Monogatari Series - Volume 16 - Chapter 10.01

Chapter Ten- Koyomi Seed

001

I wonder if Yotsugi Ononoki even makes a distinction between roads and everything else? I consistently have my doubts─she’s bound by neither the forces of gravity, nor buoyancy, nor lift. The creatures known as human beings who’re always bustling around her generally propel themselves by alternately moving one leg and then the other, and I can’t help but think that Yotsugi Ononoki is simply emulating them when she does so herself.

At present the human race just so happens to have adopted perambulation as its primary form of locomotion, and she’s just imitating them, no deeper meaning or consideration involved. If, for instance, crawling were to become the latest trend in human propulsion, Yotsugi Ononoki would probably start crawling around without a second thought.

According with reason holds no meaning for her─it’s adapting to reality that’s much more meaningful.

And that adaptation to reality is itself an absolutely goal-oriented way of life for a shikigami like Yotsugi Ononoki─then again, since she’s an aberration who doesn’t possess a lifeforce and can’t be said to have a way of life in the first place, and is in fact relentlessly pursuing a goal she can never achieve, maybe it’s more like a meaningless way of punishing herself.

“For me, the safest way to travel isn’t walking along the ground or soaring through the sky─it’s probably burrowing through the earth.”

Some time or other.

When I was going along, being taken along, on a high-altitude trip fueled by her “Unlimited Rulebook”─it’s really up to the observer whether to consider that mode of travel jumping or flying─she suddenly started explaining this to me.

In a monotone that sounded like a failed impersonation.

Lacking intonation.

Or even context.

“Tunneling through the earth like a mole─I think that’s probably the safest way for me to travel.”

Unless she was just making a groundless joke about being underground versus going underground, I couldn’t even guess at what she was trying to say.

Safe.

Sure, being underground is probably safe.

Especially for someone like her, someone for whom battle is inevitable, an indispensable safety might well be found there.

There─beneath the earth.

She might find a safety that the surface doesn’t afford her.

After all, in that kind of hermetically sealed environment there’s no fear of a surprise attack, even from above─given the lack of obstructions in the sky, aerial movement naturally allows for the greatest velocity, but a lack of obstructions also means a lack of potential cover.

Which is why Yotsugi Ononoki said that subterranean travel was the safest─or so I thought, but she just quietly shook her head at my interpretation.

Shook her head expressionlessly.

And said in a monotone, “No. It’s because there are no people around.”

No people around.

There was no one for her to imitate, hence no one to be influenced by.

It was the one place she could really be herself.