Nekomonogatari (White)

by Nisioisin

  Then again, the nuance seemed to shift a bit when I took into account that both of his parents were police officers.

  And so, to this mom of his.

  I said “I’ll be on my way” at the entrance before heading out─Karen and Tsukihi had left about half an hour earlier since their middle school was farther away─and put my hand on the doorknob when she called out:

  “Hanekawa-chan.”

  To me.

  “I don’t know what your family situation is, and I don’t plan on asking you about it at the moment, but please don’t think it’s normal to be away from your parents and leaving our home with an ‘I’ll be on my way.’ That’s the one thing I don’t want you thinking.”

  “……”

  “While we can host you, it’s not as if we can bring you into our family. No matter how much Karen and Tsukihi adore you like an older sister. Oh, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea─I’m not saying you’re a bother. Karen and Tsukihi are delighted you’re here─and you’re Koyomi’s friend, so we want to treat you as well as we can. And I’ve heard that you’re to thank for his newfound motivation to study.”

  “No…”

  Not at all, I replied.

  How do I explain it? Araragi’s mother─resembled him, but there was a kind of satori in her eyes.

  Like she saw things for what they are.

  I felt like I understood why Araragi didn’t like dealing with his mother, even if you took away the fact that she was a police officer.

  “I’m sorry. I seem to have worried you unnecessarily─but there isn’t anything really worth mentioning about my family situation. I don’t know, I guess you could say we’re not on the best terms…” Or that we were on bad terms. Or that it was warped. “…That’s all.”

  “You know that parents being on bad terms with their child is a kind of abuse on its own.” So, Mrs. Araragi said. “You need to ask for help if you’re ever in trouble. That could be a public agency, or you could ask Koyomi. He can be surprisingly reliable.”

  “Yes…”

  I─knew that.

  I knew very well just how reliable Araragi was.

  I’d always known─and yet.

  I tried my best not to rely on him.

  I was unable to rely on him.

  “A family isn’t something that you need to have, but it should be a happy one if it exists. That’s what I think. As a mother.”

  “As─a mother.”

  “Hanekawa-chan. It’s okay for people to go ahead and run from bad things, but just looking away doesn’t count as running. No one on the outside can lend you a hand while you’re consenting to the way things are─so maybe you could start by ‘speaking up’ about it.”

  Mrs. Araragi saw me off with those words─a rather long “be safe” in reply to my “I’ll be on my way.”

  My goodness.

  Mothers really are strong─was my dumb impression.

  I felt totally owned.

  But it wasn’t the worst feeling.

  …Mother, huh?

  That was another thing─that I didn’t know of until now.

  What in the world, I wondered, had I been doing all this time?

  Not just at night─during afternoons and mornings, too.

  “Just looking away doesn’t count as running? Those are some weighty words.”

  I was overcome with admiration.

  That was closer to something that Mister Oshino might say, rather than Araragi.

  And so, chewing over the words, I headed to school─but en route, I ended up face-to-face with something that I wished I could indeed “look away” from.

  No, really. I wanted to turn around on the spot and go back the way I came.

  A boy with golden eyes and hair came walking down my path─his physique made him seem my age, but describing his face as “young” would be an understatement. His babyface, with its clear signs of immaturity, made him look like a middle schooler.

  But for a middle-school boy─the look in his golden eyes, fixed straight forward in a glare, couldn’t be any worse.

  Of course─unlike spring break.

  He didn’t have a gigantic silver cross resting on his back, which may have softened his image.

  “…Um.”

  I really was thinking about changing course, but he noticed me a moment before I was able to make that decision.

  Mm. Hm.

  His golden eyes with that terrible look acquired me.

  My eyes met his.

  Head-on.

  “Oh, ohh, you─oh, what were you called again─you’re that girl who nearly got herself slaughtered by me the other day. Keheheh─gotta love it.”

  Him.

  The half-vampire and vampire hunter─Episode pointed at me, looking truly amused as he spoke.

  “Hello…” I dipped my head. “Long time no see…Mister Episode.”

  He didn’t seem very troubled by this meeting─but I was finding it as awkward as could be, and it was coming through in my speech.

  But it made sense.

  Just as he’d said, the other day─during spring break─I nearly got myself slaughtered by him.

  No, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that he actually killed me─after all, he sent more than half of the organs in my torso flying.

  He’d originally come to this town chasing after Shinobu, a legendary vampire. Then, in order to defeat her, he ended up having to fight Araragi, her thrall─and that’s when my painful experience took place.

  It was my fault for sticking my nose into a duel between two guys, but still, didn’t he feel bad at all?

  “I heard that you went straight back to your home country afterwards… Why have you returned to this town, Mister Episode?” I asked timidly.

  I did so wondering if he might have in order to try and “defeat” Araragi and Shinobu again─he could be the source of the trouble Araragi seemed to be in.

  As an expert in the field, Mister Oshino would have settled all of that with flair─but he wasn’t omnipotent. Perhaps Araragi and Shinobu had been exposed through some oversight─but the half-vampire (he was fine being in the sun, so he could get to work first thing in the morning) only smiled a wicked grin at my question.

  “Gotta love it,” he said. “What are you doing, calling me Mister Episode─I’m not old enough for anyone to be calling me mister yet, and why would anyone want to be polite to me?”

  “What?”

  But he was a vampire, half-so as he may have been… Didn’t that mean he had a pretty long lifespan?

  “Gotta love it─having a long lifespan doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m old. This is supposed to be a secret, but I’ll tell you for kicks. You’re way older than I am─right now, this very day? I’m six years old.”

  “Six?!”

  I couldn’t hide my shock.

  Maybe that was the reaction Mister Episode…er, li’l Episode wanted, as he looked delighted.

  “It’s my birthday next month, so I’ll be seven then─but my parent on the vampire side of my family seems to have been a fast-maturing aberration, and I show some traces of that.”

  “……”

  “Hey, don’t judge people by their appearances─not that I’m a human, of course.”

  Li’l Episode put an end to the topic, leaving me with no way to figure out the truth of anything he’d said.

  It seemed possible that he was just making fun of me.

  If he was going to talk about judging others by appearances, though, there was something I wanted him to explain even more than his age: it was a blazing-hot August morning, so why was he wearing the same white traditional school uniform he had on over spring break?

  Maybe he didn’t feel hot because he was a half-vampire.

  So…

  He wasn’t a high schooler or a middle schooler, age-wise he was a grade schooler and even younger than Shinobu and Mayoi…

  Forget li’l Episode, you could even call him widdle Episode. He didn’t have a baby
face; in fact, he looked old for his age.

  I couldn’t deny feeling that it was a little late to be learning this kind of hidden backstory.

  I mean, talk about a non-existent youth.

  “And also, do you not have that cross with you?”

  “Hm? Oh. ’Course not. I’d stand out if I walked around with that thing, duh.”

  Huh.

  So he was at least conscious about that kind of thing.

  “…Are you going to answer my question about why you came back to this town?”

  “Wha? Man, you really want to know, don’t you? Well, I owe you one, and I’d love to tell you,” Episode said.

  He seemed to think of nearly killing me as some sort of debt, at least.

  I felt a little relieved.

  “But I don’t know why I came to this town yet, myself. I got summoned down here out of nowhere and just arrived this morning on a night bus─”

  “Night bus…”

  How oddly proletarian.

  Or was he some sort of tourist?

  “And what do you mean, you were summoned?”

  “People summon me places. For the most part, I’m a freelance vampire hunter. I’m not like Dramaturgy and Guillotine Cutter. I’m a mercenary. I do what I want, and I’ll work for anyone as long as the money is good.”

  “So you accept jobs without even hearing what they are?”

  “Well, I got paid up front. And I had my reasons for taking this one. Who cares what the job is, though. Put me on it and I’ll kill anyone so hard that there won’t even be after-effects to deal with.”

  “…Then, is there a chance that you’d accept a tiger extermination job?”

  “Tiger extermination?” Episode asked back with a simple, puzzled face. “Umm… Well, I’m a hunter who specializes in vampires. Tigers are a little… What, did the Shogun make a ridiculous request or something?”

  “The Shogun…”

  Why did he know the old tale about the Zen monk Ikkyu?

  Was the Ministry of Education-approved anime about him an international hit?

  Hmm.

  I ended up with no reply to my question (I did want to get an answer out of him, but there was nothing I could do if he didn’t know), but I was surprised by how much of a normal conversation we were having.

  I had a lot of other, bigger ideas about li’l Episode in my head even though we’d only had contact with each other for a few hours in total during spring break with everything between him and Araragi─but this is what he was like if you got to meet him while the sun was out, huh?

  It was almost like the saying goes, behind every ghost is a silver tongue.

  He was such a normal kid it was almost a letdown.

  While he definitely didn’t look six or seven, it absolutely felt like I was talking to a younger boy now that we were here on the side of the street.

  The white school uniform was nothing more than his self-conscious idea of fashion─

  “But you know. Was it Tsubasa Hanekawa?”

  However.

  Something almost identical to the impression that I got of him─he had as well.

  “Compared to the last time we met─you’ve gotten real normal.”

  “…What?”

  He said it directly and without embellishment, so the words rang heavy in my heart.

  “I mean, just now─I have the sight of a vampire but couldn’t tell who you were for a second. And no, I’m not talking about how you cut your hair or how you don’t have glasses. It’s something more essential─that, what would you call it, overwhelming presence I felt coming from you last time? It’s clean gone. Almost like it’s been cut loose from you, without a trace─”

  “……”

  I understood what he was trying to say.

  It wasn’t something I understood until he said it─but the me that Episode knew was the me during spring break.

  Me before Black Hanekawa was born inside of me─me before I took everything black about me and set it loose as an aberration.

  Which is why─no.

  But hold on a second.

  Saying I was normal, or that I’d lost whatever presence, was almost like─

  It made me think back to what Karen said the day before in the bath.

  You never put on airs, Tsubasa─but.

  It’s not that I don’t put on airs, it was that I couldn’t put on airs now─of course there’d be no way for me to put on any airs after I’d taken my individuality and set it loose─

  No, no.

  That wasn’t right. That was even less right.

  This line of thought─probably didn’t end well.

  Probably─some truth that I didn’t want to behold─lay beyond─

  “Oh.”

  What to me was a shocking statement seemed to be nothing more to Episode than a thought he happened to voice. He already seemed uninterested in the topic as he spotted something to my back.

  Using his self-professed vampire sight.

  He’d spotted someone behind me.

  “There you go, over there─that’s who summoned me out here without even saying why. I started asking questions, and it seems like she was that Hawaiian-shirted asshole Mèmè Oshino’s senior back in college─which is why I had to take this job, it meant this had some kind of connection to me─”

  I─turned around.

  054

  She introduced herself as Izuko Gaen.

  A young dame whose large clothes looked quite casual on her small frame─but of course, while I call her a “young dame,” this was just after I had been completely unable to figure out how old Episode was, so I didn’t have much confidence in my ability to guess ages. I would believe you if you told me she was in her twenties, but if she really was Mister Oshino’s senior, she had to be over thirty at least. To be honest with you, though, I could see her as being in her teens, too.

  Actually, though I say this after all of that speculation, she was composed in a way that made it seem a little pointless to try to pin down her age─something about her seemed to stand apart. Just as it’s boorish and meaningless to look at a masterful work of art and immediately start thinking about the year and age of its production, its origin, or who its creator is─she shut down such questions.

  In that sense, her casual dress looked just right on her─a regular person wearing XL-sized clothes on an S-sized physique risked giving the impression of only being slovenly, but to be frank, she looked refined.

  She wore a baseball cap tilted to the side and the heels of her sneakers were crushed, but it didn’t strike you as improper or inelegant. It all fit perfectly in her brand of fashion.

  “Hey, ’Sode─you were taking forever to show up at our meeting spot, so I decided to come get you. Now that I’m here, it looks like you were in the middle of hitting on a girl? Sorry if I got in your way.”

  That was her greeting.

  She spoke with an amiable smile.

  There was something odd about the way she talked─like she was providing a running commentary on her actions.

  It felt like she was using her smile to cover up that oddness.

  “Hmm? My, isn’t the young lady…”

  And then she looked at me.

  “Tsubasa...Hanekawa─is it?”

  “Oh, yes─”

  Hearing my name before I’d given it─I was confused.

  In part, I was already astonished because Episode said she was Mister Oshino’s senior─but even if she’d heard about me from li’l Episode or Mister Oshino, unless she also had this “vampire sight” thing, there was no way she could recognize me as Tsubasa Hanekawa with my cut hair.

  “─Yes, that’s me?”

  “Well, what a surprise. I’m glad I decided to act on a whim and come here because it meant getting to meet you, Tsubasa. Mèmè probably didn’t tell you, but I was ahead of him in college, and my name is Izuko Gaen. He used to call me his senior. There are a lot of situations in my life where people call me that.”
>
  So she said.

  She really did speak in an odd way.