Otorimonogatari Page 27

  While it almost feels like i’m talking to voice synthesis software─this must be none other than her natural voice.

  The natural voice she uses with Nadeko.

  “Half a year…” i confirm, “until graduation day, to be precise. As soon as the ceremony is over, walk yourselves to Kita-Shirahebi Shrine. i’ll be waiting for you there.”

  “What? We can’t celebrate first?”

  “Nope.”

  What is she even thinking?

  Well─the same goes for Nadeko.

  “At any rate, the six months are just a ‘stay of execuetion’… You better not do anything like hold hands with Big Brother during those six months.”

  “My goodness,” i hear from the other end. It feels like Miss Senjogahara has a smirk on her face. “You’re trying to poison our relationship or something.”

  “…”

  i’m not laughing at that one.

  It’s not even a good joke…

  At the same time, i feel like i don’t hate her─if only Nadeko had talked to her.

  If we’d exchanged words─maybe things wouldn’t have turned out this way.

  The thought goes through Nadeko’s head.

  If i didn’t feel jealous, hostile, hateful─and murderous just because she is Big Brother Koyomi’s girlfriend.

  If only i didn’t make a wish─and knew.

  If only i knew her.

  Maybe things wouldn’t have turned out this way.

  Now that i think about it, Nadeko never once tried to get to know anyone.

  Ah ha.

  That’s why─it turned out this way.

  “If, Miss Senjogahara…” Nadeko says. “If we’d met in some other way─you and i might have become friends.”

  “Not a chance,” i get shot down with no room for compromise. “Pardon me, but I hate cute brats like you even more than I hate the person I used to be, Miss Nadeko Sengoku.”

  The call ends. No farewells.

  Folding the cell phone closed in the ceaseless torrent, i agree with her wholeheartedly.

  024

  Why would there be an epilogue?

  There’s no punch line waiting, either. What lines are left to cross?

  Nadeko Sengoku has become a god. Over.

  This is a story that could have ended with just that one line─right, so i have no idea what happened after that to 2-2, Nadeko’s middle school class.

  If Nadeko’s “blowviating” caused some kind of chemical reaction that turned it back into a warm and friendly space, that’d make for a fine tale, but i doubt it, and i can’t go back to check, either.

  i don’t feel like fabricating any more than i already have.

  Nadeko’s personal prediction is that nothing particularly changed─in fact, maybe things only got worse.

  Well, of course, i do hope the situation is starting to improve, that would be for the best.

  Let’s leave the matter in Mister Sasayabu’s capable hands.

  Try your hardest. i’m rooting for you from the bottom of Nadeko’s heart.

  i do wonder about Mom and Dad, too, but that’s not something Nadeko can do anything about, either. You do hear all the time about emotional, delicate adolescent girls running away from home and never coming back, so i pray that they take it in stride.

  i pray, even though i’m a god.

  That said, it’d hardly be cute of Nadeko to chop the story off here and end it like one of those snakes i killed in the past. So instead of an epilogue, why don’t i conclude with a preview?

  Preview:

  One day in March, half a year later─come to think of it, i don’t know what day Naoetsu Private High School’s graduation ceremony falls on, i’ll look that up some time─within the grounds of Kita-Shirahebi Shrine, Nadeko sits on the steps of the hall, her back to the offerings box.

  She’s using the Mister Serpent scrunchy not as a bracelet but as a scrunchy is supposed to be used, to gather her hundred thousand snakes into a ponytail─i mean, half a year will have passed by then, i would hope that i look at least a little different.

  By the way, the shrine has been rebuilt, or it’s scheduled to be.

  This isn’t just Nadeko’s wish but the town’s plan, so the construction should be done by March─they let it sit there when it was in shambles, but as soon as “a shrine was destroyed by heavy rains,” there was a movement to rebuild it. i really don’t get the world of adults.

  Still, it could revive some level of worship. i should be even more powerful by this time in March.

  Nadeko has all of her hair bravely bundled up in her ponytail, even her bangs, so you can get a clear view of her face from the front─which means she’s also staring straight ahead.

  i don’t want to hide anything.

  There’s no reason for Nadeko, with her pit organ, to be staring straight ahead, naturally─but today, this one day, she must.

  Because for Nadeko Sengoku, today─is the day she quits humanity for good.

  To seeing with her eyes, too─this is her last day.

  …Welllll, at least, that’s how determined i want Nadeko to be as she waits─for them.

  They’re climbing the steps now.

  And as they proceed through the gate, that’s how i want Nadeko to be.

  Koyomi Araragi.

  Shinobu Oshino.

  Hitagi Senjogahara─Miss Senjogahara is someone i’ve only ever seen from afar so i can’t picture her well even in this preview, but she’ll probably show up snuggled up next to Big Brother Koyomi.

  She’d be breaking our promise, but i’d like them to at least be holding hands here─or else it wouldn’t make for a good picture.

  Miss Shinobu Oshino won’t look like a little girl then─while she might not take her original form, she might appear to be about the same age as Koyomi.

  She’ll probably have learned from last time.

  No doubt, Koyomi will have raised his degree of vampirism, too─not that it means much in the face of Nadeko’s poison.

  But i can tell how much more prepared he is.

  Probably.

  And, though this isn’t what we promised either, how wonderful it would be if Miss Kanbaru and Miss Hanekawa were there behind the three.

  The full cast.

  i couldn’t be any happier, as a final boss.

  Of course, it doesn’t matter if they all come─Nadeko doesn’t feel like she’d go down in defeat.

  She sways to her feet.

  As she does, the countless snakes hiding in the grounds bare their fangs. They are Nadeko’s thralls, an extension of her will.

  And what would be better than kicking off the final battle with this killer line:

  “Welcome, Big Brother Koyomi. Let Nadeko make you look real cute.”

  Then, it’s time for the romantic comedy to begin.

  The showdown, in more ways than one.

  Coming soon. You can count on the gods for that.

  Afterword

  What to say in a space like the afterword is, more than anything else, up to an author’s personality, but putting that aside, when you’re reading novels and comics and such, you do get a sense of “the author’s assertions” from the narrative itself and not just in his or her explicit remarks. Calling them assertions is a bit of an overstatement, but my point is that there are types of narratives out there where you can begin to see what the author “thinks of as right” when you read them. It’s not as if these creators appear directly in the story to talk about what they think is right or wrong or what it is that they like or dislike, but as you’re reading, you can begin to read the story in that vein… It’s really just a matter of interpretation, of course, and readers are never going to know for sure unless they ask (even if they do ask?) the author point-blank. Still, well, I feel like this phenomenon occurs specifically with novels and comics, or at least more easily with them. Since the creator being an “individual” is clearer, in other words. That makes it so that philosophies don’t, or at least a
re less likely to, get mixed in. When the scale of production gets big, like in movies or dramas, and maybe even in music, which is to say when there are multiple authors, their philosophies get mixed in from their various standpoints, and it tempers each individual’s assertions and brings forth a “work” that’s independent from any one person’s humanity, while it doesn’t seem to go that way as much for smaller-scale creations like novels and comics. I want to say there’s an advantage in that since you’re able to enjoy an “individual,” and that’s part of what I like about books, but our age is unmistakably moving in a direction that doesn’t find value in the individual, and I feel like the true crisis facing the publishing industry might lie there. Personally.

  That being said, you probably won’t sense any philosophy or assertions to speak of from this book, which is just a novel where Nadeko Sengoku is as cute as can be. If you really wanted to, you could call it a story that tries to ask what cuteness is. But anyway, this volume marks the start of the sprint toward the end of the MONOGATARI series’ second season. The next title, ONIMONOGATARI, will likely depict the somewhat non-chronological burning of the abandoned cram school, while the final title, KOIMONOGATARI, will likely be about our characters graduating. I suspect that I’ll end up writing a third season, but I do feel a bit emotional knowing that at last I’ll be placing a period on this long tale. You could say I’m in high spirits. All according to plan! And so that was “Chapter Chaos: Nadeko Medusa,” OTORIMONOGATARI, a novel written hundred-percent well from head to tail.

  This is the first time we’re seeing Nadeko in color, isn’t it?* She looks wonderful. Thank you, VOFAN.

  May we meet again in the last two installments.

  * Editor’s Note: BAKEMONOGATARI was originally published in two halves in Japan, and Sengoku did not appear on the cover of either volume.

  NISIOISIN