Kabukimonogatari

by Nisioisin

  Huh.

  Spring break.

  I repeatedly used “hell” as a metaphor to describe those two weeks, but─but that hell wasn’t necessarily all bad.

  Right.

  The real reason I can’t recall that vacation without bitterness and abundant regret─even though it was so hellish.

  Even so─there were happy memories.

  Mixed in there as well.

  Unhappiness can’t be transformed into happiness.

  But in addition to unhappiness─there was also happiness.

  Not as two sides of the same coin─separately.

  “Shinobu.”

  “Aye.”

  “Wanna kiss?”

  “Why?! And whence thy middle-school-girlish invitation?!”

  Shinobu opened her eyes wide.

  Her golden eyes.

  “Why not? You’re the one who was inviting me earlier.”

  “’Twas a joke! If we did so and it came to light, Miss Tsundere or someone would slaughter me!! Canst thou have forgotten that at present I am in essence a little girl?!”

  “Yeah, but, you can beat Black Hanekawa.”

  “’Twas because my opponent was an aberration.”

  “Hunh.”

  It was hard to wrap my mind around that power balance.

  Weaker than a human, but stronger than an aberration?

  Like rock paper scissors?

  Well, I guess it was the same among humans.

  “Huh, so we won’t kiss.”

  “We shan’t.”

  Were we to, ’twould be a hundred years hence, Shinobu footnoted.

  Going to take a lot of patience.

  That was one hell of a come on.

  “I really don’t get your criteria… It’s no good if there are feelings involved? In that case, you should know that just now I meant it in an Americanized way, not an erotic way.”

  “Shush. Nothing ever erotic about a kiss,” Shinobu responded with surprising innocence.

  Hmmmm.

  Probably a feint.

  “Anyway, let’s get going. Best find someplace near Hachikuji’s home to bed down.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Worst-case scenario, we’ll negotiate with the Hachikujis and ask if we could stay over.”

  “Even I know how foolish that notion is.”

  So we set out for the Hachikuji residence.

  With the map drawn for us by the policewoman to rely on─we didn’t get lost.

  Unlike on that Mother’s Day eleven years later, we didn’t get lost.

  Mother’s Day─that day when I first met Hachikuji.

  If my attempt succeeded, that day would never arrive.

  How that would be corrected for, how the ends would be made to meet, I had no idea…but my encounter with Hachikuji, and friendship, would all never have happened.

  That was fine.

  That was good.

  Because aberrations were what “never existed” to begin with─and what was weird was that they ever existed.

  “Hey, Shinobu. Can I just make sure of something? Something we were talking about earlier. If I succeed in saving Hachikuji, will I completely forget about her afterwards?”

  “I know not.”

  “Know not? How irresponsible of you.”

  “I have no responsibility in this,” Shinobu stated. She had some nerve, the little girl. “Cease thy constant questioning of me. This time slip is my first as well.”

  “Time slip…”

  A queer new expression.

  Or rather, it was way out-of-date.

  “All things considered, ’twould be unnatural to retain memories of a girl you never even met.”

  “Yeah, you told me a time paradox absolutely wouldn’t occur, but what about it? If I forget about Hachikuji, then I won’t decide to save her─which means I can’t save her?” A theoretical loop kept spiraling in my head, but that was how it seemed to me─and if so, wouldn’t everything I was about to do be a wasted effort?

  “If a time paradox cannot occur no matter what, then no matter what efforts thou makest, wasted or proper, perhaps thou cannot save the lost lass,” Shinobu said, clinging onto the back of my neck (like a koala, though I didn’t mention it before. She seemed to be taking a liking to the position). “I remained silent so as not to dampen thine ardor, but if the wheels of fate are already in motion, then so shall it be─because the lost lass of this time is a human, not an aberration. No matter how valiant thine attempt to save her, even if thou assayest to escort her to her mother’s door, some sort of obstacle shall arise to thwart thy aim. Or so it seems to me.”

  “Got it.”

  “Mm? What?”

  “Nothing, I just came to a decision, that’s all─I mean, if that’s how it has to be,” I said, “we’ll just have to trigger a time paradox.”

  If nothing or no one exists that doesn’t change.

  Then it was fate’s turn to change.

  013

  The Hachikuji residence was a ready-built single-family home, with no particular characteristics distinguishing it as the target of our search─but Hachikuji isn’t exactly a common surname, so it seemed unlikely to be the home of a different family with the same name.

  It was already the middle of the night by the time we arrived there (for all my big talk, I ended up getting lost on the way), and the residential neighborhood had already fallen under a blanket of silence.

  There were virtually no lights to be seen in the windows.

  Only the streetlights were burning brightly.

  “I was hoping for a sighting of Hachikuji herself tonight, but I think we’re too late for that.”

  “Mmm. From the darkened lamps, I would hazard that indeed both the lost lass and her father have taken to bed. That is, ’tis safe to assume they are but two?”

  “Yeah. I don’t think she has any brothers or sisters, and I never heard any talk of her father remarrying… Maybe I just didn’t hear about it, but if he had, I think I’d know.” It wouldn’t jibe. There was also, of course, the possibility that her grandparents lived with them─but if they did, it wouldn’t be such a big deal. “I’m pretty sure it’s just the two of them. And even if, worst-case scenario, her father remarried and his new spouse has a child of her own, and even if that child is a girl and about the same age as Hachikuji─there’s no way I’d mistake anyone else for her.”

  “Even had they the semblance of twins?”

  “That’s…”

  “’Tis likely I am overthinking it. However, in the worst-case scenario, or the even-worse-worst-case scenario, we lose nothing by being vigilant against any and all possibilities.”

  For we know not what obstacles may arise to hinder us, Shinobu warned.

  She herself probably didn’t believe we’d have to thread the needle like that, but she couldn’t help dispensing her advice.

  She who, like the threading of a needle.

  Miraculously even.

  Ended up in her current state.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s spend the night considering the possibilities, then─let’s turn our minds to tackling every contingency. What time is it, Shinobu?”

  “Let me see.” Shinobu looked at the watch on her right wrist. It was a men’s watch and didn’t suit her slim wrist at all. It looked more like a bracelet. “’Tis eleven. PM.”

  “Hmm.”

  “The hour when the 7-Elevens of this age close their doors, is it not?”

  “We haven’t gone that far back.”

  “By the by, my lord. Most people believe that, as I have just intimated, 7-Eleven originally opened its doors at seven in the morning and closed them at eleven at night, hence the name. But didst thou know ’twas in truth a later addition?”

  “Huh?”

  “In truth, the name derived from a soccer team formed by the store’s founders. And so the ‘seven’ was spelt differently for the five years following upon its inception.”

  “Wow, really?”

/>   I had no idea!

  No shit, from their soccer team!

  Then then then then, what was the other spelling?!

  “Well, ’tis a fib.”

  “Why tell such a lie?!”

  “I wondered if I might fool thee.”

  “Don’t fool me just as an experiment!”

  Anyway, apparently it was eleven o’clock.

  Why the hell did it take a whole page just to find out the time?! It’s thanks to this kinda stuff that Hanekawa is threatening my position as narrator.

  Let’s just try to get through this without incident.

  “‘Without incident’ sounds as though it ought to mean ‘on purpose,’” commented Shinobu. “‘Incidentally’ may carry the meaning of ‘by chance,’ after all.”

  “Stop reacting to every single word already. At this rate, we’ll never get this conversation over with, no matter how many pages we fill. Let’s see, we can’t just stand here all night.”

  There was a telephone pole.

  A most suitable telephone pole.

  Such an ideal telephone pole that I wondered whether it might be a god (The joke is that the counter for gods is one pole, two poles, and so on. I figured I’d try out some new material, but on top of being hard to pick up on, it’s kind of a dud, and maybe even ill-advised).

  But there was no way we were going to make camp here all night.

  Given the surroundings, one night didn’t seem like it’d be a problem, but this quiet, pitch-dark residential neighborhood didn’t seem well-suited to a stakeout─I could feel it in my bones.

  If only it had a more motley feel to it.

  Yeah, a more motley feel─the kind that might draw out yokai.

  “Right,” I said, “let’s try to find somewhere to sleep like we planned.”

  I decided to check the nameplate on the house one more time, just to be sure─approach the door, make sure it says Hachikuji, and then get away from there.

  While still carrying Shinobu.

  Wait, if I’d been carrying her all along, shouldn’t she be weighing me down?

  “Yet,” I muttered, “the sensation of those ribs rubbing against my chest eases the burden…”

  “Art thou aware that thy innermost feelings, beyond the pale of humanity, are flowing untrammeled?”

  “With little girls, it’s all about the collarbone and ribcage. Oops, oops. That’s definitely not a line you can voice these days.”

  “Nor in the Edo period.”

  “Wasn’t that era tolerant of loli, though? The marrying age was insanely low, and they were even tolerant of shota, weren’t they? ‘Pageboys’ or whatever.”

  “Well, if truth be told…” Shinobu nodded meekly. “Each age hath its own mores.”

  “It’d be best if we could find a nice big park like that one with the unpronounceable name─so we could spend the night without inconveniencing anyone, or rather making anyone uncomfortable.”

  “Mmm. I submit that sleeping in a ditch by the side of the road would be most vampire coffin-like. However, art thou implying that ’twould be a shame to disturb the paperboy or anyone who happened upon us in the morning?”

  “…Yeah, something like that.”

  Shinobu, I’m personally delighted that you’re finally showing some comprehension of the subtleties of human society, but sleeping in a ditch by the side of the road is very much not human…

  It is, quite literally, a niche idea.

  Unfortunately there was no such park near the Hachikuji residence, or if there was, we didn’t know the lay of the land well enough to find it (if only I’d anticipated this and asked the policewoman). By the time we finally discovered a park that met our needs, it was well past midnight.

  In other words, the big day.

  Mother’s Day.

  “Now ’tis time for Shinobu’s Trivia Corner. Didst thou know that Father’s Day actually predated Mother’s Day?”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Drat, was it so obvious?”

  Well, the whole process may have taken longer than necessary thanks to this kind of back and forth (Shinobu’s False Trivia Corner), but we may not actually have been that far from the Hachikuji residence.

  If only I could use the GPS function on my cell phone, I could confirm our current location… We talk about how much better things were in the past, but actually having traveled back eleven years, a lot of things were way more inconvenient.

  The past wasn’t all that great. Right.

  At the same time, it definitely wasn’t all bad.

  That’s to say, the park (which had an easy-to-read name, unlike the other one) had a ton of playground equipment─which took me back, most of them having been removed all across the country in the present.

  Wow, the spinny guy!

  Actually, now that you mention it, it does seem pretty dangerous…

  “Sweet! I’m so pumped. Shinobu, let’s see who can kick our shoes off farthest from the swings.”

  “Is it not thanks to such tomfoolery that they have been removed from across the land?”

  A high school senior frolicking on the playground, admonished by, to all appearances, an eight-year-old girl.

  Well, I’d get reported for playing in the park in the middle of the night, most likely, so even if Shinobu had been into it, it was probably best to give it up.

  “Aw, but c’mon,” I groaned, “I wanna do back hip circles and stuff. I haven’t done them since grade school. I wonder if the horizontal bar still tastes like blood if you lick it.”

  “The taste of blood?” Shinobu’s eyes lit up. It seemed my words had tugged at her vampiric heartstrings; you never knew what grabbed her attention. “I see, blood, because of the iron content… If such be the case, then in lean times I might chomp on some iron to survive.”

  “What a grim stopgap…”

  Plain old water would be more like blood.

  Probably.

  Anyway, we weren’t foolish enough to lose ourselves in play, of course─but the fact that it had all that playground equipment did turn out to be our saving grace.

  We were able to spend the night lying in one of those structures modeled on a drainpipe, which at least provided us with a roof and walls.

  “’Tis most narrow, though. Like sardines in a tin. I cannot discern if I am to be thy futon, or ’tother way round.”

  “Neither, actually. If it’s too narrow, then why don’t you just go back into my shadow?”

  “Be not so heartless. Allow me to feel thy ribcage in return.”

  “…”

  Dunno.

  Well, from Shinobu’s 600-year-old perspective, at eighteen I must still be well within shota territory.

  My collarbone and ribcage were in peril.

  Someone’s after me!

  Etc.

  I set the alarm on my cell phone for the morning (since the clock was adjusted to the present, I had to factor that into my calculations) and went to sleep.

  I felt bad turning Shinobu’s nocturnal vampire lifestyle upside down, but I also wanted her companionship during the coming day.

  014

  “How can I sleep!”

  With that sudden shout, I opened my eyes.

  It was thirty minutes before my alarm was supposed to go off.

  Shinobu’s body rose in tandem with mine, that is, in surprise.

  “Wh-What, my lord… What hath transpired?”

  “Nothing, sorry.”

  My back hurt so much that I’d quipped out loud upon waking up.

  It had been unimaginably sentimental of me to be so glad that the playground equipment had yet to be removed. My joints hadn’t ached this much even when I’d slept all in a heap with Sengoku and Kanbaru in the ruins of the abandoned cram school.

  Over spring break I was a genuine vampire and didn’t pay it any mind, but…man, Oshino was really something. Then again, lead a vagabond lifestyle for long enough, and you probably got used to a bed this hard.