032
That, of course, was another joke.
I expected Ogi to follow up with a line like that, but she didn’t. Honestly, one wrong step there and it would’ve been a disaster, she said instead, as if to frighten me.
She seemed to be having fun.
“You didn’t get caught up in this land of mirrors, Araragi-senpai, you got it caught up with you.”
“…”
“Of course, this town is the only thing being affected, in spite of all the talk of worlds and lands─but please do be careful going forward. I’m not sure how much you realize this, but you’ve subdued a legendary vampire, built amicable relationships with gods, and are one and the same as me, someone with all kinds of elements from all kinds of aberrations. You suggested earlier that anything goes with me, but I’d say you’re pretty anything-goes yourself.”
Then the culprit wasn’t Ogi.
It was me─okay, it was Koyomi Araragi either way. But it didn’t change the fact that I was playing solitaire. It didn’t, but…
“Isn’t this already a disaster? You could put me on the same level as Shinobu when she destroyed the world in another timeline. Messing up an entire town─”
“Oh, no. This is still just a counterfeit. I said you pulled this land together, but it’s not like you did that physically. It’s only a question of how you feel about it. If that side is a counterfeit, then so is this one─just like Miss Shinobu said. All you did was bring a sense of maybe it’s all my imagination to the entire town. It’s not as if anything you did stopped being history, right? You only modestly rescued the light that was lost, the light that had gone out of sight─you only gave everyone a tiny little reminder of the forgotten ones, those feelings that had been left behind.”
Though you did put us in a dangerous spot, she said consolingly─well, no, I was sure it was just mean-spirited nagging.
“It won’t be a problem if you act appropriately from here. Yes, to put it as you might, it’ll just seem like you had a wonderful little dream.”
“Appropriately…” I sat down, all the strength instantly draining from my body. “It seems to me like there’s a lot you’re going to have to tell me if I want to do that.”
“Yes, and that’s why I’m here─we couldn’t bother any experts over something like this. I was impressed by Yotsugi Ononoki’s emergency response, but this story of aberrations is compact enough that we can handle it between you and me… Do be careful going forward, though. Don’t forget that we’re marked by those experts for observation.”
“…”
True. A chilling thought.
If Miss Gaen got word of this─fine, she knew everything, so maybe she already did. I could imagine how pissed she was at me for stirring up trouble all over again, after we’d pacified the town by settling that whole series of incidents… In fact, she might more than just scold me.
“No,” disagreed Ogi, “while she might know about this affair, she hasn’t the right to blow her top. She was the one who left behind Toé Gaen’s existence, after all, here in this town─and while it turned out for the best, I doubt it had been on purpose. It sure would’ve taken you longer to arrive at this classroom, though, without Ms. Toé.”
“I don’t get it… If you want to hurry me up so badly, why not come meet me at my house instead of sitting cooped up in this classroom?”
“Like I said, I was locked in─because this classroom was established as where I belong. This is my own lingering regret─or mistake, or stroke of bad luck… I failed to secure a good place for myself. That’s why messing with you in a roundabout way was the best I could do─anything may go when it comes to me, but I’m not omnipotent.”
“…”
“Miss Gaen must have left Ms. Toé behind due to some bitter memories, but I bet it was a simple case of lingering regret for Miss Hanekawa. Saying goodbye to everyone must’ve been very difficult. Almost like a six-year-old child, don’t you think? Then again, that might be why we could work in tandem…”
And yet she left with a big smile on her face. That big-breasted girl is as foolish as they come, Ogi laughed─apparently disliking Hanekawa as always.
Still, she’d allied herself with the class president among class presidents when this wasn’t even the land of mirrors. Did that mean there’d been a change in her nevertheless?
Just as I’d changed─perhaps Ogi could, too?
“Hanekawa…felt that way when she left? She’s my friend, but I didn’t do anything to show her I understood that at all.”
“That large-chested senior of mine would only hate it if someone saw straight through her, friend or not. She’s the kind of person who hides many things and has lots of secrets─you don’t believe Miss Oikura wanted you to know that she hoped to be better friends with you when she left this town, do you?”
“…”
“Then there’s Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade when she was a human, and those vestiges of the living Yotsugi Ononoki─and Karen Araragi’s complex about not being girly. Mayoi Hachikuji, who could never become an adult─and the savagery lurking in Nadeko Sengoku and Suruga Kanbaru. These were all forgotten, or were things they wish they could forget. You took all those things that were left behind and brought them to this side. That’s how you created─the so-called land of mirrors.”
It’s like some sort of light-based magic trick, Ogi quipped─and also that if she used black magic, I must use white magic.
That made sense. If she belonged to the element of darkness, my element was light, in contrast to her─though it sounds like bragging to assign yourself light as an element. I was buying myself shoes I could never fill.
“The mirror was nothing more than a catalyst─or maybe a detonator, but in any case, it only provided the chance. Of course, a mirror being the cue for all this did cause everything in the world to be flipped around.”
“If I didn’t get caught up in the land of mirrors but got it caught up with me─then I guess this was far from a lukewarm setup. Hm? In that case, did Ononoki and Oikura feel that something about the world was off not because of the negative effects that I had on it as an outsider, but rather because of its shortcomings?”
“I’d call them excesses, not shortcomings. You dragged another twenty percent from the land of mirrors, giving this place a hundred and twenty percent─it’s going to run over, beyond capacity like that. Either way, it doesn’t have much to do with them interacting with you. So if you feel like it, you’re welcome to fool around with Miss Oikura.”
Just as with Ms. Toé and Black Hanekawa, she’s not the real thing, though─Ogi said. That was a relief, or rather, I needed to straighten out the situation before the real Oikura came back to this town by some mistake.
“I need to figure something out…or wait…can we return things back to the way they were? Can we make this inconsistent world into a consistent one again?”
“I wouldn’t call it going back to the way things were. It might be more like moving forward─with an extra twenty percent in tow. Everyone regained what they’d lost, if only temporarily, so there will of course be some effect. That would be the influence you exert, if anything─for example, I imagine Miss Kanbaru is going to dream about Ms. Toé for a little while. Nothing more serious than that.”
“Can I really think of this as not having done anything serious?”
I couldn’t tell if Ogi was trying to be considerate, or if she was trying to bully me… Still, it was a load off my chest to know that despite inconveniencing everyone, I hadn’t done them any harm.
How would I ever forgive myself if Shinobu, who’d even taken the form of a little girl, could no longer be certified as harmless?
“Ha haa. You know, I think this turned out to be a good test case.”
“A test case? Of what?”
“You foolishly saved me when I should’ve been sucked up by the Darkness. My uncle may have supported your intentions there, but it’s not as if all those experts wholeheartedly approve of what you did. I think it’s clear as day that no small number of ungenerous characters would have rather seen a dangerous element like myself disappear.”
I count myself among them by the way, said a self-flagellating Ogi─while she often said these kinds of things to feign humility, I could tell she really meant it now.
“Yet this time, I acted as your safety valve─letting me live had some meaning. Forget being certified as harmless, I think this confirms it as fact. The surveillance level on you could rise a bit, though.”
“…”
The surveillance level? I didn’t need any more freeloaders. Ononoki was plenty on her own.
“Of course, walking away from this situation as it stands will have them swooping in and crushing it with all their might. Miss Gaen will get ready to face off against her sister, I’m sure─would you like that? I do think it’s a valid option. We could live in this inconsistent world forever.”
“Don’t make me weird offers. Why would I ever want that? I just want to hurry up and go home…or I guess that’s not how I should put it. I’m already home. Um…”
How should I word it?
Release the twenty percent of light I pulled into this world back through the mirror? How would I go about doing that? I didn’t even know how I pulled it here in the first place…
“I do want─to hurry up and proceed.”
“Ha haa. And again, that’s why I’m here─I take care of your mess-ups. Just as you take care of mine.”
“Kind of feels like an unfair peace treaty to me…”
No, I couldn’t say that as a fact. This could have turned into a genuine calamity─both Ogi and Shinobu called it a counterfeit, but when a screen is exposed to light for too long, that light can burn itself in. If I’d accepted Ogi’s offer just now─this world would be permanent.
She’d put a stop to it at the last second, and I sincerely owed her. I’d thought this might be her all-too-speedy revenge, but in fact it had been her payback that was speedy.
Her payback in a backwards world.
Though I wish I could come up with a better line than that.
“Um, could you please wait a second? I’m going to bring something out,” Ogi said, sticking her hand in her school jacket and fishing around before pulling out a bare Blu-ray─why stick it uncased in your uniform, I wondered, what if you scratched the disc, but no, it was no Blu-ray.
Because it was pure black.
Black like darkness.
A Blu-ray was a reflective silver on at least one side─while on both sides of the palm-sized, disc-shaped object Ogi held by the edges, as if to keep any fingerprints from getting on it, was a shade of black that felt like it could suck you in.
“Um…was that how PlayStation 1 games were?”
“Bingo. But this isn’t a PlayStation 1 game─I do have a PSX at home and would be happy to play with you, just not this. Because…”
Ogi threw it at me side-armed, like a frisbee─why make it so hard to catch when we were so close, I wasn’t a dog, I thought, but I somehow grabbed it, using my torso as a net.
“Look,” she urged.
And all I needed to do was look─because you couldn’t play this on a console when it had no donut hole.
A perfectly disc-shaped object, the kind you might expect to see in a math textbook─even a jet-black game disk might reflect something, but this one didn’t.
It reflected nothing to an excessive degree.
A flat, total black, like it had been painted.
Almost seeming to absorb any and all light that hit it─darkness.
“…”
I returned the black object to Ogi with trepidation, as if I were handling a bomb. “Don’t act so scared,” she said, taking it and raising it overhead before continuing, “Zero percent reflectivity─a mirror that’s a hundred percent absorbent.”
A mirror…that black?
Well, like she said─it was zero percent reflective.
“I was bored, stuck here in this classroom. Crafting something like this was about all I could do─using the blackboard.”
“The blackboard?”
I glanced over…and looking closely, found a chip missing from the corner. I had no idea what kind of tools and technology she’d used to create a disc out of it, though… That was some impressive DIY work.
I never imagined a piece of Year 1, Class 3 classroom’s ghost, which I’d fixed in place, could take such a form… Was it like plucking a four-leaf clover to keep with you?
“I guess,” affirmed Ogi. “It carries just as much supernatural power, if not more. You’re planning on visiting Kita-Shirahebi after this, right? In that case, I want you to offer it to the shrine there─it’s what you might call a votive object.”
“A votive object…”
This reminded me─as items that reflected the truth, mirrors were seen as holy since ancient times. Forget votive objects, they could even be treated like dwellings for the divine. Could Ogi’s handmade mirror, this black mirror, be one?
“Call it a gift to congratulate Hachikuji on her new post as god─it seems like she wasn’t able to fully deal with this situation, which is no surprise given that she only became a deity thanks to a sophistic technicality, but in reality, as the god meant to protect this town, she’s the one who needs to settle this all peacefully, not me. I suppose I’ll let her take the credit.”
“That shrine is the heart of this town. What’s going to happen when I place it there? If it has zero reflectivity, it doesn’t just show you nothing…it can even suck light into itself, right?”
“Well, it’s going to suck up that twenty percent of light that would have been lost if you hadn’t guided it here─lingering regrets and remnants that ought to have faded into obscurity. Part of a shrine’s job to accept those, right? Kita-Shirahebi is also an air pocket that attracts the stuff that aberrations are made of, and now that Mister Shishirui is no longer with us, it requires a tool to help it absorb wayward thoughts.”
True. It was asking too much of Hachikuji, who only happened to become a god due to the way everything progressed, to keep the town tranquil and pacified all on her own. We might have tied up those loose ends, all too neatly, but if there were any remaining openings, or maybe concerns, it was this.
Miss Gaen would surely continue to follow up on the situation, but it wasn’t as if she could spend all her time worrying about one town… I didn’t see the harm in bringing over one of these votive objects, or a cheat item.
“Okay. I’ll offer it to the shrine.”
“I appreciate it. By the way, you’ll know it’s time to swap it out once it’s turned completely white.”
“So it’s like a filter? How long does it last?”
“A few centuries, under normal circumstances…but then we’re talking about this town. A town once attacked by a legendary vampire, a town that you now grace with your presence─who knows, it might only last a few months.”
“You really know how to scare me.”
This time, Ogi offered the black mirror to me with care, and I took it with reverence─if what she said was true, offering it to the shrine wouldn’t fix everything. I needed to keep on frequenting Kita-Shirahebi, I thought─hm?
“What’s the matter, Araragi-senpai?”
Just as Ogi handed me the mirror and we both held it, together.
Just as Ogi and I faced each other, with what was still a mirror between us, even if it was zero percent reflective─a black mirror between us, its front side indistinguishable from its back, I thought, Hold on.
My doubts were reignited.
Ogi’s flowing delivery made me think that all the mysteries had been solved, that we even had countermeasures─but one vital point remained vague.
I got that I’d scooped up this lost twenty percent from the other side of the mirror at that moment─but still didn’t know why.
Rescuing these poor little regrets left lingering behind to fade away and giving them form sounded nice, but I hadn’t meant to do anything so noble.
In fact, I hadn’t known anything about reflectivity and the like until Oikura (’s residual thoughts?) bothered to school me.
Yes, I’d reached out to the mirror yesterday morning because something seemed wrong with the me I saw in it─my reflected self in the mirror. It had stopped.
“Unlike the reflection I saw in the sink, that wasn’t you, right? Then what exactly─”
“Come up with the answer to that one on your own, at least. Think about it, reflect on it.”
“You mean it requires self-reflection?”
“Yes, I suppose. Really, consider what you’ve done…or so I say, but we’d be back at square one if you started overthinking things again. I’ll borrow a page from my predecessors and just give you a hint.”
Ogi let go of the black mirror.
And said: “Who exactly are you?”
What, she wanted me to say it? My expression turned sober and austere, but I couldn’t reply to her question any other way. Even a lukewarm setup needed a reasonably serious conclusion.
So I answered her, looking into the dark black mirror.
“Koyomi Araragi here. Just the man you see.”
And then I understood.
Of course.
My own lingering regrets.
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