by Nisioisin
Not the darkness in her heart─her heart of darkness.
She shut out everybody else.
Too late, Hanekawa’s words reverberated through my mind. I’d thought that a month of cat’s cradle and almsgiving and saké had amounted to at least a modicum of credibility, but I was a grand fool to believe that I’d won Nadeko Sengoku’s trust.
I may have been her very first believer─but she didn’t believe in me, not for a second.
Neither trusting me nor doubting me─I was just me to her.
It brought to mind the snake she’d made into a cat’s cradle. The ouroboros, eating its own tail─the snake that only engaged with itself.
“Such…liars. It’s everyone─lies, all the time─”
Ssssss.
Sssssssssssssss.
Sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.
The mountain on which Kita-Shirahebi Shrine sat underwent a sudden serpentine transformation─no, I’m making it sound as if the mountain itself became one giant snake, like in a myth or folktale. That’s not what happened, but it’s the best way to express how it felt.
Countless white snakes started pouring forth from the precincts of the shrine, from the main hall, from within the offertory box─from beneath boulders, from the snowbanks, from behind trees, one after another, en masse.
Like light piercing the dark.
Like light swallowed up by darkness.
An endless stream of snakes began to appear seemingly out of thin air─a hundred thousand had been nothing. Snakes of every conceivable size blanketed everything, as white as the carpet of snow but far too numerous to be hidden by it.
Snake after snake after snake after snake.
In the blink of an eye everything was rendered invisible─the main hall of the shrine, the torii, the ground, the trees, the grass, absolutely all of it was buried in snakes.
Just one thing was barely visible.
The figure of Nadeko Sengoku─no, she was more snake than any of them.
My field of vision was filled exclusively with snakes.
Amidst it all.
Nadeko Sengoku─still wore her enchanted smile.
“Urk…”
We had far transcended anything on the level of gross or scary. This was something else entirely, and while some people might be upset by the comparison, it reminded me of the time I went scuba diving in some ocean somewhere. Yeah, this was a lot like being confronted with a coral reef stretching out before me in all directions. It was overpowering. I found it…
“Beautiful─”
The mass of white snakes began winding themselves around my body relentlessly, as a matter of course, even slithering out of my clothes. White snakes poured forth from everywhere, from nowhere, until I half-expected them to start emerging from my mouth.
I call myself a ghostbuster, fraud and imposter though I may be, and in that capacity I have witnessed many and varied oddities.
Urban legends, the word on the street, secondhand gossip─I’ve had my experiences with them.
Senjogahara’s ailment had been a part of that, so it’s not as if I was completely unprepared for this eventuality.
Even without Gaen-senpai’s warning, Ononoki’s worries, or Hanekawa’s misgivings─I’d considered what might happen if I failed.
Despite my confidence, I am well aware that, in this world, anything can happen─for instance, no matter how flawless my preparations, there was always a chance that someone (be it the person tailing me or anyone else) might interfere.
So it’s not as if I wasn’t braced for the possibility that Nadeko Sengoku might fly into a frenzy─deeply skeptical as I am, I’d never be caught with my pants down.
Yet her “frenzy” was so off the charts that any such mental preparation was rendered meaningless. A total whiteout caused by a blizzard of snakes was news to me.
I couldn’t even determine whether the snakes were real or illusory─and the most terrifying thing about Nadeko Sengoku’s “frenzy” was that she wasn’t actually in a frenzy at all.
She was in her normal mental state and had brought all this on without the slightest emotional upheaval.
She wasn’t even angry about my lies.
Since she’d known from the beginning.
“Really, all lies, really, all lies, really, all lies─society, the world, this world, it’s really really really really really really all lies lies lies lies lies─”
The innumerable snakes around her leapt─danced.
In time to her words.
Forget the mountain turning into a giant snake, it felt like the horde of them had surpassed the mountain in volume.
I was keenly aware that the strategy (if you could call it one) I’d had in mind in case of “failure”─the violent and forceful measures, the crude methods for defeating Nadeko Sengoku─had gone up in smoke.
Damn.
This was bad.
A perfect illustration of the expression out of hand.
Senjogahara, and Hanekawa as well, were searching for Oshino like they thought he could take care of any situation, like he was Superman or something, but─I don’t think he would’ve been of any use, either.
It made sense that Gaen-senpai had “withdrawn,” even though her original plan to install Shinobu Oshino as the serpent deity had gone awry─this girl’s animus, her mindset.
Maybe it transcended even that of the iron-blooded, hot-blooded, yet cold-blooded vampire Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, the legendary vampire whose parameters were supposed to be off every chart.
“Really, such─a liar!”
“Ha. Who’re you talking to?” I spat, snickering.
I couldn’t believe myself. What a front I was putting up. But even considering that she was a child, that she had only just become a god, Nadeko Sengoku branding me a liar at this late date felt so immature.
I couldn’t help but snicker, and snigger.
“And what are you talking about─you say that like you’ve never told a lie yourself. Seriously, you’ve been deceiving everyone around you all this time.”
“…”
Nadeko Sengoku’s smile was unwavering.
My words weren’t reaching her.
And if they couldn’t, then no wonder I couldn’t fool her─in a sense, she’d been deceiving herself all along, so there was no room for my deception to take root.
Which is why my last-ditch criticism was so pathetic. Maybe I was the one who was childish, desperately acting cool even as the weight of the snakes blanketing my body threatened to bear me down and crush me.
“I may be a liar, but you’re an even bigger one. Killing the person you love? That’s so clearly fucked up─you’ve pretty much gone full humpty dumpty.”
Finally I could begin telling it like it was, but that also spelled the end for me. It was the last resort, the final weapon in my arsenal, wielded in desperation…but it might as well have been an instrument of suicide.
“Stop lying about loving Big Brother Koyomi, about being in love with him. You just hate him. You’re just angry at him, aren’t you? Don’t you loathe and despise him for taking someone else as his lover, for not liking you best of all? Then you should just say so, but instead, because you don’t want to be that kind of person, you say you ‘love’ him, right? Ultimately, it’s not Koyomi you love, but yourself. The only thing inside you is narcissism.”
Only narcissism.
Only self-love.
Shut up tight inside her solitary world.
Which is why neither I, nor Oshino, nor Gaen-senpai, nor Araragi could’ve rescued her.
No one could save her.
To put it plainly, it’s like Oshino’s been saying ever since we were at school─people can’t save other people, they just go and get saved on their own.
As she was, happy and filled to the brim with narcissistic love─not to mention well past the brim with snakes─Nadeko Sengoku had saved herself long ago, and there was no room for anyone else to
step in.
“You could never grant anyone’s wish. Because no matter how much you play at being a god─even if you really are a god, ultimately you only care about yourself. You believe in nothing and no one but yourself─how could you ever be sensitive to other people’s feelings, to their beliefs?”
What gave me the right to say this?
What the hell was I even saying?
If I had the time to run off at the mouth, shouldn’t I be using it to beg for my life? Whatever action I might take, whatever promise I might make, things were pretty much already over and done with.
At a single sign from Nadeko Sengoku, the myriad snakes arrayed across the grounds, disarrayed across the grounds, would sink their fangs into my body─and their poison would run its course.
Poison against which even the immortal vampire Koyomi Araragi didn’t stand a chance.
A normal human like me? I didn’t even stand half a chance.
No, against me, Nadeko Sengoku might not even need to use poison. She could crush the life out of me with nothing more than the weight of the endless horde of snakes endlessly propagating around me.
My body was already groaning with the weight of the ones wrapped around my head and shoulders, and I couldn’t take much more. I’ve heard that snakes coil themselves around small animals and crush their bones before swallowing them whole─and that seemed to be pretty much what was happening here.
Which is why I should have said something.
Like “forgive me” or “let me off the hook” or “I’m sorry” or “I was wrong”─I should have abandoned my pride and dignity as an adult, maybe prostrated myself before her with my forehead to the ground, and sincerely repented for my attempt to deceive her.
Ashamed of my insolence, my ignorance, I should have begged her─to spare me.
“You’re foolish. And stupid. I thought you were crazy, but you’re not. You’re just immature and childish, that’s all─you’re that all-too-common type of pain in the ass who thinks only of herself. Do you think you’re special just because you became a god?”
But I didn’t. Instead I just hurled more criticism at her. My apotheosis as a contrarian.
Why didn’t I beg for forgiveness, when I clearly should have? Probably because I couldn’t forgive Nadeko Sengoku.
I couldn’t give her a break.
Because─I didn’t want to be spared by someone like her.
Never, not by her.
“…they hate Nadeko,” she said with her smirk intact on her face, confined to her own little world that my words couldn’t even begin to reach. “They hate ‘cute brats’ like ‘me.’ Uhh, who said that… Who was it… Big Brother Koyomi?”
“…”
Araragi would never say that to a younger girl, even if she was a god, not in a million years. If anyone actually did, it had to be Senjogahara.
Just as I was grousing at Nadeko Sengoku here in this life-or-death situation─Senjogahara had probably turned her acid tongue on the girl.
I knew all too well how sharp that tongue could be─hell, it was none other than myself who had helped her sharpen it, so I understood perfectly.
But more than anything.
It wasn’t about Senjogahara’s tongue, sharp or acid─even without the whole Araragi thing, she’d plain old hate the girl.
So I understood perfectly.
“But what am I supposed to do?” asked Nadeko Sengoku.
“…”
“Sure, I’m a ‘cute brat,’ but that’s basically not my fault, is it? Even if people hate me, there’s nothing I can do about it, is there? I hate this me too─but it’s me, my own self, so there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“…”
“I’m not narcissistic. I don’t love myself. It’s true that I only think about myself, and I only believe in myself, but─I hate myself too,” Nadeko Sengoku shared. She was giggling weakly the whole time, and it was hard to tell how serious she was being. “Still, that self is me, so I have to learn to like it. I have to become someone who can love her own hated self, any kind of self─like a god.”
“R─”
I started to say, Right.
Just to humor her, to be her little yes man. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
The weight of the snakes all over my body was finally too much for me, and I fell to my knees.
With an unpleasant squish.
Since there were snakes beneath my knees as well.
“R─wrong.”
“…”
“Cut out the pretty excuses. I’ve heard what happened, it was just happenstance that you became a god. It’s not like you wanted to become one. You didn’t put any effort into becoming a god. You didn’t become one because it was what you aspired to be. Or am I wrong?”
“I did…not. It wasn’t what I aspired to be, no. Ahaha, I mean, that’s, well, that’s true, but─”
“It was a totally random occurrence─or more like a freak accident. So don’t act like you put a lot of thought into it or something. Maybe you’re happy now, I think you probably are, but it’s like you won the lottery on a ticket you bought on a lark. No, not even one you bought, that someone gave you as a present.”
Ultimately, I said.
So close to the final buzzer─I continued provoking Nadeko Sengoku.
“Ultimately, even at this point, even now that you’re a god, you’re still dancing to someone else’s tune, just like you were when you were human. Back then you were put on a pedestal for being ‘cute, cute’─and now you’re being put on a pedestal for being ‘a god, a god,’ but that’s the only difference.”
Back then, you were pampered and spoiled.
And now you’re venerated and fussed over, that’s all.
“You’re a puppet on a string, exactly like you were before─unlike a certain other woman I know.”
“…?”
Nadeko Sengoku frowned at my words for the first time. Or─maybe it was a pained smile. Just as she was immature from my perspective, I was probably a stupid pain in the neck from hers.
But I went on anyway. I went on.
“She refused the salvation offered by a god─she rejected the chance for things to be easy, the chance to be happy. I’d figured she was better off since a god had granted her wish. For the life of me I couldn’t see why she’d try to cure her ailment. In fact, I knew that things would be tougher for her if it was cured.”
“…”
“Nevertheless─she chose a life without that god for a crutch. She wished for it. She repudiated anything that might comfort her─happenstance, accidents, blaming someone or something. She even resents me for everything that I did for her benefit. Totally different than you, huh?”
No way they could be compatible.
She’d come out and say that she hated Nadeko Sengoku─who in turn would want to kill her.
Romantic rivalry aside, Nadeko Sengoku would hate Hitagi Senjogahara.
Enough to want to kill her.
“You’re probably right. We must be totally different, though I have no idea who you’re talking about, or why. Still, sometimes,” Nadeko Sengoku said, “it can be someone’s fault─whether you call it an accident or a twist of fate, in my case it’s absolutely Ogi’s fault.”
“Ogi?”
Ogi? What─or who was that? Was it someone’s name?
In fact, there was something I didn’t understand. Nadeko Sengoku had become a god to escape from the corner she’d been painted into, more or less─but how had she known where to find the “god seed” that Gaen-senpai had entrusted to Araragi? I’d assumed she’d come upon it by chance and hadn’t prior knowledge of it, but what she just said…
Could someone have given her a little push in the right direction?
Did someone─set Nadeko Sengoku up to become a god?
Indeed, she’d said, You, too, Mister Kaiki? You’d trick ‘me.’
You, too.
So, at some point, someone else tried to deceive N
adeko Sengoku─Araragi or Senjogahara seemed like obvious possibilities, but their behavior couldn’t be described as deception.
None of the others tried to dupe Nadeko Sengoku, either─they simply tried to dote on her.
