Onimonogatari

by Nisioisin

  Speaking of living only in the moment.

  She might rise to that position on a lark─but I couldn’t see her having any interest in ruling or reigning.

  Given her personality.

  It goes without saying, though, that the Shinobu that I knew, the one I was so close to, had a personality deeply influenced by none other than my own. So of course I’d think that, but I had no way of knowing her personality back then─and yet if she was the type to accept being treated as a god, she’d have made more than just two thralls over the course of six hundred years.

  She’d have formed a hierarchical society of vampires.

  In general, she preferred solitude over supremacy.

  And I dare say that she placed herself somewhere above a god in her own mind─it was that incredible pride of hers that made me think she wouldn’t decide to be a mere god for long.

  Being a demon.

  That’s the one thing this vampire would never let go of.

  “Hm? Aye, indeed, indeed. That is the kind of prideful creature I am. I seek no admiration from others at all, such vanity has no place in my life. Thou art wise, I see.”

  “…”

  Considering how hopelessly weak she was to praise, maybe it’d be better to retract my previous statement.

  “Well, true,” she continued her story after savoring her delight for a moment. Fortunately. “As ye say, my time as a god did not last long─roughly a year, I reckon. Putting anything about my personality aside, it seems that I truly was not made to be a god─”

  Shinobu looked out the window once she said this─the sky was still blue. No signs anywhere of aberrations or anything suspicious.

  As for Mayoi Hachikuji.

  She was still to our side, unconscious.

  010

  “I suppose ye could say that part of the reason I went along with those fools’ attempts to exalt me as a god was to take a break.

  “Living at the South Pole was demanding.

  “Bitter, frozen blizzards─along with those many days when I was never once recognized as an aberration. While I may have been at my zenith, I was a little, just the littlest bit tired.

  “The littlest bit, ye hear? Littlest.

  “So now that I was in a place with plenty of humans that would recognize me, I thought I would take it easy and rest. Call it a whim if ye want. A whim quite befitting of me─being treated as a god meant free lodgings and food.

  “’Twas a holiday of sorts.

  “I was on an island nation, after all. Like being on Hawaii, were I to give a modern comparison. Aye, Hawaii─though that is one place I’ve never been despite having traveled the world.

  “’Tis not easy to arrive on an island nation with a super jump. Hitting one’s mark is difficult unless ’tis a large continent.

  “Hm? Oh, no. When I said free food, I wasn’t sucking the locals’ blood. Don’t look at me like that. Aye, I am a vampire and an aberration that uses human blood as energy, but I’d not consume any from humans showing me affection.

  “Though it’s hard to say what I’d do in an emergency.

  “What about thee? Say there was a cow that showed thee affection and one that didn’t. Thou would consume the latter’s meat, would thou not? ’Tis the same thing.

  “This country did still have a system of sacrifice in those days, so blood would have been easy to procure no matter how much I wanted─for thy reference, I’ve heard that ritual human sacrifice existed here until quite recently too.

  “From who? That Hawaiian-shirted boy.

  “Though I never told him this story─not once during the days I spent in these ruins with my arms around my legs did it feel appropriate to speak of my past.

  “Of course, this is that boy we’re talking about. He’d come to this town having researched everything he could about me, so perhaps he knew, without any disclosure on my part.

  “Though I’m dubious of whether any records of those villages still exist─most of what makes me a legendary vampire are my acts in Europe, and not a person survived who could have related the event that happened here.

  “Aye, that is what awaits us at the end of this story.

  “Brace thyself. Every character that appears will die.

  “While they avoided dying of drought, they all died anyway. Perhaps destiny isn’t that easily twisted of a thing, in the end─though I’d prefer not to believe so.

  “Well, I had no such values at the time─but ye’d better not misunderstand, I was not merely enjoying a vacation on an island nation in the Far East.

  “I did my job as a god, too.

  “Making it rain but once was not enough─I would wait a bit and then make it rain again.

  “What’s that? Didn’t the lake disappear? Aye, which is why I gathered rain clouds from the area. ’Tis the method ye just described… I used no airplane or the like, of course. I collected them with my own hands. Hold on, don’t tell me ye forgot I can sprout wings?

  “True, ’twould only cause other regions to suffer through droughts─so I tried as best I could to gather them from above the sea, but I doubt my work was perfect.

  “Gods are self-centered in that sense─believe and ye shall be saved, they say, and proceed to save only those who do.

  “I did of course explain this to those humans, but they did not seem to particularly mind… In other words, they were faithful in appearance alone, and were in the end a regular bunch that thought only about themselves. While I don’t dislike selfishness in humans, I wonder, dost thou find it a bit difficult to accept?

  “Indeed, the karma of humans, or rather, of all living things─would be much easier to bear if ye simply became an aberration.

  “Or a god.

  “Of course, ’twas not a decision thou or I had the opportunity to make─ah, right, I’ll skip over a bit.

  “Shall we pick up the pace?

  “Telling thee of how those humans came to venerate me could turn into naught more than boasting if I am not careful. About how I was extolled in this way and respected in that way. ’Twould be a dull story to hear, would it not? Not that this will be an entertaining story. Not a thing about this story is entertaining, unless ’tis the utter farce that was my youthful folly. Laugh if ye want to.

  “Ye won’t be able for long.

  “So. While I spoke earlier of free lodgings, in fact I made them myself. In the bed of the lake that disappeared─the lake itself had been recognized as my land. As what ye might call my holy ground.

  “It became home to my shrine.

  “’Twas a gorgeous structure.

  “’Tis not as if I could have settled in a village and lived among humans, after all─how would I have been able to maintain my divine majesty?

  “What’s that? I’m a horrible god for demanding a shrine from such a destitute village? Do not misunderstand, no one built anything for my sake.

  “I built it myself.

  “Have ye forgotten my ability to realize matter? And this was at my zenith. I was able to create a building and any sort of incidental gadgets in no time at all. In the blink of an eye, in the time it took them to gasp at such speed. It did not so much as tire me.

  “I must say, though, ye truly are an awful sight there in your underwear and naught else. I’ll make thee clothes, so just wear them. How long dost thou plan on providing fan service to that muscle-obsessed tsukumogami girl?

  “Hmph. I like it. Aye, it suits thee.

  “Wear that in the theatrical anime… What’s that? ’Twould throw the timeline off? What do I care? Time is meaningless in my presence. Did thou not learn that for thyself just the other day?

  “Ignoring the timeline is but a small price to pay if the alternative is putting thy unfortunate casual attire on the silver screen for all to see. Aye, ye disappoint.

  “In any case, I built my pleasant home on the bed of the lake, but this too was considered a ‘miracle,’ only bolstering my godhood. It positively skyrocketed.

  �
��I let them do as they pleased.

  “A bunch that showed no interest in the logic of an occurrence and instead preferred to proclaim and hail a miracle was best left alone.

  “There was no need to go out of my way to educate them.

  “I commend thee in that sense for attempting to discover what the Darkness truly is in this way─I can see that the Hawaiian-shirted boy educated thee well. Or perhaps enhanced thee─but that said.

  “The logic of the thing cannot always be understood.

  “For even I, doing this explaining to thee, know not the identity of that Darkness─I am merely trying to explain how I do not understand what has not lent itself to understanding, ’tis forlorn to reflect upon.

  “In that regard, this is no different from the idle chatter ye always engage in with all the girls. Shall we put this to an end? Skip straight to the conclusion and─I jest, I jest. Even I would feel uncomfortable saying this much and dropping it.

  “I shall continue.

  “With a perhaps meaningless story.

  “While I said I let them do as they pleased, I did forbid that lot…or rather, my adherents, from doing one thing.

  “Naming me.

  “Calling me by a name.

  “That is what I─forbade.

  “As I already said, I do not remember any proper nouns, will not call people by their names, and do not so much as know the name of that village─since I saw no value in them.

  “They, as a whole, were naught but humans.

  “A single bunch of humans.

  “But I did not allow them to call me by name for a different reason─after all, I was a ‘god.’ That lot wanted to know my name.

  “Yet I did not allow them to─never did I allow them to call me by my given name, Kissshot, my alias, Acerolaorion, my heritage, Heartunderblade.

  “I never gave them my name to begin with, of course.

  “And I did not allow them to give me one, either.

  “When that Hawaiian-shirted boy named me ‘Shinobu Oshino,’ ’twas to chain my existence by the name. Bound, hand and foot─and this was the one thing I had to avoid in those days.

  “For if I were given a name, I would be chained to that land─while for me the title of god was but temporary, my time in that land but a vacation.

  “Why should I allow myself to be chained?

  “I may have acted like a god, but I had no intention at all of becoming one.

  “Aye, I suppose I learned not the names of those people or the village for the same reason, if thou were to look at it that way. Because to call them by their names would breed affection.

  “I may no longer be able to leave that land─but all of this is said in retrospect, and I had no such distinct awareness of the reason in those days.

  “Now that I think upon it, I continue to remember few proper nouns─I feel the only full names I recall with clarity belong to thee and thy sisters.

  “If thou were to ask me to write it in thy system of characters, I am dubious of even thy name. The difference of a few small lines here and there can alter pronunciations and meanings so drastically, changing Koyomi, ‘calendar,’ into Reki, ‘record.’

  “Stop it, don’t act so mad─or rather, don’t act so despondent.

  “For I doubt ye can spell my former name correctly─but in any case, with the exception of calling me by a name, I permitted them everything.

  “Not so much permitted, I simply let them be.

  “I idly spent my time as I wished, slept, woke, and ate and made it rain as I wished, and blessed the occasional wedding.

  “Aye, ye could call it pleasant.

  “Looking back on it, I am dissatisfied in that Mister Donut had yet to come to this country, but that aside, ’twas a nice vacation for the most part.

  “A way to kill time… Or rather, I savored all the time I had to spare. As much as I wanted, to my heart’s content. I calmly and rather peacefully waited to recover from the small bit of fatigue I’d accumulated at the South Pole…but it ended up being for naught.

  “My regenerative powers are, strictly speaking, different from powers of recovery─still, I’d assumed that the strength of my existence would recover if those people continued to witness me, but unfortunately, ’twas not how things work in the real world.

  “How could it recover─when they were not witnessing me as an aberration known as a vampire?

  “It took quite some time for me to notice this.

  “My recovery seems to be progressing at a terribly slow pace, I thought as I lived my leisurely life. And at the time, in fact, I had no reason to be bothered by it.

  “Say I’d continued to go witnessed by nobody─while I did take care to move so that I would be, say I had continued to live there at the South Pole. I think I would have survived for another century.

  “In fact─looking back on it, that is what I should have done. I’d overreacted and in my haste made escaping the South Pole my only priority.

  “Thanks to my doing so, I was able to live a pleasant life as a god…or so I thought, but ’twas not the case. I was utterly mistaken.

  “’Twould’ve been quite alright not to be witnessed as a vampire─that was not the pressing issue.

  “The issue was that I was continuing to be witnessed as ‘a god’─in retrospect, simply refusing to be called by a name was not enough.

  “Dance with a devil and ye too will become one─and so.

  “Be called a god and ye too will become one.

  “I was truly amiss not to notice─nay, not even know this.

  “But let us put that aside.

  “Judging by the history textbooks ye now study, the political structure in those days was known as the bakuhan system, but I am not terribly familiar with that sort of thing.

  “They must have been ruled by something somewhere, as they went off to wherever they went to offer tribute each year─though serving something other than their god strikes me as unfaithful when I think upon it.

  “Well, it seems that times have not changed much since then, who sits at the top of a country has only a limited bearing on those at the bottom.

  “Perhaps it was a difficult time, but they did all seem to enjoy themselves. They seemed to live happy lives─humans are capable of finding joy in even the worst of conditions, and perhaps they can find misery in the best.

  “That’s how they differ from aberrations, who have more defined characters.

  “Nay─my character had been wavering at the time…

  “When I think upon it now, I ought to have refused their treating me as a god and left the moment I learned the land had no legends of vampires.

  “One could put it in more simple terms, too. That I was punished for daring to act like a god for so long─at least, that’s what he said.

  “Him.

  “Aye─my first thrall.

  “In other words, he who possessed the enchanted blade Kokorowatari.

  “I spoke the slightest bit about that man before─what did I say about him then? That he was a warrior…a samurai. Aye, that was it.

  “But if we’re to speak of the historical background, this land seems to have had the most peaceful political system in the world in those days─though this is something I learned not from thy textbook but from that Hawaiian-shirted boy.

  “At any rate, ’twas an age when those who fought had the least to do. He and I were alike in that sense. Loafers.

  “I heard something about how samurai was naught more than a title, an honorary post, something of the kind…but we can ignore those details.

  “What is important is that despite those historical circumstances, the man was still a samurai.

  “That he was still a warrior.

  “The man fought─in that peaceful age, in some ways more peaceful than this one, he still fought.

  “Against what? If not with humans, only so many options remain.

  “Aye─against aberrations.”

  011

 
“He fought against aberrations… W-Wait, so you’re saying he was an expert?”

  Mèmè Oshino. Deishu Kaiki. Yozuru Kagenui.