Monogatari Series - Volume 16 - Chapter 8.04

004

The epilogue, or maybe, the punch line of this story.

In a truly unexpected turn of events, the person who unraveled the mystery of Kita-Shirahebi Shrine, the relocation of what Ogi referred to as old Kita-Shirahebi Shrine, was none other than my little sister’s friend Nadeko Sengoku.

“Piece of cake, Big Brother Koyomi.” That night, for certain reasons, I’d hauled Nadeko Sengoku into the Araragi precinct for questioning, er, protective custody, and this is what she told me. “That’s easy mode.”

“Easy mode?”

No.

Whatever the answer turned out to be, transporting a building up to the top of a mountain wouldn’t be a piece of cake, or easy mode─it wouldn’t be a game at all.

But maybe it was precisely because Sengoku was a gamer, someone who could see it as a game, that the solution came to her so easily.

“Sounds like they didn’t tackle any large-scale projects like building a paved road, but as far as I can tell from what you told me, Big Brother Koyomi, they did at least a minimal amount of construction, right?”

“Hunh? Yeah…”

Incidentally, I kept Ogi’s name out of it when I asked Sengoku about this─not just her name but the very fact of her existence. Considering everything that’d been going on, I was somehow hesitant to introduce them to each other.

I can’t deny that I was maybe being overly cautious.

Or reading too much into things, at any rate…

But Sengoku had a right to know what I’d learned about Kita-Shirahebi Shrine─she was very much involved with that place, after all.

“So they did do a minimal amount of construction,” she said.

“Meaning?”

“The people who did the construction, the people who were made to eff-eck-choo-eight it─”

Her manner of speaking somehow ended up like Karen’s─why Karen’s, and not Tsukihi’s? Maybe it was a question of how influential they were or weren’t. Karen influenced easily, and Tsukihi was easily influenced…

“─had to at least clear the land on top of the mountain, to create space to build the shrine, right?”

“Uh huh. Well, clearing the land to make space… I guess that’s the minimal amount of construction? It’s not like that kind of open space would occur naturally in the middle of the mountains.”

“Yeah. And they used the lumber they obtained to build the shrine.”

Waste-free construction─Sengoku said.

Waste-free, minimal.

“Then they wouldn’t need to haul lumber all the way up to the top, right? In other words, they wouldn’t need to clear a path for that. They could just pluck up their grit and climb to the summit on whatever path, then lodge there while they were doing the actual construction.”

“…”

Well, you wouldn’t necessarily have to lodge there, but─huh. Since it’s a mountain, you’ve got all the lumber you need without having to transport it from somewhere else.

A veritable mountain of it.

A while back, I employed a falsehood about trees in the back courtyard of Karen’s dojo being used to build the dojo itself…but even if it was out of the question to harm such a sacred mountain for no good reason─using the lumber obtained from clearing a space for a shrine to build that very shrine was based in a spirit of keeping things local, or in contemporary terms, it was eco-friendly.

Such a simple answer was so clearly true once you heard it, there could be no other possibility─if the question Ogi posed had been, “How would you build a new shrine on top of a mountain with minimum harm done to the mountain itself?” it might’ve taken me a while, but I probably would’ve arrived at the same answer eventually.

But the question she posed had been…

“Hang on, though, Sengoku. We’re talking about relocation, not new construction…‘moving.’ If you use new lumber to build a new shrine, then isn’t that a different shrine?”

“They’d probably bring along their relish…I mean, their relic. But if you’re taking the trouble of moving to a new place, don’t you think you’d want a new building anyway?”

“…”

The ship of Theseus.

If its pieces are replaced in the course of repeated repairs until ultimately all the original parts are gone─can you still call it the same ship?

I think that’s how that one went.

“So the building was completely replaced, switched out, and only the name was brought along─no, wait, the name was changed too. Speaking of which…”

Whatever else may change.

As long as the faith doesn’t, then nothing has─just like how people’s feelings don’t change in the face of reason?

You can try to replace them, but they won’t change.

Immutable─no, maybe that idea is exactly what Ogi saw as being problematic.

Since, if I was to believe her, relocating the shrine to the top of that mountain had been a mistake.

A mistake?

No─what matters is the balance.

Worshipping a god atop that mountain upset some kind of balance─

“Speaking of which, Big Brother Koyomi. Your quiz made me wonder.”

“Um, it wasn’t a quiz…”

“That shrine is all falling apart, but do you think they’ll rebuild it at some point?”

“Rebuild…”

I hadn’t thought about it─but if they did rebuild it.

Modern times being what they are, I doubt they’d use lumber from the site for the construction─and of course they’d clear a road up to the top.

That’s how dilapidated the shrine was. Its reconstruction would be welcome─but in that case, what would happen to the balance Ogi was worried about?

If a shrine that already had no worshippers, that had no god, were to be rebuilt─renovated, just what new kind of faith would be born there?

No─not a new faith.

A continuation of an old one.

Whatever kind of logic you try to apply, whatever reason you employ.

Faiths, like aberrations─abide.

“It would be great if they rebuilt it,” Sengoku said. “If they did, I bet it wouldn’t be a hangout for ‘bad elements’ anymore. I bet by then, Mister Serpent─I mean the snake god would have returned to the shrine. Right, Big Brother Koyomi?”

“Oh… Yeah. That’d be really great.”

Would it?

I had no way of knowing─but that’s what I told Sengoku.

Either way, since a certain point in time, the balance in our town had gone into a one-way nosedive.

And I had a bad feeling about where things were headed.

No, it wasn’t just a bad feeling─a real feeling.

The day when I would use, when I’d have no choice but to use, the talisman entrusted to me by Izuko Gaen was perhaps not so far off.