Monogatari Series - Volume 22 - Chapter 2.06

006

“Hmm. Well, that does seem right. Since a school road is used both to go to and to come back from school—it’s a little strange that the attacks are only focused on those coming back.”

That’s a pretty clever school friend you have there, said Kizashima-senpai once we met back up on-site.

She wasn’t even a school friend of mine, and the hint wasn’t really something I could use, even if I heard it—so the way it made the mystery even more mysterious was very Ougi-chan-like.

Without prying further into the affairs of my “school friend”, Kizashima-senpai said, “As for me, I visited the staff room.”

So Kizashima-senpai’s “secret location” was the staff room?

It wasn’t exactly a place I could accompany her to.

I was ashamed of my bad behavior in those olden days.

“Yes. Although I went in there without making an appointment. It was just a decision I made on the spot. I had fun chatting with some of my old teachers. They were saying, ‘You haven’t changed a bit, have you?’ But that’s a matter of course for me.”

“…I’m just asking out of curiosity, but Kizashima-senpai, what do you plan on doing in the future? You wouldn’t possibly keep walking around with a baby face at eighty years old, right?”

“That’s a rather indelicate question.”

She turned it around by saying that I would encounter the same problem, but strictly speaking, my immortality didn’t necessarily mean eternal youth and longevity, so I couldn’t avoid changing over the years, in both a good way and a bad way.

But it was different for mud dolls.

Even clay figures managed to stay exactly the same for thousands of years, right?

“Well, in that case, I’ll have to deceive them with makeup. It’ll be the opposite of makeup usually being used to make people look younger… I’ll have to put wrinkles on my skin and such.”

“Would it not be possible to get Gaen-san’s help with making a new doll to move your soul into?”

“With that Teori-san or some such person? It would be great if that was possible. But what my grandpa and grandma used to keep my soul in this world was mostly a forbidden spell, you see.”

“Forbidden spell?”

“I’m not talking about a tree made of gold.4 A spell that’s forbidden—a very powerful one, though not very practical to use. Well, someone may be able to reverse-engineer it after a few decades, so I can wait until then. Fortunately, I am immortal, after all.”

It almost sounded like she was a patient with some incurable disease just hoping for a new treatment to be discovered, but, well, in the first place Kizashima-senpai had actually died at a young age from a serious illness, and the mindset itself was rather alike.

My questions went a little too far. Let’s get back on track.

“So, Kizashima-senpai, did you find out anything new from the staff room?”

“I didn’t make any progress. Instead of trying to figure out the truth behind the ‘phantom slasher’ incident, I noticed that they seemed more concerned about trying to cover up such disturbances—since it is a private school, I can only guess at their true motives, but they’re stepping back from solving the problem.”

“That approach that Naoetsu High takes is still the same as it was back then.”

Although I couldn’t exactly criticize them for it, since it worked out well for me a number of times… How many times had I gone around in the school at night?

I’d forgotten about the time I snuck onto the roof, too.

But it was true that such an insular environment was what led to students becoming truant. It wasn’t a problem that could easily be resolved, but I hoped that they’d do something about it someday.

“Indeed. But anyway, for the time being, what we must do is resolve the problem that’s at our hands now—at this point, all we can do is try to catch the criminal red-handed and arrest them.”

We can’t arrest oddities, but if there are any “kamaitachi“, we’ll grab them by their tails—said Kizashima-senpai.

“And just in time, it’s almost time for students to start coming back from school. We’ll stand guard here and try to witness the moment that any students’ backs get cut—if there were no witnesses, we’ll be the witnesses ourselves.”

It was a rather proactive attitude.

Although, I was a little reluctant to just stand by and watch while kids were slashed at—it felt almost like a decoy operation. It may be a bit naive to say this, but I wanted to stop crimes before they occurred, if I could.

“I feel the same way, but in reality, none of the victims have even a scratch on them. Of course, they’ll need to pay for their uniforms, but none of the high schoolers are at risk here.”

Mm, was all I said in response.

That was true, but the one-in-a-million chance still made me hesitant. A stakeout operation was a very police-like thing to do, but to just stand by and watch high schoolers get attacked…

“Please get a grip. Because even ‘just standing by and watching’ is harder than it sounds.”

Kizashima-senpai clapped her hands together loudly as if to encourage me.

“Unlike the case of the river that Suou-san was in charge of, this case has a high probability of the observer effect taking place. No matter how cleverly we try to hide in those thickets of trees, the ‘phantom slasher’ may not appear simply because it senses our gazes.”

The observer effect.

It was something like, the act of observing a phenomenon itself will end up influencing that phenomenon… It was logic that was applied to things like verifying the existence of ESP.

Like, if you take an antagonistic approach and try to see through its tricks, then fortune-telling will end up not working… Though it wasn’t exactly the same as saying, “true believers will be saved”, it was a rather convenient excuse for occult-types, having some amount of truth to it.

Instead of a new treatment, this was an old medicine that had seen many days.

That is, the placebo effect.

“Yes. Although in our case, we don’t exactly doubt the existence of oddities—but on the other hand, if ‘not being witnessed’ is the condition for the ‘phantom slasher’ appearing, it does manage to account for why the victims only had their backs slashed at.”

“It does, doesn’t it?”

It wasn’t just an oddity phenomenon with no witnesses, but an oddity phenomenon that occurred precisely because there were no witnesses… In that case, a stakeout operation could be counterproductive, in a manner of speaking.

Although, if us being on the lookout put a stop to the ‘phantom slasher’ incident, I guess that could be called productive?

“Don’t be stupid. It’s not like we can stand guard around this school road forever. The duty of the Rumors Squad is to nitpick these rumors. What would be the point of keeping a single nit alive?”

I thought the expression of “keeping a nit” should be patented, but it was as she said.

It was a bad habit of mine to only be able to see what was in front of me.

What I should be focusing on was, in this case, the backs of people and the background scenery.

“Then, what should we do? If we want to stand guard without getting noticed, the trees seem like the only option to hide in…”

But if that was the only blind spot, then I would think that anyone would be more conscious about checking there.

In the first place, if they were going to enter our line of sight, we’d appear in their line of sight as well.

If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

Was it something like that?

“If there are no blind spots, we can just make one. Aren’t we experts on death, Assistant Inspector Araragi?”

It seemed that Kizashima-senpai was fond of thinking along the lines of, “If there’s no such-and-such, then we’ll become such-and-such” or “If there’s no such-and-such, then we’ll make such-and-such”. It was an element you wouldn’t find in my personality no matter how hard you looked. A positive creative energy.

Or would that just be, “If there’s no creative energy, we can just get creative energy” as well?

“If we don’t use our immortal powers now, when would we use them, Assistant Inspector Araragi?”

“If I had a choice, I wouldn’t ever want to use my immortal powers, though… But what exactly do you mean, Kizashima-senpai?”

I had no idea how being experts on death led to not becoming witnesses to the “phantom slasher”.

What the heck was this golem trying to get at?

“You’re rather slow on the uptake. Like I said—well, let’s see. Assistant Inspector Araragi, please go and use that convex mirror over there.”

“Sorry?”

“I’m saying, go to a different place and use that mirror to keep an eye on the school road. You at least have the exceptional eyesight of a vampire, don’t you?”

Ah—that’s what she meant.

It wasn’t exactly simple to be on the lookout through a mirror, but thanks to the aftereffects of vampirism lingering in my body, it was possible for me with my long-range vision.

Moreover, using a mirror to see oddities that couldn’t, or shouldn’t, be seen was rather like a tradition from mythology.

For a famous example, the legend of Medusa.

Or was that using a mirror to exterminate her?

In any case, it was possible that Ougi-chan was ostentatiously reading the manga of Sengoku Nadeshiko-sensei as foreshadowing for this moment—or no, that was just to drop some snide remarks.

Ougi-chan loved to offend people, after all.

“Right. And vampires aren’t reflected in mirrors, after all. Even if you can see them from here, they won’t be able to see you from where they are.”

Though Kizashima-senpai laid out the plan with a triumphant face, that was something I had no choice to point out the flaw in.

“I’m very sorry, but unfortunately, I’m the type of vampire that does get reflected in mirrors…”

“What did you say!? Well, please give it your all and figure something out.”

Was it something I could do something about just by giving it my all?

It had been a huge problem in the past when I’d stopped showing up in mirrors… To think that, five years later, I’d be trying to make an effort to stop showing up in mirrors.

But if I could manage that, then it could get me a lot of sway, not just during this case, but for the rest of the training period as well—using my vampire powers wantonly was not something to be praised (considering I’d gone through a lot of hardships because of it), but as far as the Rumors Squad was concerned, that shouldn’t be a restriction.

Of course, that was if they had any restrictions at all.

“Since it’s an order from my superior, I’ll do the best that I can… But what will you be doing, Kizashima-senpai? I’m sure there was some special trait that golems had that gave them an advantage in standing guard…”

Because of my poor study skills, I wasn’t too familiar with the subject.

I’d heard something along the lines of golems having certain characters inscribed on them, and that inscription was their only weak point, or something… But I couldn’t think of any special traits otherwise.

And to that, Kizashima-senpai glanced back at me and said, “The special trait that golems have, Assistant Inspector Araragi, is that, at the end of the day, their entire body is made of ‘dirt’. And nothing more.”

And, once again, she took out her small flask.