Monogatari Series - Volume 18 - Chapter 1.05

005

With those attention-grabbing parting words and roaring laugh, the armored warrior seemed to blend into the fire’s black smoke and to disappear, just as it had promised─while the chapter has changed, the danger Kanbaru and I faced was far from over.

As beings of mostly flesh and blood, Kanbaru and I couldn’t escape from the swirling flames by turning into what seemed like mist the way the warrior had.

The fiery sea engulfing the classroom was so thick you could nearly swim in it. The route to every exit, whether door or window, had been shut off─the fact that there was still enough space for us to make if not our last stand, then our last sit, seemed like the miracle of the century.

Of course, these would simply be our last moments if we didn’t do something…

“What was that, my dear senior? That armored warrior─I found it strange that it didn’t carry a sword, but the enchanted blade Kokorowatari? Isn’t that─and also, Kissshot…”

“That…can wait…until later,” I let out a disjointed reply.

In part because my throat wouldn’t heal and I was dealing with a scratchy voice─not to mention, barely any humidity remained in the room among the rising flames, making it hard to talk. But even apart from all that, I wanted to leave it for later.

Honestly, I didn’t even want to think about it then.

It was enough to fill my brain past its bursting point─what I needed to think about first and foremost was how to get Kanbaru out of the burning building without any harm coming to her.

This cram school engulfed in roaring flames.

If I had any degree of vampirism left in me, I might’ve shielded her and gallantly plunged through the flames and out of the building to safety─but even someone as bad at thinking things through as yours truly could figure that one out. I doubted I could even make it to the door─maybe I could get to a window if I didn’t mind burning my feet, but unfortunately, it was just too risky to dive out of a second-floor window with injured, beet-red feet.

Staying in the classroom would be worse─forget about risk, the chances of dying in there were sky high. They say suffocation is the cause of most fire-related deaths.

But our predicament seemed like one of the exceptions implied by that “most”─the lances of flame continued to pierce the floor below us with no signs of slowing or stopping. The raging flames were just making that hard to see, but it wasn’t abating in any way.

You couldn’t tell from inside.

From outside, though, the entire building must have looked like a single flaming lance─a shaft piercing the heavens.

I’d had hopes for a dramatic twist, like a column shooting from below providing an opening in the floor we could use to escape, but things are never that easy in the real world. While the flames left holes that a person could fit through, looking down them to the floor below revealed a hellfire I wish I’d never seen.

The steel and concrete had grown molten.

By that logic, the holes in the ceiling might offer a lucky escape route─but how could I reach it now that my body was back to its regular settings? The chairs I might’ve stacked up to stand on were already a blazing shade of red and looked like some sort of torture device.

“Wait, hold on. Kanbaru, what if you tried… You might not be able to get a running start, but maybe two steps or so of momentum…just might be enough…for you to reach the ceiling? Wouldn’t you be able to scramble up there? And then…we could use the elevator shaft to go from the third floor to the first, and─”

“You’re overestimating your junior. My legs aren’t that strong,” Kanbaru immediately rejected my scraggy-voiced proposal. She wanted me to know just how ridiculous it was. “Even I can’t leap all the way to the ceiling, certainly not with an older boy in my arms.”

“I see.”

Well.

It’s not like she’d escape alone even if I told her to─as loyal as my junior was, she never listened to me. I needed to assume there was no way to save her and her alone.

A high school girl who lived in total opposition to Mèmè Oshino’s dictum that people just go and get saved on their own… Perhaps such a philosophy was understandable, given her background, but at the same time, the idea that the third floor would be any better than the first or second was nothing more than pure optimism…

We were caught between a rock and a hard place─what’s the right expression when it’s flames on all sides?

“Senpai.”

“What is it, Kanbaru?”

“Will you be my first?”

“Don’t give up yet!”

She had a scary way of accepting her fate!

A confession, now?

Stop trying to push how girly you are.

“I don’t want to die a virgin.”

“Don’t make admissions like that, either. You know, this sort of thing is why people skipped the story where you were the main character.”

She was more unafraid than me two, or even several times over. I couldn’t keep up with her─at this rate, she might turn this into a lovers’ suicide.

Couldn’t she be a little more serious? In the middle of a fire, at least?

You’re never going to be serious in your life if you can’t act serious here… Then again, her life was going to end here if we didn’t do something.

“Heh. Well, it’s fine. This isn’t a bad way to die─I’d be happy if I got to die with you.”

“Um, Kanbaru? Sorry, but I don’t feel that extreme a way about you.”

“What? That hurts.”

I had to make it clear to her, even if it hurt─in fact, I wouldn’t even feel happy dying with Senjogahara, my girlfriend. In May, during Golden Week, I was consumed with the notion of dying for Hanekawa’s sake, but it wasn’t like I wanted to die with her.

The list of people I’d die with─was only one name long.

A lone, golden-haired aberration.

Who wasn’t here…

Which was exactly why─we needed to escape from this flaming building alive.

“Fine,” I said, “I’m just going to accept it.”

“Hm? Oh, you’re going to accept my first time?”

“No, I couldn’t ever accept something so huge. I mean the risk─our only option is to jump out a window and pray for the best. It’s better than burning to death here, right?”

“Yeah… I was thinking about how that was our only option, too.”

Liar. You were thinking about something completely different.

“Who knows, there might even be a car parked below us, and we can land on its roof.”

“I’ve never been that lucky in my life before…”

That was the sort of thing that happened to Tsukihi, maybe. It’d be very much like her to emerge alive from a sea of flames─like a phoenix.

But wasn’t I her brother? Couldn’t I get as lucky at least once in my life?

I wasn’t sure if we could even make it to a window through these flames─but standing around and being indecisive was a far worse use of our time.

And wasting it on banter? Unthinkable.

The two of us stood, an arm around each other’s shoulders as if we were getting ready to run a three-legged race─the flames and the shimmering heat made the path ahead of us anything but visible. We were trying to make sure not to get separated during our run, and also guarding against one of us stepping in the many holes opened in the floor. If either of us was about to fall, the other could immediately help.

“Okay,” Kanbaru said. “In a 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 rhythm.”

“Why are we using the Fibonacci sequence as our rhythm?”

“Just match my pace.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. The slower runner needs to set the pace.”

“Remember. Right foot first.”

“Wait, I know I likened it to a three-legged race, but our legs aren’t tied together. It shouldn’t matter which leg we step with first…”

“And when I say right, I mean my right.”

“We’re facing the same way.”

“I’m a lefty, though, so I sometimes get right and left mixed up.”

“You really expect me to match the finer points of how you process the world?”

We continued our banter as though we were in some sort of Hollywood movie, and maybe it was somehow appropriate given the daring escape we were about to attempt.

In any case, we took our first step.

Onward toward our desperate ploy, fully prepared for severe burns.

After everything she said, Kanbaru dared start with her left leg, while I took off with my right─however.

However, our first steps were the only one we took.

The window we saw as our way out─with neither frame nor glass, really more of a rectangular hole to begin with─instantaneously expanded in every direction.

The window…spread along the entire wall.

A large amount of oxygen gushing into a burning building through an open door or broken window magnifies the fire’s scale as a natural chemical result─the phenomenon is known as a backdraft.

That’s exactly what happened.

Earlier, I likened the vertical flaming spears rising from directly under us to mines, and if I were to continue the comparison─this backdraft was a plastic explosive.

The blast originated at the very spot we were hoping to rush through, which is to say right in front of us─inflicting an inordinate amount of damage.

Ah. The “Contain” in “Rescue, Alert, Contain, and Extinguish” wasn’t there for show, and this was a head-on collision.

But Kanbaru and I weren’t the only ones to be affected by this fresh blast of fire─the flames themselves were blown out.

For a moment.

Only temporarily, of course─but the backdraft quelled the flames in the classroom by force.

“This is like how they sometimes fight fire with dynamite…”

Then, sure enough.

As I said this─from beyond the broken wall came a violent sorcerer’s doll shikigami, a tsukumogami of a human corpse used for a hundred years─Yotsugi Ononoki.

I know I’m repeating myself, but we were on the second floor.

Literally above ground level.

Didn’t matter to her.

With her grip strength, impressive even among the inhuman beings I know, Ononoki supported herself by holding onto a flat wall─and spoke to me, expressionless and emotionless.

“Don’t think you can die out here. I’m going to be the one to kill you, monstieur.”

“…”

What kind of character was she this time around?