by Nisioisin
“Nay, I have no interest. I thought that perhaps thou wouldst desire to see it, however.”
“Well, I would be lying if I said I had no interest.” Though I did want to turn and look back at the Tsunade place, I firmly suppressed that desire. Instead, moving away at a good clip, I said, “But it’s private─or rather, it’s something I shouldn’t know. I’ve already gone too far by meeting Hachikuji and exchanging even a few words.”
What’s more, it wasn’t necessarily going to be a touching reunion.
I wanted it to be touching, of course, but sometimes the world just isn’t like that.
After all, I had no clue how Hachikuji’s mother felt about her daughter at this point.
I didn’t know who had wanted the divorce in the first place, and even if I did, you should never stick your nose into other families’ affairs.
I could only pray.
That Hachikuji’s mother cared about her as much as her father did─
“That’s it then, Shinobu. We’ve done what we came to do. Back to the present.”
“Mm? Thou art finished?”
“I am. Nothing else to do.”
“Thou dost not wish to visit the bookstore, or check out Miss Loli Tsundere, or take that house’s picture?”
“I mean, it’s not that I’m not reluctant to go.” I didn’t remember ever suggesting anything about Miss Loli Tsundere, but…I let that one slide and answered Shinobu’s question. “Honestly, the past is exhausting.”
“Aha.”
“There’s so much to worry about, so much to be nervous about. I feel so worn down. Not to mention that I kind of feel like what we did was pointless─like if I hadn’t gone all out like that, hadn’t done anything at all, Hachikuji might have gotten to Mrs. Tsunade’s house anyway.”
“’Tis not so. Thou─hast properly altered the course of history, methinks.”
Even if history shall correct itself in a few days’ time, Shinobu admitted.
It didn’t seem like she was just telling me that for my sake.
I think she really believed it.
Well, it’s not like I actually thought everything I had done was meaningless─if anything, I had said it just for the sake of appearances, and the truth was that I was tired.
Seriously.
Tired.
“But you know,” I mused, “I think humans constantly change history just by being alive. Anyway, got the time?”
“None may possess time.”
“It’s just an expression! Like ‘time is on my side.’”
“Nay, ’tis on my wrist.”
“That’s actually a decent line.”
But so what?
I just wanted to know what time it was.
“’Tis four in the afternoon.”
“So it’ll be the twilight hour soon enough. We’ll wait until then, head back to Kita-Shirahebi Shrine, and return you to the brink of full vampiredom─then you can create a time tunnel to return us to the present.”
“Hmm. I still hunger most powerfully to taste the Mister Donut of this age─though if we possess no coinage, there is nothing to be done.”
“Well aren’t we sensible. I was secretly afraid you were thinking of launching a raid.”
“Mr. D is holy ground. Ne’er would I attack it.”
“…”
This one was a little too attached to Mister Donut…
Left one hell of a good impression.
“False trivia time,” I announced. “The Mister Donut company was created when Kentucky Fried Chicken founder Colonel Sanders decided after his retirement to try his hand at something sweet.”
“Thou hast revealed from the start that thy trivia is false.”
“Shoot!” Forget shoot, it was a shitty lie to begin with. Also known as idle banter. “All right then, shall we go? But try to get it right this time. We’re going eleven years forward, so don’t give me any twenty-two years into the future stuff or anything. I may have been able to cope with the past, but I can’t cope with the future. My cell phone won’t work.”
“Calm thyself, my lord. Since the day of my birth, never have I met failure.”
“Not that again…” She was too obstinate. But even if I burst her bubble, it wouldn’t get me anywhere, so I said, “That’s right! You’re my greatest partner!”
And Shinobu mumbled, “Oh, aye…”
Sounding plain old bashful.
I just couldn’t get a read on this one.
Anyway, we wasted no time in heading for the mountain, and by the time we had climbed the steps to Kita-Shirahebi Shrine, the sun had gone down.
My mind had been all over the place the previous day, so I hadn’t noticed that the path up the mountain seemed much steeper than it did eleven years in the future.
Though it may just have been one of those thoughts you can’t shake once you think them.
You’d think the path would be more difficult eleven years later, since the plants would be eleven years more overgrown, but…maybe it doesn’t work like that.
Plants also wither and rot.
But that aside, what really surprised me─was the state of Kita-Shirahebi Shrine itself.
We were eleven years in the past, so while it obviously wasn’t going to seem newly built, I nonetheless expected the shrine to retain at least some vestiges of its original appearance. But from the torii to the main hall, from one side of the grounds to the other, every inch of the place─was completely dilapidated.
Just like in the present.
No, though I’m fully aware that it’s a misguided impression based on a preconception, allow me to say─it was worse.
It looked even more ruinous than it did eleven years down the line.
“What the hell… C’mon, give me a break. I thought we were in the past, but is the twist that in fact we’ve been in the future the whole time? Someone could write a pretty interesting mystery novel using that trick.”
“Not anymore, thou hast given away the ending.”
Nor is it so, Shinobu stated with conviction.
“Hast thou not encountered thy acquaintances, the former class president in her childhood form and Hachikuji? And thine own childhood self? Hachikuji and shota Koyomi are one thing, but ’tis unthinkable that thou might mistake the Loli former class president.”
“Too true.”
I had some issues with the monikers she was using, but I let that slide─I would never mistake anyone else for Hanekawa.
Given the difference between living Hachikuji and dead Hachikuji, Before and After Aberration, it wasn’t impossible that I had mistaken someone else for her, but still─regarding Hanekawa, I was positive.
That was the eleven-years-ago.
Six-year-old Hanekawa─no question.
“Then what’s going on? I can see it laid out before my eyes, but it doesn’t make any sense. What does it all mean?”
“There can be but one explanation. Sometime in the intervening eleven years the shrine will be restored, after which it shall be allowed to go to seed once more.”
“Restored…” Hmmm. If that was true, for the sake of argument, well, it wasn’t unconvincing… It was a rational thought and all. A little too rational, somehow, an expertly painted topcoat over the feeling that something was wrong. “But…we don’t have to worry about that, I guess. We’re going home either way─Shinobu. Go ahead, drink some more of my blood, and power yourself up right to the brink.”
“Nay, my lord. There seems to be no need, for ’tis already here.”
“Huh?”
“This place─in this time, too, is overflowing with spiritual energy,” Shinobu said, casting her gaze across the shrine. “’Tis true that this place became a hangout for aberrations eleven years hence thanks to my coming, but it seems that ’twas primed to become so even before then.”
“Hmmm.”
I didn’t understand any of that.
It wasn’t something that I could pick up with my vampiric sensors; it seemed to be entirely
a question of experience.
“’Tis possible─that someone like myself hath already come.”
“…”
“Well, there should be no problem if I expend it all. If there is something here, ’twill be nothing with a beneficent influence─and while the Aloha brat might have a good way of dealing with it, I have not. What is more, returning me close to my full power carries with it a certain risk.”
“Risk… Was there any?”
“That I might turn on thee,” Shinobu replied flatly. “’Tis precisely because I have lost my power that I have become close with thee, and the more power I regain, the more I return to my role as an aberration─how far thou wilt trust me, now that is another matter.”
“…”
Hearing that, I didn’t know what to say.
Shinobu.
She surely distrusted herself more than anyone else.
To the point that she─once tried to kill herself.
“Now then, shall I again use the torii to create the gate?” she asked, and capitalizing on my silence, steadily began the preparations for our return trip. She was getting the hang of it, it being her second time and all─in the blink of an eye, the black wall had appeared again within the torii.
“Hey, what about the incantation?”
“Hmm, I forgot.”
“Whoa there.”
“Not like that. I hath not forgotten the words, I merely forgot to chant it.”
“It amounts to the same thing.”
So it had only been thrown in for effect.
Sheesh.
While I said before that it felt nostalgic, the fact is, it had really gotten me psyched up.
“My lord.”
“Yeah.”
She called me over, and I stood next to Shinobu─holding hands as we’d done in coming to this time.
Intertwining our fingers.
“Let’s just be clear about one thing. When I jump, there are going to be steps on the other side, right?”
“Aye. The stairs of eleven years hence.”
“Okay then…”
In that case, I’d better prepare myself… Got to kill as much of my momentum as possible…or no, maybe I should throw caution to the wind and jump backwards.
“Nay, I cannot really recommend that. ’Tis important to picture thy desired destination. In leaping backwards, thou may condemn thyself to wander forever in the interstices of time and space.”
“Cannot really recommend that? You should be stopping me any way you can!”
“Nay, for a vampire, ’tis not a life-or-death matter.”
“You’re being too blasé about this!”
Being condemned to wander lost for all eternity in some other dimension as a reward for rescuing a lost girl would be one hell of a punch line! And being immortal makes the punishment even worse!
“All right, all right, I’ll jump facing forward… I mean, if this body can survive a full-bore thrashing at Kagenui’s hands, then I should be able to fall down some steps without dying.”
In the end, Shinobu and I just jumped into the black wall the same way we had when we came─and returned to our beloved present.
With no way of knowing what awaited us there.
I couldn’t possibly have imagined how much the world of the future would be altered by saving Hachikuji─or.
You know what, let me get straight to the point. When our little jaunt through time ended, when Shinobu and I returned to our world─
That world lay in ruins.
019
When you hear the term “post-apocalyptic,” what kind of world do you envision?
A desolate expanse of land, devoid of a single blade of grass?
A frozen expanse of ocean, enveloped in mighty glaciers?
A blazing expanse of sky, engulfed in scorching flames?
Everyone probably has his or her own vision of ruination, but what I, what Koyomi Araragi envisions first and foremost when he hears that word, is actually not the state of the world itself.
To put it another way, I don’t care what state the world is in.
A blighted wasteland doesn’t equal ruination.
Massive glaciers don’t equal ruination.
Firestorms in the atmosphere don’t equal ruination.
To give an extreme example, even if the Earth exploded and vanished completely from the universe, I wouldn’t necessarily say that was the end of the world.
However transformed the world might be.
However finished the world might be.
As long as there are─people.
The world hasn’t ended.
Yes, and so when I envision a post-apocalyptic world, what I see is a world without a single person─and.
The world to which we returned from our eleven-year time slip, in other words the world of the present that I thought I knew, was exactly that kind of world.
I fell down the stairs as before─and this time, whether it was thanks to how I landed or because of my enhanced vampirism, I happily didn’t lose consciousness─but what awaited us was a ghost town devoid of any human presence.
A ghost town─
So ghostly that no other expression suited it better. Since it was in fact the entire world that lay in ruins, perhaps “ghost world” was even more appropriate.
Naturally it took us some time to realize this.
In fact, at first we weren’t sure we had actually managed to travel the eleven years back to the present─because (and in retrospect this makes sense, of course) when I tried my cell phone, I still couldn’t connect.
I wasn’t receiving 1seg, just like eleven years in the past.
And when I dialed Senjogahara and Hanekawa, I couldn’t get through.
“Oh, come on,” I groaned. “Did you screw it up again? Another botched job for Shinobu the Blunderer?”
“Cease that disgraceful mode of address. If thou dost not retract thy words forthwith, thou shalt at last discover the limits of my tolerance.”
“Has she already forgotten…?”
“I have not erred. I am confident that this time, ’twas an unqualified success.”
“Doubt it. Where’s the proof?”
“Thy need for proof demonstrates the difference in our intellectual level.”
“What’s with the big talk? ‘Intellectual level,’ my ass! Plain old ‘level’ would do! Hmph, anyway. We’ll know once we get down into town.”
After that exchange─after what was in retrospect a truly idyllic exchange, Shinobu and I began our descent.
When we passed under the torii eleven years ago it had been the middle of the night, and it suddenly became daytime when I fell down the stairs, so it seemed that at the very least we’d traveled through time. The question was: to what day, what month, what year?
And what to make of the fact that my cell phone wouldn’t connect? Since it was certainly possible that it was busted (possible, namely, that it was malfunctioning because I’d taken it into the past), this was no easy judgment to make.
Just when were we?
We headed into town, totally misapprehending the problem at hand, and as we headed in we still didn’t notice anything. We didn’t understand a thing.
Even though the terrible mess we had made was being shoved in our faces─
“What the… There’s nobody around.”
“’Tis true.”
“What happened? Did everyone move away all at once?”
“Or perhaps the everyone-avoid-thee plan hath been put into motion.”
“What, am I being bullied on a town-wide level now?”
That was the extent of our awareness.
Not that I thought they should have held a grand parade to welcome me back from the past…
“Mayhap everyone is devoting themselves to their homework? ’Tis the last day of summer break.”
“Regular grown-ups don’t have homework over summer break… That is, they don’t have summer break to begin with.”
“Oh, no?”
“For the sake of convenience they disguise it by calling it the Obon holiday. Or, wait. If we time warped on the night of the last day of summer break, then today wouldn’t be the last day of summer break at all.”
