Monogatari Series - Volume 13 - Chapter 1.22

022

“Long time no see, Big Brother Kaiki. How long has it been, anyway?”

“Don’t call me ‘Big Brother.’” Silently thanking the clerk who had placed the dust jacket on A Cat’s Cradle Compendium, I casually put the book down next to me and said, “I’ve told you before, just call me Kaiki.” It put me in mind of Nadeko Sengoku calling me “gramps” the day before.

Being called “gramps” made me feel depressed, but being called “Big Brother” grossed me out.

“Really? Still, I can’t address you so informally. Yaaay.”

Just as I was wondering if her laudable attitude was sincere, she inexplicably threw in another sideways peace sign.

“Have you been getting cozy with Araragi?” I asked, hazarding that he was the “wrong crowd” in question. I was the one who’d told Ononoki, or rather Kagenui, about him in the first place.

As such, perhaps some responsibility for Ononoki going astray lay with me─perhaps it was just my imagination.

“Which reminds me, that must have been the last time we saw each other. When I told you guys about Araragi─so where’s Kagenui? Is she here too?”

“Uh-uh. Sis─uh oh, hang on, I think this was supposed to be a secret.”

“A secret?”

“As in confidential,” Ononoki said before taking a few big gulps of her sugary drink. How nice of her to explain the word “secret” for my benefit. Not that “secret” or “confidential” meant anything to me.

That violent onmyoji had seemingly abandoned her girl familiar and was off somewhere doing whatever─she’s even more dangerous than me, in her own way, so I always try to keep tabs on her movements, but there’s plenty that gets by me.

And she was smack dab in the middle of getting by me.

“Well, as long as Kagenui doesn’t get in the way of my business, ultimately I really don’t care what she’s doing, or where… You’re her watchdog, though, aren’t you? What the hell are you doing here, Ononoki?”

“I came to you.”

“?”

Just as I was wondering what that could possibly mean, she amended, “I came to see you.”

I’d thought there was some deep meaning behind her words, but apparently she’d misspoken… Another result of hanging out with the wrong crowd?

“As a messenger from Ms. Gaen.”

“Gaen…”

I was on high alert the instant that name cropped up. “Gaen” alone was more than enough to make me tense up, but coming from Ononoki, it could only refer to one person: Gaen-senpai.

Izuko Gaen.

“I bring a warning from Ms. Gaen.”

“Wait, hang on, I don’t want to hear it. Don’t say it.”

“She says withdraw,” Ononoki continued, heedless of my protestations. She still hadn’t learned a thing about human emotions─if Araragi was going to teach her anything, I wish he’d forget about sideways peace signs and teach her some consideration.

If you have to hear that advice from me, though, it might be too late for you.

But─

“Withdraw?”

“Withdraw from the town… Lessee, what was it again… Ms. Gaen told me to deliver her message word for word, so I want to tell you exactly what she said, but I’m afraid I don’t remember…”

“You’re a terrible messenger, you know that?”

“Yaaay.”

Another sideways peace sign.

Painful.

“No one like you,” began Ononoki, seemingly having recalled the message. She was imitating Gaen-senpai’s voice just barely well enough that I was able to recognize what she was doing. So not very well at all.

It was like nails on a chalkboard.

“Ought to be stirring up that town─there have been some irregularities, but the place has reached a certain equilibrium. Kaiki, if you make one wrong move, everything will be ruined, it’ll be even worse than before. So withdraw. Peace peace.”

“Was that last part in the original message? Or is that your new personality?”

“It’s my new personality.”

“I see. Because the next time you say it, I’m going to knock you on your ass,” I menaced a young girl, which was too much like something Araragi would do, so I followed up with a fawning question. “Would you like another drink?”

“You’re just like that kind monster sir.” Sadly, even my last bit ended up making me like Araragi. How shameful… “I’ve still got some of this left, but okay, I’d love a nice warm chocolate chunk scone.”

“You think I’d treat you when you’ve insulted me with comparisons to Araragi?”

Not that I ever had any intention of treating her, I’d only asked to make conversation.

At which point Ononoki stood up and drew a folded 1,000-yen bill out of her skirt. “Keep the change,” she said. Apparently she’d folded it up and stuck it in there somewhere. I guess she’s not the type to carry around a purse.

I accepted it wordlessly and headed to the register. I ordered a chocolate chunk scone, not forgetting to ask them to heat it up, and then returned to the table with it.

“Much obliged.”

“Hmph,” I shrugged and faced Ononoki again, folding my arms and leaning back. “Gaen-senpai seems to understand me, but actually, she doesn’t always─what can I say. Obviously, being commanded to withdraw makes me even more eager to carry out my task.”

“She said she’d pay you if need be.”

Ononoki looked at me, munching on the chocolate chunk scone. The sight of the mushed-up food in her mouth was revolting. I couldn’t help but realize, not for the first time, that the girl sucked at eating.

“Ms. Gaen actually provided that thousand also.”

“Despicable. You can’t buy a person’s heart,” I said. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to try the line just once in my life. Incidentally, my usual line is that a person’s heart is unprofitable. “Just out of curiosity, how much is she offering?”

After falling silent for a moment, Ononoki indicated the sum: “Three million yen.”

It wasn’t the kind of money that gets discussed at a table in a coffee shop, however classy an establishment Starbucks might be.

Three million yen. Definitely a hefty sum, but what exactly can you buy with it? Well, a Premium Pass, for one. I could fly 600 times this year. Wonderful. I already can’t make full use of the one I have, and the other one would be left entirely untouched.

Putting that aside, I considered the offer.

Which is to say, it was at least a sum worth considering. But after considering it for a full thirty minutes, I said brazenly, “I’m going to have to refuse. Talk may be cheap, but I’m not.” This was another line I’d always wanted to try out. Or was it a line I’d never thought I’d have a chance to use? Well, same difference. “Tell her she seems to have put the decimal in the wrong place.”

“Unfortunately, I can’t reach Ms. Gaen anymore. Incommunicado, you might say, service discontinued. If you want to tell her, you’re going to have to yourself, Big Brother Kaiki─I mean Kaiki.”

“…”

What a useless girl. What a useless familiar.

But I couldn’t reach Gaen-senpai either. Or rather, no one in the world could. She was the kind of person who just showed up as she pleased whenever she had some business or took an interest in something. And yet she might butt into a conversation when she was far away─again, as she pleased.

“Basically,” Ononoki began anew. Seemingly what came next would be her own take on things rather than a message from our mutual acquaintance─“I think she’s worried about what will happen if you fail.”

“Worried? Did you say Gaen-senpai is worried? Now that’s a laugh.”

“I mean, I’m sure she believes you’ll succeed. I think she has the utmost faith in her exceptional junior.”

“…”

The girl was just innately unpleasant to be around.

Belief, faith… Look at that innocent face, what kind of education was she getting?

“You’re planning to pull one over on Nadeko Sengoku, right?”

“Dunno,” I played dumb. To be precise, I was making a show of playing dumb. But just because it was a blatant lie didn’t mean it was pointless. I was expressing my unwillingness to have a forthright discussion with her without actually having to say so.

Oshino does that a lot, and so do I.

“Yeah… I bet you’ll succeed─for someone of your wit, Kaiki, or actually, for anyone, duping her should be a piece of cake.”

A piece of cake.

It was almost as if she’d been listening to my conversation with Senjogahara the night before. Maybe it was via Gaen-senpai.

“But the risks if you fail are too great. Right now, Nadeko Sengoku has the divine might to wipe out something on the order of that town like it’s nothing. When she realizes you’ve tricked her and throws a temper tantrum…we’re not talking about just one or two victims.”

“Temper tantrum… She’s not a kid,” I started to say, then shut my mouth.

She was a kid.

And one who was immature for her age, what you might call a “babified” child.

“Even if the chance of success is nine out of ten, no one would risk it if number ten was a nuclear bomb, right? Gambling isn’t about your winning percentage, it’s about considering the risks and rolling the dice.”

“Don’t try to explain gambling to me.”

“You’re right,” Ononoki nodded in a rare moment of ready acquiescence. “Still, maybe Big Brother Oshino’s already got the whole stirring up placid situations and nosing around in things best left alone angle covered.”

“…”

She was comparing me to Oshino?

That was the biggest insult imaginable.

At the same time, if it were Oshino here instead of me─if Senjogahara had succeeded in finding him and asking him for help, surely Gaen-senpai wouldn’t be interfering like this. The thought made me feel abashed.

Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind, no mistake about that.

“Then… Has Gaen-senpai been to that town, too? It certainly sounds like she knows what she’s talking about.”

“I mean, spoiler alert, but it’s Ms. Gaen who’s been working hard to get that town back on track─though it’s news to me, too, and I don’t know the whole story.”

“Back on track?”

It wasn’t─back on track at all.

With Nadeko Sengoku the way she was, and Senjogahara and Araragi’s lives at stake, how the hell─no, wait.

Sure, on a micro level the town was massively out of whack, but when you really thought about it, with the advent of a deity at that air pocket of a shrine, maybe things were very much “back on track,” spiritually speaking.

Was I getting in the way of that rectification?

By meddling with Nadeko Sengoku?

“I’m…confused,” I admitted. “Are you saying it was Gaen-senpai who set Nadeko Sengoku up as a god? That she’s pulling the strings─”

“Well, not quite… Originally, a human being becoming a god wasn’t part of the plan. Ms. Gaen’s scheme seemed to be to turn that crusty old senior citizen…um, what’s her name, the former Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, into a god.”

“…?”

Now I was even more confused. Gaen-senpai had tried to set up Koyomi Araragi’s loli slave as a god─to what end?

What was it that hadn’t happened?

“That vampire used to be revered as a god, so I guess she seemed right for the job, but something went wrong─apparently, someone intervened for some reason, and the position went to Nadeko Sengoku…”

“Hmm.”

Well, I’d had a hard time believing that some teenage puppy love was directly responsible for the birth of a god, even if I’d laid the foundation for it myself, but was I getting a glimpse of the real scene here? Or the behind-the-scenes─

“It was the former Kissshot’s fault that the town got spiritually screwed up in the first place. I think Ms. Gaen just wanted to make her take responsibility…”

“You say someone intervened, but who’s this someone? Gaen-senpai being who she is, she must have already figured that out.”

“I think so, yeah. That is, I think she knows. But she didn’t tell me that much. I can’t help but wonder if it isn’t some sort of secret society.”

“Oh, think whatever you like.”

Nothing to be gained by playing it straight with this shikigami, so I left it at that. Gaen-senpai must have given her only the minimum amount of information, or not even the minimum.

Maybe the aim here was to make me waste my energy milking Ononoki for info─though trying to work out what Gaen-senpai was thinking was itself a Sisyphean task.

“The current situation is very much not what Ms. Gaen had in mind─still, however, she says the situation isn’t all that bad. Y─”

Ononoki started to say something else but stopped herself. Probably yaaay. So she did have some capacity to learn.

“─aaay.”

Or not. The brakes had failed, it seemed, and the rest made it out. She narrowly managed to lower the scissor-fingered hand she had started to raise, though.

I wondered if, as a man, I should knock the little girl on her ass like I’d warned, but I gave her the benefit of the doubt and assumed that it was involuntary, like a hiccup.

It’s worth pretending to be generous sometimes.

“So someone had to become a god in that spiritually screwed-up town, and anyone would do?”

Senjogahara’s mysterious ailment dated back more than two years, so I found it difficult to lay the blame solely on Araragi’s loli slave’s shoulders─but that vampire was definitely responsible for my curse actually “manifesting” in Nadeko Sengoku’s body.

Not that I didn’t also bear some of the responsibility.

“Yup,” confirmed Ononoki. “Seems like Ms. Gaen came to that conclusion after Sis and I went there…but I don’t know the particulars. If you’re really desperate to know, ask Ms. Gaen or Sis directly.”

“Neither of those options appeals to me.”

“I feel you. Peons like us don’t need to know the details,” remarked Ononoki─lumping me in with her as a peon was hard to excuse, but I guess that’s how it seemed from her standpoint.

Me, Yozuru Kagenui, Yotsugi Ononoki, we were all peons to Gaen-senpai─not a single person with any connection to Izuko Gaen was more than a “peon” in her eyes. She seemed friendly, but was magnificently dominant. If there was one exception, maybe it was Mèmè Oshino, whose whereabouts were currently unknown.

“Anyway, she says to withdraw. My orders were simply to relay that message to you. So now, your own orders are simply to withdraw.”

“Didn’t I already tell you? I refuse. If you can’t get that message to her, that’s fine. It’s not like this is a job interview, no need to go to the trouble of contacting her to inform her that I decline.”

“I just remembered one other part of the message,” Ononoki said after finally finishing off the chocolate chunk scone. Maybe the sugar circulating in her brain had jogged her memory. “Should you fail to withdraw, you are no longer my junior, and I am no longer your senior.”

“…”

I had been told to “withdraw” many times in the past, and on those occasions, had sometimes withdrawn and sometimes hadn’t, but the message had never been presented in such a threatening manner.

I even felt slightly betrayed to discover that she was the kind of person who’d say such a thing─foolishly, shamefully, even though I talk about how all-important doubt and suspicion are, somewhere deep down, in the heart that must be somewhere inside me, I’d trusted Gaen-senpai.

I thought she wasn’t the kind of person who went to any lengths to push her agenda, and that whatever she might say, she respected personal freedom─and yet.

There was a lesson to take home from this.

But what was it?

“What’ll you do, Big Brother Kaiki?”

Ononoki addressed me thusly again─but it seemed less like a slip of the tongue due to my injunction slipping her mind than her own way of being considerate, a concession, or something like that. Or was she giving me, contrarian that I am, a nudge in the right direction so I wouldn’t make the wrong decision?

A reminder, making certain I understood that I belonged to their side.

I considered it. I had already considered it, but this time I considered it more deeply. I recalled Senjogahara’s face from the night before, puffy from crying, and recalled her words of gratitude, directed at none other than me.

Then I considered my relationship with Gaen-senpai, and my stake in all this.

I recalled the figure that had been indicated, three million yen.

“Ononoki,” I said. This time it didn’t take thirty minutes. “Sure, I’ll withdraw.”