by Nisioisin
I accompanied Shinobu as she approached Kissshot─and as we got close.
“Hearken to me, o my servant from another route…”
Kissshot spoke to me.
“This is no contract I propose, nor is it a bargaining chip, but merely a request─might ye not stroke my head?”
“Gladly,” I answered immediately and placed my hand on her head.
Tousling her hair.
Though her entire body was melting like mud, her golden hair was still soft and pleasant to the touch─and as I mussed it around, her expression, which had been unremittingly grim, at last softened into one of joy.
Even when Shinobu sank her teeth into her neck, that expression didn’t change.
And so ended that summer’s adventure.
I think it taught me a hell of a lot more than any summer homework.
030
The epilogue, or maybe, the punch line of this story.
The next day, apparently not even the experts, my little sisters Karen and Tsukihi, could rouse me from my slumber as I lay toppled over on the steps leading down from Kita-Shirahebi Shrine, and I awakened lazily from the sunshine.
“Art thou up, my lord?”
“…Yeah. You been waiting long?”
“I too have only just awakened.”
It almost sounded like we were meeting for a date.
Come to think of it, it was kind of like a date.
Shinobu had allowed me to pillow my head in her lap.
The lap pillow I’d always longed for.
They were the thighs of a little girl, not particularly plump, and I can’t say they performed all that well as a pillow, so I just won’t say anything at all.
It’s more about the overall feeling, anyway.
Checking the date on my cell phone, I saw that it was Monday, August twenty-first. The first day of the new term. The day of the opening ceremony.
“Did we really make it back this time? Or…” I looked up the stairs towards the shrine and started to get up. “Maybe it was all a dream. Maybe when you convinced me to jump through the torii that night, I fell down the stairs and was out cold till morning.”
“Must we renew that debate?”
“Ah! It was all a dream!”
“Thou shalt piss off Osamu Tezuka.”
“Wait, did Tezuka really come out against it? Because I think the ‘it was all a dream’ ending is actually decent. If he did, maybe it was in a Knox’s Ten Commandments kind of way?”
“Presume not upon the master’s largesse.”
“Huh? Did we all have the same dream?”
“Speak not such tired lines.”
“Weird, I don’t remember what I dreamed, but somehow I feel like crying…”
“Speak not such exhausted lines.”
“Huh? What’s this pendant? I feel like I’ve forgotten something important…”
“Didst thy character also feminize?”
It wouldn’t actually be all that strange for me and Shinobu to have the same dream, though, come to think of it. “I do wonder what happened to that dream world. I guess we’ll never know. I hope everyone was revived okay…that’s to say, I hope they became human again.”
“Not everyone, I should think. There must have been many who were caught up in the panic and slain before they could become aberrations─above all, thou, who didst perish before my frenzy, would not return to life.”
“Well, so be it.”
“Mm?”
“We decided to die together, remember? There may have been a two-month time lag in the ‘together’ part, but that route’s Araragi died along with you, so his wish was granted.”
“And of course─so was mine,” Shinobu said sulkily, sounding that much more sincere.
“My only real regret is that if Senjogahara and Hanekawa, and my sisters, became human again, they would grieve for my death.”
“Who knows, they might attempt to resurrect thee using arcane methods.”
“That’d be a whole other story, an intense one…”
Another tale.
But that’s got nothing to do with me.
That route has its own battles to fight.
I’ve just got to do my best to make sure nothing like that happens in my route.
Standing up, I brushed away the dirt that was covering me from head to toe.
For the trip back through the torii I had changed from the yukata into my original clothes, which had been pretty filthy to begin with.
Laundry would be my first priority when I got home.
That and a bath.
“…Hm? When I get home? Hang on, I was minding just the date, but…Shinobu, what time is it?!”
“Hm, shall I tell thee according to the twelve-hour system or the twenty-four-hour system?”
“Either one is fine!”
“Hast thou not learned that ‘either one is fine’ strays far from the truth? Thine every choice dictates the future.”
“Don’t give me that moral lesson crap! Just tell me the goddamn time already!”
“Hold thy horses, I shall construct a sundial.”
“You’ve got my watch around your wrist, just give it back!”
“Nay, ’tis not yet adjusted to this age, so it shall be of no use at present.”
“Say that first!”
Someone just give me the time of day without taking so much time!
I wasn’t getting anywhere, so I took out my cell phone again.
The battery was about to die.
And with its dying breath, it was trying to tell me─
“…Oh no. The opening ceremony’s started already.”
What to do?
Even if I stopped by my house and dashed to school at top speed, the ceremony would already have ended, and homeroom would probably be over as well.
I was going to be tardy after all.
Hanekawa and Senjogahara were going to yell at me.
They might kill me.
They might make me an ex-person.
“Ye must needs take great pains that such doth not occur, my lord─for if thou were to die, knowest all too well that I may destroy the world. Take great pains to be as circumspect as possible in thy battles from now on,” Shinobu reinforced my own earlier resolve as she sank into my shadow.
It seemed like she hadn’t “just” woken up like we were meeting for a date─she probably meant to sleep in earnest now.
“Oh boy… This truly was like a midsummer night’s dream.”
Not that I’ve ever read it.
Truly? Pfft.
Bandying about such fripperies, I descended the steps alone─wondering what I would do if the world I found below lay in ruins.
Or if it was a completely different world even if it wasn’t in ruins… If we’d failed again and ended up on another totally different route… Hmmm.
It was totally possible.
In which case, having used up all the energy available for traveling to other routes, this time for sure, we’d have no choice but to live out our lives along a different route… I felt that it would be a little too convenient if, after all the problems plaguing our trips through time, the homeward journey alone went off without a hitch. It wouldn’t be so strange if there were one or two problems in reserve, it might even be proper…
Hmmm.
Based on the number of pages remaining, I figure everything will be fine, but maybe it’s just an intermission. I just want to avoid a surreal twist like in that famous sci-fi movie.
Seriously, I’ve had it up to here with losing my way, and─
“Misterrr Araragiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!”
Having reached the foot of the mountain, I found that my bicycle was locked up just fine where I’d left it. But as I was unlocking it, a small glob barreled into my back like a truck.
And when I say a small glob, I mean a young lady.
A young lady with pigtails.
“I’ve been looking for you, Mister Araragi! I started wit
h your house, and I’ve been searching the whole town for you since quite early this morning, but I wasn’t able to find you, so I was worried that you’d gone away to another dimension or something! Oh, I’m so glad that you’re all right! Let me hold you a little longer, let me touch you a little longer, let me lick you a little longer!”
“This is a different route!!”
I pushed away the young lady behind me, by which I mean the fake Hachikuji.
Gaaaah!
An absurdist ending!
Now I’ll never get back to my own world!
“Huh? Different route? Fake Hachikuji? What are you talking about, Mister Araragi? Has this heat finally melted your brain?”
“My head isn’t made of Häagen-Dazs, you know. Don’t lump me in with Chocolate Fondant.”
“Shall I lump you in with Pumpkin?”
“What’s the scoop with everyone always mentioning limited-time-only flavors?”
“Fine, then your melty condition reminds me of a zombie.”
“How about you just don’t lump me in with anything.”
“On a whim I try to deliver big time on the service we’ve always talked about, and this is the thankless reception I get.”
Hachikuji, having fallen flat on her ass when I pushed her away, stood up as though none of this was going according to plan. I was thinking that her movements seemed somehow quicker than usual until I realized that this Hachikuji wasn’t wearing a backpack.
I know it sounds like I’m playing Spot the Difference here, but did it mean this young lady was an imposter, after all?
“No, no, no, that’s just it, Mister Araragi. I left my backpack in your room yesterday. So I’ve been racing around all over the place since early this morning trying to get it back before you look inside it.”
“You don’t trust me an inch, do you?”
For crying out loud, I hadn’t looked.
Wait…
Yesterday, huh?
That would jibe with being back where I started from, at least chronologically speaking─it remained to be seen if this world was the same route I’ve walked, and known, and grown up in.
Thanks to Hachikuji’s unthinkable entrance, I wasn’t so sure…
“Well,” she said, “when it comes to being hugged, I’ve learned today that if I’m the one who does the hugging at my own convenience, the contents of my skirt won’t be imperiled, at least.”
Hachikuji seemed pretty satisfied with herself as she made this scandalous pronouncement.
What a pain in the ass.
It was proving unexpectedly difficult to determine her authenticity.
Was this Hachikuji the real McCoy, or a fake Mayoi?
“Hey, Hachikuji. Do you love me?”
“Huh? Not likely. In fact I hate you.”
“It is a different route! A parallel world!”
“Huh? What’s parallel is the inside of your head.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?!”
“I’m talking about your rallerallellellelpappara head.”
“I still don’t know what that means, but somehow it makes sense! The only thing you can express clearly is malice!”
“By the way, Mister Parallegi.”
“Don’t be mispronouncing my name after the conversation we just had! You’re making me seem like the imposter here! I’m sick of your half-assed slips of the tongue, my name is Araragi!”
“My apologies. It was a slip of the tongue.”
“No, it wasn’t, you did it on purpose…”
“I slipped you the tongue.”
“Not on purpose?!”
“Slung.”
“An abbreviation?! For ‘slip of the tongue’? It doesn’t make it sound like an honest mistake at all! You’ll never be a voice actor!”
“You don’t think it’d catch on? Sluuung.”
“You’d never get a callback after your first audition.”
And with that back and forth.
I now felt confident that I was back in my own world─that this was Route A.
Yup, no question.
There couldn’t be many routes where Hachikuji was blessed with such polished skills.
This Hachikuji.
She was the Mayoi Hachikuji born of months of bantering with yours truly.
I─could make that statement without reservation.
Just as I wouldn’t be who I am now if it weren’t for Hachikuji─if it weren’t for me, this Hachikuji wouldn’t be who she was.
“What are you grinning about? It’s creepy,” she complained.
“Nothing… Anyway, back to your backpack. I’d been looking for you to give it back, actually. So let’s head to my place together and get it. Can you ride behind me on my bike?”
“I don’t want to ride with you, Mister Araragi.”
“Hachikuji, just this once don’t act like you hate me. It makes me doubt that this is the right route.”
“You can’t silence me with such a preposterous excuse…”
“I’ve just returned from a pretty huge adventure, so I’d like to ride my bike if possible.”
“A huge adventure… How could you go on one without me, Mister Araragi?”
“I didn’t. You were there.”
“Huh? What are you talking about? I never imagined I wouldn’t get invited to the party, what with me on the cover and everything. I had to lie to Miss Hanekawa just now.”
“Oh, that reminds me. Hachikuji, before I forget.”
“Yes?”
“Up until now, I’ve been saying that this is the best you’re ever going to look, but you’re still doing surprisingly well past twenty.”
“What a rude thing to say!”
“You’ve never wanted to come back to life?”
“Never. Pretty soon I will have been dead longer than I was alive.”
“Hmm, I guess that’s life.”
“That’s life.”
“But if someone with psychic powers or something showed up and said they could revive you as a jiangshi, what would you do?”
“I would hate to come back as a jiangshi. Thank you, but no thank you.”
“Okay, what if it wasn’t as a jiangshi?”
“Thank you, but it’s still no thank you.”
“How come?”
“Just because. If someone told you that you could become human again, you wouldn’t do it either, would you?”
“No, I guess not. Well, we’re in the same boat then.”
“The same.”
“So, are you happy as a ghost?”
“I’m unhappy about turning into a ghost. But I’m happy to have met you.”
“…”
“So overall, I’m happy. I wasn’t able to see my mother while I was alive, but because I died with that regret, I got to meet you.”
“…Right. We did get to meet.”
In the end, Hachikuji and I didn’t ride together on my bike. In compliance with regulations we walked instead, and I pushed the bike along beside her, matching her pace. We engaged in our usual stupid banter, and every once in a while I looked over my shoulder, took a wrong turn, or got a little lost, but putting one foot solidly in front of the other, and facing ahead, we continued to walk.
This route.
Afterword
I think everyone has “that experience,” one so traumatic that they would rather die than go through it again─probably more than one─but the funny thing is that those abominable, traumatic experiences are what make us who we are. In other words, it wouldn’t make our lives run more smoothly if we went back to the past and removed those traumatic experiences. Just the opposite, in fact. A life without trauma is insipid, with more horrible experiences in the present progressive tense than in the past tense. Though that would be traumatic itself, so in the end I suppose it would amount to the same thing. But for some reason I feel like it’s better to undergo the trauma when you’re a child. Maybe “trauma” is a bit much, but isn’t some level of stress, at le
ast, indispensable to living a healthy life? That said, we all want to live with as few unpleasant memories as possible, but, but, even if we don’t intentionally try to experience trauma or take on stress, the world doesn’t turn at our convenience, so in avoiding one thing, we run up against another. Why is that, I wonder? When one says that the present is an aggregation of the past, and the future is linked to the present, it makes it sound like the past and the future are both extremely valuable things, but the past isn’t much to speak of, and living for the future is a difficult proposition. So what of the present? Well, it’s stuck between the rock and the hard place of past and future, or, I guess you could say it maintains the image of a kind of middle manager, bound to the past while sucking up to the future. For that very reason, we barely manage to power through under the illusion that all of our current troubles are shaping our future selves, but can you really call that a life? I have no idea.