by Nisioisin
Oshino, if you have the time to instill her with aberration lore (or to show her I Are You, You Am Me for that matter), how ’bout starting there instead.
Seriously.
“I accept all comers! Such a woman am I.”
“Even without any statutes, you’re gonna be censored.”
But then again, when Shinobu was Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, she only ever created one thrall besides myself, so I guess her conduct was pretty upright after all.
In which case, was she just trying to play the fool with pronouncements like that? Or was it like middle-school posing?
“Come then! Embrace me at any time, just as ye please!”
“No way, if I did, you might suck my blood at any moment.”
Moving away from Shinobu, I finally got off my knees─and glanced up the stairs, that is, in the direction of the torii.
I realized again just how far I had fallen…
It wouldn’t have been surprising if I’d died.
It would likely be written off as a typical mountain climbing accident, but on one of the piddling hills in our town? How embarrassing for the bereaved family.
“Hey, Shinobu.”
“What is it?”
“Can we also get back through that torii?”
“Mm? Aye. Well, something like that.”
“Why so vague?!”
“Well, now that ye ask, I had not considered the return journey…”
Was Shinobu’s terrifying response.
Just a minute.
Come to think of it, Shinobu didn’t use her own power to pry open the time warp gate or whatever (feels like the fishy words just keep on coming, but I’m not going to worry about it anymore); she said she exploited the power of the location, of Kita-Shirahebi Shrine, a hangout for aberrations…
“If you already consumed that power, then I suppose you won’t be able to reopen that gate or whatever it is.”
“Hah,” Shinobu snorted at my concern. That was heartening, even if it was also unpleasant. “Now let me see…” she trailed off.
Totally undependable.
She’d just put on airs by reflex.
“Hey, wait a second, Shinobu… Don’t tell me we’re stuck in yesterday’s world and can’t get home to our own.”
“No, ’tis fine, ’tis fine. Have no fear, my master.” It sure sounded like she was bluffing, but she took my arm with total self-assurance. “Consider for a moment. This is yesterday, is it not? From this perspective, ’tis on the morrow that I shall open a time tunnel using the aberrational essences gathered at the shrine. Therefore, at present that spiritual energy hath yet to be exploited, and I may open such a gate.”
“I don’t even want to give a rejoinder to a word like ‘time tunnel,’ I’ll just pass that one on to the reader.”
I delegate the responsibility entirely to you.
The narrator has left the building.
“But wait, doesn’t that create a time paradox? If we use up all that energy now, then our tomorrow selves won’t be able to come back to today.”
“…”
Ah.
She falls silent.
She goes and falls silent.
“Hmm, well, indeed,” Shinobu muttered, and since there was nothing I could do but watch and wait, I went quiet too, for about five minutes, until she finally began to explain her take on the situation. “Aye, I recall now. ’Tis easier to return to the future than to return to the past, for it doth not require the extra energy necessary to go against the flow of time. In principle ’tis as with salmon. Therefore, we need not consume so much energy for the return journey, and plenty shall remain for our use on the morrow.”
“Hmph… Well, that’s a tenuous explanation, but if you say so.”
No point in arguing.
It was good enough for the moment.
But─it already crossed my mind.
The somewhat risky possibility of a time paradox.
“Thyme pair o’ docks? Thou hast said it before, but I knew not of what ye spoke.”
“No, no, no. Forget about ‘paradox’ for a second, why are you spelling ‘time’ that way?”
What an airhead.
Didn’t she just use the term “time tunnel”?
“Ho ho. Yet I was certain thou wert speaking of the herb.”
“No, you weren’t. The other word is incomparably more common.”
“Well, aren’t we particular. Ha!” Shinobu virtually spat out that last syllable, her sadistic look enough to make any enthusiast drool. “All right, thyme out, thyme out. Let me think.”
“No, no more thinking.” It was exhausting responding to all her little jokes, so I decided to just explain it to her. “A time paradox is a contradiction that ensues from time travel.”
“What’s a contradiction?”
“Come on, words more difficult than ‘contradiction’ have definitely come up in our conversations.”
“I simply let pass the non-standard vocabulary that ye sometimes employ.”
“Okay, okay.”
I even think you’ve used the word yourself, but if I start in on that, an actual paradox could ensue, so let me give you the standard explanation of the word.
“Long ago, in a distant land─”
“When is long ago? What distant land?”
“…”
What was she, a cheeky brat?
I had to ignore her.
Plus I had no idea.
“A merchant had for sale both a spear so powerful it could pierce any shield, and a shield so powerful it could block any spear. A passing child called out, ‘My lord merchant, what should happen were such a powerful spear to meet such a powerful shield?’”
“So the child spoke like a classic master detective?”
“‘Hey, old man. What happens if you poke that shield with that spear?’”
“Ye need not do an impression of Conan Edogawa.”
“How are you so well informed?!”
I was shocked.
I thought maybe she only watched old movies, but I had to admit, she knew her stuff.
“Look, either way, the kid says this, thrusting his finger at the merchant: ‘If the spear penetrates the shield, then the shield is not as powerful as you claim, and if it doesn’t, then the spear is not. So, old man, what you’re saying is a logical contradiction!’”
“Is it not odd to use the very word in a story that purports to explain what it means?”
“Yep. And that, my friend, is a time paradox.”
That wrapped up surprisingly well.
I hadn’t planned it that way.
“Actually,” I continued, “I think the phenomenon of a paradox was hypothesized before the word ‘contradiction’ existed… Are you familiar with Zeno’s Paradoxes?”
“Zeno? Ne’er heard of him.”
“Well, it’s not something you absolutely have to know about or anything, but still.”
“I am familiar with Zenon’s Paradoxes.”
“…”
A really cheeky brat…
If she wasn’t a vampire, I’d smack her.
“Well, thou hast illuminated paradoxes and contradictions for me. But what is thy point?”
“Look, just think about it realistically. Let’s say I go home right now and do my homework. But if I finish all my summer homework before the end of summer break, then our motivation for time warping disappears, and I won’t time warp back to now, August nineteenth. In which case I don’t do my homework… See, isn’t that a contradiction?”
“?”
“You don’t get it!”
She’d cocked her head adorably.
It wasn’t even that complicated.
Not at all.
“Why quibble? There is nary a Doraemon episode where they fret over such things.”
“Oh, I think there is.”
“Mmmm. I may have skipped the difficult portions.”
“Sounds like you’re not a true fan after
all.” Not by a long shot. As I was saying this, I glanced down towards the foot of the mountain. “So what type of time warp is this?”
“Type? What dost thou mean?”
“Well, there are two major categories. The type where the person in question is there, and the type where they aren’t.”
“What, like thine own situation in thy high-school class?”
“I’m always there!”
My presence isn’t that faint!
Gimme a break.
I’m not talking about anything so sad.
“What I’m asking is, if I go home, will ‘yesterday me’ be there, or is this me right here already ‘yesterday me’?”
“Snore.”
“Don’t fall asleep!”
“ZZZZZZZZZZZ”
“Don’t fall deeper asleep!”
“Hmm. I know not,” Shinobu gave up pretending to be asleep and said this as though she were utterly fed up.
You’re so nitpicky, even though you’re a boy. You’ll never get married, her eyes insinuated.
Mind your own business.
“Thou shalt have to look and find out for thyself. Hie thee home and peer into thy room, and thy presence or absence will render the type abundantly clear.”
“I guess you’re right…”
Thinking it over was futile.
There was no guarantee that the time warp had been successful in the first place. There was still a very good possibility that I was having the world’s most ludicrous discussion with a little girl.
“Oh,” I said, “but right now, it’s noon on the nineteenth? I’m probably not home.”
“Is that so? One no longer stores such trivial memories at my age.”
“I think I remember going to the bookstore to buy some study guides.”
“’Tis simply thine imagination. Ye went to buy dirty books.”
“Not storing memories, huh?”
“Well, I do admire thee… Getting up the nerve to buy such bizarre smut at the same bookstore frequented by that ex-class president lass and Miss Bangs, as though it were nothing… I must inform thee, of course, that thou hast been spotted any number of times.”
“Maybe warn me about it when it happens!”
And don’t call it bizarre. It was pretty normal.
“Perhaps, excepting the calligraphy pens.”
“Stop it. Don’t bring up the calligraphy pens,” I cut the conversation short. This was neither the time nor the place to expose my sexual proclivities. “I see… Then maybe I’ll check the bookstore first.”
Worst-case scenario, we’d get a bit of shocking surrealist theater in which none other than myself witnesses me buying dirty books, but, well, what could you do.
“If we don’t hurry, he’ll be gone─always in a rush, that one,” I remarked as I started down the mountain.
I didn’t know exactly where on it we were, but I didn’t expect it to take too long.
Shinobu followed after me.
That is to say, she moved in sync with my shadow.
Almost as though she were on a leash, as horrible as that sounds.
“Wait, what? Shinobu, how do you know what time it is?”
“Hm?”
“I mean, that watch you’re wearing came from the future, so why would it be showing the correct time for when we are now?”
“Fear not, I adjusted it earlier. I hazarded the hour by the position of the sun. ’Twould be trouble if we knew it not, which is why I had thee remove thy watch and give it to me.”
“Huh…”
In that case, we couldn’t rely on it.
Since you messed with its crown.
“Oh, wait, I can just check the time on my cell phone.”
“Mm? Can ye? Is not the time on thy cell phone set to the future?”
“Let’s see.”
I took my phone out of my pocket.
In fact, I’d just exchanged it for a new model the other day─so Senjogahara and I could have matching ones. She also made me join some mysterious lovers’ discount service. The truth is I was a little turned off by her acting so lovey-dovey, but I was too scared to say anything.
At any rate, when I looked at the clock on the display, it read: “August 21 (Mon) 00:15 a.m.”─huh?
Wait, so if this was the time in the future─that meant only ten minutes had passed since we leapt through the torii─let’s see.
One look at the sky showed that there was no way it was currently midnight─
“Hm, if nothing else,” asserted Shinobu, “this proves the time warp was a success.”
“No, there’s still the possibility that you tampered with the clock on my phone while I was unconscious for half a day. In fact, call it a strong possibility.”
“Thou hast no trust in me at all. Why thinkest thou that I must needs pull a candid-camera stunt like that? Anyway, ’tis not so easy to tamper with the clock feature on a cell phone.”
“Maybe you used the World Clock feature to set it to Brazilian time.”
“Thy degree of doubt exceeds simply not trusting me, or deeming my words untrue or hard to believe─put simply, thou canst not stand me, can thee?”
Shinobu really did look hurt.
Who knew she could look like that.
I was kind of into it…
“Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Oh? Truly?”
She stared up at me with tears in her eyes.
It stirred my deepest sympathies.
“Really, really. For sure.”
“Then say that thou lovest me?”
“You’re totally out of character again!”
A haughty vampire!
A potential suicide!
A taciturn girl!
Stick with any of them, even the tiniest bit!
“But must ye be so cold to me? Is it not simply my role to remain more than a friend but less than a lover?”
“I don’t mean to be cold to you, but I think you’re way off base.”
“Then what am I to thee?”
“Don’t ask such deep questions. We’ll get to that in about four more installments.”
“Oh what a time-paradoxical statement.”
“Don’t go throwing around terms you just learned. Anyway, to address that earlier doubt, clock feature aside, we should be able to connect to 1seg when we get down the mountain. Television programs and terrestrial digital broadcasting won’t be wrong about the time.”
“Thy faith in terrestrial digital broadcasting knows no bounds,” Shinobu said, wiping away her tears. “Poor subterranean analog broadcasting.”
“That sounds spooky, but there’s no such thing.”
“Whereas a celestial béchamel bread crust thing sounds delicious.”
“It does, but there’s no such thing!”
“Equestrian dental broadcasting?”
“A dentist on horseback?”
A conversation without substance.
Which took us all the way to the bottom of the mountain.
I felt like an ascetic practitioner finally returning to civilization from his mountain austerities, but there wasn’t an ounce of truth to that; all we’d done was go up and come down the shabby neighborhood hill.
Then─
Something shook me to the core.
“What?! What the hell! My granny bike is gone! It’s been stolen! Or impounded! On my honor as a bicyclist, this is a grave insult!”
“Calm thyself. Thou art overreacting. Right now ’tis yesterday, so that granny bike we rode over here with thee on the seat and me stuck in the front basket hath yet to arrive. Thou shalt not park that machine here until late tomorrow night.”
“Oh, ohh… Really?”
“Kakak, this proves that my time warp was a success. There, now how about a little apology? Come then, no need to be shy. I shall always forgive thy little follies.”