protect your chastity, who will?”

  “Never have I protected my chastity.”

  “…”

  She really came from a different age.

  I just couldn’t get down with her ethics and mores.