by Nisioisin
“You must be happy now─but happy, having fun, and nothing more. Waiting around for six months, you’ve ended up with so much time on your hands that you went nuts for cat’s cradle, okay? What are you going to do once you’ve killed Araragi and the others? Have nothing but time on your hands? I’ll tell you right now, no one’s going to come to this shrine─however happy you may be, you’ll be nothing more than the steward presiding over its decay. An administrator tasked with keeping this town’s peace. That’s a raw deal. That’s a job for the old. Is a middle school girl in the flower of her youth going to be satisfied with that? You going to start your twilight years before the sun has even come up?”
“…”
The words “raw deal” really seemed to hit home, and Sengoku fell silent.
She kicked me, silently.
“You didn’t want to be a god, you didn’t want to be happy. You wanted to be a manga artist, yes? Then─why not be one?”
Ending up in that guise.
Looking like that.
What the hell are you doing, Sengoku.
“Huff, huff, huff, huff, huff, huff…”
It seemed like her strength was finally giving out.
At long last, Sengoku stopped hitting me─but apparently she hadn’t calmed down at all, and she glared at me with bright-red, bloodshot eyes.
“Y-You moron. Those, are just doodles. They’re crappy and embarrassing, that’s why I didn’t want anyone to see them. My ‘dream’… You’re full of it,” she wheezed. “Those are trash─I wanted to throw them away, but throwing them away would be embarrassing too, so I just hid them in there, that’s all─”
“Don’t talk about your own creations that way, Sengoku,” I reproved her─there may have been some anger in my voice. “Creativity is embarrassing, and dreams are embarrassing too. That’s just the way it is. Nothing to be done about it. But at the very least, they’re not something you yourself ought to demean.”
“…”
“And they were really pretty good. I have to be honest, the plot and the setting and the characters didn’t do much for an old codger like me, but I know a thing or two about drawing. I mean, like I said, I keep notebooks too, and I make drawings in mine as well…illustrations. And if nothing else, yours are better than mine.”
I was flattering her, actually, out of self-interest. I was confident that I was the better artist. But that’s precisely why I could say with confidence that Sengoku had some artistic skill of her own.
“You’ve got that little thing they call talent.”
“You don’t really mean that,” she answered quickly. Too quickly. “Plus, it’s not the kind of thing you can just decide to be.”
“But it’s also not something you’ll ever be without trying─unlike being a god, or happy.”
“…”
“And─as long as you’re a god, you’ll never make it.”
You have to be human, I said. You have to be human to make it.
My logic was horrendous, if I do say so myself─I was pressing Sengoku to quit being a god because gods can’t become manga artists.
What a thing for a grownup to be telling a kid.
While being crushed to death by snakes.
“As a god, you should have no problem killing Araragi and Senjogahara over this romantic snafu. I’m sure you could carry it off. But is that what you wanted to do? Is that who you wanted to be? It doesn’t really matter to you, does it? That’s why you told me all about it. You could speak openly because it’s not important to you.”
This was a disingenuous accusation. You could blab just as carelessly about something that’s important to you─perhaps to spur yourself on.
In fact, when she was making eyes at Araragi, even if it wasn’t overboard, she must have tried to “back herself into it” in such a way─and actually gotten backed into it.
That was her dream, after a fashion, and I couldn’t deny her that.
But then that dream crumbled.
It turned into a dream that would never come true whether she was a human being or a god─but did her other dreams need to die along with it?
“Sengoku, I love money.”
“…”
“Because money can stand in for anything. It can be the substitute for anything under the sun, it’s a trump card. You can buy things, you can buy life, you can buy people, you can buy hearts, you can buy happiness, you can buy dreams─it’s very precious, and yet not irreplaceable. That’s why I love it.” Come to think of it, I rarely spoke about money that way. The last time I did might’ve been back in middle school─when I was the same age as Sengoku. “Conversely, I do hate irreplaceable things. I can’t live without ‘this,’ I live only for ‘that,’ I was born for ‘this’─scarcity value really chaps my hide. Does getting turned down by Araragi really make you worthless? Was that your only goal? Was that all you wanted out of life? Listen, Sengoku.”
When I paused, Sengoku kicked me. Maybe hearing Araragi’s name used like that had enraged her further.
She seemed to have realized that kicking me wouldn’t hurt her fists─and maybe that was a good sign.
At least, it meant that I’d brought her back down to earth. Enough for her to have that realization, anyway.
The proof was that she only kicked me once, no follow-up barrage.
“Listen, Sengoku,” I reprised. “A certain fool is taking care of the tiresome task of dating Araragi for you, so put him in the rear-view mirror and find your own tiresome task. You probably have all kinds of other things you want to try, things you want to do. Or you did, right?”
“Things I want to try─things I want to do.”
“Was it so painful that you’d just abandon everything? Really? Was there no high school whose uniform you wanted to wear? No monthly magazine whose new issue you wanted to read? No new season of a TV show or new movie that you were excited about? Sengoku, was everything other than Araragi just irrelevant bullshit to you? Didn’t you love your parents, those good, law-abiding citizens? Was everything other than Araragi just trash in your internal Top Ten?”
“…No.”
“Then why? Why does Araragi get such special treatment? Is he your avatar or something?”
“What would you know, Mister Kaiki.”
After taking a good long wind-up, focusing on her target like she was getting ready for a penalty kick, Sengoku kicked me in the face as I lay on the ground─turning my head a little bit wasn’t enough to mitigate the damage from an attack of that ferocity. Kicks like that could be the end of me.
“You don’t know a thing about me, Mister Kaiki.”
“I’ve done some poking around. But, you’re right. I don’t know anything. Nothing important, anyway. You’re the only one─who knows anything about you, which is why you’re the only one who can value you.”
And, I went on.
At this point, anything I said might be my famous last words.
A bunch of my teeth were broken. False teeth are really expensive… Shit.
“And you’re the only one who can make your dreams come true.”
“That didn’t work so let’s try this instead? You think that kind of half-assed approach is acceptable?”
For human beings? Sengoku asked.
My answer was somewhat garbled by the blood I spat out along with it.
“Of course it is. We’re only human, after all. Nothing is irreplaceable, nothing is immutable─for this girl I know, this girl I know intimately, her current love is always her first love. She acts as if she’s never really fallen for anyone before. And that’s the way it should be. Anything else would be no good─there’s no such thing as a one true love or an irreplaceable thing. Human beings, because they’re human beings, can always try again. They can always buy it again. So for now,” I turned my eyes towards the main hall of the shrine.
And that’s when I realized─that the hordes of snakes had disappeared. The snakes I was sure were atop my body, pressing me down, were
gone. It was just that I was so grievously injured that I couldn’t move a muscle, couldn’t get up on my own.
I realized that I was at a perfectly normal shrine.
A brand-new building on lonely grounds.
The hordes of snakes had plowed clear the snow, however, and it felt like spring had arrived, just here.
I looked at the offertory box in front of the main hall.
“Go buy some real art supplies with the money I gave you. Three hundred thousand yen should be enough to get you one of everything.”
“I’m telling you, I’ve…never even thought about becoming a manga artist─not to mention, I’m a god now even if I never aspired to be one, and it just seems like a waste to ditch my good fortune.”
Hmm, I couldn’t argue with that.
It’s not like people have to become what they aspire to be.
“But─” Sengoku may have been about to kick me again at that point. She may even have been about to punch me again. Yet she did neither, she just kicked the air like she was over the whole thing and clenched her fists defiantly. “There was a manga artist that they called a god. It wouldn’t be a waste if I end up like him,” she said─dared to say.
Now, that was an impossible dream. But everyone has the right to dream as big as they want.
Every person has the right.
“Mm-hm. And I’m sure you can do it. If you don’t believe me, you’ll just have to try it and see for yourself.”
If you don’t believe me.
Coming from someone who made his living as a swindler, what turned out to be my last words to Sengoku were painfully cliché. Breathtakingly so.
But Sengoku replied:
“Okay. I’ll fall for it.”
And chuckled ruefully.
What kind of creep laughs when she knows she’s being lied to?
Who cares. Hitagi Senjogahara had commissioned me to “deceive Nadeko Sengoku,” and I had pulled it off, even if things had gone just a tiny bit differently than I had planned.
No.
Maybe I had failed.
Maybe I had failed miserably.
I extended my right arm, which felt like it had been fractured under the weight of the snakes, and with my index finger, I poked Sengoku in the forehead. “You little scamp.”
038
“Sengoku─Kaiki?!”
Just at that moment, Koyomi Araragi appeared in his civvies. It was good timing. The best timing, perfect even.
If he’d come a little earlier, the hordes of snakes might have gone ahead and slain Araragi, while if he’d come any later, I wouldn’t have known what to do with the collapsed and unconscious Sengoku. If I left her she might freeze to death. But I suspected some of my bones were broken, and in that state I wasn’t at all confident that I could carry her down that snowy mountain path by myself.
So in that sense I was grateful for the arrival of the charming prince.
Nice of you to drop in.
But dropping in like that, in the middle of exam prep, with his secondary exams looming─had he had a premonition or something? Man, defenders of justice have excellent intuition.
Not that he’d ever been the kind of guy who’d put his exam prep before a middle school girl.
“Kaiki! What─the hell are you doing here?! What have you done to Sengoku?!” he shouted at me in utter consternation.
What to do? I was thoroughly exhausted, so I considered just laying it all out, telling him that thanks to Senjogahara’s request, I’d been in the throes of battle with Sengoku until a moment ago. If, as a result, things went sour between Senjogahara and Araragi and they broke up, what did I care, I thought─but instead, I lied effortlessly.
“Gaen-senpai asked me to come. I was exorcising this young lady. I’m here this time as a ghostbuster, not a swindler. I know it’s against the rules for me to be here at all, but you can give me a pass since I’m not here as a swindler, right?”
This brazen mouth of mine sure comes in handy.
Given that I was there as a swindler and nothing but, same way I live my life.
Excepting the last five minutes or so.
“Ms. Gaen…”
Hearing that didn’t seem to quell his confusion, but at least the situation started to make some kind of sense to him.
From my perspective it was an unthinkable prospect, any way you sliced it, but the explanation “Izuko Gaen is acting to put the situation to rights” seemed to be relatively convincing for Araragi.
Damn Gaen-senpai, and Oshino.
Always pretending to be righteous in front of these children.
Something I will absolutely never do.
“B-But…” Araragi cast his gaze down to my feet, where the unconscious Sengoku lay, and repeated, “What the hell have you done to Sengoku?”
It seemed he was letting the fact that I’d broken my promise slide for the moment and accepting the explanation that Gaen-senpai was behind my presence. I’d broken my promise before as far as he knew, so maybe he felt like that ship had already sailed.
“The same thing I did to your sister,” I said bluntly.
“The same thing you did, to Karen…”
“Yes. Though this time it’s not a bee. A killer bee was appropriate for your sister, but for Sengoku─for Nadeko Sengoku,” I corrected, having inadvertently used the more familiar mode of address, “it’s a slug.”
“…”
“In a three-way deadlock between a slug, a frog, and a snake, the slug beats the snake─hence Slug Tofu. Then again, given that it’s a fake aberration I cooked up, as is my style, it doesn’t have the power to seal away a serpent god on its own. If Nadeko Sengoku hadn’t been inclined to accept the slimy little guy, it never could have contended with the snake.”
“Been inclined, to accept… Kaiki. What─”
Have you done to Sengoku, Araragi started to say, but apparently he thought better of it. Maybe he realized that he was beating that particular question into the ground.
And in its place, he asked, “─did you say to her?”
“The usual,” I answered, ignoring Araragi and leaning over Sengoku. The job was nearly complete, and I didn’t want any kid interfering at this point. “I said the usual. Love isn’t everything, there are other things to look forward to in life, don’t throw away your future, everyone’s youth is embarrassing, someday you’ll look back on this and laugh… All the usual stuff that adults say to children. What have I done to Sengoku? Just the usual.”
So saying, I stuck my hand into her mouth, and gritting my teeth, thrust it in all the way to the elbow, so deep that I was a little worried her jaw might come off.
“H-Hey! Kaiki! What’re you doing!”
“Shut up already. Stay out of it, Araragi. Know that there’s nothing you can do for her.”
I started feeling around inside Sengoku’s body, and once my fingers held the “thing” I was searching for, I quickly pulled my arm free─and her little mouth closed back up normally.
And simultaneously.
Sengoku’s stark white hair, that full head of white-snake hair, turned jet black, which is to say, went back to normal.
From the aspect of an exalted serpent deity.
To that of a run-of-the-mill middle school girl─now that her hair wasn’t made of snakes anymore, I got the strong sense that, unlike in the pictures I’d seen in the album, her bangs were awfully short…too short, but maybe that was just my imagination?
And the white dress that oddly resembled a sacred vestment also turned back into a commonplace middle school uniform.
Three months ago.
That must have been what she looked like right before she became a god. She was back to her old self.
Sengoku was back.
Araragi must have recognized this too─and it seemed to reassure him. I displayed the talisman that was clutched in the hand I’d thrust down Sengoku’s throat.
The talisman of a snake.
The talisman of the corpse of an au
tophagous serpent.
It was dripping with saliva, or gastric juices, with bodily fluids anyway, almost like a slug had been crawling all over it, but either way, this was without a doubt the talisman that had bestowed divinity on Sengoku.
Might as well make sure, though.
“Is this the talisman Gaen-senpai entrusted to you?”
