Monogatari Series - Volume 19 - Chapter 5.05

005

“Now that we’re done giving detailed explanations about every last mystery, may we depart? Time to go, Mister Araragi.”

“What? Where to…”

She hadn’t explained every last mystery at all, and the explanations were so quick and rough that honestly, most of our conversation had been nothing more than small talk!

Someone needed to set up an explanation center.

“Oh, I can give you the details as we walk. We can’t just sit around in this park talking forever─no need to sit in place the entire time, this isn’t an anime commentary track. I’m originally a child, you know, and staying still goes against my nature.”

“Hm… Willing as ever to cross over into any media you feel like. But yeah, I don’t care where we discuss this.”

“Didn’t we use to talk on the road for the most part? You did lose both of your bicycles, but why not trek side by side with me for a change?”

For a change, or the first time in a while─that wasn’t what I objected to. Of course we could talk as we walked, I was fine with it if she was…but where were we headed?

“Well, it seems you’re a little out of position, so I’m correcting that and putting you back in it. Such is the role I’ve been assigned.”

“Your role?”

“Heheh, call it another ironic twist of fate. I, whose former calling was to make people lose their way, am working as a guide.”

I didn’t take her meaning as she walked off, her large backpack swaying. If this was hell, or at least the afterlife (I couldn’t let it go, thanks to my attachment to life or refusal to accept the situation), the girl before me had brought her favorite backpack down here.

I wasn’t complaining, though, I didn’t want to see her in a death shroud or anything─I was wearing my school uniform, too.

No trace of having been shredded.

Nor was my body sliced into ribbons─maybe only because I was in a hell where dying just meant reviving, and not because I was a vampire benefiting from the associated traits…

If I got a new set of clothes every time I died, hell was hard at work.

“Hm, but now that I mention it, Shinobu isn’t with me. If I died, does that mean she actually regained her full vampiric nature?”

“Most likely. I think that was another one of her goals.”

“Her?”

Repeating the word, I followed Hachikuji out of the park. Sidewalk, roadside trees, street, crossing, signal─I still saw the same town as always.

Not that I knew the area well enough to say so─but nothing seemed strange about it as a town.

Nothing about it was hellish.

If you pressed me─I guess it felt strange that there were no other pedestrians?

“At the entrance to Avīci, didn’t people have to fall through flames for two thousand years? All the sinners are busy falling, and maybe that’s why no one’s arrived yet?”

Of course not.

I was here.

And couldn’t have fallen faster than them, according to Newton’s experiments.

“Yes, and you’ll understand that part soon enough─I’ll make sure you do. Don’t worry, think of me as all-knowing and all-powerful. I’ve heard about most things from her.”

“Again─who’s this you’re talking about?”

“Her august self.”

“Yikes, what is she, the final boss?”

“Her Excellency.”

“Why the period-drama affect? Who is this person─who knows everything?”

Well, I already knew by now.

If it wasn’t Hanekawa, that left only one possibility─it had to be the big boss of the experts and the one who cut me into ribbons, Izuko Gaen.

But how did Miss Gaen contact Hachikuji, who’d ascended to the afterlife─or rather fallen into the depths of hell?

“An all-knowing, all-powerful ass in lion’s skin, that’s me.”

“Nah, you can’t bluff your way up that far. You do seem to know where we’re going, Hachikuji, so start by telling me our destination. Your mother’s place─couldn’t be it.”

“Right, and she appears to be alive and well. Her house was gone, but she’d simply moved. Thank goodness.”

“…”

“Well, in terms of destinations, Mister Araragi, here’s our designated goal: my job is to bring you back to life.”

Putting you back in position was a figure of speech, I guess it’s more like dislodging you from the correct position, Hachikuji added, just complicating things.

I didn’t get it at all.

Then again, I hadn’t understood much of anything lately─led to and fro by everyone, getting caught up in their affairs… I bet a slicker guy than me would have fared better.

“Bring me back to life… Wait, is that something I can do?”

“Of course. You’re not just going to stay dead, are you?”

“But Miss Gaen…”

The solution is for you to die─she had said.

And since this was her, I believed it. Naturally I wasn’t happy with it, and it made no sense, but whatever she was thinking, I could be certain of one thing. She acted in ways that, in her view, brought the greatest possible happiness to the greatest number of people─even if nothing could be less in my interest.

You could trust her on that.

Nor would she second-guess her own actions─if she thought killing me was the solution, she’d never take it back.

“Really, Mister Araragi, keep it together. It had to be this person’s plan all along. To kill you, then have you come back to life.”

“Kill me, then have me come back to life…”

All along?

What an unproductive plan.

That went beyond taking credit for solving a problem you created, it was like multiplying by two and then dividing by two─giving me a scare was all it accomplished.

Did she want to prove that hell existed?

Why now?

Even if that was it, she’d have known about it for a long time now─hm?

Did Hachikuji just say this person?

Rather than she?

…

Now I was splitting hairs.

“It isn’t just multiplying by two and then dividing by two,” Hachikuji continued, not engaging with my inner doubts─walking did seem to suit her better, and she was getting pretty talkative. “Subtraction’s at play as well.”

“Subtraction?”

“That, too, you’ll understand soon enough.”

“…”

Every crucial bit was being held back… As my guide, I guess Hachikuji had a proper procedure in mind, so I wasn’t going to force the answers out of her.

The idea of coming back to life hardly left me cold, but I was letting a torrent of topics toss me about, entrusting myself to the flow, and not thinking clearly, focusing too much on Hachikuji─I don’t know, the unvarnished truth is that words as potent as come back to life weren’t ringing a bell for me.

“Is something the matter, Mister Araragi? Aren’t you happy? You can return to being alive.”

“Um, honestly, my brain hasn’t gotten to that point. I’m having a hard time accepting that I’m dead, so I’m not in a place to wonder about not being dead…”

“Ha ha ha. Are we rehashing that discussion? Would a world where the dead come back alter the meaning of life?”

“That’s not it.”

Was it?

Nope, that wasn’t it.

No, some part of me must have felt, I can rest in peace now. Though it did sound like a line out of a manga…

“Hm. I can sympathize. You’ve been battling, with your life on the line─they say gamblers who keep on winning actually have a subconscious desire to lose. Perhaps to bring balance to a life that’s seen too much victory? I wouldn’t mind believing that your relief was genuine and not affected.”

“Why so condescending─”

“However, I doubt she is so generous that honesty suffices─this way,” Hachikuji turned a corner.

As she did, the scene changed─well, the corner was a regular corner. I mean the color of the sky.

It should have been midday.

But the sky snapped to night─the streetlamps, just standing there until a moment ago, illuminated the darkened street as if they’d been doing so for some time.

“What? Did someone just cast Tick-Tock?”

“I wonder─oh, Mister Araragi. It appears as though someone’s collapsed over there.”

“Hm?”

Just as I was coping with the color shift in the heavens (we were supposed to be in hell, after all), Hachikuji spoke and pointed─looking in the direction of her finger, I saw why. Certainly, leaning against the streetlamp, lit as if in spotlight, was a person.

No, not certainly. Uncertainly.

And not a person, but a monster.

Collapsed there─covered in blood, in a pool of blood, was a vampire on the verge of death, her limbs severed.

A legendary vampire in a gruesome state.

The iron-blooded, hot-blooded, yet cold-blooded vampire─Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade.