Kabukimonogatari

by Nisioisin

  I’d known from the start.

  Hahaha.

  You really can recognize people.

  Even after eleven years─even when they’re eleven years older.

  Even though her appearance, her voice, and her manner of speaking were all completely different.

  Even though she didn’t bite me.

  I recognized her at a single glance.

  “So…you’re alive, then.”

  You’re.

  Alive.

  Not dead.

  Not turned into an aberration.

  Alive.

  I let go the arm that was holding Shinobu to my side─in truth, I desperately wanted to embrace Hachikuji the same way, but as she was now a grown woman, I couldn’t give in to that impulse.

  And either way.

  I couldn’t keep calling her plain old Hachikuji without an honorific, could I?

  Because now─I was the younger one.

  “You’ve been alive─ever since.”

  Without fate correcting for it.

  Since that Mother’s Day eleven years ago, when you got to see Mrs. Tsunade─without losing your young life the next day, or the day after that─not to mention.

  Surviving Shinobu Oshino’s plan to obliterate humankind. You stayed alive right up until this moment.

  You did it─you lived.

  “’Tis difficult to readily believe…not only that anyone hath survived at all, but that the survivor should be thy friend,” Shinobu, sounding surprised, muttered under her breath─seeing how she was clinging to my side even when I’d let go, I guess she really was surprised.

  She must have thought it was an impossible coincidence.

  But if that was the case, her statement was a little off base─because.

  In this timeline, Koyomi Araragi and Mayoi Hachikuji didn’t know each other at all─Koyomi Araragi died before he could meet Mayoi Hachikuji on Mother’s Day.

  They did meet once, eleven years previously, when he saved her from a traffic accident, but─there was no way she remembered that passing encounter.

  Indeed, Miss Hachikuji looked baffled by our surprise.

  She asked, “Is something wrong?” as though she was concerned─with an expression that the young Mayoi Hachikuji I knew would never wear in a million years. “You look like you’re about to cry. Was it that frightening?”

  Flustered, I fibbed, “Well, you see… We were just startled. We’d taken it for granted that everyone was dead, so─we are, um, delighted to meet another living person.”

  “Oh? You’re wrong about that. There are a lot. Of living people, I mean. Though I’m the only one left around here… Huh, so you haven’t run into anyone else so far? If that’s true, then you two are the ones who’ve done a hell of a job of surviving,” Miss Hachikuji said, skipping admiration and going straight to astonishment. “So that’s why you went setting off those fireworks so carelessly.”

  “…”

  Humanity hadn’t been swept aside so easily, it seemed─they hadn’t just lain down and died.

  Well, that was gratifying.

  And it’d be a little too convenient by anyone’s standards if the only surviving human in this ruined world were Mayoi Hachikuji.

  Too serendipitous.

  By anyone’s standards.

  Shinobu’s prediction that there must be tens of thousands of survivors around the world─might have been a bulls’-eye after all.

  “Seems like those zombies are taking down the survivors one after another, though─I’ve steadily been losing contact with everyone. And I’ve nearly died any number of times myself.”

  Of all the things for her to say.

  Without a trace of the tragic bravado you might expect, too.

  So resolute.

  But it was no surprise.

  The young lady that I knew─of course she’d become a levelheaded, dependable adult when she grew up.

  “Sorry, but did I catch that?” she asked as I stood there unable to recover from the shock─unsure if I should be taking this turn of events jubilantly or what. “Koyomi Araragi?”

  “…Right. Let me see. ‘A’ like ass-kisser, two ‘ra’s like in Radio Shack, and ‘gi’ as in ‘give a man a fish’… Then ‘Koyomi’ as in calendar,” I explained all in a fluster, presuming that she wanted to know how my name was written.

  “So you’re Araragi-kun.”

  Then I’m glad I came, she nodded.

  Strangely─satisfied.

  “…”

  Huh?

  From her reaction, it seemed like she already knew my name─no, no way.

  We lived in different areas, and we were different ages.

  If Hachikuji didn’t die without seeing Mrs. Tsunade on that Mother’s Day eleven years ago and hence never turned into an aberration─then the two of us had no reason ever to come in contact─so the me of this timeline.

  Would’ve been killed─would’ve died.

  Without ever meeting Hachikuji.

  Without ever encountering Hachikuji.

  So how could she know my name?

  “It’s unbelievable, actually meeting like this. But then again, maybe it shouldn’t be such a surprise. Maybe it all makes sense.” With this remark, Miss Hachikuji took off the backpack she was carrying and began rummaging around inside. “Wow, so there really is a Koyomi Araragi. And he did say you’d have a blond girl with you.”

  “H-He?”

  “Said you’d probably have a blond girl with you, yes.”

  “Who said that?!”

  No.

  Hang on─I can guess, can’t I?

  I knew only one guy who’d say something like that.

  Who’d say something so specific, so incisive─I knew him all too well.

  Knew that frivolous man in the Hawaiian shirt.

  “Well, since you ask, it was the same person who told me that a rice shower would be effective against these zombies, a guy called Oshino─and he gave me a letter for you.”

  Upon which.

  Miss Hachikuji handed me a newish-looking envelope.

  027

  Yo, Araragi.

  I’ve been waiting for you.

  I can always count on you to keep me waiting, though, can’t I?

  Does this qualify as “it’s been a while,” I wonder? After all, this me and the me you know are completely different people, as are you and the Araragi I know. Or maybe more strangers than different people. Though of course you’re still you, and I’m still me.

  I thought it best to entrust this letter to Hachikuji. I’m praying it reaches you─if you haven’t given up on meeting people, even with the world in this state, then I’m pretty sure it will reach you in the end.

  Because it’s the threads binding people together that weave the tapestry of fate.

  But you know how easy it is for me to get carried away, and if I keep getting mired in idle chatter, I’m going to run out of stationery before I know it─paper has become a precious commodity these days.

  I’ll try to be brief.

  So briefly hear me out.

  To be honest, I don’t know for certain what you’ve been doing, what path you’ve followed or where it’s led you, nor what you might be thinking─you always talked about what a perceptive guy I am, but even I don’t know everything. I was just showing off for you youngsters, and the fact is that the world is positively littered with things I don’t understand.

  A different fate, for instance? I’ve got nothing.

  A different world? No idea.

  Though maybe it would be better to call it a different route.

  For the gamer generation, the gamer mind.

  So I want to let you know at the outset that the information I’m about to dispense will likely include any number of mistakes, and plenty of errors. Please amend those yourself.

  You can do that much, can’t you?

  Because─you’re the Koyomi Araragi who succeeded.

  The Araragi from my route, by which I
mean this route, sadly failed─failed to establish a constructive relationship with Shinobu and threw his life away in vain.

  Not a bad end, a dead end.

  That in and of itself is a tragedy.

  I feel terrible about my friend dying right under my nose. Which is not to say that the Araragi of this route held back at all.

  Don’t be disappointed in him.

  He gave it everything he had.

  He risked everything, time and time again.

  Same as you.

  Of course, I’m writing based on the premise that there is a you, an Araragi, for me to write to─to be frank, this is something of a gamble.

  I’m betting on the possibility of an Araragi who forged a positive relationship with Shinobu, and my gambler’s heart is thumping in my chest.

  Not that I’m much of a gambler.

  Might be your retort when you read this?

  But it’s not a hopeless wager.

  In fact I think it’s a sure bet, the odds are maybe 8-2 in favor. Good enough to wager everything I’ve got, and my life to boot. Because I refuse to believe that there isn’t at least one route where you succeeded.

  I want you to take a look at Hachikuji, who I assume is standing before you now─it seems that a mysterious high school student saved her life when she was a little girl.

  She says that on a certain Mother’s Day, while en route to visit the home of her mother, from whom Hachikuji had been separated for life by family circumstances (though maybe that’s an exaggeration)─she was crossing against the light and was shoved out of the way to safety just as she was about to be hit by a truck.

  As I understand it, the incident occurred while she was running away from some sort of deviant who had flipped her skirt and was pursuing her─but the fact that afterwards that high school student helped the lost child to find her mother’s house seems to have made the deeper impression.

  She seems terribly regretful that, because she was shy around strangers at the time, she didn’t utter a word of thanks to the high school student.

  Though maybe that was only natural.

  Given that the high school student seemed a bit funny in the head, talking to his shadow and all.

  I had already heard this story before Golden Week, when all that stuff was happening with Missy Class President (I expect all that stuff happened in your route as well). At the time, I was going around town collecting tales of aberrations.

  That’s when I became acquainted with Hachikuji.

  And it wasn’t just her. All kinds of people remembered that high school student.

  Hachikuji said that he was alone when they met─but according to most accounts, he seemed to have formed a two-man cell with a blond girl (sometimes a little girl, sometimes a middle school girl who seemed like she’d returned from living abroad).

  Really, all kinds of people.

  Remembered that mysterious high school student.

  An office worker who had been a middle school girl at the time, a recently retired (on account of marriage) policewoman who had been stationed in a police box at the time, not to mention the truck driver who claims he was the one who almost hit the kid.

  And even those who didn’t have such direct contact with him could hardly forget the sight of a high school student walking around carrying a little blond girl in his arms like a koala.

  Sounds like the town was in a tiny bit of an uproar at the time.

  And why not?

  How else could it be?

  He was too mysterious, his identity just too secret.

  There were even tales of him hiding behind utility poles, staking out the homes of ordinary citizens─though these were nothing but unfounded rumors, of course.

  Urban legends.

  Chinese whispers.

  Campfire tales.

  And then it hit me.

  Spring break was over, so by then I already knew both Koyomi Araragi and the little girl that Shinobu Oshino had become─not that Shinobu ever set foot outside the abandoned building in which I made my happy little home.

  Nor was she embedded in your shadow.

  And yet.

  It goes without saying that it was the two of you.

  You two, for your part, probably think you pulled it off without a hitch. But just like in sci-fi novels, however hard you might try not to affect anyone, or history, or fate, it’s impossible not to leave some kind of trace in people’s memories.

  The effect people can have on history─even just one person, or one thing─is terrifyingly profound.

  Granted, we may not remember someone we simply pass by on the street.

  We may not even be aware of them as part of the scenery, as anything more than a breeze.

  Like how we forget some of our elementary school classmates when we enter middle school─and forget some of our middle school classmates when we enter high school─but even if we can’t recall the fact that we were in the same room as them, that memory nonetheless remains buried in our hearts.

  Even if it doesn’t remain in the mind, it remains in the heart.

  And that has to influence our lives.

  History. The world.

  Your traces did remain in this world.

  Scattered though they were.

  And I managed to reassemble them.

  As ghost stories.

  As aberration lore.

  Naturally I don’t know all the specifics, but I’ll bet that that Araragi─not the Araragi from this route, the one I know, but you, the Araragi who is reading this letter─performed a time slip to save Hachikuji, yes? You used Shinobu’s power to leap into the past to save Hachikuji? In your route, Hachikuji must have died in that traffic accident, and it was only after her death that you got to know her, so you took pity on her, and yes, you tried to change the past.

  You don’t have to hide it.

  You don’t have to be ashamed.

  I don’t even blame you for the time travel itself.

  In fact, I’ve never had the slightest urge to blame you.

  If you think that you brought the world to ruin by saving Hachikuji, you’ve got another think coming.

  You’re wildly off base on that one.

  It may well have been an important factor, but underlying causes only go so far. Because the Araragi, or me, or the Hanekawa of this route should have been able to find a way around it.

  Not that your effect on history wasn’t colossal.

  But we, who after all wield the same colossal power to influence events, should have been able to do something about your colossal influence.

  And while I did tell Shinobu that it was best not to attempt time travel, I never expected every single route’s Shinobu to abide by that.

  Especially.

  A Shinobu who had a positive relationship with you─

  I was pretty sure that if something went down, you’d avail yourselves of that option.

  Though I doubt you would possibly use it for so cockamamie a reason as not having finished your summer homework, like you were Nobita or something.

  How you holding up?

  Still with me?

  If you’re tired of reading, how about I throw in a classic Oshino joke right about here?

  Okaaay, then let’s continue on.

  Your life-or-death endeavor paid off, and as you can see, Hachikuji is still alive─the thing I want you to realize, however, is that this Hachikuji is not the same Hachikuji you know.

  I’m not talking about the difference between being alive and being dead.

  She’s the Hachikuji from another route.

  My own inimitable analysis of the urban legends you two have become leads me to believe that you’ve got some misguided notions regarding traveling in time.

  I did try to explain it properly to Shinobu, but it seems that she wasn’t really listening.

  In your route either.

  What can you do?