003
Backtracking.
Backtracking in time─and going back up that mountain track.
Early on the morning of the thirteenth of March, the day of the entrance exam for the school I hoped to attend, I climbed the steps to Kita-Shirahebi Shrine where it sat atop the crest of the mountain─as had been my habit for the past month or so.
Habit.
Though if you do something every single day, maybe it’s more of a routine?
Well, since I was basically hiking, or maybe trail-running, every day, it was good for my health─but the reason I stuck to my routine so readily, without even thinking about it, even on the day that was going to decide the course of my future, might actually be that I’m a diligent guy.
Being diligent isn’t necessarily a virtue, though, and in this case maybe I just didn’t know when to quit and got dragged along by force of habit…
In this case maybe my habit was a bad one─more vice than virtue.
In fact, Tsubasa Hanekawa, whose level of diligence, whose diligence strength, is much stronger than mine, had told me that there was no point in searching Kita-Shirahebi Shrine anymore, that if I was going to search I should do it someplace else─and Ononoki never even seemed concerned about it in the first place, but for me, it was one more thing I couldn’t quit… Against my better judgment, or maybe just indifferent to it, I kept on going to Kita-Shirahebi Shrine every day.
Visiting the precincts of that shrine where there was no longer any god.
And of course no middle school girl.
And─no expert.
“Well, not knowing when to give up the ghost seems pretty natural for a vampire─”
Being immortal and all.
Though in my case I wasn’t immortal, I just didn’t have a reflection─an utterly useless, and in fact pretty annoying, undead trait to possess.
Anyway, that was about the size of things.
Yozuru Kagenui had vanished from Kita-Shirahebi Shrine─suddenly, without so much as a fare-thee-well, and in the blink of an eye just about an entire month had passed.
Without incident.
Uneventfully.
Under the circumstances, it seemed correct to assume that, having finished her business in this town and lacking a fixed abode to begin with, Ms. Kagenui─like Oshino─simply drifted on. But that wasn’t the case.
No way.
No, unlike Oshino, Ms. Kagenui hadn’t done any of the things she was here to do─though I say that based only on my own limited knowledge and narrow view of the situation, so maybe she had after all. Maybe she’d finished whatever she came to do… Knowing her, maybe she’d taken down some great evil in the course of that single night before she disappeared, but even if she had.
Ms. Kagenui─the onmyoji Yozuru Kagenui.
Would never leave her familiar Yotsugi Ononoki behind.
“Wouldn’t she, though? Big Sis is pretty all over the place when it comes to that kind of thing. One time she left me in the bottom of a ravine in the middle of nowhere and forgot all about me.”
Well.
Ononoki herself might say so…and I’m truly stumped as to how she could forget her at the bottom of a ravine, but…
“Even so, even if Big Sis would leave me at the bottom of a ravine, I don’t think she’d leave me at your house, Monstieur…”
I was a little upset that my house was being compared unfavorably with a place as dangerous as the bottom of a ravine, but anyway, Ononoki had her doubts too.
Though she really didn’t seem concerned.
True─for me it goes without saying, but even Ononoki wasn’t enough of a badass to be in any position to be concerned about Ms. Kagenui.
Ms. Kagenui was, in a certain sense, a more fearsome person than either Oshino or Kaiki─probably the only individual in the world who could solve anything and everything through violence.
Why would someone like me be concerned about her? Could I be? Didn’t she just leave on a whim? After all, all she did was break her promise to meet me at the shrine.
…And then never come back.
I’d tried telling myself this a million times in the ensuing month, but I didn’t know when to quit, didn’t know when to give up, didn’t know when to sist and decease─and I ended up visiting the shrine every day. Almost like I was making a hundred-day pilgrimage.
“Wait, sist and decease doesn’t sound right, now that I think about it…”
Uh oh.
Today’s the exam, and I’m losing my confidence─well, anyway, Senjogahara got recruited so she’s all set for college, and she said she’d escort me to the campus for the exam, so I’d better get back down the mountain in time to meet up with her.
The fact that she thinks I need an escort means she doesn’t have much faith in me, but thus spake Senjogahara: “Look, you know the expression ‘the wayward dog will meet the rod’? Well, the wayward Araragi always seems to meet an aberration.”
Wiser words were never spoken.
That’s my sweetheart, always keeping her eye on the ball─and keeping an eye on me.
“Your scores are already good enough to pass, and as long as you can avoid missing the exam itself, campus life is within your reach.”
That’s what she said.
I didn’t know how much to believe the part about being good enough to pass, but if she was more worried about me failing to take the exam than about how I’d do on it─I must’ve been responsible for leading a pretty irresponsible life.
Well.
Going mountain climbing on the morning of my exam was pretty damn irresponsible─
“And after the exam, it’s finally graduation time, huh? Can’t wait to see how this turns out,” I muttered to myself as I climbed the now thoroughly familiar and not particularly burdensome steps. Shinobu was there inside my shadow, of course, but apparently she was pretending to have gone to bed early, so there was no reply─since Shinobu and I were together 24/7, strictly speaking I guess I never said anything just “to myself,” but well, if she wasn’t listening, then close enough.
Can’t wait to see how this turns out─by no means implied some kind of rosy outlook for my future. When you get right down to it, the implication was more one of despair, that it might be impossible for me to lead anything like a normal campus life in the first place.
A campus life or any other kind of normal lifestyle, given my close association with an aberration, and being somewhat of an aberration myself─me, oh my.
It’s not like I was relying on her, but in that regard it was pretty discouraging when Ms. Kagenui disappeared─it had been a real support to have her there to talk to when I realized that I, myself, was an aberration.
The fact that that support had been completely removed.
Was perhaps another reason I was making this daily pilgrimage─maybe I was just pretending to be worried about Ms. Kagenui, like it was no big deal, and really I was just worried about my own precious self.
It’s not like she’d done much of anything about the transmogrification of my body, nor was she going to…but her oddly bold, supremely self-confident attitude was a comfort to be around─as one would expect of a self-proclaimed champion of justice, she never wavered.
There was some overlap with Karen in that regard─no, it was more than that.
In being constrained never to set foot on the ground thanks to some curse I don’t know anything about, yet managing to keep her cool and live her life, Ms. Kagenui might’ve become a kind of role model to me─so if that “cool” could possibly come under threat, it was no wonder I was scared.
“Though…it’s hard to imagine who, or what, could threaten her in the first place…and even supposing there was such a thing, there’s still the question of why. Could it have something to do with everything that’s going on?”
…
Everything that’s going on─it was uncertain at present how applicable that phrase really was. Some might argue that the present tense, “going on”─should be replaced with the past tense.
In the month since Ms. Kagenui disappeared, at least, nothing─not a single mysterious thing, has gone on in this town.
A month passed uneventfully, without incident─that’s not just a turn of phrase, it’s a plain fact.
No aberrations.
And no Darkness.
No urban legends.
No word on the street.
No secondhand gossip.
And obviously no school ghost stories─none of it.
Nor had there been anything Oshino would’ve been interested in collecting if he’d still been here─nothing mysterious, nothing weird, nothing out of the ordinary.
As if it was all over.
It was as if it was all over.
“I guess if there’s anything at all I can point to, it’d have to be the lingering mystery of why Ms. Kagenui went missing─”
And.
As I got to the top of the steps and went to pass under the torii at the entrance to Kita-Shirahebi Shrine─I saw her.
Standing within the grounds of the shrine.
Smack in the middle of the ceremonial path─striking no particular stance, and with no air of awe or reverence, on that path meant for the gods alone.
In her baggy clothes.
With her hat down over her face─her identity and age impossible to determine at a glance.
“…Ms. Gaen.”
A month without incident.
A daily pilgrimage turned routine.
Well, it seemed like my hundred-day pilgrimage hadn’t turned out to be such a colossal waste of time after all.
Something was about to happen.
Something decisive─or no.
Maybe something was about to stop happening.
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