Otorimonogatari

by Nisioisin

  “What’s with the lack of enthusiasm?”

  “i’m full of enthusiasm,” Nadeko counters as she takes the gardening trowel out of her knapsack.

  i brought it because it seemed like the sort of item to take on a search (i have a lot of other things too, like rope and chisels)…but i never thought i’d be using it so soon.

  “C’mon, hurry up and get digging. I’m certain my object of worship is buried down here.”

  “…”

  “Hsshh, hsshh─it’s like winning the lottery with your first ticket, hmmmm? Aren’t you lucky, Nadeko. Just a half-hour stroll and you’re already going to be free of me─”

  He sounds so thrilled, he seems to have forgotten what Nadeko was saying. Mister Serpent generally comes across as a surly cynic, so i’m a little surprised to see him this excited.

  Well─maybe it’s only natural when you’ve discovered your own body.

  So soon, too.

  i don’t know if the lottery analogy is appropriate, lacking, or exaggerated…but it’s true that the chances were pretty low.

  No wonder he’s happy.

  “…”

  i stick the tip of Nadeko’s trowel into the sandbox with a scrunch.

  In any case, i’m already going to be saying goodbye to Mister Serpent, believe it or not─and when Nadeko thinks this, it does feel tiresome.

  Nadeko’s feelings aren’t the least bit important, though─to be honest, you don’t need to feel motivated just to dig up some sand, and in the end, it’s just a later of sooner or matter, wait, no, a matter of sooner or later, because we were going to have to say goodbye at some point.

  That point is now, that’s all.

  Our time together was brief, but it’s not as if i wanted it to be long─and that isn’t a snake joke.

  Time to say goodbye to Mister Serpent.

  If i find his object of worship here.

  012

  i didn’t find it.

  No matter how much i dug and dug, there was just plain sand. Before i knew it, i reached the bottom.

  It was Nadeko’s first time learning that sandboxes have bottoms.

  Though it’s obvious they do.

  But according to Nadeko’s experiences as a child, sandboxes contained an endless amount of sand─like a bottomless swamp.

  Well, i learned what was at the bottom of it all: concrete.

  Apparently it’s just concrete buried in the ground in the shape of a pool…how inelegant. i’d rather not have known.

  As far as its depth, i’d estimate it went down about two feet.

  i guess that’s all the depth you need for it to seem infinite to a toddler.

  “Mister Serpent.”

  “…”

  “Hey, Mister Serpent?”

  “…”

  Now he was being the silent one.

  It’s like we’ve exchanged, no, reversed characters.

  “Hey.”

  Hey. Hey. Hey, Nadeko keeps calling to him stubbornly.

  Since he’s enwrapped around her wrist, it’s not like i can give up and leave just because he’s fallen silent.

  i might be “irittating” him, and i would leave if i could, but i’m also too tired even to move.

  “It’s not here. Your object of worship.”

  “…”

  “It’s not here…”

  Mister Serpent finally responds to this repeated statement with a huh.

  He seems undaunted. Defiant, even.

  “Looks like I malfunctioned.”

  “M-Malfunctioned…”

  He says it still sounding undaunted…and after telling Nadeko so confidently that he was certain, too.

  After vibrating that furiously, like a hurricane, on someone’s wrist─a malfunction?

  “I see, I see. So this can happen. What a learning experience. Isn’t that right, Nadeko?”

  “I-If you malfunctioned, that’s fine, but…c-couldn’t you tell me sooner? You must have realized it a while ago…”

  It’s rare for Nadeko to complain like this, but i can’t help it.

  i didn’t just dig up one spot in the sandbox, i dug all around. You could play human whack-a-mole here.

  Plus, i’m going to have to fill the holes back up and smooth them over.

  So pointless and unproductive.

  “What’s the matter, can’t you just leave it like that, hmmmm?”

  “i can’t… It’ll be a ‘social issue.’ What if a child fell in and got hurt?”

  “You worry too much…”

  Maybe, but i need to try and make it look like the way it was, even if it won’t be the exact same.

  In which case, this is all i’ll be able to do for tonight’s search. Even i don’t think it’s a good way to put it, but Nadeko’s first outing started and ended with her playing in a sandbox.

  How juvenile.

  “Still, you could malfunction?”

  “Stuff happens. Even gods aren’t infallible.”

  “Aren’t gods what they are because they’re infallible? Aren’t they supposed to be omniscient and omnipotent?”

  “Infallibility and omnipotence are two different things─look them up in your dictionary if you want the details.”

  “Hmph…i don’t have one. So is your not-infallible dowsing going to keep on malfunctioning? Because all the fruitless and wasted labor is going to be pretty tough on Nadeko in terms of both time and energy…”

  “Don’t get so worked up, I know what it’s like when I malfunction now. It won’t happen again.”

  He’s full of confidence.

  That makes Nadeko trust him even less.

  i think this is what you call a “wrash promise”─and it’s Nadeko who’s going to have to suffer for it. It’s no laughing matter.

  Besides, Mister Serpent enwrapping Nadeko’s right wrist tires out her arm even more than it normally would when she uses the gardening trowel. i don’t think i’ll get “tendanitis,” but Nadeko’s muscles might be sore tomorrow.

  “Why do you malfunction, anyway? Is this like how the Missing Person Stick in Doraemon is only accurate seventy percent of the time?”

  “No─that’s not it.”

  i feel a little dissatisfied that the Serpent immediately understands Nadeko’s obscur comparison thanks to our sharing some degree of knowledge, but in any case, he shoots down the question.

  “It means that my spiritual energy is scattered─simply.”

  “Scattered?”

  “Maybe I ought to say it’s been scattered.”

  His energy has been scattered─um.

  It sounds like something i’ve heard before─but where and when?

  A hangout.

  The bad things there─something.

  Didn’t Big Brother Koyomi end up needing to…

  “So in other words,” i ask the Serpent, “you’re more metal detector than dowsing stick? Like finding buried landmines being harder if the sediment has a lot of iron in it…”

  “Nadeko, are you comparing my body to a landmine, hmmmm?” he says venomously (being a snake), but considering how he doesn’t go on, i might not be too far off.

  Nadeko sighs.

  If Nadeko is right, how many more pointless wastes of holes is she going to have to dig? And─what if we run out of time?

  If we run out of time… Well, it’s not Nadeko who’ll be in trouble, but Mister Serpent…

  Still, Nadeko hates wasted effort just as much as she hates having to try.

  No matter what i say, though.

  As far as this dowsing goes, this process of identifying the location of the item we’re looking for, i have to leave it all up to Mister Serpent─in a sense, Nadeko is a living gardening trowel who just needs to believe and obey, whatever trouble she may or may not be put through.

  Believe and obey. Just like someone serving a god.

  “Well…in any case, i guess we’ll try again tomorrow.”

  “Hold on a second, Nadeko. You’re too good at cal
ling it quits, what kind of brilliant gambler are you? Instead of giving up, why not try checking just one more spot?”

  “No. i’m tired.”

  i’ve gotten tired. Miss Nadeko is now quite tired.

  Turning a deaf ear to the Serpent’s arguments, i get to work leveling out the sandbox─no, thinking of it as work makes it feel tiresome, so Nadeko imagines she’s playing around and plowing the sandbox as she messes with the sand.

  Maybe that was the problem.

  Because i’m thinking of it as play, i’m not as efficient as i could be and take longer than i usually would─to give a detailed confession, i get so caught up in it that instead of just filling in the holes that i dug, i really do start to play, making little mountains and castles, and that was the problem.

  You might also say Nadeko’s luck ran out.

  Given the outcome, i should have just agreed to Mister Serpent’s request and moved somewhere else to search a little longer for his object of worship.

  It’s too late to put the genie back in the bottle, but don’t you want genies out of bottles? It certainly sounds more fun…

  “Oh, Sengoku. There you are.”

  Just as i’m building Nagoya Castle (in case there’s some kind of copyright issue, we’ll say something resembling Nagoya Castle) and having trouble figuring out how to angle the shachihoko, i hear a voice from above Nadeko’s head.

  i look up.

  Nadeko wasn’t doing a good job of keeping her cap on right.

  Which is why our eyes meet.

  “B…Big Brother Koyomi.”

  There, standing a step outside the sandbox, is Koyomi.

  Big Brother Koyomi.

  Legal name: Koyomi Araragi.

  He’s wearing a serious expression─in the middle of the night, too.

  Is he taking a walk?

  013

  “Listen to me, Sengoku. If I were anyone else, I would be furious right now.”

  Our location has changed to Koyomi’s house.

  Big Brother’s room.

  i’ve come here to play a few times since June, and it’s clean and tidy like you’d expect of him, but today─this one night, there’s no sense of fun and excitement in the air like on Nadeko’s other visits.

  Just like the first time i came here, there’s strong tension.

  …Unlike back then, Nadeko is being made to sit up straight on her knees, so you might even say it’s worse.

  The difference is about as big as an amusement park and solitary confinement.

  “Listen to me,” he repeats.

  He just said something about not being furious, but he’s clearly angry.

  It might be Nadeko’s first time ever seeing the Furious Version Koyomi. So this is how and why he gets mad.

  It’s quite wonderful.

  “Sneaking out of your house in the middle of the night and wandering around town for fun… If you keep that up, you’re going to turn out like me or Karen or Tsukihi.”

  “…”

  Whaaat.

  That’s an odd way to put it.

  If you’re wondering why he’s mad at Nadeko, he’s scolding her for playing around at night─while i can understand chewing someone out for sneaking away when their parents aren’t watching, Nadeko’s playing around was just building something resembling Nagoya Castle. It doesn’t seem so bad that he has to take her to his room and make her sit on her knees.

  Well, i guess as someone with little sisters of a similar age as Nadeko, he couldn’t help but feel anxious over her “dalinquent” behavior…

  He even made Nadeko take off her cap.

  Nadeko feels like she’s in her birthday suit.

  “I don’t want to nag you or anything, but Sengoku, nighttime is for sleeping. Unless you’re a vampire.”

  “…”

  i can’t tell him that i was looking for something.

  Then again, he was searching, too, for Nadeko─when Nadeko’s Mom and Dad noticed she had “runaway,” the first person they thought to call was Tsukihi, or Big Brother Koyomi’s little sister.

  Tsukihi’s fame extends to the PTA.

  Tsukihi being Tsukihi, her reaction was, “It’s fine, what’s one night,” and she even lied for Nadeko and said i was staying over, but Koyomi happened to pass by his little sister’s room (pass by his little sister’s room?) and to overhear this.

  “What are you, stupid?! What if Sengoku goes extinct?!”

  He apparently dashed out of their house to go looking around town for Nadeko.

  i wasn’t able to find what i was looking for, but Koyomi found Nadeko through his instincts alone. Even if you account for the fact that he used his bike, he has incredible dowsing skills─quite unlike Mister Serpent, you might say.

  On the topic of Mister Serpent, he’s been silent for a while─he seems to be “adhearing” to his promise that he won’t talk in front of people, but now that i think of it, he knows who Koyomi is.

  That’s what he said. That day in June.

  He was watching from the shrine when Nadeko and Big Brother Koyomi and Miss Kanbaru conducted that richual at Kita-Shirahebi Shrine─so.

  So i wonder what he’s thinking watching Big Brother Koyomi now.

  “Tsu…”

  i feel like we’re going nowhere at this rate, so i nervously begin to talk.

  Nadeko wants to try her best to change the subject.

  Not that Nadeko likes trying her best.

  “Tsukihi… What’s she up to?”

  “Hm? Tsukihi? She’s such a cold person that she’s already getting her fill of sleep next door. Want me to wake her up?”

  Swoosh, swoosh, Nadeko shakes her head.

  That’s not what i want at all… In fact, what a scary thing to say.

  Koyomi might not really understand because she’s his little sister, but Tsukihi is basically scary.

  Tsukihi the Terrible.

  They don’t call her one of the Fire Sisters for nothing… Some of the stories about her aren’t even funny.

  She’s a good girl, though. And i’m not saying that to smooth things over, she’s really, truly a good girl.

  It’s just that her absolute energy is on a different level from people like Nadeko.

  You could even say a different dimension.

  Not all good girls are law-abiding, you see.

  “Sengoku? You don’t need to feel like it’d be a problem. Whether she’s awake or asleep, Tsukihi is always gonna have droopy eyes.”

  “Leave her droopy eyes alone… But no, i already made trouble for Tsukihi… i even made her lie.”

  i’ll need to get our stories straight soon─and before that, i need to thank her.

  “Right. But first things first, you ought to apologize to your parents, Sengoku. I know I’ve told you again and again not to be so quick to say ‘I’m sorry’ since that’s your favorite phrase. Still, you need to apology to them properly this time around.”

  “Y-Yeah… You’re right…”

  “Sheesh, if i hadn’t found you, who knows what might have happened…”

  Koyomi shrugs his shoulders like he’s both annoyed and relieved.

  Um, “who knows what might have happened”? Probably nothing in particular…

  i might have finished flattening the sandbox, tidied up the thing resembling Nagoya Castle, gone home…and, well, after getting yelled at by Mom and Dad, gone to sleep, woken up, and headed to school.

  This is a safe town, anyway, not a big city like Tokyo.

  Not much happens here.

  Koyomi tends to worry a little too much about girls younger than him as you can tell from his interactions with Tsukihi and Karen.

  You could even call him overprotective… i’m glad that he’s kind to Nadeko, but i really do think he overdoes it with his attitude toward his little sisters.

  He can go past protective and be prying.