Monogatari Series - Volume 12 - Chapter 1.19

019

“…Hm? Hold on a second.”

I couldn’t help but be captivated by Shinobu’s story once the Darkness finally appeared, but now I had to disrupt the melancholic mood.

I mean, there was some important information missing here.

“What happened to Aberration Slayer I?”

“Hm? I told thee. Swallowed up into the Darkness together with me─he had no time to draw either the Aberration Slayer or the Aberration Savior. While only three quarters of my body fell victim to it, his situation as the first to be engulfed was worse─it went and got just about his entire body.”

“Went and got… So you just sat there and watched it happen?”

“I was not watching, to be exact─the Darkness, which had appeared by the time I realized it, had engulfed us before I realized it.”

“…”

Paying more attention to Aberration Slayer I in their situation was a tall order─and there wasn’t any reason for Shinobu to protect my predecessor, anyway.

The man wasn’t even Shinobu’s thrall at that moment in time, which is to say he was just plain human, not my predecessor─hm?

Hold on, no, wait, that can’t be it.

“That doesn’t make sense, Shinobu. If he was swallowed up by the Darkness, wouldn’t that be the conclusion? Don’t tell me you were pretending to suck at storytelling but setting up a clever narrative trick? As in, making me assume that the head of the group of experts was my predecessor, when in fact…”

I’d have to look at her in a new light if that was the case.

Not many mystery novels these days employ decent narrative tricks─maybe the spring of such tricks, once thought to be endless, is in fact starting to run dry.

But now!

Was my partner Shinobu Oshino about to make a big stir?!

“Ne’er-active tricks? I can’t say I’ve ever heard of those. Sounds terribly like an oxymoron to me.”

“…”

Of course not…

“In any case, that woman, in fact man, attacked, in fact was attacked, four years, in fact four hundred years ago by the Darkness─”

“Forget about narrative tricks,” I cut in, “this had better not be about you simply having misspoken at some point.”

“Oh, no, ’tis not so at all. Worry not, I’ve neither tricks nor mistakes in my story─the Aberration Slayer I of whom I’ve spoken thus far is the predecessor, for thee and for me, no mistake about it─listen more carefully. I believe I said the Darkness swallowed just about his entire body.”

“You did. And that’s why I’m asking. If that’s the case─”

“Just about. In other words, a part of him remained,” Shinobu said before appearing to roll up her right sleeve─not that she had one since she was wearing a sleeveless dress.

“His right hand remained.”

“Hm?”

His hand?

“I did tell thee he was engulfed first─and when he was, he grabbed onto my wrist as if to seek my help. He snatched onto it, like so,” she said, grabbing my arm with her right. It was a tight grip, like she was placing a lock around it. “As if to seek my help─or so I put it, but I believe that in reality, ’twas a reflex. Had it been a vine of ivy or a twig of straw there, that is what he would have grabbed─’twas an action guided by instinct.”

“So you think─he would have literally grasped at straws?”

“Aye, and so ’twould be harsh to criticize him in any way. ‘Should he not have grasped the sword at his waist instead?’─would be too cruel a charge. I doubt it’d have meant anything even if he had─the Aberration Slayer could not have cut through a plain darkness that was no aberration.”

“…”

“That said, grasping onto my wrist as if to seek some bond is questionable. He could have botched my escape in doing so.”

“Well, you say that, but when you’ve got boosters on you big enough to fly to the South Pole, a human’s grip wouldn’t do anything─hm? In that case, don’t tell me─”

“Precisely.” Shinobu gripped my wrist tighter. “I flew to the South Pole together with his hand.”