Monogatari Series - Volume 12 - Chapter 1.01

Chapter Sneak- Shinobu Time

001

We’re already quite familiar with the name Shinobu Oshino. Hearing it doesn’t make me particularly happy, but I don’t find it odd, either. It feels just right. The name she once had, Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, must already be a thing of the past, even to her.

The past.

What came before.

What’s ended.

Or perhaps─what never happened.

What’s uncertain if it ever happened.

That’s what it is to her. Something spoken alongside her memories, or maybe even something with no relation to who she is now.

Unrelated.

I think it goes without saying that a past self is far more of a stranger than the average stranger and is subject to a kind of hatred completely different from self-hatred─if you take me, for example, me during spring break, me during Golden Week, me climbing the stairs, me on Mother’s Day, me on my bike, and me in class are all someone else.

Someone else. Strangers. People I don’t know.

This isn’t an attempt to shift responsibility.

I’m certainly not trying to disavow who I was back then, either─me back then did a very good job of things back then. I think I did everything I could with everything I had.

But my everything was different from my everything now─I think in each instance, based on each conviction, the person I am today would have behaved differently.

Nevertheless, I’d have saved a vampire in the end.

Nevertheless, I’d have been attacked by a cat in the end.

Nevertheless, I’d have caught Senjogahara in the end─taking those actions in each instance, based on each notion.

Whether they are right or wrong, there are something like an infinite number of other paths I could have taken─and choosing from that infinitude is ultimately something decided in the moment. You could even say that it’s up to whimsy.

That Shinobu is the Shinobu she is now.

That she’s the Shinobu she is now and not a different one.

That she’s willing to throw away the name and form of a legendary vampire, the iron-blooded, hot-blooded, yet cold-blooded vampire Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, and be the Shinobu she is now─this fact that is my greatest saving grace of all could be called the product of her momentary whims.

What joyous whims.

Despite appearing like a little girl, she’s far older than me, an eighteen-year-old kid, and has lived a long life that’s gone on for more than five centuries, so maybe, rather unexpectedly, she can be considerate in these matters─no, not considerate, I know it’s nothing more than caprice.

So this time, let’s talk about how these whims of hers played out four hundred years ago. About what she went through in this country four hundred years ago, and what she did─that’s our story.

Shinobu Oshino.

A story that goes back through her timeline.

We’ll rewind Shinobu’s clock.

That’s not all we’ll be doing, of course, because that past relates and doesn’t relate to the present day─as always, I’ll save, be saved, do things, be unable to. Please entertain your own thoughts on that as you read.

I, Koyomi Araragi, am going to be thinking, too.

About her─as I tell it.