Otorimonogatari

by Nisioisin

  What’s he being so cautious of, anyway?

  “You really need to be more cautious. Not just you, Karen and Tsukihi, too… It’s almost like you don’t realize that you’re kids.”

  “i-i realize that…i think.”

  i’m not sure about Tsukihi or Karen─it can feel like they’re trying too hard to act older than they are─but Nadeko thinks of herself as a kid.

  A kid who doesn’t know anything.

  All i know is that a sandbox has a bottom.

  “Well, no, it’s not that you don’t realize that you’re a kid. You don’t realize how indecently the world gazes upon children.”

  “…”

  What an opinion.

  i’m at a loss for words.

  i have to wonder if Big Brother Koyomi is actually fighting against no one other than himself.

  But also thinking that trying to make that point would be wrong, Nadeko apologizes.

  “i’m sorry.”

  Nadeko’s favorite phrase. Call it a conditioned reflex─in any case, it’s a magical spell that ends conversations.

  A magical spell, like one of those charms.

  i’m not sure how effective it is, though.

  “Well, as long as you realize what you’ve done… Hm? Wait, so what’s going on? Why was a good girl like you walking around in the middle of the night?”

  This also seems like the wrong time to argue that i’m not a good girl, and it doesn’t make the question any easier for Nadeko to answer honestly.

  The real reason is that i’m looking for Mister Serpent’s object of worship…but i can’t tell Koyomi that. If i were going to now, then Nadeko would have asked him for help from the beginning─and not lied on the phone.

  This time.

  i’m keeping it a secret─from Big Brother Koyomi.

  After all─unlike June.

  Nadeko isn’t the victim.

  Nadeko is guilty─of killing lots of Mister Serpent’s breathren.

  “Sengoku? Don’t tell me…” Big Brother sounds suspicious that Nadeko has clammed up. “Don’t tell me what you said on the phone yesterday was somehow a lie and you’ve gotten wrapped up in something bad…”

  “…”

  Nadeko’s mouth turns into a straight line.

  He really does have great instincts.

  In fact, i feel like they’re a little too sharp─i guess it’s due to all his experience facing off against aberrations, the result of his long service record.

  Well, i didn’t get wrapped up in something, this time i’ve been enwrapped, so to speak.

  This is what i think as i look at Nadeko’s right wrist.

  “N-No, that’s…not it,” i then say.

  i won’t claim to have spoken clearly or firmly─anyone would have heard the words as a makeshift excuse, a knee-jerk denial.

  “Oh, really, it isn’t? Good,” Koyomi accepts them, sounding relieved.

  …He seems to believe Nadeko.

  i shouldn’t be saying this as the person who lied to him, but he’s a bit naïve.

  He’s too much of a good boy.

  “I was so sure you weren’t telling me how some aberration conned you into doing something for it, like searching for a lost object, and how that’s why you were digging up that sandbox.”

  Bingo.

  The only thing he didn’t get right was that the aberration was taking advantage of Nadeko’s weakness, her sense of guilt─Koyomi knows i chopped up and killed lots of snakes, but a serpent coming to complain to Nadeko about it is beyond even his imagination.

  He really seems to believe─Nadeko is a decent person.

  “N-No… That’s not it at all. i-i just had… Well, there’s a lot of issues in Nadeko’s class right now, and…Nadeko is the president, and…”

  i try to think of an appropriate excuse, but unable to come up with a lie out of thin air, Nadeko ends up telling a story adapted from her reality.

  It’s still a lie, of course.

  “S-So…i’ve been feeling kind of tired…and suddenly felt like wanting to leave the house.”

  “Oh, I see. Yeah, that kind of thing happens.”

  Koyomi seems convinced.

  It doesn’t quite make sense for Nadeko to leave her house in the middle of the night because something bad happened at school, but the excuse seems to do a pretty good job persuading Koyomi, who hasn’t had the best relationship with his parents after he started high school, and who even went through times when he didn’t come home.

  That must be why he’s scolding Nadeko like this today, in particular.

  He must have lots to say when he looks back on his own life.

  “I do understand how you feel, Sengoku. But running away isn’t going to fix things.”

  “Running away…isn’t going to fix things.”

  “In that case, you should have come to me. So…what’s this classroom trouble? Does it have anything to do with Kaiki’s charms?”

  “…”

  He has such good instincts. He really does.

  Yes, i did talk to him about it a little in the past─but he should already consider the case closed. Well, not just Koyomi, but everyone─Nadeko, her whole class. The case was solved as soon as Mister Deishu Kaiki left town.

  There are problems that come out of solutions─new things to end that come out of endings─but this, too, Big Brother Koyomi would know a lot better than Nadeko.

  “Nope,” i barely manage to deny.

  But even Koyomi won’t swallow this one whole. He starts to look unpersuaded.

  And─

  “Sengoku,” he says. “You’re in middle school, so I’m sure you have problems and issues to spare─but you know you don’t have to take them on alone, right? True, I’m not someone who should be dispensing advice, but I can at least lend you an ear.”

  “…”

  He looks serious as he lets this be known.

  When he’s being serious, he looks kind of trustworthy and also a little scary.

  Because, usually, he’s just messing around.

  “Listen, Nadeko. No man is an island.”

  Now he’s starting to say stuff that’s making him sound like a school principal.

  It’s so “buy the book” that i have to gulp─i nearly burst out laughing.

  i can’t believe someone is saying it unironically in this day and age!

  “…If I told you that, some people out there would complain, ‘I can’t believe someone is saying it unironically in this day and age’!” he turns the argument upside down.

  i didn’t expect it to go in this direction. A surprise twist.

  “Some would even say, ‘Sure, but you’re talking to an independent woman!’”

  “…”

  His tone is getting so heated i dare not talk.

  If Nadeko were that elementary schooler Hachikuji who’s apparently friends with Big Brother, i doubt she’d leave him alone when he’s in such a state, but all i can do is watch and listen.

  i can’t even slip in a comment.

  “What a sad interpretation. I bet people who say such things don’t read books. That’s one of the most famous lines of poetry out there!”

  “…”

  Technically, it isn’t a poem.

  “Or what, are we really islands, off on our own sticking our heads in the water instead of at least being peninsulas?!”

  “…”

  What could have happened to him over the last few months? i never knew him as the type to go on in this vein, even as a joke.

  No.

  That must be just how much Nadeko made him worry.

  i feel ashamed.

  i feel bad about what i’ve done.

  i’ll make sure i don’t get caught next time.

  Before going out, i’ll make sure Nadeko’s parents are completely asleep.

  “Y-Yeah,” i nod and agree as these thoughts go through Nadeko’s head. “You’re exactly right. From now on, i’ll come to you if i’m ever in tro
uble instead of wrestling with it alone.”

  “I hope you do. You must be exhausted, so rest for today.”

  “Rest?”

  “Hold on a second,” Koyomi says before leaving─and Nadeko finds herself all alone in his room.

  Where did he go?

  “H-Hey, Mister Serpent… Are we going to be okay? He didn’t catch on, did he?” i whisper. “Mister Serpent?”

  Hm. There’s no reaction.

  He’s just enwrapped around Nadeko’s right wrist, not moving an inch like he really is nothing more than a scrunchy, a plain, tacky scrunchy… i try shaking him, i try smacking him, i try smashing him into things, i try poking at him with the trowel, but he doesn’t even twitch.

  Why not?

  Sure, i want him to act like an accessory when we’re around people, and right now there’s no telling when Koyomi might return, so maybe the Serpent is being “prewdent” by just staying put…

  Eventually─

  “Thanks for waiting.”

  Big Brother Koyomi is back.

  In one hand he’s holding what looks like a thin kimono─a yukata for women, apparently.

  “Here you go.”

  “?”

  “You can sleep in this. I borrowed it from Tsukihi.”

  “What…”

  i’m speechless.

  i can sleep in it? In other words, pajamas?

  Is he sure he didn’t mean to say i could weep in it?

  It would be strange if he said that, too, but… Is Big Brother Koyomi implying that Nadeko should stay over?!

  “Stay the night here. It’s late, after all.”

  Forget implying it, he said it outright.

  Directly.

  “We have to get our story straight to cover for the lie Tsukihi told, too.”

  “Tsu, Tsu-Tsu-Tsukihi… You borrowed this from her,” i stammer, panicked. “S-So, in the end, you woke her…up?”

  “Hm? Oh, no. I just barged into her room without asking, fished through her drawers without asking, checked on Karen’s and Tsukihi’s sleeping faces up close without asking, and borrowed it without asking. I don’t think Tsukihi would mind.”

  “…”

  i feel like there was a completely unnecessary step in there, but maybe it’s Nadeko’s imagination. She can’t tell.

  Still, sleeping over.

  i can’t hide how bewildered i am by the sudden new development crashing down on Nadeko’s head.

  As i take the pajamas (sleeping in a yukata─it’s like i’m at a traditional inn) from Big Brother Koyomi, i’m still panicking.

  “Wh-Which room should i sleep in?”

  “Huh? Well, it’s not like our house has that many rooms. You’re just gonna have to sleep in here.”

  “I-In Big Brother’s room…in Big Brother’s bed!”

  My panic starts to accelerate.

  It’s not like he said anything about his bed.

  i’m getting carried away.

  “Hm? Well, yeah. You must be tired, so use the bed.”

  Nadeko’s jumped gun landed a bullseye.

  Nadeko is sharp today.

  “Wh-What… Y-You use your bed, Koyomi! N, N-N-N, Nadeko can just sleep under the bed!”

  “How do you even come up with that?”

  That’d be terrifying, Koyomi mutters.

  Yeah, i guess anyone, and not just Big Brother, would have trouble getting a good night’s sleep knowing that someone is lurking right below.

  “Just use the bed. It’d turn into a huge problem if it ever got out that I made a middle school girl sleep under my bed. I’d be marked for the Fire Sisters’ terrible retribution.”

  “B-But Nadeko can’t hog Big Brother’s bed and enjoy it all by herself…”

  “Oh. No, no, it’s fine.”

  While i continue to show as much consideration as possible, Big Brother Koyomi gets a smile on his face like nothing’s the matter.

  “Two people could sleep in this bed no problem.”

  014

  That was the moment.

  The light in the room has been casting Big Brother Koyomi’s shadow onto the carpet, and a young blond girl comes flying out of it.

  “Vampire Punch!”

  The girl runs her fist straight into Koyomi’s chin as she yells the words.

  A perfect uppercut.

  “Gaah!”

  Koyomi bends backwards, then keeps tipping over to fall on the floor face-up.

  So weak!

  He let himself get defeated like some kind of punching-bag character you’d see at the very beginning of a battle manga. He was so weak you could compare him to a flimsy piece of paper.

  “Hmph!” the young girl grunts, twisting in the air to land on the ceiling without a sound.

  She’s wearing a fluttering dress but does a good job holding its fabric between her thighs so that the hem doesn’t flip up.

  Her hair looks like it’s standing on end, though.

  …i believe the girl was wearing a helmet the last time i saw her─but it seems the helmet played out as a fad.

  Yes.

  It was a vampire who leapt out of Koyomi’s shadow, no, the former vampire, Miss Shinobu Oshino.

  Even i feel a little strange about calling someone who looks like an eight-year-old girl “Miss,” but according to Miss Shinobu, she’s actually five hundred years old. Normally, i might need to call her “Mistress” and not just “Miss.”

  …Right.

  She must be the same as Mister Serpent in that sense─and now Nadeko realizes why he’s been so quiet all this time.

  Not because Koyomi was there, but because Miss Shinobu was close by─that’s why he’s been staying still.

  If you just go by age, Mister Serpent must be the older of the two, and even if no one believes in him now, he’s still a god, while Miss Shinobu is a vampire. So you might not see the need─but then, Miss Shinobu is “King of the Aberrations” after all.

  The ruler of unlife.

  In other words, every aberration is food to her.

  The title of “top of the food chain” fits Miss Shinobu better than anyone─she might easily gobble down Mister Serpent (especially at his current size).

  Swallowing a snake alive would be a bad joke.

  Not something you could laugh about.

  “Phew… ’Twas a close call,” Miss Shinobu says still stuck to the ceiling and wiping the sweat from her brow.

  Like someone who just finished a big job.

  “We nearly ran afoul of some Tokyo publishing ordinances…good grief. My master’s lack of restraint is enough to drain the blood from even a vampire’s cheeks. I thought I might suffer a bout of anemia.”

  “…”

  It’s such a contemporary subject for her to touch on.

  Not something you’d expect from a vampire, but Miss Shinobu seems to be influenced pretty heavily by Koyomi, so maybe it’s wrong to seek a level of refinement from her that matches her appearance.

  “Now, then.”

  Miss Shinobu drops from the ceiling.

  Agilely, like some rhythmic gymnast, she avoids Koyomi and lands on the floor.

  She follows that by rubbing her chin.

  Around the same spot where she punched Big Brother.

  “As our senses are linked, my master’s pain becomes mine as well, yet… Heh, so ’tis not a problem if I knock him unconscious before he has any chance to feel distress.”

  “…”

  What a frightening thing to say.

  Koyomi is still on the floor and not moving a finger. Is this “rattling the brain with a punch to the jaw,” like in boxing?

  Your brain getting rattled sounds pretty serious, though.

  i mean, it’s your brain.

  “Are ye all right, forelocked girl?” Miss Shinobu looks at Nadeko and asks.