by Nisioisin
No one that I know confronts his own weakness as much as he does, and I find him dazzling.
Almost blindingly dazzling.
I can think back with fondness to that night when Miss Senjogahara and I excitedly badmouthed Araragi─and while I think Miss Senjogahara feels the same way, every insult I uttered about Araragi somehow became praise.
Like calling him a chump.
Everything I said came out sounding like that.
All of my anger for him was nothing more than fondness, and at face value too.
My feelings for him were the one thing I couldn’t cut loose.
I’ve always loved Araragi, always, even when I become you.
He says he saved the dying Shinobu even as he cried about not wanting to die.
I bet I would have been smiling as I saved her.
Yes, I think that if you were to pinpoint the moment when I fell in love with him, it would have to be when he was crying in that battle to the death with Shinobu.
After all, I’ve never cried before, not a single time.
I doubt I even cried when I was born.
That’s why I fell in love with Araragi, the crybaby.
Episode said that I had become normal, but the bigger question is what if I stopped being me?
If I became me, would Araragi cry yet again?
I wouldn’t be able to stand it.
But I’m not going to look away anymore from whatever it is that I can’t stand.
I want to become one with the two of you, never looking away from the reality that doing so would disappoint Araragi.
So that I can keep loving Araragi, too.
That’s what I want to do.
Miss Black Hanekawa.
No, that’s such a formal thing to call you now that I think about it.
The me inside of me.
Or maybe I should call you another me?
No, that somehow seems wrong, too.
I have a feeling that you’re something like a little sister to me. I started to feel that way when I saw Karen and Tsukihi.
I’m sorry for being such an awful big sister.
I’m sorry for making you worry all this time.
This really is my final request.
This is the last time I’ll force you to play such a difficult role.
Please save our other sister.
I know she’s a troublesome girl, a pyromaniacal runaway, but I’ll wait for as long as it takes for her to come home.
I love you both, and myself.
Yours in haste.
─
…And then.
That was it for the letter my myaster wrote before going to sleep.
It was hard to nyoh what to say.
I’d always thought my myaster was a smart anyimal, nyot an idiot like me─but nyow it looked like she myight’ve been just as stupid, or maybe even stupider.
I’d nyeed to be stupid in order to make my myaster smart if you went by the logic in her letter, but even that seemed fishy to me.
Since the way I work as a character is that I only ever do as my myaster wants in order to protect my myaster’s intentions, she didn’t have to write such a letter─all she had to do was go to sleep like nyormal and I would’ve gone out there to beat that tiger down.
I share my myaster’s memories, so if she realized what the tiger, the Tyrannical Tiger, really was, I would absolutely nyoh about it too.
Nyo, my myaster was fully aware of that─she said so in the letter.
So that meant she nyew but still nyeeded to ask me?
In the end, my myaster nyever realized that that’s exactly what people call her fastidiousness and nyot being like everyone else.
Nyow that is the biggest tragedy of all.
“Meow.”
I placed the nyotebook on top of the desk.
Really, I had her memories of writing the letter, too. That meant there was nyo real reason for me to read it, but I took the time to anyway. I guess I’m in nyo place to say anything about my myaster.
Whatever the case, I nyow had a general idea of what was happening.
The Tyrannical Tiger.
And the source of my myaster’s illness.
I had all the details nyow.
But even my myaster seemed to be mistaken about a few things─nyot that she could have avoided those mistakes since she was building a case without having everything she needed to come to a conclusion.
Both the style and context of my myaster’s letter were out of joint─there was nyo way she wrote it in a collected state of mind.
It’d be impawssible for her to get a purrfect score in this situation, but she still myanaged to get decent marks, an eighty out of a hundred. Nyot bad.
“How does she nyot see it? You’d think she would. You’d think she’d question why nyo jealousy ever sprouted about Hitagi Senjogahara and Koyomi Araragi going out even though she burned with envy about her home and family.”
The strongest emotion in my myaster was romantic love.
I don’t think I nyeed to explain. Just think back to the transformation before the culture festival.
Basically, that annyoying little human’s little sister was right when the first thing she associated with fire was feelings of love.
So the very furst thing my myaster should have burned wasn’t the Hanekawa residence or the abandoned cram school, it was Hitagi Senjogahara the purrson─
Did my myaster really nyot nyotice?
Nyo.
I guess that meant she was looking away from the fact.
Then I suppose my myaster would eventually run into that reason once she’s able to stop looking away from the truth and look straight at it instead.
I wonder if she’ll be able to take it, though.
It’s a cruel truth─and my myaster wouldn’t be able to cut her heart loose anymore.
“Loving me and the Tyrannical Tiger─loving herself. I doubt my myaster knows just how hard that is. She’s an extreme case, but doesn’t any human look away from their stress and envy to one degree or anyother?”
Nyot many people are able to look at the world head-on. Why did my myaster have to be the one to wear such heavy shackles?
Me and the Tyrannical Tiger nyeeded to carry that weight.
Just because she cut her pain loose.
That didn’t mean her pain never hurt.
In fact, just imagine how painful it is to sever a piece of your heart.
“And her biggest mistake was calling someone like me her family─mya-haha. I’m nyothing more than her pet.”
Nyo, I was a stray.
And it was weird to call me her sister to begin with, I was a male when I was run over on that street─but then again, I was made from a cut-off piece of my myaster’s heart even if I’m based on an Afflicting Cat, so I guess my gender is a little fuzzy. Little sister, little brother─being called either doesn’t feel wrong.
Why ask what an aberration’s gender is to begin with?
Actually, the most impurressive thing was that she could call that gigantic tiger her little sister. She nyew the females are fiercest when it comes to wild animals, right? Wanting me to attack it and exorcize it was one thing, but asking me to bring the tiger back to her heart as family was a ridiculous request.
Nyot dead or alive, but alive and well?
She was asking for too much.
I was planning on beating it down even if my myaster didn’t ask me to. But then she went and asked for even myore.
But if that Hawaiian-shirted jerk expert heard me, I’m sure he’d say, “What violent thoughts. Aberrations and humans need to figure out how to coexist” or something. Isn’t that the kind of thing that little human said?
Sure, we were both nyew breeds of aberrations, both aberrations born from my myaster, but unlike me, that thing wasn’t based on any aberration─its spirit didn’t possess anything. My nyon-aberrational myaster didn’t seem to nyoh what exactly that meant.
She didn’t nyoh h
ow freeing it was to a nyaberration to nyot be written about, to have nyo records, to nyever have been spoken of.
Honestly, I didn’t even want to imagine it.
One thing I could say─is that the tiger had nyo blind spots, nyo weaknesses.
Furget bringing it back, just opposing it was difficult.
I’d have to face it head-on.
And destroy its strengths.
“Ah…” I sighed.
Nyow what a heavy burden.
Right on my shoulders, too.
“It doesn’t really myatter to me. I’m just a nyaberration that works for my myaster’s sake. Whether my myaster’s parents’ home burns, or some myemyorable building burns, or her friend’s home burns, or even this home burns, it doesn’t myatter to me at all. If anything, those rising flames look refreshing to me.”
Because there wasn’t much of a fundamental difference between the Tyrannical Tiger, the avatar of her envy, and me, the avatar of her stress. It called us similar aberrations, too─so if anything, I understood the Tyrannical Tiger’s feelings better.
The only real difference between the two of us is whether we were independent of our myaster or if we couldn’t separate ourselves from her. It didn’t seem to mean anything to me.
Just like my myaster understood, I was just a nyaberration who was going to disappear sooner or later─so maybe there was nyo nyeed for her to take me back inside and burden herself with me.
Myaybe it was also true for the Tyrannical Tiger.
If she did nyothing, the flames of emotion might all just get expelled and vanish─so there might be nyo need for my myaster to take it all into herself.
Nyot just nyo nyeed.
Doing so myight even backfire.
Me coming out had to be its own kind of burden for her─so instead of accepting me, she nyeeded to erase me.
She needed to extinguish me.
It wouldn’t be hard to do. In fact, it’d be very easy to make me disappear, my myaster only had to wish for it to happen.
But that wasn’t what my myaster chose to do.
She’d set us loose, but nyow she was trying to get us back.
What a funny thing.
Me. The Tyrannical Tiger.
We were just nyewsances to my myaster.
Instead of stubbornly trying to accept us─if she really was smart, my myaster should be able to─
“So─it’s pointless.”
Hitagi Senjoghara must have changed.
That annyoying little human must have changed, too.
And my myaster also changed.
But nyo matter how much you change, there’s something that doesn’t change. The world.
Hitagi Senjogahara changing doesn’t mean her past nyever happened. That little human changing doesn’t mean his past nyever happened.
It doesn’t change. It’s not replaced. It doesn’t become something else.
Humans are themselves for as long as they live.
We, who were created by my myaster who wandered around town during spring break wanting to meet that vampire, didn’t change anything. So─it really would be right and good for us to just disappear.
That annyoying little human and that Hawaiian-shirted jerk would agree.
I was just in the way.
And so was the Tyrannical Tiger.
“But, well. She asked.”
I didn’t nyoh what this feeling was.
I nyew I should be doing the same thing whether she asked me to or not─so why did I feel so inspired?
The burden on my shoulders should have only weighed me down.
So why did it feel so comforting?
All that happened was that for the first time, I had a place waiting for me─I had somewhere to go home to. That was it, but why did I nyow feel like I could accomplish anything? What had she done?
It made me happy.
It made me want to cry.
“Nyot that I’m gonna cry─I’m a cat. I don’t cry, I meow.”
Meow, I meowed─and unlocked the window.
My myaster figured out that I’d come out the night before because I’d forgotten to lock it (she probably would have figured it out anyway, there was a lot of other evidence), but I didn’t think I nyeeded to be careful about that now. I wouldn’t be coming back to this room as me.
It seemed like my myaster had chosen my current appearance because she thought these clothes would be easy to mewve around in, but really, I mewved around best wearing nyothing at all. I felt bad doing that to my myaster, though (I even felt sorry nyow for going around in just her underwear during Golden Week), so I’d accept her act of kindness.
She was gonna have to let me go barefoot, at least.
And just as the bottom of my paw hit the windowsill, I remembered something.
Just a cat’s passing fancy, really.
Nyo matter what ended up happening, my myaster wasn’t going to be my myaster anymore, and I wasn’t going to be me either.
This wasn’t about individual differences between Black Hanekawas─it really would be the last time I surfaced.
After being put off in May and June, the aberration nyown as me really was going to be resolved this time.
So I’d write something down for her, too.
Would these count as final words in my case?
Nyo, probably nyot.
I wasn’t going to die or disappear, I was just going home.
But what a long way back it was.
“Nyalright, time for my final service to my myaster.”
It’s nyot like I can write long sentences.
I added one little line to the end of my myaster’s letter before flying out of the wide-open window into the mewnlit nyight.
“I’ll be off.”
062
I am a tiger. I have a name: the Tyrannical Tiger.
I have an idea of where I was born, but all I remember is that I saw sobbing and weeping in a dark, damp place─I am made of not envy alone but of all dark emotions.
I am a product of darkness.
The kind of darkness that makes you want to avert your eyes.
But it does not matter to me what I am, what my name is, where I was born, what I am made of.
In fact, the name Tyrannical Tiger is almost a nuisance. They say that a dead tiger leaves its skin behind, while dead men leave their names behind, but I am made of nothing but darkness, I have been all but dead from the beginning, and I intend on leaving behind neither name nor skin.
I do not intend on leaving a single cinder behind.
Like a raging fire that leaves not a single pillar or post behind.
I will burn everything to nothing.
All that I hold important is this heated, burning obligation in my frame.
This tiger of tyranny cares not for the past.
I must burn it. I must burn it.
Burn what?
Everything.
The moment after I was born into this world, I saw my mother who had brought me into it.
No, perhaps I should say my twin sister.
It seems that the flames that burn in my chest come from this sister of mine─my strong, wise, frightening, fragile, pure-white sister.
Innocent and unblemished. White, transparently white.
My beautiful sister, who looks not a thing like me.
She truly was beautiful.
That beauty.
That whiteness. When I think of how it is I who protects it─I feel proud.
But that matters none.
The spark can be anything.
The fire can grow in any way.
The one and only thing I have is this obligation.
While I have no sense that I am doing something for her sake, I also do not intend to cause her any harm, just as the cat born in the same way from her said.