Monogatari Series - Volume 12 - Chapter 1.09

009

“Made into a god?”

I couldn’t help but be puzzled by Shinobu’s words─for one thing, what she was saying sounded so overblown, and for another thing, her story seemed pretty disconnected from the issue at hand, namely that Darkness.

“What, do I sound foolish to thee?”

“Oh, um… Well.”

She rattled me by being exactly right.

I felt like I needed to learn how to hide my emotions a little better, though becoming as inexpressive as Ononoki would be too extreme.

It was way too easy for people to see them.

You didn’t have to be Oshino to see through me.

“Well, yes,” I admitted. “Oh, but didn’t you tell me once about being invited to become a god in the past or something?”

I felt like she said it during spring break, right after I met her.

Right after she made me into a vampire.

Told that I wanted to turn back into a human, she said she understood how I felt.

Since she was once invited to become a god but declined─she understood how I felt.

And so she’d make me human again.

“Is this the time you were talking about?” I asked.

“Well, I suppose…but recalling it now, I wasn’t invited to become one, in fact, as much as I was half-forced… There was no room for dialogue or anything of the like.”

“No room for dialogue… I guess you did make it rain right in front of their eyes…as in, seeing is believing…”

Hm?

But wait, dialogue?

“Before we go any further, Shinobu, there’s something I want to confirm. Were you able to speak Japanese back then? In other words, when you saved these villagers, were you able to have a proper conversation with the Japanese people who witnessed you? Or rather, were you able to communicate your thoughts to them at all?”

“Nay, I was not.”

“Didn’t think so.”

So that was why.

There could never be a dialogue in the first place─Shinobu didn’t even know about the existence of Japan, so of course she didn’t know Japanese.

“So is that when you learned Japanese or something?”

“Aye, clumsily─of course, I was a bright girl in my glory days, and a multitude venerated me as a god. It didn’t take a terribly long time to learn the language spoken by those humans.”

“Is that really how it works?”

“And even now I’m learning modern language from thy kind. Moé and tsundere and braided big-boobie class president.”

“You need to forget the last one you just said.”

I didn’t remember ever teaching her that phrase.

Don’t say it to Hanekawa even by accident… She doesn’t have braids anymore, anyway.

I love her no matter what her hairstyle is, though!

“But being half-forced into becoming a god doesn’t seem like your style,” I said. “Why not just escape from that with a super jump instant air dash?”

“Run? Me? I?”

Hah! Shinobu laughed in defiance.

I couldn’t begin to figure out how she was able to look at her own partner with such an awful expression on her face.

“I turn my back to no one. I’ve never once fled since the day I was born as a vampire.”

“…”

I dunno, it felt like she had a lot of times…

And wait, wasn’t she originally born as a human before turning into a vampire? Or maybe she “didn’t remember” that, either… What a convenient memory she had.

That’s what happens when you live for so long.

“Well, ’tis not as if they had any need to court me by force, nor did I have any reason to reject them by force─I thought ’twould be a nice change of pace to be treated as a god…I suppose. To imagine my mental state at the time.”

“Hmm… Still, treated as a god.” Just like Shinobu said, I didn’t really understand the historical background or circumstances, so I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it. Was my point of view too peaceful? “I guess I can understand how making it rain was the most virtuous miracle possible in those days…but that seems like something other aberrations could do, too. Like, um…rain frogs?”

“Rain frogs aren’t aberrations… But aye, when they saw rainfall so intense that it caused flooding, they must have treated that as an aberration. Everything is situational in the end.”

“Situational, huh… Oh, but now that you mention it, I remember hearing that they can control the weather to some degree now. That they can force the sky to be clear or cloudy or rainy by moving rainclouds around with planes or something… It’s not quite genetic engineering, but it does feel like technology that’s gone beyond the boundaries of humankind in some way. Maybe you could call that the other side of the ‘miracle’ coin?”

“Indeed. If someone appeared who could use genetic engineering to cure any illness in an instant, who would object to calling her a god? She would even be venerated. Though whether that’s a good thing or not, I do not know.”

“?”

“I mean to say that deicide is not out of the question in this day and age of weakened piety─those with outstanding skills are targeted. For their skills and their life. But no─deicide itself has existed in places around the world for millennia. Fortunately, that was not my experience.”

“Oh, it wasn’t?”

That was unexpected.

Since she said the story had a bad outcome, I assumed she was working up to that kind of ending─but then, in that case, there wouldn’t be any place for the Darkness in her story.

So far, I didn’t have any clue when or at what point the Darkness might get involved.

“What, are ye disappointed? That my plight in those days was not that I fell victim to deicide? This audience of mine has such cruel expectations.”

“No, that’s not what I meant…”

“Ye needn’t worry, this story will be relevant. ’Tis not my plan at all to stealthily turn this into an advertisement for the film.”

“Are you sure it isn’t?”

“Why, I cannot believe it. I’d heard that it would be a theatrical feature but never expected it to be in 3D.”

“Stop spreading false information…”

It’s 2D, okay? 2D.

What was she doing trying to use lies to get viewers in seats?

“To think the class president’s breasts would come bounding out so!”

“They won’t, they won’t.”

“Well, putting aside whether they will, a film would be subject to fewer restrictions than television, so will we not be able to depict whatever we want, be it breasts or blood spray?”

“…”

I now knew this little girl talked about breasts and blood spray in the same breath. Very scary.

“Hold on, so stop sneaking in ads for the movie. Keep telling the story. About your past…or your first thrall.”

And about the Darkness, of course, but if I’m being honest with you, I was interested in her first thrall, too.

Having it described as jealousy or envy, which made me feel like I’d been seen through, didn’t sit well with me, but as Shinobu’s─no, as Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade’s “second thrall,” I couldn’t help but be curious.

I just had to be.

“You needn’t tell me to continue,” she said. “But I am recalling some of this as I tell it, so like anything from the past, my memories are a bit hazy, and I may not remember the precise details─”

“…”

How undependable.

Please, Shinobu. I’m depending on you.

“Allow me to continue by explaining a bit more about the background─though this would have more to do with the conditions of the land than it does the age.”

“The conditions of the land?” I asked. “You mean how the whole area was suffering from a drought, right? I got that already─”

“Nay, not that but details of the lake I made disappear. It seemed that this lake, while perhaps not Lake Biwa, had been worshipped in one way or another. Those who lived around it revered it as ‘a divine lake’ and prayed to it as such. In other words, they prayed to it for rain. ’Twould seem easy to laugh at them for their foolishness─however many myriad gods they say this country has, seeing a lake of all things as a god and praying to it for rain? If thou art willing to go that far, why not scoop the water from the lake and carry it back with thee bucket by bucket.”

“…”

Actually.

If she made a lake that people worshipped disappear, didn’t that make her the god-killer?

I wasn’t going to make the joke, though…

“Thus my witnesses,” she continued, “were locals praying for rain─to that bunch, it must have seemed as though I’d come bursting out from inside the lake. As an incarnation of the lake’s water.”

“Um, it’s a little awkward to say this, but if someone that blond, golden-eyed, and tall appeared out of nowhere in front of a Japanese person in those days, she’d seem pretty divine…”

Of course, she was doomful, not divine.

Then again, maybe there isn’t that much of a difference in impression given off by the two words─even I was taken by her beauty when I “witnessed” her for the first time.

So much so that I was ready to throw my life away.

In that sense, maybe there isn’t any difference between aberrations and gods─even the crab that had possessed Senjogahara was supposed to be a kind of god.

As for devils, which stood in contrast…um.

Would Kanbaru’s monkey be one?

But even that devil─was a monkey that granted wishes, and you could say that it performed miracles.

Was there, or wasn’t there, some theory that gods and devils are just two sides of the same coin?

“Hmph. Flattery will get thee nothing,” Shinobu said, apparently taking my words as praise.

“Um, I wasn’t trying to flatter you or suck up to you. Anyone from outside of Japan would have been a rare sight in those days.”

“Did you not hear what I just said about flattery? Ye truly are a fool. The most it could possibly get thee is a pole dance.”

“That’d be something.”

She didn’t simply not mind my words, she was jubilant.

A god who’s vulnerable to praise…wasn’t one I’d worship.

Still, she’d performed a miracle before their eyes, manifesting as a god to them, and she’d saved many of their lives as a result─if they were saved.

I could understand those people making Shinobu into a god─but.

But…

“But that…couldn’t have lasted for long.”

“Hm? Why dost thou say so?”

“Well, given your personality─you’re not the type to sit back and enjoy people just worshipping you…”

She was haughty and arrogant, domineering and condescending, discriminatory and egotistical, someone so hopeless that she really left you with no hope─but there was no way this vampire could enjoy being treated as a god for long─was my take on it.

Speaking of living only in the moment.

She might rise to that position on a lark─but I couldn’t see her having any interest in ruling or reigning.

Given her personality.

It goes without saying, though, that the Shinobu that I knew, the one I was so close to, had a personality deeply influenced by none other than my own. So of course I’d think that, but I had no way of knowing her personality back then─and yet if she was the type to accept being treated as a god, she’d have made more than just two thralls over the course of six hundred years.

She’d have formed a hierarchical society of vampires.

In general, she preferred solitude over supremacy.

And I dare say that she placed herself somewhere above a god in her own mind─it was that incredible pride of hers that made me think she wouldn’t decide to be a mere god for long.

Being a demon.

That’s the one thing this vampire would never let go of.

“Hm? Aye, indeed, indeed. That is the kind of prideful creature I am. I seek no admiration from others at all, such vanity has no place in my life. Thou art wise, I see.”

“…”

Considering how hopelessly weak she was to praise, maybe it’d be better to retract my previous statement.

“Well, true,” she continued her story after savoring her delight for a moment. Fortunately. “As ye say, my time as a god did not last long─roughly a year, I reckon. Putting anything about my personality aside, it seems that I truly was not made to be a god─”

Shinobu looked out the window once she said this─the sky was still blue. No signs anywhere of aberrations or anything suspicious.

As for Mayoi Hachikuji.

She was still to our side, unconscious.