Tsukimonogatari

by Nisioisin

  “Hmm…thou hast the right of it. But ’tis also true that no human being could heal a fractured bone in a mere hour.”

  “Yeah…”

  Though with Karen, all bets were off.

  Not to mention Karen’s sensei.

  Though never having met her sensei, I’m really just speculating on that one.

  “Then I shall perform a simple test for thee. Proffer me thine arm.”

  “Like this?”

  “Scratch!”

  Accompanied by this sound effect (?), Shinobu scratched my arm.

  Like a cat.

  In a feat of bodily manipulation, she’d suddenly extended her fingernails into sharpened claws.

  “Owww that─doesn’t hurt?”

  “I should think not. I merely grazed thy skin.” Shinobu flashed her claws for me to see. “’Tis the same level of damage as scraping the inside of thy cheek for a scientific experiment.”

  “How does a vampire know anything about scientific experiments?”

  “I have lived lo these five hundred years.”

  It was more like six hundred, actually.

  Not that I was going to hassle her about fudging her age.

  It’s bad manners to talk about a woman’s age.

  Not sure about an aberration’s, though.

  “Okay, so you scraped my arm, now what?”

  “Observe.”

  “Hm?”

  Unbelievably.

  Or should I say inevitably?

  The wound on my arm where Shinobu had scratched me vanished─well, it was never exactly a wound, but any sign of it vanished without a trace.

  “Look there. Thy body hath healed itself.”

  “Mm-hmm…no question about it.”

  Somehow the unimpressive healing of that unimpressive wound didn’t sweep away all my misgivings, but there was no question that my healing factor, my physical regeneration, was somewhat enhanced.

  “Nay, I know thy mind is not fully at ease, my lord, but be wary─I advise thee to draw those curtains closed. For should a vampire with such a meager healing ability be exposed to sunlight, he would be reduced to ash without even catching flame.”

  “Oh, uh huh…”

  Shinobu’s dire words filled me with dread. I rose, and contorting my body to keep it out of the sun’s rays, closed the curtains. This naturally made the room pretty dim, so I turned on the light.

  “’Tis merely a precaution… ’Tis possible, nay probable, that ye might walk openly beneath the sun in safety. Simply because thou hast manifested some ability to heal meanest not that thou art fully become a vampire once more, my lord. Here now, say eee.”

  “Hm?”

  “Say eee.”

  She said it so childishly that I failed to take her meaning, but the second time, Shinobu just did it for me─it was super cute─spreading my lips apart on the side like I was saying, “eee.”

  Okay, it wasn’t that cute.

  Holding my lips in that position, Shinobu inspected the area closely, then concluded with, “Aye. For now, at least, thou hast not grown fangs.”

  “Really?”

  “Aye. If thou believest me not, look in the mirror.”

  “But the whole point is that I don’t have a reflection!”

  “Ah, of course.”

  Heh, a smile rose to Shinobu’s face.

  Gimme a break.

  On purpose or not, it was pretty annoying.

  But also super cute.

  “Then touch it and see,” she suggested.

  “Like this?”

  “Who told thee to touch mine chest? I’m talking about thine own tooth.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Her cool reaction made me feel like a plain old pervert. No, regardless of her reaction, I was a plain old pervert.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “And?”

  “It’s hard, feels normal.”

  “’Tis not a question of texture.”

  Shinobu didn’t seem too impressed that I’d remembered to throw in a nice little joke even at a time like this. “Well, it isn’t pointed. My teeth are definitely regular teeth─and very fine teeth at that, if I do say so myself. Let’s see, what other vampiric phenomena can we check for right now…”

  “Why not try eating garlic for thy morning meal?”

  “I don’t want to have such an intense breakfast… Wait, but if that tested positive, wouldn’t I just keel over and die?”

  “Like as not.”

  “I’m not liking like as not.”

  It was no joke.

  Sure, I was living a life where I might die at any moment, but I could never face my parents if I died just because I ate some garlic. Nor could I face Senjogahara. And not because of the garlic breath.

  “Such experiments can be left for another day. At present, ’tis the most dire of scenarios to which we ought turn our minds, my lord─’tis not a reality that thou might wish to face, but in my judgment, thou art at present a half-baked vampire. If thou canst,” and here Shinobu’s tone turned serious, “I ask that thou dost trust my judgment. Lest we waste time in pointless investigations.”

  “Okay. I’ll trust you.”

  Which didn’t mean that my misgivings had vanished.

  While my toe and skin had indeed healed, neither one seemed like an impossible occurrence, which meant that the only phenomenon of note, and my predicament at the moment, was “lacking a reflection.”

  Definitely insufficient evidence to say that I was a vampire, or at least, it would be a premature conclusion─Mèmè Oshino, the expert, might even call it imprudent and rash─but.

  But nonetheless.

  I trusted Shinobu.

  I’m embarrassed even to say it, I can’t believe I’m putting it in print, but it felt only right.

  “Then it’s really you I’m worried about. Are you okay? Nothing’s happening with your body?”

  “Nay. And judging from mine earlier inability to pierce thy body, my lord, my power hath not returned─”

  Wait a minute, she really tried to put a hole in me?

  Not a shred of mutual trust to be found in that thought.

  “And what is more, our link is born purely of the drinking of blood─save for if I should bite thy neck whilst half-asleep and drink thy blood, no connection should be possible.”

  “Well, I never wanted to say so, but I’ve always thought that seemed like a strong possibility.”

  “Impertinent lout. Never in all my five hundred years have I been half-asleep.”

  “Oh really…”

  I let that one pass.

  If further investigations were a waste of time, using that time for our comedy routine definitely was too. Just this once, we had to abandon the stance that the idle banter was the real point of these books.

  What mattered now was whether there’d been some change in Shinobu’s body.

  “Shinobu, first things first, take off your clothes. So I can take a look.”

  “What dost thou intend with me?”

  “I want to torture your little girl feet.”

  “Thy sisters have not crushed them.”

  “Shit…useless little sisters. They couldn’t even manage to give her a little wound like that?”

  “I have ne’er even crossed swords with my lord’s sisters, but… That’s it,” said Shinobu, clapping her hands.

  The kind of clap where you slap your fist with your open palm.

  “I know who to ask.”

  “Huh? Who?”

  “Well, ’tis certain that some manner of change hath been wrought upon thy body, my lord─and if that change is, as I suspect, some manner of vampiric phenomenon, ’twould be best to consult an expert.”

  Her arms crossed, Shinobu sounded strangely reluctant.

  At least it didn’t seem like the attitude of someone who’d just been struck by a brilliant idea.

  “By an expert…do you mean Oshino? Mèmè Oshino─but we don’t even know where to find him.”
>
  “Nay, I suspect this is outside that brat’s ken─for had he harbored apprehensions that such might befall thee, he would most certainly have shared them with me.”

  Shinobu wasn’t overly fond of Mèmè Oshino, the parent whose last name she bore, the master who had bound her with that name, but judging from what she just said, it wasn’t like she didn’t recognize his competence.

  At least, she recognized that he wouldn’t skip town─if he knew there was still some kind of crisis lying in wait for me.

  In other words, in Shinobu’s considered opinion, this situation was beyond Oshino’s control.

  And of course I had no objection to that opinion. I agreed wholeheartedly.

  “I know not how to grapple with thy circumstance, my lord. Which means that neither would it profit us to turn to that Aloha brat for aid, even if we knew where to find him. He is naught but useless grime upon my boot heel.”

  “…”

  She recognized his competence, but apparently that was it. I guess she still hated him.

  Fair enough, but…

  “Then who are you talking about? Who’s this person you think we should ask?”

  “Thou knowest full well. When I say ‘who’ with such a nuance, ’tis clear of whom I speak,” Shinobu replied with real revulsion.

  Far more revulsion even than when she spoke of Oshino, who was one of the main causes, one of the architects of her transformation from a bewitching beauty into a helpless little girl.

  “I speak of Yotsugi Ononoki.”

  007

  My first encounter with Yotsugi Ononoki came over summer break─thinking back on that “incident,” I have to be honest, she didn’t make a very good impression on me.

  To put it plainly, we were enemies.

  What I mean when I say “encounter” is that we fought.

  It made sense that Shinobu seemed unhappy about her own suggestion─because she and Ononoki had an honest-to-god duel to the death that time. Or no, maybe it wasn’t a duel to the death for Shinobu─but let’s leave that aside for now.

  Yotsugi Ononoki.

  Was an expert─and an expert specializing in immortal aberrations, including vampires, in fact.

  “Ononoki, huh… But strictly speaking, Ononoki isn’t an expert, is she? It’s Yozuru Kagenui, who employs her as a shikigami, who deploys her as a familiar, who’s the expert, right?”

  It’s unclear whether I understood that part correctly, but I’m pretty sure that was the deal. I somehow kept running into Ononoki since that incident over summer break, and our relationship had moved away from straightforward hostility─though her master Ms. Kagenui remained very much my enemy.

  I’d heard rumors, but we hadn’t come face to face.

  It was Shinobu who faced off against Ononoki.

  And it was me who faced off against Ms. Kagenui─in a one-sided massacre. She ran roughshod all over me, but let’s leave that aside as well.

  Yotsugi Ononoki and─Yozuru Kagenui, huh?

  “Okay… Well, it’s definitely a good idea. Though it’s a real shame I can’t say so with a smile on my face.”

  “Indeed.”

  Shinobu’s feelings seemed similarly complicated.

  Something seemed to be rankling her.

  An expert who specialized in immortal aberrations was, when you get right down to it, fundamentally her enemy─so was it any wonder?

  Then again, during that summer break both Shinobu and I were nothing more than “former” vampires, having already lost our immortality, so they let us off the hook─what was it they said, something about us being certified harmless?

  I said, “Ononoki is one thing… But Ms. Kagenui, well, you know what kind of person she is, what kind of expert she is. If she found out I was manifesting symptoms of vampirism, you know she’d be eager to take me out.”

  “To that too, I say indeed─indeed, what else could I? And yet, it cannot be that those two solve anything and everything by violent means. In fact, is not their central task, their bread and butter, ye might say, to keep the peasantry from transforming into immortal aberrations and the like?”

  “Uh huh… But either way, their services won’t come for free. It’s their job, after all.”

  Not gonna be cheap.

  Gonna be pricey as hell.

  Oshino had asked for five million yen─thinking back on it now, what the hell was he doing demanding that much money of a high school student?

  “At least, Ms. Kagenui and Ononoki aren’t like Dramaturgy and those other guys… I’m pretty sure they aren’t.”

  If they were, we’d be in trouble.

  Because once I’d become a vampire over spring break, “those three” did their level best to take me out─me, and I was just Shinobu’s victim. Shoot first and ask questions later. Though I guess that makes sense, since once you narrow down the field even further from immortal aberrations to “vampire specialist,” you had to start viewing all vampires as uniformly evil.

  “Ms. Kagenui…” I muttered. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. She’s without a doubt the ‘strongest’ person I’ve ever met, and I’m sure if we could sidestep our past hostilities and get her to step over to our side, she’d make for a reliable ally.”

  Karen once said that Yozuru Kagenui “might just about be a match for my sensei”─at that point I could only guess at how strong Karen’s sensei was from the many anecdotes she’d told me, but it struck me that her statement really said something about Yozuru Kagenui, that expert who avoids treading on the ground at all costs.

  “When you get right down to it, Ononoki herself is something of an immortal aberration─”

  “A zombie, more like. A corpse tsukumogami. Or to put it plainly, more a doll than aught else.”

  “A doll…”

  Yup.

  That was about the size of things.

  “Being a shikigami as she is. Though she be most free for a shikigami… ’Tis surely thanks to the nature of her master.”

  As onmyoji are somewhat out of fashion of late, Shinobu added─though I doubted it had anything to do with what was trendy at the moment.

  A shikigami’s level of freedom, I mean.

  “So, what wilt thou, my lord?”

  “Good question…”

  If you removed my personal feelings─if you removed the resentment, of course, and the fear, the chattering teeth, going to them for help was an excellent idea. It almost seemed like a made-to-order model solution.

  But at the same time, like I said, those two─or really just Ms. Kagenui, to be honest, had an extremely dangerous disposition, and she had what it took to back it up.

  To the point that even that most ominous of ominous villains, the swindler Deishu Kaiki, openly hated dealing with her─probably because that silver-tongued devil knows better than anyone the privileges enjoyed by those who can solve things with violence.

  One wrong word and instead of helping me she might just take me out─though if that’s as far as it went, I guess that would be my just deserts. If things really went south and we rehashed the events of the summer─

  “But, or, hang on a sec, Shinobu.”

  “Aye?”

  “I don’t even know how to get ahold of those two.”

  “Whaaat?”

  Shinobu turned an accusing glare at me.

  Seriously, those eyes really are something.

  “Kagenui aside, ye joined forces with that Ononoki time and time again─and yet, thou art ignorant? Why did ye not ask for her digits?”

  “Vampires don’t say ‘digits.’”

  It lacked dignity.

  Way too contemporary.

  It was like Oshino using email.

  “No, I mean, Ononoki just isn’t the kind of character who’d be walking around with a cell phone… I feel like she said something about not having one even for emergencies. Aberrations seem fundamentally unsuited to a technological civilization in the first place, don’t you think?”

 
“Is she really such a delicate flower? Hmmm. Then our situation is a difficult one indeed. If we cannot reach her by telephone, is there some other means we might employ?”