Monogatari Series - Volume 20 - Chapter 1.07

007

In essence, you could call it a magic charm.

A trifling one that an elementary school girl might use─Kanbaru’s home clearly has a lot of history to it, so it’d be odd for there not to be a tradition or two of the sort.

A year had already passed since I first heard of it, so I couldn’t describe the specifics. I want to say it went something like this, though: the surface of the water in her home’s cypress-wood bath reflected, on occasion, the image of the person you’d marry one day.

The legend is so cute even I hesitate to make any uncouth jokes or jabs about it, and I had to wonder if I should really be looking to it for help─but it was a different story when I considered that Toé Gaen, mother to Suruga Kanbaru, and older sister to Izuko Gaen, was tied to this legend.

It took on a very different complexion.

Though she’d passed away, her involvement in our storyline would utterly change the course of the tale─in fact, it’s not an overstatement to say that she had something to do with the majority of the aberrations I’d experienced as a high school student.

Even if the legend came straight from the Kanbarus, to hear that Kanbaru’s father once saw a vision of Toé Gaen in that water’s surface assured there was something about the wood bath.

Something.

It was worth a try, at least.

This was like Nobita and the Steel Troops, where he uses the bath in Shizuka’s home to travel to another world. Hoping that it connected back to my world was expecting too much─but couldn’t it work as a communication tool?

If I looked at the surface and saw someone other than me, wouldn’t I be able to leave a message?

If you saw whoever you were going to marry in the future, I absolutely wanted it to be Hitagi there in the water, but if it just meant a lifelong partner, maybe I’d rather it be Shinobu─it’d be quicker that way.

I might not see anyone, of course.

I might just see my own stupid face reflected─but it did seem far more productive than staring into the bathroom mirror at my own home.

“Okay, then you go visit Suruga’s─I’ll go searching for other possibilities, just in case. I don’t have any ideas left, but maybe other gods will have other ideas,” Miss Hachikuji said, approving my plan. I had to admit, she might have matured, and we may have been in another world, but she was still such a good person, offering even to use her divine network.

Though…it did give me pause that Hachikuji simply called her “Suruga” in this mirrored land. Given their respective ages, it was appropriate─I really shouldn’t be worrying myself over consistency.

In any case, I climbed down the mountain alone and began pedaling the BMX to Kanbaru’s─and arrived in no time, as it wasn’t far.

Once I knew that left and right were reversed, I had an easy enough time riding the bike. I’d also grown accustomed to seeing the flipped-around world. Humans can adapt to anything.

If I got too used to this world, though, it’d be a hassle once I returned─I’d end up only being able to write backwards, and soon my nickname would be Leonardo da Vinci.

People might start touting me as a universal genius.

I’d feel so self-conscious.

The Kanbaru residence─or rather, estate was so grand I almost felt like calling it the Kanbaru mansion. Some said it contained eleven TV sets.

I entered the “residence” about twice a month to clean up Kanbaru’s room (and borrowed their cypress tub a number of times─the reason I was just barely able to recall it) but still shrink every time I stand in front of its gates.

Perhaps there were some things humans don’t adapt to─and the gate had been flipped around as well, with even the doorphone on the opposite side.

Opposite.

The world fully mirrored.

It’d be hard to explain, but you can’t just barge into someone else’s bath (no matter how well you know the person). I needed to get Kanbaru’s permission first…but was having trouble summoning the nerve to hit the call button.

I needed her permission, but come to think of it, in this mirrored world Kanbaru might be a completely different character from the junior I knew…

Going by the stats I’d compiled, cases like Tsukihi’s, where someone hadn’t changed, were in the minority. In the past I hadn’t felt too reserved about relying on my close friend Kanbaru (what kind of a senior was I?), but nothing guaranteed she’d be the candid, gallant person who never failed to lend a helping hand.

I may respect you as a senior, Araragi-senpai, but letting you use my bath is out of the question, she might say, without any feeling even.

I’d never recover if I heard that from Kanbaru, in a different world or not. I’d carry the baggage for the rest of my life.

It kept my finger from hitting the button, but then…

“Pfft,” I laughed─why was I worried?

Aside from Tsukihi, all the girls─whether it was Karen or Ononoki or Hachikuji─differed from the versions I knew but hadn’t changed fundamentally as people.

Grownup Hachikuji was still helping me out. Ononoki’s expressiveness exposed her nasty personality to the world, but you could say she was the same as ever.

Flipped around or reversed, they were still them─and Kanbaru would be too.

We had a relationship of trust, didn’t we?

Why be so negative, anyway? In fact, the trait that always gave me pause might be turned around and canceled out.

A Kanbaru who isn’t sex-obsessed.

A Kanbaru who isn’t a masochist.

A Kanbaru who isn’t shameless.

A Suruga Kanbaru who fancies just literature, always has her underwear on, and quietly walks along the sidewalk; considerate to the untalented, not prying when speaking to the timid, and ever-prudent─okay, she’d be unrecognizable at that point.

While I loved her boyish ways, I’d have no other chance of seeing her act gracefully. I felt excited when I thought about it that way.

Just what kind of Kanbaru would she be─yeah, why overthink this?

Maybe I’d find that I guessed exactly right. I’m not bad at reasoning.

After all the serious battles I’d recently faced, it didn’t hurt to have the emotional wherewithal to enjoy laidback twists.

True, being transported to another world was unbelievably huge, but why not be a big man who welcomed such a crisis? The kind who quipped as bullets flew by.

I’d be like Space Pirate Cobra.

I made up my mind and used my Psychogun, or actually just my plain finger, to press the button─I think I pressed it.

But.

Something pressed back.

“…?!”

A fleeting moment.

I had no idea what had happened─of course not. Who, in modern-day Japan, ever pressed a button that pressed back? In any age or world, as a matter of fact, but I hadn’t survived so many battles for nothing.

I’d been to hell and back, I played with fire without getting burned.

Even with what you might call zero fighting abilities, I could go toe-to-toe with anyone thanks to my first-rate danger avoidance─which is to say, skill at running away.

Well, I wasn’t going toe-to-toe with anyone if I ran, but anyway, I had the presence of mind to spring back. I’d have sprained my right index finger otherwise.

If I were lucky, actually. My finger could’ve broken─into multiple pieces.

Because what pushed back wasn’t strictly speaking the button, but rather the gatepost behind it─no, not even the gatepost. The doorphone and the gatepost were simply destroyed by the pressure applied to the other side.

And sure enough, what came sticking out of the pulverized post─was a fist.

“Ah…”

It flew too fast for the human eye to perceive it as such, and I must have recognized it only because I was familiar with it.

A fist─a paw. Because I knew about that Monkey’s Paw…

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

I’d like you to know that the scream wasn’t mine.

Honestly, I was so dumbstruck I couldn’t even scream─in other words, the cry belonged to the girl who appeared from the other side of the gate along with the Monkey’s Paw.

A cry─be it a girl’s, or a beast’s.

“R…”

I finally began to speak.

It wasn’t raining, or the least bit cloudy─but a figure in a hooded raincoat and rubber boots came crashing through where the gate once stood, and I spoke her name.

“Rainy Devil!”

No. Should I still have called her Suruga Kanbaru?

“A…aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” roared the Rainy Devil─or Suruga Kanbaru.

Before saying, just as before:

“I─I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you─”

“…!”

Baths were the least of my worries.

If anything, I needed to avoid a bloodbath, but too stunned even to mumble that quip, I straddled the BMX─I couldn’t believe it.

A lukewarm setup? Give me a break.

A highly hazardous aberration had shown up in the middle of the day─how much of a beatdown had I received at the hands of this demon monkey last May?

I also lost one of my favorite rides back then─I began to pedal, swearing I wouldn’t lose the borrowed BMX and let history repeat itself to that degree.

Pedaling for dear life, dammit!

What kind of a world was this?!

Of all the things to happen, for the Rainy Devil to reappear because Kanbaru got mirrored…

“I─”

At my back, a voice that should’ve been distant…

“I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you!”

Grew closer.

I knew I shouldn’t look back. I needed to focus only on moving forward, but my fear got the better of me and I turned my head─I really shouldn’t have.

Wall-running.

The Rainy Devil ran perpendicular to the wall surrounding the Kanbaru residence as she chased after me. Each step she took crushed and demolished the white surface, turning it into flour-like dust.

What a terrifying musclehead.

If there was any saving grace, she wore boots─and couldn’t gather the kind of speed she could in running shoes.

Still, she seemed faster than the flipped BMX’s top speed, and the distance between us continued to shrink─this was bad. Since my link to Shinobu had been cut and nothing about me was vampiric, I hadn’t the durability to withstand a blow from the Monkey’s Paw.

At this rate, I’d die in this nonsensical world before ever finding out if I’d gotten into college─come on, this inconsistency went too far! How could she have lived until now as the Rainy Devil? This was who Miss Hachikuji chummily called “Suruga”?!

I cursed and complained as I turned the handlebars─steering at this velocity was all but impossible, but I might earn myself some time if I veered away from the wall-running Kanbaru.

Fortunately, BMX bikes were made for acrobatic tricks, and I needed to resort to stunts if she beat me on speed.

But no, I soon learned how shortsighted my idea was.

A misconception.

I should’ve known that her legs’ true power lay not in their speed, but in their jumping skills. The Rainy Devil kicked off the Kanbaru residence to leap parallel to the ground─thereby following my turn and still chasing straight after me.

Depending on how you looked at it, it was a vertical jump.

She caught up to me─passed me.

“I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate─!”

Her hatred only grew.

Packing it into her balled left fist, she descended in front of me and, still midair, swung it in my direction─wait, her left fist?

Huh? I forgot to hit the brakes, or even to take my hands off the handlebars to guard my vitals─her left hand?

No, that was how it went.

The paw Kanbaru once wished upon was a left hand. The original and authentic item had been a right hand, but the memento bequeathed to her by Toé Gaen, her mother, was a southpaw.

Kanbaru had kept her left arm wrapped up in bandages every day at all hours─because underneath was the furry limb of a beast, the price she’d paid for wishing upon an aberration.

As the Rainy Devil too─it was her left arm, as she wore a raincoat and tall rubber boots, that wrecked my body and my mountain bike.

The impression had been so strong that I hadn’t noticed, but…it didn’t make sense, did it? Even if you accepted that she’d become the Rainy Devil in this mirrored land─wouldn’t her paw be her right hand?

Right hand, left hand.

Because mirrors─flip left and right.

If the original was a left hand.

Then it needed to be a right hand.

“─I! Hate! Youuuu! Ihateyouihateyouihateyouihateyouihateyouihateyou─!”

That was as far as my thoughts got.

As Kanbaru’s howls gradually collapsed in on themselves, perhaps due to the Doppler effect, I rode right into the incomprehensible left hand─its destructive power had smashed a gate into dust and would surely reduce my body to putty.

“Heh…” I had to laugh.

I couldn’t believe it. Despite Ogi’s lectures, I was still hopeless─after all this time.

Suruga Kanbaru.

I don’t want to die, but maybe it’s not so bad if it’s you, I found myself thinking─Koyomi Araragi is such a lost cause that it made me want to laugh, and to weep.

You were right, Ogi. But you know, even this late in the game, even in another world, my junior Kanbaru─is someone I just can’t bring myself to hate.

“ihateyouihateyouihateyouihateyouihateyouihateyouihateyouihateyouihateyouihateyouihateyouihateyouihateyouihateyouihateyouihate─” “─myaaaahahahahahaha!”

Then.

The monkey’s cry was joined by a cat’s.

And I─was scooped up, bicycle and all.