Monogatari Series - Volume 13 - Chapter 1.28

028

The next few days passed in a humdrum routine of trips to Kita-Shirahebi Shrine, where dwelt the ophidian deity Nadeko Sengoku─it’d be nice if I could say so at this point, but unfortunately, reality isn’t that generous. Before I could begin my slow and steady progress, there was one more hurdle to overcome.

If it was even a hurdle.

The following day, January fourth. The New Year’s holiday was over, and the world had more or less returned to business as usual. The first thing I did that day was go get some breakfast.

Come to think of it, I hadn’t eaten anything since the trip to Mister Donut two nights prior. If I’m not careful, I forget to eat. Something is definitely wrong with how my brain processes hunger. Though maybe it’s just that my appetite for money outweighs my appetite for food.

After enjoying the breakfast buffet at the restaurant on the first floor of the hotel (I love the atmosphere of the all-you-can-eat experience. Or maybe the all-you-can behavior itself), I returned to my room. Then I took my morning shower, and when the time was right, I set out. I thought about trying to seal the crack under the door with tape, but if I started getting worked up over every little thing there’d be no end to it, so I gave up on the idea.

At the front desk, I asked, “Excuse me, is there anywhere around here that would sell a cat’s cradle?” I figured somewhere like Tokyu Hands or Loft would have them, but despite the fact that those places sell literally everything, they have a mysterious tendency to lack exactly the things I happen to be looking for (given that they’re big chains, maybe it’s some kind of fraud-prevention effort). So I was being cautious.

But the concierge just said, “Hunh?” and cocked his head in confusion. It was no way to react to a guest, but I understood how he felt, so I said, “Never mind.” I ended up making for Tokyu Hands after all. Even if they didn’t have an actual cat’s cradle, surely they’d have some string in the arts and crafts section.

I strolled down the main drag, keeping an eye on my surroundings just in case─in case someone was following me or watching me─but I simply couldn’t tell. Perhaps someone was tailing me, perhaps nobody was.

Gaen-senpai wouldn’t give the same warning twice, but there was a one-in-a-million chance that Ononoki might be lying in wait for me. Yet that didn’t seem to be the case either.

Maybe she was off playing with Araragi at the moment. It hadn’t been true when we met in the past, but nowadays she seemed to have become quite the liberated shikigami.

Good for her.

I guess we owe our thanks to Araragi for that.

I decided to do a little shopping. As long as I put another 10,000-yen note into the offertory box, I was pretty sure Her Snakeliness would rush out excitedly, saying, “Here’s Nadeko!” But I think it was bothering me that Senjogahara had compared what I was doing to visiting a hostess bar. I was buying some kind of offering just to emphasize that my trips to the shrine were devotional in nature.

Some kind of offering.

Fruit or flowers, the usual choice for a shrine, would only exacerbate the hostess-bar image, so I nixed that idea.

Was I being too uptight?

After giving it some thought, I decided to bring a bottle of saké, and succeeded in locating a decent liquor store. I figured most guys who were going after a girl at a hostess bar wouldn’t pick a local saké.

You could also say I was just in a playful mood since I had money to burn.

Any ethical opprobrium that I was trying to get a middle school girl drunk would be off the mark here. She was no longer a middle school girl. She was no longer human.

She was a god.

They say no god can refuse a tipple, so in fact it would disqualify her from divine status if she didn’t drink the saké, which in a certain sense would solve the whole problem.

I wanted to avoid being the jackass who upended the whole story by slipping and breaking the saké bottle on which so much was riding. I exercised the utmost care in climbing the snowy mountain path, and it was high noon by the time I arrived at Kita-Shirahebi Shrine.

It was grueling carrying a magnum of saké up that mountain.

I never wanted to do it again, but I had a feeling I was going to have to. Many times over.

I was about to put 10,000 yen into the offertory box when a thought struck me and I took out another 10,000-yen note. Twenty thousand yen altogether.

If 10,000 yen bought such an entertaining entrance, I was dying to see what 20,000 would get me.

Becoming free with my money the second I make an easy buck isn’t great, but as far as I’m concerned money exists to be spent, so no big deal.

I slipped the 20,000 yen into the offertory box.

“H-H, here, eeek!”

Nadeko Sengoku dashed out from the shrine hall as vigorously as ever, but this time her agitation got the better of her and she went tumbling. She smacked her head on the corner of the offertory box so hard I thought she might be dead.

For better or for worse she was a god, so she got right back up, seeming relatively unhurt. She was unable to hide her agitation, however.

“T-Twenty thousand? M-Mister Kaiki, did you mean to do that? You know you can’t have it back, right?!”

“…”

Apparently, Nadeko Sengoku was only comfortable with donations of up to 10,000 yen. Her position that, such limitations notwithstanding, money once put into the offertory box couldn’t be returned was laudable. She was like a contemporary videogame arcade.

“It’s fine.”

“A-Are you paying for tomorrow in advance?”

“That’s just for today…and I brought this.” I placed the bottle of saké on the offertory box; I couldn’t get it to stand up on the uneven surface, so I lay it on its side. “A special treat for you.”

“Oh! Saké! Nadeko’s been wanting to try some!”

A real boozehound─unfortunately, she was a “god” after all. Though basically all monstrosities have a taste for alcohol, not just gods.

But something about the way she said it bothered me. Was it a craving carried over from her time as a human being?

“Dad only ever drank, like, beer, so this’ll be Nadeko’s first time drinking, like, saké!”

“…”

Roger. I wasn’t going to pursue it too deeply, but I got the impression that back when she was human, Nadeko Sengoku had been sneaking sips behind her parents’ backs.

The kind of people who would say, “She doesn’t look the type,” or, “That’s not like her,” had almost certainly driven her to her current state, so I didn’t feel like I could say anything. Not that I’m the kind of moralist who gets preachy over a bit of booze to begin with.

“Mister Kaiki, what’s the difference between beer and saké!”

“If it’s made from barley, it’s beer, and if it’s made from rice, it’s saké.” With this crude explanation I wrapped up that portion of the conversation and moved on to the next offering, or present. “I brought you this,” I said, handing Nadeko Sengoku the cat’s cradle. “Now you don’t need to use a snake. I got you a bunch of spares as well, so you can pass the time playing to your heart’s content.”

“Thanks! With this Nadeko can kill time until it’s time to kill Big Brother Koyomi!”

Because she always spoke in the same excited tone, it was hard to tell if the kid was actually excited, present-progressive. She was excitable, sure, but that could simply be because she was amped up, high, which is precisely why a sudden mention of killing Araragi, for instance, froze my blood.

I’m not a moralist, nor am I so fragile that I can’t bear to see someone die, but that didn’t mean I could remain calm in the face of such blithe deployment of the word kill.

Naturally my expression remained placid.

The two are totally separate.

“It’s not just a way to kill time, Sengoku, cat’s cradle is a deep, even profound pursuit.”

I taught her some new tricks from among the ones in A Cat’s Cradle Compendium that I’d memorized the day before.

I judged it best to stay focused on cat’s cradle and not let the conversation drift for that day. We played for a few hours, then I said, “See you tomorrow,” and left the shrine.

I could tell that Nadeko Sengoku was waving goodbye behind me, but ignored it. It wasn’t like I’d swallowed what Senjogahara said, but I might as well exercise caution about being won over by Nadeko Sengoku’s devilish wiles and not be too impatient in my bid to make friends with her.

I’d left behind the huge bottle, so the descent was a breeze. And then, when I reached the bottom of the mountain, it happened. I meant to keep my eyes out for anyone following me on the walk back to the station, but as it turned out there was no need.

Because there she was, in plain view.

Waiting for me at the entrance to the stairway that led up to the shrine.