Monogatari Series - Volume 23 - Chapter 1.14

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Hachikuji Mayoi had just been a lost grade schooler when I met her last year on Mother’s Day, but now she’d become a splendid god. Even if it weren’t for this case with the vampire, I knew it wasn’t a good idea to visit her so casually due to her position, and I’d been careful not to rely on her (literally, pray to a god). But it was a different story if she was the one to call me.

Gaen-san had ordered me to keep watch over Shinobu, but she hadn’t told me that I necessarily had to keep watch over her at home. Despite her previous offense, it wasn’t as if Shinobu had been sentenced to house arrest.

But to deliver a message through Ononoki-chan through not a living message nor a dying message nor anything encrypted but a fortune slip of all things… It was surely something only a god could do.

The Kitashirahebi Shrine.

Built on top of a mountain, it was a shrine with deep connections and karma for me, and for everyone in this town.

If I was Lupin III, I could have simply ridden up the mountain in my New Beetle, but alas, I couldn’t go against the Road Traffic Act or my own common sense. So I parked my beloved car at the shoulder of the road, placed Shinobu on my shoulders (my shoulders were also a child seat), and began to laboriously climb up the mountain path.

Due to the aftereffects of my vampirism, while I wasn’t exactly nocturnal, I was still pretty strong at night—in times like these, I had no need for night-vision goggles.

“However, what business could that lost girl have with you? Does everyone really just want to see my master’s chaos?”

Yes, I was curious about that, too. No, not my chaos, but her business with me—Hachikuji should have learned her lesson (or rather, Gaen-san mercilessly beat the lesson into her), so she shouldn’t be behaving as freely as she used to.

She wouldn’t just invite an ordinary citizen to the top of the mountain without any business—so maybe she had a few words to say about the serial mummy vampire incident secretly going on in this town, after all?

It was easy to get mad at me for this, but if the origin of this vampire’s visit was Shinobu, then I had no choice but to take the blame for it, as her supervisor.

It was a violation of a virtuous supervisor’s duty of care. Putting aside whether or not I had any virtues as a supervisor.

To be honest, responding to Hachikuji’s summons did make me glad that I could gracefully escape from Shinobu’s interrogation, but if what Hachikuji had to say had anything to do with this matter once we finished climbing the mountain, it would be a dead end for me.

A girl at the front gate, and a little girl at the back gate.

I had no choice but to hope that it was about something completely different. For example, maybe Hachikuji had decided to appoint me to sit upon not a child seat, but the seat of a god (in which case, I would humbly accept).

Really, I had no idea where my utterly random life was headed anymore. My life wasn’t simply going forward, but hurling itself forward. Without coming up with any ingenious plans, the climb was completed.

Hachikuji was sitting under a waterfall in white clothing.

“Oh, how embarrassing. You ended up seeing me secretly trying to train.”

“What part of this is secret? I’ve never seen anything so blatant. It almost felt like you weren’t under a waterfall, but under a spotlight.”

When did this shrine even have a waterfall?

Don’t misuse your godly powers just for laughs.

She hadn’t fixed her free-spiritedness at all.

“Oh dear. So this is not what they mean by a beautiful girl, glistening like the morning dew.”

Of course not.

With a splash, Hachikuji made her way out of the waterfall basin… She was soaked completely through, and it was not in the least bit romantic. Her trademark twintails had been flattened against her head by the water pressure, and her white clothing clung to her body, making it difficult for her to move.

That open-mindedness. Truly a god.

“Anyway, it has been a while, Amefurashi-san.”

“It’s certainly been a while, eternal fifth-grader Hachikuji, but just because you’re soaking wet, that doesn’t mean you can call your friend by the name of a gastropod mollusk.3 And you’re not sopping wet because I made it rain4 or anything. I’m sorry if you went and got hit by a waterfall just so you could call me that, but my name is Araragi.”

“Sorry. I flubbed it.”

“No, it was on purpose.”

“I fwubbed it.”

“It wasn’t on purpose!?”

“Ti debbuwf I.”

“Even backwards, it wasn’t on purpose!?”

No, that had to be on purpose.

And in any case, it really had been a while since I’d been here, but with the usual exchange that made it feel as if it hadn’t been any time at all, Hachikuji and I celebrated our reunion.

“I wanted to see you too, Nobushi-san.”

“Who are you calling Nobushi. By anagramming it, you’ve turned a ninja into a samurai.5 My name is Shinobu… Wait, am I doing this too?”

“Sorry. I flubbed it.”

“Nay, ‘twas on purpose.”

“I fwubbed it.”

“‘Twas not on purpose!?”

“I fubwebd it.”

“Even anagrammed, ‘twas not on purpose!?”

With the girl and the little girl chattering away, it seemed pretty fun. Unlike the world of the animation’s commentary tracks, they were heartwarmingly close.

Why was it only in the commentary tracks that they didn’t get along? It’s usually the other way around.

Well, Shinobu, as Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, had also been exquisitely enshrined as a god in the past, so in that sense, it wasn’t just a relationship between a girl and a little girl, but perhaps a senior-junior relationship as well.

A junior, huh? Hmm.

“Anyway, Anagra-san.”

“You’re prolonging this, aren’t you? If you take what you flubbed and link it to a new way of flubbing, this passage will last forever!”

“Anyway anyway, Araragi-san. The reason I went to the trouble of asking the very busy Ononoki-chan to summon you to this mountain at this late hour is none other than this.”

Although I was hoping there was another reason.

“The truth is, there was a little girl I wanted to introduce to you, Araragi-san.”

“Oho? It sounds like there are some circumstances.”

“If you wanted to be introduced to a little girl without any circumstances, you’d have to be totally crazy!”

From the little girl who showed no intention of descending from her seat atop my shoulders even after we’d finished our mountain climb, I received an elbow to the head.

“To be precise, it’s not to Araragi-san, but to Shinobu-san.”

“Huhu. It seems you’re the one that’s totally crazy, Shinobu-chan.”

“Don’t act so proud of yourself with a little girl on your shoulders. And don’t shrug your shoulders, either, it clings. There’s a right way and a wrong way to shrug your shoulders, you know.”

“D-do you really need to go that far? All I did was shrug my shoulders, though?”

“Now, lost girl. What of the little girl you wished to introduce to me?”

“Yes. Right this way.”

Hachikuji went up the shrine road on the grounds and towards the main shrine—and we followed in the footsteps of the young god as they were marked down on the ground with wet, bare feet.

“Yes. Just the other day, there was a lost child that came under my custody… Incidentally, she was naked.”

“Oh, a naked little girl, you say? Who knows if that can be adapted for the anime. It’s a fine line to walk.”

“It’s way out of bounds! Sanitize it!”6

She retorted with a pun.

“Sanitize the little girls!”

You meant, clean up every important point, right?7

Even if you punned on every important point.

“Anyway, it’s out of bounds even in a novel, is it not?”

“And yet, it can’t be avoided. After all, we’re for social awareness, getting straight to the heart of taboos.”

“Not for social inappropriateness?”

But, to be serious, I was a little relieved.

I had no idea who this naked little girl was, but apparently it was a completely different case from the matter that I was cooperating with Gaen-san on—the matter with Deathtopia Virtuoso Suicidemaster.

And considering Hachikuji’s origins, you could say that taking custody of lost children was practically a livelihood for her.

As long as we didn’t run into the novel and stupid development that the progenitor who birthed and named the iron-blooded, hot-blooded, cold-blooded vampire was actually a little girl, and a naked little girl at that, then it seemed likely to be unrelated to this case—and the clock had reached its peak around the same time we had reached the peak of the mountain, so there were about five hours left until dawn.

If Hachikuji’s child, or rather, her business8, was business for Shinobu, then it would be ideal if Gaen-san (and the others) could draw the curtain on the gourmet vampire while she was distracted.

And with Kagenui-san still not having returned to the country yet, it was unlikely that Miss Suicidemaster would be suppressed in a violent manner… In that respect, I was thankful for Gaen-san’s pacifist nature.

“By the way, Araragi-san. Don’t you have anything you want to say to me?”

“Hm?”

“You have that look on your face.”

Wow, even though her career was just starting, she was still a god in the end… For her to read my face, my chaos.

However, I’d decided that I wouldn’t consult her about this case. It was different from when she didn’t have her position—now that she’d become a god, I didn’t want to stick Hachikuji in a dilemma between oddities and humans.

“Ha ha. You don’t know me as well as you think you do, Araragi-san. You’ll never put me in a dilemma, because I’m always on your side, Araragi-san. As long as I’m with Araragi-san, even hell isn’t such a bad place.”

As she said those deep words of friendship, Hachikuji opened the sliding door to the main shrine, but as soon as she did so, I felt like I’d been struck by a sense of cruel betrayal by that good friend of mine.

On the floor within the main shrine, as if it was a divine object of worship that had been carefully laid to rest, the naked little girl was indeed a naked little girl, but.

The naked little girl was a mummy.