Otorimonogatari Read online

  That goes without saying.

  Because Nadeko─did want to make reality disappear and go away, but wasn’t able to.

  Nadeko knows.

  But what Nadeko doesn’t know, again─is why things turned out like this.

  Now that the roof is gone─though technically it’s the floor, not the roof─well, with the entire shrine gone, it’s also correct to say the roof is─i finally realize it’s raining.

  And it’s a big downpour.

  A squall.

  A cloudburst.

  …Nadeko’s thoughts nearly turn to how well put “cloudburst” is, but i don’t even need any snarky remarks from Mister Serpent to know that this is no time for that.

  In an instant, though, i’m drenched.

  Maybe that’s exactly what i need.

  Even if her clothes get heavy from soaking up water, it doesn’t really matter to Nadeko now, and also─this rain that started to pour all of a sudden will probably hide Nadeko’s tears.

  “All of a sudden? C’mon, Nadeko, your memories are getting all muddled─hmmmm? Didn’t you climb under the shrine floor to take shelter from the rain? It was all well and good when you ran away and came to this mountain, but then it started to rain on top of that─”

  “Is…that what happened?”

  i forget. Nadeko’s mind is absent.

  My memories are “muddeled.”

  Well, if the Serpent says so, it’s probably true─but putting aside the “verasity” of this or that, the best word to describe Nadeko these days might just be “muddeled.”

  Mixed up.

  Muddied.

  Nadeko really is muddeled right now.

  Soggy and swampy.

  “You might be muddled, but your mind does seem clear to me─yeah, that’s just my opinion. Hsshh hsshh, even now you look pretty coolheaded to me.”

  Coolheaded?

  Nadeko?

  Is that true?

  “Oh, right, maybe I should say coldblooded─since you’re able to pick out his footsteps even in this downpour.”

  “…”

  True.

  Right.

  Nadeko’s eyes could be facing the ground─the sound of the pouring rain could try to drown it out, but still.

  His footsteps.

  These footsteps.

  The approaching footsteps─Nadeko can identify.

  Cannot but identify.

  Because he’s─very dear to her.

  Someone Nadeko loves.

  “Hey, Sengoku.”

  Throb.

  He calls Nadeko’s name─and she can feel her heart shake.

  i can feel it throbbing and pounding and shaking.

  i’m surprised that i still have something like a heart left, and i’m embarrassed that i’m reacting this way.

  Oh.

  So i still had emotions.

  It’s so embarrassing.

  i just want to disappear.

  “What’s the matter? Look at me, Sengoku.”

  “…”

  It takes those words.

  But Nadeko finally looks up.

  i wanted to sit frozen there for the rest of my life, like a rock, like i was petrified─but those words from him are all it takes. Nadeko’s body doesn’t lie.

  No.

  This must be what Nadeko wanted from the beginning.

  i hid. i ran.

  But even so─it must have been because Nadeko wanted him to find her.

  i must have wanted him to chase after Nadeko.

  i must have wanted him to save Nadeko.

  And.

  And i must have wanted him to get rid of Nadeko─

  “I’m here to kill you─Sengoku.”

  That line.

  That captivating line. It makes Nadeko feel like she’s going to melt.

  Nadeko’s body just has to react to it─to his now visible figure.

  To Koyomi Araragi’s figure.

  Big Brother Koyomi’s figure─i can see it.

  i can see him clearly, even in this blinding rain.

  Clearly.

  Yes, so clearly.

  “Hsshh hsshh─you know there’s not any kind of emotional reason that you can see him, right? You’re just sensing Big Brother Koyomi’s body heat with the snake’s signature pit organ─” the Serpent butts in.

  But i can’t complain.

  It’s Mister Serpent’s job to butt in.

  “─Because you’re a snake now, dear─and a wonderfully poisonous one, too.”

  “…”

  Of course, the Serpent’s voice doesn’t reach Koyomi─and the Serpent is just butting in.

  Because Nadeko can see him clearly.

  No matter what the Serpent says.

  i can see him clearly.

  It doesn’t have anything to do with a pit organ or whatever─Nadeko can see Big Brother Koyomi clearly.

  “Didn’t I just tell you to stop looking away from reality? Listen to me, that’s not possible.”

  He’s right.

  Of course.

  Because his is a figure i’ve been chasing─for nearly six years.

  He’s someone Nadeko always turned her eyes from but never stopped watching.

  His tattered school uniform. His disheveled hair.

  There’s barely an unwounded spot on his exposed skin─and the bleeding from none of the wounds shows any signs of stopping.

  Koyomi’s left arm has been cruelly ripped off of him, too. No, strictly speaking, it’s connected by the skin─but that connection is so unreliable that Big Brother’s arm might fall to the ground if he twists his body even a bit.

  Koyomi says that he’s a vampire.

  A bloodsucking demon.

  He wasn’t always, but apparently he is one now.

  That’s what he told Nadeko when we were reunited, and he’s even showed her the skills that come along with it─but as far as i can see, his powers of recovery from being a vampire don’t seem to be working at all.

  “C’mon, Nadeko. What a horrible way to put it,” the Serpent says immediately. “Aren’t you the one who left your vampire Big Brother in this awful state?” He never misses a chance to jump in with a quip. “Because poison is even effective on vampires. The fangs you stuck in him are still there. He hasn’t pulled them out.”

  “…Oh. Really?”

  Yeah.

  Yes, really.

  It was Nadeko. It’s Nadeko’s─fault.

  There’s no room for excuses, no extenuating circumstances.

  It was Nadeko’s fault.

  “In that case…i guess i really need to fight him,” i say.

  i slowly rise.

  In Nadeko’s right hand is Mister Serpent. In her left is a giant fang.

  i rise─with poison in my heart.

  My soaked bangs slide at the motion─no, Nadeko’s body is already prepared to fight, regardless of her will.

  If i had to say if Koyomi is black or white, he’d be black─and facing her staggeringly black, vampiric Big Brother.

  Nadeko’s hair is standing on end.

  Each one of those hairs─a snake.

  A swarm of snakes.

  A writhing tangle of snakes.

  Yes.

  It’s not just Mister Serpent.

  Nadeko is now─joined by a hundred thousand snakes.

  Nadeko is toothless to impose her will on the mass of them─and they’re the ones who will do the biting anyway.

  No.

  That’s not true.

  These are just more excuses─a hundred thousand of them.

  Nadeko set them off, and Nadeko caused them, too.

  They’re the fault of one individual, Nadeko Sengoku.

  I’m at fault.

  I’m the one who was enwrapped by the snake.

  The one who let it crawl into my heart.

  “Hmph. Naught but an aberration body and soul. She hath fallen so, ’twould appear─though in this case we might choose to say ascended.”

  A
voice.

  The somewhat old-timey words come from a young blond girl who i only now notice, but it seems like she’s been by Koyomi’s side this whole time.

  “And now at last I see why that Hawaiian-shirted boy always insisted that I be careful with this forelocked girl. Though I suppose she’s no forelocked girl now, but a snake-locked one. Nay─perhaps I should say a snake-god girl.”

  “…”

  “Come on, now,” the blond girl says to Koyomi.

  The words are relaxed, like the two are close.

  As if they’re partners.

  “Don’t ye shilly-shally now. This waif is no longer thy sister’s friend, nor is she thy adorable little junior─she is a wicked, fiendish, and hopeless aberration. Just another snake,” emphasizes the blond girl─Miss Shinobu Oshino.

  “Yeah, I know that,” Koyomi nods in reply.

  As if they understand each other perfectly.

  He continues.

  “We’re looking at my enemy─and your food.”

  “…”

  “Go ahead and eat her, Shinobu.”

  As he says this.

  Koyomi and Miss Shinobu─take off in Nadeko’s direction, despite the still-pouring rain, no special signal needed, not even a wink.

  i’m so jealous, Nadeko thinks.

  Of who? Miss Shinobu.

  That’s where Nadeko wanted to be, really.

  Right by Big Brother Koyomi’s side.

  i wanted to be his partner.

  Even if we couldn’t be each other’s lover, i at least wanted us to be at each other’s side.

  So why is Nadeko─standing face-to-face with him like this?

  i don’t know. i don’t know.

  i don’t know─why is Nadeko─

  Why am I─

  Opposing him?

  “I hate you, Big Brother Koyomi!”

  Nadeko swings the giant fang in her left hand─and it strikes directly at Koyomi’s heart.

  i knew how powerful it would be.

  And by god, is it powerful.

  They say that you can end a vampire’s life by sticking a simple stake of wood into its heart─so what about a fang from a white snake?

  Nadeko’s beloved.

  The heart of Nadeko’s once beloved─ah.

  It scatters in the air.

  Its muscles and blood come raining down on Nadeko.

  Like rain.

  Like a torrent.

  “Woo-hoo! Looks like you really did it now, Nadeko!” the Serpent roars.

  A hundred thousand snakes raise shouts of victory.

  No.

  i think it might have been Nadeko’s own voice, after all.

  Because─Nadeko Sengoku is laughing now.

  Even though she wants so much to cry.

  Even though she is crying─Nadeko is laughing.

  “Aha,” she laughs.

  She laughs, and laughs, and laughs, and laughs, and laughs.

  What else can she do, it’s so funny─

  “Ahahahaha… Ahaha, ahahahaha!”

  Oh, really.

  Why did things turn out this way─why?

  Why.

  003

  The story goes back a thousand years.

  …Is that too far back?

  i guess it is, heheh.

  Really, Nadeko doesn’t know much about what happened a thousand years ago, either─and what i have heard is from Mister Serpent, so it’s hardly demonstrative evidence.

  The way that word “demonstrative” starts with “demons” makes it seem somehow aberration-ish, but that’s a different topic.

  You shouldn’t swallow anything the Serpent tells you without chewing on it first─since we’re dealing with a snake, maybe i should say “swallow whole.”

  What happened a thousand years ago doesn’t really interest Nadeko, anyway.

  Um.

  So we’re just going to go back to something that Nadeko can speak of from her own experience─in other words, back to the day i met the Serpent.

  That should make the story demonstratively true.

  To Nadeko, at least.

  There might be a few mistakes in the way i remember it, or actually there must be, but there are a lot of things in this world that can’t be forgotten no matter how hard you try, and a lot of things in this world that you can’t cover up even with a lie, and for Nadeko, her meeting with Mister Serpent is one example.

  After all.

  Nadeko was already dragging along snakes from her past─dragging along snakes that used to be wound around her.

  Almost audibly dragging…and dragging.

  Just like Nadeko has dragged along her feelings from elementary school─almost audibly.

  All right. The date was October thirty-first, a Tuesday─i guess that would make it Halloween, but to be honest, i’m not too familiar with that event.

  i don’t really know what kind of day it is.

  According to Mister Mèmè Oshino, an authority on monsters and the supernatural who once lived in this town (what does “authority” mean, anyway? Is it like “almighty”?), “Halloween and Thanksgiving ought to take deeper root in Japan. I mean, look at how big Christmas is here now.”

  That’s what he said, but Nadeko doesn’t really understand Thanksgiving, either.

  But i do think that giving thanks is important.

  i’m thankful to Mister Oshino.

  And to Miss Kanbaru, and to Big Brother Koyomi.

  i’m thankful.

  i wouldn’t be leading such a calm and peaceful life now if it wasn’t for them─wait, calm and peaceful?

  No.

  What they taught Nadeko in June might be that there’s no such thing as a calm and peaceful life in this world.

  Peace.

  That kind of stuff only exists on TV.

  One Peace.

  Isn’t there a manga called that?

  It was fun to read.

  While i wish i could live a peaceful life, i don’t think it would be possible in Nadeko’s reality.

  i don’t think it would be possible at Nadeko’s school.

  In fact, i was already “meloncholy” the morning of October thirty-first─no, Nadeko being meloncholy wasn’t limited to that day.

  Mornings are always meloncholy.

  More specifically, the walk to school is always meloncholy─whether it’s the thrity-first, the thirtieth, or the first.

  Whether it’s October, September, or November─yes.

  There’s never a walk to school that isn’t meloncholy.

  Not since that day.

  Not since June.

  It was different in April, you see.

  It was probably still different in May, too.

  i want to say that the famed fraud Deishu Kaiki came to this town because he was tracking rumors of the vampire known as Miss Shinobu Oshino, and the gears might have already been turning in April or May─but it wasn’t until June that they started having an actual effect, including what happened with Nadeko─

  “Whoa, watch─”

  And then.

  Despite her meloncholy, Nadeko decided to head to middle school with lots of time to spare so that she wouldn’t be late. But just as i turn a corner, a bike plows toward Nadeko.