Monogatari Series - Volume 12 - Chapter 1.02

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Previously in the series:

I, Koyomi Araragi, traveled through time with my vampire partner, Shinobu Oshino, a dime-a-dozen experience during which we failed to change history and returned dejected to the modern day, the end.

If you wanted details, I’d ask you to consult Kabuki, the work before the work before last, but you don’t really need to. “I’d ask you” to do it, but I’m actually not. To be honest, I wish you wouldn’t consult that tale of failure. Do you think I like showing off my faults or something?

But I will go so far as to say that there was a moving reason behind our time travel, namely an attempt to revive Mayoi Hachikuji, my friend who died eleven years ago and has since been wandering this town. For the sake of my honor, I’d like to divulge (stingily) that I was trying to prevent her from ever losing her life in a traffic accident at the too-young age of ten─though when I asked her directly after coming back defeated and disappointed…

“It’s not as if I particularly want to revive. How pointless and self-serving, Mister Araragi, tee-hee!”

That’s what she said (she didn’t actually go that far), so my grand midsummer adventure, on which I spent the last day of my last, precious high school summer break (technically the day of the start-of-school ceremony for second term) was totally meaningless, as in why bother wasting an entire book’s worth of space on that, are you stupid or what, why don’t you just die, oh, being half-vampire and immortal you can’t even do that, hopeless bastard.

So don’t read Kabuki, okay?

Promise me you won’t!

This isn’t just an act!

…But anyway, I was plodding back home with this problematic ghost girl, or really just the problem child known as Mayoi Hachikuji.

Our start-of-school ceremony had already begun when I’d failed to change history via time travel and came back to the present (the exact time being an hour past noon on August twenty-first, a Monday). I was already feeling excited on the inside, as in look at what I’ve done, absent on the very first day of the new term, never having managed to start on my summer break homework in the end, Senjogahara and Hanekawa are gonna kill me two times each, I can’t wait (hooray), but all of that aside I needed to return Hachikuji’s backpack to her.

As far as the details regarding that one, they’re not really worth discussing here, and to someone who’d just slipped into the past and future and whatnot in a “pointless” use of time as Hachikuji put it (she didn’t actually), it felt like old news, but chronologically speaking, the ghost girl Mayoi had come to play in my room and forgotten her backpack there only yesterday, on August twentieth.

If you wanted details, what was it you could consult? Uh, the BAKEMONOGATARI Anime Complete Guidebook, if I’m not mistaken?

There might be a short piece in there about that episode…but wait, that would mean it happened in the anime adaptation, so for us, does the event belong to a parallel world?

Parallel world.

A grating term…

Well, in any case, I suppose that book isn’t in distribution anymore… Gosh, the anime world is so rough.

Just when it seemed to be a hit, it got weeded out in the blink of an eye.

You could say such a quick turnover rate is in fact healthy for an industry… Actually, never mind.

While I’d been hustling to alter the past, Hachikuji had been roaming the streets trying to retrieve her backpack from my house.

If she was going to meander around for nearly half a day looking for me, then she could have just waited in front of my house around the time I usually got back from school, but when I put the question to her…

“I don’t want you searching my backpack! Searching it would be one thing, but the idea of you doing this and that to the fabric makes me want to vomit! What, you’d never? True, you might not. But the simple fact that you had the time is already inexcusable!”

So went her reply.

She didn’t trust me at all.

In fact, she plain hated me.

Of course, a girl of such a young and tender age treating you like the plague might be a rare and welcome experience, so I wasn’t at all opposed to partaking in it, but either way, Hachikuji still needed to reclaim her backpack.

Hence, with her walking by my side, I was pushing my bicycle from Kita-Shirahebi Shrine, the site of my time warp, and heading home.

“I do have to say, Hachikuji, you somehow feel weaker as a character without your backpack.”

“How rude of you, Mister Araragi. These pigtails should be more than enough to establish who I am.”

“Pigtails, huh. They aren’t up to defining you on their own, though… I heard good characters need to have designs that are identifiable just from their silhouette.”

“That’s a very dated way of thinking… I believe it’s been a long time since we’ve entered an age where templates like characters being identifiable by their silhouette and stories needing a traditional dramatic structure don’t hold anymore.”

“I see you’re as skeptical of pre-existing values as ever…”

“What I think determines a character design’s quality isn’t the silhouette, it’s whether they’re recognizable even if someone with no artistic talent draws them. Like Goku, or Pikachu. A child could draw them and you’d still recognize who they are, right?”

“Good point.”

“Though without my backpack, I’m more like a slug than a snail.”

“Was it Oshino who said it, or did Hanekawa, I forget… But yeah, snails and slugs are basically the same. Slugs are snails whose shells retrogressed, or something…”

“But it feels weird when there’s something left after their shells de-evolve─like a bird that can’t fly, or with humans, isn’t it like saying, ‘I lost all my bones but I’m still alive, I’m doing fine’?”

“Hmm. If you considered the shell an exoskeleton, I guess, but in terms of its role, isn’t it more like their skin? Not that I’m sure a human could survive without any.”

“Yes, it’s hard to say for sure. But you’ve proven it’s possible to lose all your bones and survive, Mister Araragi…”

“Right, as a boneless chicken, I’ve proven…no such thing, damn you.”

“Because the hermit crab is so unforgettable, we assume a snail’s shell could be removed. If you actually did that, the snail dies. Pretty important innards seem to be stuffed in there.”

“Like with your backpack.”

“No, there’s nothing that important in mine… It wouldn’t trouble me not to have them, it’s just that you holding onto my belongings sickens me, Mister Araragi.”

“…”

“It would only mean Mayoi Hachikuji turning into Mayoi Muckyoozy… Wait, did we already make this joke before?”

“I’m not too sure because I wasn’t there, but didn’t you, for the anime’s alternate voice track?”

“Dear I. I did reuse it, oh dear.”

“I think recycling is fair game as long as it’s across different media… And that’s a parallel world, anyway. I do think you might want to avoid that joke so people don’t start associating you with slugs…”

“I am based on a snail, though. Not much of a difference. It being a cat for Miss Hanekawa makes me jealous.”

“Uh huh.”

“The same goes for your demon.”

“…Uh huh.”

“Is something the matter?”

“No, well… Kids love snails, don’t they? While slugs creep them out… Having or not having that shell makes a big difference.”

“Maybe not so much these days. And snails do have a lot of parasites.”

“Parasites?”

“In my case, you, Mister Araragi.”

“I see, I see, in your case, me─hold on a sec, who’re you calling your parasite?”

“You’ve been doing that a lot today, going along with it. I personally feel that kind of humor is embarrassing in writing.”

“I’ve heard of that before, though. What was that snail parasite called, again? The really scary type that takes over the brain…the leucochloridium.”

“How very much like you that we find a scrambled ‘loli’ in there.”

“Oh god. Did I throw a perfect alley-oop for you to dunk on me with?”

“You’ve got it, Mister Araragi. If you kind of try, you can also mishear a ‘lewd’ in there. What a nasty parasite.”

“Just the worst. No, why are we trying at all?”

“Can we discuss how we might make the ‘dium’ part interesting too?”

“I’m not helping you brainstorm names to call me… But really, the leucochloridium is a real scary kind of parasite, isn’t it? Just hearing about what it does gives you the chills. It attaches to a snail, makes it move to a place where it’s more easily eaten by a bird, and even transforms the eyestalks so it stands out… Sure, you might think I’m worthless, but I wish you wouldn’t lump me in with those things.”

“I’m only joking.”

“I know that, but still.”

Hachikuji and I chattered on the way in this fashion until we arrived at the Araragi residence, or in other words, my house. We go on endlessly any time we start bantering, but it never amounted to much─though this one case may have been an exception.

That is, when I think back on it now.

The talk about the evolution, retrogression, and so on of snails and slugs and the stuff regarding the leucochloridium parasite might have actually foreshadowed things about this story to a rather ironic extent─but really, calling it foreshadowing is just an example of the so-called Barnum effect. You can say anything you want after the fact.

“When I think back on it.”

Considering how humanity has been jerked around by those convenient, convincing words, my view sounds like a plain delusion─thinking back is the only way you can think about things, and even if you wanted to dispute that, people should only bother thinking about the future anyway.

I should have learned that more than well enough.

After my time travel.

“Okay, Hachikuji. Come on in.”

“Hunh?”

I tried nonchalantly to invite her in, but she replied with a face that said, What the hell did he just say?

“Mister Araragi, you know the only time I’ll ever enter your house is for your wake.”

“While I’m hurt by your shocking language, some part of me also feels happy that you’d come to my wake…”

“You’ve become an oddly positive person in the short time since we last met.”

“Well, I did go through a handful of inconceivable life experiences…”

“In any case, I won’t enter your house. For as long as you live, I’ll never cross the Araragi residence’s threshold… Yesterday was the last occasion, or actually, wouldn’t you say even yesterday was half like an abduction?”

“An abduction? Don’t make it sound so scandalous.”

“But it’s the truth. Please don’t feel like you can say whatever you want just because the original text isn’t available anymore.”

“I’m not denying that it happened. I’m just asking you not to make it sound so scandalous.”

“How selfish… Anyway,” Hachikuji said, caution crackling in her eyes. There was no feeling or relationship of trust in them. They were suspicion itself.

Makes my body tingle to have such eyes on me.

“Mister Araragi, I haven’t lost my girlish sense of caution to the point that I’d enter into your home when both your parents and your little sisters must be absent.”

“Cut it out, you’re ten years old.”

“I’d be twenty-one if I were alive.”

“See, now you’re killing my buzz.”

“Don’t let my actual age kill it.”

“You used to shy away from smashing my dreams with that sort of line. Why would you suddenly go and let me down?”

“Well, you know, things have gotten a lot stricter after Tokyo implemented those youth ordinances. Going forward, this girl is going to have to state that she’s over eighteen and legal, or else we may be subject to damaging rumors.”

“Legal… I thought that ordinance didn’t take actual ages into account?”

“Did it not? I dunno, I’m just a kid!”

“What’s your positioning here, dammit? Are you a child or an adult?”

“I’m legally an adult but physically a child.”

“Not that you have a physical body…”

“To be serious for a moment, it doesn’t matter if there’s an ordinance. The manga and anime industries were busy censoring themselves before it ever passed. They say it’ll impede creative freedom, but it’s been that way for some time now, in fact. Moaning about government regulations when you’re already sucking up to whoever is paying you is pretty pathetic.”

“Don’t get serious like that with zero warning…”

“We, at least, ought to remain free among it all! I’m Mayoi Hachikuji, ten years old! I’ll show you my panties!”

“That’s a little too free!”

“Oh, but was just showing panties all right? I heard that the ordinance wouldn’t affect my friend Shizuka from Doraemon.”

“Well, I doubt they can regulate Doraemon.”

And wait, why “my friend” Shizuka? Who are you anyway, are you important?

“Yes,” Hachikuji agreed, “Doraemon is something of a national manga… Worst case, you’d even alienate international opinion. Still, if I may, Doraemon simply is erotic.”

“No weird readings of that historic masterpiece!”

But sure, all of its secret tools are true to human desire and can easily be abused all day long…

“I believe, Mister Araragi, that four out of five elementary school boys owe their sexual awakening to Doraemon. How long is the Agency of Cultural Affairs going to turn a blind eye to this state of affairs?”

“I’m curious about the fifth boy…”

“Wakame from Sazae-san.”

“…”

Our conversation gave me a lot to think about the legacy, both positive and negative, of nationally acclaimed manga; I also felt that the fifth boy was kinda kinky.

Wait, that had to be fake data.

Stop making things up.

“In that case…just wait here for a minute. I’ll run and grab your backpack.”

“You have ten seconds. Sprint.”

“A haughty tone?!”

For some reason, I was now a ten-year-old girl’s gofer.

No, a twenty-one-year-old woman’s?

Makes my body tingle either way.

Well, since her eleven years as a ghost weren’t any that “accumulated,” Hachikuji would never turn twenty-one…

That, too─my time traveling had made painfully clear.

A historical fact.

Leaving Hachikuji to wait at our freshly built gate, I went in and climbed the stairs to get her backpack from my room.

I felt like swapping out her backpack’s contents and filling it with stones in a pang of goatish mischief, but no stones were to be found in my room, naturally, so I gave up on the idea.

Now, let me swear to all the gods above while I’m narrating that I really didn’t mess with the backpack after Hachikuji left it in my room the day before.

I may be a nasty parasite, but I’m not so criminal that I’d put my hands on a girl’s personal belongings.

I’m chivalrous.

A gentleman.

I didn’t want to make Hachikuji wait for too long, so I shouldered her backpack and headed outside again, not stopping to sit down or enjoy a cup of coffee.

“Ahh! Hey, don’t be touching my property!”

“That’s asking for too much…”

“Yikes, I’ll have to take it to the cleaner’s.”

“Um… Haven’t you been hating me a little too hard today?”

“I don’t want it anymore. Go ahead and throw it out.”

“Weren’t we saying you’d turn into Mayoi Muckyoozy without this?”

“The way you’re forcing it onto me is creepy. You’ve bugged it, haven’t you? Ugh, you scum!”

“Why be that suspicious of me… What a hassle, just read Kabuki. It’ll prove my innocence.”

“I’m not buying such an expensive book.”

“Don’t call it expensive…”

“Sixteen dollars?! Imagine how many eight-dollar pocket-sized books I could buy with that kind of money!”

“Just two. Can’t you at least call it bulky instead of expensive? The total word count should be about even.”

Give me a break. Why the negative promotion when she’s in its chapter title?

“Of course,” she said, “fixed retail prices for books could become a thing of the past in Japan, too. The current resale system seems to be reaching its limits, and we’re getting closer and closer to the age of electronic books. I don’t know if they’re a black ship, a rescue boat, or a privateer vessel.”

“E-books, huh? You know, they’re surprisingly good for reading manga. It’s shocking how well the color black shows up on them.”

“Yes, that’s true. The ink can sometimes be too light in magazines. It could be that the better the art, the more you want to see it as digital data.”

“If there’s a problem with the format, it’s the two-page spreads. Phones will show you one panel at a time, but manga’s strength is its free control of the display size… Still, we might end up getting used to it.”

“After all, panel layouts were incredibly straightforward until just a couple of dozen years ago. Like four long, horizontal panels in a row. The art was simple, too. It could be that we’re experiencing a Renaissance in many ways.”

“Calling it a Renaissance implies that we’re learning from the past, though…”

Maybe that was the case for the panel layouts… Yet while I did bring it up, I’m not too knowledgeable on the topic. How do cellular phones deal with the complicated paneling you typically find in girls’ comics?

Spreads might be the least of our problems…

“And more manga is getting serialized on the internet,” Hachikuji noted.

“Right, online magazines. In that sense the manga industry’s gates have widened for rookies. Not to mention the new print magazines that keep getting launched.” Closing our eyes, for the moment, to the fact that existing ones are going under─sorry, “on hiatus”─one after the other. “In light of those developments, manga might actually be a super-stable line of work. Lots of long-running series nowadays, and the skills are pretty transferable.”

“That’s an awfully optimistic view… But like you were saying about the paneling, and how manga’s strength is adjusting the display size, I think another strength is being able to continue one story for as long as its popularity and its creator’s stamina lasts.”

“Well, culturally, novels are a bit different in that regard.”

I think it’s a matter of different release formats.

The magazine serialization is the main thing for comics, but it’s the book for fiction. A novel’s nature is that of a “one-shot” in terms of comics. It’s very discrete, whether you like it or not.

“Don’t forget the fiction franchise that repeatedly pretends the series is over but comes back to life like a zombie each time and chooses to drag on forever!”

“Stop it,” I begged. “Stop with the masochism.”

“That aside, I think electronic books will become prevalent all at once if they can solve the pricing issue. Just as long as they set it at a point that won’t see anyone starving.”

“Starving… In this slump, that feels like it’s easier said than done.”

“Considering the bother of turning them into convenient electronic data, I think they could be sold for more than real books, in fact.”

“How patronizing.” As if it were a seller’s market.

“There just needs to be more added value. Like search functions, or links to foreshadowing that let you come right back to it, or the ability to revisit the character intro at any moment, or voice actors reading the lines.”

“All of those are pretty far from our image of a book…”

I could feel myself being left behind by the times.

And I’m only in high school.

Still, it’s not something you can readily accept without an elite education in it, so to speak, from your earliest days. I don’t even feel comfortable with cell phones, not having gotten one until I was a high school student.

Text messages? They make me panic a little even now.

“It’s fine, Mister Araragi, be glad that you’re present for the genesis of a new culture and aware of the fact.”

“I wonder. I’d have preferred to take my sweet time enjoying it after it’s become the norm.”

Also, a ghost telling me how I should feel over being “present”? Not that a half-vampire could say it better.

“I envy people who were there for the emergence of cell phones,” remarked Hachikuji. “They composed their own incoming call notifications with chords!”

“Is that so enviable?”

“Now you can download a ringtone by pressing a button… But either way, isn’t it a good opportunity? The publishing industry could use a revolution.”

“A revolution… I just hope it doesn’t implode in the process.”

Brooding over the future of publishing with an elementary schooler, I started to get hungry.

It was getting to be about that time.

As a vampire I don’t need to adhere to that strict of a meal schedule, but habits, not to harken back to what we were saying, are hard to shake, and it wasn’t every day that I ran into Hachikuji.

Why not treat ourselves to lunch?

“Is there anything you want to eat, Hachikuji?”

“I could name many dishes, but no, nothing, if it has to be with you.”

“Hey, hey…”

Weird. Did Hachikuji always hate me this much?

It’s been so long, I couldn’t even guess why…

Come to think of it, was the last time we talked at this much length actually Nise?

That, indeed, would be quite a while ago.

“Well, Miss Hanekawa and Miss Kanbaru and Miss Sengoku did organize coups d’état and hijack your role as narrator.”

“Hold on a second. Chronologically, it wouldn’t make sense for us to know about Kanbaru and Sengoku.”

“I never thought that Miss Sengoku would turn out that way. How frightening.”

“Stop it, it really would cause a time paradox if I knew about that now. Sengoku is just my cute little junior.”

“I want to say that was the problem…”

“By the way, aren’t you ever going to narrate?”

“The rule is that beings that are nothing but aberrations can’t become narrators.”

“So there was a rule about that…”

I looked down at my shadow.

Ah.

Right, so this time, too…

“All joking aside, isn’t there anything you want to eat? My treat.”

“Oh… As you are aware, though, I’m a ghost. If you lunched with me, Mister Araragi, you’d be looked at like parents who order food for their deceased daughter too.”

“I don’t mind.”

Hm.

While that didn’t matter, if Hachikuji ate real food, how would that eaten food be treated in reality?

Normal people couldn’t see her, but they could see her food… Would the food in her organs look like it’s floating in space?

That couldn’t be it.

It’s not like things look like they’re floating just because Hachikuji is holding them… Maybe it all gets patched over by the brain of whoever sees it happening.

Of course, if anyone’s brain is patching things over, it could be mine, “recognizing” a human who died eleven years ago.

But that’s just a hypothetical ghost story.

“It’s my treat, but I’m a penniless student getting ready for his college exams. We’d only be able to go to a fast food place.”

“Fast food…”

“Not enough for you?”

“It makes you want to fast? That would be more than enough.”

“Give me a break.”

Wrong sense of the English word.

As a student studying for exams, I at least know that much.

“Well, get on my bike. Let’s ride together.”

“No way, Mister Araragi. Riding behind you…”

And then.

Just as Hachikuji started to give another one of her answers in the “I hate Mister Araragi session” that seemed to be all the rage with her.

It already had its hooks in me, and I was on the edge of my seat waiting for her answer but wasn’t able to hear it to the end─because.

That’s when we spotted something.

It.