by Nisioisin
“Suuuure.”
No way.
It seemed much more likely that my bike had been stolen, or impounded…but if it had been impounded, or worse yet, stolen, it meant that I’d lost every single one of my bicycles, so by all means I hoped that Shinobu’s time warp had in fact been a success.
And so I extended the antenna of my cell phone and connected to the internet.
If a TV show─the weather report, the news─said that today was August nineteenth, I’d have no choice but to believe Shinobu.
Then I’d prostrate myself before her.
With that manly, yet somewhat servile, determination, I worked my cell phone and─huh?
Huuuuuh?
No reception?
?
“Shinobu. Did you break my cell phone while you were messing around with it?”
“Waaaaaaaahh!” li’l Shinobu wailed at the top of her lungs at long last. “I cannot bear it! I hate thee! Do what thou wilt, I care not!”
“You really sulk like a child.”
“Dash!”
Shinobu made her own sound effect as she started to run off but stumbled and fell flat on her face at the edge of my shadow. In the heat of the moment, she seemed to have forgotten that she couldn’t move outside its borders.
“Okay, I’m sorry, I’m really, really sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
Concerned about my favorability rating, I apologized sincerely to Shinobu as she lay face down on the asphalt, then put my arms around her little girl’s waist to pick her up off the ground.
When she looked at me, I saw that she was crying for real.
It wasn’t like with Hachikuji or Tsukihi’s feigned tears─and that was actually kind of off-putting.
“Listen,” I said, “it’s true that the internet isn’t coming through─maybe my phone broke when I fell down the stairs?”
Which really bummed me out.
After I’d gotten matching phones with Senjogahara and everything─and when I thought about how the new Senjogahara, that is to say the reformed Hitagi Senjogahara, wouldn’t get mad, or fly off the handle, or lash me with her acid tongue but just be sad like a regular person, it bummed me out even more.
It pained me to be the kind of male character who made girls cry all the time.
“It still accepts inputs, though… Hm?”
What?
When I checked the screen again, it said out of range.
Still out of range, even though we’d come down off the mountain?
“Weird. I figured I’d have full bars down here.”
“Do people even say ‘full bars’ anymore?”
“I’m sure some still do.” Rebutting Shinobu’s dig, I kept on working my phone…but it really did seem to be out of range, which meant that most of the functions were dead. “What’s going on? Did the base station get blown up or something?”
“Thou hast a robust imagination.”
“Well, seems like there’s nothing for it… Let’s head to the bookstore. Even without the bike, it’s not so far.”
“Then c’mon, c’mon, c’mon, shoulder-ride!”
“Just how far are you going to take this little girl thing?”
It made it difficult to fathom our relationship.
Kagenui laughed her ass off at me when I was giving one of my little sisters a ride on my shoulders─wait a sec, was I giving a ride or being given one that time?
It wasn’t exactly something I wanted to remember, so my memory was hazy.
But having just been cried at (or rather whined at), it was hard to refuse, so I relented (not that I even put up a fight) and let Shinobu get up onto my shoulders.
So light!
Was she completely hollow or what?
“How much do you weigh?”
“I can freely control my weight. See?”
“So heavy!”
Incredible!
Like the Crab of Weight!
No, freely controlling your weight reminded me of some other yokai… Stone-something… If you bore the burden all the way home, it would transform into treasure…
“Hm? Perhaps ’tis merely my imagination, but when I increased my weight, thy gait seemed to become somehow steadier…”
“It’s just your imagination. I’m not so greedy that the thought of treasure improves my physical conditioning.”
As we walked and talked, a gaggle of middle school girls appeared directly ahead of us. I tensed up, worrying that they might report me, but upon reflection I was just walking along with a kid on my shoulders, so we were probably fine (if it were that time with my little sister, though, they’d definitely report us).
Then again, we must’ve seemed suspicious after all, because those girls were really giving me the eye─
“Omigod, so cute!”
“Like a little doll!”
“Her hair’s so fluffy!”
……
Shinobu was a hit.
These middle school girls weren’t at all bashful, in the face of a legendary vampire.
From the dress-like uniforms, I guessed that they were students from my alma mater…in other words, Sengoku’s classmates?
“Wait, this is perfect.”
It struck me.
Before going to the bookstore and determining if this was a type A time warp (the person in question is there) or a type B time warp (the person in question isn’t there), I could begin by verifying with these girls what I’d been unable to on my cell phone: whether the time travel had been successful in the first place.
“Hey, girls. Could you tell me if today is Monday, August twenty-first?” I just asked point-blank of none of them in particular, though it felt somewhat abrupt.
To which they answered─
“What, you’re waaay off!”
Though I couldn’t see her, I could sense that up above me Shinobu was jubilant─as if she wanted to say, Now hurry up and apologize to me, you brat.
But hold on, I was more preoccupied with another aspect of the girl’s response.
Off is one thing.
But way off?
Waaay?
“…Then what’s today’s date?”
I asked them.
Fearing the answer.
“What’s the deal, mister, you sound like a person from the future or something.” Having really hit the nail on the head, the girl replied, “It’s May thirteenth.”
Just like that.
Shinobu’s haughty mood up above my head shifted slightly─but only slightly, as if to say: My, not at all the date I intended. Well, ’tis no big deal.
Sure, no big deal.
No way.
Having accomplished a historic feat by traveling into the past─whether this was a day or three months ago seemed to her like no big deal, no big difference.
Honestly, I’d anticipated this from the moment the girls appeared ahead of us─if it was summer break, then a gaggle of girls in their uniforms on their way home was an odd sight any way you sliced it.
So I’d surmised that we might have gone back to a time before summer break─my intuition is actually pretty good.
But that good intuition was telling me something else as well.
An alarm was going off.
And─my cell phone’s lack of internet access and out-of-range message uppermost in my thoughts─I asked another question.
“What year is it?”
“Um─”
The middle school girl informed me.
That from now, or rather from the future, we’d gone back eleven years.
007
After getting the middle schooler’s name and contact info (address and telephone number), we went down into town. But we didn’t have to confirm it with anyone else, or do any relevant fieldwork, or pretend we were on some cutesy program about exploring our own provincial city, to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that what the girls broke to us was true.
I’ve been living here for eighteen years, after all.
That said, it’s not as though there was a specific difference I could point to.
There were, of course, concrete changes here and there: buildings unexpectedly present, or absent─in other words, if pressed I’d say that everything was different, but that wasn’t it. The air itself was different, that was how it felt. No point in harping on the differences. And I don’t mean from an ecological standpoint, air pollution or anything, I’m talking drastically, fundamentally.
Even though it was the same townscape─
The town lay before me like I had never seen it before.
It greeted us with the face of a stranger.
Greeted us as outsiders, estranged from its affairs.
Though I’d already recognized this in my heart, we visited the Araragi residence in a last vain act of hope, where verification became verity.
I never thought my house looked particularly old─but seeing it now, freshly built, I could no longer deny that it was eleven years ago.
I felt like a culprit being presented with irrefutable evidence.
Only recently, Ononoki had destroyed the front entrance with her Unlimited Rulebook, but now it lay before me looking just as it had in the good old days, before we rebuilt it, as though nothing had happened. My notion that Shinobu was lying evaporated instantly.
Although her vampiric powers included the ability to create matter, there was just no way she could create something on the scale of an entire town.
And speaking of Shinobu.
Speaking of my personal idol Miss Shinobu.
“…”
She hadn’t met my eyes or spoken a single word for quite some time.
She was like her earlier characterization.
She’d reverted.
No, back then, she used to glare at me with piercing eyes, but now even that was gone, and she just averted her gaze, weakly, awkwardly. She had a “Hey, don’t talk to me when I’m obviously this upset, you really ought not to take me to task” aura turned all the way up.
“…Gosh,” I said.
Gazing at my own home from a distance.
In the end, the bookstore didn’t even exist (it hadn’t opened yet), so I still couldn’t determine if this was type A or type B, but since I maintained my eighteen-year-old form even though it was eleven years ago, I guessed that it was a type A time warp where “the person in question is there.”
Because if it was type B, it would be odd that I hadn’t turned into a charming seven-year-old boy.
Thinking about it more carefully, I probably should have figured this out when my cell phone displayed the time from “the future” (and my clothes didn’t return to yesterday’s), but it was a bit late for that now.
That is to say, if I was too brazen, I ran the risk of encountering the counterpart of “the person in question,” in other words Koyomi Araragi, the me from this point in the time stream. It was one thing if we’d gone back to yesterday, the day before, or a few months ago, but the eighteen-year-old me and the seven-year-old me might fail to identify each other even if we met.
It also meant that I didn’t need to worry about being spotted─no matter what I did at this point in the time stream, there wouldn’t be anyone to wonder, “Huh? Two Koyomi Araragis? Which one is the copy?”
So I loitered around my neighborhood.
Pretty brazenly.
Holding hands with Shinobu.
To be clear, I was holding hands with her not as a mark of deep affection, and certainly not because I was about to try time warping through a black wall again, but so that the war criminal of a little girl couldn’t run away. While it was true that she couldn’t leave the contours of my shadow, if she sunk into its depths there was no way I could pull her out again.
“Gosh, I’m sorry, Shinobu, really. For doubting you and all.”
“…”
“I was an idiot, not believing what you said. Even though I know better than anyone how amazing you are. Of course you can time warp, it would be strange if you couldn’t. Nothing is impossible for Shinobu Oshino.”
“…”
“I mean it, your actions reflect the best vampire-kind has to offer. Not that vampires have reflections, but, you know. Wow, you really did it, eleven years in the past. The fact is, I was anxious. About whether or not I’d actually be able to finish all my summer homework if we went back only a day or two, that is. To be honest, I was terrified. Could I finish thirty days’ worth of assignments in only two, even if I pulled an all-nighter? I was worried that all of your good intentions would be for naught.”
“…”
“But that’s Shinobu for you. Didn’t even need to discuss it with this old scaredy cat, you just thought it all through for me. My anxieties were an open book to you. With eleven years, I can definitely finish. Plenty of time. I can even state with certainty that I could finish eleven years’ worth of summer homework assignments. Well, that might be going too far, actually. But thank you, Shinobu. You reaaally pulled my fat out of the fire, and I’m truly grateful. Any thanks I give will be insufficient, but let me say it just once more. Thank you so much!”
I bowed my head low.
Shinobu didn’t even look up.
“By the way─” I raised my face. Wearing a furious look, I imagine. “My little friend can take me back home, yes?”
“O-O-Of course.” It was the first time I’d heard Shinobu’s voice in quite a while, and it was clearly trembling. “’Tis all going according to plan. I thought it might take thee eleven years to complete thy homework, so I took it upon myself to be considerate.”
“Eleven years? Am I that much of a slacker?”
I was too tired even to look furious anymore and just sat down on my haunches right there. You could say I was at my wits’ end.
“Hold on what are you an idiot hold on what are you an idiot hold on what are you an idiot,” I blathered, literally at my wits’ end. “If it was only a day or two, we could cope even if we couldn’t get back. I’d take full stock of the difficulties and grapple with the crisis. Assuming it was type B, of course. But eleven years? Even the currency is different. Who the hell is Soseki Natsume, anyway?”
“Thou shouldst know the illustrious name even if his portrait no longer remains on the currency. At any rate, ’tis type A, so it makes no difference.”
“Eleven years? It makes all the difference. I can’t even use my cell phone.”
Cell phones had already been developed, I think, but there was no base station way out here in the boonies─and the system was probably totally different anyway.
Let’s get real, I don’t think my cell carrier even existed eleven years ago.
“If those middle school girls hadn’t given us some of their tea, we wouldn’t even have anything to drink!”
“Thine interpersonal skills are surprisingly robust. Only when it comes to girls. I understand thy sentiment, but do not act as though ’tis my fault.”
“How is this situation anyone’s fault but yours?”
“No, no, no, harken to my words, ’tis my fault, but I am telling thee not to act as though ’tis my fault.”
“…”
What a peach.
Oh wait, I said almost the same exact thing just the other day, didn’t I? Was that influenced by our pairing?
Birds of a feather.
Though it might predate our pairing for all I know.
“Understood? Thou shalt not blame me.”
“I don’t remember going that far…”
“I shall cry. I shall cry my eyes out. Just one word of blame, and I shall be wailing at the top of my lungs that this high school boy abducted me. Heheh, and what will happen then? Thou shalt be apprehended by the police, without any means to identify thyself. An eighteen-year-old thou canst not exist eleven years ago. As a minor with no job and no fix
ed address, thou shalt be confined for all eternity.”
“You don’t have any means of identifying yourself, either.”