Otorimonogatari Read online

  And while it has no body heat.

  You can feel its vitality─that enwrapment.

  “…”

  Fearfully.

  Nadeko gets up, stands on her toes, and tries to look inside her shoe cupboard─but i don’t have the height for it, after all.

  It would be nice if i had a platform to use, but i don’t see anything that convenient.

  Nadeko’s only choice is to use her nails to nervously pull her indoor shoes, nearly falling out of their cupboard, down toward her─and to check inside them.

  Empty. Nothing’s inside.

  No socks, no human ankles, and of course─no white snake.

  It’s not there, nor do i see it.

  “…”

  Sure, Nadeko has fewer friends than the average person, she’s reserved and silent, and she’s such a bad girl that she doesn’t like human contact and even thinks it’s gross, but it’s not like i’ve been particularly bullied─so i don’t see why anyone would ever put a snake in Nadeko’s shoe cubby.

  Actually, that would go beyond bullying. i’d be scared of anyone who’d do that, more than any bullying.

  Um, so what i’m trying to say is that Nadeko doesn’t matter enough to be subjected to a prank as elaborate as a live snake snuck inside her shoe cubby.

  Being hated is its own kind of talent, a fine personality trait.

  Even what happened in June─was all kinds of stuff happening without Nadeko’s involvement.

  While Mister Oshino and Miss Ogi this morning called Nadeko a “victim”─i think you could say that Nadeko isn’t even a victim.

  Maybe the word is bystander.

  It just feels more on the mark.

  Given the miserable condition of Nadeko’s second-year class─i can’t help but think so.

  That’s right.

  It’s not about Nadeko’s personality or character─there’s no way that any bullying could take place in Year 2, Class 2 right now.

  “…Maybe it was Nadeko’s imagination.”

  Just to be sure, i hop up and down a few times to take a (tiny) peek inside Nadeko’s shoe cupboard, but nothing seems out of the ordinary after all.

  It’s strange, though.

  If it was Nadeko’s imagination, it was Nadeko’s imagination, and i of course would prefer it that way─we’d have a happy ending, so why? If that sense of being enwrapped by a snake was all in Nadeko’s head─then why did she feel that a snake she couldn’t even see was a white snake?

  “What’s the matter, Sengoku? Is everything all right?” a girl in Nadeko’s year calls out to her, worried about (what must look like) the bizarre way she’s acting by the shoe cupboards.

  “i’m fine,” Nadeko replies in a tiny voice and looks at her feet. “i’m fine.”

  i don’t know if Nadeko spoke loudly enough, but the girl seems persuaded and proceeds to her classroom─the two of us are assigned to different classes, so she naturally heads to a different one from Nadeko’s.

  Nadeko’s shoe cupboard is for Year 2, Class 2, so there are of course a few students from class around─but they don’t bother saying anything about her bizarre behavior.

  They don’t even look in her direction, they don’t even speak to one another. They just head to our classroom.

  Yes.

  This is how it is.

  The current state of Year 2, Class 2.

  A meloncholic school life, in other words.

  005

  If you asked Nadeko whose fault it is, I’d say no one in particular…but if we had to vote anonymously on who caused this situation, i think the unanimous answer would be Mister Deishu Kaiki, the swindler.

  He’d be elected for sure.

  Well, i know i’m making it sound like we’re acquaintances, but Nadeko has never met that man.

  Still, we’re more than acquaintances.

  If i were to describe our relationship, i’d say he is a Very Important Person to Nadeko. A VIP.

  Aside from Nadeko’s family, Big Brother Koyomi, and Tsukihi, he’s left a bigger impression than anyone else in her life─i mean, it’s his fault that Nadeko’s life went the wrong way.

  That it slipped off the tracks. And fell to pieces.

  …

  Wait, is this what they call making yourself out as the victim?

  Uh oh, let Nadeko correct herself.

  It was everything around Nadeko that went the wrong way.

  And slipped off the tracks. And fell to pieces.

  Not Nadeko, but everything around her.

  Nadeko has always lived her life the way she lives it now─from long before Mister Kaiki ever visited this town.

  Only.

  The classmates around Nadeko got─just like Nadeko. That’s really all that happened.

  So if i had to say, the victims were Nadeko’s classmates.

  This might be getting off topic, but i think it’s important, so i’m going to talk a little bit about the past.

  We’ll keep it simple.

  It was June.

  Actually, it was a page out of Mister Kaiki’s Fraud Files, with which Nadeko isn’t too familiar─so some of this will be what i heard from Tsukihi and her sister, the Fire Sisters of Tsuganoki Second Middle School.

  Mister Deishu Kaiki is a psychic who calls himself a ghostbuster.

  The easy way to explain it would be to say that he’s in the same line of work as Mister Oshino, but their natures seem somewhat different, and apparently Mister Kaiki uses his psychic powers for the sole purpose of making money.

  Calling him a fake spiritualist would be “brayzen.”

  But i ought to be brayzen here.

  This year, he put down roots in the town that Nadeko and the rest of us live in─and he decided to target its middle schoolers.

  To put that in a brayzen way too, he didn’t put down roots, he made his nest here.

  His scam was selling fake charms to a large number of random middle schoolers─as far as money goes, he honestly didn’t ask for much.

  A price you could manage on an allowance.

  It was the Kaiki way of doing business, low margins and high volume.

  There were of course some kids who took it too far, which became a problem and made the Fire Sisters act─but as time passed, it was the majority of scams, affordable on an allowance and not particularly problematic, that became the true problem.

  Yes.

  It would have been better if they’d turned into actual cases─like with Nadeko.

  i think that’s why Nadeko has been able to live the same way (still gloomy) before and after the case─with no changes to her personality.

  Resolving something that has become a full-blown case serves as an important, they say, “richual”─and so.

  And so those of Nadeko’s classmates who didn’t experience it as a case and never partook in a richual─who were vaguely able to manage it, are living out their school lives still feeling uncertain.

  Being “obscur” like this won’t get across what i mean by “feeling uncertain,” so i’m going to be kind of straightforward about it. In a nutshell, things about the class like─

  Who likes who

  Who hates who

  How someone feels about someone else

  What someone wants to do to someone else

  ─and other kinds of “thoughts about everyone” that go beyond even the level of personal info were all “dievulged.”

  The “charms” that Mister Kaiki turned into a fad were for middle schoolers and were all basically about relationships─yes.

  The phony charms Mister Kaiki sold were so fake that they were barely effective─meaning, terribly enough, that they brought no results and left the causes lying around.

  Finding out how people they thought were friends really felt, learning the true motives driving people who were nice to them─how could that not affect a relationship, and how could that not affect the way you socialize?

  …You can guess how the rest went, for the most part.r />
  Mister Kaiki’s goal wasn’t to ruin relationships, of course─the only thing he was after was middle schoolers’ money.

  It was business.

  And of course, Mister Kaiki didn’t specifically target Nadeko’s class─he was targeting all the middle schoolers in town.

  But i guess you could call it a trick of fate? No, i don’t think it’s anything that overblown, it’s just a plain old coincidence─but for whatever reason, the charms Mister Kaiki sold were a gigantic hit in Nadeko’s class.

  If it had been the flu, our whole class would have had to stay home.

  The result of it all is Nadeko’s current meloncholic school life─a class where everyone’s stiff and uncertain, where no one can speak from the heart, a peaceful class in appearance only.

  No matter what you say, people think you’re lying, that you’re saying it for show and actually feel a different way─

  A class without cases.

  Where nothing happens.

  Where everyone pretends to be asleep.

  Where no one wants to do anything.

  Everyone must be looking forward to their new class assignments next year─it can’t get any worse than it already is, and Nadeko can’t deny feeling the same way.

  i do wonder if anything can be done about it.

  But i also think nothing can be.

  There’s nothing to be done anymore.

  “…”

  Good morning─i consider uttering the words but can’t as i enter the classroom, silent as always─some students looked Nadeko’s way as she entered while others didn’t react, but that really doesn’t bother her much anymore.

  i’m used to it.

  It feels like boarding a train from a station platform, and i am now used to the mood.

  Slouching so that she doesn’t stand out, Nadeko heads to her seat.

  There’s going to be a quiz during homeroom this morning, so she needs to prepare.

  “………”

  …i don’t scream this time.

  It’s the third time, after all.

  i’m in class, too─screaming on a train would draw people’s looks, wouldn’t it?

  Well, this did make three times that i was on the verge of screaming, but it was only the second in terms of snakes.

  From inside Nadeko’s desk─appeared a white snake, this time in plain sight.

  It crawls and squirms out, baring its fangs.

  But it disappears a moment later.

  Nadeko sits down in her chair like nothing happened and starts preparing for the quiz─then again, Nadeko might not have screamed even if it were the first time.

  After all, this class is already being constricted by something like a snake.

  i’m not going to scream just because a snake wraps itself around Nadeko─so long as it doesn’t bite her.

  006

  …Still, that composure didn’t last for long.

  It wasn’t a question of getting used to it.

  How could you not feel beaten down when a white snake wrapped itself around you after crawling out of your shoes, your pencil case, your gym clothes bag, the cleaning supplies locker, the corner of the hall, and even the cracks of your textbook and notebook? Of course you’re going to buckle.

  i’m not surprised anymore. But it is tiring.

  i’m exhausted and i’m sick of it.

  It feels like i’m opening a huge line of jack-in-the-boxes, one after another.

  Being forced to keep opening the boxes, knowing that something’s going to happen when i do, is kind of like “torchure.”

  They’re hallucinations.

  i think.

  While i felt like everything was fine, all of the stress sitting in Nadeko’s heart as she led her meloncholic school life could have caused her to start seeing a white snake. To compare it to a famous example, they say a manga author who was tired started seeing a white alligator.

  But─if they aren’t hallucinations.

  If it’s “that stuff.”

  …It does seem possible.

  According to Mister Mèmè Oshino, an expert, “Meet an aberration and you’ll be drawn by aberrations.” If you get involved with aberrations even once, it’s apparently easier to get involved with them again.

  It hasn’t ever happened to Nadeko outside of June─but maybe her first time has come.

  Nadeko’s first time, which is to say her second time.

  It scares her, of course it does.

  But i was ready for it.

  i thought this day might come─in fact, those days back when nothing happened were almost scarier.

  Something happening can be easier on you than thinking something might happen.

  Having to wait for it is more stressful.

  That’s a lesson Nadeko learns every day in class.

  That isn’t to say that Nadeko has any way of dealing with it.

  Actually, when Nadeko tried to deal with this kind of situation on her own in the past, with some self-taught half-knowledge (or not even that, it was just reading in the aisles of a bookstore), things only got worse.

  It would have been fine if i’d left it alone.

  But i couldn’t─and it went horribly.

  i met a horrible fate.

  That’s why Nadeko waited until after class to use the school’s public phone to call Big Brother Koyomi and give him the details.

  There’s something he told Nadeko once.

  If she ever needed help with aberrations, she should call him right away.

  So i called him.

  “A snake? A snake, huh.”

  But to be honest, his reaction gave Nadeko doubts.

  Maybe, having gotten too used to surprises, Nadeko didn’t sound like she’s in enough of a crisis─and ought to have called him back when she first saw (felt) a white snake in the shoe cupboard.

  Because that was the only time i can say i was genuinely surprised.

  “The snake from before?”

  “Nuh-uh… Not that one. A different one.”

  i have trouble speaking.

  Please don’t underestimate Nadeko. Just because i’m talking to Big Brother Koyomi doesn’t mean i’m going to be eloquent.

  i get worked up no matter who i’m talking to. Even if it’s Nadeko’s parents.

  “The snake from before was…i don’t know…right, i couldn’t see it. But i can actually see this one… Oh, i couldn’t the first time, but now i do…”

  “Hmph…”

  Nadeko’s words are all over the place, even by her own standards, but Koyomi stood strong and listened.

  He is a gutsy man.

  “So there’s been no actual harm yet? If we’re going to compare this to last time, it’s not like it’s constricting your body or anything─”

  “Y-Yeah. It’s not,” Nadeko nods, biting.

  It’s almost like Nadeko is a snake, heh.

  Nadeko was making the call because she didn’t want to cause any worries, but it feels like that’s exactly what i’ve done. Though Koyomi has mean-looking eyes, his face is pretty emotive. It’s easy to figure out the way he feels when you’re talking to him in person, but i have no idea what he’s thinking right now on the phone.

  And when Nadeko doesn’t know that, it’s hard for her to get her mouth going.

  It’s hard for her to get her brain going, too.

  How might Nadeko explain the situation she’s been placed in?

  …Placed?

  Has Nadeko been placed in it?

  “When there’s a crack, or a space that’s closed off…that’s where it suddenly appears.”

  “Hmph… So this snake shows up in places that you ‘couldn’t see until now’? Well, yeah, snakes are known for lurking. They hate bright places or something,” Koyomi follows up like he’s examining what Nadeko said. “Maybe this aberration is a spooker? You know, just surprising humans for no good reason…”

  “Aberrations like that exist? Ones that just surprise people…” Like face
less ghosts? No, the noppera-bo has its own roots, and i want to say they were pretty sad, too. i feel like i read about them when i was looking stuff up.