Monogatari Series - Volume 20 - Chapter 1.22

022

What’s happening, what’s going on here, why on water and not a mirror─I thought as I opened my eyes wide, only to have Tsukihi actually stick her fingernails in them.

No surprise there, but she really knew how to mess up a clutch moment.

“You can’t put it on me, I did warn you. Why can’t you ever do as you’re told, big brother?”

Ditching the final steps of washing my face, Tsukihi scurried away into the bath.

I wished I could be like her. Seriously, I felt jealous.

When I looked back down into the sink, all the soapy water had been sucked down the drain. I felt like I’d lost my chance to seize a hint that had appeared out of the blue, but maybe, against my own will, my face had been beaming thanks to the heavenly experience that was having someone wash it. I shouldn’t feel too dejected…

I wanted to curse Tsukihi for interfering, but I wouldn’t have seen anything at all if she hadn’t had the bright idea to wash my face─so par for the course. After waiting for her, Karen, and Oikura to leave, I brought Ononoki out from my sisters’ room and headed to Kanbaru’s.

We traveled by BMX, not the Unlimited Rulebook, because there were people around during the day to see us─yes, riding two to a bike was against the rules, but strictly speaking, Ononoki is a doll. Legally, if we interpreted it as riding around with a doll on my shoulders, it was just fine.

“I gotta say, it’s still pretty abnormal to be riding around with a doll on your shoulders,” the shikigami took her turn to quip at me─Ogi hadn’t lent me her bike’s foot-rest accessory, so there was nothing I could do. “Monstieur, you give all kinds of characters shoulder rides. Who’s left?”

“You’re making it sound like I’ve given them to a majority of the cast. Going down the list, it’s only about four people long, counting you.”

“Me, Shinobu, the bigger little sister, and who else?”

I exercised my right to silence.

Since Ononoki wore pants in this world, nothing too wonderful happened during the ride. Thanks to her experience supporting Miss Kagenui with one finger (?), she did have an excellent sense of balance, and operating the bicycle wasn’t the slightest bit harder─in fact, I felt like I was the one being steered because she held onto my hair like a pair of handlebars (making me look like I had pigtails).

We’d discussed what we would do at Kanbaru’s the previous night, and I didn’t imagine there’d be any changes to our plan, but I still saw fit to report the little incident.

“Huh, is that so,” Ononoki said. “Well, it’s not your fault that the water went down the drain. It doesn’t seem too relevant, so don’t worry about it─wait a sec,” she pulled off a double-take from her double-decker perch. “Isn’t that really important? Could the gate to the other world be in our bathroom after all, and not in the monkey girl’s home?”

“Our bathroom, my ass.”

“I’ll be sure to tell Big Sis Sodachi the same.”

“No, she’s suffered enough! Anyway, it was only for a moment, and maybe I was just seeing things─I couldn’t make it happen again, either. I’m not even sure what caused it.”

“Right. A mirror the first time, and a reflection in the sink the second time… The location was the same, but the meaning seems different. I guess the constant is that you were washing your face? The necessary condition for reflective surfaces opening to another world: washing your face.”

“What kinda condition is that? If that’s all, I washed my face in the bath too… Either way, my reflection laughing, or not moving the way I do, isn’t that important─if going back home is my goal, I need to see Shinobu, or someone who can contact Shinobu, in the reflection.”

“Hm, true. Which makes today’s mission quite important.”

“Yeah, if possible, I’d like to end this today─I didn’t want this to take more than a day. Like I was saying, Oikura, for example, is starting to feel my negative influence.”

“…”

Huh? Why stay silent there? Ononoki suddenly going quiet worried me─was she angry? I suppose missing my opportunity earlier in the bathroom deserved a scolding.

“Monstieur. Have you noticed there’s a simple solution to this disturbance?”

“A simple solution.”

“Yes. A super-simple super-solution.”

“I’m fine with super-simple, but a super-solution sounds a little scary.” The wording suggested something along the lines of die and you’ll never worry again─but if she was saying a solution existed, I had to hear her out. Coolly, trying to come across as not one bit afraid or anything about this proposal of hers, I prodded, “What is it?”

“It’s a sort of Copenhagen interpretation.”

“Copenhagen interpretation? That’s some complicated stuff… Quantum mechanics, was it?” Since we can’t fully grasp the present, predicting the future with perfect accuracy is impossible─but how did my current situation relate to that line of thinking?

“Aren’t you supposed to be the straight man? I obviously meant Copernican revolution.”

“How should I know?! They’re practically the same thing!”

“Uh, the Copenhagen interpretation and Copernican revolutions aren’t that similar,” Ononoki criticized me for her own misstatement─but that aside, she restated, “It’s a sort of Copernican revolution. Simply give up on returning to your original world and resign yourself to settling down in this one.”

“Oh! I guess I could! You’re a sharp one, Ononoki, now there’s no need to sneak into Kanbaru’s bath. Why don’t we head straight to the Häagen-Dazs shop, I’ll treat you to whatever you─hold on,” I attempted a clumsy double-take, as the other half of the double-decker arrangement.

Ononoki just said, “Häagen-Dazs stores don’t exist in Japan anymore.”

Right. Seriously, though? It wasn’t just this world…but we digress.

“How is that a solution? Even if it’s some super-solution, it doesn’t solve anything. If I continue to exist in this world─”

“That’s only because you’re trying to go back to yours and refusing to grow accustomed to this one. You’re like a transfer student who just won’t stop bragging about his hometown and speaking in his local dialect, souring the mood for the whole class.”

“What’s with the mean example?”

“If I may, I’m the kind protagonist who reaches out to the kid who’s sticking out like a sore thumb.”

“Oh, so this was another one of your grade-school rom-com metaphors…”

“Surrender and open your heart to this world, be influenced and pressured by it instead, and you might go back to normal─from our point of view. Actually, it might never be more than a compromise…but I don’t think you’d overpower our influence when we hold the majority.”

“…”

This seemed to be an honest proposal, not some kind of joke─and looking at it objectively, Ononoki could be right.

If I gave up.

If I abandoned my world and decided to live here─I guess, in the vein of Ononoki’s analogy, it’d be like getting lost at sea, drifting off to a distant land, and hunkering down there?

“I don’t think it’s a bad suggestion, monstieur. Not just because it’d maintain this world’s balance, but for you too. I mean, you might not have realized this yet, but you aren’t in any danger as long as you don’t try to go back, you know?” Thanks to her usual monotone, Ononoki didn’t sound like she was trying particularly hard to convince me, but she certainly was nudging me in a certain direction. “So long as you don’t try to get near Kanbaru’s home, the monkey shouldn’t decide to attack you on her part. All it takes is a resolution to start living the hanky-panky life with Big Sis Sodachi from tomorrow.”

“Like that’s my goal here. As if I’m going to stay just so I can be all lovey-dovey with Oikura… Phew.”

Perhaps the proposal was worth considering? It might end up being my only option─but I still only considered it through an objective lens. It wasn’t yet worth so much as a moment’s thought.

I felt bad toward Ononoki, who’d gone out of her way to come up with it, but settling down in this world meant leaving far too much behind in mine. As long as there was hope, I’d pursue it, even if it put my life in danger.

“You know you’re putting my life in danger too, right?”

“W-Well, I…”

“It’s fine, I’m already dead. I just had to ask─just wanted to ask. And it’s not as if this plan is airtight,” Ononoki said. “Even if you settled right in to your current position, there’s no guarantee the real Koyomi Araragi isn’t coming back.”

“The real? Well, the real one to you guys, but don’t make me sound like a fake.”

“A double of the same person, the doppelganger phenomenon, is probably enough to destabilize the world on its own… I wonder, where did Koyomi Araragi go? Maybe you two did switch places, and he went to that other world.”

“…”

Then my fear that there were now two Ogi Oshinos in that world might not be idle─assuming the Koyomi Araragi in this world took her form. But it’d explain why Oikura and I lived in the same room. No matter how close, a high school-aged boy and girl sharing a room was irregular.

Couldn’t that be why she was second only to Ononoki, a professional and expert, in sensing that something was wrong? Koyomi Araragi’s gender was different from Koyomi Araragi’s… For my part, our closeness seemed wrong when I already had a girlfriend.

“Hmm…”

I just hoped things in the other world weren’t hopeless, like Ogi and Ogi trying to kill each other─she embodied my feelings of self-negation, after all.

I guess I also needed to figure out what kind of relationship I had with Hitagi Senjogahara in this world, but that concern could wait until our mission today ended in failure. For now, I would focus on evading the Rainy Devil─a fainthearted approach, as opposed to eliminating her, but putting aside the Monkey’s Paw, it wasn’t as if I could eliminate Kanbaru herself.

I told myself that my sights were set just right─and just as I did.

“We’re here,” Ononoki said, pointing ahead in the direction of a wall smashed into dust.

The result of Kanbaru running along it a day ago─even if consistency didn’t matter in this world, destroyed objects didn’t seem to repair themselves, and the gate to the Kanbaru estate past it was a shambles as well.

“All right, monstieur, let’s follow the plan. I’ll do what I can to buy you time, so don’t rush your investigation. Feel free to take a dip in the tub while you’re there.”

“As if I’m in such a state of mind.”

“Maybe not, but you do have plenty of time. Forget five minutes, I could buy you five hours.”

I’d feel woozy if I took a bath for that long.

I wondered how I might reply, but couldn’t at all─having spotted beyond the pulverized wall, on the grounds of the Kanbaru estate, a raincoat kicking up a cloud of rubble as it dashed straight toward us.

So far away just a second ago, it was now this close─the day before, I’d found it strange that she’d run along the wall for no apparent reason, but I understood as she sped through the grand, or formerly grand, Japanese garden.

She ran splitting the ground with each step─wrecking a wall sure beat destroying our planet. It implied that she had some degree of judgment and reason, but I wasn’t in a place to be giving it any more thought.

“Just go, kind monster sir. Unlimited Rulebook─”

Ononoki leapt off of my shoulders, and the finger she’d used to indicate the demolished wall grew massive and destructive. It now pointed at Suruga Kanbaru, who was coming at us head-on, ready to collide.

A finger of havoc pointed at legs of havoc─Ononoki had been riding on my shoulder in part so her hands would be free. And so, the battle between the monkey and the corpse began.