Monogatari Series - Volume 19 - Chapter 7.02

002

If I closed my eyes and thought back, I could recall many of the varied surreal images that I’d encountered over the past year─I don’t plan to list them all out after we’ve come this far, but the sight I faced this night, which is to say the night of March fourteenth, after my date with Hitagi ended and the sun had set, could not be outdone by any of them as a summation of surreality.

I was in a park.

Yes─a park whose name I didn’t know how to read for the longest time, which turned out to be not Rohaku or Namishiro, but Shirohebi due to misreadings and misprints throughout the years. I’d discovered it was Shirohebi Park a day ago, when I was in the depths of hell, but in any case, this sight was found in the park’s plaza.

A game of baseball.

Or maybe I should call it a pretend game of baseball, since they were far from having enough people on each team─in any case, the roles of pitcher, batter, and catcher had been assigned as three individuals amused themselves by playing at baseball.

Baseball in the park.

That in itself could be called wholesome, but the characters at play and their tools made the scene surreal. A kind of surreality lacking in reality.

The pitcher was Miss Izuko Gaen.

A lady who despite donning a baseball cap-esque cap also wore loose and baggy clothing that seemed unsuited to any athletic endeavor. Someone with a thin body and, despite her youthful looks, a full-fledged adult you’d never expect to see playing innocently in a park.

The batter was Shinobu Oshino.

While it’d be one thing if she was playing in the little-girl form she’d taken until not long ago, she was now a woman of exceptional beauty, tall with long limbs and long blond hair, in a gorgeous dress, so dazzling she literally drew your eyes to her. What’s more, she wore stiletto heels as she held a metal bat and waited on one leg for the ball to come, the very picture of a sewing machine on a dissecting table. So unbalanced it seemed like a dissecting table on a sewing machine.

I made one mistake there. A thoughtless mistake.

Not a bat. The long object she held in her hands as if she was going to row a boat with it was no metal bat─it was a Japanese greatsword.

A blade that even an amateur could tell was forged by a master.

Its name Kokorowatari, commonly known as the Aberration Slayer.

In that sense, she did appear to be a demon wielding a metal bat, but more the type you’d expect to see in hell─a genuine vampire who had regained her full nature, healthy in body and spirit this eve as she looked truly refreshed playing this night game.

That said, this king of the aberrations did appear to be fine the morning before on the grounds of Kita-Shirahebi shrine, so the noble and legendary and all-powerful vampire─the iron-blooded, hot-blooded, yet cold-blooded vampire in her complete form seemed to endure the sun’s rays just fine so long as her defense was up.

“C’mon now, pitcher. You’re looking scared to me.”

The individual who pounded her mitt while for some reason aggressively heckling the pitcher, the position to whom she should have been playing the role of a loving wife, was the only one of the three whose age didn’t make her out of place playing baseball in a park. A young girl, with pigtails─Mayoi Hachikuji.

She played catcher despite wearing a skirt, crouching down with her knees spread and showing the whole world her underwear.

How to explain it. Maybe her guard was too far down?

Seeing those panties brought me no joy at all.

In fact, in terms of bare fundamentals, she should have at least taken off her backpack when playing baseball─or maybe it was the backpack that allowed her to maintain her balance despite her unstable pose.

This sight was already as surreal as can be, but what made it super-surreal was the fact they used a rock of reasonable size as their ball.

A rock?

They were throwing rocks and hitting them with swords?

What kind of a baseball game was this?

I know that it’s often described as a duel, but they were taking it too far.

As a common, upstanding citizen, I wanted to report this sight to the authorities the moment I saw it, but it involved people I knew─or rather, it consisted only of people I knew, so my plan was to pretend not to see it, turn around, and head back. I could even try to meet up with Senjogahara during her daddy date, but─

“Nope,” the tween girl next to me said.

Ononoki stopped me─her fingers scissoring my sleeve. Stopped in such an adorable way, even someone as renowned for his bravery as myself couldn’t help but halt.

To say nothing of the fact that Ononoki possessed great and powerful strength in spite of looking like a cute little doll. Even a scissoring of my clothes with her fingers had enough stopping power to make it feel like I’d been pinned to the ground by a stake.

“Aren’t you settling this tonight?”

“Well, yeah…”

“I can’t be of any help to you now that Big Sis is gone─but I will at least watch you fight, kind monster sir. So,” said Ononoki, Let’s hurry up and join their circle.

Though it seemed one would need extraordinary courage to join this circle, I couldn’t cower, urged by a girl who appeared to be half my size, regardless of whatever resided in her.

I stepped on the field─or rather, into the park’s plaza.

“Ah! Why, if ’tis not my master!”

Shinobu seemed to be the first to notice.

Beautiful, graceful, shining there in her elegance─this gorgeous blond woman with a perfect body who simply could not be captured in full by any number of flowery words gave me an innocent wave of her hand (well, of her sword) as she called to me, so of course I felt embarrassed, or rather, just flustered.

“How late ye are! How we’ve awaited thee─we were playing cricket courtesy of all the time we found on our hands!”

So it was cricket? The progenitor of baseball? You could say without exaggeration that I didn’t know a thing about cricket as a sport.

“Ha!“Haha!“Hahahaha!” she laughed.

Shinobu came running over, held me up in her arms, and spun me around─kind of like a professional wrestler’s giant swing, or even the way an adult would play with a child, but there existed such a difference in height between the two of us now that this was possible.

I had found our physiques reversed.

And aren’t you in high spirits today, Miss Shinobu.

The last time I saw her this excited may have been back during spring break.

I recalled how that past excitement, too, expressed the joy of having regained her full abilities… It seemed that being complete is something to be happy about.

As Shinobu literally threw me around, Hachikuji and Ononoki looked on with choice expressions.

Me getting my just desserts, the sight of me being treated the way I always treated them, may have felt more pathetic than anything.

Maybe like the feeling of seeing someone scary with power over you kowtowing to someone even scarier with even more power? In that sense, though, this treatment may have been justifiable revenge from Shinobu’s perspective.

An exhilarating tale of revenge.

To the point that I almost enjoyed it.

Of course, in some ways I couldn’t even complain if she’d gone the full nine yards and carried me in her arms and on her back, considering the way I used to treat the young Shinobu.

Now that she’d returned to her full form, though, it seemed that her heart may have grown as big as the rest of her; she released me after having her fill.

Shinobu had mentioned earlier that her outward appearance affected her behavior, so as sad as it was for me, it seemed she couldn’t talk to me the way she did while she was a little girl.

Then again, given that she now appeared to be twenty-seven years old, it’d be beyond ultra-surreal if she acted like that little girl.

That Shinobu was gone, but she now felt like a high-spirited cousin I was meeting during summer break.

“H-Hachikuji…”

Though fully toyed with, played with, and robbed of my balance, I still reached out to the young girl before me─but come to think of it, Hachikuji had passed out as soon as I kidnapped her out of hell, so this would in fact be the first time in six months that I was facing her in the real world.

I was very disappointed that I couldn’t hug her like always thanks to the way the world spun around me.

“I think you did that more than enough back in hell, didn’t you, Mister Dark-and-Stormy?”

“However cool that sounds, Hachikuji, don’t make me sound like the opening of a Gothic novel. You’ll give people the wrong idea. My name is Araragi.”

“I’m sorry. A slip of the tongue.”

“No, you’re doing it on purpose…”

“A tip of the tongue.”

“Or maybe not?!”

“A foul tip when she swung.”

“I guess that’s something you’d care about as a catcher, but still!”

Fortunately, our time apart seemed to have no effect at all on this interaction of ours.

Though we did also do this in hell.

“I thought you’d be close to out of ways your tongue could slip, but I guess there’s more than expected…”

“I have to say, it really does hit home in a different way when it’s real-world.”

“Could you not call the world of the living real-world?”

What was hell then, virtual reality?

Like the way you called a brick-and-mortar bookseller a real bookstore these days?

I couldn’t support it.

“It’s nice to see you again as well, Miss Ononoki. Thank you for your earlier kindness.”

“Yeah. I’m glad you’re back,” Ononoki said.

I didn’t know what kind of position she took as she made this reply (even whether or not she was talking down to Hachikuji)─but right, it had also been a full half-year since the two had met like this.

Though I was ecstatic at the time over the tween girl, little girl, and young girl having assembled in one place (what kind of a person was I?), Shinobu had completed a sudden growth spurt, and looked different.

Speaking of which, though, I wondered─there was something I needed to check on. In fact, I should have checked the previous day.

I reached out toward Hachikuji’s chest.

She ran away.

“What’s wrong, Hachikuji?”

“I ought to be asking the same about your brain. Why were you so calmly attempting to grab a handful of my still-growing bosom?”

“No, I was just wondering how your body was doing─I grabbed you out of hell without thinking, but does that mean you’re alive again like me? Or could it be that…”

“That’s right, Koyomin. It could be.”

From up on the pitcher’s mound, Miss Gaen had been watching our little skit like an adult─not that she stood on any physically raised ground─but now she interrupted us.

Given her position, it felt like she’d picked me off.

“I’m sad to report that in Hachikuji’s case, her body has been cremated, you see─heh, but she might be a nasty sight had she been buried. Like a zombie, or maybe a jiangshi─but in any case, she is now a ghost, just as she was when you first met her in this park.”

A ghost.

She dropped the rock she held straight onto the ground as she said this.

“I made sure to take a close look into the situation today because of the possibility this raises. Around the time you and Miss Senjogahara were on your love-date, Koyomin.”

“Love-date…”

What a way to put it.

It wasn’t anything that saccharine, either.

It was a little more bloodcurdling than that. Bizarre would be another word.

Still, I understood─of course it wouldn’t be that picture-perfect. Then again, depending on how you saw it, you could debate whether Hachikuji coming back to life was a good thing or a bad thing─she’d died eleven years ago, so even if she did return to life after all this time, she’d be just as lost in the world as she was as a ghost.

In fact, she may have had even fewer places to go had she come back to life and been bound to a physical body.

Still.

It was better than hell, right? I thought so but─

“Still, Hachikuji. I’m sorry,” I bowed my head to her. Or maybe I should say I hung my head in shame. “I brought you back here without thinking─but now that I am thinking about it, I ruined the six months of work you did stacking rocks in children’s limbo. Jizo or some other figure should’ve come and reincarnated you if you’d kept at it…”

And yet, I forced Hachikuji to escape all because I couldn’t bear to see her like that─and yet, she would be the one paying any price for my actions, not me.

A punishment she wouldn’t have even brought upon herself this time around.

“It’s fine, Mister Araragi. There’s no need for you to worry─I’ve already discussed that matter with Miss Gaen and come to a deal.”

“A deal?”

With Miss Gaen?

Hearing this brought a wave of anxiety over me─making me look back at Miss Gaen, but she only shrugged, as if to play stupid.

“I’m not bothered in any way by you rescuing me,” Hachikuji continued. “Hell was indeed hell. If I’m being honest with you, when I saw that thread of salvation dangling down from the heavens, I wanted to climb it so badly I even thought about pushing you aside.”

“That’s a pretty terrible thought you had.”

Social climbers are bad enough, but that?

She must be joking, of course─I had trouble ridding myself of my guilty conscience even after hearing this.

“All right, we can cover that as well, so why don’t we get this briefing started─Koyomin did show up, after all. Let’s get through this fast, since we’re going to wrap everything up today. So for now, Koyomin─do you think you could order your beautiful, all-grown-up slave to stop bullying my junior’s shikigami?”

I looked over.

And found Shinobu Oshino throttling Yotsugi Ononoki for no discernible reason. For no good reason at all, in fact─just as Ononoki feared, Shinobu seemed to be in the midst of paying her back for the verbal abuse she’d suffered in the summer.

I take back my previous statement.

Whatever form she took, adult or complete, whatever the case, whatever the situation, my partner seemed to always have the same nasty personality.