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Ononoki Yotsugi-chan. An immortal falsely similar to a vampire, a doll girl and a corpse doll (this had nothing to do with what we were talking about earlier, but her existence was close to that of a zombie—a physical oddity similar to Frankenstein’s monster), and shikigami of Kagenui Yozuru-san, the specialist traveling from a great distance away to return to Japan. And right now, in Tsukihi’s room in the Araragi house, she was freeloading as a stuffed doll.
She had taken up the role of a nearby overseer that was monitoring Shinobu and me closely to ascertain whether our certification as harmless was really appropriate, but at the present moment, the young shikigami girl was, to me, a goddess of salvation.
“Wow, if it isn’t Ononoki-chan! You came at just the right time. Now, don’t hold back. Come and sit down right on my lap. My lap will be your child seat.”
“My master, before you say such creepy things, at least retort to the doll girl’s sketch comedy technique of knocking on the door yet coming in through the window.”
“Please make yourself at home, Lord Ononoki.”
“Is she a noble?”
Shinobu looked at me with even more suspicion, but it seemed that she had to lay aside those doubts in order to deal with her natural enemy that had flanked her—so far so good.
Call me creepy or even a degenerate, but anyway, I’d planned on plunging headfirst into bantering about a child seat with a little girl and a young girl as a vivid reminder of my high school days, but…
“Fortunately for me, I’m not so free that I can spend time lounging around on your lap, oni onii-chan,” said Ononoki-chan, expressionless and indifferent.
No, this girl (and though I said “girl”, she was the tsukumogami of a corpse that had been used for a hundred years) was always expressionless.
Because she’s a corpse.
“Thanks to you, even though my employer, the onmyouji onee-chan, is away, I get to keep working. I’m making a huge profit. I’m laughing like, ‘wahaha’.”
She didn’t look like she was going “wahaha”, though (because she was expressionless).
“It’s the know-how of wahaha.”
“If such a know-how exists, I’d like for you to teach it to me.”
But Gaen-san had said something like that, too… Ononoki-chan was in charge of a separate case.
That it was important to not sweat the small stuff.
In that case, she really must have just come with perfect timing, as opposed to coming here on Gaen-san’s orders to support me in marking Shinobu—in that case, for what reason?
“What? Should I not have come without a reason?”
“Are you a childhood friend? My childhood friend doesn’t act that spoiled. If it weren’t for Hanekawa’s support, she might not have even made it to college.”
“I just felt like seeing your chaos, oni onii-chan.”
“Don’t come to see my chaos. At least come to see my face.”2
Although as a matter of fact, her timing was pretty chaotic—though the problem was, that chaos didn’t show any signs of ending anytime soon.
“Hup.”
Ononoki-chan stepped over the window frame and entered the room—she wasn’t a vampire, so she didn’t need permission to enter.
How in the world did she knock like that? Was it a magic trick?
“It’s true, I really don’t have a reason. I was out for work and I just barely arrived home when it turned out that dumbass Tsukihi was in her room. She’s studying or something.”
She was an oppressive and insolent middle school third-year that it was unavoidable for her to be called a dumbass, but I guess she’s surprisingly diligent when no one’s looking, that sister of mine—since Tsukihi thought that Ononoki-chan was a life-sized stuffed doll, she couldn’t possibly enter through Tsukihi’s window, so the hard worker had no choice but to return home through the alternate route of using my window.
Then, really and truly, how in the world did you knock like that. Did you borrow the power of the yanari phenomenon? Was it a phantom knock?
“However, it looks like I’m intruding upon you guys. Well, busy as I am, I can leave for the attic or whatever, so feel free to continue your discussion—oh, that reminds me.”
While I’d been racking my brain trying to figure out a way to detain Ononoki-chan as she was about to make her hasty exit, she stopped just then to feel around her chest, as if she’d just thought of something.
What did that young girl plan on pulling out from her chest?
“Don’t tell me you’re going to use ‘Unlimited Rulebook’ to make your breasts huge!? Stop it, stop it! There are some lines you just shouldn’t cross, Ononoki-chan!”
“I don’t want to be warned about crossing humanity’s K-point by someone like you, oni onii-chan. Here. A souvenir.”
“A souvenir?”
Had she really gone that far away for work? Even if Ononoki Yotsugi-chan busied herself with urban legends, with Kagenui-san’s absence, I figured her current range of activities would not deviate from this neighborhood.
However, when I took what she offered to me, it was not any kind of senbei or cookies indicating “Just visited ______”, and instead, a piece of paper that had been folded ultra-thin.
In other words, it was a fortune slip.
Don’t tell me she was trying to make the fortune slip she got at some shrine into a souvenir? Because fortune slips and charms and stuff are hard to throw away? Even as I thought, “I’m not going to accept this if it’s nothing less than ‘great luck’”, I opened it up.
“Well. If it isn’t a fortune slip from Kitashirahebi Shrine, where that lost girl works as a god,” said Shinobu, taking a look at my hands and saying it out loud to make it easy to understand.
Incidentally, the fortune was “average luck”.
Average luck.
It wasn’t really clear to me if that was good or bad.
“So when you said you were working, you just went to play around with that lost girl, hm? You should’ve called me, too.”
“I didn’t go there to play. New as she is, Mayoi-nee-san is a lost child that rules over this town, after all. If I want to be able to do my work properly, I have to go through the proper channels, or else—”
While Shinobu and Ononoki-chan were partaking in a conspiratorial exchange that may have been friendly or unfriendly, I inspected the fortune slip.
–
Love—Treat your girlfriend preciously!
Studies—Don’t let your guard down! Keep going without resting!
Health—Your mind is really in poor health!
Someone Waiting—You should go and see them yourself!
Business—Being a yes-man is dangerous!
–
What a high-energy oracle…
With her manner of speech, it did feel a lot like Hachikuji… As for the “Business” fortune, if it was referring to my current role as requested by Gaen-san, then “being a yes-man is dangerous” may have been just the advice I wanted to hear.
It was a good feeling.
This must be average luck for the sake of Araragi, averarage luck—but no.
That wasn’t what I should be paying attention to. Well, that was important, too, but what I should focus on was—
“Ononoki-chan. You don’t need to go to the attic. Until Tsukihi-chan leaves her room, you’re free to just hang out here.”
I stood up.
“The child seat and its child are going to go out for a late-night drive.”
It was time to go and see the person waiting for me.
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