Monogatari Series - Volume 19 - Chapter 5.08

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“Huh?”

For a moment, I didn’t understand a word of it. A second passed, and then a minute, and I still didn’t.

It must have taken me a full five minutes to comprehend his words─both he and Hachikuji waited patiently for my brain to crawl to that point.

I felt sorry for making them wait, but the only answer I could give with my boggled mind was, “Y-You’re saying you pretended to die?”

That’s it. Even I was disappointed in me.

It wasn’t about pretending to be dead, we were in hell, nowhere you get by pretending.

But I want to say most people’s answers would have resembled mine if their conclusion were to check out against common sense and past events. Few could have a conundrum of this caliber thrust before them and fire straight back with a brilliant response.

Hanekawa, maybe?

“Pretending to die─isn’t quite it,” Tadatsuru graded me dutifully.

Maybe this betrayed a nasty personality, but expecting anything else from Kaiki and Oshino’s clubmate was its own reflection on yourself.

“I am, in fact, dead. But you aren’t too far off the mark. I’m pretending to be dead in a sense─as if I’ve come across a bear.”

“A…bear?”

“A bugbear, if you want. A devil,” he quipped before continuing─maybe there was some deeper meaning, but he was easily over thirty if you did the math despite his youthful looks. Maybe it was nothing more than a pun.

A devil, though…

“Where should this explanation start─Oshino is glib, and Kaiki clever with his words, while I don’t speak to people often. I was a lonely child who played with dolls.”

“…”

“I’ll try my best and pick a clear starting point. As a human, as an individual, I’ve been dead for quite some time,” he divulged casually. Between his words and his tone, he certainly was a poor explainer if not exactly a poor speaker. It was kind of tragic if he’d become a doll-user because he always played with his dolls alone, but putting that aside─

“For quite some time? Um, what do you mean?”

“The me that Yotsugi killed was a doll I controlled─a substitute self, or perhaps body double you’d expect any doll-user to wield.”

“…”

“Hm? I was bracing for more pointed questions from you around now, but you’ve gone silent. Conversations with people never go as well as those with figurines.”

While playing alone with dolls and speaking to figurines were similar, they gave off very different impressions, but either way─I’d gone silent because I’d been left speechless.

If Tadatsuru thought I’d react promptly, I’m sorry, but he was overestimating me─faced with situations they never even imagined, people usually freeze up and can’t say a word. That said, as a high school kid who loves manga, anime, TV shows, today’s popular entertainment, I’d have no response or rebuttal if you called me a fool for not having imagined it at least.

A body-double doll.

A standard move for a doll-user.

Then he wasn’t pretending to be dead─but had pretended to be alive?

To be alive, so that he could be killed?

“You said…Ononoki didn’t know, right?” I asked.

“Correct. Not just her, Yozuru didn’t, either─though in her case, she probably didn’t bother trying to find out. Ever a seeker of intensity, she must not have been interested in shabby old me─what a sad romance it was.”

“Romance…”

“Oh, forget it. It’s in the past. Hearing an older guy reminisce and ramble on about his love life would only bore a youngster. As for Kaiki? He’s a liar, after all, but I’d say the only ones who knew about my technique were─Miss Gaen and Mèmè Oshino.”

“…”

Only a woman who knew everything─Miss Gaen.

And a man who acted like he saw through everything, Oshino.

Hearing their names, they did strike me as the type to notice details that people were trying to hide─but the question was when he started to harbor this secret.

The point wasn’t unrelated to me. A fact that turned his position as an expert upside down, roots and all, it fundamentally changed the meaning of the night of February thirteenth, what happened exactly a month ago.

That kidnapping─that blackmail.

That battle, that calamity.

How did this rewrite it all?

“A doll destroyed a doll. That’s all that happened─so, Araragi. I brought up Yotsugi, but if your indirect involvement in my death was weighing on you, go ahead and unburden yourself.”

“It’s not that simple…”

To be honest, I did feel that way, a little.

If all this was the whole point─then I wasn’t just indirectly but directly involved in Tadatsuru’s death. I’d be lying if I said that didn’t weigh on me at all. Learning that it was a doll that had gotten smashed to pieces back then was poor comfort, but I did feel a little less tense.

It raised the question, however, of why he did what he did. I wanted to cross-examine him and point out that he’d ended up in hell anyway─and so the burden stayed on my shoulders.

“Then what was that farce for? What was the point? What were you trying to accomplish by abducting three people who’re very important to me?”

“A farce, you say. I personally saw it as a tour de force.” Tadatsuru smiled. “In a sense, you see, dying and coming back to life is my specialty. Even more than it is a vampire’s.”

“Specialty?”

“Not that I ever came back to life, strictly speaking. I simply possessed a doll and returned to the world of the living through a medium─my true body is always on this side.”

This side.

Which, here in hell, meant the next life─our situation made demonstratives tricky, but he seemed far too familiar with this world…and what he just said had to be the main reason. If his true body was located here, that’s where this side referred to.

“Oh, but know that I’m not a resident of Avīci. Being seen as someone who went to hell hurts worse than actually being in hell.”

“Sure, I just had the same experience… In fact, it hasn’t let up one bit.”

“Normally, I live up in heaven, without a care in the world.”

“…”

This instantly wiped out any guilt I might have felt over his death…

A child like Hachikuji getting sent to hell after passing on to the afterlife in a moving manner was quite a letdown, but the idea of enjoying the good life in heaven chipped away at my motivation to live in its own way.

I mean, why not hurry up and die rather than risk sinning throughout a poorly lived life… Not that I knew how serious Tadatsuru was being.

“Since when? When did you decide to kick back and retire─or I should say, how long have you been leading this lifestyle of traveling between this world and the other?”

“Call it labor, not a lifestyle,” Tadatsuru answered. “Maybe migrant labor─or transmigratory labor. No, I was still a healthy soul in a healthy body back in college. A healthy human specimen. I became a doll-user after creating the doll known as Yotsugi, and after breaking away from the others.”

“I’m not sure how much I should ask you about this since it sounds private… But was creating Ononoki, and Miss Kagenui ending up as her owner, your motive for becoming a doll-user?”

“Motive? You make it sound so criminal. To get to your point, though, it isn’t far enough from the truth to call it a lie─in my telling of it, at least. Miss Gaen and Yozuru may have a differing opinion─oops.”

Tadatsuru looked up at the sky.

This drew me into looking up as well, but I saw nothing in particular─the sky was just at the border between day and night, as dusk fell.

Not a single cloud, not a single bird.

I had no idea what Tadatsuru was looking at, but he seemed to have spotted something in the spotless sky. “It seems we’re being told to hurry─so I can’t provide a full account of why I became a doll-user. You’ll just have to wait for the theatrical spin-off,” he said.

A spin-off is one thing, but really? A movie? Just how big of a prequel did he want?

“Allow me to give you a succinct explanation. If you’re just dying to know more, then ask Miss Gaen once you’re alive again─she knows everything, so she might even disclose more details than I could. Whether she will is another question, of course… I chose this path after college, but my old senior does look upon me with scorn. Things rarely went for me as I hoped, and my business never gained any traction. That’s when I had a hasty thought─I see it as foolish now, but a sort of forbidden technique, if you would. A taboo amongst experts, or perhaps something closer to a curse.”

“A curse…” I’d heard the word somewhere before.

“Maybe I should describe it as transforming myself into an aberration─the existence of Yotsugi Ononoki, the doll I created as a student, lay at the root naturally. Which is to say, I thought I might turn the corpse of Tadatsuru Teori into an aberration just as I’d done to her hundred-year-old cadaver.”

I attempted to create a doll aberration called Tadatsuru Teori. A doll of myself─using my own corpse.

“And did you succeed?”

It seemed preposterous. If that was possible, you could gain undying, eternal youth. I was aware of the existence of immortality, given that I lived in a world that had formerly human vampires… Still, a human turning a human into an aberration was unbelievable.

What drove him to it? Aesthetic curiosity?

“I failed, and this is the result. Half-man, half-spirit, I wander between this world and the other─no, maybe I ought to say I’m stuck between this world and the other.”

“Don’t tell me you can’t abide immortal aberrations because you resent that.”

“I can’t deny there’s that element.”

“You can’t…”

“Is this where I make a joke about feeling out of my own element?” asked Hachikuji, from behind me.

That’s what she says after staying quiet for all this time? She knew she didn’t have to meet any wordplay-density quota, right? What a strong sense of duty, even here in hell.

“While I say I failed, I’m still able to live via my dolls─and since I was later successful in their mass production, in a sense I gained undying, eternal youth, and am an aberration. Like a doppelganger─or perhaps a half-a-ganger? I decided to make the most of my idiosyncratic nature as I applied myself to my profession.”

“…”

And those idiosyncrasies permitted him to do as much as he did even outside of Miss Gaen’s network… Was that the takeaway?

“And that’s the story of Tadatsuru Teori… Is that good enough for you, Araragi? Or are you interested in hearing more?”

“Um…”

Honestly, I wasn’t that interested, though I wouldn’t say it to his face─he’d given me a suitable overview of his unique circumstances. Now it made sense.

I imagined there were other dramatic episodes, various twists and turns before he became a full-fledged doll-user, but my interest─my questions lay beyond that.

“Just to be sure, nothing serious happened to you even when Ononoki blew you to smithereens?”

“I wouldn’t say nothing serious. My dolls are a very serious matter to me, and I lost one─but in terms of my life, no, you needn’t worry. I was half-dead to begin with.”

“But why pretend to be dead…” Or rather, alive. Why that entire farce?

“Again, it wasn’t a farce─neither Yozuru nor Yotsugi knew anything about it, after all. I would call it a live test performance, with no rehearsal. Let’s go back to last month,” Tadatsuru said, his eyes still turned upward. What was he seeing there, anyway? “I received a request for my services as an expert, Araragi, to resolve the anomalies occurring in your town.”

He dove in with no introduction─or so it seemed, but I guess he was talking about it this entire time. He’d been waiting here to tell me─having asked Hachikuji to fetch me just so he could.

It wasn’t to apologize for his long silence, or about what happened a month ago─and whatever ill will I felt toward him had waned significantly during our exchange.

“Anomalies occurring in my town… You mean Kita-Shirahebi Shrine and─no, that can’t be it. That was solved already last month.” To be precise, we hadn’t solved it as much as returned it back to an unsolved state, but no need to nitpick.

“Yes. This request, simpler than that, painted you and the former Kissshot as my targets. Miss Gaen’s network certified you as harmless, but that was none of my business─in fact, aberrations protected by her network ought to be my top priority. I should’ve moved against you even without a request.”

“…”

Right, that was how it went.

He took my two little sisters and a junior hostage, an unimaginably cruel and villainous act, in order to come after me and Shinobu─he claimed it wasn’t a farce, so I was on the edge of my seat as to why. A request, though, meant I’d had his motive right from the start.

If he was obligated to eliminate me and Shinobu after taking on a request, he was being perfectly honest in describing it as not a farce but a tour de force, a live test performance with no rehearsal─

“Yes, right. Exactly…” Tadatsuru nodded, unconcerned and unembarrassed. It almost felt like a magic show where you got to learn how the tricks were performed─okay, no real magician does that. “It’d be exactly right─if someone hadn’t acted first. In fact, it would’ve been worse otherwise. Your little sisters and your junior might not have made it out in one piece…”

“Don’t say stuff like that. You’re scaring me.”

“I’m the scared one here. Little did I know that Suruga Kanbaru was a Gaen daughter… I shudder to imagine what might have happened if I, in my ignorance, had harmed her. I’m glad I heard about it in advance.”

“…?”

She indeed was Miss Gaen’s neice─and he must not have known that when he kidnapped her, but shudder to imagine? Miss Gaen wasn’t the type to dote on someone just because she was her niece. He did use the word daughter─was he afraid of Kanbaru’s late mother?

“You heard about it in advance─and someone acted first─which almost makes it sound like Miss Gaen informed you prior to getting your request. About what was up in our town.”

It seemed possible. Apparently, Miss Gaen coming forth and handling a job on her own was quite rare─but what she’d tried to do was something like pacify, or maybe govern our town… She’d even enlisted the help of Episode, a dangerous expert, so she might also have reached out to an old acquaintance outside of her network and spoken to Tadatsuru Teori─

“No, never. She and I are somewhat like odd bedfellows at the moment, but we only came into contact after I learned about the situation. The one to approach me─to act as a mediator between me and Gaen, was someone else.”

A mediator.

I had a hunch when I heard that word. The kind that only someone studying for exams would have─but I felt certain for whatever reason. This hunch spoke a man’s name to me with more eloquence than any well-reasoned theory…

“Oshino,” I said without thinking. “Was the person who tipped you off in advance─who acted first…Mèmè Oshino?”