Monogatari Series - Volume 14 - Chapter 1.06

006

“Cutting to the chase, my lord, thou art most definitely a vampire at present─just as thou didst suspect. Lacking a reflection is a purely vampiric phenomenon, it has naught to do with any other sort of aberration,” Shinobu explained. As she’d commanded, I was dressed in whatever clothes had been lying around. What had been lying around, or hanging on the wall, getting aired out, was my school uniform, which I wasn’t wearing lately since I wasn’t going to school.

You might call my look Naked Uniform.

Sexy? No?

“A vampiric phenomenon… But Shinobu, see for yourself, my toenail.”

“Quit thrusting it at me. I shall only torture thy foot once a day.”

“That’s not what I’m asking for, is it? It’s not like I enjoyed it, did I?”

“’Tis I who ought to say, see for thyself.” And she did as much. “Thy toe. ’Tis healed.”

“Huh?”

Hearing this, I grabbed my foot and peered intently at it─I had to force myself into a kind of yoga pose, but anyway, I examined the toe in question.

The nail was split, and there were traces of blood─no, it didn’t look healed to me at all.

“That is naught but a superficial view─internally, ’tis quite another matter.”

“Internally?”

“I was not there to witness the scene with mine own eyes, so I cannot be sure, but I have reason to believe that when thy sister didst stomp upon thy foot, the bones of that toe were well and truly broken.”

“Broken?”

She really did crush it!

Super painful, right?!

What the hell was that hair-washing devil thinking?!

“Calm thyself. ’Twas naught but an infinitesimal fracture.”

“An infinitesimal fracture…”

What the hell is that?

An infinitesimally small fracture?

Or does it mean the entire bone was fractured into infinitesimally small pieces?

Because the latter sounded hard to bounce back from…

“When I perpetrated my torture…er, palpitated thy toe, it felt as if the bone had been broken but had since set─which is to say, ’tis healed. Even if not entirely.”

“I see…”

Come to think of it, Senjogahara or somebody was telling me about that.

About banging your pinky toe on the corner of the dresser and curling up in pain─it might sound like just a funny story, but in fact a lot of the time people shatter the bone in their toe like that. Because a broken pinky toe doesn’t actually affect your life all that much on a practical level, it often heals up without the person ever realizing it had been broken─something like that, anyway?

Incidentally, when I tried out the “banging your pinky toe on a corner” subject on Hanekawa, her only response was, “Huh? I’ve never banged my pinky toe on a corner.” That aside, if what Shinobu said was true, it all added up.

Which reminds me, by which I mean, now that she’d said it, the excruciating pain from when it happened had vanished without a trace─interesting.

So this─was a form of healing as well?

“But it’s totally different from my impression of how a vampire’s body heals…”

“Thy impression.”

“Yeah.”

To be honest, I’m loath to compare it to spring break, when I was transformed into a full-on vampire─but back then, if my arm, or leg, or even head got blown off, it’d heal a second later.

No, the already overblown phrase “a second later” doesn’t even cover it.

If a part of my body was destroyed, it regenerated simultaneously─is, I think, closer to the truth. Hard to believe if you haven’t seen it with your own eyes.

But it’s true. I know because I didn’t just see it, I experienced it, experienced it personally─the vampiric healing factor is, how can I put this, a bat-shit crazy, fucked up, out of control, jaw-dropping thing.

Or at least I’d thought it was.

“Hmm…thou hast the right of it. But ’tis also true that no human being could heal a fractured bone in a mere hour.”

“Yeah…”

Though with Karen, all bets were off.

Not to mention Karen’s sensei.

Though never having met her sensei, I’m really just speculating on that one.

“Then I shall perform a simple test for thee. Proffer me thine arm.”

“Like this?”

“Scratch!”

Accompanied by this sound effect (?), Shinobu scratched my arm.

Like a cat.

In a feat of bodily manipulation, she’d suddenly extended her fingernails into sharpened claws.

“Owww that─doesn’t hurt?”

“I should think not. I merely grazed thy skin.” Shinobu flashed her claws for me to see. “’Tis the same level of damage as scraping the inside of thy cheek for a scientific experiment.”

“How does a vampire know anything about scientific experiments?”

“I have lived lo these five hundred years.”

It was more like six hundred, actually.

Not that I was going to hassle her about fudging her age.

It’s bad manners to talk about a woman’s age.

Not sure about an aberration’s, though.

“Okay, so you scraped my arm, now what?”

“Observe.”

“Hm?”

Unbelievably.

Or should I say inevitably?

The wound on my arm where Shinobu had scratched me vanished─well, it was never exactly a wound, but any sign of it vanished without a trace.

“Look there. Thy body hath healed itself.”

“Mm-hmm…no question about it.”

Somehow the unimpressive healing of that unimpressive wound didn’t sweep away all my misgivings, but there was no question that my healing factor, my physical regeneration, was somewhat enhanced.

“Nay, I know thy mind is not fully at ease, my lord, but be wary─I advise thee to draw those curtains closed. For should a vampire with such a meager healing ability be exposed to sunlight, he would be reduced to ash without even catching flame.”

“Oh, uh huh…”

Shinobu’s dire words filled me with dread. I rose, and contorting my body to keep it out of the sun’s rays, closed the curtains. This naturally made the room pretty dim, so I turned on the light.

“’Tis merely a precaution… ’Tis possible, nay probable, that ye might walk openly beneath the sun in safety. Simply because thou hast manifested some ability to heal meanest not that thou art fully become a vampire once more, my lord. Here now, say eee.”

“Hm?”

“Say eee.”

She said it so childishly that I failed to take her meaning, but the second time, Shinobu just did it for me─it was super cute─spreading my lips apart on the side like I was saying, “eee.”

Okay, it wasn’t that cute.

Holding my lips in that position, Shinobu inspected the area closely, then concluded with, “Aye. For now, at least, thou hast not grown fangs.”

“Really?”

“Aye. If thou believest me not, look in the mirror.”

“But the whole point is that I don’t have a reflection!”

“Ah, of course.”

Heh, a smile rose to Shinobu’s face.

Gimme a break.

On purpose or not, it was pretty annoying.

But also super cute.

“Then touch it and see,” she suggested.

“Like this?”

“Who told thee to touch mine chest? I’m talking about thine own tooth.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Her cool reaction made me feel like a plain old pervert. No, regardless of her reaction, I was a plain old pervert.

“Mm-hmm.”

“And?”

“It’s hard, feels normal.”

“’Tis not a question of texture.”

Shinobu didn’t seem too impressed that I’d remembered to throw in a nice little joke even at a time like this. “Well, it isn’t pointed. My teeth are definitely regular teeth─and very fine teeth at that, if I do say so myself. Let’s see, what other vampiric phenomena can we check for right now…”

“Why not try eating garlic for thy morning meal?”

“I don’t want to have such an intense breakfast… Wait, but if that tested positive, wouldn’t I just keel over and die?”

“Like as not.”

“I’m not liking like as not.”

It was no joke.

Sure, I was living a life where I might die at any moment, but I could never face my parents if I died just because I ate some garlic. Nor could I face Senjogahara. And not because of the garlic breath.

“Such experiments can be left for another day. At present, ’tis the most dire of scenarios to which we ought turn our minds, my lord─’tis not a reality that thou might wish to face, but in my judgment, thou art at present a half-baked vampire. If thou canst,” and here Shinobu’s tone turned serious, “I ask that thou dost trust my judgment. Lest we waste time in pointless investigations.”

“Okay. I’ll trust you.”

Which didn’t mean that my misgivings had vanished.

While my toe and skin had indeed healed, neither one seemed like an impossible occurrence, which meant that the only phenomenon of note, and my predicament at the moment, was “lacking a reflection.”

Definitely insufficient evidence to say that I was a vampire, or at least, it would be a premature conclusion─Mèmè Oshino, the expert, might even call it imprudent and rash─but.

But nonetheless.

I trusted Shinobu.

I’m embarrassed even to say it, I can’t believe I’m putting it in print, but it felt only right.

“Then it’s really you I’m worried about. Are you okay? Nothing’s happening with your body?”

“Nay. And judging from mine earlier inability to pierce thy body, my lord, my power hath not returned─”

Wait a minute, she really tried to put a hole in me?

Not a shred of mutual trust to be found in that thought.

“And what is more, our link is born purely of the drinking of blood─save for if I should bite thy neck whilst half-asleep and drink thy blood, no connection should be possible.”

“Well, I never wanted to say so, but I’ve always thought that seemed like a strong possibility.”

“Impertinent lout. Never in all my five hundred years have I been half-asleep.”

“Oh really…”

I let that one pass.

If further investigations were a waste of time, using that time for our comedy routine definitely was too. Just this once, we had to abandon the stance that the idle banter was the real point of these books.

What mattered now was whether there’d been some change in Shinobu’s body.

“Shinobu, first things first, take off your clothes. So I can take a look.”

“What dost thou intend with me?”

“I want to torture your little girl feet.”

“Thy sisters have not crushed them.”

“Shit…useless little sisters. They couldn’t even manage to give her a little wound like that?”

“I have ne’er even crossed swords with my lord’s sisters, but… That’s it,” said Shinobu, clapping her hands.

The kind of clap where you slap your fist with your open palm.

“I know who to ask.”

“Huh? Who?”

“Well, ’tis certain that some manner of change hath been wrought upon thy body, my lord─and if that change is, as I suspect, some manner of vampiric phenomenon, ’twould be best to consult an expert.”

Her arms crossed, Shinobu sounded strangely reluctant.

At least it didn’t seem like the attitude of someone who’d just been struck by a brilliant idea.

“By an expert…do you mean Oshino? Mèmè Oshino─but we don’t even know where to find him.”

“Nay, I suspect this is outside that brat’s ken─for had he harbored apprehensions that such might befall thee, he would most certainly have shared them with me.”

Shinobu wasn’t overly fond of Mèmè Oshino, the parent whose last name she bore, the master who had bound her with that name, but judging from what she just said, it wasn’t like she didn’t recognize his competence.

At least, she recognized that he wouldn’t skip town─if he knew there was still some kind of crisis lying in wait for me.

In other words, in Shinobu’s considered opinion, this situation was beyond Oshino’s control.

And of course I had no objection to that opinion. I agreed wholeheartedly.

“I know not how to grapple with thy circumstance, my lord. Which means that neither would it profit us to turn to that Aloha brat for aid, even if we knew where to find him. He is naught but useless grime upon my boot heel.”

“…”

She recognized his competence, but apparently that was it. I guess she still hated him.

Fair enough, but…

“Then who are you talking about? Who’s this person you think we should ask?”

“Thou knowest full well. When I say ‘who’ with such a nuance, ’tis clear of whom I speak,” Shinobu replied with real revulsion.

Far more revulsion even than when she spoke of Oshino, who was one of the main causes, one of the architects of her transformation from a bewitching beauty into a helpless little girl.

“I speak of Yotsugi Ononoki.”