Nekomonogatari (White)

by Nisioisin

  I got out of bed and onto all fours, then stretched my back─mewving like a cat does─then spoke to myself as if to make sure.

  “I dunnyo, though. If I’m out here like this, it has to mean that my myaster is feeling some kind of stress again…but nyow I can’t even guess what it is. I’d gone and pinned it on her house burning down, but it seems like it myight be more than the fire if I keep showing up─”

  That’s how it seemed to be for me this time.

  I was basically my myaster during Golden Week, and I was so closely connyected to my myaster before the culture festival that you could say I was like a mirror personyality─but this time my personyality seemed to have been completely cut loose and divorced from hers.

  Was I developing independence as a nyaberration nyow after all of these appearances? I’m nyot smart so I don’t know, and I’m sure that Hawaiian-shirted jerk would interpurrt it anyother way.

  “But things really are getting more convenient every time I show up─appearing only while my myaster is asleep really gives me more room to breathe. They were all doing everything they could to make me go back into hiding the last two times. Myaahaha, they even got help from that pipsqueak vampire.”

  “Who are ye calling a pipsqueak vampire?”

  “Mrow?!”

  I was speaking to myself but got an answer.

  I don’t nyoh when, but when I looked around─wait, I didn’t nyoh when? Well, she was sitting there in the room, nyo, above the room, on the ceiling, with her hands around her knees like she had always been there, from before the dawn of time.

  A young blond girl.

  Shinyobu Oshinyo was there.

  She was wearing a helmet with goggles on it the last time I saw her, but it looked like she’d nyocked that off.

  Also.

  She was expressionless the last time I saw her, and during Golden Week, too. But nyow─I don’t nyoh exactly how to explain it, but she wore a gruesome smile as she looked down on me.

  I dunnyo, she myight have been managing a smile now, but for some reason she seemed cuter back when she was expressionless.

  “Hmph,” the vampire snorted confidently.

  She was making light of me, wasn’t she?

  True, it was nyatural for her to feel confident since we’d fought twice and I’d lost twice─as Black Hanekawa, as an Afflicting Cat, or as a nyaberration, I was as good as nyothing compared to her, couldn’t hold a candle to her.

  “It’s been quite some time, cat─I’ve not a clue why ye are here in the room of my lord and master, but I suppose only a boor would demand an aberration to account for its appearance.”

  It’s not as if I’m that Hawaiian-shirted boy, the vampire added.

  Hmm.

  I was planning to ask her what she was doing here, but nyow I realized she would be wondering the same thing about me.

  “Wait, nyow hold on a second. Weren’t you trapped in that annyoying little human’s shadow?”

  That should have been the case.

  According to my myaster’s memories.

  So it didn’t make sense for the vampire to be here unless that little human was around, too─but he wasn’t clinging onto the ceiling or anything.

  Nyothing that scary was going on.

  “Aye, ’tis true─but a bit of an irregularity has occurred,” the vampire divulged, still sitting on the ceiling. “At the moment, the pairing between my lord and master and I─in other words, between Shinobu Oshino and Koyomi Araragi─has been severed.”

  “Severed?”

  Mrow? I tilted my head.

  I didn’t understand.

  “In other words, we’ve reverted to the state that existed before the Hawaiian-shirted boy disappeared─no, ’tis even worse than those days. For I do not so much as know where my lord and master is, nor the state he is in. Honestly…” she said before looking at me, snyorting, and concluding with, “Telling ye would do me no good.”

  She was giving up on me.

  It was probably the right mewve, though.

  I can’t understand any dialogue that goes on for more than three lines.

  But in any case, it seems like that little human really was in trouble─I mean, being cut loose from this vampire made it a pretty serious situation, right?

  There was the monkey, too.

  What could have happened to him, anyway?

  I’m nyot the kind of aberration to get worried about others (if anything, I hate him), but nyohing my myaster, this would worry her─so in that sense, you could say it was good timing that she had showed up while I was out, which is to say while my myaster was sleeping.

  “I had thought that perhaps my lord and master had returned to his home, but I now see what a fleeting hope that was. What’s more, I find thee here instead. It’s as though I’ve missed the forest and found the trees.”

  “……”

  Even I nyew she was using that idiom wrong.

  But I did get what she wanted to say.

  Again, it wasn’t like me, but I decided I’d let her nyoh.

  Nyot about the idiom, but about her human.

  “Your lord and myaster should have been in that abyandoned cram school at nine last nyight. He had an appointment with the monkey girl.”

  “An appointment? But why meet the monkey now─ah, I see. Indeed, that is a clever plan by my lord and master’s standards. It was not the aberration so much as that girl’s lineage he was thinking of.”

  “Her lineage?”

  “Never mind─but this is a superb piece of information. Now my trip has not been in vain. Allow me to praise thee. I had thoughts of sucking thy blood to calm myself, but I shall refrain from as much, as a show of gratitude.”

  I couldn’t believe it. She was really thinking of doing that?

  Nyow that was a close one.

  “Or perhaps thou would prefer me to suck thy blood as a form of thanks? Thou art that woman’s stress, so sucking thee up would bring her some relief─or so it should go.”

  “Hm. Nyo thanks, I think I’ll pass.”

  Nyow that she mentioned it, though, she was right. The last two times, my myaster did get “saved” by her sucking my blood─but things were a little different this time around.

  What was different about me compared to before?

  I probably had a clear mission nyow─nyot the kind of reason that’s behind every aberration, but an unyusual mission. Of course, I didn’t nyoh exactly what that was.

  But I bet I had one.

  “Hmm. I see. Thou art akin to a new breed of aberration, and thus there are things about thee that both I and that Hawaiian-shirted boy are unfamiliar with─it would be wrong for me to make careless decisions about such matters. One could even compare thy previous appearances and thy current one to Terminator and Terminator 2.”

  “Nyow that’s an easy example for me to get, but should a vampire really be using it?”

  She was alarmingly mainstream.

  Did that annyoying little human show her those?

  “Of course, in any case, sucking thy blood would only be a palliative treatment of sorts, nothing more than a stopgap measure. ’Tis not a method that should be repeated too many times.”

  “Yep,” I agreed.

  I nyew better than anyone how pointless “palliative treatments,” or solutions through brute strength, were.

  Also─I couldn’t forget.

  I may be making grand appearances, but at the end of the day, I was just my myaster’s personyality’s flip side. I shouldn’t be grandstanding.

  I nyeeded to lay low.

  I nyeeded to sneak around.

  “The front, the back… They are two sides of the same coin, after all. Perhaps that is an overstatement, but it does at least seem to be reversible. While my lord and master excels at spinning his wheels, or perhaps going in circles, I must say I get a similar impression from thee.”

  “Hm?”

  “Well, this may strike thee as a commonplace tale as it is surely i
n thy master’s databank, but ’tis a meaningful recollection from my five hundred years alive, so sit quiet and listen. An anecdote regarding the emperor Napoleon─it seems he slept but three hours each day.”

  “Oh.”

  She was right. That was part of my myaster’s nyowledge.

  Actually, it was really well nyown. Wouldn’t anybody nyoh that one? Even that ignyorant little human might have heard it.

  Of course, it seemed purrposterous to call it a recollection.

  “And what about it? Does that have something to do with me being awake while my myaster is asleep?”

  “No, I’ve no intention of relating it to that. Just listen.”

  “Nyohkay, I’m listening.”

  “Meanwhile, this emperor was renowned for his love of baths. They say he bathed for over six hours each day. To compare him to a contemporary figure, think of Shizuka-chan.”

  “……”

  First it was Terminator, and nyow it was Doraemon…

  She needed to do something about her lopsided nyowledge.

  “They are saying many things these days about the subject, but perhaps, in the end, even Shizuka-chan will be censored… Though practically speaking, she in fact already is. On that note, the good old ending theme of Perman now seems crazy risky. To think that Per-ko is just sitting there with her panties out… In fact, those words ‘now seems’ suggest that even before any regulations are enacted, wherever you look, self-censorship must be setting in. What a sad state of affairs.”

  “I hate to burst your bubble while you’re talking about this like it’s someone else’s problem, but if any regulations do get ennyacted, you’re gonna be the first one getting censored.”

  With all due respect, she shouldn’t be worrying about the late creator of Doraemon and Perman.

  “Indeed. Oh, we’ve strayed from the topic.”

  “Yeah. If that’s what you quieted me down to say, this is definitely getting cut from the manyuscript.”

  But in that case, I still had nyo idea what this vampire was trying to tell me.

  Meow??? Meow.

  How little that empurror slept and how long he bathed for was famous─certainly more so than your average anyecdote.

  “And. When I learned those two things, I came upon a thought,” the vampire stated.

  In a dramyatic voice.

  “He absolutely must have been sleeping in the bath, then!”

  “……”

  Oh.

  Nyow it made sense. That’s what you got if you connected her two anyecdotes─putting aside the truth of the myatter (according to my myaster’s knowledge, he attended to government affairs while in the bath), it was one way to look at it.

  “So there are situations in which we’re able to take two idiosyncrasies that, in a sense, could be called abnormal and connect them in our minds to arrive at an utterly sensible conclusion. Perhaps we could say that the way that a negative multiplied by a negative results in a positive, crossing one mystery with another creates a stable, proper result. In other words, what I’m trying to get across here is that matters that may appear to be unrelated may, contrary to expectations, be connected─it is pointless to separate two related sides, the front and the back, when considering them. Thou may indeed be Black Hanekawa, a personality cut loose from Tsubasa Hanekawa─but there are no clear differences between ye two.”

  Or so I think, the vampire said─and let out a gruesome laugh.

  “Aberrations and humans look alike to my eyes, after all.”

  “…Do they.”

  Nyow that I heard her say that.

  I felt like a little weight had been taken off my shoulders─and that a ton of bricks had been placed in my heart.

  Me and my myaster─the same?

  I nyew it, I recognized it, I even said it myself─but nyow that she was saying it to me.

  “I really mustn’t let you suck my blood, in that case.”

  “I suppose not. Yes, natural extinction is in fact the best course of action. From an expert’s point of view, of course, but from an aberration’s point of view as well.”

  “So, vampire?” I asked, having thought of something─the vampire’s remarks had made me think it. “If you want to thank me, do you think you could answer a question I have?”

  “Hm? Well, that’d be quite fine with me─but please, I ask thee to be quick. I must hasten to my lord and master’s side. If this meeting was to take place at nine, then he may not be in the same location─that hapless fool will get himself killed this time, if I do tarry.”

  She myight have acted carefree, but it seemed like she was in a tight spot, too.

  So, as requested, I asked her point-blank.

  “Do you nyoh about a tiger aberration?”

  “A tiger?”

  “Yep, a tiger─”

  A tiger.

  A mammal belonging to Carnivora Felidae.

  “─It’s wandering around this town right nyow.”

  “There are countless tiger aberrations. A significant number that I myself am familiar with, and if thou were to add that Hawaiian-shirted boy’s knowledge─”

  The tally would easily break fifty, the vampire informed me.

  Meow.

  Nyow that was a problem.

  I couldn’t even grasp such a number as fifty.

  “Well, for my part, I have my myaster’s knowledge─but it isn’t enough to pin it down. I nyoh it’s a terrible aberration, but I don’t have a clue what it really is─”

  “Indeed, to name a thing is to fix its identity─whether ’tis my Shinobu Oshino or thy Black Hanekawa. Not knowing the name of a thing, and thus not seeing its true form, makes it dreadfully frightening─that is how it works. One who is no one is more terrifying than anyone. The fears of an anonymous society are nothing new. Have ye any clues aside from it being a tiger?”

  “It was a big tiger.”

  “Tigers are, in general, big. Now if it were a small tiger.”

  “Hmm. It was super fast. It got to where I was going before me in nyo time at all.”

  “Tigers are, in general, fast. Now if it were an immobile tiger.”

  “Hmm. And it talks.”

  “It talks?”

  That one made the vampire react.

  Purrty openly, too.

  “An aberration that takes the form of an animal yet speaks─that is, I might say, quite uncommon. But I feel as though hearing that has further obscured its identity,” the vampire said, standing up.

  Though that sounds wrong because her feet were on the ceiling.

  She skillfully held the hem of her dress between her thighs to keep it in place─should we call that prim?

  On the nyother hand, her blond hair was all upside down.

  “’Tis impossible for me not to have noticed an unknown aberration prowling around this town.”

  “Hm?”

  Nyow that she said it, I realized she was right.

  A little sardine like me could do whatever I wanted, but there was no way this king of aberrations, of un-life, wouldn’t have spotted a nyaberration as powerful as that crawling around.

  An iron-blooded, hot-blooded, yet cold-blooded vampire.

  Nyo aberration can say they aren’t food to her.

  “But that’s nyot something you’d be paying attention to nyow, right? I don’t nyoh exactly what’s happening, but that annyoying little human’s in trouble, and your pairing’s been severed, and─”

  “No, that’s precisely why. How could I possibly let an aberration escape my notice in my situation─’twould be a bolt from the blue. Um, and so ye saw this tiger?”

  “That’s right.”

  Nyo, nyot exactly.

  I saw it, but before that─

  “My myaster saw it. So I saw it too.”

  “Which would mean─perhaps that is where we ought to focus. In other words, an aberration only visible to the two of thee─a tiger only visible to the two of thee.”

  “……”
<
br />   “’Tis a possibility. Sorry that I cannot be of help.”

  I shall think of another way to show my gratitude, promised the vampire, calmly walking along the ceiling so she could leave the room from the window. She must have been headed to that abyandoned cram school.