Monogatari Series - Volume 23 - Chapter 1.36

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In the end, Shinobu seemed to have given up on showing off, and thus Araragi Koyomi appeared to have lost the opportunity to show off his skills as an actor.

Once they actually met, such a contrived scheme would have been ridiculous—thinking about it, Suicidemaster was essentially sealed in the form of a little girl, too, so in terms of being a disgrace of a vampire, she was on the same level.

Incidentally, I was using vague wording like “seemed to” and “appeared to” because, along the way, the two little girls had put the humans (including the god that was formerly human) off to the side by beginning to speak in a foreign language—but what language was it, exactly?

Perhaps a language that had been used in one of the many countries that had been destroyed by “Princess Beauty”—regardless, we’d been completely left behind.

However, watching the two little girls act so cheerfully was such a pleasant sight that I couldn’t get mad. It felt like the first time I was seeing Shinobu make such expressions, and from what I could tell, Suicidemaster seemed to be warmly greeting her old friend after such a long time. It was possible that some effect of the mummification remained, because she didn’t seem to be able to pick herself up off of the rush mat, but her expressiveness made it clear that she was truly glad to have reunited with Shinobu.

In a way, it was like our hard work had been rewarded—although, I suppose most of it was just me needlessly worrying.

Not to mention, you could say things had gone just as planned.

The interrogation. About the serial vampirism incident.

Assuming Shinobu hadn’t forgotten about our original objective…

“They seem pretty happy, and the conversation seems to be going smoothly, so let’s leave Hachikuji-chan to be the witness while we humans step away for a moment. Koyomin, come here.”

“Huh? Um, no, but, Shinobu is tied to my shadow, so…”

“I set things up so that within the barrier, the two of you can act separately even while maintaining your pairing, so it’s fine. Hachikuji-chan, I’ll leave it to you.”

“Yes, leave it to me!”

Hm? Putting aside the fact that Hachikuji had become a loyal subordinate to a person of power despite being a god, what did she mean?

We could act separately?

I wondered if I could do such a thing—wasn’t it like the pairing between Shinobu and me was severed, even if it was in a limited area? And did that mean Gaen-san had anticipated from the beginning that their reunion would go well? To put up such a complex barrier—no, before that.

Regardless of whether it went well, had Gaen-san made plans for Shinobu and I to act separately from the beginning?

I didn’t really understand her intentions—but, with Shinobu not introducing me to Suicidemaster as her slave, I couldn’t exactly interrupt their conversation (the foreign language courses I chose were English and Spanish. Hola!), I guess I had no choice but to follow Gaen-san. Whatever Gaen-san was planning after recovering from the darkness, or mud, in the hearts of those high school girls, I had better hear about those plans—

“I would’ve liked it if she could have reunited with Shishirui Seishirou in the same way.”

That was what Gaen-san murmured, with her words feeling more meaningful than just light conversation, as she led me through the house. And our destination ended up being Kanbaru’s room—she sure knew her way around someone else’s home. As expected of the onee-san who knew everything.

She was well aware of the location of her niece’s room.

“If you know anything about architecture, you can pretty much tell the layout of the rooms from outside—but this is pretty awful. So, like my sister, Suruga’s a messy girl, too.”

However, it seemed she’d been surprised by the mess, giving her impressions in a shocked manner as she entered the room.

“I’m sorry. Normally I was supposed to have come and cleaned her room yesterday, but Higasa-chan was there, and if I went and started cleaning in front of her friend, Kanbaru would lose face.”

“If that’s true, then it’s exceedingly mysterious why you would go out of your way to care for Suruga like that, Koyomin. Rather than just Suruga’s senior, it’s almost like you’re her mom.”

You’re even more motherly than her actual mother, said Gaen-san.

I’d been described in many different ways before, but being described as motherly might be a first for me. But, being compared to the famous Gaen Tooe-san didn’t exactly make me happy.

“So, what’s the matter, Gaen-san? I know Hachikuji is watching over them, but Shinobu and Miss Suicidemaster—or should I say, Little Miss Suicidemaster? Well, it doesn’t really matter, but I do feel a bit uneasy just leaving them on their own.”

From the atmosphere around them, it didn’t seem like it would suddenly turn into a scene of carnage with them saying “I came to eat you, Shinobu” and “I’ll let you eat me” or anything, but I wasn’t too optimistic—to get to the point, oddities were oddities because you couldn’t predict what they might do in the next instant.

I wanted to return as soon as possible.

“I have two pieces of bad news,” said Gaen-san.

With my life as it was, it wasn’t too surprising to hear that there was no good news, but for there to be two pieces of bad news.

That was twice the sense of foreboding.

“I’ll keep it short. The first is that the last missing member of the girls’ basketball team, Kiseki Souwa-chan—her belongings were discovered.”

“Her belongings… Just her belongings?”

“Yes. Not just her cell phone and school bag, but her school uniform, gym clothes, and basshoes. Ah, ‘basshoes’ means…”

“Basketball shoes. I’ve read ‘Slam Dunk’, too, so I know what it means. But… Finding only her belongings but not the girl herself…?”

I wasn’t sure if it was a good or bad thing that her mummy hadn’t been discovered yet, but the fact that only her belongings were found was certainly bad news—or, perhaps not bad, but ominous.

In the same way you can’t start a particularly pleasant story with a school bag being abandoned by the road—I could only assume that something had happened to Kiseki-chan.

“Where were they discovered? In her room, or…?”

Remembering that the second mummy, Honnou Aburi-chan, had been discovered in her room, I brought up the location that would be least discomforting for her belongings to be discovered.

“That’s a good line of thought,” said Gaen-san. “Where they were discovered was in the gymnasium of Naoetsu High, in a locker in the girls’ locker room.”

“The girls’ locker room…?”

“Don’t react to the thought of the girls’ locker room. No need to worry, I had a female investigator perform the search.”

“It wasn’t like I was wondering why you hadn’t sent me to perform that task.”

Regardless of whether they were male or female, Gaen-san had already crossed a line at the moment she sent an outsider into the school—she was always this sort of person, I suppose.

Alternatively, perhaps there was a student currently attending Naoetsu High that held a connection to Gaen-san, like me last year—it was certainly a possibility.

“More precisely, it’s the girls’ locker room exclusively used by the girls’ basketball team. Each member is provided with their own locker.”

The girls’ basketball team sure was treated favorably.

If there was stuff like that, I guess it could be pretty hard to quit.

It was all thanks to Kanbaru’s achievements, and I couldn’t deny that the rest of the athletic department was a bit sloppy—but, in that case, though it wasn’t as good as her own room, her locker wasn’t all that discomforting to find her belongings in, right?

“In the first place, even if your subordinate managed to invade the girls’ locker room, how did they manage to unlock her personal locker?”

“Koyomin, the fact that you think of invading the girls’ locker room as completely natural is something I love about you. The personal lockers have combination locks, you see. From the register of names that you borrowed from the previous captain—a treasure trove of personal information—I was able to deduce the combination.”

Even if she didn’t use her date of birth, it wasn’t as important as a bank account password or anything, so I figured she’d use a number associated with her personal information—said Gaen-san, as if it was something obvious to her.

Leaking personal information was pretty scary.

“Using that same approach, I tried to crack the passwords of the cell phones owned by the first three mummies, but unfortunately, that didn’t go as well.”

“Well, it would certainly be more secure than a locker. Not to mention, if you get it wrong too many times, it could erase all the data inside—but, putting that aside, how should we evaluate this discovery? Isn’t it normal to find one’s uniform or gym clothes in their locker?”

“If it’s ‘uniform or gym clothes’, then yes.”

That was what Gaen-san said.

“But if it’s ‘uniform and gym clothes’, then that’s very strange indeed. Was Kiseki-chan going home naked when she went missing? It would be a big deal, even if she wasn’t mummified.”

A big deal…

Even if she revered Kanbaru, she probably wouldn’t do anything like go streaking (not even Kanbaru had done that. She was all talk, no action).

“It seems unlikely she had a spare uniform or gym clothes, either. It wasn’t as messy as this room, but the belongings had been stuffed in the locker pretty sloppily—as if they were getting in the way and thus disposed of.”

It was possible that Kiseki-chan was just bad at keeping things in order, but there was another interpretation—the person responsible for attacking her had roughly crammed Kiseki-chan’s belongings into her locker in order to hide the evidence.

Not the person responsible.

But perhaps—the demon responsible.

“Thanks to your reconnaissance, Koyomin, it ended up occurring in the opposite order, but if Kiseki Souwa-chan’s mummy had been found first, stripped of all her belongings, it would have been quite an ordeal to try and identify her… In other words, it would have been quite an ordeal to try and resolve this case.”

“Is it like how, in mystery novels, the culprit destroys the victim’s face and fingerprints?”

When the victims were mummified, you couldn’t tell the difference.

As long as there was no blood relation like with Shinobu and Suicidemaster… As long as there was no bond, unbreakable even after six hundred years.

“But it’s a little strange. Why is it that they did such a shoddy cover-up job for only Kiseki-chan?”

“It wasn’t shoddy, it was malicious. Her cell phone had, of course, been turned off—for items that were shoved in so roughly, the culprit was very attentive to detail. And the fact that a vampire was able to enter the school makes it extremely dangerous for the girls’ basketball team.”

“……”

That was true—it was an alarming situation.

Although I wasn’t sure if that was something that the specialist that had entered the school in the same way should say.

“However, to do such a cover-up job, they wouldn’t just need to enter the school—they’d need to be able to open Kiseki-chan’s personal locker, right? It may be possible for another member of the girls’ basketball team that shares the locker room with her, but I don’t think an outsider vampire would have been able to open the locker, wouldn’t you say?”

The suspicion on the remaining members of the girls’ basketball team had already been cleared—how had that “attentive” vampire unlocked that locker?

A combination lock. A password.

How could you open and close that without breaking it?

Gaen-san’s response was clear.

“They spoke with the locker’s owner. They had to have heard it from her.”

They had to have heard it from her.

There was no other way.

“And then, if I were to presume the reason that the cover-up job was only done for Kiseki-chan, I would arrive at a rather unpleasant conclusion, Koyomin. Basically, it would mean that the fact that we were using the mummies’ belongings to identify them has been leaked.”

“Ah.”

“There’s a high chance that our information is being exposed to the vampire.”

Rather than bad news.

It was the worst possible news.