Monogatari Series - Volume 14 - Chapter 1.13

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“Tadatsuru Teori─puppeteer,” said Ms. Kagenui.

It didn’t require much effort to discern the unmistakable feelings of antipathy, not to say animosity, Ms. Kagenui felt towards this individual.

She was visibly aggravated.

“Tadatsuru?”

She’d spoken the name when she was talking to Ms. Gaen on the phone earlier, hadn’t she? But at the time, I hadn’t realized it was a person’s name─

In the end, Ononoki and I hadn’t found anything other than the “calling card,” so with it in hand we turned around and headed right back to the vacant land, er, wasteland where the ruins of the cram school had stood.

“Um,” I started to tell Ms. Kagenui about what we’d found─my junior and my two little sisters had disappeared almost as if they’d vanished into thin air, the futons still warm─but she cut me off.

“No need.”

It seemed like she grasped everything her familiar was doing if she put her mind to it, so maybe she just understood what was going on without my needing to explain.

I hadn’t imagined that Ononoki’s every experience might be getting transmitted to Ms. Kagenui…

Did they have an actual telepathic connection, even if it was a one-way street?

That’d be a hell of a thing.

Thinking back, there might’ve been a few shady moments I’d rather Ms. Kagenui didn’t know about, but all I could do was comfort myself with the thought that she couldn’t have the full picture. I didn’t want to deal with any more stress than I already had to.

Well, even if she’d gotten an indirect grasp of the situation through her familiar’s eyes, seeing something in person was different, so I went to hand over the string of cranes I was holding.

Ms. Kagenui just glanced at it, though, and made no move to take it─almost like she’d seen something unclean.

Assuming that thing wasn’t me─it was the cranes she loathed.

Then she’d said:

Tadatsuru Teori.

Puppeteer.

“Tadatsuru, you say…” I was studying for my college entrance exams, aspiring to attend a national university─and anyway, math had always been my strongest subject.

Tadatsuru, Yozuru, Yotsugi─sine, cosine, cotangent.

Each of their names was an alternate reading of a trigonometric function. Which naturally made me curious to triangulate some kind of connection between Ms. Kagenui and Ononoki─and that puppeteer…

Seemed like there had to be some kind of common denominator.

But judging from Ms. Kagenui’s brusque manner, it felt intrusive to ask…or rather, given the current emergency, I’d rather not take the time to ask if I could get away with it.

All I wanted was to find out where Kanbaru and Karen and Tsukihi were.

That was my overriding priority.

“Hm?”

“I just…”

“Tadatsuru is a puppeteer and, well, an expert─an expert of sorts who specializes in immortal aberrations, just like yours truly. I reckon I already told you that.”

She put extra oomph into the just like yours truly, but I was pretty sure it was not because she wanted to emphasize that fact.

In fact, it sounded like her tone had become more emphatic in spite of herself, because she couldn’t stand it─she just couldn’t say it calmly.

But asking about that felt intrusive too.

I didn’t feel like I could point it out.

It’s not like I wasn’t interested─in what kind of relationship Ms. Kagenui had with this Tadatsuru person, and I might need to know at some point─but given the current vibe, I couldn’t come right out and ask her.

“When you say you already told me that,” I began cautiously.

Although Ms. Kagenui was a violent person, I didn’t think she was the type to make sparks fly for no reason, and maybe I didn’t need to be so cautious. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but be on my guard. I was terrified that she might fly into a rage.

“You mean that this person─is the stray expert, right? A stray dog, the lone wolf who doesn’t belong to Ms. Gaen’s faction─”

“If you don’t,” said Ononoki.

Interrupting me.

Incidentally, it seemed that the entire time Ononoki had been gone, Ms. Kagenui had been standing on top of a rock (I had a hard time seeing the distinction between that rock and the ground, but I’m sure there was one). Now she was back on Ononoki’s shoulders.

“If you don’t belong to Ms. Gaen’s faction, then you essentially don’t belong, period…since what Ms. Gaen has is less of a faction and more of a network. In other words, Tadatsuru is like an off-line computer.”

“Yotsugi. No need to tell him anything irrelevant,” Ms. Kagenui reproved her familiar.

I wasn’t sure which part of that could possibly be “irrelevant”─but I felt like that piece of intel sufficed to give me a sense of just how exceptional this Tadatsuru Teori was.

Even Mèmè Oshino and Deishu Kaiki, misfits to the end, were part of Ms. Gaen’s faction─network. Those two, those two were.

But Tadatsuru.

Wasn’t.

In which case, I couldn’t even begin to imagine how stray this dog was─and when I forced myself, all I could envision was someone too outsized for words like eccentric or ominous. He loomed large, and I started to get scared.

“So you’re saying that an expert who specializes in immortal aberrations─is the one who abducted my sisters and my friend? Then, his goal is…”

This was a kidnapping.

It was easy to get distracted thanks to the involvement of aberrations and experts, but this was a clear case of kidnapping─it certainly wasn’t some spiriting-away. Depending on the facts, depending on how they unfolded, we’d need to alert the police post-haste.

No, it was ninety-nine percent clear that we needed to, but on the off chance that we’d be devising another solution ourselves…

“What, Ms. Kagenui? What does─Tadatsuru Teori want?”

“I reckon I ought to call Gaen-senpai before I answer─a body’s subjectivity can muddy the waters, after all. Subjectivity, or personal feelings. What I can tell you is that our boy Tadatsuru…” Whereupon Ms. Kagenui described Tadatsuru Teori in what actually seemed to me a very detached way. It seemed like a real rarity for a straight shooter like Ms. Kagenui─“has a tendency to let his personal enmities guide his actions, so his professional work is weak. By virtue of which, the present situation isn’t as hopeless as you might imagine, young man. But…”

“But?”

“I want to make it absolutely clear to you that in this situation, as always, you mustn’t fall back on your vampiric power. Let’s get that straight before you find out what’s going on and fly off the handle.”

“…”

So was she anticipating a situation that would make me fly off the handle? While I may not be quick-tempered, I am quick to jump to conclusions, and I was ready to fly off the handle right then and there─but because I was dealing with Ms. Kagenui, a violent onmyoji who was itching to shut me up with one blow from her fist, I somehow managed to retain my composure.

“I understand that,” I managed to respond. “If I keep on transforming into a vampire─not having a reflection will be the least of my worries. I get it already.”

“Do you really, though? I declined to bring it up when we were jawing earlier, but─it isn’t just you. Who can’t transform into a vampire, I mean,” reminded Ms. Kagenui, looking down at my feet.

It was night, and the moonlight wasn’t that bright, so my shadow was hard to see unless you really strained your eyes─but I guess an expert like her could even see Shinobu Oshino where she lurked in my shadow.

Could stare at her.

“The former Heartunderblade mustn’t transform into a vampire, either.”

“…”

“Stands to reason, I reckon. That’s the inevitable logical conclusion, isn’t it? The soul linkage between you and the former Heartunderblade is a geometric progression─so if you don’t transform into a vampire, the former Heartunderblade can’t regain the power what she’s lost. Your companion must henceforth remain an eight-year-old girl in perpetuity.”

It occurred to me that, depending on how you looked at it, that might not be such bad news, but of course it was. Shinobu being stuck as an eight-year-old girl might be an even bigger problem than my own inability to transform into a vampire.

“Yup…” I tried to nod along as if I was already well aware of that, but I’m not sure I pulled it off. It was just as she’d said, of course, I didn’t need to be told that it was the inevitable logical conclusion, and it would’ve been weird if I’d been surprised when Ms. Kagenui pointed it out─but even though I felt like I had a handle on it, however tenuous, “discouraged” doesn’t even begin to cover how I felt, confronted with the naked truth like that.

Discouragement, yeah, that was what I felt more keenly than anything.

It made me realize just how much I’d been counting on Shinobu─unconsciously. I realized just how much I’d been counting on the power and battle prowess that Shinobu─that Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade regained when she drank my blood, even if it was only a fraction of her true strength.

Yes.

Finally, ultimately, I guess what I’d been relying on wasn’t my own strength as a vampire, but Shinobu’s─or more than that, maybe I had just been counting on my partner Shinobu Oshino.

The things I’d taken for granted.

And in so doing lost, and betrayed─

“It’s kind of funny, though, isn’t it?”

“Hmm? What is, young man?”

“Well, over spring break I’d wanted to seal away Shinobu’s power─and yet, suddenly, I was using that power to deal with all sorts of problems.”

I joined Ms. Kagenui in looking down at my shadow. Despite the fact that it was my own shadow, unlike Ms. Kagenui I couldn’t discern anything within it. Though I’m pretty sure Shinobu was in there. And would stay in there.

“How can I put this… The power that I thought I was using only as a last resort, as an underhanded makeshift means of getting me through this or that situation, the temporary power that I thought I was just borrowing─suddenly I was exploiting it as though it were my own, without a second thought… Maybe this divine punishment was only to be expected.”

“Divine punishment?”

It was Ononoki who reacted to my words.

Yotsugi Ononoki.

“I wonder─you’re obviously reaping what you’ve sown, kind monster sir, but I’m not sure that it’s divine punishment.”

“…? What do you mean?”

“Well now,” Ms. Kagenui took over for Ononoki, “I reckon she’s saying the timing is a little too good for it to be divine punishment─and when the timing is too good, assuming it’s not simply a coincidence, more often than not it’s been orchestrated that way.”

It’s the work of people, not gods.

“For your sisters and your friend to be abducted by an acquaintance of ours on the very day your reflection ceases to be, the day your vampirification exceeds the limits of your humanity, so to speak─now that’s just a little too much of a coincidence.”

“…”

Well.

It’s not like that didn’t make sense─it rang a distant bell, in fact.

Hadn’t Deishu Kaiki once said something similar to me? Oh yeah, it was the first time Ms. Kagenui and Ononoki came to town. Over the summer, on Obon.

He said something like, “Coincidences are generally a product of malice”─but then again, in that case it was Deishu Kaiki himself who was the malicious source.

I said, “It hasn’t been all that uncommon for my bills to come due all at once these days─I mean, lately it’s been nothing but, endlessly paying for my own tomfoolery. All the stuff that’s been piling up, the stuff I’ve been putting on the shelf, has come crashing down on me at the same time─”

“Been brought crashing down, more like, wouldn’t you say? Like a game of Jenga. At least according to what I hear from Gaen-senpai─and from Yotsugi here.”

“…”

By what she heard from Ononoki, did Ms. Kagenui mean that thing with the “Darkness”─or the thing with Mayoi Hachikuji? Now that was the ultimate example of something I put on the shelf.

And the ultimate example of something that came crashing down.

“Can I ask you something, Ms. Kagenui?”

“What is it.”

“It’s… This might sound strange, but is this Tadatsuru Teori guy the kind of righteous person or whatever whose ideology won’t allow for any indiscretions or iniquities? Who believes that there’s a proper form to the world, and that the world ought to be in that proper form─that just as the Earth turns on its axis, so too should the globe inscribe an ellipsis through the cosmos, that kind of thing?”

“Ideology? Ha─”

What a hoot, replied Ms. Kagenui.

Though she wasn’t smiling at all, not even a tiny bit.

She wore the most serious expression imaginable.

“He’s utterly divorced from such things. And by such things I mean anything like righteousness, or a proper form. Not only that, he’s utterly divorced from anything resembling an ideology at all. Enmity doesn’t constitute an ideology, does it? Other than our mutual focus on immortal aberrations, he and I have nothing whatsoever in common.”

“…”

That almost made it sound like her own violence stemmed from some kind of ideology, but if I brought that up now the argument might go on forever, so I decided to keep things on the subject of Tadatsuru Teori for the time being.

Though all I really wanted to know was Tadatsuru’s stance on aberrations─because if he was anything like that “Darkness,” that black hole swallowing up all errors─then my friend and my little sisters, or at least two out of the three, were in real trouble. They were in for a rectification of all their indiscretions, all their monkey business.

The thought made my blood boil, and I wanted to pour all that boiling-hot blood down Shinobu’s throat, to mobilize all my heightened senses and search for the girls.

If I did, I could have them safe and sound in a few hours at most─I don’t know.

The idea was massively appealing, but the immediate presence of Ms. Kagenui and Ononoki, very much not my sworn allies, was a reliable deterrent.

Calm down.

That’d be the wrong move.

That’d be like taking out another loan to repay your current one─then I’d really be in hot water, like I was trying to keep a failing business afloat once all its liquid assets had dried up. Acquiring power came with a price, which lent a certain sense of self-sacrifice to that course of action, and as long as I was the only sacrificial victim, it felt like it was worth a shot─but it wasn’t that simple.

I had to keep in mind, I had to be clearly, overtly self-aware.

That if I ceased to exist, if this human being ceased to exist, there were people who would feel a deep sense of loss, if nothing else─I.

Needed to be thoroughly aware of that.

I needed to realize that.

If I became blinded by that spirit of self-sacrifice in the course of this rescue mission because I didn’t care what happened to me, I’d be depriving them of the part of themselves that I represented─I’d be tearing off one of their limbs, almost.

If push came to shove, it still might come down to that.

But it wasn’t time to make that decision yet.

“Supposing Tadatsuru did have something like an ideology, it would have to be based on─aesthetic curiosity, I reckon. Though I’m a mite hesitant to apply the word ‘aesthetic’ to that man.”

“Hunh?”

Aesthetic curiosity?

Not a phrase I was used to hearing.

Intellectual curiosity, maybe, but─

“He’s possessed of the sense that it’s precisely what God did not create that is beautiful─that the existence of aberrations created by humankind is beautiful. He fancies himself an artist. That’s his failing.”

“…”

Fancies himself an artist.

She─didn’t mean it in a positive way, did she?

“I’m keen to take on immortal aberrations because, as you’ve seen for yourself, I despise them for their wickedness─but from what I’ve heard, Tadatsuru is the exact opposite.”

“The exact opposite…”

“He loves them for their beauty.”

I may not be the most perceptive guy, but even I could tell that the preface, or the obviously unnecessary annotation, from what I’ve heard, was a lie. And Ms. Kagenui didn’t even try to pretend that it wasn’t. But by lying about how close she and Tadatsuru were, she was indicating that she didn’t care to divulge the truth.

“Even if it’s not an ideology, though, he is very particular, so your sisters and your friend are still safe. Safer than they’d be if I was gunning for them, at any rate.”

“Well, that’s not saying a whole…”

I trailed off because it seemed like finishing that sentence might deprive me of any modicum of safety I might have enjoyed until then.

“But if he possesses this sense of the aesthetic worth of aberrations, why does he take them on? I guess it’s not the same as being the Aberration Roller or the Aberration Slayer, but in the end, isn’t he still exterminating aberrations?”

“His position is more like Oshino’s, I reckon. Rather than exterminating aberrations, he makes his living as an intermediary or…a neutral mediator, I suppose? An art dealer understands the value of art and appreciates its beauty, but buys and sells it with plain old money. It’s like that.”

“…”

An art dealer isn’t an art collector, was that it? Or maybe was it more like the contradiction inherent in an animal lover working at a zoo, where they lock animals in cages?

Actually, I didn’t think that was a contradiction.

People who love to read books become writers─and if you really think about it, that’s a grand contradiction, but the world is founded on such contradictions, it’s positively foundering in them, so contradictions become normalized until finally they aren’t contradictions anymore.

Then again, if you ask me, although on the surface the old chestnut about the unbeatable spear and the unbeatable shield seems like a clear example of a paradox, the underlying assumption is a little bit strange.

The unbeatable spear. The unbeatable shield.

Either one is already a contradiction in terms─because the moment a decidedly not unbeatable human being is wielding something, it stops being unbeatable.

Like how I couldn’t get a handle on Shinobu’s vampiric power─and ended up overindulging.

Like how I betrayed Oshino’s expectations, betrayed his faith in me─and ended up losing my humanity.

It’s based on the assumption of a human being who’d be unbeatable even without those things─and no such person exists. They do not exist.

“Sounds like this expert Tadatsuru is the perfect opponent for me to face as I am now.”

“…”

My potentially masochistic-sounding line apparently didn’t sit well with Ms. Kagenui, who, after a pause, said, “Don’t wallow in it.”

She abandoned her usual Kansai dialect and said this with something closer to the intonation of standard Japanese.

“That’s not power. That’s self-infatuation.”

“Self-infatuation…”

Infatuated─with myself.

Even if it wasn’t self-sacrifice…

“Don’t wallow in the tragedy of the situation, you hear? The long and the short of it is that your sisters and your friend were kidnapped by some mysterious fool, nothing more. In regard to that, at least, you are one hundred percent the aggrieved party. If by some one-in-a-million chance you actually invited something like divine punishment, it was for pushing it until you lost your humanity. It has nothing to do with the fact that those three were targeted. Isn’t that so, Yotsugi.”

“Yup, it is.”

For some reason Ms. Kagenui wanted Ononoki to back her up on that point, and the shikigami nodded meaningfully.

It seemed weird to seek approval from your own familiar, and it was also weird that the response seemed so pregnant with meaning.

Then again, their relationship was just kind of weird─to the point that it struck me as the real paradox here.

“Well then,” I said, “no choice but to save those three girls who have nothing to do with it…for me, anyway. Whatever else happens. Ms. Kagenui, you…”

Man, it was hard to say.

A terribly brazen request─but I had to ask. For my own sake as well, so I wouldn’t get lost in myself and wallow in self-sacrifice or self-infatuation.

“Will you help me? In this, we might say, dramatic rescue?”

“I will, since Gaen-senpai told me to─I’ll take the liberty of going along with her wishes. But let’s get one thing straight: I can’t involve myself directly. My power is exclusively geared for defeating immortal aberrations, so it’s no good against a human being.”

“…”

“Don’t look at me like that, young man. However aggravating Tadatsuru may be, I reckon you’re more my enemy than he is. So don’t look at me like that─I’ll let you keep borrowing Yotsugi─and I’ll lend you my wisdom as well. Anyhoo, the first thing we need to do is take a looksee at those cranes. If they are a message, I reckon they’re a message for you.”

“For me?”

“I can’t say for sure how thoroughly he understands the situation, but─Tadatsuru’s ultimate target is definitely you.”

“Me? No, wait, Tadatsuru’s target─”

“You, and the former Heartunderblade. The harmless certification that Oshino requested for you is only good within Gaen-senpai’s network, it has no currency with an outsider like Tadatsuru.”

Then this really couldn’t have come at a worse time─someone gunning for me and Shinobu, just when we’d lost the ability to fight.

Artificially.

Intentionally.

Maliciously─bad timing.

“So if that hypothesis is correct, Kanbaru and my sisters are being held as hostages, to be used against me.”

“That’s about the size of it. And if the real target is the two of you, then I reckon those girls are even more likely to be safe. For now, anyway.”

Somehow that didn’t make me feel one iota better.

That is, all it did was make me more impatient.

I was worried about my sisters, of course, but I also felt super-guilty about Kanbaru─I sent my sisters to her house because I thought it would be a safe zone, since she was related to Ms. Gaen, related to her by blood. But now I’d gotten her mixed up in this. If nothing else, I should at least have explained to her what was going on. Why the hell didn’t I?

True, while Kanbaru may not be an immortal aberration, an aberration had taken up residence in her left arm, so she could conceivably find herself in an expert’s crosshairs… Given the timing of her abduction, however, it seemed much more likely she’d been taken hostage because of me.

“Well, this is no time to stand around jawing. First off, let’s see those cranes. If there’s no message there, I reckon that changes things.” And with that, after refusing to take them from me the entire time, Ms. Kagenui finally accepted Tadatsuru’s cranes.