Monogatari Series - Volume 22 - Chapter 2.03

003

Because I had commuted to school on bike, I had hardly ever used the path that was the shortest between the station and the school where the “phantom slasher” was said to appear. Strictly speaking, both bicycles that I had owned had gotten destroyed beyond repair in my third year, but after that, I obstinately went to school on foot using the same path that I’d taken on my bicycle, as if I were trying to mourn the losses of both of them.

The paths one takes aren’t changed easily.

As such, I didn’t really recognize the lane that we arrived at.

To the point that it made me wonder, had it really been like this then?

It didn’t exactly have a good view, and it was surrounded by thickets of trees on both sides, so it didn’t seem like a path I would want to take… Was this even a path that Naoetsu High students even took? I couldn’t even see a dog on this path, let alone a single person.

“It can get crowded enough that it becomes hard to breathe when it’s before or after school. Well, I’m just exaggerating, but it did get crowded like that when I was attending.”

It seemed Kizashima-senpai was the kind that took the trains, so she was able to testify as such—though I had no idea why, it seemed she was in a good mood.

“If you have to ask me that, Assistant Inspector Araragi, then the truth is that it seems they’ve become a lot more concerned with safety and public order than they used to be. They’ve put up more streetlights, and they even have convex mirrors set up at road junctions. Ahaha, how many times did I get hit at that corner by bicyclers?”

This wasn’t something I could just pretend to not know anything about.

As a bicycler myself, this was painful news to hear—I’d never hit anyone myself even though I’d been hit before, I couldn’t say that I hadn’t engaged in dangerous bicycle riding like having two people on my bike.

Or rather, I’d done that quite frequently.

It wasn’t really that the world got stricter since then, it was more that I was just a good-for-nothing at the time.

“Fortunately, since I was a mud doll, even if I was hit by a bike, it didn’t hurt or itch or anything. Even if I were to get hit by a plane, it wouldn’t hurt or itch or anything. It was actually harder to pretend that I was injured—I didn’t want to exaggerate the pain, but if I said I was completely unharmed, I would just stand out in a bad way.”

As she spoke, she pulled out a small flask, then gulped down its contents—though the flask was the kind you’d usually use for alcohol, hers only contained water.

As she was a golem, she normally wouldn’t need food or drink. But, in the exact opposite way as Suou-san, moisture was something that was indispensable to Kizashima-senpai. Especially on sunny days like today.

There was a risk that her skin—that is, her mud—could dry out.

While she was immortal, she wasn’t necessarily indestructible.

“Haaah… Nevertheless, when I still attended, there wasn’t anything like the ‘phantom slasher’. Not even bicycles were considered dangerous—I wonder if, because public order improved, all the smaller issues that went ignored are paradoxically starting to come to light?”

“That could be the case… Like, cautiousness in general went down, or something… And the problems themselves had already been there in the past…”

But if we were talking about the “phantom slasher”, then that probably wasn’t it.

It was hard to believe that high schoolers were having their backs slashed in the past.

At the very least, I’d never experienced something like that—well, I couldn’t exactly say “never”.

For one, I’d gotten the inside of my mouth stapled at one point… Even that would be a huge incident if it happened now.

“Hmm. Assistant Inspector Araragi, what you said does show one point of view, but the way I see it is a little different. It’s not completely true that something like this never happened in the past.”

“Is that so?”

I had thought that Kizashima-senpai’s view was that the “phantom slasher” had never appeared in the past, but was she taking it back? I tilted my head, but she simply continued, “In the past, a phenomenon like this was probably dealt with as ‘kamaitachi‘.”

”’Kamaitachi‘? Right, I’ve heard about that before.”

“I’d be surprised if a member of the Rumors Squad hadn’t heard of ‘kamaitachi‘ before.”

“Ah, yes, well, I am still a newcomer.”

”’Kamaitachi‘ are youkai that come in a trio. As the name implies, they’re weasels.2 And both hands of each one are sickles, like this… The first one knocks you down, the second one cuts you up, and the third one applies medicine to those cuts to heal them—you’ve heard that, right?”

“Mm—”

To tell the truth, I probably hadn’t heard about that before, but I didn’t want my senpai to think I was ignorant, so I gave a vague response without telling the truth—and another reason for that vague response was to incorporate my skeptical feelings of, “What kind of weird youkai is that?”, as well.

“To make cuts and then heal them… What exactly are they trying to accomplish? And is the first weasel, the one that ‘knocks you down’, even really necessary? They’d probably be more successful if they started off by suddenly slashing at you…”

“Those sorts of matter-of-fact criticisms are what spoil these nicer ghost stories—and give birth to more dangerous ones, like the ‘phantom slasher’.”

It’ll be bad if we don’t deal with it while it’s still a rumor, said Kizashima-senpai.

Her scolding made me feel almost like a criminal… even though I was a policeman.

“But trying to eliminate everything that brings about uneasiness is more a modern thing.”

“That’s right. So an incident like this one may have just been ignored in the past. Since it’s only uniforms that were cut, with not a single injury on any student’s skin.”

“They wouldn’t even notice until it was too late.”

“Indeed. You’ve said something smart, Assistant Inspector Araragi. Not everyone is immune to pain the way you and I are.”

Though I wasn’t immune to pain, either…

Maybe it would be good to have a discussion on the minor differences between our types of immortality, bringing in Suou-san as well… It was possible that a wrong assumption could lead to a terrible mistake otherwise.

Anyway, it was time for the inspection.

Kizashima-senpai and I tried walking back and forth, up and down the path, to start with.

But there were no new developments from doing that.

There were no weasels that suddenly burst out of the thickets of trees, and there were no perverts that burst out, either.

“When you say ‘thicket of trees’ too many times, doesn’t it end up sounding like ‘forest of organs’?”3

“Please don’t say something so horrifying with such a polite way of speaking.”

“I don’t have any organs, after all. If I could grow a heart or a liver, I’d probably harvest them.”

“That’s taking horrifying to the extreme.”

Surprisingly, our conversation aligned pretty well.

And though it wasn’t brought on because of the thicket of trees, I asked, “Could it be possible that it’s a natural phenomenon?” as we continued walking. “Don’t we also call that ‘kamaitachi‘? A whirlwind-like phenomenon where a vacuum forms near your body and cuts you up…”

“True. Or rather, it was more that everyone was satisfied with calling it the work of the yokai, ‘kamaitachi‘, until they tried to scientifically explain it as the vacuum phenomenon through science. Like the theory of geocentrism.”

“Geocentrism… That’s a little too large-scale to be on the level of a rumor.”

“But ‘kamaitachi‘ themselves are rumors in the wind. Because they are wind, after all. Nevertheless, I think it’s hard to see this case as a natural phenomenon—if it were, it would be even more unnatural for only the uniforms to get cut.”

That was true.

Actually, since clothes could flutter about, it seemed more likely that only the skin would get cut—plus, the fact that only the backsides of the students were cut bothered me.

I doubted that a natural phenomenon would behave so much like a surprise attack.

“It’s possible that the way this lane was constructed made it easy for ‘kamaitachi‘ rumors to begin—and if that’s the case, it would actually be unnatural if no such phenomenon occurred in the past.”

“It’d be unnatural, huh.”

Then, rather than a natural phenomenon, was it an unnatural phenomenon?

The thing was that it was still hard to judge whether an oddity phenomenon was natural or unnatural.

If anything, it was supernatural.

In the end, with no results to show after three trips up and down the path, we returned to the starting point—though legwork was fundamental to police work, if all we did was walk around without thinking, we’d just get tired.

Although golems never got tired, and vampires could recover from their fatigue in an instant. This was a mental thing.

“Hmm. Is there some sort of misunderstanding that we’re making? I’m only saying that because I’m the kind of guy that often makes a lot of misunderstandings…”

“But we’ve gotten clear evidence of uniforms that had been cut up, you know? And not even just one or two.”

“That’s right… But Kizashima-senpai, there’s something that bothers me. For example, let’s say there was some kind of youkai, whether it’s a ‘kamaitachi‘ or a ‘phantom slasher’, and they were slashing at high schoolers from behind.”

“Swish! Like that.”

“Yes, like that. In this example, the youkai wasn’t actually seen—but if the clothes they were wearing were cut, is it really possible for them to not notice that? All the victims testified that ‘they’d been cut before I knew it’, but…”

For example, even if they didn’t feel any sharp implements (?) on their bare skin, they’d still feel some sort of wind pressure… The skin of humans usually had fairly sensitive sensory receptors, after all.

“Considering I basically have a natural mud pack with my mud skin, I can’t really relate to that. Since I can only really sense temperature and humidity. It’s really terrible in midsummer. There was even a time when my arm came off!”

“Did something that brutal really happen?”

“I can’t say it was all that brutal. I can just stick it back on again if I moisten the edges. It’s a little unclean, but as the saying goes, nothing a little spit can’t fix.”

So she could at least produce saliva?

I really wanted to ask her about the finer details of her immortality.

“Anyway, going back on topic. Well, in the opposite of my example, if it was midwinter and your back was exposed, then you’d definitely feel a chill, but right now the weather is pretty nice. Maybe people are just making the assumption of safety that ‘there’s no way my uniform will suddenly get cut’, and that’s actually having a huge effect.”

“That’s true…”

What I had was only a theory. I wasn’t totally convinced of it myself.

Not to mention, the rumor that I was challenging in this case was exceedingly unrealistic—and the less realistic it was, the less convinced I was. If someone did get slashed at from behind and realize it, they’d probably start panicking out of fear.

It would be impossible to think properly in that state.

“Could you confirm this for me? It wasn’t just the victims that didn’t see the ‘phantom slasher’, but all the students around them also didn’t see it, right? Did it seem like the uniforms suddenly tore open to the students around them?”

“I don’t believe there were any witnesses to that effect. It seems that all the victims were targeted because they were returning home alone.”

“Hmm.”

Hearing that students returning home alone were targeted, or that care was taken to not be witnessed by anyone, made me think that it was less likely for it to be an oddity phenomenon and more likely for it to be a human crime—was it possible?

If they stealthily approached so as to not be noticed by the victims, and daringly slashed at the uniform while being careful enough to not cut the skin, and quickly disappeared before the victim turned around—

It wouldn’t be hard to hide in the thickets of trees, but the real challenge was still trying to cut the uniform without cutting the skin.

Were such acrobatics possible with any sharp implement?

At the very least, it would be impossible with a sickle.

“…Ah. If it was a demon sword, then maybe…”

“A demon sword? What is that?”

“Well, there was something like that, a while back—it probably still exists now, but since it hasn’t been used for several years, it could be all rusted over. It’s a huge longsword that the vampire in my shadow once wielded that can cut only oddities.”

But that was the opposite.

It would be able to ignore the clothing and cut the body inside, but it wouldn’t be able to cut just the clothing itself—unless the clothing itself was an oddity… But an oddity of school uniforms just makes no sense.

“I see. Well, it’s not like oddities related to clothing don’t exist at all. Incidentally, won’t you be calling out that vampire? I’ve heard that, when you were working with Suou-chan, you enlisted her help—you enlisted the help of the iron-blooded, hot-blooded, cold-blooded vampire for an on-site inspection. That is, you left it all to her.”

“I didn’t leave it all to her, but, well, yes. However, I don’t want to have to rely on a young girl all the time. I’m already an adult now, too…”

I gave an arbitrary excuse to dodge the question.

The truth was that Shinobu wasn’t particularly happy with how Kizashima-senpai was treating “her master” as an errand boy, so it would actually be difficult to call her out in front of Kizashima-senpai.

And even if I wasn’t working with Suou-san, I would be okay with asking for her opinion if I was left alone—but I couldn’t exactly say, “My partner hates you, so please go somewhere else.”

Though I had to say this was somewhat of an inconvenient arrangement, it was natural that nothing went exactly the way I wanted it to when I housed an oddity within me—or rather, within my shadow.

“Regardless of if it is an oddity phenomenon, if it isn’t an oddity phenomenon, and if it’s a natural, unnatural, or supernatural phenomenon, if we can’t come up with a theory, they’ll bring in Crime Squad 1 or the Public Safety Squad to take over for a full-blown investigation. Since there are victims involved.”

“True.”

The real problem with the case was if there was even a perpetrator involved.

A nonexistent perpetrator.

That in itself sounded like a rather modern rumor.