Onimonogatari Read online

  001

  We’re already quite familiar with the name Shinobu Oshino. Hearing it doesn’t make me particularly happy, but I don’t find it odd, either. It feels just right. The name she once had, Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, must already be a thing of the past, even to her.

  The past.

  What came before.

  What’s ended.

  Or perhaps─what never happened.

  What’s uncertain if it ever happened.

  That’s what it is to her. Something spoken alongside her memories, or maybe even something with no relation to who she is now.

  Unrelated.

  I think it goes without saying that a past self is far more of a stranger than the average stranger and is subject to a kind of hatred completely different from self-hatred─if you take me, for example, me during spring break, me during Golden Week, me climbing the stairs, me on Mother’s Day, me on my bike, and me in class are all someone else.

  Someone else. Strangers. People I don’t know.

  This isn’t an attempt to shift responsibility.

  I’m certainly not trying to disavow who I was back then, either─me back then did a very good job of things back then. I think I did everything I could with everything I had.

  But my everything was different from my everything now─I think in each instance, based on each conviction, the person I am today would have behaved differently.

  Nevertheless, I’d have saved a vampire in the end.

  Nevertheless, I’d have been attacked by a cat in the end.

  Nevertheless, I’d have caught Senjogahara in the end─taking those actions in each instance, based on each notion.

  Whether they are right or wrong, there are something like an infinite number of other paths I could have taken─and choosing from that infinitude is ultimately something decided in the moment. You could even say that it’s up to whimsy.

  That Shinobu is the Shinobu she is now.

  That she’s the Shinobu she is now and not a different one.

  That she’s willing to throw away the name and form of a legendary vampire, the iron-blooded, hot-blooded, yet cold-blooded vampire Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, and be the Shinobu she is now─this fact that is my greatest saving grace of all could be called the product of her momentary whims.

  What joyous whims.

  Despite appearing like a little girl, she’s far older than me, an eighteen-year-old kid, and has lived a long life that’s gone on for more than five centuries, so maybe, rather unexpectedly, she can be considerate in these matters─no, not considerate, I know it’s nothing more than caprice.

  So this time, let’s talk about how these whims of hers played out four hundred years ago. About what she went through in this country four hundred years ago, and what she did─that’s our story.

  Shinobu Oshino.

  A story that goes back through her timeline.

  We’ll rewind Shinobu’s clock.

  That’s not all we’ll be doing, of course, because that past relates and doesn’t relate to the present day─as always, I’ll save, be saved, do things, be unable to. Please entertain your own thoughts on that as you read.

  I, Koyomi Araragi, am going to be thinking, too.

  About her─as I tell it.

  002

  Previously in the series:

  I, Koyomi Araragi, traveled through time with my vampire partner, Shinobu Oshino, a dime-a-dozen experience during which we failed to change history and returned dejected to the modern day, the end.

  If you wanted details, I’d ask you to consult Kabuki, the work before the work before last, but you don’t really need to. “I’d ask you” to do it, but I’m actually not. To be honest, I wish you wouldn’t consult that tale of failure. Do you think I like showing off my faults or something?

  But I will go so far as to say that there was a moving reason behind our time travel, namely an attempt to revive Mayoi Hachikuji, my friend who died eleven years ago and has since been wandering this town. For the sake of my honor, I’d like to divulge (stingily) that I was trying to prevent her from ever losing her life in a traffic accident at the too-young age of ten─though when I asked her directly after coming back defeated and disappointed…

  “It’s not as if I particularly want to revive. How pointless and self-serving, Mister Araragi, tee-hee!”

  That’s what she said (she didn’t actually go that far), so my grand midsummer adventure, on which I spent the last day of my last, precious high school summer break (technically the day of the start-of-school ceremony for second term) was totally meaningless, as in why bother wasting an entire book’s worth of space on that, are you stupid or what, why don’t you just die, oh, being half-vampire and immortal you can’t even do that, hopeless bastard.

  So don’t read Kabuki, okay?

  Promise me you won’t!

  This isn’t just an act!

  …But anyway, I was plodding back home with this problematic ghost girl, or really just the problem child known as Mayoi Hachikuji.

  Our start-of-school ceremony had already begun when I’d failed to change history via time travel and came back to the present (the exact time being an hour past noon on August twenty-first, a Monday). I was already feeling excited on the inside, as in look at what I’ve done, absent on the very first day of the new term, never having managed to start on my summer break homework in the end, Senjogahara and Hanekawa are gonna kill me two times each, I can’t wait (hooray), but all of that aside I needed to return Hachikuji’s backpack to her.

  As far as the details regarding that one, they’re not really worth discussing here, and to someone who’d just slipped into the past and future and whatnot in a “pointless” use of time as Hachikuji put it (she didn’t actually), it felt like old news, but chronologically speaking, the ghost girl Mayoi had come to play in my room and forgotten her backpack there only yesterday, on August twentieth.

  If you wanted details, what was it you could consult? Uh, the BAKEMONOGATARI Anime Complete Guidebook, if I’m not mistaken?

  There might be a short piece in there about that episode…but wait, that would mean it happened in the anime adaptation, so for us, does the event belong to a parallel world?

  Parallel world.

  A grating term…

  Well, in any case, I suppose that book isn’t in distribution anymore… Gosh, the anime world is so rough.

  Just when it seemed to be a hit, it got weeded out in the blink of an eye.

  You could say such a quick turnover rate is in fact healthy for an industry… Actually, never mind.

  While I’d been hustling to alter the past, Hachikuji had been roaming the streets trying to retrieve her backpack from my house.

  If she was going to meander around for nearly half a day looking for me, then she could have just waited in front of my house around the time I usually got back from school, but when I put the question to her…

  “I don’t want you searching my backpack! Searching it would be one thing, but the idea of you doing this and that to the fabric makes me want to vomit! What, you’d never? True, you might not. But the simple fact that you had the time is already inexcusable!”

  So went her reply.

  She didn’t trust me at all.

  In fact, she plain hated me.

  Of course, a girl of such a young and tender age treating you like the plague might be a rare and welcome experience, so I wasn’t at all opposed to partaking in it, but either way, Hachikuji still needed to reclaim her backpack.

  Hence, with her walking by my side, I was pushing my bicycle from Kita-Shirahebi Shrine, the site of my time warp, and heading home.

  “I do have to say, Hachikuji, you somehow feel weaker as a character without your backpack.”
>
  “How rude of you, Mister Araragi. These pigtails should be more than enough to establish who I am.”

  “Pigtails, huh. They aren’t up to defining you on their own, though… I heard good characters need to have designs that are identifiable just from their silhouette.”

  “That’s a very dated way of thinking… I believe it’s been a long time since we’ve entered an age where templates like characters being identifiable by their silhouette and stories needing a traditional dramatic structure don’t hold anymore.”

  “I see you’re as skeptical of pre-existing values as ever…”

  “What I think determines a character design’s quality isn’t the silhouette, it’s whether they’re recognizable even if someone with no artistic talent draws them. Like Goku, or Pikachu. A child could draw them and you’d still recognize who they are, right?”

  “Good point.”

  “Though without my backpack, I’m more like a slug than a snail.”

  “Was it Oshino who said it, or did Hanekawa, I forget… But yeah, snails and slugs are basically the same. Slugs are snails whose shells retrogressed, or something…”

  “But it feels weird when there’s something left after their shells de-evolve─like a bird that can’t fly, or with humans, isn’t it like saying, ‘I lost all my bones but I’m still alive, I’m doing fine’?”

  “Hmm. If you considered the shell an exoskeleton, I guess, but in terms of its role, isn’t it more like their skin? Not that I’m sure a human could survive without any.”

  “Yes, it’s hard to say for sure. But you’ve proven it’s possible to lose all your bones and survive, Mister Araragi…”

  “Right, as a boneless chicken, I’ve proven…no such thing, damn you.”

  “Because the hermit crab is so unforgettable, we assume a snail’s shell could be removed. If you actually did that, the snail dies. Pretty important innards seem to be stuffed in there.”

  “Like with your backpack.”

  “No, there’s nothing that important in mine… It wouldn’t trouble me not to have them, it’s just that you holding onto my belongings sickens me, Mister Araragi.”

  “…”

  “It would only mean Mayoi Hachikuji turning into Mayoi Muckyoozy… Wait, did we already make this joke before?”

  “I’m not too sure because I wasn’t there, but didn’t you, for the anime’s alternate voice track?”

  “Dear I. I did reuse it, oh dear.”

  “I think recycling is fair game as long as it’s across different media… And that’s a parallel world, anyway. I do think you might want to avoid that joke so people don’t start associating you with slugs…”

  “I am based on a snail, though. Not much of a difference. It being a cat for Miss Hanekawa makes me jealous.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “The same goes for your demon.”

  “…Uh huh.”

  “Is something the matter?”

  “No, well… Kids love snails, don’t they? While slugs creep them out… Having or not having that shell makes a big difference.”

  “Maybe not so much these days. And snails do have a lot of parasites.”

  “Parasites?”

  “In my case, you, Mister Araragi.”

  “I see, I see, in your case, me─hold on a sec, who’re you calling your parasite?”

  “You’ve been doing that a lot today, going along with it. I personally feel that kind of humor is embarrassing in writing.”

  “I’ve heard of that before, though. What was that snail parasite called, again? The really scary type that takes over the brain…the leucochloridium.”

  “How very much like you that we find a scrambled ‘loli’ in there.”

  “Oh god. Did I throw a perfect alley-oop for you to dunk on me with?”

  “You’ve got it, Mister Araragi. If you kind of try, you can also mishear a ‘lewd’ in there. What a nasty parasite.”

  “Just the worst. No, why are we trying at all?”

  “Can we discuss how we might make the ‘dium’ part interesting too?”

  “I’m not helping you brainstorm names to call me… But really, the leucochloridium is a real scary kind of parasite, isn’t it? Just hearing about what it does gives you the chills. It attaches to a snail, makes it move to a place where it’s more easily eaten by a bird, and even transforms the eyestalks so it stands out… Sure, you might think I’m worthless, but I wish you wouldn’t lump me in with those things.”

  “I’m only joking.”

  “I know that, but still.”

  Hachikuji and I chattered on the way in this fashion until we arrived at the Araragi residence, or in other words, my house. We go on endlessly any time we start bantering, but it never amounted to much─though this one case may have been an exception.

  That is, when I think back on it now.

  The talk about the evolution, retrogression, and so on of snails and slugs and the stuff regarding the leucochloridium parasite might have actually foreshadowed things about this story to a rather ironic extent─but really, calling it foreshadowing is just an example of the so-called Barnum effect. You can say anything you want after the fact.

  “When I think back on it.”

  Considering how humanity has been jerked around by those convenient, convincing words, my view sounds like a plain delusion─thinking back is the only way you can think about things, and even if you wanted to dispute that, people should only bother thinking about the future anyway.

  I should have learned that more than well enough.

  After my time travel.

  “Okay, Hachikuji. Come on in.”

  “Hunh?”

  I tried nonchalantly to invite her in, but she replied with a face that said, What the hell did he just say?

  “Mister Araragi, you know the only time I’ll ever enter your house is for your wake.”

  “While I’m hurt by your shocking language, some part of me also feels happy that you’d come to my wake…”

  “You’ve become an oddly positive person in the short time since we last met.”

  “Well, I did go through a handful of inconceivable life experiences…”

  “In any case, I won’t enter your house. For as long as you live, I’ll never cross the Araragi residence’s threshold… Yesterday was the last occasion, or actually, wouldn’t you say even yesterday was half like an abduction?”

  “An abduction? Don’t make it sound so scandalous.”

  “But it’s the truth. Please don’t feel like you can say whatever you want just because the original text isn’t available anymore.”

  “I’m not denying that it happened. I’m just asking you not to make it sound so scandalous.”

  “How selfish… Anyway,” Hachikuji said, caution crackling in her eyes. There was no feeling or relationship of trust in them. They were suspicion itself.

  Makes my body tingle to have such eyes on me.

  “Mister Araragi, I haven’t lost my girlish sense of caution to the point that I’d enter into your home when both your parents and your little sisters must be absent.”

  “Cut it out, you’re ten years old.”

  “I’d be twenty-one if I were alive.”

  “See, now you’re killing my buzz.”

  “Don’t let my actual age kill it.”

  “You used to shy away from smashing my dreams with that sort of line. Why would you suddenly go and let me down?”

  “Well, you know, things have gotten a lot stricter after Tokyo implemented those youth ordinances. Going forward, this girl is going to have to state that she’s over eighteen and legal, or else we may be subject to damaging rumors.”

  “Legal… I thought that ordinance didn’t take actual ages into account?”

  “Did it not? I dunno, I’m just a kid!”

  “What’s your positioning here, dammit? Are you a child or an adult?”

  “I’m legally an adult but physically a child.”

  “Not that yo
u have a physical body…”

  “To be serious for a moment, it doesn’t matter if there’s an ordinance. The manga and anime industries were busy censoring themselves before it ever passed. They say it’ll impede creative freedom, but it’s been that way for some time now, in fact. Moaning about government regulations when you’re already sucking up to whoever is paying you is pretty pathetic.”