Koyomimonogatari Part 2

by Nisioisin

  Ms. Gaen beckoned to me.

  Beckoned?

  What’s the deal, I wondered, but it seemed like she simply didn’t want to have a conversation with the torii between us.

  I girded my loins and passed under it.

  Was there someone stronger and more violent than Ms. Kagenui, or was there a way to render her strength ineffective? Ms. Gaen’s words took on a different implication in each case, but regardless…

  “Are you saying you can’t believe anyone would take action against Ms. Kagenui given the risk?”

  Yes.

  I had my doubts on that score.

  What would it take for someone to face off with Ms. Kagenui? To face off with violence personified─in my case, my little sister’s life had been on the line.

  That probably fell under Ms. Gaen’s “statistically unlikely” clause… But that was maybe just down to a simple lack of prudence on my part, and I might’ve opted for a different strategy if I’d known what Ms. Kagenui was capable of. Be that as it may─without Shinobu, I never would’ve plucked up the courage to take on the violent onmyoji.

  And the price I had to pay for relying on Shinobu like that was the loss of my humanity─my physical, if not my mental, humanity, anyway.

  …

  Yeah. Maybe what I should be trying to work out wasn’t the reason someone had taken action against Ms. Kagenui─but the price this supposed someone had paid for doing so.

  Someone.

  Ms. Gaen used that word, which gave such specificity to its referent, as if it was a given─under normal circumstances, maybe it would just be a figure of speech, or an unimportant, even misleading statement, but since it was Ms. Gaen who said it, I didn’t think so.

  In other words, any hope that Ms. Kagenui had quit her HQ at the shrine of her own volition was hereby completely─thoroughly eliminated.

  Someone─a word you usually use to describe a human being, but which you could also use to describe an aberration─or even something else.

  Just what exactly was Ms. Gaen referring to─when she said “someone”?

  “Well, as an expert who lives as she does, fighting as she does─there’s no question she has a way of incurring people’s enmity. But she doesn’t invoke justice on a whim, or as an affectation. People may bear grudges against her, but I don’t think anyone does so without justification.”

  “…”

  As someone with not one but two little sisters who invoke justice on a whim, and as an affectation, that really made my ears burn, or it gave me heartburn.

  “In other words, you think that Ms. Kagenui herself wasn’t the source of the trouble.”

  “It’s not a question of what I think, Koyomin, that’s just the fact of the matter─by the way, how’s Yotsugi?”

  “Huh?”

  She changed the subject so suddenly that I was taken off guard─but since it was Ms. Gaen doing it, it must’ve been a necessary protocol, had to be.

  I answered her fully aware that it was dangerous to go along with someone’s protocol when you didn’t know where it was heading─or were unable to, not wanting to read her true intention. Obviously Ms. Kagenui was Ononoki’s primary guardian, but in light of Ononoki’s origin, Ms. Gaen was also one of her guardians, broadly speaking─and guardians have the right to know how their charges are doing.

  “She’s…doing well. Since she’s totally expressionless, I don’t actually know how she’s feeling about this particular matter…but that girl knows Ms. Kagenui better than anyone. And she doesn’t seem to be concerned─at the moment.”

  Judging that there was no need to provide detailed information on her fiendish desire for ice cream and so forth, I summarized Ononoki’s status report as such.

  I mean, I imagine that’s what Ms. Gaen wanted to know.

  “Yotsugi knows Kagenui better than anyone? Haha…seems like you don’t know much of anything, Koyomin.”

  “Huh?”

  “Well, as long as you aren’t weirdly pretending to know all about Yotsugi the aberration, then it’s all good─”

  And incidentally, since I know everything, naturally I know about Yotsugi too, Ms. Gaen said─she’s surprisingly self-congratulatory. Though when it comes to Ononoki, she’s pretty much right on the money when she says I don’t know a damn thing.

  We’ve been living under the same roof for almost a month, but I don’t know much about that little tween other than the fact that she likes ice cream. And that information is all but useless.

  “Then again, given how your own transformation into an aberration is progressing, it’s not like you wouldn’t understand someone else just because they were an aberration─though some vision of mutual comprehension based solely on the fact you’re both aberrations would be a fantasy.”

  “Uh huh… Well, Ononoki and Shinobu definitely don’t see eye to eye…”

  By virtue of which things are currently pretty tense in the Araragi room at the Araragi residence─at first it was constant fighting but now it’s more like a cold war, with Ononoki doing her thing during the day and Shinobu remaining nocturnal, keeping out of each other’s way and living a life of non-communication.

  Honestly it was stressful, and you can imagine how little progress I was making with my exam prep lately─it was down to the wire.

  “Not to mention the fact that Yotsugi’s peculiar even among aberrations─being artificial and all.”

  “Artificial…”

  “I imagine she was even totally calm when she confronted Tadatsuru, right? I tested her once─I made her fight Kagenui.”

  Ms. Gaen just tossed off this mind-blower like it was nothing.

  “I wondered if she possessed anything like human compassion, you know? At the time I didn’t think it was so unlikely that she might, but she attacked her ‘Big Sis’ without a moment’s hesitation.”

  “...”

  “The match itself ended with Kagenui victorious, though. It was just like her not to order Yotsugi to stop, even though she could’ve─oh, but don’t worry, Koyomin. I’m not telling you this all of a sudden because I think Yotsugi Ononoki is the cause, the culprit, behind Kagenui’s disappearance or anything.”

  Such a suspicion had only barely crossed the back of my mind, but Ms. Gaen quickly brushed it away─the combination of nonchalance and a zero tolerance for wasted action reminded me of the kind of shogi problems they set in the newspaper.

  “Since she wouldn’t make a move like that unless she was ordered to─unless she was directed to.”

  “Sure─I guess you’re right.”

  The fact that she purposely phrased it that way, that she said Ononoki wouldn’t make a move, demonstrated that Ms. Gaen wasn’t completely denying her individuality, her free will─but looking back on how Ononoki had seemed when she confronted, when she took on Tadatsuru… Ms. Gaen definitely seemed to be onto something.

  Just as Ononoki has no expression.

  She has no emotion─and so, of course, no compassion.

  “Then again, that’s exactly why─Kagenui was removed.”

  “Uh…removed?”

  I was getting fed up with reacting like that to every word Ms. Gaen said─I may not be able to read her intentions, but I’d rather retain my composure and dignity while I was facing her.

  Was that impossible without the gravitas of, say, a Hanekawa? Though it beggars the imagination to try and picture the two of them having a conversation.

  “What do you mean, removed?”

  “Like I said, Kagenui’s disappearance has nothing to do with Kagenui herself, Koyomin─she was essentially unconnected to the series of stories that unfolded in this town. She almost got involved on account of your little sister, but that was avoided thanks to your efforts.”

  More declined than avoided, really, glossed Ms. Gaen. “Which is precisely why I sent her in this time…but I guess the problem was more deep-seated than I expected.”

  “Even if it was more─more deep-seated than you expected, I’m s
ure you knew about it?”

  “Don’t take it out on me, Koyomin─it’s not like I’m not broken up too, my adorable junior was your collateral damage.”

  “…”

  “Kagenui may have been collateral damage, but it was Kaiki who got entangled in it─I really do wonder what happened to him. There’s a mess of intel, and I know all of it─but the problem is that it’s probably all false. He probably spread most of that himself, though─a wayward junior is a senpai’s woe. As for Oshino─haha.”

  Ms. Gaen started to say something about him, but lightly laughed it off. As far as I was concerned, there was nothing to laugh about─whether she was talking about Oshino, which goes without saying, or Ms. Kagenui, naturally, but even Kaiki.

  “Hm? No, no, Kaiki gets what he deserves, so don’t let that bother you─though given your nature, Koyomin, I imagine that’s impossible. But really, don’t let it bother you. Nor Oshino─but as far as Kagenui is concerned, let me make something clear right now, for the sake of the future. For the sake of your future, Koyomin, and that of this town.”

  “My…future?”

  “Mm-hm. For your sake, now and to come. Though when it comes to the town…that’s not all on you. The reason Kagenui was removed,” said Ms. Gaen, “was simply that she was in the way─not Yozuru Kagenui herself, but her familiar Yotsugi Ononoki. The very Yotsugi Ononoki─who’s been installed by your side, Koyomin. Point is, in order to render that shikigami, that tsukumogami, that little doll, powerless and ineffectual, her master was dealt with. Yotsugi Ononoki, a shikigami who does exactly as directed, who only follows orders. If her master, the person at the top of the chain of command, is gone, then that dashing-look tween is nothing to fear─”

  Dealt with.

  That blunt expression─panicked me.

  Pained me.

  005

  “Ms. Gaen…what do you mean, dealt with?”

  “Dealt with. Though I doubt Kagenui, for her part, would feel things had been dealt with satisfactorily─well, strictly speaking she wasn’t here on business, so it wouldn’t be fair to take her to task for that.”

  By “here,” I assume she meant both Kita-Shirahebi Shrine, and, in a broader sense, the town as a whole.

  Ms. Kagenui’s “business”─her business as an expert, had been about eighty percent wrapped up the moment she gave her opinion on my physical abnormality. The subsequent stuff with Tadatsuru was just something she might as well look into since she was already here, and staying in our town even afterwards was simply irregular.

  “Private business, you might say─personal interest, not professional. Though curiosity…is not something that motivates her, is it. Well, there’s no question that the presence of Tadatsuru, motivated as he is by aesthetic rather than intellectual curiosity, made her a little sentimental… There’s no way she stayed here because she was worried about Yotsugi being at your house, Koyomin…or at least I’d like to think not.”

  That’s what you’d like to think, huh?

  Don’t try to tell me it’s “unlikely but conceivable,” Ms. Gaen.

  “Sending Yotsugi to your place kept things unpredictable, Koyomin, not to mention that, as a purely artificial aberration, she could protect you─but apparently there was someone who wouldn’t stand for that.”

  “Wouldn’t stand for it…”

  Someone.

  “Yet, they still couldn’t take action against Yotsugi herself─because she’s a purely artificial aberration. And so they took action against her master. The reason there was someone who took action against her─the reason someone took action against her, was this.”

  Someone.

  Someone who wouldn’t stand for it─someone who took action against her.

  Ms. Gaen kept repeating these phrases─almost like she was trying to implant some kind of suggestion in me.

  “We can divide the subsequent story into roughly two possible paths: Yotsugi is rendered powerless as planned, and remains by your side as a meaningless bodyguard─or she surprises us by awakening to her humanity and tries to protect your bonkers-ass self of her own free will, Koyomin…losing sight of her proper role as an aberration in the process.”

  “…”

  “I don’t need to tell you what happens if she loses sight of her role as an aberration, right, Koyomin? Since you’ve seen the consequences of that with your own two eyes─”

  In that case.

  Yotsugi Ononoki will no longer be a purely artificial aberration─and she’ll become vulnerable to any action taken against her, she’ll no longer be anything to fear.

  Ms. Gaen concluded her lecture─once she explained it that way, I finally got it, and Ms. Kagenui’s sudden disappearance also started to make its own kind of sense… Not to mention.

  That business with Tadatsuru.

  That time, too, there’d been two possible outcomes: I further vampiricize myself in order to rescue the “hostages,” or Ononoki comes out swinging to forestall that eventuality─and in so doing displays her full aberrationhood to me.

  And with that display.

  She destroys the relationship that might’ve been between us, or that might’ve grown between us─in the event, it was this latter option that occurred, but that’s, how can I put this, that’s just about my psychology.

  My frame of mind.

  Ms. Kagenui averted that state of affairs by having Ononoki come live with me─and that’s exactly why this past month passed without incident, one might say.

  But speaking of exactly why.

  That’s exactly why Ms. Kagenui was removed─thus transforming Ononoki into nothing more than a doll─by this “someone” Ms. Gaen keeps talking about.

  …But I don’t get it.

  It doesn’t quite add up for me─why the hell would anyone go that far? It’s almost like they were trying to keep me from doing something…or to make me do something?

  Either way, I don’t like it.

  Feeling like an attack could come at any moment─like they’ve rigged it so I stand alone.

  Starts to make me wonder if the vampirization of my body, my transformation into an aberration, hadn’t been planned all along─at the very least, the idea doesn’t seem entirely delusional.

  Since if it weren’t for everything with Sengoku─and this shrine, I wouldn’t have relied so heavily on Shinobu─and what about her?

  Where does Shinobu stand in all this?

  She’s more of a bodyguard to me than Ononoki ever─oh, I see. Since I can’t rely on Shinobu anymore without exacerbating my physical transformation into an aberration…in a certain sense, she’s been rendered just as powerless as Ononoki.

  Since the fact that I can’t power myself up.

  Means that Shinobu can’t power herself up either.

  At this point she’s the dregs of an aberration, in the truest sense, a shadow of her former self. Just a little blond girl─she can’t be my ace in the hole, or even her own.

  Neither an ace in the hole nor a sword in the sheath─

  “Is Miss Shinobu…”

  She seemed to have picked up on the fact that I was thinking about Shinobu─or rather, Ms. Gaen had probably guided my thoughts in that direction.

  In fact, she’d been periodically glancing away from me and down at my shadow.

  “Fast asleep at the moment, Koyomin?”

  “Yeah…lately she’s been a total night owl.”

  I didn’t say, Because of Ononoki. If anything, Shinobu was avoiding Ononoki more than the other way around─

  “She’s usually asleep around this time.”

  “Heheh. Well, I guess that’s her version of setting her mind to something─actually bringing her lifestyle closer to her essential nature as an aberration, just in case? Then again, seeing as how she’s barely an aberration anymore, seems pretty pointless…and it’s not like that’s going to allow you to become human again, Koyomin.”

  Seems like our Miss Shinobu is a real optimist, or should I say hopeful,
or…clinging to hope, maybe─said Ms. Gaen. The way she said it sounded somehow sympathetic, but at the same time sober, as if she was just relating a factual truth.

  As if she was just relating that Shinobu’s actions and whatever passed for Shinobu’s feelings were nothing more than a worthless waste of time─though even if that were so, I was in no position to give her a hard time about it, having totally failed to notice Shinobu’s uncharacteristic hyper-vigilance on my behalf.