by Nisioisin
“Nope. Because in this world, she doesn’t know me. It was only thanks to Oshino’s good offices that we ran into each other─” I don’t know what the exact odds had been, but I had a feeling it hadn’t actually been much of a gamble on Oshino’s part. For Hachikuji to meet the me from another route must have been a necessity. “I mean, this route’s me and this route’s Hachikuji never even met.”
“Route, eh? I see, ’twas that sort of logic. So that’s how we bested the difficulty of time travel into the past─put down in writing, ’tis easier to understand. ’Twould be even easier were it put into the form of a diagram.”
“When it’s turned into an analogy about intersections, you can’t but get it. Well, it’s on Oshino for not having helped you understand something so important.”
We’d ended up taking one hell of a detour thanks to him.
Or rather it had been futile from the start.
Returning to the past to do my summer homework wouldn’t have done any good.
I’d have pointlessly finished the summer homework of a me from another route.
“Shinobu, have you read Dragonball?”
“Aye.”
“In the manga, Trunks comes from the future, right? To defeat the androids that are causing chaos in his world. But that’s a parallel world, so no matter how successful he is at defeating the androids in the past, the future won’t change. And Trunks says something like, ‘I do it because I want there to be a world where the androids have been defeated’─which never really made sense to me when I was a kid,” I said. Full of emotion. “But now I get it. How Trunks felt.”
“Dost thou fancy thyself to be like Trunks? Thy self-opinion is wildly over-inflated.” Shinobu looked disgusted. As ever, we just couldn’t get on the same page─it seemed dicey to call me the Koyomi Araragi who successfully forged a positive relationship with Shinobu Oshino. “So, what wilt thou do?” she proceeded to ask.
“What will I do?”
“Though the Aloha brat’s letter hast changed thy perspective somewhat, nothing else has. The energy at Kita-Shirahebi Shrine is exhausted, so ’tis true as ever that we cannot return to the past, nor to Route A. We have no choice but to live on in this timeline─in this world. That being the case, would it not have been better to obediently learn the means of survival from the lass instead of performing a cool exit?”
“…”
“We might also have been able to garner information regarding other survivors. She may even know aught of Miss Tsundere or the former class president, or of thy sisters, and the rest.”
Hmm.
That hadn’t occurred to me, but there was a good possibility.
Wouldn’t that be great.
“But it’s no good, Shinobu.”
“No good…wherefore?”
“We have somewhere we have to be, remember? Miss Hachikuji said, ‘If you’ve got nowhere to go’─so it’s no good.”
“Somewhere to be, eh?” Shinobu shrugged her shoulders resignedly. “Thou meanest to go forth to save the world?”
“No. To save the girl.”
That was always the plan.
So we had to.
That’s what I always did.
This time too─that was all there was to it.
Nothing special about it at all.
“I never thought I’d have to fight you again.”
“Hnh─nor that I would have survived. So a suicidal vampire changes classes into a failed-suicide vampire, eh? We shall simply have to finish the job for her.”
“The you from another route… Neither Type A nor Type B, but Route X. Think we’ll get along?”
“I disavow any me who could destroy the world in full knowledge of the flavor of Mister Donut.”
“Maybe she didn’t know. Maybe she didn’t have any during Golden Week.”
“Mayhap.”
“If we can defeat the you in Route X, Oshino says everyone who’s been turned into a zombie will come back to life.”
“A convenient setup, indeed. Her suicide a failure, to say nothing of her failure in creating thralls… I can but hope to avert my eyes from the ineptitude of this route’s Kissshot.”
“But it’s thanks to that we’ve got any. Hope, I mean.”
“Mayhap.”
“And hasn’t the you in my shadow been failing all along, too? Come to think of it, when you made me into a vampire, you were really worried about me going into a frenzy.”
“I have never once failed.”
“This again… Incredible.”
“Precisely, I am incredible…though, aye, if all the zombies become human once more, thou canst do it, canst live on in place of the already-deceased Koyomi Araragi of this route. Thou canst even become close with the Miss Tsundere of this route, or the former class president of this route, and thy sisters of this route─”
“I can’t do that. I may look the same, but my personality is different, and the relationships with them were constructed by the Araragi of this route. I can’t just cut in and hijack them.”
“…”
“Hey, after we save the world, let’s you and me wander off somewhere, just the two of us.”
“Haha, an interesting proposition.”
“Will you help me?”
“I suppose ’tis unavoidable.”
Shinobu laughed─laughed gruesomely.
No. She laughed cheerfully, lightheartedly.
“I said we would die together, did I not?”
“…So you think we’ll die?”
“We have no hope of victory. I, an incomplete vampire, and thee, an incomplete human, such a two-man cell against a vampire at the height of her powers? Even if my vampiric level were raised to the limit, ’twould be vain. ’Tis as though we are challenging her with our legs tied together for a three-legged race.”
“I guess.”
Oshino’s letter said much the same thing.
So it was probably true.
It had to be true.
“But our battles have always been like that,” I reminded Shinobu. “You going to lose your nerve in the face of certain defeat?”
“…Hmm.”
“I’m not saying we should do it because Oshino asked us to. How can we let a route where it’s possible for Hachikuji to be alive be a route in which the world lies in ruins? Don’t you want the route where she’s alive to be a good one?”
“Aye, well, destroying the world simply by being alive… Who is she, Helen of Troy?”
“A full-tilt Helen of Troy.”
“’Tis most difficult for a single human to try and change the world, but perhaps ’tis not impossible to tilt it a bit.”
“I don’t know about playing tilt-a-world, but just about anybody can tilt a narrative.”
“A dandy tale, eh?”
“We’re the dandies here.”
“’Tis a bit affected.”
“I don’t deny it.”
“Kakak. Well, my lord, if thou must affect something, what wilt thou affect?”
“Good question. For the moment, I think I’ll try and tilt the world, after all, out of affection for the girl standing before me.”
“Ah, that weigh the life of a girl against the entire world and choose the girl thing, eh? How current.”
“Nah, it’s already played out.”
“Heheh.”
“We’re going to save the world, and we’re going to save the girl. Heroes these days are all about being that greedy.”
“Indeed.”
Now you’re talking, Shinobu approved, taking my hand in hers.
Our fingers entwined.
As though we were setting forth into a new world.
“If we are to die together─so much more whilst we live.”
“I like that.”
Now it was my turn to laugh lightheartedly.
Now I saw.
We really had forged a positive relationship─so far so good, and, I was pretty sure, it’d be good from here on out t
oo.
All right then.
Time to fashion the here-on-out.
Time to fashion the future.
029
“Jiangshi.”
Day drew to a close─and that night.
Having ascended the mountain path we had traversed more times than I could count in the past few days, we found ourselves within the precincts of Kita-Shirahebi Shrine. We raised one another’s vampiric levels almost to the max and also produced four duplicates of the enchanted sword Kokorowatari so that we were armed to the teeth, carrying two blades apiece.
Shinobu hadn’t changed her body into a battle-ready form, choosing instead to remain a little girl. She stood at the ready, those massive enchanted swords, so incongruous with her physique, resting across her shoulders.
The zombie hordes didn’t come for us, probably because our vampiric level was elevated nearly as far as it would go─meaning our humanity was lowered nearly as far as it would go.
If we’d been in town they might have sensed us, but because we were at that unpopular shrine─and likely also because of the efficacy of that talisman affixed to the main hall, the grounds were peaceful.
Most effective of all, however, may have been the rice (brought up the mountain from the market in town) sprinkled all around us just in case.
Of course.
For extra insurance we could also bite the bullet and return Shinobu to full vampire status, if absolutely necessary─in which case Shinobu would regain her full power─or rather, in which case Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade would be restored in place of Shinobu Oshino.
If we did that, we might be able to look forward to a fair fight─or maybe more than fair, given the additional presence of her true thrall, i.e. me. But though I suspect that plan occurred to her just as it did to me, neither of us spoke it aloud.
It wasn’t a matter of trust.
It wasn’t out of Shinobu’s anxiety that she might turn on me if she regained her power─that anxiety was long gone.
Having read Oshino’s letter.
We’d gotten past that.
For that very reason, however─we didn’t want to alter our relationship as it stood now.
Our strange relationship where each of us was the other’s master and slave.
In a certain sense, I prized that bond above life itself.
That was why.
Maybe it was a ridiculous thing to be hung up on, but it was ridiculously important to us.
We had no intention of putting it before the fate of the entire world, of course─in that case we’d just have to save the world.
“Aye, ’tis─a continental aberration. They differ from vampires and the like, who have been deprived of death from the start. They would best be termed ‘living corpses.’”
“Jiangshi, yeah. I think they were pretty popular back in the day.” That was my parents’ generation, though, so I don’t know much about it. “Ononoki and I were talking about all that. Anyway, if they’re weak against rice, then that’s probably what they are.”
“They would never be able to attend a wedding.”
“Since you mention it, vampires can’t handle crosses, either… I think I also remember hearing something about the girls being cute.”
“’Tis only Tenten, is it not?”
“Why do you even know about Tenten?”
But the strongest impression I have of them is not as “the resurrected dead,” but as the slaves of magical practitioners─seeing how they’d been restrained by the talisman made me think that maybe they were sort of like Ononoki, like a shikigami. And I had the impression that Tenten herself was a yugen doshi, who controlled such jiangshi.
Shinobu spoke as if they were distinct from zombies, and I pictured jiangshi as stiff, not limp like zombies.
“Aye, as though rigor mortis hath set in. Anyway, in most cases─the resurrection of the dead carries a price.”
“A price, huh?”
Having for the moment laid aside my dual enchanted swords, I was performing some careful stretches. This may have been unnecessary for a vampire body, which is to say, it was definitely unnecessary, but it was more about mood.
“Not that I was bringing back the dead, but if the price for saving Hachikuji was the ruination of the entire world, well, that sounds about right.”
“’Tis not a fair trade, though, in the end.”
“Yeah. I refuse to accept the idea that the world ended just because Hachikuji is alive. Even if fate decreed it.”
That made it seem…
Like she’s dispensable, like the world doesn’t need her─bullshit.
Whether dead or alive.
Child or adult.
“The world isn’t the same without her.”
Aye, Shinobu agreed. Finishing up her dual-wield practice swings, she said, “I am ready. The time is ripe, now is the moment. Shall we call forth our accursed foe?”
“You do the honors.”
Without any particular cue.
Abandoning any thought of turning back, abandoning all else─Shinobu drew a great breath and cried to the heavens like a bullhorn.
“W!”
The volume was deafening, but I didn’t block my ears─because the moment that cry was loosed, the battle had already begun.
It was a sort of signal like the fireworks in the park, or rather a sign saying: Here We Are.
Like bats using ultrasonic waves to determine one another’s location─it was a message demarcating the boundaries of a vampire’s turf.
If, as Oshino said, the other Shinobu was still alive in this world─there was no way she could ignore a signal pattern identical to her own. She would come.
It might also draw out the zombie hordes─but they were slow, so she, a genuine vampire, would arrive first.
“…Now we can neither run nor hide,” Shinobu announced once the signal cry had ended. Seeming a little bit out of breath, she returned to my side.
“I have no intention of running or hiding.”
“Then what dost thou intend to do?”
“A little something I like to call, ‘not having a plan.’”
“Keheh.”
’Tis just like thee, Shinobu said.
Well, she was probably right.
But it wasn’t death before dishonor or anything; I wasn’t set on throwing my life away in a suicide attack.
I intended to win.
“Even at the height of your powers these enchanted swords will deal you damage, right?”
“So I trust. Yet at the height of my powers, I am given to ignore all common sense. The unforeseen possibilities are legion.” Shinobu looked over my two katanas, comparing them to her own─since they were replicas that she herself had produced, I doubted even she could tell them apart. “In the face of the Kokorowatari I wield at the height of my powers, even this series of enchanted swords amounts to naught but toys.”
“In that case, we’ve got no choice but to find the chink in her armor.”
The strong are also careless, I proffered a strategy that wasn’t much of a strategy at all.
“If her armor has such a chink,” Shinobu warned. “Even I would be on my strictest guard after hearing a boundary marker identical to mine own.”
“Hmm. A you who isn’t careless is going to be unstoppable… In which case, what do we do? We’re invulnerable like her, and yet…” It was also true that “invulnerable” meant something quite different for us and for a fully powered Shinobu.
“If we have any chance of victory, it lies in the fact that the me of this world seems to have crossed the line into madness.”
“That’s actually helpful?”
“Aye. Though, of course, it may also be our downfall─but an insane me will likely be plumbing the depths of despair. Her failed suicide attempt doth not change the fact that even now she remains a potential suicide.”
Hmm.
A potential suicide plumbing the pits of pathos and paranoia?
