Monogatari Series - Volume 18 - Chapter 1.26

026

Whap.

Shinobu’s hand moved to grab Kanbaru’s face.

It looked like she was using the Iron Claw─Shinobu seemed to launch another attack from the mount position upon the face-up girl she straddled, Kanbaru.

That said, it seemed the Iron Claw was only meant to threaten, with no strength put into her fingers─touching Kanbaru’s face more than grabbing.

Still, how could anyone stay still with this sham of a vampire’s hand on her face? Shinobu had enough grip strength to crush a snake aberration. Of course, a snake’s head wasn’t the same as a human head, but it was probably like having your head patted by a bear.

I thought I could hear Kanbaru gulp.

And yet she didn’t retreat.

She didn’t retreat.

“You’re trying to avoid ever having to meet your former partner, who spent four hundred years coming back to life─that’s not good. It’s not good at all.”

That’s.

Not right─Kanbaru said.

“…”

I found myself gulping as well─so that’s what Kanbaru wanted to talk to Shinobu about while I was gone? I had no way of knowing how she broached the topic, but given that she’d ended up pinned to the ground, she probably hadn’t done so in a very good way.

No.

She absolutely hadn’t broached the topic in a good way.

She would have been direct, her words loud, clear, and unconsidered when there may have been better ones to use.

You’re wrong. It isn’t right.

She must have said those kinds of things─and even if she did know what kind of explosion of anger those honest words would invite, she wouldn’t have said it any other way.

Suruga Kanbaru.

She continued, still refusing to choose her words carefully.

“An adult for five centuries? Really? Seems to me you’re nothing more than a coward who keeps running away, refusing to face her past.” She said the words clearly. Her face still pressed down upon. “You told me to apologize─but don’t you have someone you need to apologize to, if anything?”

“I haven’t a clue as to what thou may speak of. I cannot make sense of it─’tis incomprehensible. I had seen from within my master’s shadow that derangement is thy standard state of mind, but it seems thou hast exceeded even that.”

So Shinobu agreed that there was something wrong with Kanbaru’s head… That was plenty on its own, but right now I also shared Shinobu’s inability to understand what Kanbaru was trying to say.

She needed to meet the first Aberration Slayer.

And─apologize to him?

Is that what she was saying? I recalled my conversation in the empty lot with the boy Aberration Slayer. He said something─about wanting to apologize to Shinobu.

He wanted to meet her in order to apologize.

I couldn’t gauge just how much he meant it, and even if he was telling the truth, part of me felt it’d be a little selfish to want something like that after all this time─yet Kanbaru now said the total opposite to Shinobu.

Meet him and apologize to him─what made Kanbaru feel like she needed to say that?

“I know better than anyone that I’m messed up in the head.”

So she was aware of it…

“But that has nothing to do with this─I still know you’re in the wrong, even with a messed-up head.”

“And I’ve been asking thee all this time where I’ve gone wrong─I don’t understand a lick of it. If a lowly human such as thee wishes to deliver a sermon to me, at least speak in a somewhat logical manner.”

“To hell with logic!” Kanbaru screamed again.

It almost looked like she was eating Shinobu’s palm when she screamed with her face pressed down─and Shinobu didn’t move her hand away, either.

Depending on how you saw it, they painted a very surreal picture.

Ononoki might have smiled if she could form expressions─but this was as serious as could be for the two involved.

“Stop whining and just meet him! We’re talking about a guy who spent four hundred years returning all in order to meet you─so why won’t you do that for him?!”

“And again, that is where thy misunderstanding lies─’tis not as if he returned for any reason as trifling and emotional as that. ’Tis mere vitality, merely a natural phenomenon. No different from the arrival of the summer and the winter, the pouring of rain, the crashing of the waves, the day turning to night turning to day again. A natural phenomenon, where scattered ashes were gathered once more by the wind and excited in the way a magnet would be.”

“Sure, but it’s natural for someone to fall in love!” yelled Kanbaru. “Don’t you dare deny someone’s feelings of being in love with you!”

“Again… How incomprehensible ye are!” Low until now, Shinobu’s voice also began to rise. “Just what kind of disposition doth thou possess? Stop trying to measure the world by thy own standards! That is not the nature of a vampire thrall─a vampire’s relationship of master and servant! ’Tis not a matter of love and love not, ye─romantic rotbrain!”

Romantic rotbrain.

The words were strong enough to potentially end the argument, but Kanbaru still didn’t fall back─she persisted in the same fraught tone.

“Your master and servant relationship isn’t about love and love not? Is that─something you’d be able to say to Araragi-senpai’s face?”

“…”

Shinobu fell silent.

She went from enraged to quiet.

While we weren’t face to face, I was directly to the side of hers. But Shinobu couldn’t have gone quiet because she knew that.

Had we been linked, I could never escape notice at this distance, no matter how expert a job I did at hiding…

How ironic. I’d come into contact with Shinobu’s feelings like this precisely because our link had been severed.

“Hmph. And so ye created such an opportunity for the two of us to be alone? Ah, but now that I mention it, something about ye did appear strange when I said to my master I’d no intention of meeting that thrall… And so ye had him buy books and brassieres and whatnot?”

“No, that doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

…Apparently it didn’t.

“I really just wanted him to buy those for me. If I’m being honest with you, I regret not putting more emphasis on the bra─I’m concerned now that he’ll treat it as some kind of joke and not buy one. My chest really hurts after all that moving I did just now. My breasts can’t keep up with my speed. I thought they might get torn off at the root.”

“Thy movements were indeed dynamic…”

“By the way, back when I played basketball, there was this one team we used to face off against called the Commandos, but I could never quite focus during those games.”

“Well, it seems thou art underprepared once more as far as underwear.”

“Indeed. I’d never be down on the ground like this if I’d worn a bra… Though it’s really easy to just have to lie here like this. It’s like I’ve been freed from gravity.”

“Hmph. A concern I do not share as I am now,” Shinobu said, seemingly annoyed.

As far as I could surmise, the beating-each-other-down portion of their conversation was behind them─you’d think the situation would start with them trying to talk each other down, then proceed to shout- ing each other down, then beating each other down, but it seemed that fights between girls followed the opposite path.

In other words, a beatdown, then the shouting down─and then, at last, they talked each other down.

Okay, it’d be disrespectful to girls around the country if I took anything Shinobu Oshino and Suruga Kanbaru did as representative, but still.

Just as I thought during our encounters with the armored warrior and the monkey-crab-snake, Kanbaru was so quick to act─she must have gone straight into this per usual, as soon as I started down the mountain to go shopping. An opportunity to get right into a fight, ending in Shinobu mounting her.

Ononoki and I had walked in on them as they tried to shout each other down.

Neither Ononoki nor I would be spying on them so easily without that battle at the start… Whether or not Kanbaru honestly didn’t want anyone around, it was very much like her to have failed so spectacularly in the end.

That kind of inattention to detail was in character.

As was the fact that she didn’t hesitate to face off against a vampire─if she had something she wanted to say, she said it, whether it was to a cute little girl with blond hair or her esteemed senior.

When she wouldn’t compromise on something, she wouldn’t compromise on it.

That stubbornness─could she have gotten it from her mother?

I mean, just think about her left hand…

Anyway, a side product of us learning about what led to this situation was the factoid that Kanbaru had moved around as fast and hard as she could while wearing my hoodie directly against her braless skin. This set my heart aflutter to no small degree. Shinobu made it for me, and I rather liked it, but how should I feel wearing it in the future?

Wait, why were they talking about breasts?

“Hold on a moment, why do we speak of breasts?”

“You’re the one who brought it up, Shinobu.”

“Um…”

Shinobu tried to get started again, her expression still annoyed─though Kanbaru may have thrown her off beat, that seemed to have calmed her mental state. Of course, just as Kanbaru pointed out, Shinobu called herself a five-hundred-year-old adult (actually five hundred ninety-eight years old) but had no choice but to take the form of a little girl.

In other words, nothing about her seemed mature.

It appeared as though they’d talked each other down, but she’d surely fly into another rage if Kanbaru said something else that bothered her─and in fact, her nails were still placed against Kanbaru’s face.

“Fine, I understand what it is ye wish to say─but this is no mere misunderstanding, ’tis meddlesome as well. Just as I said to my master before, thy senior is the only one I could now call my thrall. As I am now─”

“You say you don’t understand what I’m saying, but if anything, I don’t understand you when you say that─that’s exactly what I can’t stand you saying.”

“Hmm?”

“You’re almost making it sound like you should only have one thrall─haven’t you ever considered something like you, Araragi-senpai, and this first Aberration Slayer all getting along, the three of you together?”

“The three of us?”

Shinobu seemed confused by Kanbaru’s opinion─as was I.

Because she was right.

I’d never considered it.

And─neither had the first Aberration Slayer, most likely.

She said she didn’t need two thralls, but when I thought about it, she didn’t have a reason for not having two, did she?

So then why had this idea never once come to any of us? That almost made it look like─the first Aberration Slayer and I knew we’d face off and fight over Shinobu from the start.

Fight over her?

Like some kind of love triangle?

Yes, almost as if─my brain had been rotted by romance.

“That man died out of resentment for me. He showered me in rancorous words─and I should forgive that? No─thou said I must apologize. Apologize? For making him a vampire out of my own feelings of solitude? And what─ye dare say I ought to make up with him?”

“It doesn’t matter whether or not you make up with him.”

You could hear in Kanbaru’s words that she held nothing back. She mercilessly criticized Shinobu, who looked a little weaker after Kanbaru’s earlier point─and it felt like she also criticized me as I listened.

“You don’t have to. That’d involve the both of you, so maybe you can’t─if you’re going to say you want to pick Araragi-senpai over the first Aberration Slayer, that’s fine. But you need to be the one to tell him that. You shouldn’t leave it up to Miss Izuko or Araragi-senpai.”

“And what do ye claim to know?” Shinobu said, disgusted. “This does not involve thee, so thou art able to say anything about it at all─thou knowest not. Not a single thing─not of my relation with him. Our history. Thou art nothing but a nuisance with thy arbitrary delusions. Nay, not only of what took place four hundred years ago─I dare say ye know nothing of even my current relationship with my master, or am I mistaken?”

“It’s true, I don’t know. But I can tell,” Kanbaru insisted without denying Shinobu’s words, her valid point.

She was serious─and sincere as she spoke.

“About how you feel about your first, and your second.”

“…”

Shinobu gulped─as did I.

Ononoki was just silent─probably because she didn’t understand what Kanbaru truly meant.

But I knew.

Given that the two didn’t have too deep of a relationship, it was a bit strange that Kanbaru would get into it with Shinobu to this degree, her personality aside… But now it made sense.

I’d even thought that she, as my ever-caring junior, was inferring the way I felt and saying these difficult words to Shinobu in my place─but that wasn’t it.

Kanbaru understood better than I did.

And better than Shinobu, of course.

She knew how the first Aberration Slayer felt.

Feelings of obsession─like some kind of true love.

“Enough of thy foolish empathy.”

This seemed to come across even to Shinobu, someone who by no means was perceptive when it came to the subtleties of the human experience. She spoke to Kanbaru with a complicated expression on her face.

“That man, returned from four hundred years ago, may appear pitiful to thee─ye may feel sympathy. However.”

“I’m not sympathizing with him. I don’t feel bad for him, either. I even understand that no one could have stopped this from happening─but it’d just be so hopeless like this. Him coming back to life from four hundred years in the past is like a miracle that no one could have ever predicted, right? Not you, not Araragi-senpai, not Miss Izuko, probably not even Mister Oshino─and the miracle deserves a fitting reward. If you ignored this miracle, treated it like some sort of statistical phenomenon, pretended it never happened─it would just seem like you’re leaving him so empty-handed.”

“Which is what ye must find so pity-inducing… But what would satisfy thee? Why must ye raise such a fuss? Have ye not considered that my not meeting him is an act done for his own sake?”

Shinobu’s replies grew weaker.

Something about them told me that.

It sounded like she was saying things to try to convince Kanbaru to come around to her side instead of making her own points─was she wavering?

The aberration who had lived for five hundred years?

Was she being defeated in an argument by a seventeen-year-old girl?

“Were I to meet him after all this time, I’d have no words for him─he was never a good thing for me from the start, nor was I for him. Face reality, monkey-girl. There is nothing to do to him now but eliminate him─his existence brings unrest to this town, and he is like the embodiment of those stories of aberrations that now infest this place. His role should be nothing more than that of prey to an expert. He could never be considered harmless the way I or my master have been─ironically, that man who once slew countless aberrations himself will now be defeated by a future colleague─and there is no way to prevent that.”

“I know. And that’s why.”

“That is why? Why is it all the more reason for me to meet him? As I have said again and again, that man resents me─he may kill me if we were to meet. He may kill my master as well. It seems he says I must return his enchanted blade, but I may not be the only one to fall victim to it. So taking all this in consideration─”

“I’ve taken all that into consideration and I’m still saying you should meet him─like I said, forget about logic! Why does everyone refuse to meet people by saying things like that─it’s such a non-starter! If people don’t meet, it’s game over from the start!”

There’d be nothing to tell!

Kanbaru raised her voice─before raising her torso, Shinobu’s hand still around her face. Shinobu began to lose her balance─she couldn’t have expected Kanbaru to get up from being mounted using her abs alone. Shinobu must have felt as though she had her opponent physically dominated, if not mentally─but Kanbaru tried to get up.

Without borrowing the strength of her aberrational left hand, either.

“Just come out and say it,” Kanbaru urged. “You’re scared. Say you’re scared of meeting him.”

“…”

“That you don’t want to meet him and talk to him and get your emotions worked up─king of aberrations? Legendary vampire? Yeah, right. You’re exactly what you look like─a little girl who’s scared of monsters.”

“…”

“You might feel like you’re being faithful, or that you’re showing how virtuous you are by not meeting him because you think you’d be betraying Araragi-senpai if you did─but that’s not true. You’re not betraying him, the only person you’re betraying, the only person you’re lying to, the only person you’re being phony to is yourself. Your weak, phony self.”

“…”

“What’s wrong with saying it. Just say it. Say it. That the kind of love that brought him back over four hundred years is too heavy for you. That honestly, it creeps you out. That it’s a problem if he comes back to life and into yours after all this time, just when you’re getting along with Araragi-senpai. That it’s a pain in the ass if he decides to rehash all these things that are just memories for you now. That the way he’s being so pushy is gross. That you find his feelings annoying─just say that it would’ve been better if he stayed dead. If you can’t, then don’t ever go on about master this, lord that. There’s nothing lofty or noble about you.”

All you are is shy.

Kanbaru had now gotten all the way up.

“Don’t give me that master and servant stuff─you don’t deserve to have slaves or masters.”

“Ka…”

“You don’t deserve to form any relationships at all.”

“Kakak!”

Shinobu─laughed.

A gruesome laugh─and I could tell there was strength in her hand now.

This would be my only chance to stop her─yes, there wasn’t any logic left at this point, nor was it a discussion.

Right or wrong didn’t exist now that it had gone this far.

This was no longer a Shinobu who could stay silent, in the face of that many hostile remarks─Ononoki had started to get up as well. While she probably didn’t understand what they were saying, she could sense the disquiet in the air as a warrior.

But.

Just as Ononoki held me back earlier, I stopped her this time. I held her hand and kept her from trying to insert herself between the two.

“Why do you have your fingers wrapped around mine?”

“Oops, my mistake. I confused you with Senjogahara.”

“You’re disgusting.”

I adjusted my grip.

“Wait just a little longer, Ononoki.”

“Why? It’s bad enough already.”

“Even then.”

I understood─this could go past the point of no return. Shinobu didn’t discriminate between humans for the most part, and Kanbaru being my junior didn’t mean a thing to her.

She couldn’t suffer that much of an insult.

And not do a thing about it.

Even then…

“Kakak─kakak. So are those the dying words ye wish to leave behind? ’Tis I who should be asking thee─are ye satisfied after saying all ye wished to say?”

“I’m very dissatisfied. I still have a lot I want to say.”

“I’ve not the space in my heart to hear it. I feel like crushing thy head right here, even if’twould ruin everything.”

“Then go ahead, do it.”

I’m not apologizing, Kanbaru said─still glaring at Shinobu from between the fingers clasped across her face.

“Do it, then you can feel awkward around Araragi-senpai next. I bet you’ll start avoiding him, the way you’re avoiding the first Aberration Slayer now. You know the way you’ve been talking about him like he’s something from your past? Well─you can make everything about Araragi-senpai a story from your past too.”

“What a fortunate girl─so many ways of killing thee have come to my mind that I hesitated to kill thee out of reflex just now,” Shinobu said as she strengthened her grip─then blood.

She was already applying enough strength to Kanbaru’s head that her skin tore and her blood ran─but I still didn’t move.

I couldn’t intervene─it felt wrong to.

If I were to jump in and settle everything down─it’d be such a farcical ending. It’d be wrong for me to end their conversation.

Even if─it went past the point of no return.

Even if it ruined everything.

“So I shall give thee one final chance.”

“I don’t need it. You’re going to throw away your second someday, just like you threw away your first. How could you ever face who your second is when you can’t face your first? And your third, and your fourth, and your fifth─just keep on splitting up with people forever.”

“Forever?”

“You’re immortal, aren’t you? You know what Araragi-senpai said once? He said─that if you wanted to die tomorrow, he was ready for his own life to end tomorrow, too. But I bet you’d never say anything like that. Even if you did─you’d say it to your third, too. And to your fourth. And to your fifth─you’d keep on living, and you’d keep on saying it.”

“…”

That…

The words were overpowering to Shinobu, someone who’d even tried to end her own life after she grew bored of immortality.

“Do not assume all are as social as thee. Ye summed me up as shy earlier─but ’tis natural to feel disinclined to meet someone, is it not?”

“No, it’s unnatural. Even if you don’t meet eye-to-eye with everyone, you still meet them.”

“I am not a person.”

“Maybe not, by the looks of you.”

They were diametrically opposed.

My conversation with the boy Aberration Slayer had been pretty damn fruitless─but Shinobu and Kanbaru’s was quite barren as well.

No, it even felt like the more they talked, the wider the disconnect─but.

It meant their roots were entwined.

Their roots were the same.

“’Tis not as if I could say something to him if we were to meet, thou must realize. Ours was a relationship defined by hate. We were brought together by mutual hate before we first separated, then hate brought us together once more before we were separated again, by death─I have no intention of reconciling with him, nor do I intend on the three of us all getting along. I do not intend on speaking of the first alongside the second. I consider the simple comparison between the two to be an affront to my master.”

Something she said here surprised me.

No, not that Shinobu could consider anything to be an affront to me─it was what she said about mutual hate.

I’d heard that the first Aberration Slayer killed himself out of hatred─but this was my first time hearing that Shinobu hated him.

Of course it was.

It wasn’t as if she’d told me everything, and there was the whole matter of her level of excitement when she spoke─but.

One thing was certain.

Suruga Kanbaru─had managed to pull out emotions from Shinobu that I never could.

Was this it?

Was this the real reason Miss Gaen gave this job to Kanbaru? She’d said she needed Kanbaru’s left hand, and I’d assumed that Kanbaru’s ties to the Gaen family was key. That’s what I’d been telling myself, but here Kanbaru was an outsider, someone who stood distant from the situation─I’d seen her as nothing more than a bystander who’d been dragged in, but could Miss Gaen have actually “dragged her in” to put her up against Shinobu like this?

Whether Kanbaru had added an extra item to my shopping list on purpose, or if it was just another one of those miracles that happened around her… When I went back and thought about it, I went to go buy breakfast─I was encouraged to leave the scene─by Miss Gaen.

She could tell that I’d go shopping if she handed me a five-thousand-yen bill─and given that this was Miss Gaen, she could have known there’d be a chance, or was even sure that I’d encounter the first Aberration Slayer, were I to climb down the mountain.

Was I reading too much into this?

How could she predict something like the first Aberration Slayer returning with a will of his own when she first tried to drag Kanbaru into this job?

“…”

No, maybe she could.

I know everything.

The lady who knows everything.

Who knew, maybe she’d even predicted that I’d buy some cougar photo books…

“That’s going a little too far,” Ononoki jumped in, despite not knowing anything about that situation.

Really? She was going to zing me over a situation she didn’t even know about?

“Please don’t try to play stupid to provide comic relief here, monstieur. I think we’re nearing the emotional climax.”

“Emotional climax… This really is just a show to you, isn’t it?”

“That’s not true. You’re about to see the tears start to really flow. From me.”

“Yeah right. And that’d just be a cry-max, not a climax, anyway.”

Whatever the case, Miss Gaen certainly had no desire to meet her long-lost niece─her older sister’s daughter.

So─even if Miss Gaen knew everything, there were some things she didn’t understand.

Wanting to meet someone.

The desire to meet someone─she didn’t understand that.

Ah.

At that moment─after my eighteen years alive and many experiences, I understood for the first time.

Loving someone and wanting to meet them─are two different emotions.

“Nor is there anything I could do for the first, were I to meet him─I could not so much as give back the enchanted blade Kokorowatari, not now. It has integrated itself into my body,” Shinobu said. In a subdued voice. “Listen close, for this is what I wish to say. It is not that I refuse to meet him because I derive no benefit from doing so─meeting would not be good for him, either. What meaning would there be in having him see me getting along well with my master? Having him see that I no longer have any feelings at all for him─what meaning is there in that? Ye would have me do something as cruel as that?”

“That’s right. I’m telling you to do the cruel thing. It’s your job to wound that man in your past,” Kanbaru said. In a fierce voice. “Do you just want to be someone good and loved by all? Do you want to be loved and nothing else?”

“Thy words…are no different from saying that ’tis better to destroy what would otherwise grow weathered and faded─”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.”

“And if he now wishes to kill me out of hatred, I have no choice but to kill him in turn─I would not allow myself to be killed for his sake. While I admit that I may owe him apologies, I do not expect him to forgive me. And still ye say I should?”

“You should. If that happens, just respond to those feelings of hate─just cut those feelings off. But if you apologize and he does forgive you─”

“The outcome would be no different. He would be eliminated by those experts the moment after he forgives me─still I should?”

“You still should.”

You still should, Kanbaru repeated.

Shinobu seemed irritated─maybe she saw it as Kanbaru making fun of her, because her grip grew even tighter… It could barely be any stronger.

I thought I even heard the sound of Kanbaru’s skull creaking.

“Even if thy foolish prediction is correct and that man did return out of his feelings for me─I would never respond to such feelings. Were I to meet him, the most I could ever do would be to mercilessly and unsparingly reject him. And still I should?”

“You still should.”

“Say I met him─”

A gruesome smile reappeared on Shinobu’s face.

More gruesome than I’d ever seen.

It was as grotesque as a smile could be.

“What would ye do if I wanted to respond to those feelings? If instead of thy senior─I chose the first Aberration Slayer, then what? Still I should?”

“You still should.”

And if that happens, Suruga Kanbaru declared─as her blood spilled.

“Make a clean break from Araragi-senpai─and live by his side forever.”

Dangle.

Shinobu’s hand, the one wrapped tight around Kanbaru’s head, dangled and fell─swinging back and forth, strengthless. Not just her hand. Shinobu’s face and shoulders both slumped and drooped.

She didn’t say it out loud.

Shinobu still had the far more dominant position. Though now off balance, she straddled Kanbaru─and Kanbaru was the one bleeding.

But it was so clear.

Yes.

Shinobu Oshino had admitted defeat.

The legendary vampire who had lived for over half a millennium, Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, had just admitted that she lost─to a seventeen-year-old high school girl, at that.

It was my first time.

I’d never seen Shinobu Oshino lose one-on-one before.

“Ononoki,” I said─at some point, I’d let go of her hand. “I have a request.”

“Another one? Stop using me like some kind of convenient tool. Know your place, punk.”

“Punk? Don’t worry, this is my last request,” I said, pointing at my face.

“Could you take this stamp off of me?”

“…?” Ononoki tilted her head like she didn’t understand. “I can’t guarantee your safety if I did that. I understand that my footprint is embarrassing, but you just have to put up for it this one night and everything will be okay.”

She’d put her footprint on my face knowing that it’d be embarrassing? And you know, given the role it played, there didn’t seem to be any particular need for it to be on my face, or even for it to be a footprint, so long as others could see it…

I spoke once more.

I spoke, looking straight forward─my eyes fixed on a bleeding Suruga Kanbaru and a defeated Shinobu Oshino.

“I feel like dueling someone.”