by Nisioisin
She probably turned a deaf ear to what I had to say in every single route, at least on this subject.
What I want to emphasize first, at the very outset, in a big ol’ voice, is the clear-cut truth that it is absolutely impossible to alter fate through time travel.
Fate can be altered.
It can be altered by a person’s thinking.
But it cannot be altered by time travel.
Because time travel to the past, or at least the type of time travel to the past Shinobu carried out, is not travel within the space-time continuum─it‘s nothing more or less than travel to another continuum altogether.
It’s not movement from the future to the past, but movement from one world to another.
Movement from one route to another.
I know I risk making this even more confusing by saying this, but for you two, this timeline, this ruined Earth, is a parallel world.
A different world.
So rest easy, my successful Araragi.
And my successful Shinobu.
Your world is plugging along just fine, totally unruined.
You think a world in which you succeeded could go down the tubes? Ridiculous.
There is a world still waiting there for you, Araragi, in which the worst thing you have to worry about is exam prep.
Thank goodness, right?
But I’m betting you won’t get it if all I tell you is the upshot, Araragi, so let me explain the whole thing from the beginning.
It’s really not that complicated.
First, I want you to imagine infinite worlds.
Vast quantities of worlds, lined up side by side.
Parallel worlds.
Parallel routes.
I think it’ll help if you picture the roads around Nagoya.
We’ll call the world where you and Shinobu have forged a positive relationship Route A, and we’ll call this ruined world Route B─no, if we do that you’ll start to think that the number of worlds is finite, so how about we insert a bit of distance and call this world Route X.
You warped with the intention of leaping back into the past─eleven years into the past, of Route A. Eleven years is nothing more than a guess, but the you who appears in the urban legends seems to have been wearing your school uniform, so I assume you warped while you were still in high school.
If you got held back, that’s a different story, of course.
But where you ended up wasn’t eleven years into the past of Route A, it was eleven years into the past of Route X. And, to put it plainly, when you crossed routes, the concept of time lost all meaning.
Time has no meaning across continua.
Imagine it like crossing diagonally at a pedestrian scramble─but then, once you had achieved your goal, your movement was vertical, leaving the past of Route X and arriving eleven years later in the same route─in other words, in this present.
When traveling to the future, it’s possible to stay within a given route─maybe you’ve heard about this from Shinobu? That traveling to the past consumes more energy than traveling to the future, or is harder, or whatever…
Now, as to why you two ended up in Route X in the first place─why you chose this “ruined world” route out of all the limitless possibilities: it’s probably because, out of all the limitless worlds, this world is just about the only “Mayoi Hachikuji Survives” world.
I can imagine where Shinobu might have created the time tunnel─probably at Kita-Shirahebi Shrine. Bingo, eh? That shrine where you exposed Sengoku to all the world in her school swimsuit.
I assume Shinobu used the torii there.
Because if she didn’t use the energy there, there’s no way little-girl Shinobu could effect a cross-dimensional jump.
In my route, I rigged up something there to absorb the spiritual energy so it couldn’t be used for such purposes, but the me in the route where you and Shinobu have a positive relationship probably wouldn’t have been so cautious.
Thinking about it from a more holistic perspective, however, I was probably leaving you, leaving both of you, room to choose whether or not you would exploit the spiritual energy of that place, as part of my ideology of balance.
And when you passed through the torii, you were probably only half listening to what Shinobu was telling you, am I right?
So you let some extraneous thoughts slip in.
For example─
Couldn’t there be a world where fate allowed Hachikuji to live? That kind of thing.
If you, linked as you are to Shinobu, thought something like that, that thought would become your navigation system, and suddenly the reason you ended up in this Route X becomes all too clear.
Because while Shinobu works the pedals─you’ve got your hands on the wheel.
How’s my reasoning?
Am I on the money?
Or could I be off base?
Well, if I am, then I’ll leave it to you to make that part make sense.
Conversely, it wouldn’t be untrue to say that it’s precisely because you wished for Hachikuji’s survival that this route exists per se─because if you hadn’t rescued her after time warping eleven years into this past, she would have died then.
That’s one case where even I wouldn’t say that she just went and got saved on her own.
Your actions didn’t destroy the world.
To be precise, your actions alone didn’t destroy the world.
But saving Hachikuji is a triumph all your own─you should be proud.
Hahaha, this is a funny feeling… Knowing you’re the Araragi from another route, somehow I don’t mind praising you straight out. And not just because you’re the Araragi who succeeded.
Which is why, Araragi.
If you’re reading this letter─crap, when I say it like that, I’m probably already dead, but things being what they are, who knows? I might still be alive, though that doesn’t matter─Shinobu’s notion that travel to the past and travel to the future are the same, or similar, means that you guys mistakenly ended up here in this Route X.
And if I’m not mistaken, it also means that you guys will read this letter.
Because in setting the coordinates, and turning the steering wheel, I expect you wished to see “a world where Hachikuji and I never met.”
Add onto that Shinobu’s misapprehensions, and there’s an extremely high probability that you’re here, reading my letter.
I have the utmost confidence.
That this gamble has paid off.
So I’ve got a favor to ask of you, Araragi─and of you, Shinobu.
Would you mind saving the world?
I imagine you’ve already figured out that Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade brought this world to ruin, but do you realize that she is still alive, menacing what little remains of the human race?
Her suicide attempt failed.
She’s alive.
Haha, did you think she killed herself, that she’s already dead? Not that that isn’t a perfectly reasonable assumption.
But she failed.
And it wasn’t only her suicide attempt that was a failure─her attempt at creating thralls failed, too. It must have been her plan to bring the world to ruin by turning every single human being into a vampire, but you can’t go about creating thralls that crudely.
Often when you try to turn someone into a vampire, it doesn’t take, and they go into a frenzy.
Even for her─even for her, at the apex of her powers, some things are doable and some things aren’t. I mean, up to this point she had only ever made two thralls including you in her entire life, so her ideal vision of vampires breeding like rabbits, of producing vast quantities of thralls lickety-split, was never going to work out in the first place.
Thralls are offshoots of the vampire who creates them, which is exactly why, for the same reason that cells degrade when the cloning process is repeated─her plan was bound to fail.
Producing failed vampires.
Those being the zombies that you’ve pr
obably already seen. Pretty startling, no?
I’m guessing you may be laboring under the misapprehension that Shinobu succeeded at committing suicide, which is why her thralls went off the rails. But they’re not successful products, they’re failed ones.
They didn’t go off the rails in the end, they were off the rails from the get-go.
That’s the only reason─there are any survivors left at all.
Humanity wouldn’t have stood a chance against vampires.
But because it was zombies, we’ve barely managed to hang on─for now.
Incidentally, Heartunderblade has been in hiding since her failed suicide attempt, and I’m on the hunt for her as we speak.
It goes without saying that she─the iron-blooded, hot-blooded, yet cold-blooded vampire, she who is known as the aberration slayer, the mightiest vampire─is unstoppable, even on the brink of death.
There are no chinks in her armor to exploit like there were during spring break.
There is very little left that I can do. I intend to form a tag-team with our mutual friend the violent onmyoji, or maybe with the swindler, to launch one final suicide attack, but it will likely come to nothing.
The entire human race, zombified though they may be, are nonetheless not complete thralls of Heartunderblade. They are incomplete thralls, so to speak.
You could call these failed vampires “near vampires.”
For which reason─they can be restored.
Their humanity can be restored.
If, in the course of events, my team succeeds in defeating her─then the entire zombified human race, everyone who has been transformed into an aberration, will have their humanity restored, and this dead world can be revived.
Think I can call that hope?
It’s certainly wildly optimistic.
Because when Heartunderblade gets serious.
When Heartunderblade goes crazy.
No one can stop her─no one but you two.
No one but you, because you are her.
But you’re probably thinking, “There’s no way we can stop a full-strength vampire when our own vampiric nature is so weak.”
If so, that’s fine.
I can’t force you.
Because it’s not your world that’s ending.
But Araragi.
Take a look at the woman who delivered this letter to you.
That’s the Hachikuji you rescued.
And she too will eventually be hunted down and killed by those zombies if the world goes on like this─because while she’s clever, and strong, I’ve only instructed her in the bare essentials necessary for her to survive long enough to find you. She’s just a normal human being, after all.
Won’t it leave a bitter taste in your mouth, Araragi, to abandon a life you already saved once?
Asking you to save the world is just my own selfish request, so feel free to ignore it.
But Araragi.
At least save the girl standing there in front of you.
Your dear friend,
Mèmè Oshino
p.s.: By the by, in a startling turn of events, the Araragi here in Route X started dating Senjogahara, but who are you sweethearts with in your own world, I wonder?
028
“I was entrusted with handing over that letter to a boy by the name of Koyomi Araragi, provided he had a little blond girl with him─by that Oshino guy. I told him I didn’t believe that our local urban legend was actually true…but surprise, surprise, here you both are.”
I was expecting you to be wearing a school uniform and a dress, though, Miss Hachikuji said.
I guess our talk of a dress code and wearing yukata just barely did the trick─she didn’t seem to realize for the moment that Shinobu and I were the same urban legends who shoved her out of that crosswalk whom she had encountered as a young lady.
That was eleven years ago, after all, and her memory was probably hazy.
And nothing was leading her to suspect that the high school student of eleven years ago might still be a high school student today.
Who gets held back that many times?
“I first met Mister Oshino before the apocalypse, when he used to roam around town─that urban legend got him all fired up, which I thought was kind of weird, but now it makes sense. I guess it reminded him of someone.”
“…Seems that way,” I agreed noncommittally.
I did everything I could to meet her in the middle but couldn’t meet her eyes─I see.
Oshino.
Here, too─Oshino.
Was that sort of guy─that kind of guy.
The kind who sees through everything, no matter what route he’s in─whose insights extend even to other routes.
Dude’s still got it.
“Thank you very much, you’ve been a great help.”
“What did the letter say?”
“You know… Rendezvous point, his last will and testament, that sort of thing.”
“Huh…”
Somehow it seemed like Miss Hachikuji didn’t quite buy it, but I guess she didn’t think it proper to speculate about the contents of a private message, and she left it at that.
“Listen, Araragi. If you’ve got nowhere to go, why not come with me? I think I have it in me to look after two minors. I’m living in a nearby house at the moment─it’s where my mother used to live, actually, back in the day. I don’t have enough supplies to divvy up, but I could teach you the survival skills that Mister Oshino shared with me.”
“…”
“And look─the fact is, I’m lonely all by myself.”
“…I imagine.”
She really has turned out great, I thought.
It was strange, thinking about her like that, when this Mayoi Hachikuji was older than me─but well, for her to end up like this.
It wasn’t my world─but if this kind of world was possible?
It made me glad.
Even Oshino said it was me who’d done the saving─but in the end.
It felt like I was the one who’d been saved.
“You’re very kind─Miss Hachikuji.”
“No, not really. It’s just, when I was a kid, a stranger was kind to me. So I try to be as kind as possible to strangers too, that’s all.”
“Oh─I see.”
“So, what do you think? I can scrounge up some tea for you, at the very least.”
“No─thank you anyway, it’s a nice offer, but we have somewhere to be.”
“You do?”
“Yes. And I’m sorry to say, we have to hurry. We didn’t set off those fireworks as a means of communication, we were just having fun.”
“That’s… You’re awfully weird, you know that?”
“Yes. I’m a weirdo.”
It’ll be okay. Soon you won’t be lonely anymore, I promised, taking Shinobu by the hand.
Shinobu seemed like she was about to say something, but looking back and forth between Miss Hachikuji and me, for once the little motormouth of a girl─kept mum.
Maybe she read the mood.
Or maybe she read ahead a bit.
“Sorry it was a wasted trip,” I apologized.
“Not at all, I’m glad I could deliver the letter I’d been entrusted with, but─hey.” Miss Hachikuji stopped us as we were about to race out of the park. “Hey, Araragi-kun. Have we…met somewhere before?”
“Hmm. Well, maybe we passed each other on the street sometime or something? They’ve got streets all throughout this great nation, after all.”
“No, it isn’t that…”
“We’ve never met. I’m just passing through,” I said. Probably smiling. “But thank you so much, for being alive.”
And just like that─without so much as a backward glance, I put the park in the rearview mirror.
Just like always, my mind was full of frivolous questions like─Now that she’s grown up, has she learned how to read the name of that park?
“Did that truly sate thee, my lord?” Shinob
u finally opened her mouth after we’d been walking for a while already. Like it was hard on her, she seemed about to trip on the cracked pavement at any moment. “Was there not more thou wouldst have liked to discuss with her?”
