by Nisioisin
“Good grief… It feels like I just forgot to perish along with the rest of the world.”
“Affect not such coolness despite the circumstances. As though this were a Hollywood movie.”
“Miss Shinobu, lover of Shogakukan. Are you familiar with a gadget that appears in an early Doraemon episode called the Dictator Switch?”
“I am not.”
“How are you a true Fujiko fan again?”
“I know only later Doraemon.”
“So you’re a bandwagon Fujiko fan.”
“Tell me of this ’Tater-dick Switch already.”
“Dictator Switch. It’s a gadget that will erase someone you don’t like from the world at the push of a button. Not kill them, but make it so that they ‘never existed’…so that the person is even erased from the memories of people who knew them.”
“Ho ho, a useful gadget indeed.”
“Except that it doesn’t exist. Anyway, it’s an item from a sci-fi-heavy era of Doraemon, but…because Nobita is just that kind of character, in the end he uses the button to erase all of humanity.”
“A fearsome dictator indeed.”
“Sure, some people define a dictator as someone who carries out genocide… Listen, I’m not trying to do any deep thinking here, it just occurred to me that it feels like someone used the Dictator Switch on this world.”
“Thou art saying that Nobita may yet be alive, somewhere in this world!”
“No. What a conclusion to jump to… Plus, being a Nobita fan is just weird. Nobita moé is totally incomprehensible to me. But never mind that. Every single human on Earth vanishing is unthinkable under ordinary circumstances. It’s impossible without some sci-fi element thrown in, whether it’s genocide or a mass kidnapping. It would take a long time.”
“Hmm…”
My attempt to draw a simple-as-possible example from manga hadn’t gone all that well, but it still seemed like I had managed to get my point across somehow.
Before going to my room to check how far I’d gotten in my drills, I scrounged up a bunch of newspapers that were squirreled away in the house.
The Araragi parents (by which I mean my mother and father) being very methodical people, newspapers and advertising circulars were carefully sorted and stored away.
I guess tidiness was in the genes─and if the world had fallen into ruin in stages, that is, “by the book,” following proper procedure, then that process, or at least a harbinger of it, should be lurking somewhere in the pages of those newspapers. I began skimming through them with that assumption in mind.
I would find the info much more quickly if only I could connect to the internet on my cell phone, but as it turned out, paper was the last medium standing.
In a few hundred or a few thousand years, all that paper would turn to dust, though─and in the end we were completely out of luck anyway.
Well, out of luck in terms of finding out what happened─by what process the world fell into final ruin─but it wasn’t as if I learned nothing whatsoever.
The papers stored in the Araragi residence went all the way up to the June fourteenth evening edition.
There wasn’t a single issue from after that date.
When I went to my room to see how far I’d gotten in my drills, the book was open to the page with the same date.
“Of course, there’s no guarantee that the me of this timeline didn’t just abandon his drills there… If only I’d kept a diary.”
“Can we not examine thy younger sisters’ journals?”
“No, I can’t imagine those two kept one, either…and supposing they did, even this big brother wouldn’t read his little sister’s diary without permission!”
Well.
The dates definitely matched, so that was reliable enough, as far as it went. And we had incidentally confirmed that the me of this world was also properly engaged in exam prep, which was its own kind of comfort─
“Now then,” I began, returning to the living room and opening the June fourteenth evening edition once again. “We can say with confidence that something seemingly happened, some kind of something happened, during the night of June fourteenth─after the evening edition had been delivered, but before the morning edition had been printed─and the world crumbled, not in stages, but in one fell swoop.”
Something exactly like the Dictator Switch. Something science fictiony.
“I don’t know how advanced the weaponry had become in this world, but I can’t imagine they developed anything that could *poof* erase every single human, and only humans, all at once.”
“Which meaneth, what?”
“Which means it must have been some kind of aberrant phenomenon. Only an aberration can circumvent the compulsion of history, or the theory that fate corrects itself, right? Which is why you can time travel, and why I was able to save Hachikuji─why I was able to prevent her transformation into an aberration.”
“I see. ’Tis a plausible explanation.”
“Yeah…”
That was how I tried to make sense of it, anyway.
And my reasoning probably wasn’t wrong, but─however right, I couldn’t deny thinking, So what.
If it wasn’t an aberrant phenomenon?
Same difference.
What was the point of analyzing it?
Seriously…
I, Koyomi Araragi, feel that in my own way, I’ve been through a lot. Not just the hell of spring break and the nightmare of Golden Week that I keep mentioning. I believe every tribulation I experienced helped me grow emotionally.
But─this was a whole other order of magnitude.
All told, up until now, things had been more or less confined to an individual level. Even the Great Yokai War had been prevented beforehand─of all the incidents thus far, Black Hanekawa’s atrocities had claimed the most victims, but then too, no one from the general public had died.
Yet, now, let alone someone dying.
Every living person on Earth was gone, a whole other kettle of fish.
“Hmmm. If something happened around June fourteenth or fifteenth, I guess the world’s current state of ruination is the result of two months having passed since the annihilation event… In other words, it happened quite recently,” I broached the subject with Shinobu─I did, but she remained silent, methodically rubbing her temples.
She was prone to wild mood swings, so checking the newspapers and confronting reality might have put her in another dark humor─or so I thought, but that didn’t seem to be the case this time around.
Instead.
She simply seemed vexed.
“What’s wrong, Shinobu?”
“Well…something is flitting about the edges of my mind…but I cannot quite put my finger on it. My memory hath truly become a wreck.”
“What the hell, you have some idea what’s going on? About why the world is like this─or about what aberration made it this way, if that’s what happened?”
“Hmm…I wonder.”
Shinobu tilted her head dubiously, but the possibility was there. Back at the abandoned cram school─now everything was abandoned, of course─she had sat through a number of Oshino’s lectures on the subject of aberrations.
For Shinobu, who had been consuming aberrations regardless of type, it was like learning the names of ingredients─in which case.
“Wait,” I said, “it’s entirely possible that the Shinobu of this altered timeline didn’t sit through Oshino’s lectures…”
“Even if the me from this world did not, the me who is here hath, so ’tis of no account.”
“Oh, right.” So complicated. It was all a paradox in my head. “Actually, hang on a sec. If we keep following that argument, the situation is going to become even more complicated, but…where do you and I stand in this timeline?”
“Stand?”
“When we went eleven years into the past, I met myself. Okay, we didn’t meet, I just took a peek at him, but still.”
“Indeed. And most adorable
he was.”
“His cuteness is irrelevant.”
“’Tis most relevant. I am praising thee. Rejoice.”
“Under the circumstances, no, I do not rejoice at having my seven-year-old self’s cuteness praised. The question is, what’s become of that cute kid eleven years on?”
“What, ye ask? Hath he not become a smartass high school student?”
“That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about what happened to young Mr. Araragi on X-Day in the middle of June of his senior year in high school.”
“…”
“At the time you would’ve still been cohabitating with Oshino in the abandoned cram school… Or did that aspect of history change too? Well, either way, along with everyone else─I guess the two of us perished?”
Died─for some reason I was reluctant to use the word.
Death is hard to handle, as Ononoki might say.
More than anything, though, there were no corpses.
“There are probably lots of aberrations that spirit you away, right?” I continued. “Feels like a relatively realistic deduction that all of humanity might have fallen prey to one… So does that mean I was unable to resist that aberration?”
Shinobu was one thing─but if even Oshino and Hanekawa were gone, there was no way I could have survived the phenomenon.
“My lord. Methinks ’tis overly hasty to adjudge this phenomenon aberrant.”
“Huh? How come? Didn’t you just agree with me?”
“I merely called it a plausible explanation. I never said ’twas surely so─look to thine own words for evidence. If the foe were an aberration, they could not dispose so easily of me, nemesis of all aberrations that I am. And what is more, that Aloha brat, so fond of his balancing role, would ne’er overlook an aberration capable of destroying the entire world. Unless he had a reason to.”
“Oshino… I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s alive somewhere in all this.”
Hm?
Hold on.
The middle of June… In the proper timeline─although this was now the proper timeline, I suppose─that was right around when Oshino left town, wasn’t it?
I didn’t remember the precise date, but that was about when─quite a coincidence.
Did it mean anything?
“Methinks ’tis naught but wishful thinking on thy part,” Shinobu said. “We must admit that both thou and I have likely perished in this world.”
“You’re right…in which case, history really has changed.”
I didn’t know what kind of guy the Koyomi Araragi in this altered timeline was─but a world devoid of me felt as horribly alien as it sounds.
I’d joked about forgetting to perish along with the rest of the world, but young Mr. Araragi hadn’t forgotten at all and seemed to have properly perished like everyone else.
What an upstanding guy.
If I do say so myself.
“It does feel odd for me to be here right now in spite of that.”
“At least we reaped some benefit. We know now the date the world fell into ruin,” Shinobu said.
“Yeah, but the question is, what happened that day? Or that night? Until we find out, we can’t do anything about it.”
“Do anything? What canst thou intend to do in our predicament?”
“Well, assuming everyone’s been spirited away or something, if we can resolve the aberration problem, won’t everyone be returned to the world? Even if we can’t fill in the two-month blank, we can at least restore the world to its original state.”
I didn’t really know.
But that hope still remained.
In that sense, I could certainly hope to see Karen and Tsukihi, Senjogahara and Hanekawa, and everyone else again.
“Which is why I want to know what caused the end of the world.”
“I see,” nodded Shinobu. “Such unwillingness to admit defeat is what makes thee who thou art, ’tis thy raison d’être─so, shall we go and find out?”
“Go? Go where? You mean we should expand the search area? Like head outside of town, or go all the way to Tokyo?”
“Nay, nay,” Shinobu waved me off before pointing out belatedly: “If we time slip again, to the night of June fourteenth, it shall become abundantly clear exactly what hath transpired.”
021
“If you can make that happen, we won’t just be able to pin down the cause, we might even be able to clear things up!”
Don’t worry, let me assure you that that kind of ending isn’t lying in wait for you. The story doesn’t get resolved in the next five pages, with the rest of the book given over to descriptions of me fondling Shinobu’s ribs─though that would be legendary.
The reason isn’t that you can’t alter history or fate by returning to the past. That notion was merely academic by now, our time slip actually having caused the end of the world.
“Well, it might be hasty to assume that it’s because we saved Hachikuji that the world has gone kaput,” I said. “And besides that, we did all kinds of different things when we were in the past. We involved ourselves in all kinds of people’s pasts, from those middle school girls we happened to meet to Loli Hanekawa, that policewoman, Hachikuji’s father─even the driver of the truck that almost ran me down. For example, we can’t say for sure that by throwing that book at us, and thus losing it, Hanekawa didn’t turn into a demon queen.”
“Aye, knowing that lass…”
I’d meant it as a joke but got an impression that Shinobu was strangely persuaded.
That said, if we were dealing with the butterfly effect, we didn’t know which of our actions could have destroyed the world. How could we know?
But there was no need for us to go eleven whole years back to look for the cause─we only had to go back two months.
The direct cause of the end of the world, of the downfall of humanity.
We just had to investigate the night of June fourteenth.
“So─can we go back to that point in time?” I asked.
“We have no other choice. As I have said, however, should I fail, we might well return to the age of the dinosaurs─though ’twould not be so different from this ruined world, methinks.”
“Not so different…”
I thought it would be pretty damn different.
Like 20-0 different. A forfeit.
In what game, I didn’t know.
But despite there being a big difference between this world where not a single creature was to be seen, and the world of however many millions of years ago, there might still be some similarities. Enough to make the comparison, anyway.
“Hang on a second, though. Even with your vampire powers restored, I thought it was possible to travel to the future, but not to the past. Giving you back any more power…”
Would be unwise?
Was she herself against it?
Sure, if she told me that, I’d have no choice but to agree, but under the circumstances─
“Aye,” answered Shinobu, “and even with the return of my powers to their apogee, ’twould still be far from assured that we could effect travel to the past.”
“Hmmm…so, what do we do, then?”
“Think upon it. If thou and I were already gone by June, and the educational system was no more thanks to the downfall of society, then naturally, there would be no need, nor indeed any possibility, of jumping eleven years into the past on account of thine undone summer homework─therefore in this timeline, the spiritual energy at the shrine must yet remain there, utterly unexpended.”
“Ah.”
Yeah.
That made sense.
It was obvious when I thought about it─so if we used that energy to jump into the past again─if we pinned down the cause of the world’s collapse and started over again from that point in time, we should at least be able to realign history into a shape preferable to this one, even if we couldn’t make it exactly the same as before.
“Hang on,” I said, “we might not even have to go to the troub
le of determining the cause. Even though the whole ‘age of the dinosaurs’ thing was a joke, the time warp might be a failure again this time too, right, Shinobu?”
“I never fail, but I cannot deny the possibility that ye might.”
“How the hell can I fail if I’m just tagging along on your warp?”