Monogatari Series - Volume 14 - Chapter 1.10

010

It may be a little late at this point to insert “the story so far.” It feels like I missed the window, and frankly it’s a total embarrassment as a narrator─but if I’m going to explain everything in proper sequence, it’s got to be now or never.

Where to begin? I guess it’s got to be spring break─that hellish spring break.

Or no, strictly speaking, just before it started?

That bloodsucking spring when I was attacked by a vampire, when I became a vampire─up until then I had somehow managed to make my way down the road of humanity, sometimes unsteady on my feet, sometimes going off course of course, but that spring I strayed entirely.

That was about a year ago.

Once I became a vampire, it was neither a kinslaying vampire nor a half-vampire nor a vampire-hunting spec ops team who saved me─but a heaven-sent class president with braids and glasses, and an older guy in a Hawaiian shirt.

And I became human once more, a demon no longer.

Give or take a few lingering after-effects.

And they all lived happily ever after.

Except when they didn’t.

I’ve already told you all of this, so let’s skip ahead a month─to Golden Week. The end of April and into the beginning of May─a nightmare. Tsubasa Hanekawa, who’d played a central role in restoring my humanity, was bewitched by a cat.

It took more than a spritz of water in the face to repel that malicious, murderous feline assault on Hanekawa─on the world itself. I did it by exploiting my vampiric power.

The might of a vampire.

I employed the vampiric strength that I lost over spring break, which you’d think I would’ve abhorred, that power I risked my life to escape, and defeated the cat─well, temporarily sealed it away, anyway.

Incidentally, I regained my vampiric power by giving my blood to Shinobu. By letting the little girl bite me in the neck. It all comes down to this. At the time, Shinobu was not yet bound in my shadow, so I had to give her blood at regular intervals, but on that occasion I let her exceed her usual dosage─and so was able to turn into a vampire, or more precisely, a thrall of the Aberration Slayer.

I was able to─for better or for worse.

But then, during the subsequent school term─when Oshino was still around, in other words─the only time I really used my vampiric power was that time with Kanbaru, the thing with her and the monkey.

With Senjogahara, who met a crab.

With Hachikuji, waylaid by a snail.

With Sengoku, entangled by a snake.

Not to mention the second time Hanekawa was bewitched by the cat─on each occasion I dealt with the aberration-related phenomenon in question solely as a human being.

If Ononoki was right and I in fact leaned too hard on my power as a vampire, it had to be later on─like when Karen Araragi was stung by a bee.

When she was stung by a bee thanks to Kaiki’s scheming─I used my vampiric healing factor to absorb some of the blistering fever that wracked her body.

And then it was Tsukihi’s turn.

The matter both concerning and involving Tsukihi─it was Obon, and that was when it came to blows with Ms. Kagenui and Ononoki. In order to battle the Aberration Roller, slayer of immortal aberrations, I transformed myself into an immortal aberration. A vampire.

To tell the truth, even having commandeered the strength of a vampire, I was no match for Ms. Kagenui─but regardless, that must’ve been the inflection point.

When I stopped being human.

And began metamorphosing into a vampire.

A rapid-fire series of aberration-related phenomena cropped up since the last day of summer break and throughout second term─and each time, to deal with them, I turned into an immortal vampire.

I got used to using my vampiric power, relying on my vampiric power, wielding my vampiric power to deal with these unreliable and unwieldy aberration-related phenomena─sometimes I even used it to deal with other things.

I leaned on it most heavily when Sengoku was entangled by a snake for the second time─no, when she was the one who entangled the snake.

That was when it really started.

I wanted to save Sengoku.

So I turned into a vampire almost every day hoping to resolve the situation─which wasn’t very effective as it turned out, and in fact effectively one hundred percent counter-productive, but anyway, that went on for a month, two months.

And that brings us to the present moment.

The present situation.

The present phenomenon.

“Basically, monstieur, you spent too much time as an immortal aberration. You overdid it, blithely bouncing back and forth like that. I imagine that as far as you were aware, you weren’t ‘overdoing’ anything, let alone ‘blithely,’ but still…” said Ononoki.

I sensed something like sympathy in her tone, but that had to be my own self-serving imagination─she was speaking in her quiet, placid voice like always.

Placid, and expressionless.

“No…I did do it blithely.”

I had to admit it.

I had to acknowledge it.

It wasn’t the first time someone pointed this out to me─Senjogahara and Hanekawa and others from the female camp had warned that I was blithely over-relying on my power as an immortal ever since Oshino’s disappearance.

Not that I was self-aware about it.

But it was definitely true that any reluctance I’d once felt about using my vampiric power─about becoming immortal, had slowly but surely faded. Not only that, but I felt a strange sense of connection every time I used my vampiric power to fight alongside a reinvigorated Shinobu.

Euphoria?

Well, there was certainly some of that.

Of course there was.

Anyone with a pulse would feel the same way.

Any average high school student who got to wield a power that transcends the human realm, transcends human knowledge, and denies the thrill of it would be full of it─as would anyone who denies getting lost in all that power.

“So you’re saying that because I borrowed Shinobu’s strength too frequently, I myself fully transformed into a vampire? But I was being so careful to avoid that!”

Oshino had cautioned me over and over again, after all: to maintain Shinobu’s existence in this world, I had to keep giving her my blood in perpetuity, but I also needed to be super-careful about the dosage.

He strictly enjoined me that if I gave her too much, if I let her drink too much blood, Shinobu would become an aberration once again─the aberration-slaying king of aberrations.

At the same time.

He enjoined me (just as strictly) that I would transform into a vampire as well. So even when I let Shinobu drink my blood so I could fight, I never once exceeded the proper threshold─at least I didn’t think I did.

“You’re not listening, it’s not about your relationship with Big Sis Shinobu. It’s totally unrelated to you giving her your blood. Well, it’s indirectly related, of course, but…the why and how and who-drank-your-blood of your transformations into a vampire isn’t really the issue. Until now you’ve been ‘metamorphosing’ by borrowing Big Sis Shinobu’s power, but it would’ve been the same if you’d borrowed from a different vampire each time.”

“…”

“Let me give it to you straight, monstieur. I’ll put it as plainly as I can. It’s not that you became a vampire too often, it’s that you became too comfortable about becoming one. You got too used to using the power. You got too good at it─at this point you could become a vampire even without Shinobu.”

“Wait.”

Wait a sec.

I couldn’t keep up─no, that wasn’t true, I was keeping up, or in fact, I’d finished the upkeep on my mental filing cabinet a while ago. I was convinced. So if this were somebody else’s problem, I would’ve totally agreed with her here. I’d probably have praised her to the skies: Great deduction, Ononoki.

But this was my problem.

No matter how true, if it was also tragic, if it was also a failure I didn’t want to acknowledge─I couldn’t swallow it just like that.

“But Ononoki. Is it…is it really that easy to become a vampire? You just do it too much, get too used to doing it, and then you’ve done it?”

“Dance with the devil, and you’ll become the devil─play with a demon, and you’ll become a demon. And you really took the initiative playing that game.”

“I…didn’t feel like I was playing.”

“Of course you didn’t, young man, that’s just a manner of speaking. You were dead serious. I reckon I can vouch for that myself, having battled you in your vampire form. Otherwise, a body wouldn’t have backed off,” Ms. Kagenui, silent all this time, finally interjected.

Well, Ononoki was only ever acting as her mouthpiece anyway, and as her familiar the opinions she expressed were most likely hers and Ms. Kagenui’s, there being no difference between the two.

“Or maybe I ought to say you were seriously off your rocker. It might sound strange for me to go around jawing about what’s normal, but normal sure as shooting doesn’t include becoming a monster to protect your little sister.”

“…”

“Listen, young man, this might seem to you like it’s coming out of left field, but it’s not as uncommon as all that─it’s not easy, but it’s not all that uncommon either. There are even those among us experts what end up becoming aberrations themselves. It’s a particularly marked tendency among my closest colleagues, by which I mean onmyoji. Which is why, to avoid it,” Ms. Kagenui’s gaze dropped to Ononoki beneath her feet.

A chilly gaze, her eyes cold.

“I employ this here stand-in.”

“…”

“That’s how dangerous facing an aberration head-on can be─Oshino must’ve told you? That once you’ve dealt with an aberration, you’re much more liable to get drawn in again.”

He did tell me that, yes.

But what he didn’t tell me…

“If I transformed into a vampire too often, I’d end up as one myself─that, he never mentioned.”

“Because he failed to see it. What kind of a person you are, I mean. That was where he miscalculated. No, maybe never calculated at all─can’t miscalculate if you never calculated in the first place. Sure enough, that’s why I say it was an oversight. He never predicted that you, young man, would transform into a vampire so frequently in such a short span.”

“That…”

That definitely wasn’t a miscalculation─nor was it an oversight.

Uh-uh.

That was an error in judgment.

“So you’re saying…I betrayed Oshino’s faith in me? Is that what it boils down to? He never expected me to do it. To keep on borrowing the power of an immortal aberration so blithely─to rely too much on a vampire─”

Shinobu.

He entrusted the former Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade to me, entrusted her to my shadow, and I betrayed that trust.

I couldn’t live up to his expectations.

Shinobu’s power, Shinobu’s existence.

I used them like convenient tools─and that was something not even he could’ve seen.

Which is why he never informed me of this possibility.

Nor did he inform─Shinobu.

He almost certainly.

Thought it’d be rude.

“…”

“’Course, we can only guess at what Oshino’s intentions might’ve been─for all we know, he just plumb forgot. And what about this, young man: supposing he’d told you about this possibility, would you have shrunk from making use of the vampire’s power? Even if you’d known it would cost you your humanity, you’d’ve done it anyway, no?”

Words of comfort.

Were something I’d never expect to hear from Ms. Kagenui. She was too violent, too careless, too oblivious. Probably she was just thinking out loud.

There’s really no way of knowing what I would’ve done.

If I’d known beforehand, maybe I could’ve done something about it, or maybe I’d have been well and truly scared off.

“So you’re saying the reason my healing factor is so slow…or that I have a healing factor at all, even if it’s non-existent compared to when I was Shinobu’s thrall over spring break, the fact that I have some level of immortality, is proof that my transformation into a vampire is unconnected to Shinobu? In other words, I’m not transforming into Shinobu’s thrall, but into my own brand─my own breed of vampire.”

“That’s about the size of it. Though, typologically speaking, I reckon you’d be treated as a natural vampire.”

“There are two types of vampires, monstieur. Two breeds. Natural vampires, and human beings who become vampires after being bitten by one─it might seem like you belong in the latter category, but as it happens you’re classified as the former. Someone who transforms into a vampire, who becomes one, is a natural vampire.”

“I don’t really understand that reasoning…”

I never really understood what I was told over spring break either, but this seemed even more confusing.

Or rather, viewing vampires as organisms and trying to understand their ecology already seemed outside the framework of human understanding.

“Seems like the incident involving the serpent deity was the biggest problem─you really, really, really, really, really overdid it there, monstieur─you turned into a vampire almost every day. ‘High frequency’ doesn’t even begin to cover it. You spent more time as a vampire than you did as a human during that period, didn’t you?”

“Sure…”

It was my fault that Sengoku had done that─that she ended up like that. Or I felt responsible, at least─so that’s why.

That’s why.

“I think I’ve got some kind of grasp of the situation. I wouldn’t call it a firm grip, but…what do I do, Ononoki?”

“Do about what?” she threw the question back to me so ingenuously that I fell silent for a moment─and a bad feeling washed over me, but I quickly dispelled it, interpreting her response as a request to be more specific. I rephrased my question.

“What do I do to become human again?”

When was it?

It must’ve been over spring break that I’d asked Shinobu more or less the same question─what had her answer been?

Whatever, that was the past.

How she answered back then was irrelevant─what I needed to know.

And the one thing I knew I didn’t want to hear─was Ononoki’s hopeless reply.

“Kind monster sir,” she said.

Like a doll, looking at me with those doll’s eyes.

Without hesitation or consideration.

“There’s no way to fix this.”