Monogatari Series - Volume 23 - Chapter 1.25

025

The gourmet vampire’s diet, unbalanced towards service a la carte rather than buffets, held more weight than Shinobu had suggested, as well as more misery than Princess Acerola had described.

It wasn’t that she chose to only eat food that tasted good.

It was that she could not eat anything but food that tasted good.

It was a behavior that went completely beyond stoicism, ingrained to the point that it was impossible to fix. Suicidemaster, who had set her sights on “Princess Beauty”, had starved to death many times as a result.

“I don’t remember much about those times anymore, but I could tell that Suicidemaster was growing weaker and weaker right before my very eyes—she was transforming into a little girl. Regressing into the form of a very cute little girl—even though she had originally been a fierce, bewitching, older woman, older than me at my complete form.”

“Older woman—”

“Koyomin. The fact that you looked at me in response to the term ‘older woman’ is something this onee-san won’t forget when she does become an older woman.”

It was a bit of an emotional reaction from the onee-san with a usually laid-back personality.

“If you want, Koyomin, now that you’re nineteen. Do you want me to use my tricks to completely crush everything you hold dear? Do you want me to utterly destroy your interpersonal relationships, Koyomin?”

Scary! You don’t need to get that mad.

What’s wrong with an older woman?

Especially a fierce, bewitching, older woman.

“As far as I can tell, she’s regressed even further since I saw her last—as expected. After taking in the blood of ‘Princess Beauty’, the blood of another human being would end up being thinner than water.”

I surmised that the reason Shinobu’s memories were hazy was because “Princess Beauty” had been separated from her and had ascended to heaven—but I knew what she was saying.

I had been made to carry only her saliva, not her blood, but even with that, I didn’t know what would have happened if I had swallowed it—

“If Suicidemaster had been conscious, she surely would not have even drank the wondrous blood from the Blood Pond Hell, either.”

Shinobu had said the same thing as Princess Acerola, but in fact, I didn’t think the medicine from the Blood Pond Hell would even have worked.

At the very least, that was what the princess had predicted.

The princess, who had driven her, the picky eater, towards anorexia—had said she’d altered the ecosystem. 

The ecosystem—the thanatosystem.

It was like how dogs, who had originally been carnivores, had turned into omnivores after living with humans—or like koalas, who became able to eat the poisonous eucalyptus trees—or pandas, who only eat bamboo, which has low nutritional value.

“Hm…? But wait a minute. Would the blood from the Blood Pond Hell have suited Suicidemaster’s taste, even if she wasn’t conscious…? Could the blood that my master fed to Suicidemaster perhaps have been…?”

Uh-oh.

Shinobu was starting to be perceptive in a way she hadn’t been before—even Hachikuji, who’d been the one to come up with that treatment, seemed to make a face as if saying, “That’s right, isn’t it?”

I guess I had no choice. This wasn’t the time to be worrying about timing—in order to reinforce Shinobu’s theory, it was time to jump in and talk about my post-death experience.

“What are you talking about, Shinobu-chan! There’s no way Koyomin would lie about something like that, to his eternal partner Shinobu-chan and close friend Hachikuji-chan! Or are you implying that Koyomin is trying to deceive you two!?”

Gaen-san interrupted with quite the unnecessary and exaggerated follow-up—please act more detached about these things, I’m begging you.

I’d only stayed quiet because I missed the timing to speak, but it was quickly becoming an established fact that I was intentionally deceiving them.

Don’t force me to be indebted to you!

“That’s true.” “I suppose that’s true.”

They had more faith in me than I was expecting.

Faith was coming from all sides.

Well, it would mean having to bring up Hachikuji’s mistake, plus, even if the right timing were to come along, the story of meeting Shinobu’s predecessor wasn’t something I could tell easily…

Shinobu got back to her main point.

“Therefore, I believed that she would have long since perished by now, but I suppose she’s made it this far thanks to the quality of my blood. I’m surprised that she’s still alive and well, even though her form has become smaller and younger—and so, I cannot think for a moment that Suicidemaster is going around the town binge drinking the blood of high school girls.”

If I had to decide what the most unreliable thing in the world was, it would be Shinobu’s assertions, but as for this particular assertion, it had a certain persuasiveness to it.

Despite the unavoidable fact that there weren’t very many witnesses who could testify to the events of six hundred years ago, even Gaen-san seemed to agree.

“I see. Well, that’s testimony worth taking into account,” she said, nodding.

Nodding without a whiff of animosity. What a laid-back onee-san.

“The master of the ‘Castle of Corpses’, Deathtopia Virtuoso Suicidemaster—in contrast to her notoriety, she’s a peculiar vampire with not many of her victims being heard of, even in rumors. That unbalanced peculiarity was what made her so notorious—but I feel like I understand the reason now. The food that suited her taste—the food that fell victim to her—it was just too rare.”

But there wasn’t enough evidence to deny the possibility that her rare food had ended up being Japanese high school girls, so the suspicion on Suicidemaster hadn’t been completely cleared yet.

At least until we heard directly from her.

“‘There are two reasons why you can’t eat something. Because you like it, and because you hate it’—that’s what they say.”

“You’re acting like that’s some oft-said cliche, but Hachikuji, whose words are those?”

“They’re my words.”

“Of course.”

You were more looking forward to saying “They’re my words”, weren’t you.

“You can say the same thing in reverse, too. ‘There are two reasons why you want to eat something. Because you like it, and because you hate it’—Hachikuji-chan’s words.”

“Wow! You’re going to give me the credit? Gaen-sama, you are a god!”

You’re the one who’s a god.

As expected from the head of a group of specialists full of eccentrics and weirdos, her mind control techniques had reached a level where she could take control of a god.

However, whether or not Suicidemaster was being set up as the culprit behind the serial bloodsucking incidents, Shinobu’s testimony had created an unexpected new possibility.

The progenitor who had birthed and named her—the death-prepared, death-inevitable, death-certain vampire—why, after all this time, after six hundred years, had she come to visit the iron-blooded, hot-blooded, cold-blooded vampire?

After starving and becoming weak.

After reaching her limit.

Could she have come to feed on her ‘old pal’, the only food she could eat?