by Nisioisin
“Well yeah, I’m sure…”
Because, for one thing, it would be a prince on a white horse.
Sheesh, white coat… Like a doctor?
Ophiuchus.
“Come on, Kanbaru, didn’t I tell you no idle talk? We’re not done yet, so we can’t risk breaking her concen─”
“Look!” Kanbaru suddenly yelled.
I was the one whose concentration had broken. Carelessly─I’d taken my eyes off of Sengoku. When I returned my gaze back at her─Nadeko Sengoku had collapsed face-up on the plastic sheet we’d laid on the ground─and was twitching freakishly, violently.
Her mouth.
It was open wide.
Her jaw was stretched as far as it would go.
Like a snake─swallowing an egg.
Like there could even be─a snake’s head inside.
“Wh-What happened?!”
“I-I don’t know─she suddenly…”
The scale markings on Sengoku’s body─were disappearing.
They were about halfway gone.
But─the other half remained.
They hadn’t disappeared.
And.
They were even on Sengoku’s neck, where they didn’t seem to be only moments ago. The snake─the Jagirinawa had her in its grip.
What happened…what went wrong?
Where had we gone wrong?
The illustration of the Jagirinawa that Oshino had said was in the Compilation of Snake Curses─of a man constricted by a snake that entered into his body through his mouth─not a deathly but a murderous, killing aberration.
A serpent god.
Possession by a serpent god.
“Did it fail?!” shouted Kanbaru. “Is that it?! It failed, and the purification ritual went out of control, ran amok─”
“No─this ritual isn’t supposed to be a risky stunt… It isn’t some powerful feat. That’s why it’s heterodox. It shouldn’t be double-teaming her, there’s no reason it would. Because this is supposed to be like a negotiation with the aberration─”
Ask it.
You need to ask it─Oshino had said.
Humble yourself before it.
And yet… Did Sengoku let herself get distracted, like in Senjogahara’s case? Even then…the aberration suddenly reaching its final stage like this…
It was going so well until we were halfway in, too!
“…Halfway?”
Crap, I realized belatedly.
Sengoku was writhing on the plastic sheet.
Her legs, still yet to fill out, that extended from the school swimsuit─the scale markings were half gone from them as well.
Half gone─in only the crudest way.
The scale marks had completely disappeared from her right leg─but remained on every inch of her left leg, from her toes to her crotch.
Not a single one had disappeared.
I didn’t know about her torso, but it was the same for her neck and collarbones, as clear as day once you noticed─
“Kanbaru…I had it all wrong. If only we could see, we’d have gotten it right away─”
“What do you mean?!”
“The Jagirinawa─it wasn’t just one of them. There were two.”
“………kk!”
Even so─
There were hints we should have picked up on.
The traces covered every inch of her skin aside from her arms and her neck up. Her toes, her shins, her calves─and she had two legs. For one snake to wind itself around every inch of both of her legs was structurally impossible. If there’d been only one snake, there couldn’t have been markings on her inner thighs.
From the tips of each leg’s toes.
A Jagirinawa had its grip on her─one for each leg.
As if they were constricting Sengoku’s body.
Two snakes.
“…Dammit!”
One of them─had been removed with the power of Oshino’s amulet.
The Jagirinawa had gone away.
Gone away here and there.
But then the amulet’s power was spent.
I hadn’t said enough─had I realized that there were two Jagirinawa, Oshino would have come up with an appropriate plan. Unlike every other time, there was no limit to how much he would help. Nadeko Sengoku was a victim, and he was pulling out all the stops. But because we’d premised our discussion on one Jagirinawa, he’d prepared a strategy for just one─
Which is why the other─was running wild. Of course it was─the other giant snake with which it had shared its grip on Sengoku had been exorcised.
“Kanbaru! Stay there─no, get back!”
“Shouldn’t we contact Mister Oshino─”
“He doesn’t have a cell phone!”
Not on principle─but because he failed at modern gizmos.
So─our only choice was a hardline approach.
I rushed into the makeshift boundary─into the square illuminated by the flashlights. I grabbed onto Sengoku’s body and sat her upright─she was hot to the touch. You could say burning. It was so bad I thought my hand might get scalded─
The scale markings at the base of her neck.
They were now digging so far into her skin that calling them traces would be ludicrous. They were eating into her to the point of altering her silhouette─gnawing in as if to pulverize bone and tear flesh.
As if to chop her up.
Eating into her.
I could almost hear her body─groan and creak.
“Sengoku…”
Her eyes had rolled back─she’d lost consciousness.
Swallowed whole─
“Nkk…!”
I laid her body, which I was holding, on the plastic sheet again. Then, I slowly reached my hands toward her.
No, not toward her.
Toward the Jagirinawa.
“Even if I can’t see it─I should be able to touch it.”
He’d said so.
Ever since spring break─vampire blood ran through my veins. Blood. You could say I was an aberration myself─and an aberration should be able to touch another aberration.
If I could touch it, I could peel it off.
Right.
The key was to imagine it. To visualize the Jagirinawa through the traces that its scales etched into Sengoku’s body─and to puzzle out the manner it exercised its grip. I couldn’t afford to be wrong. Dammit… Like the younger of my two little sisters, and unlike the older, I was ever the indoorsy type…so this was my first time touching a snake. The first one ever was going to be an aberration…
Courage, me.
Even Sengoku, who used to play with that youngest sister of mine, caught more than ten snakes on her own─what kind of big brother feared doing as much?
“Agh…hkk!”
Slither─
An unpleasant sensation, in both of my hands.
A sensation like sticking my hands into mucus.
A sensation like spiked scales stabbing into them.
It was plain disgusting.
What made it disgusting was that I was touching something I couldn’t see─I’d never thought that doing so would be as viscerally repulsive. I’d mustered such a strong will to touch it─but now wanted to take my hands off of the aberration as soon as I possibly could.
I tried to use its sliminess to my advantage by sliding my hands around it to get them in the right position. Grabbing its cylindrical body, about the size of what a musclehead’s thigh must be, I then─pulled with all my might.
It wasn’t like I had the physical prowess of a vampire as well.
Plus─it was slippery.
Because I was pulling in the same direction as its scales, I wasn’t putting my strength to much use. I changed my approach and dug my nails into the giant snake’s body (so soft it felt like my fingers sank into it) before pulling again─
To peel it off─!
“G…aaaaaagh!”
An unimaginable pain─ran through my right arm.
&n
bsp; I looked at where the pain came from to see blood─spurting everywhere. My arm was flattened as if a machine press had gotten hold of everything from my wrist to my elbow, and two deep, deep holes had been bored into that flattened area.
“─A-Already?!”
The snake’s head had already pulled out of Sengoku’s mouth─my fingers burrowing into its torso had been understood as an attack, and it had exited her body to strike back at me. I didn’t notice until it bit me because I couldn’t see it─
“Oww…wwwww!!”
The overwhelming pain made me leap and roll away confused─meanwhile, Sengoku’s body seemed to flap and flop at random around the plastic sheet in the square, likely as a result of the Jagirinawa undoing its grasp on her body. I could only guess since I couldn’t see it, but it must have been the case, given the situation.
Which meant─that it was coming to grip and possess me next!
Before it could try, I slammed my flattened right arm on the ground. Even greater pain came over me─but a moment before my arm hit the ground, I could sense the buried fangs─the Jagirinawa’s, no doubt─sliding out. Realizing that my plan was to pin its head between my arm and the ground, it had preempted me. As a result, all I managed to do was bang my injured arm against the earth.
It almost felt like my arm had torn off.
A moment later, it was my leg.
My left ankle.
Scrush─a flattening sound.
As with my arm─it seemed this snake could crush a human body just with its bite… What monstrous jaw strength. Well, it was a literal monster’s jaw strength, but even so─
Estimating where the Jagirinawa’s head would be based on the fang marks drilled into my ankle, I nevertheless stuck my fingers between its mouth and my foot and pried them apart─though it was biting down on me with an absurd amount of force, I used the small gap I created to twist my leg out. It was shot, down to the bones, but the nerves still seemed intact. It was fine, it still moved.
It would have been nice if I could hold on to the snake’s mouth, but I reflexively let go when I felt a wet slap on my hand (the snake’s long, forked tongue must have licked me).
“Nkk!”
Still, the blind, haphazard kick I sent the Jagirinawa’s way with my other leg seemed to hit it, or at least it felt that way. It was the same sensation as kicking a rubber ball, so I doubted that I’d dealt any damage. I then rolled backward, two times, three times, to put some distance between myself and the Jagirinawa.
It was only the day before yesterday that I’d given Shinobu my blood.
That meant my body should have been able to heal itself even faster than normal─but my flattened right arm and left ankle weren’t recovering so easily. They didn’t even show signs of doing so. The pain wasn’t going away, either… Wait…was the Jagirinawa a poisonous snake?
Even vampires are susceptible to poison. All the more so considering how minimally vampiric I was. Shinobu in her prime would have brushed off such a wound─
I hopped myself back up on one leg. My right arm dangled uselessly at my side… It hurt too much even to raise.
It wasn’t as if I had no experience battling aberrations, and their kin and ilk, over the past few months. In fact, you could say I was fairly experienced for the short amount of time. But─I’d never fought an aberration that I couldn’t see. I’d always thought of the invisible man as a ridiculous concept in this day and age, not even good for a joke. I never imagined that an invisible enemy could be this dreadful!
I was up against a snake.
I recalled that snakes had some tissue called pit organs that allowed them to sense infrared radiation and to find prey via heat─which meant our eye levels’ height difference probably didn’t work to my advantage. It went past trying not to be seen by your enemy while seeing him.
Ssszzzsss…
I could hear a sound.
Of something crawling, creeping my way.
“……kk! A-Ahh!”
While I was able to stand on my left leg, I couldn’t use it for much else. My movement was now as inefficient as it could be, but─the Jagirinawa had probably tried to attack my upper body, and I dare say that I dodged it.
Turning around, I tried to guess where it landed.
The Jagirinawa’s landing point─
Was clear to me.
“I─I might be able to do this.”
I just might─be able to do it.
I stood on guard so I could confirm my guess.
I waited for the second strike, my eyes glued─I kept my eyes glued to the Jagirinawa’s current position. To tell what your opponent is thinking─you look into their eyes. Not that I knew whether I should be looking into the snake’s eyes or pit organs, not that the Jagirinawa was visible to begin with─
It moved!
I leapt aside and dodged it.
Clamp! came a noise from right beside me, as if a bear trap had been set off─no doubt the sound of the Jagirinawa’s mouth closing as it missed. It gave me chills─if that thing ever got around my head, it was game over. It’d be bitten straight off.
But…
I saw a way for me to win.
This arena─was my ally.
A dirt ground.
Overgrown with grass.
And snakes─were creatures that crawled on the ground.
That was true even if the creature was an aberration.
I might not see the Jagirinawa itself, but it left behind a clear trail─just like the scale markings etched into Sengoku’s body.
The churned ground sent up dust.
The grass parted like it was in the way.
On asphalt or concrete, I wouldn’t be so lucky. If the serpent exorcism were taking place at the abandoned cram school where Oshino lived, like in Senjogahara or Kanbaru’s case─I’d be toast. But wait.
Maybe this stage direction came courtesy of Oshino.
Right, come to think of it, this aberration could ignore clothes. It only made sense for it to be able to do the same for dirt or grass. Even its slithering sszss and the sound of its mouth snapping shut shouldn’t have been audible. If the Jagirinawa couldn’t ignore the field’s physicality─that was the arena’s doing. On these grounds, the serpent, too, merely invisible, existed.
Because it was an aberration.
Like me and Kanbaru.
Like a prank curse actually taking.
An air pocket─a hangout.
Where bad things─gathered.
Oshino had said to make allies of the bad things─which meant this must have been part of the measure. The basic stratagem was predicated on creating a boundary, but the abandoned cram school hadn’t been designated as the stage, just in case something unexpected like this happened─and maybe it was all thanks to the enhanced field that I could hear and touch the aberration.
Mèmè Oshino.
It hurt to feel so powerless.
The upshot was that for Senjogahara and Kanbaru too, I’d turned it all in to Oshino─I relied on him from start to finish. He wasn’t going to be in our town forever, and yet, in each and every case─this time too!
Maybe I was the one who wasn’t regretting a thing.
I’d learned nothing from all my time with Oshino.
I didn’t see─a thing.
“Nkk…”
I somehow dodged the Jagirinawa’s next attack, too.
Still…it felt like I was getting nowhere. If I focused on just dodging its attacks, then thanks to the power of the bad things that gathered on the premises, I could gauge the Jagirinawa’s position and movements with some degree of accuracy from how it disturbed the dirt and grass─but striking back was a pretty tall order. Attacking would require wild guesses, and my right arm and left leg were out of commission. How was I supposed to mount a proper attack?
It was like─my body wasn’t healing at all.
The pain was only getting worse.
It might have been my imagination, but it seemed to be sprea
ding.
