Monogatari Series - Volume 12 - Chapter 1.21

021

“That’s so intense I have no words. Or room to be jealous or sympathetic,” I simply spoke my mind, giving her my unvarnished opinion.

Or rather, what I felt all over again listening to her story was: I see just how much of a different level you operate on.

Forget levels. Just everything.

It was too different.

Resurrecting a human being from his hand alone? Ridiculous─I knew it wasn’t exactly fair to criticize her for it, but frankly, it seemed like she was playing around with life itself.

She said “returning to being a vampire,” but that, to me, felt the most like a divine act─it’s a little late in the game to be saying this, but in terms of power, she really was nothing short of godly.

I keenly understood how those people felt when they recognized her as a deity for making that lake disappear─keenly and anew.

“…And you did it?”

“Hm? Uh, no, no, hold on a second. I do admit to speaking of the suspension-bridge effect and the desire to propagate in the face of a mortal crisis, but that was merely a figure of speech, and I know not how to respond to such a direct question─”

“…?”

Shinobu was blushing and staring daggers at me for some reason─hm? Wait, so did she fail? Figure of speech? Was the vampirism stuff a figure of speech? Mmf…

“Wait, no! I wasn’t asking if you did it!”

“What? Ye weren’t? Thou art not interested in hearing of what Aberration Slayer I and I did under the cover of darkness?”

“I don’t even want to imagine if the two of you had love scenes! No, I’m asking if you managed to do it when you tried to regenerate the rest of him from his hand!”

“Hah,” Shinobu instantly laughed, a note of superiority in her voice.

This little girl, she was the best in the world when it came to looking down on someone.

“I know not how to fail. When I said ‘I had no idea what would happen,’ I meant ’twas unclear what manner of success I would achieve, what else? In fact, I wish someone would teach me how to fail. Otherwise I would be flummoxed when I do somehow manage to fail one day. Ah, indeed, ’twould be nice to know. I wish someone would write a self-help book or such on the topic, How to Fail Better!”

“…”

Well.

The scary thing is that there really are books like that.

“So then, what was thy question again? If I did it? Is that what you want me to answer? Very well, I shall.”

“Yeah… No, you’re virtually telling me that you did it. Right?”

“I failed,” she answered─

Successfully faking me out.

Her gleeful, self-satisfied expression quickly vanished─transforming to one of gloom.

She looked at the floor instead of at me.

“Y-You failed?”

“To be more precise, I succeeded for a time─but the end result was failure. I’ve told thee already, have I not─about the fate met by Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade’s first thrall─”

“…”

Right.

I’d already heard─during spring break.

On the roof of this abandoned cram school─I’d heard about the fate of my predecessor.

About his end.

I’d heard it, and been shocked.

I’d already been─spoiled.

“Aberration Slayer I returned to life just as I’d planned─his entire body was regenerated from his right hand. A full and complete transformation into a vampire─there were no missteps in my execution unlike when I turned thee into a vampire over spring break. Nor did I turn into a little girl. I would say the first thrall I created went better than my second, were we simply discussing the degree of my craft.”

“And I have to just sit and listen to this…”

“But─perhaps he was not as strong mentally as thou. While I suggested earlier that the elite are weak in the face of setbacks, that man must have been fragile in some more fundamental way.”

In retrospect.

I may have been lacking in consideration.

So she said─but I didn’t think you could expect Shinobu to be considerate to humans back in those days.

That’s why she couldn’t avoid it.

It was unavoidable.

Aberration Slayer I’s─suicide.

“Didn’t he throw himself into the sun, turn into ashes, and disappear?”

“Aye. Suicide─that oh-so-common cause of vampire death, about nine out of every ten. If there was anything uncommon, anything divergent about it, then─’twas that he ended his life after but a few years of being a vampire.”

“As a thrall, he might not have had your level of endurance, but I presume he didn’t die swiftly just because he went out into the sun.”

Burning, regenerating.

Burning, regenerating.

Burning, regenerating─until he burned away.

It would have required quite a lot of time.

It would have required─quite a lot of suffering.

I’d experienced something similar─so I knew.

That it really was a living hell─but a vampire probably can’t die unless he does that. Especially if you’re Shinobu’s thrall─

“…You didn’t save him? The way you did when I accidentally went into the sun over spring break?”

I was asking her if she didn’t, but perhaps the better question was: if she couldn’t save him.

And in fact, “’Twas impossible,” she replied. “Nor did I really understand the meaning of his actions at the time─well, we’d spoken at length prior to his decision to end himself, but my relationship with him was essentially bankrupt at that point. I had no way to stop him.”

“Bankrupt?”

“To put it simply, Aberration Slayer I was angry─angry that I had made him into a vampire.”

“…”

“’Tis no complicated matter. For my part, I felt that I had bestowed upon him something for which he could never thank me enough. Not only had I brought him back to life, I had made him the thrall of my mighty self. ’Tis an absurd attitude to take after having done so out of loneliness, but that is something I am able to regret only now, after four hundred years. I truly felt that way then. If anything, I meant to be modest about it, telling myself, No, I shan’t be so childish as to demand his gratitude. I merely did what was proper.”

But I was off the mark.

Quite off the mark, regretted Shinobu.

After returning him to life from just one hand─after Aberration Slayer I had been given new life as a vampire, the very first words he spoke were:

“‘You monster─how dare you deceive us!’”

“…”

A demon, and not a god.

She’d been found out─to be a vampire.

That must have been what “deceive” meant.

At least in part.

But he probably also meant something else by it─

“─‘So it was all your fault!’ he shouted. Perhaps it was more rebuke than shout. That’s when he spoke his bit about ‘divine punishment.’ By continuing to pretend to be a god, I brought down divine punishment─he claimed.”

“So in other words, he made everything your fault, from the people being spirited away to all the rest? He was saying the Darkness was part of your plan or something… Well, I mean─I can kind of understand why he’d think that, but─”

His sense of scale was off.

Even if he was the leader of a band of experts, even if he knew real gods, he surely hadn’t ever dealt with an aberration of Shinobu’s─Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade’s caliber. And being forcefully brought back to life via his remaining right hand after being engulfed by this mysterious Darkness and disappearing─it would have been strange if he did stay on an even keel.

The fact that he’d been regrown from his hand, especially, concerned his very identity as a human─they say that planarians can regenerate forever, and an earthworm that’s split in two turns into two earthworms… But where do you find your sense of self when that happens to you?

An impossible question to answer─

Had been put directly to him.

“So─what did you do? No matter what your reason for saving him, you did it all the same. You couldn’t have stayed calm when he said that to you.”

“No, ’twas not that bad. Correcting his misconception was a bother, so I let him say whatever he wished. He may be confused and deluded now, I thought, but he would calm down eventually.”

’Twas similar to the way I’d pouted here in these ruins, she remarked.

“…”

I wasn’t naive enough to buy that it mustn’t have been that bad just because she was making it sound like it really wasn’t.

How Shinobu thought then.

And what she thought─I couldn’t begin to imagine.

Since I’d never met him face-to-face, there was no way for me to know exactly how delicate Aberration Slayer I was, but at the end of the day, Shinobu was just as sensitive as him.

Being that way, she was only acting like a villain sometimes… She consistently cast herself in a bad light and said that turning him into a thrall was just a self-centered impulse, and she wasn’t lying, but she also seemed to be presenting it in far too one-sided a way.

She’d reigned over a region as a god, even if she called it a whim─and he was its last survivor. Did she really, truly, unequivocally not want to stop him from dying? I wasn’t going to believe that.

If she was that kind of woman─

I wouldn’t be alive like this.

I wouldn’t be alive─halfway vampire.

“But he did not calm down. He was confused and deluded, he antagonized me at every turn, before flinging himself to his own death. Cursing me again and again, slathering me in words of remorse and resentment, he threw his body into the sun as I watched─and then he died.”

I could not stop him.

Nor could I save him.

Indifferently, apathetically, in a flat tone, Shinobu described the outcome.

“I even told him my true name after we reached the South Pole─and yet the only time he ever called me Kissshot was immediately before he cast himself away.”

“…”

Still─he’d called her Kissshot.

Not Heartunderblade, not Acerolaorion─but Kissshot.

Just like me.

In that case…

“And then he died─though ’twould be more accurate to say he met his demise, as his was an immortal body, but in any case, he died. Leaving behind as a memento a replica of the enchanted blade Kokorowatari that he worked himself to the bone to make. I am sure he made it with the intention of slaying me… I only happened not to have made a thrall before him, ’twas not as if I had remained resolutely single─but when I watched his corpse burn blue and fade away, I decided that I would never again create any─I swore that I would never drink human blood for any purpose other than nourishment.”

To God, at that, she added.

How ironic the words sounded─when she’d played at the role.

I certainly wasn’t laughing.

Nor did I find her words clever─because ultimately, both as a god and as a vampire, she hadn’t been able to “handle” humans.

The demon’s monologue.

Her tale of what was now past, four hundred years old.

So did its curtain fall, on an unhappy ending.