Monogatari Series - Volume 18 - Chapter 1.33

033

Perhaps the expression little girl was a bit too overpowering for the uninitiated, but whatever the case, Miss Gaen didn’t say another word as she stepped away from me─no, to be exact, she did mutter something to herself, so low that I could barely make it out.

“It’d be nice if I could ever trust anyone enough to just hand them my phone.”

Then, after one more actor went missing from the stage that was the Naoetsu High athletic field, eight o’clock came at last. Time came for the duel to begin─and a change occurred.

Something came raining down from the cloudy night sky─or maybe it would be better to say it came slashing down.

It was a blade─a great katana.

A Japanese sword is made to slash, not rain down─yet it clearly fell like a single bolt of lightning from high in the sky to the center of the field.

Its tip squarely hit the bamboo sword Miss Gaen had thrust into the ground earlier. She said spiritual energy or something had been used to strengthen it, to the point that you could stick it into the ground, yet it tore like a piece of vinyl tape, splitting exactly in two.

Of course it did.

What good was spiritual energy in the face of a great katana? Miss Gaen’s so-called imaginary version of the enchanted blade Kokorowatari was no match.

How could the imaginary ever rival the real thing?

What had come flying from the sky was the aberration-exterminating blade known before any other as the Aberration Slayer─the enchanted blade Kokorowatari.

It was as if the bamboo sword never existed in the first place.

Its presence was such that it seemed to always have been there, sticking out of the ground─and with that, the weapon signifying the start of our duel changed from a bamboo sword to an actual blade.

My head shot up to look at the sky at the same time as the armored warrior’s─but there was nothing to be found there. Not the moon, not even a flying bat.

Even so, we knew. Who now owned this sword─and therefore who threw it between me and him.

A vampire known as the Aberration Slayer.

Whom I called Shinobu Oshino─and he, Kissshot.

Once an iron-blooded, hot-blooded, yet cold-blooded vampire─and now the dregs of one.

“Hah. Gotta love it,” Episode said with an insincere laugh. Maybe he could see wherever she was. “So, the master has decided to provide the tool for this conflict between her slaves─or maybe the prize? Like she’s saying she’d give the winner that enchanted blade.”

“Maybe. Whatever the case, that bamboo sword I went to all the trouble of preparing just got split in half, so we’re just going to have to use the real thing. Koyomin, First. We’re running a little late, but why don’t you get started─put your backs to one another around that sword, just as originally planned,” Miss Gaen said, ordering us around as if nothing too unexpected had taken place─was she trying to say she’d accounted for even Shinobu’s actions here?

In that case, I’d just have to play into her hands.

Yes, right.

I’d been thinking how dull this would be with a bamboo sword─not to mention, it changed nothing about what we needed to do.

I would run, grab the hilt, and score a strike.

It’s all either of us had.

It’s all there was, and yet it felt like our duel would now be fought under a completely different set of rules─and this seemed to go for the first Aberration Slayer as well, but not in the same way.

Because of his powerful sense of the enchanted blade Kokorowatari being his personal property, made of his own flesh and blood from the start, perhaps it didn’t move him to see it presented as a tool or offered as a reward.

No.

I couldn’t see his expression behind his face guard, but he seemed clearly displeased by this turn of events. In fact, as he faced me on the other side of the sword, he voiced his disappointment.

“She’s come so close, so why doth my master─why doth our master, Kissshot, so stubbornly refuse to show herself?”

“…”

“Is she that loath to meet me, Sir Araragi? What say ye? Are my efforts meaningless? Is this turmoil between us nothing more than a nuisance to Kissshot?”

And ye─he asked.

“What about ye, Sir Araragi? What meaning do ye find in this duel?”

“You wouldn’t understand what this means to me. I don’t know if anyone would,” I replied.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been exchanging words with him like this right before our fight, from opposite sides of the blade─but I had to say something when I considered that this would be our last conversation regardless of what happened.

“You might be some kind of special, chosen person─I’m not special, and I might not even be chosen. It could be that no one can replace you, while anyone could replace me. But you see.” I turned my back─to the first Aberration Slayer, standing there on the opposite side of the blade. “You can’t become me. There might be an infinite amount of replacements for me, but only I am me.”

“…”

“You’re not me, and I’m not you. That’s how it is, right?”

Though I phrased it as a question, I received no reply─I could only hear the sound of armor rattling.

He must have turned his back to me.

Yes, it was the position he needed to take to begin the duel, but it also seemed to symbolize how irreconcilable the two of us were.

Even if he was the first and I was the second.

Even if we were both servants and both slaves.

We weren’t the same─and we wouldn’t understand each other.

“One…”

Miss Gaen began the count once she saw us turn our backs─and I took a step forward. Behind me, I could sense the first Aberration Slayer moving as well.

“Two-o-o. Three-e-e.”

The vague lack of energy in her voice must have been intentional─Miss Gaen was doing everything she could to scrub any deeper meaning from this duel. Just as Oshino had turned all my battles into games during spring break.

“Fo-o-our.”

But not everything goes to plan, even if you are someone like Miss Gaen who knows everything─one person can’t control other people that conveniently, to say nothing of aberrations. No matter how much of a farce she made this duel out to be, nothing guaranteed that its outcome would be a laughing matter.

“Fi-i-ive. Si-i-ix.”

Even then─did the first Aberration Slayer really not know? Why Shinobu would come close enough to toss the sword at us but not make an appearance? No, even I didn’t know why until now.

I’d assumed she’d holed herself up simply because she didn’t want to meet the first Aberration Slayer, or because she didn’t want to take on any more trouble─but maybe it wasn’t that Shinobu didn’t want to meet the First. Maybe she couldn’t, I realized.

“Se-e-even.”

Yes, that’s where we differed.

Shinobu already hung on the edge of death when we met during spring break─and even after that, I’d only seen the true and full Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade in passing.

But four hundred years ago, when she interacted with the first Aberration Slayer…

She was in her prime.

At her most beautiful, her most splendid, her most radiant, her most sublime, her most powerful─that was the woman she was then.

Which is why─she couldn’t stand it.

Showing her depleted, weakened, childish self to the first Aberration Slayer, both partner and fated rival to her in the past, would be─to come out and say it, embarrassing.

She felt embarrassed to be seen in her changed state.

She didn’t want to be seen as the dregs of her former self.

As a part and cause of the aberrational phenomena occurring in this town, the First had to know about Shinobu turning into a child, but being seen by him was a different matter altogether.

I felt pathetic to have met this duel so unashamedly, not understanding feelings as obvious as these─but I also wasn’t so magnanimous that I’d go out of my way to tell the First.

Even if I did, he probably wouldn’t understand how she felt─to him, Shinobu, or rather, Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, was special.

She was perfect.

A different person from the Shinobu I knew now.

I also felt like I understood why I always had such a hard time communicating with him─it was as if we’d been conversing across a mystery novel’s narrative trick. We’d been talking about two entirely different people but acting as though they were one and the same.

Four hundred years.

It was so obvious that I actually didn’t understand it at all─this once again taught me just how long that was.

“Ei-i-ight.”

But who out there could laugh and call him old-fashioned or off the mark? The fact that Shinobu was now bound this way was unusual from the start─in her more than five hundred years, looking that way and being that weak was exceptional for her.

I knew what the First would think.

He’d want to return her to the way she was.

Not as her thrall─but as an expert.

To the way she was when they exterminated aberrations together.

What exactly would make Shinobu happy?

I’d bound her in unhappiness over spring break─and she’d put up with that unhappiness, but once reminded of her past, of four hundred years ago, could she still feel the same way?

“Ni-i-ine.”

Kanbaru had told her.

If she met the first Aberration Slayer and found her mind siding with him─then she needed to leave me and spend her days by his side.

Kanbaru really was amazing for being able to say that.

She wasn’t just able to say it, either. She could probably do it.

To make sure that didn’t happen─I’d need to continue being someone special to Shinobu. That seemed to be my answer to this duel’s meaning.

I wanted to keep being that special someone for Shinobu Oshino.

The girl who chose to live alongside me.

“Ten!”

I turned as I heard the word─spinning my body around my right foot as Kanbaru had taught me, so that I could sprint those seven meters.

I took my first step.

I accelerated toward the sword rising out of the field into which it had been plunged─and as I did, I saw a jarring and utterly unexpected scene.

The handicap for this duel consisted of two parts.

First, as ten of my steps created a distance different from ten of the first Aberration Slayer’s, I would need to travel seven meters to reach the enchanted blade Kokorowatari, while he needed to go ten. I would have a three-meter advantage, and he would be three meters behind─a numerical gap that could not be closed.

But there was another part─the fact that this warrior in his armor should be at a disadvantage in a footrace. I hadn’t realized just how easy it was for him to compensate for this point. I’d forgotten that my opponent was an expert who didn’t care about appearances when it came to exterminating aberrations.

And so.

As he, the first Aberration Slayer, walked ten steps according to Miss Gaen’s count with his back turned to me─he’d been taking off the massive armor wrapped around his entire body.

A tall, fit, and stunning young man with long, tied-back hair emerged from inside what had been empty in the abandoned cram school─and he dashed toward the enchanted blade Kokorowatari in order to cut me down.

That boy Aberration Slayer.

This is how he matured.

He even looked cool as he ran! Dammit!

What a figure he’d cut standing next to a legendary vampire─he wore Western clothing inappropriate for anyone in a Japanese suit of armor. The design of his clothes resembled that of a swallowtail coat, not something very suited to running, but it must have felt like athletic wear compared to being clad in armor.

He of course didn’t step on any of the armor he scattered along the field during his ten steps, and he was already preparing to reach for the great katana.

I was now in a full sprint, keeping with the instruction I received from my sharp-eyed tutor, but god, this wasn’t even going to be close! And I’d been conveniently ignoring the fact that a wider walking stride also meant a wider running stride. People with long legs are fast, I’m telling you!

Since he was running without the leg irons that was his armor, it was impossible for me to win this race in my current condition.

Naturally, his right hand grabbed the enchanted blade first.

I’d yet to run even half of my seven meters─was I just a slow runner or what?

The young Aberration Slayer, formerly the boy Aberration Slayer, grabbed the hilt of the enchanted blade but did not stop there─he continued sprinting forward at the exact same speed. This of course wasn’t him over-shooting his mark. His intentions seemed to be to use his momentum to cut me down.

The fact that he didn’t make use of the difference in strength between us to torture or bully me commended him as a genuine warrior─though from my perspective, it also meant he wouldn’t be providing me with any openings.

The enchanted blade Kokorowatari.

The Aberration Slayer’s sword─a sword that slew only aberrations.

I’d lost most of my vampiric abilities now that my link to Shinobu had been severed─though I only had the strength of an average human, that didn’t mean I had lost all of my nature as a vampire.

The enchanted blade’s sharp edge would cut well─the bamboo sword provided by Miss Gaen was one thing, but this sword created for the purpose of exterminating aberrations would have an immediate effect were it to so much as graze me.

At this point, I had in essence lost.

I guess you could say things were only progressing as they always do─but if there was ever a time when I couldn’t lose, couldn’t be cut down, and couldn’t stop moving forward, it was now.

I took another step in Kanbaru’s shoes.

The moment I did, one of them came off. Maybe they were the wrong size after all, but that didn’t matter. I continued stepping forward, with the other foot.

Ahead─toward the armored warrior holding the great katana.

Well, no, he wasn’t an armored warrior now that he’d tossed that armor off─this young man who held his sword ready even as he charged toward me was a berserker. What did that make me, empty-handed and hopeless? Cannon fodder?

The distance between us suddenly shrank.

For every one of my steps, the First took three─we were now in melee range. He held the sword high over his head, and─

“Ha!”

He laughed.

“Ha!”Haha!”Hahaha!”Hahahaha!”Hahahahaha!”Hahahahahahaha─!”

Maybe something was funny.

Or maybe something was sad─as his laughter bellowed out.

He swung the sword, held high, down toward the tip of my shoulder─sparing no ounce of his physical strength as a vampire thrall.

Forget me.

He handled the sword as if he wanted to split the field itself in two─in fact, it’d be no surprise if he did.

It’d be a surprise if he didn’t, in fact.

If there was a reason he didn’t.

It’s that he was a vampire.

And I a mockery of a vampire.

It was the difference between the first Aberration Slayer, who’d been a vampire ever since the day his blood was sucked four hundred years ago, and me, who’d been a vampire for no more than two weeks during spring break. The differences in our careers brought about a difference in results.

The inarguable pinnacle of immortality─which meant surviving being torn to pieces or turned to ashes, and continuing on and on and further on…

Something that Shinobu herself, the presence at both of our roots, once pointed out…

Vampires’ defensive abilities aren’t particularly high─because their immortality acts as a defense itself.

In other words, while I didn’t know how he may have been back when he was a pure human, a pure warrior, a pure expert─right now.

He walked the night as a vampire.

He fought at night, and paid no attention whatsoever to defense.

He neglected himself.

Even at the abandoned cram school, he made no attempt to dodge Kanbaru’s punches or tackles─and he was no different without his armor.

He held nothing back as he swung the lengthy great katana as if to split the field in half. Even though there was no need for that. He only needed to nick me with his enchanted blade to end the battle.

And I─found his torso, left wide open by his swing, and slapped it on.

I still carried all the momentum from my full sprint, which meant it looked like I countered his attack with a palm strike as I ran past─but in any case, the talisman I’d peeled from Kita-Shirahebi Shrine took to him.

It took ahold of him.

“Hah─ah, ha, ha, hahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA?!”

His roaring laughter turned to a shriek.

The sword he held aloft─promptly dropped to the ground.

Of course it did, the slip of wonder-working paper was mighty enough to write off my five-million-yen debt─and if you were to go all the way back, we’d used it to prevent the first Aberration Slayer’s return to begin with.

I’d placed that directly on his body.

How could it not be effective? Especially now─when the armor protecting the First had been cast aside.

“That’s Mèmè’s… Oh, so that’s what’s going on.”

Miss Gaen’s voice.

An expert, she understood instantly.

“What a surprise─this, I’d really call unexpected. You took the duel I set up and turned it into a slap fight!”

No.

That’s not what I did. Please stop.

Don’t amuse yourself while I’m over here putting my life on the line.

Still, it was only natural for me to notice the talisman at Kita-Shirahebi Shrine as I awaited tonight’s duel─as Kanbaru and I amused ourselves with ritualistic dances, trying to get Shinobu to come out. The two of us had come to that very shrine to place it there, after all.

Still─there was one thing.

In a different timeline─in a different history traveled by me and Shinobu, the talisman placed on the shrine was something else.

It affected the world in the same way, but its effects were different.

That talisman was a little too powerful, and neither Shinobu nor I, with our aberrational nature, could so much as touch it─which would have meant that Kanbaru’s right hand placed it there.

I understood that to mean that in that timeline, Koyomi Araragi never built the same kind of relationship with Shinobu Oshino that I had with her in this one.

If that was the meaning of that history.

And if this history had a meaning too─it meant the talisman could be reused. It could be removed, then placed in another location.

Of course, no matter how much Mèmè Oshino acted like he saw it all coming, there’s no way he could have imagined something like this duel─not to mention, it was Kanbaru who brought up the actual idea: Couldn’t you peel this thing off and take it with you to use somehow?

It probably didn’t count at all under Miss Gaen’s rules, and I of course couldn’t let this end after a mere touch from my palm.

So.

I reached for the katana he dropped─and picked it up.

The fearsome Aberration Slayer’s enchanted blade, Kokorowatari─this duel wouldn’t end until I delivered a strike with it.

“Guh, ah, ah, ahh… Ki─”

As he began to break apart.

As he crumbled, he screamed.

“─ssshot, Kissshot, Kissshot, Kissshot, Kissshot, Kissshot─Ki-ki-ki-ki─”

He screamed─he screamed the name.

Of the one who met him four hundred years ago.

Who fought against him. Who fought with him.

The name of the monster─who turned him into a monster.

There was nothing I could say to the first Aberration Slayer and his rising voice. In fact, I couldn’t so much as look at him.

But this dispelled my doubts. Any I might have had. My suspicion that reconciliation was nothing more than an excuse, and that he wanted to bring harm to Shinobu…

Now that I heard this voice, I finally believed it─what he wanted was to see her.

That didn’t change anything, of course. He only continued to crumble.

Which isn’t to say that he simply fell over─his form itself began to crumble─it broke apart.

Unable to maintain a human shape, unable to maintain his human form.

They began to pour out.

The tall, fit young man that was the first Aberration Slayer broke apart into pieces of the aberrations─he crumbled and sloshed into every one of his accumulated things, flooding forth like a cracked dam had finally burst.

Like a chipped blade─

The young Aberration Slayer’s body lost its integrity, spilling all the aberrations it held.

A crab, a snail, a monkey, a snake, a cat, a bee, a phoenix, a tiger─a dog, a bear, a leopard, a zebra, a ladybug, a fox, a piece of coral, a camel, a sea slug, a cow, a lion, a giraffe, a crawfish, a shark, an ostrich, a wolf, a turtle, a deer, a goat, a chicken, a rabbit, a millipede, a slime mold, a tanuki, a lizard, a spider, a mole, a silkworm, a squirrel, a whale, an octopus, a dugong, a beetle, an otter, a crane, a turbo, an inchworm, a tadpole, an anteater, a flying squirrel, a narwhal, a scorpion, an earthworm, a stick-bug, a swan, an oyster, an elephant, a carp, a llama, a sea otter, a shiitake, a sheep, an alligator, a cicada, a rhino, a sea urchin, a mouse, a sea lion, a parrot, a porcupine fish, a reindeer, a flounder, a pangolin, a jellyfish, a peacock, a mantis─came spilling out, as if there was no end to them.

All in a confused mess.

Mixed, mingling, and muddled.

Impossible to tell one from another.

He became all those “bad things” themselves.

He returned─he regressed.

The talisman had enough power to purify an entire shrine with its touch─so maybe it was obvious that, placed directly on his body, this would happen.

That doesn’t change the fact that the ghastly sight looked like madness itself.

Yet at the same time, it brought me relief.

I’ll admit I knew it was a false and phony feeling─but it felt so incredibly stressful for someone with a spirit as weak as mine to swing a blade at an opponent who took a human form and spoke human words, even if I did know he was an aberration… Especially when he was once a human. Now that he crumbled, I had an easier time wielding it.

I had an easier time.

Of ending it.

“Kissshot─kissshot─kiss─”

His voice crumbled, too. So too did his self.

His senses crumbled, as did his memories.

At this rate, all of him would scatter, all would be dust, nothing would be left behind─adding a swing of this sword to his crumbling existence would change nothing.

I would win the duel.

It would have meaning for me.

But it would be all but meaningless to him─were he to return to ash, the first Aberration Slayer would only be engulfed in eternal recurrence again.

He would never die.

Not for eternity.

He was an immortal among immortals─and neither Miss Gaen nor Episode could do anything about that. What can be done about an opponent who can never die?

In this sense, it didn’t matter whether it was me or the others─when would he return next?

Another four hundred years later?

Five hundred years later─a thousand years later?

Even if an expert did seal him away, he’d outlive them in the end─and if he was incapable of dying, he couldn’t even commit suicide.

Immortality that even he could not break down.

“s, sh─ot, ototot─■■■■■■■■■■■■■─■■■■─■■■─”

Now even his words held no meaning.

The whole of his body broke apart, spilled forth, and unraveled, leaving only his throat, still producing sounds─and it was to him that I spoke.

“Well… I don’t know what age I’ll live to─but if we can ever meet again.”

If we can ever meet again.

Let’s meet again.

I then readied the too-long sword, the Aberration Slayer’s blade, made from his own flesh and blood, to this incomprehensible composite while it could still be called him, and─

“■■■■■─■■■■─■■■■■─■■■■■■■■■─■■■■■■■■■─■■■■■■■■■─■■■■■■■■■─■■■■”

“There is no need to apologize. I’ve forgiven thee,” said the voice.

Before I could deliver my stroke, a voice responded to this voice that could no longer be called a voice─shoving aside the horde of aberrations that had flooded forth to cover most of the field, heading with singular purpose to his last remnant, his throat, and.

Biting deep into it.

“’Tis I who should apologize─Seishiro.”

A little girl.

She appeared from wherever she’d watched this worthless duel, whether it was a roof or the shadows of the gym shed. A little girl with golden hair and golden eyes─a former vampire.

Shinobu Oshino had approached him from his back─which you could no longer call his back─wading through the horde of aberrations, covered in their fragments, to bite into his neck─baring her fangs as she called his name.

Seishiro.

This girl who shouldn’t have distinguished between humans, who claimed she remembered nothing about him, that she never once called him by his name, called the name of her erstwhile thrall─she called the name of her erstwhile comrade-in-arms.

And ate.

Crying─she ate.

Gulping, gnashing, and gulping again.

She ate him─the shadow of her fist thrall, while he could still be called himself, turning him to her own flesh and blood. And by turning him to her flesh and blood, her prey and sustenance, her bone and body─she freed him from his eternal loop.

“I am glad we could meet. I believed we would never meet again. But never again shall we meet─for now I have one more important to me than thee. For now, I wish to be for him.”

The mockeries of aberrations, spread across the field─now came together.

They came to an end.

The parts that had created the Aberration Slayer, the dust and ashes that briefly covered this entire town─entered her stomach, without a speck left behind. No matter how massive their volume, she finished them all herself.

I don’t know how he heard her words, now that he had neither face nor expression─I don’t even know if he heard them. At the very least, though, I didn’t see my predecessor looking satisfied, or free of regret.

He’d been relieved of no burden, nor was he uplifted. Hearing the words spoken aloud did nothing to bring him comfort or any kind of salvation. Even so, after four hundred years─

His suicide had succeeded at last.