Monogatari Series - Volume 23 - Chapter 1.28

028

“Kanbaru. Do you mind becoming a slave for tonight? Also, lend me your house.”

“All right!”

Second slave, secured.

“Oikura. Tonight, become my slave, and cook for me.”

“Don’t think you’ll be able to live until tonight.”

Third slave, failed to secure.

The reason for that failure was most likely because I’d been in a hurry and said “my slave”… Well, it wasn’t like I could tell her to become the slave of a golden-haired, golden-eyed girl.

And because of her connections with Gaen-san, I couldn’t exactly get Kanbaru fully involved in this either, so renting her house for one night should be good enough.

As the “citadel” of the king of oddities.

I’d heard yesterday that her grandparents were out on a trip, so Kanbaru could stay over at Higasa-chan’s house or even Karen’s room in the Araragi house and hold a pajama party there, while I was allowed to do whatever I liked in the meantime.

I knew it made me sound like an outlaw, but it was a decision I couldn’t avoid—the only building I could think of in this town that could serve as a vampire’s stronghold was Kanbaru’s mansion.

Just as the death-prepared, death-inevitable, death-certain vampire, Deathtopia Virtuoso Suicidemaster, had once taken up residence in the “Castle of Corpses”, the iron-blooded, hot-blooded, cold-blooded vampire, Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, needed a building of suitable pedigree in which to take up residence.

It was fairly Japanese-style for a castle—or rather it was just a Japanese mansion—but hopefully, this being Suicidemaster’s first visit to Japan, she wouldn’t be able to differentiate between castles and mansions in Japan… Not that I, a Japanese person, could.

“But no, I didn’t say that just because I wanted to show off. If Suicidemaster were to learn that her former thrall who she came to visit had been rendered harmless and sealed in the shadow of a pervert—nay, human—she may close herself off entirely. We won’t be able to hear a single shred of information. In the worst case, you might even be killed. Would you be fine with that?”

“No, I wouldn’t, but…”

“In that case, become my slave again like you were in last year’s spring break, and prepare a castle and a banquet. To make my reign more convincing. If you can secure two or three more fake thralls, then that would be great.”

The slave sealed in my shadow stuck out her chest in pride and ordered me as such from the child seat.

Erm…

“So basically, you want to greet your old pal with a master-servant relationship in that sort of fashion?”

“Fashion is important in hospitality. I’m pretty strict on fashion. Like a Parisienne.”

“No, rather than a Parisienne, you’re more like a putting-on-airs-ienne. Respectfully speaking, Shinobu. Wouldn’t a petty trick like this just be found out immediately…”

“Oh, you’re already getting into it. ‘Respectfully speaking’, you say? Ka ka, you’re an expert at acting like a slave already! Have you done this before? Wait, of course you have! Ka ka, keep it up for the real thing!”

With a loud laugh as if she’d already gotten accustomed to being the master, Shinobu sunk back into the shadows… It almost looked like she was assimilating with the child seat.

What a mess. She’d appeared as if she was going to listen to my concerns, but then she just said whatever she wanted to—however, as soon as I parked my New Beetle in the parking lot, before I went inside, it was then that I called Kanbaru, who’d been in the middle of her morning run, and Oikura, who’d been indulging in her slumber at her lodgings.

Kanbaru had eagerly agreed (it was scary how eager she was, but I decided to call her back and discuss it properly, as well as other things), while Oikura had refused (if I left her alone, she’d probably call me back, so at that point, I’ll more or less apologize from the bottom of my heart… and ask for her home cooking separately).

Well, Shinobu putting on airs was the same as always.

I almost wanted to tell her to be more show-offy towards me, but considering the way she was cooperating for this case, I couldn’t bluntly refuse that honesty… I had better properly inform Gaen-san about this, too.

Thinking about it, Kanbaru was the “niece of that Gaen-san”, but in reverse, Gaen-san was the “aunt of that Kanbaru”. What if Gaen-san casually went, “I’ll do it, too! Let me be a slave, too!” after I went to her with our plans?… I didn’t want to see Gaen-san like that.

What an odd family they were.

On the other hand, even though my parents were ordinary, upright public servants, why had all their children turned out like that?

Speaking of which, the fact that only the members of the girls’ basketball team of Naoetsu High were being attacked could be rephrased as “only Kanbaru’s juniors were being attacked”, so maybe it was a good idea to think about things with her as the focal point.

Even if the gourmet Suicidemaster were only able to dine on “Princess Beauty”, Kanbaru Suruga was the daughter (in other words, the direct descendant) of Gaen Tooe, who’s practically talked about as if she were a legend—so for the club members that were under her influence, the possibility of them being targeted is…

Although, in that case, maybe Kanbaru herself would be targeted? Actually, it was fairly possible that that was the case—and if so, then using Kanbaru’s house as a meeting place wasn’t a bad idea, if only to see Suicidemaster’s reaction, but Kanbaru herself should probably be kept far away.

That was what ran through my mind as I wandered around the campus of Manase University to kill time, having arrived earlier than expected (it was a fairly expansive university, and I still hadn’t seen all of the campus yet. Supposedly, it would take over four years to check out all of the facilities—what was this, the British Museum?), but once it got close to 7:45 am, I knocked on the door to the lecture hall for my international linguistics class.

Although it was called “linguistics”, it was different from classes on foreign languages in that it put languages from all over the world, both famous and unknown, on equal footing and compared them in detail. Ultimately, an unproductive course with no destination in sight—there were many incomprehensible courses like this in college.

But I liked that sort of incomprehensible stuff. Could this be Ougi-chan’s influence?

It was a liberal arts course unusual for someone in the mathematics department to take, and it was hard to say that the course was particularly popular even taking into account how early in the morning it was, but for Meniko, whose goal was to work with codes in the future, there was no way she couldn’t take this course—well, for her, international linguistics probably wasn’t even an “incomprehensible course” (in exchange, Meniko was bad with normal foreign language study).

“Hola. Araragi-chan, you’re eaaarly. How diligent of youuu.”

“I dunno about being called early when you’re here in your seat before me. Hola.”

Not to mention, I planned on skipping class after this. Unfortunately (or not), today’s lecture hadn’t been canceled.

It seemed I’d have to borrow Meniko’s notes another day—the number of favors I was asking her was increasing. Someday, I’d better do something for her in return.

I bumped fists with Meniko and sat down next to her, and then asked, “Do you mind if I asked you to decipher another code?”, showing her the sequence of numbers that I had displayed on my cell phone.

“Hmm. Hmm, hmm?”

A normal person, after being asked to solve codes like these two days in a row, would find it strange and ask for my intentions before even trying, but this was Hamukai Meniko—she couldn’t not solve a code that was put before her.

It was a difficult personality, but I liked that about her… It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but neither I nor my proud network of friends from high school were people that moved without some reason or purpose.

Even Hanekawa and Oshino.

And even the violent onmyouji Kagenui-san that was heading towards this town was actually a person of reason—she moved according to her own, unique logic.

As a result, there had been a time when I’d thought that people were just like that, but after becoming friends with Meniko, I came to learn that there were people who weren’t like that—I’d been enlightened.

Meniko also seemed to be rather interested in the fact that I was (in a rough estimate) rather logical about things, so I suppose it was a mutual thing.

In order to maintain this relationship, I didn’t dare introduce Meniko to any of my other connections, such as Oikura, even by mistake—of course, I had absolutely no intention of breaking off my connection with Oikura, who I had reconnected with after entering university, but as for her… Rather than our connection being broken off, it could be more like she herself would snap.

“A cell phone, huh. Was the code recorded on a cell phone?”

“Yep. Although I don’t know if that holds any meaning…”

“That’s truuue. These days, cell phones are like a part of our brains now, aren’t theeey? Some people criticize the fact that when you go on a trip, you end up looking at the scenery through the small screen of your smartphone, but looking at something with the camera of your smartphone is basically the same as looking at it with your own eyes, riiight? Maybe when people complain about train passengers playing with their cell phones, it’s a sign that they’ve failed to pair their phones with themseeelves?”

I hadn’t exactly mastered the use of a cell phone myself, so it was hard for me to wholeheartedly agree, but, well, it wasn’t like I didn’t understand what she was saying.

“Anyway, this time it’s only numbers, huh. Hm. I did solve it, buuut.”

“Already? You’re really the one that’s early to things, aren’t you. The truth is, I didn’t have the slightest idea.”

It wasn’t like I didn’t feel helpless when delegating the whole thing to Meniko, so I’d thought that I’d challenge it on my own in the period of time before I took it to her, but I’d spent most of that time on Shinobu’s matter.

“It doesn’t seem like putting it on a phone and not on paper really maaattered? But numbers are easy to make into a code, aren’t theeey. Languages can vary from region to region, depending on grammar and culture, but numbers are worldwiiide. No matter where in the universe you are, one plus one is two, and a prime number is a prime number, riiight?”

“That’s not actually the case. For example, in Nepalese, the representations for ‘1’ and ‘9’ look similar, so when a Japanese person sees them, the math wouldn’t add up at a glance. The logic would look completely wrong. Also, it’s only in Japan where people use the ‘正’ kanji to count to five, and for someone like me, the little horizontal bar used to distinguish a ‘7’ from a ‘1’ is enough to make me not think of it as a ‘7’”.

“I see. For someone like me, a ‘7’ with a horizontal bar looks kind of like the kanji for seven [七] upside down, so I end up getting those confuuused. So you’re above me when it comes to that, huh, Araragi-chaaan.”

There wasn’t really an above or a below in this exchange, but aah, I wanted to have a conversation like this.

I suddenly realized.

When Shinobu—when Princess Acerola, as “Princess Beauty”—went about destroying countries… When she was a human, did she feel the same way as this when she met a vampire?

Even though it was a relationship of eat or be eaten.

The interpretation that they were vampire and thrall, or master and slave, was at odds with the lighthearted way in which she spoke of her as an “old pal”.

She had said that she’d reflected from that time with Shishirui Seishirou, so I’d interpreted it as the master-slave relationship having been reversed, but what if it wasn’t that? What if Suicidemaster really was just a “friend” to Shinobu?

Like, for example, Kanbaru and Higasa-chan.

According to Hachikuji, Suicidemaster had called Shinobu a friend as well.

A friend, huh.

There had been a fiercely determined class representative who had declared, “If I can’t die for someone, I wouldn’t call that person a friend”. But what if Shinobu wanted to meet Suicidemaster with that in mind?

Did I have the qualification to stop her?

Talking about qualifications at this point was what made me, me—regret may always come too late, but logic always took precedence. If I ultimately acted upon my emotions, then I would most likely act too late to a disgusting extent.

I should learn a bit from my new friend.

What I wanted was not qualifications, but qualities.

“Hmm. Araragi-chan, what’s the matter? Thinking about something?”

“No, I’m trying hard not to think about something. So, what’s the answer to the code?”

“Like yesterday, I managed to solve it, but it’s a dead-end that isn’t really refreshiiing. Even though I managed to decode it, it just leaves me stressed agaaain. But it ended up being letters of the alphabet agaaain.”

“Alphabet—then, ‘D/V/S’?”

“No~ope. This time, it’s ‘F/C’.”

“F/C”?