Monogatari Series - Volume 16 - Chapter 10.04

004

A few minutes later.

I stood looking out from a lofty vantage point.

That is, I was standing atop Ononoki─atop one of her fingers, which was thrust upward as if she was pointing at the heavens.

“…”

It’s not totally clear to me what her primary role as the familiar of an expert really is─but the role she actually carries out in the course of her day-to-day duties seems largely to approximate that of a chauffeur.

Though obviously I don’t mean that this tween girl actually drives a car─the expert who employs her “can’t set foot on the ground,” so instead, Ononoki ferries her employer around on her finger or her shoulders or her head.

Transporting someone around like a piece of luggage is impressive, and I’ve always been impressed by Ms. Expert’s ability to be transported like that as well─but never in a million years did I think that I’d have the pleasure.

Okay, true…

This way there was no loss…

In fact, not an inch of my legs was wasted (whether or not I have confidence in their length is another story); moreover, the length of Ononoki’s arm and finger were added in as well, so I was in fact looking down from a height of “about nine feet,” as she had initially, and confoundingly, predicted.

That other time I’d “gotten” a shoulder ride, my perspective had been pretty damn high as well, but this was definitely higher─I mean, I could never be on the bottom of this particular arrangement…nor, ordinarily, on top either.

Balancing atop a single finger?

What was I, a basketball?

Not that I was being spun around, but as someone with a not particularly good sense of equilibrium, standing on her finger at all, however unsteadily, seemed entirely down to how good she was at adjusting the balance for me.

It was a bit like a ride, and while this wasn’t the time or the place, I was enjoying this bit just a bit.

“When you carry her around, do you maintain the balance for her like this?”

“Nope, with her there’s no need. She’s got her own special riding style─though I do have to be extra careful not to make a mistake and dump her on the ground.”

If I did, she’d be pissed off for real, said Ononoki.

“Pissed off for real, huh…”

For reals.

Shinobu slept through all of this, incidentally. Given how badly she and Ononoki get along, she may’ve been awake and just playing possum.

What sort of demon acts like a possum, though? Seems like an unbelievable step down for an aberration.

“I’d get the blame even if it was her own fault. There isn’t much technique involved, but I do have to be really careful, it’s pretty rough. It’s so much more relaxing to carry you, Monstieur, since I know you won’t complain at all.”

“I hate to say it, Ononoki, since it makes me happy that you think so, but I’m not that easygoing.”

In that sense, this was the perfect height.

It’s not like I’d get off without a scratch if she dropped me, but as long as I didn’t land on anything really terrible, it wouldn’t be life-threatening, nor would I lose consciousness, so I’d be able to complain to Ononoki to my heart’s content.

“…”

Speaking of dropping things.

“Listen, Ononoki. For now we’ll continue the search in this configuration, but─”

“Man, you give up quick, Monstieur.”

“I prefer to think that I’m just quick to move on.”

“‘If you can’t figure out the solution, just leave the problem unsolved,’ isn’t that your catchphrase?”

“How is a guy like that going to pass any exams…”

Well.

Senjogahara did tell me that skipping problems you couldn’t solve is an unavoidable technique for entrance exams─but Hanekawa advocates the prodigious technique of “solve the hard questions first, and the rest will be easy.” A little too prodigious.

“This goes well beyond being conspicuous, so I’d like to find it as soon as possible…but since we’re talking about finding something, does that mean that someone lost it somewhere?”

“Hm?”

“Come on, don’t ‘hm?’ me, Ononoki. Are we looking for something that you…or that somebody, lost?”

“Good question. I’m a just-does-what-she’s-told-to-do girl, so I just do what I’m told to do.”

“If you’re going to append a descriptor like that, at least make it easier to say. But when you’re searching for something, it’s usually something somebody lost, isn’t it?”

“Not necessarily. You’ll lose your balance for sure, almost necessarily, but maybe it isn’t something that somebody lost.”

“Don’t even hint at such an inauspicious future.”

“We could be looking for something that someone hid somewhere, or something that disappeared in some kind of accident. If you want to go around making assumptions about it, suit yourself, but can you not cause any confusion for the people on the ground with your hasty conclusions?”

“…”

Stern…

Like she even knew what we were looking for.

“You said that it’ll be instantly recognizable, but does that go for me too? It must, since you’ve got me up on the watchtower here… If there’s been some kind of misunderstanding, I’m sorry, but the drain on my vampiric skills has been pretty intense lately, so if you’re counting on my aberrational vision, you’re out of luck.”

“It’s fine. I’m not counting on anything from you.”

“Then why the hell am I up here? Why are you carting me around like a portable shrine?”

“Right. The reason I’m kakakarting you around─”

“Ditch the pointless Shinobu imitation.”

“…is that you can find it even without aberrational powers of vision. So make like a weather vane and look every which way, please.”

“Can I assume it’s on the ground?”

“Don’t assume anything. Don’t even think about anything. You just concentrate on keeping your eyes peeled.”

“…”

How did I end up getting ordered around by a tween girl? When people are feeling emotionally vulnerable, I suppose they just opt for the path of least resistance.

Though it remained to be seen if getting ordered around by her actually fit that bill…

“Anyway, if you just inform me anytime anything catches your eye or seems weird, even if it isn’t suspicious, that’ll be sufficient.”

“Sufficient, she says…”

Her character was all over the place, as usual.

How the hell can that violent onmyoji employ such an inconsistent shikigami─how does she control her?

By force, I guess?

That might shade into domestic violence territory, depending.

“Anything that catches my eye or seems weird…apart from our reflection in the traffic mirror at an intersection, I assume.”

“If you want to be sarcastic, save it for later. Right now I’m busy.”

“…”

Won’t even make conversation with me, huh?

I wondered how she could qualify as busy when her only job was to hold me up, but apparently Ononoki was also scanning our surroundings while she supported me on one finger. She’d already searched this area once, but they say “search seven times before you blame someone else”─though that’s a different type of admonition.

“It’s not like I’ve got a ton of time myself,” I griped.

“You talking about that ‘six months left to live’ thing?” asked Ononoki, still holding me up and not even pausing in her search─an intrusive remark, totally out of context. “Out of all the stuff you mentioned from this past year, that’s the only one that’s still unresolved, isn’t it─your remaining days are marching right down the drain, aren’t they. Is that why your exam results were so disgraceful?”

“…”

“Though I bet it’s not your own life you’re worried about, Monstieur─it’s your wife, not your life.”

“Don’t try to squeeze in a pun while we’re having a serious conversation.”

“I’d rather you thought of it as a light jest.”

“Don’t try to squeeze in a light jest either.”

“What? So you’d rather I squeezed you with my thunder thighs? I’m sorry, but my thighs aren’t all that thunderous. I know you like ’em plump, I’m terribly sorry.”

“I’ll murder you,” I threatened this tween girl. “And anyway, that’s not what you should be apologizing about.”

“Oh? You don’t like ’em plump?”

“That’s a whole other conversation. And while we’re at it, Senjogahara’s not my wife.”

“Funny. I wasn’t talking about Senjogahara.”

“Huh? You weren’t? Then did you mean Shinobu?”

“Nah, I was talking about Senjogahara.”

“If you want to make light jests, be a little less heavy-handed as a conversationalist─and while we’re at it, don’t just call her ‘Senjogahara.’ You’ve never even met her, have you?”

“I never have, no,” answered Ononoki, turning the corner.

Where the hell were we going? The exact opposite direction from my house… Was I even getting home before the day was out? Humans and aberrations have completely different senses of time and distance, after all…

Couldn’t she at least tell me how large of an area we were searching? From her movements thus far, even that wasn’t certain.

Not limited to this or any area.

Not that I was surprised, but the instructions the violent onmyoji gave Ononoki seemed pretty damn vague─though in light of an earlier case, maybe it wasn’t the onmyoji that the shikigami was serving.

Particularly if it was the ringleader of those experts─

“How long was it again, Monstieur? The amount of time you’ve got left? Which ends first, your exam prep or your life?”

“That’s a wonderfully indelicate question, thanks for that. Way to rub it in.” Or maybe, to come right out with it. Because I have to say, that kind of candor felt better than weirdly dancing around the issue. “That’s a tough one. The exams themselves end first. But the graduation ceremony comes before the exam results are announced.”

“We could say you’re lucky.”

“Could we not?”

“Same goes for the intensity of the drain on your vampiric powers. You’re repeating the same futile effort, or even more, the same futile defeat, over and over again.”

“It’s not futile…”

But true, it hadn’t been productive.

It’d even been counter-productive─maybe it was about time I rethought my strategy of charging in blindly as soon as I recovered.

“I’m not sure charging in blindly counts as a strategy,” Ononoki shrugged.

Which very nearly made me topple off her finger.

“Nothing I can say to that…”

“I figured Big Sis was the only person who adopted that strategy.”

“So does it count as a strategy or not?”

In her case, maybe it did…

Then again, the serpent deity isn’t immortal, and she specializes in immortal aberrations, so it doesn’t seem like her turn to take the stage─though the same’s true for Ononoki.

Hm.

That reminds me, at some point someone told me that one of the reasons snakes became sacred was that the physiological phenomenon of ecdysis made them symbols of immortality─let me see, who did I hear that from again?

My memory’s fuzzy, and I can’t seem to connect the dots.

Been happening a lot lately.

Been pushing the exam prep a little too hard, I guess.

“Hanekawa’s out trotting the globe looking for Oshino on my behalf─but unfortunately, she hasn’t had any luck.”

“Yeah. Big Brother Oshino─I haven’t seen him in a while either.”

“Hmmm…”

Seriously, where the hell could that dissolute bastard have gone?

Hanekawa went overseas, but I can’t picture Oshino even having a passport…

“Hey, Monstieur. So what do you plan to do? If you want, I could always get in touch with Ms. Gaen for you like I did before, you know?”

“That’s okay…”

Leaving aside why she was being so condescending, letting Ononoki rope that woman into this was right out. The whole situation came about in the first place because I’d done her a favor “as a friend”─no, scratch that, I really shouldn’t be laying the blame for this at anyone else’s feet.

But if you’ll permit me to lay the blame at something else’s feet─you could say the culprit was that talisman she entrusted me with.

The root of all evil.

“…Plus, I flouted her will by not using that talisman. I’m afraid I can’t be looking to her for help.”

“Well. As a friend, she might be surprisingly willing to listen to what you have to say?”

“I know she’s not a bad person… She just expects a little too much from her friends in the way of payback.”

Then again, with me and Senjogahara’s lives on the line, maybe I should be willing to make any sacrifice─in this case, though, the price I have to pay might very well be Shinobu Oshino, at a minimum, and Nadeko Sengoku in the worst-case scenario.

I can’t do that.

If I could make such a decision, I would never have ended up in this situation─I know full well that this is no time for rhetorical flourishes, but since cool-headed judgment was impossible at this point, the only strategy left to me was the heat of battle.

“Yeah, fair enough. That’s Ms. Gaen for you, ask for a casual favor and later you’ll pay for it in spades. If there’s something you want to protect, maybe safest to leave her out of it.”

“You said it…though I don’t know about safest. My current sitch is about as unsafe as it gets.”

“Though probably…the fact that there’s been no contact from her end means that she has no desire to help you.”

“Sounds like it’s too much to ask, then.”

“Maneuvering so that things seem like too much to ask is her strong suit.”

“A little too shrewd for my taste.”

“But isn’t Big Brother Oshino the same way? Even if Miss Tsubasa of the Hanekawas found him, there’s no guarantee he would help, is there? He’d say, ‘Can’t save, Missy, it takes a person on their own for saved’ or something.”

“Since when does Oshino speak such broken Japanese? What the hell kind of country has he been living in?”

“Listening to a conversation between me with my monotone and Big Brother Oshino with his broken Japanese would probably be intolerable.”

“If you really think so, how ’bout you fix your monotone.”

“It’s unfixable,” declared Ononoki.

It was a strangely firm declaration for the shikigami─her monotone was still monotone, but something felt kind of off about it.

I had to wonder.

Was her character shifting again?

“Anyway, you’re not wrong, Oshino might say that─which is why Hanekawa’s search is more for temporary peace of mind than anything. She’s just doing it for me on the side while she does some location scouting.”

Well, maybe not just on the side, but that was really all I could expect from her.

“Ultimately, it’s up to me to take care of it somehow or other. I sowed the seed, I’ll do something about it.”

“If that’s true, if you did sow the seed, then yeah, I guess it’d be up to you to do something about it.”

“Hm? Are you saying someone else sowed it? No, I don’t believe that for a second.”

“Nor should you─since seeds are buried in the earth. Until they sprout, you don’t even know they’re there… But don’t you think it’s strange? How all this chaos has been centering around you, Monstieur, almost like it’s maintaining the balance, almost like someone’s got the answer sheet─”

“…”

“Even if it’s true what they say, that once you encounter an aberration, you get drawn to them─it still seems like things are somehow balancing themselves out. I don’t think you’re so slow on the uptake that you wouldn’t think it was unnatural.”

“Oh, but I am. I’m constantly in over my head just trying to jerry-rig things─and I’m finally hitting my limit with that,” I said.

Well, moping to a tween girl wasn’t exactly a cool look, even if she was an aberration, and anyway, I shouldn’t put Ononoki, who was ultimately on Ms. Gaen’s side, in a difficult position, so maybe it was best to leave it at that.

With that in mind, I returned the conversation to our search.

“I don’t see anything likely… Are you sure it’s around here, Ononoki?”

“I don’t need you to report that you don’t see anything. Report back when you’ve found something.”

“Geez…”

What an attitude to take with someone who’s helping you search for something free of charge, spending his precious time in the bargain…

“Something instantly recognizable─I wonder what it is.”

“Who knows, I can’t even begin to guess… But Monstieur, I’ve got something of a could be.”

“Oh yeah? What is it?”

“Something instantly recognizable to anyone─but which you lose sight of the moment you start searching. In other words,” said Ononoki─looking up at me atop her finger. “A smile!”

She said it in a monotone.

With no expression whatsoever.

“…”

Okay, that definitely was something I wanted to find for her, and soon.