Tsukimonogatari

by Nisioisin

Placid, and expressionless.

  “No…I did do it blithely.”

  I had to admit it.

  I had to acknowledge it.

  It wasn’t the first time someone pointed this out to me─Senjogahara and Hanekawa and others from the female camp had warned that I was blithely over-relying on my power as an immortal ever since Oshino’s disappearance.

  Not that I was self-aware about it.

  But it was definitely true that any reluctance I’d once felt about using my vampiric power─about becoming immortal, had slowly but surely faded. Not only that, but I felt a strange sense of connection every time I used my vampiric power to fight alongside a reinvigorated Shinobu.

  Euphoria?

  Well, there was certainly some of that.

  Of course there was.

  Anyone with a pulse would feel the same way.

  Any average high school student who got to wield a power that transcends the human realm, transcends human knowledge, and denies the thrill of it would be full of it─as would anyone who denies getting lost in all that power.

  “So you’re saying that because I borrowed Shinobu’s strength too frequently, I myself fully transformed into a vampire? But I was being so careful to avoid that!”

  Oshino had cautioned me over and over again, after all: to maintain Shinobu’s existence in this world, I had to keep giving her my blood in perpetuity, but I also needed to be super-careful about the dosage.

  He strictly enjoined me that if I gave her too much, if I let her drink too much blood, Shinobu would become an aberration once again─the aberration-slaying king of aberrations.

  At the same time.

  He enjoined me (just as strictly) that I would transform into a vampire as well. So even when I let Shinobu drink my blood so I could fight, I never once exceeded the proper threshold─at least I didn’t think I did.

  “You’re not listening, it’s not about your relationship with Big Sis Shinobu. It’s totally unrelated to you giving her your blood. Well, it’s indirectly related, of course, but…the why and how and who-drank-your-blood of your transformations into a vampire isn’t really the issue. Until now you’ve been ‘metamorphosing’ by borrowing Big Sis Shinobu’s power, but it would’ve been the same if you’d borrowed from a different vampire each time.”

  “…”

  “Let me give it to you straight, monstieur. I’ll put it as plainly as I can. It’s not that you became a vampire too often, it’s that you became too comfortable about becoming one. You got too used to using the power. You got too good at it─at this point you could become a vampire even without Shinobu.”

  “Wait.”

  Wait a sec.

  I couldn’t keep up─no, that wasn’t true, I was keeping up, or in fact, I’d finished the upkeep on my mental filing cabinet a while ago. I was convinced. So if this were somebody else’s problem, I would’ve totally agreed with her here. I’d probably have praised her to the skies: Great deduction, Ononoki.

  But this was my problem.

  No matter how true, if it was also tragic, if it was also a failure I didn’t want to acknowledge─I couldn’t swallow it just like that.

  “But Ononoki. Is it…is it really that easy to become a vampire? You just do it too much, get too used to doing it, and then you’ve done it?”

  “Dance with the devil, and you’ll become the devil─play with a demon, and you’ll become a demon. And you really took the initiative playing that game.”

  “I…didn’t feel like I was playing.”

  “Of course you didn’t, young man, that’s just a manner of speaking. You were dead serious. I reckon I can vouch for that myself, having battled you in your vampire form. Otherwise, a body wouldn’t have backed off,” Ms. Kagenui, silent all this time, finally interjected.

  Well, Ononoki was only ever acting as her mouthpiece anyway, and as her familiar the opinions she expressed were most likely hers and Ms. Kagenui’s, there being no difference between the two.

  “Or maybe I ought to say you were seriously off your rocker. It might sound strange for me to go around jawing about what’s normal, but normal sure as shooting doesn’t include becoming a monster to protect your little sister.”

  “…”

  “Listen, young man, this might seem to you like it’s coming out of left field, but it’s not as uncommon as all that─it’s not easy, but it’s not all that uncommon either. There are even those among us experts what end up becoming aberrations themselves. It’s a particularly marked tendency among my closest colleagues, by which I mean onmyoji. Which is why, to avoid it,” Ms. Kagenui’s gaze dropped to Ononoki beneath her feet.

  A chilly gaze, her eyes cold.

  “I employ this here stand-in.”

  “…”

  “That’s how dangerous facing an aberration head-on can be─Oshino must’ve told you? That once you’ve dealt with an aberration, you’re much more liable to get drawn in again.”

  He did tell me that, yes.

  But what he didn’t tell me…

  “If I transformed into a vampire too often, I’d end up as one myself─that, he never mentioned.”

  “Because he failed to see it. What kind of a person you are, I mean. That was where he miscalculated. No, maybe never calculated at all─can’t miscalculate if you never calculated in the first place. Sure enough, that’s why I say it was an oversight. He never predicted that you, young man, would transform into a vampire so frequently in such a short span.”

  “That…”

  That definitely wasn’t a miscalculation─nor was it an oversight.

  Uh-uh.

  That was an error in judgment.

  “So you’re saying…I betrayed Oshino’s faith in me? Is that what it boils down to? He never expected me to do it. To keep on borrowing the power of an immortal aberration so blithely─to rely too much on a vampire─”

  Shinobu.

  He entrusted the former Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade to me, entrusted her to my shadow, and I betrayed that trust.

  I couldn’t live up to his expectations.

  Shinobu’s power, Shinobu’s existence.

  I used them like convenient tools─and that was something not even he could’ve seen.

  Which is why he never informed me of this possibility.

  Nor did he inform─Shinobu.

  He almost certainly.

  Thought it’d be rude.

  “…”

  “’Course, we can only guess at what Oshino’s intentions might’ve been─for all we know, he just plumb forgot. And what about this, young man: supposing he’d told you about this possibility, would you have shrunk from making use of the vampire’s power? Even if you’d known it would cost you your humanity, you’d’ve done it anyway, no?”

  Words of comfort.

  Were something I’d never expect to hear from Ms. Kagenui. She was too violent, too careless, too oblivious. Probably she was just thinking out loud.

  There’s really no way of knowing what I would’ve done.

  If I’d known beforehand, maybe I could’ve done something about it, or maybe I’d have been well and truly scared off.

  “So you’re saying the reason my healing factor is so slow…or that I have a healing factor at all, even if it’s non-existent compared to when I was Shinobu’s thrall over spring break, the fact that I have some level of immortality, is proof that my transformation into a vampire is unconnected to Shinobu? In other words, I’m not transforming into Shinobu’s thrall, but into my own brand─my own breed of vampire.”

  “That’s about the size of it. Though, typologically speaking, I reckon you’d be treated as a natural vampire.”

  “There are two types of vampires, monstieur. Two breeds. Natural vampires, and human beings who become vampires after being bitten by one─it might seem like you belong in the latter category, but as it happens you’re classified as the former. Someone who transforms into a vampire, who becomes one, is a natural vampire.”


  “I don’t really understand that reasoning…”

  I never really understood what I was told over spring break either, but this seemed even more confusing.

  Or rather, viewing vampires as organisms and trying to understand their ecology already seemed outside the framework of human understanding.

  “Seems like the incident involving the serpent deity was the biggest problem─you really, really, really, really, really overdid it there, monstieur─you turned into a vampire almost every day. ‘High frequency’ doesn’t even begin to cover it. You spent more time as a vampire than you did as a human during that period, didn’t you?”

  “Sure…”

  It was my fault that Sengoku had done that─that she ended up like that. Or I felt responsible, at least─so that’s why.

  That’s why.

  “I think I’ve got some kind of grasp of the situation. I wouldn’t call it a firm grip, but…what do I do, Ononoki?”

  “Do about what?” she threw the question back to me so ingenuously that I fell silent for a moment─and a bad feeling washed over me, but I quickly dispelled it, interpreting her response as a request to be more specific. I rephrased my question.

  “What do I do to become human again?”

  When was it?

  It must’ve been over spring break that I’d asked Shinobu more or less the same question─what had her answer been?

  Whatever, that was the past.

  How she answered back then was irrelevant─what I needed to know.

  And the one thing I knew I didn’t want to hear─was Ononoki’s hopeless reply.

  “Kind monster sir,” she said.

  Like a doll, looking at me with those doll’s eyes.

  Without hesitation or consideration.

  “There’s no way to fix this.”

  011

  No way to fix it.

  No way back.

  It struck me as odd that when I heard Ononoki’s cruel pronouncement, when I heard that hopeless answer condemning me to my fate─I accepted it readily.

  I accepted it.

  Without shock or consternation.

  Her answer touched something in me.

  Something deep inside of me.

  Or no, maybe not quite─it’s not like it was totally unsurprising. It was definitely not what I thought she was going to say. But it was the kind of surprise you feel when you happen to put a piece of a jigsaw puzzle in exactly the right place, or when you open a dictionary to precisely the page you’re looking for. I was startled by how “right” it felt.

  “I see…” I nodded.

  The one most likely to mock this response, in all its stiff-upper-lip gallantry, was none other than me. Who’re you trying to impress? I wanted to ask.

  Like when someone gets hit by a car and says, I’m fine.

  “So that’s the deal, huh? Well, there it is, then.”

  “I expected you’d be a mite more upset about it,” Ms. Kagenui, eyeing me doubtfully, said from atop Ononoki’s shoulders. “We’re still inside the barrier, you know. You don’t want to roll around on the ground for a spell and bawl your eyes out? Wail your frustrations at the heavens? Go on, I’ll pretend I didn’t hear nor see a blessed thing.”

  “No… Well.”

  When you stopped to think about it, this wasn’t a question of a mere broken finger─I’d been informed that I was dropping out of the human race, never to return. I wasn’t just losing some part of myself, I was losing my very humanity, so there’d be no shame in rolling around on the ground and crying for a while.

  And yet.

  I felt absolutely no need to do so.

  “What can I say. It’s like, There you go. Guess that makes sense.”

  “…”

  “I mean, I’ve been really reckless these past six months. It was the same when we fought each other… I was turning myself into a vampire like it was nothing, like I was drinking an energy drink or something, relying on the power of an immortal to battle aberrations. And the retribution for that…”

  Retribution?

  That’s what I said, but somehow it didn’t sound right.

  Why, I couldn’t say…or no, it sounded wrong because there was a better word for it.

  It wasn’t retribution.

  The price.

  “I had to pay some kind of price.”

  Yes, a price.

  I’d been cooking the books, and the secret finally came out─that morning it finally came out, finally came into view (or, not).

  That’s all. No biggie.

  I was actually surprised it’d taken so long.

  I was just paying interest─on all the bills that had come due recently.

  I was just settling the accounts for all my shenanigans.

  No─

  This was the last installment, the final payment.

  Last year was over, even according to the traditional calendar─and Koyomi Araragi needed to wrap up his fiscal year.

  That’s all there was to it.

  “Price, right,” repeated Ms. Kagenui disinterestedly. Her expression suggested that maybe she’d wanted to watch me writhe around on the ground for her sadistic delectation. “Well, what else could you expect, throwing around all that power willy-nilly─no choice but to accept it, I reckon. Not that that ever-so-enlightened attitude of yours will do a lick of good. Still and all, I reckon you haven’t lost your humanity just yet.”

  “What…do you mean?”

  “There’s no way to reverse the process, no way to fix it, but there’s a way to keep your transformation into a vampire from progressing.” Ms. Kagenui prompted Ononoki, seemingly telling her to pick up the thread of the explanation. As onmyoji and shikigami, they really seemed to have some kind of psychic link.

  “Okay. So, there is a method, monstieur.”

  “By a ‘method’ you mean a way not to lose any more of my humanity?”

  “Well, yeah… Yeah. We’ll have to conduct a thorough, by-the-book examination to find out how vampiricized you are, kind monster sir, and how much of your humanity you retain. But either way, there’s a way for you to maintain the current status quo, whatever that turns out to be.”

  “…”

  I didn’t ask right away what this method might be because I somehow felt like that’d be greedy.

  Like it’d be shady, as if I were trying to default on my loans─sure, I’d talked like I was at peace with it, but ultimately, given my predicament, I had to find out what this method was, if there really was one.

  “So what is it, Ononoki? What’s the method?”

  “Mmmm… Maybe ‘method’ wasn’t the best way to describe it, since it doesn’t really involve you doing anything. In other words,” continued Ononoki, “You just have to stop using your vampiric power.”

  “…”

  “You can keep feeding Big Sis Shinobu, of course─using your shadow as a battery charger like you’ve been doing should be fine. If that’s as far as it goes, then there’s no problem. But you’ve got to keep an even keel, and of course you’ve got to avoid actually transforming into a vampire. No matter what.”

  “Stop using my vampiric power…”

  Definitely not what you’d call a method.

  It didn’t even require any action on my part.

  Though that didn’t mean it would be easy.

  If anything, it sounded like a detox program─would it be that easy to wean myself off of vampiric immortality, given how handy it’d been?

  And there was no question that, having so fecklessly immersed myself in the world of aberrations, I’d continue to be involved with them, to get sucked into their orbit.

  Even now they were dragging me down.

  “Supposing,” I sprang a totally unnecessary question on Ononoki for the sake of confirmation. “Supposing from now on─I kept on using the power of immortality every time I had to deal with an aberration, what’d happen to me then?”

  “You know what would happen─don’t make me say it,
not to a friend. You’d edge closer and closer to being a vampire. I can’t say for sure how many more chances you’ve got─but you definitely have less wiggle room than you think, monstieur.”

  “I’m not thinking about wiggle room or more chances or anything, that would be too optimistic, but…”