Monogatari Series - Volume 12 - Chapter 1.29

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“H-Hachikuji?”

“That’s right. Which is why Shinobu is safe for the most part─your link being severed was like a random accident, but what amazing luck, there’s a legendary vampire for you. And she might get even luckier. You could die and she’d go back to being at her full power.”

I looked at Hachikuji.

Hachikuji, exhausted and sleeping─

The ghost of a girl I was best of friends with.

“I see,” Ononoki interposed then. “Yes─I thought that might be the case.”

“Really, Ononoki?”

“Well, like I said, I’d heard some things from my sister─but the possibility was there. Actually, it could even have been you, kind monster sir─anyone except me. I didn’t want to create any confusion by throwing unnecessary info into the mix, though.”

But.

Of all the possibilities, I thought it was most likely Miss Hachikuji, Ononoki said, her face utterly expressionless.

I couldn’t glean a single emotion─and it was her relentlessness that reminded me once again that she was an aberration.

Something decidedly different from a human.

Not something─I’d ever be able to understand.

“Don’t look at me like I’ve done something wrong, kind monster sir─I did speak a little bit to Miss Hachikuji about this while you were passed out… We were only discussing possibilities, of course. If we’re talking about probability, the likelihood didn’t alter by so much as ten percent.”

“What’s going on, then? To be honest, I could kind of understand why it’d go after Shinobu─she’s led a life so full of twists and turns that I could see anything happening to her. But not Hachikuji. She lived ten years as a human, then eleven years as a ghost─she’s not in any position to be chased by that Darkness, even by accident─”

No.

Hold on a second.

It did feel─like the Darkness was moving toward Hachikuji earlier.

It went after her, engulfing the desks she was sleeping on─or so it seemed.

That was the feeling I got.

“Let me answer that question,” Gaen cut me off just as I’d found myself grilling Ononoki. “It’s not like Yotsugi really understands the situation. She only has secondhand information. I don’t think even Yozuru saw what was actually going on─I don’t believe her, she only seemed to be listening to half of my story. Maybe only a quarter.”

“In that case,” I said.

My tension ratcheted up─while it was good news that it wasn’t after Shinobu, nothing changed in the end if it was going after Hachikuji.

No.

It only made things worse─if it was after Shinobu Oshino, a former fighting vampire whether or not she’s lost her powers, she had a better chance than if it was after Mayoi Hachikuji, your average ghost girl.

“I want you to tell me everything─not half of the story, but all of it. Tell me everything about the Darkness.”

“Of course─that’s why I’m here, after all.”

But speaking from my outlook on life.

I think it’s going to leave a bad taste in your mouth, warned Gaen.

While her words prefaced a story that clearly had a bad ending, just like Shinobu’s before she recounted what happened four hundred years ago─this wasn’t something I could afford not to hear.

Not now.