Monogatari Series - Volume 15 - Chapter 1.04

004

That night.

I headed to a certain abandoned building.

The ruins of a cram school that had gone out of business a few years back─it had taken up the entire building so it must’ve been a sizable enough cram school, but unable to stand up to the furious onslaught of a major exam prep-chain that had moved in over by the station, it was forced to retreat, or to abscond under cover of darkness─you hear all kinds of stories, but who knows what really happened.

Well.

Hmmm.

In that sense, I was heading from a high school whose origins I didn’t really have a handle on to an abandoned building whose origins I didn’t really have a handle on. Even I’m a little shocked that I could tread such a vague path without any sense of danger whatsoever.

But, not being Tsubasa Hanekawa, I didn’t want to know about any of it badly enough to do my homework.

“Hey, Araragi─I’ve been waiting for you.”

Oshino.

Mèmè Oshino, Expert, greeted me with the same mock-innocent line as always─when I arrived at a certain classroom on the fourth floor.

There was a little blond girl in the corner, but I’ll omit a description of her.

I informed Oshino of the situation.

I may have added a few dramatic flourishes.

“Hm. A stone, huh?” said Oshino─an older guy in a Hawaiian shirt. “Stones often become objects of worship, don’t they─the power stones you mentioned are somewhat different, but you can lump them in.”

“Huh…like precious stones taking on magical properties?”

“Maybe, though these days─in modern society, it tends to be their value and not their appearance that fascinates people─”

Oshino chuckled softly.

He always came off as totally flippant, which is honestly not a type I do well with.

But Mèmè Oshino wasn’t just a flippant old fart─he was an old fart who had saved my life, my dignity, and my humanity.

Flippant though he most definitely was.

“You said it was about the size of a rugby ball, right, Araragi? So, which way was this rugby ball enshrined?”

“Which way?”

“Vertically? Horizontally? You said it was like a rugby ball, so I’m assuming it has a width and a height.”

“Oh…”

A pretty detailed question, I thought, but on the flipside, I’d come in Hanekawa’s stead to give a detailed explanation, so it was really an oversight on my part.

Maybe it would’ve been best if Hanekawa herself had come, but since it wasn’t a crisis or an emergency, my conscience had prevailed against the idea of marching a youthful maiden around town in the middle of the night.

“It’s kind of like a Jizo statue…and when you include the shrine, maybe it actually is patterned after one… Let’s see. Was Jizo a Buddhist deity?”

“This Araragi kid really knows his stuff.”

“You don’t have to say it like that.”

Not so naturally, anyway.

Though it was just a random fact I happened to have picked up, and the first and last I could muster on the subject.

I wasn’t even sure what Jizo was the Buddhist deity of.

“Lemme see…the patron saint of travelers? No, wait, isn’t there something about the Six Jizos? Hm, but Bamboo-Hat Jizo…”

The more I spoke, the more I seemed to be giving myself away.

“Ha hah. Well, in Japan, Jizo certainly has come to be conflated with the roadside gods that watch over travelers─though it’d be odd for it to be in a flowerbed.”

For once, Oshino almost seemed to be giving me the benefit of the doubt and didn’t make fun of me as I flailed helplessly.

“A stone statue,” he continued. “Since you described it as a stone statue, I’m assuming it’s got that sort of a shape? Meaning it’s not just round, but carved into the shape of a person─”

“I dunno… Honestly, Hanekawa had already given me that impression, so I guess I sort of saw it that way… But if I’d just happened to see it as I passed by the flowerbed, without any preconceptions─I probably would’ve thought it was just some nondescript rock.”

“A-ha.”

“Or…” I shook my head at Oshino’s smirking nod. “Maybe not─even if I hadn’t been told about it, just passing by and seeing it ensconced in that wooden shrine, with that altar and everything, I might’ve thought it was carved like a statue─”

“The simulacrum phenomenon.”

“Huh?”

“When people see something that resembles a face, they find a face in it─or a human form in a stain or dirt on the wall. As the old saying goes, the truth behind the ghost is withered grass.”

“The truth behind the ghost─so I guess aberrations, and tales of aberrations, have something to do with this simu-whatever too?”

“No, that’s a separate issue entirely. Not to mention, Araragi, even if the stone took the form of a statue, that doesn’t mean someone carved it. It could’ve been naturally worn down by the elements until it ended up looking that way.”

“The elements, huh.”

“Would that be it? According to your story, two years ago your beloved friend saw the stone just lying around─has its shape changed at all?”

“She said it hasn’t.”

Ordinarily, even if you almost tripped over it, no ordinary person would remember a rock, or the shape of one, from two years ago, but in that regard Tsubasa Hanekawa is no ordinary person.

She’d told me that though the last couple of years had weathered the stone somewhat, it’d had that same rugby-ball shape.

In other words, even if someone had enshrined it during those two years, the main body─the stone itself, had remained unaltered.

“Hmm. And what’s missy class president’s take on it?”

“Her take, well─”

Oshino always calls Hanekawa “missy class president.”

You’d think that since she hates being treated like a model student she wouldn’t be thrilled about that nickname either, but for some reason, maybe because it’s Oshino, she doesn’t particularly seem to mind.

Incidentally, the one time I tried calling her “missy class president” as a joke, she really went ballistic on me. I wasn’t sure I would ever recover.

“Hanekawa saw it when it wasn’t enshrined, so at the time she seems to have thought it was just a rock. But now, she’s researching our campus as a way to repay you, Oshino─and she noticed how something’s happened to the rock she stumbled across two years ago. She found it really unsettling─or something.”

“Unsettling,” Oshino repeated the word back to me. “Sure, it must be unsettling when what used to be just a rock is sitting in some shrine─though I can’t begin to guess, ha hah, if missy class president actually finds anything unsettling.”

“This is no laughing matter.”

Maybe the way Hanekawa talked about it made it seem that way, but─I dunno, some mysterious faith springing up on campus was thoroughly unsettling, and even if it weren’t, we couldn’t just let it go.

Even someone with as little school spirit as me felt that way.

“Well then, Araragi─seems like the first thing to do would be to investigate the origin of the sweets, but we’re talking about missy class president here. Maybe she did that before she even talked to you?”

“…”

Acting like he saw through it all, that was Oshino.

For some reason it grated on me this was Hanekawa he was pretending to get; it was a strange feeling. As if you know so much about someone you just met─yet I myself had gotten to know her only a few days before him.

When you got right down to it, I didn’t know a damn thing about her.

“Yeah,” I said. “From the brand and time of purchase, calculated backward from the sell-by date, she nailed down which shops they could’ve been bought in and the students most likely to buy them─”

“A regular Sherlock Holmes. Did she make enquiries?”

“No, not yet, apparently.”

“Maybe she felt like that would be rushing things?”

“No. She figured out that whoever left the offerings wasn’t acting alone, an unspecified number of people seemingly left the sweets and whatever else at the shrine─in which case she needed to widen the scope of her investigation, and couldn’t continue operating under the veil of secrecy.”

“…”

“Which is why I’m here. You’d be interested in a story like this. She says it’s her way of repaying you for looking out for us.”

Judging that I’d more or less said what I needed to say, that was how I wrapped up my explanation.

Well, it was unclear if it was wrapped up, but in any case, it emphasized that I was there not to consult Oshino about a mysterious stone, but simply to do him the favor of delivering info about strange doings at our school.

If I didn’t make that clear up front, my debts might balloon even further. True, since I already had no way of paying off the five million yen I currently owed him, maybe it didn’t matter if I accrued more.

I’ve heard that once the amount you owe grows beyond a certain point, you start not to mind not being able to pay it off, or taking on even more debt, and not necessarily because you’ve gone to pieces. I felt like I was standing on the edge of that precipice─which meant I really couldn’t afford to get any more bills.

Since I couldn’t risk incurring one of Oshino’s consultation fees, on this occasion I had no choice but to act slightly, or flagrantly, like I was doing him a favor.

“Ha hah,” Oshino let out a forced laugh, as though my ulterior motive was obvious to him.

Hanekawa had mentioned the “Cackling Woman” to me, and I bet the monster had the same sort of laugh.

“Wh-What?” I put on a show of consternation. Or if he really had seen through my little ploy, it wasn’t a show, and my consternation was genuine. “S-So something like a school ghost story holds no interest for an expert, huh? You prefer something a little more difficult, based on archival evidence or whatever?”

“No, no, missy class president was right on that score─even a jack-of-all-trades like myself has his strengths and weaknesses. It can be a hassle to get ahold of stories from inside a closed space like a school─I’m grateful for the offer.”

“O-Of course.”

“Nevertheless, Araragi. This is a favor from missy class president, not from you, so it by no means cancels your debt. I eagerly await your consideration in that regard.”

“…”

Well.

At least I didn’t incur any new debts. I guess that was all I could ask for.

I can’t deny I’d had my hopes up, but this seemed like a good compromise.

“I’m not sure it qualifies as a tale of an aberration─ha hah, but it’s a good story. Gotta be sure and write this one down.”

“…Oshino. Just for my edification, I’d love to know what you ultimately plan to do with all these ‘tales’ you’ve been collecting.”

“Hm?”

“Um, like, are you planning to put them in a book, or present them at a conference…or anything like that?”

There was no particular need for me to ask him about it right then, but I’d been wondering about it while I was talking with Hanekawa after school and I’d wanted to ask him if I had the chance.

At least to that extent, I was intrigued.

In other words, was this man, my savior so to speak, actually amassing aberrations as part of his occupation, or was he just insisting on calling his hobby “work” when he was actually unemployed…

“Ha hah. I’m not some sort of authority on aberrationology, so I don’t have such lofty goals. I do sell the stories I collect to interested parties, though.”

“Sell? And you get customers? They’re just ghost stories.”

“Says the guy who almost played the lead role in one?”

“Just curious, how much do you get for one?”

“Ha hah. I don’t know about divulging my negotiated prices to a supplier.”

“…”

If that was how he felt about it, what could I do but drop the subject, but charging me a fee for dealing with an aberration then turning around and selling the story to someone else did strike me as a pretty sweet business.

Is that what they call the middleman margin?

I’m sure it’s not as sweet as it seems to a neophyte, of course…but either way, simply finding out that Oshino derived an income from his fieldwork was enough for me.

“But, do you really think someone’ll buy this story?”

“Good question. I have one customer who’ll take anything and everything─but lately that one seems to have started behaving erratically again, and I get the feeling it’d be best to put a little distance between us. Not that I can go sell it to him instead…”

Oshino seemed to be thinking about how to monetize this, which seemed a little premature, like he was counting his chickens before they’d hatched.

A weird stone getting enshrined in a school flowerbed wasn’t going to interest anyone─it quite literally wouldn’t be worth the paper it was written on.

It’d take an expert to find an interesting way to spin it.

“So, what about it, Oshino?”

“Hnh? What about what?”

“That’s not fair, I asked you first… As an expert, what do you think?”

Running through all the pertinent points, I tried again.

“What was seemingly just a hunk of rock two years ago has, two years later, become an object of worship for some part of the student body─for an unspecified number of people, it’s become an aberration-y thing. Does that ever happen?”

“It’s not uncommon for objects to become aberrations─after all, aberrations come into being according to some standard. And yet.”

“Hm?”

“It’s hard to say if it’s worshipped because it’s an aberration─or if it became an aberration because it was worshipped.”

“Is it worshipped because it’s an aberration, or is it an aberration because it’s worshipped?”

I only intended to repeat Oshino’s words back to him verbatim, but apparently I’d gotten something wrong.

“No, no,” he corrected, “It’s not ‘is it an aberration because it’s worshipped.’ It’s: ‘Is it worshipped because it’s an aberration, or did it become an aberration because it was worshipped.’”

“…? Sure, the wording and grammar might be a tiny bit different, but is it such an important difference that it’s worth harping on?”

“In this case,” said Oshino significantly. “But it’s a little hard to know just from hearing the story. Think you can draw me a picture of it, Araragi?”

“Huh?”

“You heard me. If you came here straight from school, you must at least have a notebook and something to write with.”

“I do, but…”

I’d never imagined I’d be asked to draw at that point. I was taken aback, but if that was what he wanted, I guess that was what he would get.

“To be honest, though, I’m not exactly artistically inclined. Even if I seem like I would be.”

“They never taught you to draw in art class?”

“Naoetsu’s a prep school, so they don’t put a lot of emphasis on the arts. And I didn’t take any art classes for my electives.”

“Hmph… Well, just do your best.”

“Roger.”

I ran my mechanical pencil across the page of the notebook I’d taken out. I was relying on memory─if it was two years ago, I’d have to admit that I didn’t remember, but it had only been a few hours. I might not be Hanekawa, but as a teenager and currently active high school student, my powers of recall could handle that much, at least.

“It’s about like this.”

“Nope, that’s not gonna cut it.”

Dismissed out of hand.

If I aspired to become an artist someday, that would’ve put an end to my dream.

Can’t you say something nice, even if it’s not true?

“Don’t ‘nope’ me. I tried my hardest to draw it the way it is. Maybe the lines seem a little wobbly, but that’s how the thing looks in real life.”

“That’s not what I meant. I need you to draw the shrine and altar, not just the stone itself.”

“Hunh? But─”

“Just do it.”

Urged to blindly forge ahead, I begrudgingly did as I was asked. Not like it was such a hassle to add in the shrine and altar─they weren’t exactly the most complex structures.

I’ve been calling it a shrine because I don’t know how else to describe it, but it couldn’t have been simpler. That is, if it hadn’t been held together with some nails, it would’ve been just a pile of toy blocks.

“Oh, that kind of shape? The shrine, I mean.”

“Yeah, but…” I said once I’d finished drawing everything. I almost wanted to add in a background for kicks but decided not to push it. “In terms of the altar, its shape seemed totally unremarkable, like it was no more than a tiny desk to put offerings on, but the shrine’s shape felt like it was based on something, if only clumsily.”

Scrutinizing the notebook, which I’d handed over to him, Oshino responded, “Yeah?”

“Was it at a temple? Or had I seen it around a Jizo statue or some roadside god, I dunno…but I feel like the shrine’s shape rings a bell.”

“Hey, if you’ve got tidbits like that up your sleeve, you’ve gotta tell me up front─was that supposed to be some hidden-ball trick revealing your erudition?” asked Oshino, smirking.

Judging from his tone, he was mocking me, rather than scolding me.

“No, it was a vague notion, and it only came to the forefront of my mind when I drew it out like this. In that sense─”

I only remembered thanks to your bright idea to have me draw it, I almost said before cutting myself off in a fluster. If I started throwing around words like “thanks” and “bright idea,” he could hit me up for money─not that I actually thought he was that much of a money-grubbing miser.

I just felt wary, since the subject of money had come up.

Anyway.

“Um, but, I can’t specifically call anything to mind. It’s more like I’d seen it somewhere, like it wasn’t my first time ever… Can you tell, Oshino? If this shrine is modeled on some part of something─”

“No, I can’t say I recognize it. But…”

After saying but, Oshino fell silent and handed the notebook back to me. I felt a certain sadness that the masterpiece I’d labored over had outlived its usefulness in a few short minutes, but we weren’t critiquing my artistic skills.

“But what? Don’t start saying something and clam up─if you’ve got an inkling, tell me already.”

I’d meant to press him on the point calmly and rationally, but frustrated that my masterwork had been so useless, that he’d been such a dick about it after forcing a bad artist to draw, I ended up sounding a little heated.

But Oshino let my reaction roll off him like water off a duck’s back and simply came back with, “Ha hah. You’re spirited today, Araragi. Something good happen to you?” He added, “While we’re at it, I’d like to hear what you think about it. Boy, would I ever like to hear the erudite Mister Araragi’s opinion on the subject. What’s your take on this particular matter?”

“What’s my… Well, you said it yourself in passing. It might be a ‘school ghost story,’ but I’m not so sure it’s about an aberration.”

“A-ha. Meaning?”

“Well, this is a pretty boring, realistic interpretation, but I bet somebody, I don’t know who but somebody, started worshipping some stone that had landed in the flowerbed as if it were a god─I mean, a shrine doesn’t just appear out of thin air. A person’s got to build it.”

“A vampire, on the other hand, might be able to manifest one.” Oshino turned his eyes to the little blond girl in the corner.

True, there were exceptions.

“But that shrine was obviously a human creation,” I objected. “It seemed that way to me, anyway. Though I’m not a hundred-percent certain…”

“Hm.”

“So in this case the somebody is plural, in other words an unspecified number of students started a little religion, or a faith group kind of a thing, and took that stone as their object of worship… Something like that?”

I wasn’t expressing myself well, and it was hard to put into words what the relevant questions were in this case, but the idea that a bizarre faith had sprung up at my school was definitely unsettling.

Or flat-out frightening.

“People have freedom of religion, ya know. It’s guaranteed by law,” Oshino reminded me.

“Right, no question about that─in this case, though, it’s clear from Hanekawa’s testimony that two short years ago this now-deified stone was nothing but a lump of rock─doesn’t that kind of give you the creeps?”

Unlike Naoetsu High, which had only been around for eighteen years, not long enough to develop a “school ghost story,” this venerated stone had just been a rock sitting by the roadside up until a couple of years ago, and that was difficult for me to accept.

I think that’s what it was.

“An aberration doesn’t have to have a history or pedigree, though,” answered Oshino, “since new aberrations are being born, being produced, all the time.”

“When something creeps you out, it’s because some kind of malign influence might be involved. That’s my hunch, and I believe that’s what Hanekawa’s worried about. In other words, someone’s knocked together this sham religion, fabricated this object of worship, and is taking a bunch of students for a ride─”

“For a ride? To rip them off for some cheap candy?”

“Well, I dunno.”

“If someone was going to take them for a ride, you’d think they’d do a proper job of it─I haven’t seen it for myself, Araragi, but as far as I can tell from your crude drawing, the construction of the shrine is itself quite crude. About as crude as the drawing.”

“Oshino. I’m well aware of how bad I am at drawing, but it hurts my feelings to hear someone else say it, okay?” Don’t make it sound like my crude drawing has made a crude shrine even cruder.

“Anyone who’s trying to take them for a ride would build a more impressive shrine, don’t you think? In order to fool people, work on the design─or so says a friend of mine.”

“Like you have any friends.”

“You’re right. Maybe not a friend.”

I was trying to get back at him by hurting his feelings, but not only did I fail, Oshino even smiled in apparent delight.

What the hell went on in his mind? It was a mystery.

“Not to mention, in that guy’s case, it might’ve been just another lie,” mused the expert. “Putting that aside, Araragi, how does it strike you?”

“Well, sure, I guess it makes perfect sense. If you were trying to take them for a ride, you wouldn’t use such a childish shrine. If you can’t build one yourself, you might outsource the construction. So then, is it a genuine religion? It’s part of their creed that they have to build the shrine themselves, no matter how broke-ass it is? I know we have freedom of faith in this country, but all the same, founding a new religion at your school is kind of…”

And why would anyone want to worship a rock that was just sitting there like that? It would be one thing if it were some kind of precious stone… Then again, maybe it was some kind of insane power stone, and Hanekawa and I just couldn’t pick up on it?

“You’d sense something from a power stone, wouldn’t you, in your present condition─hmm. Okay, listen, Araragi. This is the message I want you to relay to missy class president. Knowing her, it’ll tell her everything she needs to know.”

Forget about the “school ghost story” angle for the moment, the ever-smirking Oshino advised─for some reason with an even jollier expression than usual.

“Now try taking a look at the Naoetsu High curriculum. The lot of the student is to study, after all.”