Monogatari Series - Volume 13 - Chapter 1.23

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023

Naturally I had no intention of withdrawing, and after taking the three million from Ononoki, I headed directly to Kita-Shirahebi Shrine.

Right off the bat, the money covered the costs of securing the attentions of my hostess, I mean the deity─the alms required to draw her out of the shrine. I was happy not to have to worry about my Sengoku Pilgrimage anymore. At 10,000 yen a day, I could make three hundred visits. Even if I went to the shrine every day until graduation, more than half the money would be left over.

And I was ecstatic to have all my travel and accommodation expenses taken care of. True, the price was making an enemy of Gaen-senpai, but upon consideration she was already something of an enemy, so in fact I was somewhat relieved that the onerous cord was finally cut. Getting a severance package to boot? Hip hip hooray. Were things going a little too well for me?

I felt like a new man as I ascended the mountain and worshipped at the shrine─and by “worshipped” I mean put a 10,000-yen note into the offertory box.

“Here’s Nadeko!” The serpent god appeared in exactly the same way she had the day before. It reminded me of a piggy bank they used to sell at Tokyu Hands. “Ah, Mister Kaiki! You came!” she greeted.

“Well, I am your very first believer, after all.” I’d taken a shine to the ridiculous turn of phrase and was keeping it going for a second day. Nadeko Sengoku looked pleased (how starved was she for believers?), but at the same time I felt like it hadn’t quite done the trick, so I added, “The truth is there’s something I want desperately, so I’ve decided to make a hundred-day pilgrimage to this shrine. I’ll come every day until my wish is granted.”

“A hundred-day pilgrimage, huh? Nadeko…might’ve done one of those before…or not?”

She cocked her head along with the vague pronouncement. Probably it wasn’t that her memory was vague; it just didn’t matter to her. Maybe she’d made an attempt but hadn’t had the will to keep it up.

“So, what’s your wish, Mister Kaiki? Is it something Nadeko can grant for you?”

“Ah, it’s a little hard to sum up.”

She was so lacking in majesty that I lost track of the fact that she was supposed to be the object of my pilgrimage, but if I was going to make a hundred-day commitment, sooner or later I needed to tell her what my as-yet-nonexistent wish was.

It seemed that for the first time in my life (or maybe not, but anyway, for the first time I could recall), I’d be praying to a god.

“Hard to sum up? Like romantic stuff? That kind of thing?” She was probably conflating my wish with what she was dealing with─or had dealt with. “At your age, Mister Kaiki, does it mean you’re hoping to get married?”

“Not a chance.” I could feel my tone getting overly serious. I had to wonder why I was being so vehement about it but couldn’t stop myself from continuing, “Have you ever played a game called Dragon Quest?”

“Hm? Played, no, but Nadeko’s heard of it.”

“Then maybe you’ll understand. It’s an RPG where you save up gold pieces on your way to beating a demon lord.”

“Okay…”

“But if you get killed by a monster, you lose half the gold you worked so hard to save up.”

“Right, right.”

“When you get married, the same thing happens,” I said, giving her a significant look. “So marriage is the same as death.”

“Um…” Nadeko Sengoku smiled in seeming perplexity. Maybe she really was perplexed. “Th-Then, how about marrying someone who’s richer than you?”

“You don’t get it, do you? I don’t want to lose any of my own money. It’s not about gaining more from the other person than I would lose.” My voice was taking on a fevered tone, so regaining some of my composure, I wrapped things up: “Anyway, I’m not interested in getting married. It’s impossible to sum up in a few words, like I said.” Forget summing it up, I could expend every word at my disposal and still not be able to convey a wish that didn’t exist yet… “If I have to, though, let’s say commercial prosperity.”

“Co-mersh-ul-pro-sper-uh-tee,” Nadeko Sengoku repeated my words back to me as though she was struggling with the spelling. That’d be one thing, but if she didn’t know what the words meant, we were in real trouble. “Um, what’s your job then, Mister Kaiki?” she asked.

“That’s also a little hard to sum up.”

Actually it was easy. All you needed was one word: swindler. But telling her that would ruin my plan. She may have forgotten the name Deishu Kaiki, but I was pretty sure she remembered falling victim to a “charm” because of a swindler.

Maybe she’d forgotten, but putting it to the test was too dangerous.

“I’ll be making one hundred visits─ninety-eight more, to be precise. So there’s no hurry, I’ll explain it little by little.”

“…Okay! Sounds good!”

Even Nadeko Sengoku seemed to find this a little suspicious, but apparently the prospect of ninety-eight more visits won out, and she was all smiles.

Was she the type where a negative emotion gets erased as soon as a positive emotion comes along? I envy how simple life must be for such a person. Well, she was no longer a person, and as a human, she must have been much more negative.

But─now.

Now, at last.

“Tell me about yourself, Mister Kaiki, a little bit at a time! Nadeko will listen! Because that’s what gods do!”

“…”

She could quit harping on the god thing.

Maybe she was just excited because she was new at it─or was it not being human anymore that excited her, that she wanted to emphasize?

Either was fine by me, but both surpassed my comprehension. Fortunately, I didn’t have to get it.

“Okay, for today just teach Nadeko some more cat’s cradle! Like you promised! Nadeko pretty much mastered all the tricks from yesterday!”

Nadeko Sengoku came down from the main hall, leapt over the offertory box in a single bound, and landed beside me. Quite the athlete─and tomboy.

Had she been like that as a human being?

Leaping over the offertory box, a receptacle for cash, was nothing short of blasphemous. Then again, she’d removed the 10,000-yen note I had tossed in there, and if it was empty, it was probably the god’s prerogative to jump over it or do anything else she damn well pleased.

“Right, cat’s cradle,” I nodded, inwardly preening. My practice had made perfect. I could reproduce all these moves flawlessly in my mind. The book itself, I had (hidden but ultimately) given to that shikigami girl as a present (I hadn’t yet memorized the whole thing but was feeling generous). The evidence was gone. There was no danger that my pretense would come to light.

“Sure. Get out the cat’s cradle I gave you yesterday.” By which I meant the impromptu loop of string I’d made.

“Oh, that? Nadeko played with it so much it broke,” Nadeko Sengoku reported, without a moment’s hesitation, the overnight destruction of my gift. I wasn’t even sure where the piece of string had come from, so it wouldn’t be very mature of me to get mad─but what to do?

If only I’d stopped somewhere and bought a proper cat’s cradle, but I’d come straight to the shrine from Starbucks. Not that I knew how a proper one would be better.

“So Nadeko’s been practicing with this instead!” she said, producing a loop of string. She made a new one with some string that was lying around? Great, then there’s no problem─I thought, but there was a big problem. The loop Sengoku produced wasn’t made of just any piece of string, but from a white snake presumably plucked from her own head.

The slender serpent was holding its own tail in its mouth like a mini-ouroboros. And Nadeko Sengoku was handing this horrifying cat’s cradle to me with a big smile on her face.

“’Kay, Mister Kaiki! Do it, do it!”

“…”

I felt an urgent need to re-program my mental simulator. I was ashamed at my own lack of foresight for coming this far without ever expecting to perform cat’s cradle with a snake, and I needed to adjust my understanding of Nadeko Sengoku.