Monogatari Series - Volume 18 - Chapter 1.12

012

“Ah─so it’s ye. How long it took. Thou hast grown quite haughty, I see, forcing me to stay wide awake, waiting here all night.”

“You were sound asleep. What happened to you being nocturnal?”

“My sleep schedule’s been turned around.”

“If a vampire gets her sleep schedule turned around, that just means sleeping when a regular, healthy person does.”

“Mnrrrgh.”

Shinobu got up as she rubbed her eyes─but as she did, she bonked the top of her head against the swing. She fell back down with a “Gah!”

Just look at how cute she is…

While Kanbaru watched the little girl with a warm smile (now that I think about it, this would have been her first time meeting a speaking Shinobu), I of course had to do more.

We parted ways not knowing if we’d ever see the other alive again, so you could call this an emotional reunion─but the timing of it just wasn’t right. It felt like getting a slow curve when you’re expecting a fastball.

Like I might end up watching it go past me.

Whatever the case, I first needed to ask Shinobu why she was here─and I would also need to explain to her what had happened to me since our parting. I moved the swing to the side and helped Shinobu get up.

“Hey, Shinobu… Why are you here?”

“I know, I know─calm thyself, my master. I’ll explain all in…zzz…”

“It looks to me the only thing you’re interested in doing is sleeping… Hm?”

That’s when I noticed─only once I’d taken her hand and approached her. Here and there on Shinobu’s translucently white skin were what looked like scratch wounds.

Scratch wounds?

Wounds?

Don’t tell me it’s from playing on the swings, I thought, given her position and supine pose (she would seriously be getting lectured if it was)─but no, you didn’t get scratches like hers from playing on a swing.

In that case, what could it be? The marks almost made it look like she’d been through a small skirmish before I arrived at the park. In that case, was she sleeping despite it being the middle of the night to restore her energy after a battle?

“Kakak!”

Shinobu laughed─then faced Kanbaru.

A pretty intrepid laugh, given that her entire body was covered in scratches.

Seeing her made me think. Maybe we’d remained connected in a sense despite our link being cut, considering the way I’d been subject to countless blows and scrapes.

“So─a monkey. Hmph. What a handful that was.”

“…?”

I tilted my head in confusion at the words that accompanied her laugh─okay, well, Shinobu may have been living at the abandoned cram school with Oshino and not in my shadow when that stuff happened with Kanbaru’s left hand, but I did draw on her strength. It still didn’t explain why Shinobu herself described Kanbaru as a “handful,” though…

“Heh. Yeah, this kitty really is a lot to handle,” Kanbaru returned, her words coming from some strange fantasy unknown to me─please, Kanbaru, just stay quiet for a while. I’m sorry, but you’re only going to make things harder to deal with.

What was she going to do if Shinobu snapped at being calling a kitty? She knew that this little girl was also a vampire, right?

But.

“A cat, eh…”

Shinobu’s smile only grew wider as she showed no signs of anger.

Of course, she showed close to zero interest in any humans other than myself─nothing had fundamentally changed about her in that sense since the days when she sat silently in a corner of the abandoned cram school, her arms around her knees.

Even this exchange that seemed like a conversation with Kanbaru was in fact nothing more than Shinobu talking to herself─she casually looked away from my junior and back to me.

You could say she only had herself to blame, but Kanbaru’s body shook and jolted, having been ignored─but let’s not get into the perverted stuff right now.

“Oh, no─when I say a monkey, I speak not of this girl. It wore a rain coat and long boots, but ’twas a different person.”

“A different person?”

“A different aberration, I should perhaps say. Whatever the case, the aberration I fought elsewhere just now. Alongside a cat.”

“Huh? Wha… What are you talking about?”

Could Shinobu, too, have encountered some kind of aberrational phenomenon while I was being led astray by mine? In fact, I was just thinking about how I don’t have a monopoly on getting attacked by aberrations, but─a cat?

What did she mean, a cat?

What was going on in this town?

“Oh… Are those scratches all over your body from this…monkey you’re talking about?”

So this monkey had nothing to do with Kanbaru’s left hand─an evil I could neither hear, see, nor speak of.

It was similar to the way I’d gotten lost, in that it wasn’t strictly the same as the snail I encountered in May─but what could it mean if we were coming across all of these aberrations that were close to but not the same as the ones before, like some sort of rehash of the past?

“Close but not the same? I’d be far more succinct and call it a cheap knockoff. Though to go into detail, about half of these scratches are collateral damage from the cat’s attacks.”

“Collateral damage… I’m having trouble understanding anything you’re saying, but did you also fight this cat you’re talking about while you were off elsewhere or whatever?”

“No, no… I was with the cat─aye, a contest for the ages in so many ways. But these are mere scrapes. Nothing to fret about. What about thee? Art thou unharmed?”

“Oh─yeah. So, um, about that Darkness after you and I split up…”

I still didn’t want to be too specific about the topic in front of Kanbaru─so I tried to choose my words carefully, but my concerns were apparently unnecessary.

“Nay,” Shinobu said. “I’ve already heard a small bit about that─it seems that I myself had been confused about many a thing for over four hundred years. What an utter fool I’ve shown myself to be.”

“…”

Four hundred years.

Hearing about this time span made me recall something entirely different─the message for Shinobu that I’d been entrusted with by the armored warrior.

The enchanted blade it had lent her for over four hundred years…

What I should have been paying attention to, however, was the fact that she’d heard a small bit about it─heard it? From whom? Miss Gaen?

No, she and Shinobu hadn’t been put in contact with each other yet─my link to Shinobu was already severed by the time I met Miss Gaen.

Of course, she’d promised to reconnect our link, but─right, I needed to ask Shinobu why she, and not Miss Gaen, was here at this park.

“Hmph. I should think that goes without saying,” she said, glowering as she looked up from her position─looking up at me like she was looking down on me. She beamed with a sadistic smile. “I heard it from the tween girl who trampled all over ye.”

“A tween girl who trampled all over me? ? ? ? What could you possibly be talking about? You know you’re the only one who’s ever stepped on me with bare feet, Shinobu.”

“I never spoke of bare feet.”

“Ah! Oh no! This is what they mean by ‘loose lips sink ships’!”

“It seems it’s thy loose morals that have brought thee low in this case…” Shinobu said, shaking her head in disbelief. “In fact, thy face is still marked clearly by an adorable little footprint.”

“What?!”

I looked at Kanbaru, as if to ask for confirmation.

Kanbaru awkwardly nodded with an Um, yeah. “I kept my questions about what could have gone on while I was passed out to myself this whole time.”

“Come out and say them! Especially if you noticed something! And you enjoyed getting carried on the back of a senior who looked like that?!”

“Even if you’re my most respected senior, I don’t have the right to give you my unsolicited opinions about your sexual tastes…”

“Why is that the one thing you’d be modest about?! This kind of thing is your wheelhouse, you should be rolling up your sleeves and getting to work! I’d welcome it! The one time I’d want you to stomp your way into my business with muddy boots and leave no stone unturned!”

“But you’d prefer me to be barefoot, right?”

“It’s not like that!”

This couldn’t be real… Was I really wandering around town with a footprint on my face the entire time? How could anything I did be taken as remotely serious?

And just how hard did Ononoki step on me?

“But in a sense, it’s the kind of stamp ye could only find in the world of the printed word.”

“Lay off this ‘printed word’ stuff.”

“Hmph… Well, normally I’d be so enraged by such marks that I’d feel compelled to flay thee alive, but that doll-girl did save me, however unwillingly─so I shall show thee generosity this one time.”

While Shinobu said something unignorably violent, she also said something that was even harder to ignore. Saved.

Saved by Ononoki? On top of hearing about what happened?

“Hold on… Now I really need you to tell me what happened, Shinobu.”

“Again, ’tis I who would ask that question more than thee… What exactly happened in that short time we were apart that led thee to have a tween girl’s footprint impressed upon thy face?”

“Well, look at the time. I’ve got to head back to my room to listen to some paper-jacketed CDs on my vacuum-tube amp.”

“Don’t ye try to act cool in some unfathomable way. Vacuum-tube amps and paper-jacketed CDs? The only vacuum here is the one in thy skull, the depth of thy seedy character paper-thin. I’m asking thee about the reason for that footprint.”

“If I’m being honest with you, I don’t know either.”

Try as she might, with her uncomfortably real remarks, to hound me and my attempts to gloss over the subject, I didn’t understand much about anything that was going on, let alone the footprint─which is why I wanted to know what happened to Shinobu, at least.

“Oh, nothing worthy of mention─the cat and I were attacked by a monkey… And just as we struggled in our fight, the doll-girl appeared from nowhere to join us most admirably. What was that girl’s secret technique again, the Unlimited Rulebook? Well, she used it to blow the right side of the monkey’s body right off.”

“…”

Ononoki was putting in good work.

All over the place.

In other words, after she heard from us at the abandoned cram school─or its burnt ruins, Ononoki went after the armored warrior only to come across Shinobu, whether by chance or by fate, just as the former vampire came across this aberrational phenomenon of her own.

Thinking about this, you could say that Shinobu and Ononoki had a strange kind of bond tying their lives together─despite the two getting into a serious fight during their first encounter.

Shinobu may have won an overwhelming victory then, but her powers had been enhanced to a level close to their limit─my link with Shinobu was severed now, so her abilities in a fight wouldn’t be too different from an average little girl’s. It was also pretty rare for someone as obstinate and ostentatious as her to admit that she struggled to fight this monkey she herself dismissed as a cheap knockoff…

“And then you were saved by Ononoki─which is when she told you everything. In that case…”

If she’d heard about the Darkness, then could she have also heard about the armored warrior that came after it? No─that seemed unlikely. She wouldn’t be asking me about what happened if she had.

Ononoki had no duty to explain that much to Shinobu, someone she generally wasn’t on good terms with─she must have told her about where I’d be meeting Miss Gaen, which is to say this park, and gone back to tailing the armored warrior, looking for it and scurrying away.

God, what a hard worker.

While part of me was amazed, another part of me didn’t know how to feel about Shinobu still not knowing about the armored warrior.

While it would’ve been easier for me if Ononoki had told her, I felt some sort of inchoate pride over being the one to deliver the news─and I’d been tasked with a message.

“Well, so long as the two of us are fine,” Shinobu said. “No, I suppose it isn’t as if we’re fine.”

“…”

If you’re alive, you’re fine─no, that’s what Miss Gaen would say.

“It seems that our link will be restored by the Hawaiian-shirted boy’s mentor or some such? Thus the doll-girl said I ought to convene with her, but when I arrived, I found neither thee or this mentor. And so.”

“‘And so’ you fell asleep under a swing? What kind of idea is that? Where would it even come from? Even if you did get tired out by your unexpected battle, there have to be better places to sleep. Ononoki went out of her way to save you and your fight was finally over, so why go and do something as risky as─”

“Listen, ye,” Shinobu interrupted me. Her sadistic smile had disappeared, replaced with an unexpected solemnity. “We shall talk about that later. Alas, it seems my battle has yet to end─the fight was not over.”

“Hm?”

“Our battle is only beginning.”

Then, when I looked.

In the direction Shinobu pointed with her chin─it stood there in the dead center of the park.

Kanbaru had her eyes trained on it as well.

Her gaze sharp.

Now I saw that Shinobu’s description was accurate─a monkey in long boots wearing a raincoat. A large monkey that was both familiar and strange.

But only its left half.

As for its right half, blown away by Ononoki’s Unlimited Rulebook─it was a massive crustacean.

There in its place─a crab.