Monogatari Series - Volume 19 - Chapter 5.10

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I wasn’t sure when Tadatsuru had lowered his gaze, but it lifted again─like he was on the lookout for the first star in the night sky as the sun continued to set and it grew darker. I followed suit and this time saw clearly what he did.

No, clearly is an overstatement─it still looked dim to my eyes, but it was clear what it was.

From the sky─or rather, from the heavens.

Came dangling a strand of string.

“Or a thread, Mister Araragi. It’s here to collect you─which makes it sound like it’s bringing you to the world of the dead, but actually, it’s here from the world of the living,” Hachikuji explained.

The world of the living… If it was a thread, it made me think more of Akutagawa’s short story about a spider’s thread dangled down from heaven by the Buddha.

Well, they say spider silk is tough enough even to be used in space, so I didn’t find it unreliable…but how did that story go? Was Kandata the character’s name? As he started climbing up the dangling spider’s thread, other sinners tried to make it to heaven with him, and when he told them to get down, didn’t the thread snap?

In that sense, the thread was a trial─especially if Miss Gaen was doing the dangling.

“You really are running out of time. If you miss that thread, Mister Araragi, you’ll burn in Avīci for eternity. An oni thwacking you with a giant knapsack.”

“A giant knapsack? Isn’t that you?”

“Excuse me. I meant to say with a giant club.”

“Scary either way…” Or maybe cute as hell?

“So, Mister Teori, I’m sorry but can you stop with your story?”

“Hold on, Hachikuji, don’t cut him off like that. Not when he’s in the middle of what I need to hear. Tadatsuru, this thing you could do because you didn’t belong to the network… You mean accepting the job to slay me and Shinobu─or pretending to.”

I was jumping ahead in his story to get as much as possible out of him before the thread (?) from heaven reached the shrine. Not a very praiseworthy move as a listener, but a fortunate one, because the doll-user answered, “I suppose… I pretended to accept it, as I pretended to be alive. Not that I can say exactly what Oshino’s intentions were.”

So that’s how it was.

He continued, “The fact that Yozuru Kagenui was considered uncontrollable despite being part of Miss Gaen’s network was just perfect─she’d confront me with a merciless, ice-cold heart for my illegal act. So when your body started acting up, Miss Gaen sent those two to work─”

“…”

Even before I spoke to her about the strange phenomenon I was experiencing, namely my reflection disappearing, Miss Gaen had dispatched the onmyoji and her familiar─as if she’d foreseen things. Her seeming clairvoyance had sent chills down my spine back then, and I’d chalked it up to her “knowing everything”─but now that I was privy to the secret behind her trick, it was nothing special. That turn of events had been marked down in advance as part of her timeline.

Still, the timing being spot-on was very much like her…

“But why would you do it?” I asked Tadatsuru. “Couldn’t you just turn down the request?”

“I had no reason to, and even if I did, it’d have just gone to another expert. Miss Gaen and I came to the conclusion that playing into the hands of our ‘enemy’ would be best.”

“Y-Your enemy?” Not─client? The individual who came to him with the request to slay me and Shinobu. Wouldn’t the two of us have been his enemy instead?

“Not necessarily. To say the least, Deishu Kaiki went missing in your town, and neither I nor Miss Gaen are so cold as to have not cared.”

“Kaiki…”

Right, Miss Gaen had said some such thing─the info getting so complicated that she didn’t know what the truth was…

I saw Kaiki as a guy who wouldn’t stay dead even if you killed him, and his friends from college, Miss Gaen and Tadatsuru, must have felt that way more than I did… If the unthinkable had happened, they couldn’t turn a blind eye.

“While I called it playing into the enemy’s hands, it wasn’t as if we knew what the plan was─we moved in order to find out. We also had to halt your ongoing transformation into a vampire. I could come to this side and guide you, but having played the part of a hated enemy, we needed to get Hachikuji over there to help out.”

“And I did,” she said. “Find me toward the end of the credits, under Cameo Appearances. Since I’d get to meet you again, I gladly waived my booking fee and gave it my all.”

“Nothing would depress me more than you charging a booking fee to do this… That’d be worse than realizing I’m in hell.”

For the time being, kill me to reset my body, then revive only the human part─so that’s what was going on. They could’ve told me in advance, but if they didn’t.

There must have been some reason.

Was that part of their strategy against the enemy? Hard to figure out from my position.

“If we killed you with the enchanted blade Kokorowatari and revived you with Yumewatari, you might just return as a vampire, and we’d be back where we started. That’s why I, an expert, had to butt in and be ready for you in hell.”

With this, Tadatsuru jumped down from the offering box─my eyes never left him, but a total change came over his outfit as he landed. On second thought, costume might be more apt─not only was his garb now as Japanese as it could be, it matched the occasion.

The vestments of a Shinto priest.

If having only a spiritual body meant instantly changing clothes when you felt like it, that seemed pretty handy─I wasn’t jealous, but maybe kicked back and retired wasn’t far off the mark.

“My former senior and I also agreed that fixing your issue was the only way to counter our enemy. How odd, given that I used to oppose her so vehemently, but let’s simply praise Oshino’s skill as a mediator.”

“Were your doubts ever cleared up?” There were a lot of other things I wanted to ask him, but at the moment, this was foremost on my mind. “You had to go along with Oshino because you didn’t know what his intentions were─that was the key, but did you ever reach a conclusion there?”

“I’m afraid not. I have a hypothesis, though─no, it’d be presumptuous to call it mine. This one, at least, is Miss Gaen’s alone. Her guess as to why Oshino still refuses to show himself. Why he seems to have gone missing. Her thinking─is that it’s for the same reason that Yozuru disappeared without a trace.”

“…”

And what would that be?

Wasn’t that a tautology? As good as saying nothing?

I knew very well that Miss Kagenui had vanished just like Oshino─hm? No, that wasn’t it.

In that sense, Kaiki had disappeared too.

Instead of bringing him up as well, Tadatsuru treated Kaiki as an exception and didn’t include him with the other two experts.

Did that provide a way out, or at least, did Miss Gaen see it that way? The solution she sought, when she didn’t even know what she was up against…

“My thoughts and hers diverge on that point,” Tadatsuru said. “Remember what I told you? Find Oshino. From the looks of it, you came up empty-handed.”

“My friends are searching for him, though…”

Actually, only one still had the arsenal of means to find him: Hanekawa. Senjogahara and I had exhausted our connections─not only did we not know where he was and why, we didn’t even know whether he was alive.

Only Hanekawa hadn’t given up.

I’d seen it as impossible, but our only hope was that he was in fact overseas, where she’d gone looking for him…

“Then that line wasn’t part of your performance. Even if the way you pretended to be killed by Ononoki was a farce.”

“Not just that one line. Though only a doll died there, most of the things I said were the honest truth. Deception isn’t my forte─I may be a doll-user, but feeling like a marionette and not calling my own shots is only humiliating. I felt like I’d been assigned an unpleasant role; the story was taking a twist that was altogether too neat. Of course, half of this was directed at Oshino and how he acts like he sees through everything.”

“…”

“I do feel like apologizing to Yozuru, though. I played the role of the nasty villain, but she had to do the nasty work. Even she must’ve felt bad about using a shikigami to kill me─and feeling bad…” the priest trailed off.

I wasn’t going to comment. Miss Kagenui’s mindset was unfathomable to an inexperienced high schooler like me. Honestly, though, she might be even less bothered by it than Ononoki…

“May I tell them?” I asked Tadatsuru.

“Hm?”

“Ononoki…and Miss Kagenui, if we figure out her whereabouts. That you’re a doll-user and didn’t really die back there. That you pretended to die, or to be alive. I’m getting the sense you don’t want too many people to know.”

“True, but they’ll find out anyway, now that this is happening. It’s the right time for it, or rather, it’s time for me to pay the piper. I’d appreciate it if you could apologize on my behalf.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Why should I apologize?

Say sorry for me─a common enough request that’s unreasonable when you think about it.

Not gonna be his body double…

“If you want to apologize, do it yourself─even if you can’t return to life, you can visit the land of the living through one of your dolls, right?”

“It’s not that simple, unfortunately. Dying is a fairly grave offense, and getting sent to hell is only the start of it. Every crime is met with a punishment…”

“…”

His setup was more complicated than I’d imagined, then─letting a doll containing his ego get smashed wasn’t exactly a painful decision for Tadatsuru, but obviously it hadn’t been an easy one either.

“You’re lucky because the enchanted blade Yumewatari can revive you immediately─Miss Gaen might have slaughtered you without a proper explanation, and as her junior, I must ask you to overlook that fact. It was more convenient to brief you in hell, you see…”

“Well, I’m used to being made a fool of without any kind of proper explanation. That’s fine, but─”

“Don’t worry,” Tadatsuru cut me off, as if to erase any concerns I had before I could voice them. “Once you return to life, you won’t face any more requests from Miss Gaen to help her with ridiculous jobs. Unless she lied to me about her aims, you’ll have fulfilled your role by the time you come back to life as a human. Think of this trip through hell as a short-term hospital stay to excise your vampiric nature. I doubt even she would try to work you as you’re convalescing. Her intent is to remove any concerns prior to the showdown with our enemy─though if you have to impute malice, she might be trying out that pair of enchanted blades.”

“…”

I could see her wanting to do that… If Miss Gaen didn’t have ulterior motives on at least that level, I’d be confused. Still, while Tadatsuru didn’t totally fail to address my interrupted question, that hadn’t been quite it.

Now down from the offering box, the priest continued at a relaxed pace toward the thread dangling from the heavens and stopped right below it.

Then beckoned me over.

“Let’s get going, Mister Araragi,” Hachikuji encouraged me as well─so I had to move. Yes, I had to, that’s exactly how I felt.

The thread came so low that I could jump and grab it─or so I say, but if it wasn’t a string, it wasn’t a thread either.

A white snake.

A snake’s tail dangled there.

…They wanted me to grab it?

At least it wasn’t the head, and it did make sense─Kita-Shirahebi enshrined a white serpent, after all… A snake was more appropriate than a spider.

“What’s the matter, Mister Araragi? You look scared. Is it because it’s a snake?”

“I’d be lying if I said no… It’s like a phobia at this point.”

“If this is about what happened to Miss Sengoku, don’t hate yourself too much.” My phobia stemmed purely from being bitten countless times by poisonous snake fangs and hovering repeatedly on the brink of death─but Hachikuji waded into an even deeper part of my heart. “It was the aforementioned conman who saved Miss Sengoku’s soul, but if he hadn’t gotten involved, wouldn’t you have saved her eventually? It might’ve taken a little more time, but I believe you would have.”

“…”

“As far as that case goes, think of it as someone swooping in and taking the glory for himself─don’t worry, I’ll vouch for you. You’re the best, Mister Araragi.”

I never felt like I’d been competing with anyone, and it wasn’t a question of winning or losing─of glory or anything, but hearing that from Hachikuji did help.

To the point I felt like I could even grab onto a snake.

I reached out─and held the white snake’s tail.

It twitched.

The thing was alive?

“I’ll back her up on that theory, Araragi. In fact, I’m sure our enemy wanted it─you spending a little more time, that is, rather than anything to do with Nadeko Sengoku herself. Perhaps my irregular turn only arrived because Kaiki’s interference threw a wrench into the plan. You were originally supposed to spend more time in a drawn-out battle with Nadeko Sengoku─becoming a vampire in order to save her. Oshino saw my deployment as an insurance policy. So it was for our enemy, too.”

Tadatsuru was standing right next to me as he spoke, and it was unnerving on a whole new level.

“…By the way,” I said to Hachikuji, “I still haven’t asked you. Why was I off?”

“Excuse me?”

“You know, the reason you had to act as my guide. When I woke up in hell, I was in that park, even though Miss Gaen killed me at Kita-Shirahebi Shrine. You put me back in position─or dislodged me from the correct position. What’s that about?”

“Hmm. We don’t have any time, and I thought I needn’t bother, but you’re that curious?”

“I wouldn’t go that far?”

Yeah, okay, I was only trying to drag this out.

I was putting off climbing up the white snake─and returning to life.

Postponing it as much as I could.

“Well, I’m curious, yes. Forget the stuff about being out of position. That got taken care of thanks to you─but tell me that park’s name, if you say you know it. It’s where we first met, but I still don’t know how to pronounce it.”

Namishiro? Rohaku?

I’d been told neither, but I honestly couldn’t think of any other reading. It was too difficult even to appear on a Japanese test─if I really had to guess, maybe Robyaku or Namihaku…

“Shirohebi Park.” It was Tadatsuru who answered. “Originally, it would be read Shirohebi.”

“What? Shirohebi─as in ‘white snake’?”

“Not the character we now use for serpents, but another with a common origin. More affiliated with water than pests, its modern meaning is torrent, as in a torrent of tears. Shirohebi was once the entire area’s name─at some point, someone wrote it down incorrectly, resulting in the opaque characters.”

Did that make sense? Maybe it did.

I didn’t know about writing them wrong, but I could imagine mistaking one for the other. If I handwrote either to look it up in an electronic dictionary, the other one was similar enough to show up in the list of candidates.

The characters’ order was flipped too, but that did happen from time to time in Japanese─to begin with, reading left-to-right was only a modern practice. Things could get jumbled as time passed. Shirohebi…

As in…

“Kita─Shirahebi Shrine.”

“Mm-hm. Yes, it was the original location of Kita-Shirahebi Shrine─and why you were out of position. You’ve heard that the shrine had been moved…haven’t you?”

“Oh, right.” I forgot who’d told me, but yeah─and joining the two was a mistake, leading to distortion, or something?

“I’d call that an understatement─in essence, they brought a sea god to a mountain. Technically a lake, not the sea.”

“A lake?”

“Like I said, at first it was written with a character associated with water.”

That seemed good enough for him, but something else caught my attention─a lake. That sounded familiar, but before I could remember…

“Well then, Araragi, why don’t we get going?” urged Tadatsuru. “Say hi to Miss Gaen for me─and to Yotsugi too. I’d never ask Yozuru, but be extra kind to Yotsugi, please, in my place.”

“Sure, I understand,” I agreed out of reflex, maybe too rashly given the nature of his request.

Then I worked up, at last, the nerve to confess what was really on my mind.

“I wonder, though─is it okay for someone like me to come back to life?”