Monogatari Series - Volume 12 - Chapter 1.25

025

We were transported in an instant─I heard later that Ononoki was able to go through the window normally and didn’t have to crash through the ceiling.

Not that I should call flying out of a window “normal”…but Ononoki just maybe hesitated to destroy the abandoned cram school that was home to so many of my memories.

I’m using phrases like “just maybe” and “I heard later”─the reason I don’t sound sure is that I couldn’t read Ononoki’s expression at the time or our trajectory.

We were simply going too fast.

Ononoki was no match for Shinobu’s peak-state super jump instant air dash, according to Shinobu─judging from our velocity, though, Ononoki’s leg strength might have been comparable in this case at least.

Actually, I was knocked out by the kinetic impact─it wasn’t even close to the kind of speed that my consciousness could withstand.

“That’s because I didn’t go easy unlike when I first did it─it was an all-out escape this time. You should consider yourself lucky that your body wasn’t torn to pieces from the sonic boom, kind monster sir,” Ononoki explained.

Actually, it was more like an excuse.

This girl never apologized…

Then again, she probably figured we couldn’t get away unless she went at that speed, and we did in fact manage to get away. I should have had no complaints…but still didn’t feel like thanking her.

Humans are emotional animals.

“So… Where are we now?”

When I regained consciousness, I was somewhere I’d never seen before─it seemed like we were in the mountains, but I didn’t know which.

All mountains tend to look the same when you’re in them…but at least it didn’t seem to be the ones I knew so well…or rather, was deeply tied to, that featured Kita-Shirahebi Shrine. I felt no familiarity with this place.

Hmm…

Actually, forget where. What about the time?

It was a…night sky…approaching daybreak, actually.

“I don’t know where we are, kind monster sir. I didn’t have the luxury to pick a target─though I’m sure I went roughly north from that abandoned cram school.”

“North… Um, but why are we in the mountains?”

“Three quarters of Japan’s land is mountains. A haphazard jump is probably going to land you in them.”

“…”

Shinobu had said that three quarters of our planet is covered by water so that’s probably where a jump would land you. Ononoki was making a similar point at a reduced scale.

“Well, I don’t think we’re that far away…” she told me. “I jumped almost straight up the first time, which is why we only had to travel a few miles as the crow flies.”

“Is it not…following us? I mean, the Darkness?”

“It seems that way. I guess it’s true that it’s bad at dealing with vertical motion… That is how the Aberration Slayer got away four hundred years ago, too. I should have jumped more upward this time, too─we ended up flying like a cannonball because I aimed for the window and traveled at a shallow angle.”

We probably went a few dozen miles, maybe even more than a hundred, Ononoki estimated with a nonchalant look.

It seemed like we’d escaped without thinking of what might happen next.

Well, she’d gone fast enough to make me black out, so maybe we’d broken the hundred-mile barrier…

And it wasn’t even per hour, so I was really lucky that I hadn’t gotten thrown off.

“Wait, where’s Hachikuji? Don’t tell me she got thrown─”

“She’s fine. Thanks to the tight grip you had on her chest, kind monster sir─quite the seatbelt, I must say. She’s sleeping in the shade over there.”

“Sleeping… Did she pass out again?”

“No, she was awake when we landed. She said she was sleepy because it was night, and went to bed.”

“…”

Such audacity when she didn’t have to face adversity head-on.

Nerves of steel.

“Oh, because it was night… Right, the time… When is it? I mean…how long was I out?”

“How long? Just long enough for Miss Hachikuji and I to have our fun with you.”

“What did you do to me while I was passed out?!”

And hold on, “Miss Hachikuji”?

Sheesh, were they getting along?

“To be specific, one night─ever since early evening,” Ononoki enlightened me, “so I guess that would be about twelve hours.”

“Twelve hours…”

What a good night’s rest.

I was mentally exhausted too, so my body probably used the opportunity it had when I blacked out to go into sleep mode─not that I felt at all refreshed.

“Though I said Miss Hachikuji and I had our fun with you, actually we tended to you, kind monster sir.”

“O-Oh… Sorry for the trouble.”

“Are you really? Saying so doesn’t cost you a thing… If you’re being sincere, why don’t you swear you won’t get angry even after you see everything we drew under your clothes?”

“How about I get angry now?”

Kick.

No, I wanted to but stopped myself.

Whether or not they’d really tended to me, a guy passing out during an escapade was nothing but a burden─I was grateful that they hadn’t abandoned me there and simply run off.

“At any rate, if we’re being cautious, our rule that it won’t follow us if we travel vertically is just based on past experience. It’s only worked so far. There’s no telling how it’ll go next time.”

“Yeah… Past experience aside, I can’t figure out the first rule about how this Darkness works. What is that thing?”

I might have been less anxious if it actually kept on chasing us.

Even at that moment, the Darkness might pop up right next to me─I’d breathed a sigh of relief, but that wasn’t our situation at all.

“So, Hachikuji…”

I stood to go check up on her as she slept, just to be sure. There was a chance that she’d been injured and that Ononoki was trying to be thoughtful.

Then again, I wasn’t too sure whether Hachikuji, a ghost, could sustain an actual injury…

Either way, I was worrying too much. She looked the very picture of health as she slept there under the trees.

I even touched her and made sure.

Yup, she was in good health.

“Okay, then… Now what? If we don’t even know where we are…”

Muttering, I pulled out my cell phone.

Hmm.

I should have expected as much, but it was out of service─which meant we were deep in the mountains, far from any towns…

It seemed unthinkable, but could Ononoki have put in so much effort that she took us to another country? What if we were in the Grand Canyon?

…I guess the Grand Canyon isn’t a mountain.

“I’d love to launch a counterattack, but can that thing be counterattacked?” I wondered out loud. “And it’s hard to tell if it’s really coming after us in the first place… We can’t even be sure if it’s following Shinobu, since that’s just based on experience too…”

“The first step of our counterattack will be listening,” Ononoki said.

“Listening?”

“Gathering info─did you forget what I was saying right before that thing appeared? I told you there was someone who knows about this thing that isn’t an aberration but a phenomenon. Remember?”

“…”

Um.

Now that she mentioned it─it felt like she’d said something like that.

My memories were vague since I’d passed out right afterwards…but I believed the name was…

“Gaen…”

Gaen─Izuko Gaen.

So we needed to hear what she had to say? She knew Kagenui…right? Were we going to have to approach Kagenui first to get to her?

“Ononoki… What about your job? Is everything going to be okay?”

“Of course it’s not going to be okay. But I can’t just go back to my work now─I’m not that cruel.”

“Do you have any way of contacting Kagenui? You couldn’t yesterday, but some time has passed since then. She must be close to done with whatever she was doing, right?”

“Contact my sister… Hm. Considering our predicament, we might have to try, even if it’s no good, even if she’s still working. In that case, I do have a few tricks up my sleeve to gain access…but I can’t use any of them this deep in the mountains.”

“Can’t you telepathically communicate with her or something?”

“Unfortunately, our bond isn’t that strong. To approach her, we’d have to climb down this mountain, then call her or text her─not that I’d expect an immediate reply. I have a negligent sister.”

“Negligent… Well, I guess I don’t see her as the type to reply to text messages within the minute.”

Whatever her personality, though, Kagenui was our only hope─she appeared to be our only route for contacting Izuko Gaen.

“Telepathy is too much to ask for, but it’d be nice if my sister could at least use her sixth sense─that said, I’m sure she’d readily abandon someone as inconsequential as me if she had to.”

“…”

“In fact, kind monster sir─don’t you think it’s about time you pulled that Aberration Slayer out of your shadow?” asked Ononoki. “Either she doesn’t want to talk to me or she’s sound asleep, because she hasn’t come out at all ever since we landed─I doubt the acceleration knocked her out too.”

“Wait, Shinobu?”

What?

Now that Ononoki mentioned it, my partner wasn’t around─no, I’d noticed from the start that she wasn’t. That’s why I naturally assumed that she was in my shadow─unlike Ononoki and Hachikuji, Shinobu and I couldn’t be separated.

Our shadows.

Our hearts─our very being connected us.

We couldn’t part ways─in other words, if we didn’t see Shinobu, the natural, logical conclusion was that she was hiding in my shadow─but.

But when I thought about it, that didn’t make sense.

Because right now─it was night.

Not exactly the middle of the night, since it was close to dawn, but unmistakably an hour you’d classify as night─there wasn’t a hint of the sun’s rays.

So then why?

“Why isn’t Shinobu─awake?”

“Why? Don’t ask me, kind monster sir,” answered Ononoki, sounding confused despite her emotionless expression. She had to have wondered, too, for her part─and now that I’d asked, her suspicion that something was off was deepening. “I mean, what am I supposed to say? It’s probably because she hates me─”

“I realize that you and Shinobu don’t get along, and she certainly doesn’t like you, but that’s not enough of a reason for her to literally hide in my shadow at such a critical time… That’s not the kind of person she is.”

“So you trust her,” Ononoki noted with a sarcastic overtone.

That was her only rebuttal, though.

It seemed like even she had no choice but to recognize how, well, magnanimous Shinobu was. Hence the sarcasm, I suppose.

“In that case… What could it be?” she asked. “I thought it was impossible, but could she really have fainted inside your shadow? Or maybe she got seriously injured somehow…”

Right now she can’t regenerate the way she did when we fought, yes? Ononoki checked with me─and she was right, but still.

“Can you even get seriously injured while you’re in someone’s shadow? It’s like she’s in a dimension of her own in there. She shouldn’t be affected by those kinds of physical shocks…” I mused, touching my shadow.

It was a dim, moonlit shadow, but there was no mistaking it for anyone’s but my own─that was where Shinobu should be. It’d be strange if she wasn’t─

“You can’t enter your shadow, kind monster sir?”

“Unfortunately, no… But.”

I patted it all around and got no reaction in return─the anxiety and impatience I felt should’ve been communicated to Shinobu through my shadow, too, but she wasn’t reacting to that either.

Despite her reacts being incomparably better than they’d been four hundred years ago.

Which meant… What did it mean?

“Ononoki? You know what this means. I’m just going to have to kiss you.”

“How did it come to mean that?”

“Our only choice is to reach her by making my heart pound, like yesterday. We’re gonna have to kiss─a big sloppy French one!”

“If you say so…though I’d rather not.”

Not really, Ononoki demurred.

She didn’t wanna─how sad.

But there was no other way.

No matter how much she didn’t wanna, my only option was to steal a kiss from Ononoki!

“Um.”

Just as I tried to grab onto Ononoki’s small frame, Hachikuji popped out from under the trees to show her face.

“Mister Araragi.”

Oh.

She seemed to be asleep just a moment ago, but it looked like she was awake─had Ononoki and I been too loud?

I’d been trying my best to keep my voice low…

“What is it, Hachikuji? Jealous?” I said, looking in her direction. “In that case, I’d be fine kissing you instead. You might’ve spoken up sooner.”

“Please die, Mister Araragi. Sorry, I meant to say please wait, Mister Araragi.”

“Wait for what? Are you taking responsibility for the character I am and committing suicide?”

Out of confusion, I was saying and doing things that didn’t make any sense, but I’d have you know, at least I was aware of that.

I was concerned if I could take back any of it.

“Um, er─I’m sorry I went to sleep during such a crisis,” Hachikuji said, as if she really regretted it, and felt guilty about it.

But what was she supposed to do?

It’s not like I could criticize her after being unconscious for all that time.

“It’s fine. You slept, that’s all. Anyway, Hachikuji, why do I need to wait to kiss Ononoki?”

“No─Mister Araragi. There are a countless number of reasons why, but before that, or more importantly, regarding Miss Shinobu…”

Hachikuji approached me as she spoke. She must have called out to me right after waking up because she didn’t have her backpack on.

“She’s not in your shadow at the moment, correct?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that she isn’t…”

Whether Shinobu was asleep or unconscious…

She was bound to my shadow, after all─but maybe there were exceptions? In fact, she did temporarily leave my shadow when she fought Ononoki.

But she’d regained most of her power as a vampire then, so─

“Kind monster sir. Allow me,” Ononoki followed up on Hachikuji’s words─and touched my shadow the way I had moments earlier.

Closing her eyes─she seemed to be feeling for something.

“Ononoki─”

“Be quiet. I’m checking right now─searching,” she shut me down, focusing on her palms as they touched my shadow, with her eyes still closed─but even I wasn’t optimistic enough to believe that she was waiting for a kiss.

I simply waited.

For Ononoki to come to a conclusion.

Her conclusion─an answer I felt I could foresee.

“She’s not there…” Ononoki uttered at last.

In her affectless voice.

“She’s not there.”