Kabukimonogatari

by Nisioisin

  “There isn’t?”

  “None at all.”

  “None.”

  “’Tis like fretting over whether or not the sky will fall on thy head. Thou art more than a little chicken, thou art Chicken Little.”

  “I mean, between the two, sure, I guess I’d be Chicken Little, but…”

  Wait, we were getting off track.

  And it was pretty weird she’d know Chicken Little but not the “contradiction” fable─not that they meant the same thing, but they were both classic.

  “Be that as it may, the danger is nil, Chicken Little. There is naught to be concerned about.”

  The middle of the street is no place for this conversation, Shinobu prompted and enticed, having gotten straight to the point and skipped the rest. Upon reflection, she was right that as we stood there talking in the road, there was no telling when a car might come or who might pass by. I followed after her as prompted.

  Speaking of which, this road of eleven years ago was kind of dangerous… I wasn’t totally sure, but I could have sworn there was a proper guardrail along here in the future.

  We reached a sidewalk, and perfectly situating ourselves in the fading sunlight, started walking side by side. It was much easier to have a conversation this way, though in our case I didn’t feel there was any real point to my standing closer to the road…

  “Ahh, at any rate, ’tis mighty fine.”

  “What is?”

  “To strut about like this, out in the open. I literally live in the shadows, after all. But as we are unknown to the people of this time, I am able to act freely. I can hardly contain myself.”

  “Huh…”

  So that was it.

  I thought she’d been acting funny, but it seemed like this bit of free time, born of our massive time jump, accidental though it may have been, had her in high spirits.

  So that was it: because she stood out as a little blond girl, and because she was sealed in my shadow, Shinobu had no traffic with daylight─

  “Hang on,” I said. “It’s normal for a vampire to live in the shadows.”

  “Hm? Ah, I suppose so.”

  “If you’re feeling that way because Hachikuji was able to come to my room, I guess it kind of makes sense, but you’re fundamentally a denizen of the dark side, aren’t you? A nightwalker shouldn’t be delighting in daylight. The sun is your enemy.”

  “Hmm. I suppose I’m still half asleep.” Shinobu scratched her blond head. Coming from her, the reaction seemed crass, too human. “Perhaps the remainder of my explanation should wait until I am back to my proper self. Until the sun has gone down completely, that is.”

  “Well, to be honest, I’d like to hear it as soon as possible. When it comes to time paradoxes.”

  “Indeed? Fine, the details may be incorrect, but I shall offer then a rough exposition for the time being. There is a general outline to the flow of fate, and this cannot be altered.”

  “What?”

  “That which happened will surely happen, and that which did not can never. That which happens must happen, and so doth, and that which doth not must not, and so doth not. I do not mean to say that fate is immutable─merely that the outline doth not change. In other words, the universe shall correct itself for any deviation caused by what we do here in the past, within a certain margin of error. Provided we swear off anything dire.”

  “Anything dire, like?” Did something on the level of me meeting myself fall short?

  “Mm. On the subject of thine original goal, thy summer homework, let us say for the sake of argument that we traveled one day into the past, and ye stealthily completed it unbeknownst to thy counterpart from that time. However, if ’tis an amount that thou couldst complete in one day, then with a little tenacity ye might have stayed up all night and completed it without returning to the past. And if not, thou wouldst not be scolded so badly.”

  “…Huh?”

  What was she saying?

  I mean, all sorts of occult sources held that the outline of fate is fixed─the world principle, the cosmic will, the Akashic Records, this and that great prophecy─but it also applied to time travel?

  Really?

  “Hold on a sec, if that’s true, then there was never any point in coming to the past to do my homework. If I return to the past and am able to get it done, then there was no need to return to the past; if I return to the past and can’t get it done, then there was still no point in returning to the past…”

  “Yup. No point, sorry,” Shinobu─little Miss Shinobu─abandoned all her old-timey phraseology and agreed like a kid.

  Was she playing dumb, or was she actually dumb? How adorable.

  “Ye implored me to take thee back in time, and I simply granted thy wish out of a desire for donuts.”

  “The truth comes out!”

  Her motivation was just that simple.

  Sure. Why would she ever be worried about my homework? Come to think of it, when she first pointed it out, more than anything else she was just trying to annoy me.

  Even if she didn’t mean any harm, I’m pretty sure she didn’t mean well.

  “I also had a notion to attempt time travel, which had heretofore existed for me only on paper. I had always hoped to assay it at least once in my life.”

  “Don’t get me involved in your bucket list!”

  “Thou art the one who brought it up.”

  “What are you, a nefarious venture capitalist taking advantage of people’s innocent daydreams?” It was a roundabout way of denouncing her as a swindler. “To turn it around, you’re saying that even if I finish my homework in the past, my future self would return to the past for some other reason and end up doing the homework anyway?”

  “Indeed, little import was accorded to the ability to time-travel in Ghost Sweeper Mikami.”

  “Stop explaining everything through manga.”

  Although for my part, I did keep relying on sci-fi novels.

  This goddamn conversation was all fluff.

  “Putting it in the most pessimistic and defeatist way possible,” intoned Shinobu, “my point is that worrying over the details will avail thee naught. ’Tis all the same, past or present: thou canst not do what thou canst not do, and thou canst do naught but what thou canst.”

  “All the same…”

  When she put it like that─well.

  It wasn’t as if I didn’t get it.

  The struggle against an opponent as unfathomable as fate is never going to go your way, in a past reached via time travel or anywhere else.

  Reality is─the enemy, even in the past.

  The battle with reality is always─a losing battle.

  “I understand now, Shinobu. You’re saying that we couldn’t pull off a barbaric feat like altering history, or the future, even if we wanted to, embedded within fate as we are.”

  “More or less.”

  Hm.

  So to return to our earlier example, if there is a rule that, should now me encounter seven-year-old me, one or both of us would be completely vaporized, present me and past me would never be able to meet in the first place.

  And even if, for the sake of argument, I did have some money from this time, some kind of impediment would surely crop up and prevent me from buying stock in an IT company. And by the same token, I wouldn’t be able to get my hands on any valuable titles at the bookstore.

  “So I can assume there won’t be any butterfly effect-type thing.”

  “What is this butter-something of which thou speakest?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Glazing something with butter and frying it in oil?”

  “Appetizing, if erroneous.”

  It would probably taste like fried cheese.

  No, the butter would just melt, wouldn’t it?

  “It’s the theory that one minute difference in initial conditions can yield a massive change later on, and…”

  I’d only heard about it from Hanekawa, so I didn’t understand it al
l that well, which made it hard to explain. Something like a single butterfly flapping its wings in China causing a whirlwind in Brazil─but if you pressed me as to how, honestly I’d just have to throw up my hands.

  I thought about calling Hanekawa and asking, but my device was out of range, and the Hanekawa of this time didn’t have a cell phone anyway.

  She was probably about six years old, too.

  ……

  I wanted to meet her.

  Since doing so now wouldn’t change fate or make it so that I couldn’t meet her in the future, I dearly wished for a glimpse of Loli Hanekawa.

  If we weren’t supposed to meet, then we just wouldn’t anyway.

  Loli Hanekawa.

  It had such an alluring ring to it.

  “Oi, why art thou grinning? Give me a proper explanation of this swallowtail effect or whatever ye call it.”

  “I don’t even know how to come back to such highfalutin’ jokes,” I said, but proceeded nonetheless. “Let me put it this way. A curveball appears to change direction right in front of the batter, but in reality, the change began the moment the ball left the pitcher’s hand.”

  “Now I see.”

  “You do?!”

  From that feather-light explanation?!

  Incidentally, a curveball is created by the rotation of the ball and the concomitant air resistance, so apparently the technique is quite different with a softball versus a hardball.

  “Hm. Then ’tis no cause for concern. No such monarch effect shall occur. If this world be changed by the beat of a butterfly’s wings, then ’twill change even if they fail to beat. So it is.”

  “Is it? I don’t really get it… But a difference in initial value leading to a great calamity is persuasive on a theoretical level, at least. It’s like the steering wheel of a car.”

  “Allow me to give an easily understood analogy then, in emulation of thine own,” Shinobu prefaced. “A child who causeth trouble under the influence of manga or video games will still cause trouble, even without the influence of manga or video games.”

  “…”

  That’s a dangerous analogy!

  Easily understood though it may be!

  “Well…I think I get it. Let’s just say for now that I do. Maybe that’s how it is. Influence exists per se, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it alters the outcome.”

  Actually, didn’t Senjogahara say something similar once?

  In the end I contributed to resolving the issues that she was harboring, but maybe it wasn’t really me─I just happened to be there, and even if I hadn’t been, the story might have turned out the same.

  She was nice enough to tell me that for that very reason, she was glad it was me─but if you turned it around.

  That meant the only thing your will can affect is your own life, not anything so grandiose as fate or the world.

  Hmm.

  That might make everything seem futile, but it also affords some peace─as if the stability of the vehicle we’re riding in has been fully guaranteed.

  “I see. If that’s the case, then I’m a little relieved. In a nutshell, nothing catastrophic could happen due to your or my individual actions.”

  “Were it not so, then I, prudent as I am, embodiment of circumspection that I am, would not have treated us to this trip through time at thy request merely because I desired Mister Donut.”

  “Yup. Whatever anyone says, there’s no one as prudent and circumspect as you.”

  “Though that Aloha brat did absolutely forbid me.”

  “Whaaaaat?!”

  I was so shaken that, once again, my comeback was a mess.

  But I think we can overlook that, given just how shocking Shinobu’s declaration was.

  “Wha? Wha? Wha? You did something Oshino absolutely told you not to?! Like it was nothing?!”

  “I did, but so what-nyon?”

  “No cutesiness! What character are you, even?”

  Don’t be flippant, not in a scene where things seem like they’re about to get really serious.

  We can conduct this conversation with just a touch more urgency.

  “Aye, the Aloha brat forbade it, and so I refrained from it. But now the Aloha brat is gone, so ’tis fine.”

  “You think like an insect, you know.”

  Are you more mosquito than vampire?

  You’re so poorly wired you lack the capacity for thought altogether.

  Even slime molds think things over more than you do.

  I helplessly and pointlessly gazed at our surroundings.

  At the world of the past.

  At this world about which I now knew the terrifying truth, that Oshino had absolutely forbidden our coming here.

  “Are you for real? When that guy said don’t do something, he tended to be right. You’ve got that innocent smile on your face like you don’t think for a second that you did anything wrong, but let me ask you, just to be sure. Do you understand what you’ve done?”

  “I do not.”

  “Right! You do not! Thank you very much. But I do. I do, okay? And I don’t blame you. I do not blame you.”

  She couldn’t help it, being an idiot.

  After almost half a year together since spring break, it finally sank in. Very sorry it took me so long to comprehend something so painfully self-evident.

  You’re a complete idiot.

  Since long before you became a little girl.

  Not because I influenced you or anything.

  “Um, did Oshino say anything else? About why you absolutely mustn’t try?”

  “I am not certain. Like as not he did, but if he did, I no longer recall it. Hence I surmise ’tis that history might be irrevocably altered if something dire doth happen.”

  “…”

  “Rest easy. ’Twas because of people like thee that they concocted the tale of Chicken Little, ye fool. Thou hast said it thyself, dost thou truly think that something dire could come of our paltry individual actions?”

  “I guess not… But for my reference, when you say dire, what does that actually mean? Give me an example.”

  “Something irrevocable… Dropping a nuclear bomb on this nation’s center of governance, for instance… Though perhaps from a global perspective, ’tis perfectly revocable.”

  “Not likely. One whole state, gone.”

  “Countries disappear from this planet often enough.”

  “…Whenever you drift into satire, the conversation turns heavy real fast.”

  “I have seen so many disappear with mine own eyes. But, aye, if something on the level of the destruction of a star were to occur, then history might be greatly altered. If we extinguished the sun, for instance.”

  “…Okay.”

  Good enough, let’s leave it at that.

  If history wouldn’t change unless we did something of that magnitude, we were solidly in no-need-to-worry territory.

  A high school student who couldn’t do his summer homework satisfactorily and a little blond girl who loves Mister Donut─we’d never disturb anything on a stellar scale.

  Even if we did, it still might not affect history. Our galaxy itself is small potatoes from the perspective of the ever-expanding universe.

  Thus our apprehensions were dispelled─fools that we were.

  In the end, we’d forgotten.

  That Shinobu Oshino was a singular, legendary vampire with the power to distort reality─that I was a singular thrall who had under my belt a “miraculous” victory over that vampire.

  That we were a fearsome two-man cell who could very well change the world.

  History. The universe. Fate itself.

  It’s not the sort of thing you say about yourself, but if I do say so myself─silly me, I’d completely forgotten.

  009

  There was a time when the phrase “be the only one, rather than number one” was making the rounds with some of the cognoscenti, and while it does sound great and can really give you a boost when you’re feeling down, it d
oesn’t hold up in the cold light of day.

  First and foremost is the objection that becoming the only one might actually be harder than being number one since most of the time, most people are pretty run-of-the-mill. They can’t acquire individuality except through competition with others because being the only one still means being one of them. No, in that sense, the call to “be the only one, rather than number one” is overly correct and maybe, for that very reason, offers no consolation.