by Nisioisin
There was no way she’d forgotten it.
Nonetheless, Ogi seemed to want to hear it from my lips.
With her train of thought so obvious, so transparent, I actually felt less reluctant to get on board than I would’ve otherwise. Though maybe she was just taking me for a ride.
“People can’t save other people. I can’t save you. You’ll just have to go and get saved on your own, Araragi─something like that, anyway.”
“Oh right, right, that’s the one. How could I forget. I’m so scatterbrained, forgetting my own uncle’s catch phrase.”
“Yeah, your uncle’s catch phrase. Not mine,” I said. “Which is why I feel astonishingly unrepentant about it─I messed up, I was rash, I should have thought things through, I should have been more prudent, I don’t think any of those things. At all. Though I do feel bad about betraying your uncle’s expectations and his faith in me, Ogi, and honestly I don’t know what to say… You know, maybe I did mess up, maybe I was rash, maybe I should have thought things through and been more prudent, but even so─that is, even if I’d known ahead of time, I’m almost positive I would’ve done exactly the same thing. As Ms. Kagenui said─it’s certainly not Oshino’s fault for not telling me.”
I was intentionally leaving out the most important part.
But I assumed that Ogi already knew everything─she knew my situation, knew the trouble I was in─knew why I didn’t regret it. I was pretty sure she did, anyway.
She knew, but was purposely making me go to the trouble of telling her about it─playing with me, you could say.
Outwardly she didn’t resemble Oshino, but personality-wise she was the spitting image of that Hawaiian shirt-wearing bastard─though for some reason Hanekawa said they were “nothing alike.”
“Absolutely. Even if you’d known, you would’ve done the same thing, Araragi-senpai─which is the whole point.”
“What do you mean, the whole point?”
“I mean the whole point, no more, no less. Which is to say, I’m only here like this, as me, because that aspect of you is so alluring─I think you’re the kind of person who’s capable, you know, of distorting things.”
“Distorting what things?”
“I mean, all kinds of things. All kinds of things that aren’t supposed to be. And I hate it when things are distorted─or should I say I love it when they’re fair and balanced? I want to put things right, is what I’m trying to say.”
“…”
To put things right─to put everything in order.
?
“It makes me feel good to put things right─though it seems like you prefer it when things feel a tiny bit bad, Araragi-senpai.”
“I don’t think you’d get on very well with Hanekawa. We hate those most similar to us, or whatever… She believes so strongly, almost pathologically, that everything ‘has to be put right.’ Twice as much as anybody else.”
“How much is twice as much in cat terms?” asked Ogi, then peered past me at Ononoki, who stood waiting like a doll just as I’d told her to. Still looking at the familiar, Ogi continued, “And here you are, getting a little help from your friend even as we speak. A friend or─tween girl? That’s the term you use, right? Asking a teensy little girl like her for help is pitiful.”
“Yeah…maybe you’re right. Maybe it is pitiful. But you just saw for yourself, the girl is no ordinary─”
“I’m well aware. I’ve heard about her before.”
“?”
Had I told her?
I guess I must’ve.
But then why call her a teensy little girl, in that case? Talking with Ogi always made me feel like I was lost in the clouds.
Like the conversation would never end, or like I’d never find a place to land.
Not that finding a place to land meant the conversation would end.
What did she know, and what didn’t she─and how much had I told her?
“So does having a not-ordinary tween girl on your side make you feel like you’ve got an army at your back, Araragi-senpai? Well done, tonight’ll be another easy victory.”
“Easy victory… How dare you. Have you forgotten that until recently I was making the pilgrimage up this very path to Kita-Shirahebi Shrine almost every day, and every single time the tables were turned and I barely survived?”
“Yeah? I guess I must’ve forgotten. I only ever remember the cool things about you, Araragi-senpai.”
Ogi played dumb.
That certainly reminded me of her uncle.
Still, I was worried about her future─about what that kind of attitude would do to her future, about whether she had a future at all.
Like I was about Tsukihi.
“Nope, no good,” I said. “Maybe I do worry too much about other people─like, what am I doing worrying about other people when I can’t even watch out for myself? So see you around, Ogi. At school, I guess.”
“But you won’t come to school anymore, Araragi-senpai.”
Her words stopped me cold.
How can I put this, I felt like I’d been gently but firmly informed that I’d never again return to the familiar halls of Naoetsu High.
But I was reading into it too much, of course, and Ogi continued, “It sucks, why do seniors get to stop coming to school, what kind of a system is that? I wish they’d consider us sad and lonely underclassmen who’re feeling left behind. Though it’s not like you’re banned from attending school, Araragi-senpai, so please come back. Your adorable kohai here is oh so sad and lonely.”
“Yeah…well, sorry for ditching you. But with my grades, I have no choice, I have to shut myself up at home and study.”
Sounding disappointed, Ogi replied, “Do you really though? It’s not just me who’s lonely, you know, Kanbaru-senpai’s lonely too. I wonder what she’s up to right about now.”
“Who knows,” I said, waving to Ogi as I turned away─though to be honest, I did want to walk her home. “See you around.”
“You’ve really grown up, Araragi-senpai. Don’t you think so too?”
“…”
I don’t know if she hadn’t heard my goodbye or if she’d just ignored it, but Ogi kept on talking even after I turned my back.
“You’ve really become an adult these past few months, don’t you think? You’ve become very mature. You don’t get worked up as easily as you used to. A while back, there’s no way you could’ve stayed so calm in this situation, don’t you agree?”
“…”
“I mean look, over spring break, when you thought you’d never become human again, you shut yourself up in the P.E. storage shed and cried. So how come you can keep your cool now? Do you think all the experiences you’ve had this past year helped you grow, that you’ve grown up thanks to everything you’ve had to give up, thanks to the prices you paid? Since you learned the hard way that all your tricks, your games, your workarounds won’t get you anywhere? Boy, what a treat. To get to watch someone grow up right. I much prefer a bildungsroman to a success story. There’s nothing like watching people learn from their mistakes, and grow through their failures.”
“…”
“You failed with Hachikuji and Sengoku, Araragi-senpai, but if that helped you grow, then don’t you feel like it was worth it? Ultimately, no one can protect everything or get everything they want, so when you can’t get the things you want, when you can’t protect the things you love, what’s important is how you process that experience. Or I guess people just have certain expectations of how you’ll behave in that kind of situation. Life never goes as planned, so on the occasions when it doesn’t, what’s important is how you avoid being crushed by that, how you turn it into a springboard─right?”
“Maybe so.”
It may very well be so.
That my accumulated experiences─my accumulated failures─have matured me. That they’ve turned me into an adult. In that sense, maybe humans do learn more from failure than from success, from a bildungsroman than from a success-roman
.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
But.
“But even so, Ogi. I refuse to believe that failure and misfortune, sacrifice and sadness, are ‘good things’─once you start believing that, you’re screwed.”
“…”
“I’d always rather mature through success. Duh,” I said, returning to where Ononoki stood.
I couldn’t waste any more time, and while it was undeniably an abrupt cliffhanger on which to end our conversation, well, we’d see each other again soon.
Whatever happened.
I was pretty sure we’d have to see each other again.
And I doubt the conversation was as much of a cliffhanger as it seemed to me. Since Ogi Oshino saw through you, just like her uncle.
016
“You know, I bet that kid is the one pulling the strings, kind monster sir, the mastermind who hired Tadatsuru to do some aberration elimination, the last boss who’s amusing herself by tormenting you,” Ononoki opined calmly as we hiked up the mountain path─though when I say mountain path, in fact when I say path, I’m unfortunately not referring to the familiar stairway up to Kita-Shirahebi Shrine.
Having given up on a direct descent from the sky to avoid being seen, what was the point of then approaching via the usual, well-known route─via that stairway on which I had once passed Sengoku? Well, Shinobu probably would’ve wanted to go that way even knowing that it might be a trap, but at the moment she was recharging her batteries in my shadow, and anyway, I no longer had the power to back up such a bold and brazen approach.
In order to get the drop on Tadatsuru─to take him by surprise, we kept hidden by taking a path that wasn’t a path.
Compared to the mountain paths I once trod with Ononoki, and Hachikuji, this was nothing to speak of─or so I told myself, but no matter how much I tried to bolster my spirits, a mountain path at night is straight-up dangerous. Dangerous and scary.
I mean, you had to watch out for snakes on this mountain even in the middle of winter.
Speaking of which, I know the shrine’s name is Kita-Shirahebi because Hanekawa told me so, but what’s the mountain itself called, I wonder? Never occurred to me to ask.
Hmm.
Is this realization that I don’t know something the wisdom of knowing my own ignorance?
“Hm? What did you say, Ononoki?”
“Oh nothing─just a half-baked prediction. Even supposing it were true, what would her motive be? Though I guess she said it herself: she wants to put things right─but what does that even mean? What is right, anyway? I’m an aberration, a shikigami, a corpse, a tsukumogami─that’s probably more than enough to qualify me as wrong. It’s all smoke and mirrors anyway, I’m just finagling my way through life─or death, I guess, using every trick in the book. But even if I’m an extreme example, isn’t the same more or less true of human beings too?”
“…”
“Like, just for instance, kind monster sir─you’ve fought in the past to protect Tsukihi…right? You fought desperately to protect her secret─but I wonder, did you actually pull it off?”
“What are you trying to say? That I fought for no reason?”
“No, not at all─not at all. I’m just wondering if there really is such a thing as a secret in the first place, a secret that nobody knows. Whether it’s really possible for Tsukihi’s parents and sister, her classmates and seniors and juniors, in other words for all the people around her, not to know the truth.”
“Are you saying I risked my life to protect an open secret?”
If so, that would make me the biggest clown of them all─and yet I couldn’t come up with anything to refute Ononoki’s theory, at least not right then.
But yes.
It was definitely absurd to imagine that I was the only one who knew my little sister’s secret─even if no one knew the truth, the whole truth, how could Tsukihi keep such a massive secret from everyone else? It seemed impossible that no one would know.
In fact, it was much more realistic to imagine that everyone knew─but wasn’t saying anything.
“I shouldn’t let that discourage me, though─because then I’m not alone, then everybody’s out to protect Tsukihi.”
That thought gave me a thought.
A pretty shameless thought.
That if everyone found out about my situation─maybe they’d protect me as well.
That was probably aiming a little high.
“Listen, I’m just spit-balling, all I’m saying is that maybe it’s possible,” qualified Ononoki. “At the end of the day, even though everyone’s pretty glum, they do their best to seem glib─just enough to make everything seem right with a world where everything really isn’t. Just enough to make it seem like there’s some kind of order to the universe, to their lives.”
“You make it sound like the world is made of papier-mâché.”
“More like the painted backdrop to a play─or maybe just a giant international expo. Same goes for Tadatsuru, I bet.”
“…”
“Do you want to hear about him?” asked Ononoki.
Incidentally, our marching order was her in front, trailblazing a path through the trees, and me following behind on the path she created, like a total loser.
Totally reliant on her.
They say snakes bite the second person that comes through, so it’s not like I had it easy. But when it came to the requisite power to forge a path up a mountain, I couldn’t hold a candle to Ononoki. I had no choice but to follow after her like a loser. How have the mighty fallen. Pitiful, just like Ogi said.
“To be perfectly honest, no, I don’t.”
“Really? Even though he’s abducted three of your dearest people?”
“Yup. For me, the ideal course of events is that we take this Tadatsuru by surprise, snatch the three hostages from under his nose, and come back down the mountain without him ever seeing us or finding out that we were there. Conversely, nothing could make me happier than to get this over with without ever seeing Tadatsuru’s face, hearing him speak, or generally knowing anything about him whatsoever.”
“That would be wonderful. That would definitely be ideal, tonight, in light of our plight. But that’ll just get us through tonight’s plight; it won’t actually resolve anything. What do they call that─a game of fox and mouse, of tanuki and mouse…”
“A game of cat and mouse.”
“Right. That’s the one. A game of cat and mouse…an endless string of fruitless battles. Doesn’t feel like much of a game, honestly. Though I bet a cat would have a lot of fun with an endless string.”
Ononoki unconsciously darted glances in every direction─maybe all this talk of animals made her feel like they were out there somewhere, close by. Not that I’d ever heard anything about foxes or tanuki or even cats on that mountain.
It felt like literally anything could appear out of that darkness, though─who knew it would be so hard to walk at night when you couldn’t see in the dark?
It took all my concentration just to keep from tripping.
And I was covered in cuts… Would little wounds like that heal right away, given my current state?
“So I think you’re going to have to ‘convince’ Tadatsuru like you’ve done in the past─face him, talk it over with him, and make him give it up.”
“You might be right…but talking it over isn’t actually such a mature solution. Lately I’ve been thinking that hashing it out is no different from fighting it out, it’s just another form of violence. Which is why, to tell the truth, after we recover the hostages I want to shut myself up in my room and let you or Ms. Gaen or Ms. Kagenui take care of the rest.”
“That really is the unvarnished truth, isn’t it? It makes me happy that you can be so honest with me. Well, it seems like Ms. Gaen is working to protect you, monstieur…this time, anyway. She really seems to have taken a shine to you. Or maybe she feels responsible, in her own way.”
“Responsible? For what?”
“We
ll, I bet she’s super-conscious of failing to prevent what happened to Nadeko Sengoku… Ms. Gaen’s not the type to regret it, but maybe she’s trying to make amends for it. Since the thing with Nadeko Sengoku has been one of the main drivers of your precipitous descent into vampiredom these past few months.”
“But that was just a matter of time anyway. Just a question of whether it’d happen sooner or later─even without the whole Sengoku thing, other problems would’ve cropped up. I would’ve borrowed Shinobu’s power to deal with each of them, gotten complacent about wielding the unbridled fury of my vampiric power, gotten carried away─and lost my humanity. Am I wrong?”
