Monogatari Series - Volume 23 - Chapter 1.19

019

What goes around will come around.

The fact that I had silenced Oshino Shinobu with a kiss in an abandoned building that was once a cram school had become a mere memory, but now I was reaping what I sowed by being silenced with a kiss by her predecessor, Princess Acerola, in heaven. After all this time.

I’d been hit where I least expected it.

It was a scene that I could only describe as bewildering, but at the same time, maybe I should feel honored by it… Not even the princess from mythology and fairy tales, who went around destroying nations everywhere, would have killed her people with such a beautiful kiss.

Not one you do on the back of one’s hand, but a genuine, lips-on-lips kiss.

And happening in heaven, at that.

Or it could be that it had just been a wild delusion of mine (in which case, I had better rush to the hospital as soon as possible, instead of worrying that my vampire constitution might be exposed—my mind had to be in serious condition to fantasize about a naked princess with a demon mask), but, like in hell, there was no dying, living, or killing in heaven.

If there was.

It would be—coming back to life.

“……”

When I came to, I was back in the main shrine of Kitashirahebi Shrine—a dark indoor scene, a complete change from the scenery that I’d been seeing previously. No matter how I looked at it, it wasn’t the great Mother Nature of the Middle Ages, but Japanese architecture of the present.

A scene I was quite familiar with.

However, the circumstances around me, I wasn’t familiar with.

After my early return from my trip to not hell but heaven, the ones who greeted me were my oni partner, Oshino Shinobu, and my godly friend, Hachikuji Mayoi—and their tears.

“M-master! Master, my master! You came back!”

“A-Ara… Arara… Araragi-shan!”

The crying girl and little girl came and squeezed me in a tight hug.

What was this situation? For Hachikuji to normally flub my name like this…

“Since you were showing no signs of coming back to life, Koyomin, these kids were worrying that they’d accidentally messed up and killed their partner or friend, up until now.”

Said a voice.

Behind the bawling pair, there was the shadow of somebody who stood there, shocked—and that somebody was casually carrying, not an oodachi, but a kodachi, against her shoulder.

It was Gaen Izuko-san.

There was no one else that would call me Koyomin—she must have revived me with the Demon Blade “Yumewatari”, that formed a pair with the Demon Blade “Kokorowatari”.

“Although, they actually did mess up. Since Shinobu-chan comes from the position of being sealed, she couldn’t break the pairing between herself and you, Koyomin, so it just ended up being a half-baked near-death experience.”

So basically—I was fine up until the point where I was blown to smithereens, but afterwards, since I wasn’t returning from hell, Shinobu and Hachikuji panicked and asked for help from Gaen-san?

“To be precise, they actually asked for help from Yotsugi. And she was the one who contacted me. And since I had so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so much free time, I came.”

Gaen-san, are you perhaps mad?

Well, of course she’d be mad. Since they were both willing to ask for help, both Shinobu and Hachikuji probably gave all the information they had to Ononoki-chan, and by extension, Gaen-san.

At the very least, Gaen-san should now be aware that this shrine was sheltering the mummy of a little girl—Deathtopia Virtuoso Suicidemaster.

The ancient vampire that Gaen-san had been attempting to seize all throughout tonight… Incidentally, I had completely ignored the mission entrusted to me by Gaen-san and tried to fall to hell of my own accord.

At this point, the promise that she wouldn’t get involved again until I graduated from college was most likely no longer valid… Or rather, it was a breach of trust that may as well have earned me a permanent breaking off of relations.

It was natural for her to get mad.

“I’m not mad, Koyomin. I’m hurt. I thought you’d have a little more faith in me.”

That was what Gaen-san said before she returned the Demon Blade “Yumewatari” to the still-sobbing Shinobu—the sword capable of reviving oddities, complementing the sword capable of killing them.

Of course, Shinobu and Hachikuji had probably intended to use that kodachi to revive me, but it didn’t go as well as when they had sent me to hell—but that made sense.

After all, I hadn’t fallen to hell in the first place.

I’d been sidetracked with a drastic change to my route, sent to heaven instead of hell—and that was when Hachikuji’s plan fell apart.

So for me to have been revived now, Gaen-san, the onee-san who knows everything, had surely managed to grasp what sort of experience I’d undertaken—it was hard to gauge what was going through Gaen-san’s mind, as she would have had to urgently interrupt her carefully planned all-nighter after receiving the request through the young girl from the girl and little girl.

It was likely a loss of face for a commander to abandon the mission she had planned.

I really felt sorry after she told me that she felt hurt—yes, when I was in high school, it felt like school was almost everything to me, but now that I’d become a college freshman and expanded my world somewhat, I’d learned that it was not only children that get hurt, but adults, as well.

Even the onee-san who knew everything wasn’t Superman—after making an adult feel hurt, making a girl sad, and making a little girl cry, I was so wracked with guilt that I almost did actually want to go to hell this time.

I wondered how they must have felt while looking at my dismembered body, and I swore to myself that I would absolutely never tell them that I’d been talking to a naked beautiful woman wearing a demon mask in heaven.

The difference in elevation and temperature was really something else.

The difference in elevation between heaven and hell.

And the difference in temperature between the pond of blood and her lips.

“What’s the matter, Koyomin? This onee-san is waiting for your words of apology, you know? I’m ready to forgive you, so you should really reconcile these things quickly.”

Regardless of what she felt inside, she was showing a lot of generosity, quite like an adult, or perhaps even an onee-san. However.

However, I was unable to offer any words of apology, nor was I able to offer any words of comfort for Shinobu and Hachikuji—well, of course I would do those things afterward, but before that, there was something I had to do first.

Something I had to do.

If I didn’t do that, I wouldn’t be able to speak.

I picked myself off of the floor, broke away from the new god and the old demon, and turned my back to the administrator of the specialists. And I crawled over to the mummy sheltered in the main shrine, the center of this conversation and the center of this problem.

The mummy of the naked little girl.

The gourmet vampire.

The mummy of Deathtopia Virtuoso Suicidemaster—I carefully cradled that mummy’s head so as not to break it, but with the force I’d used to crawl forward, I kissed the mummy with all my might.

A kiss on the lips of a mummy.

These college chapters had become rather adult.