Monogatari Series - Volume 22 - Chapter 1.07

007

To turn into fish after getting wet.

Putting aside how it actually happened, the wording itself was easy to understand in terms of cause and effect, but to watch that phenomenon, that oddity phenomenon, occur before my very eyes… Well, the impression was certainly different.

It was hugely different, widely different, an order of magnitude different from what I had imagined.

Compared to that stereotypical image of the lower half being the fish and the upper half being a beautiful woman—it was practically the complete opposite. Although, even if that image actually existed, I’m sure it would actually be rather grotesque itself.

At one point, Kanbaru Suruga had had her left arm possessed by a monkey oddity, and her arm had been transformed into a monkey’s up to her elbow—but even then, it was still an amalgamation of two primates.

To become half-fish and half-human was something that could not easily be expressed in words, and it held a beauty that could not be expressed through paintings.

This is something I heard later on, but apparently this transformation took on a different appearance every time it occurred—parameters such as the amount of water, the quality of the water, the temperature of the water, and the amount of bacteria in the water all came together to decide what sort of fish would become half of her. The condition of Suou-san herself also factored into the equation.

This time, it was a piranha.

Probably.

Densely-packed scales sprung up all over her body, and densely-packed fangs sprung up inside her mouth.

A half-fish person—was how she had described herself, but looking at her like this, I couldn’t even call it “half”—she was basically all fish, with the last remnants of her humanity showing up in the one-piece swimsuit caught in her pectoral and dorsal fins.

It seemed that the rope that she had been tightly bound by would slip off, but it seemed to have somehow gotten tangled up with that swimsuit and managed to retain its shape… While I kept my eyes fixed on her as I was told to, it was a grand display that I could almost describe as pitiful.

I couldn’t help but keep my eyes fixed on her.

“Piranhas are actually one of the more preferred kinds,” was what Suou-san said, also later on. “There were times when I turned into stuff like deep-sea fish and mollusks, after all—gross doesn’t even begin to describe it. There’s a certain charm to fish, but a person becoming half of one is just the worst. I’d be fine with dugongs, at least… but among aquatic animals, it seems like mammals are out.”

Speaking of which, there was that theory that what people thought were mermaids were actually dugongs or manatees… I remembered hearing from Hanekawa at some point that the meat of a dugong was extremely tasty.

Maybe even that ended up tying into the legend of the mermaid?

It was so that the five drowning accidents didn’t end up tying into a new oddity story that Suou-san had cast herself to the bottom of the river—but, with there being no value to turning into a piranha, nothing ended up happening.

No oddities—no kappa, no crabs—appeared.

There was nothing that seemed like it wanted to prey upon the mermaid.

Though she had taken on a hideous appearance, she surely hadn’t lost her ability to think, but Suou-san began to swim forward at the bottom of the river—if I got careless, I could have been pulled into the river from the rope I was holding.

She was probably breathing through gills now, since it seemed she didn’t need to come up for air.

Well, fishing wasn’t something that produced immediate results, anyway… I should be patiently vigilant about this.

For the Rumors Squad, being unable to fish anything up was really the more desirable result—or maybe fishing with bait wasn’t even the right way to describe this?

Even if “mermaid flesh” was a delicacy, oddities did have their own tastes, after all… If that was the case, Suou-san’s stripping and transforming would end up being a waste… Well, someone like Suou-san probably wouldn’t consider that a waste, though.

She’s the kind of person who’s aware that useless actions make up the essence of labor.

As her junior, I’ll make sure to properly learn this attitude from her.

As I thought that, I sat down on the riverbank. Since it seemed like it would be a drawn-out battle, I figured I’d conserve some mental strength in order to respond more quickly in an emergency… I never had an interest in fishing, but surely not even anglers were constantly on the alert.

They’d wait for a tug.

Even so, to make sure I didn’t end up accidentally letting go of the rope, I wrapped the end of it around my wrist—that way, even if Suou-san started to get eaten… Then I suppose I’d just get eaten along with her?

If that happened, I figured Shinobu would come to my aid…

“Don’t just assume things for your own convenience.”

With that timing, a voice spoke from my shadow.

“Certainly, if your life is exposed to danger, I will be sure to move with great haste—but that will not necessarily be the case if that mermaid is in crisis.”

“Huh?”

Though I ended up saying that out of reflex, there was no further response from my shadow.

What? What did she mean by that? It was surprising in itself that Shinobu was awake in the middle of the day, but it was also surprising that she would come out with something that sounded like a warning—or maybe she was just rebuking me for my selfish thoughts?

It was true that, in high school, I relied a little too much on Shinobu’s powers and ended up in some outrageous circumstances. There were some unwanted side effects that came from abusing vampire skills, from utilizing Shinobu’s powers as if they were my own—if it weren’t for Gaen-san, I probably wouldn’t have lived to graduate from high school.

That’s why, even if the members of the Rumors Squad were to rely on it, I definitely shouldn’t think that “Shinobu will do something about it if it gets dangerous”, not even a little bit.

But, right now, was she really only doing nothing more than rebuking me?

Don’t just assume things for my own convenience, was exactly right. That was exactly why Shinobu wouldn’t take any excess actions in helping me out—even though she told me that this case seemed to be oddity-like, she didn’t disclose anything specific.

In other words, it was an attitude even more prudent than Oshino.

Prudent, but reliable.

So the problem was what she said afterwards—that wasn’t necessarily the case if that mermaid is in crisis.

That was what Shinobu said.

That was what she was implying.

If we turned that around, didn’t that mean that, right now, in real time, the mermaid—Suou-san was in a crisis?

“Suou-san!”

Without really understanding anything, I followed my instincts—my “impulsive and emotional nature”, as Karen put it—and stood up and pulled the rope back with all my might.

And though I pulled, it didn’t budge a bit.

Considering that the aftereffects of my vampire constitution allowed me to be muscular without even needing to work out, I shouldn’t have been completely powerless, but, as if I had landed a huge fish, I was totally unable to pull the rope back.

Or rather.

The rope was pulling me towards the middle of the river.

Was Suou-san trying to move through the water?

No, that was wrong.

Though I couldn’t see well through the reflections on the surface of the water, Suou-san was doing somersaults in the water, in pain. It looked almost like she was drowning—even though she was a mermaid?

As if she was suffocating from respiratory failure—even though she had gills?

“…….!”

In any case, Suou-san was no longer in a condition where she could pull me in… That mermaid was definitely in a “crisis”. Then, where was that force that was pulling in the rope coming from?

The “invisible hand”?

Even when I looked, not just around Suou-san, but in every nook and cranny in my surroundings and even up to the sky, there was nothing that seemed like it could be an oddity. Even if I looked out for those “bad things” that preceded the coming of an oddity, I couldn’t feel anything at all.

But I was no longer the boy I was in high school.

Even though I couldn’t say I had insight on every oddity in the world, since there was definitely something odd happening right now, there was no way that I couldn’t feel a single thing wrong.

Even the “invisible hand” that the drowned children said they saw was something that I should be able to see—or maybe this wasn’t an oddity phenomenon at all? Was Suou-san simply drowning just as the five children had before her? Was this just the sixth drowning accident to occur—

It wasn’t the time to be thinking about that right now.

If the rope wouldn’t budge no matter how hard I pulled, then I’d give up on that approach—shit, I wish I’d worn my swimsuit today, too. Thinking that, I jumped into the river.

Unfortunately, with a form less like the beautiful form of a fish and more like what would be used as an example of bad form, I promptly bounced off the surface of the water.

It was like how, if you didn’t reduce your surface area when entering the water, the resistance of the water felt like concrete—but what was different was what happened just before I would’ve entered.

I rolled over the surface of the water and slid to the point just above where Suou-san was struggling, and—and I didn’t sink into the water. It was like the entire river had frozen over—except that it wasn’t frozen, it was still flowing, and it was still liquid.

Nevertheless, my body wasn’t sinking.

As if I were on a huge conveyor belt, I was continually being pushed downstream, but it wasn’t at a speed that I couldn’t go against. Though I did so clumsily, I was able to move my arms and legs to stay above Suou-san.

However, I couldn’t get near her.

I couldn’t sink.

It wasn’t ice, but it was like the mermaid had been trapped in the middle of a water bed—it was less of an “invisible hand” and more of an “invisible sack” that was impossible to pierce through.

No matter how hard I punched it, the surface would pleasantly bounce back.

There was no doubt about it.

This was absolutely an oddity phenomenon, with no room for error—this had crossed the limit of simply being a rumor.

But really, what kind of oddity was it? To be able to create all this strangeness without even showing even the slightest bit of it—

“…No, that’s not it.”

It wasn’t invisible because it was an oddity—it was invisible because it was transparent.

For example, it could be invisible because it was “water” itself, which was high in transparency.

Neither kappa nor mermaids nor crabs.

“—The river itself is the oddity!?”

Then even mermaids would drown.

It would be like, on land, if the air itself could bite you. No matter how hard you tried, humans were unable to resist changes in air pressure. Plus, even if you had gills, that didn’t change the fact that you were breathing in oxygen.

That’s why even fish would suffocate in water with low oxygen levels.

Like how just throwing goldfish into a tank wasn’t the same as actually taking care of it—if you didn’t properly set up an oxygen pump, the goldfish would suffer a living hell, gasping for air above the surface of the water.

Water might be the mermaid’s natural habitat, but if the water itself was the enemy, any mermaid would die from drowning.

No.

It would be better if they could die.

But Suou-san couldn’t. She couldn’t die like vampires could. Really, considering vampires had an obvious weakness in sunlight, mermaids had a much simpler kind of immortality that far surpassed them—if what I experienced over spring break was hell, then what Suou-san was experiencing now was a living hell.

“Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!”

I didn’t expect anything from repeatedly hitting the surface of the water—it took a lot of effort just staying where I was. Despite being in the miraculous position of being able to crawl on top of the water, I couldn’t do the normal thing of just sinking into the water.

It felt like the flow of the river got faster, too.

Since I was attached to Suou-san via rope, I was able to not be pulled downstream, but it felt like our positions were reversed… Normally, I should be the one that needed to pull Suou-san out, but now I couldn’t do anything but watch as Suou-san drowned—as Suou-san continued to drown without even being able to die.

I couldn’t do anything but watch.

But that was all I needed to do.

Even as she struggled with her entire body, even as she continued to drown, even as she stayed unable to breathe or speak, Suou-san looked up at me through the surface of the water—but she had never once been looking at me for help.

With those strong piranha eyes.

With those eyes filled with a strong determination, she was trying to bring something to my attention.

She kept flapping her mouth open to try and tell me something—and it was definitely not in the way a “drowning goldfish” would. However, no matter what Suou-san was shouting at me—no matter what sort of plan she had to try and escape from this crisis, it wouldn’t reach me from within the water.

Despite being anticipated for my ability to communicate with oddities, something this irritating was a first—there was no way I could even begin to understand the movements of a piranha’s mouth, no matter how hard I stared at Suou-san’s mouth to try and read her lips.

But, just as I was starting to despair, I suddenly plunged into the water. Though I had braced myself against the water, increasing my points of contact unlike how I was supposed to, in order to not be washed away by the current, I suddenly—as if it was a matter of course—sank into the river with a splash.

As if I’d stepped on a pitfall, I sank in a straight line towards Suou-san.

I would have never been able to guess what had actually happened.

What Suou-san was doing was not shouting, but singing.

The “mermaid’s song”.

If it was within the range of common knowledge that the “mermaid’s flesh” gave rise to eternal youth and longevity, then it was within the range of common knowledge that the “mermaid’s song” had the power to sink ships—for a song that could sink even the most unsinkable of ships, it wasn’t hard to sink a single person.

And so I was able to reach Suou-san.

But of course, I would have never been able to guess that that wasn’t even Suou-san’s intention.

It wasn’t that unreasonable to assume that, despite telling me to leave her behind in an emergency with a calm face, she looked to me for help when it came down to it—but if that wasn’t the case, it was clear that she wanted to get me to do something.

The “invisible hand”.

Regardless of whether being brought into the inside of the water bed changed the reflectivity or whether my scrambling about changed the transparency, I was able to distinctly see the hand that should have been invisible.

I was able to see the hand that was grabbing Suou-san’s body, as if it was grabbing not a piranha but a squirming eel—but the role I’d given was not to pull that hand off of her.

What I was supposed to do was—take the hand that was grabbing Suou-san.

The hand of the child that was reaching out for help.