Monogatari Series - Volume 23 - Chapter 1.40

040

Wasn’t this different from what she said earlier? Hadn’t Suicidemaster denied that she was the culprit in the serial vampirism incident?

Plus, didn’t she suffer from anorexia, unable to take in any other “food” after being entranced by the taste of the food known as “Princess Beauty” six hundred years ago?

Wasn’t it that she turned from a mature woman into a little girl because of malnutrition, not because she got older? —Those were the question marks running through my mind.

However, I couldn’t say anything.

I couldn’t interject into Suicidemaster’s narration—and Shinobu stayed silent as well.

What was she thinking? What was she deciding?

To stick with humans, or to stick with oddities.

Was she thinking about that?

Or perhaps, was she still believing in her friend’s innocence, even after such a grand confession?

So innocently?

Though it was natural that Hachikuji, a neutral and mediating god, did not interfere here, it was a bit surprising that remained seated on the porch, not moving—with this confession, you would think that it would confirm Suicidemaster’s guilt and allow for concrete measures to be taken immediately.

In the end, although we considered various things like if she knew about prime numbers or if she would be able to cover up a crime, but the bottom line was that it was Occam’s razor and that ancient vampire was the culprit—was that just the uninteresting truth?

No matter how many question marks danced through my mind, were there any major points of doubt left before the current confession that deserved special mention? Was it right to take the results of the DNA test and the “B777Q” message as they were?

She bared her fangs at a high school girl.

For the sake of putting on airs.

Suicidemaster’s nonchalant attitude as she told me that was something that was familiar to me—needless to say, it was the same attitude that Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade had during that hellish spring break that I spent.

The fact that they were both trying to make themselves look good for the other party made it sound like a fairy tale with a moral lesson, and I could see how that might be an example of like attracts like, but when it came to the similarity in their lack of guilt, it wasn’t as funny.

During that spring break, that King of Oddities had no qualms about feeding on humans—she even thought that humans were born to be eaten by vampires.

The top of the food chain.

The apex, far above us.

Insensitive to the point that she didn’t even consider unabashedly speaking like that insensitive—but as far as Suicidemaster was concerned, it would be not only insensitive but also suicidal to make a speech in front of us here, in the name of confession.

A suicidal act.

A vampire with suicidal tendencies.

That was also familiar to me.

It was a memory fresh in my mind—it would never fade.

Even if a year or a thousand years passed, it would never fade.

Without guilt, without shame, but rather with pride—Suicidemaster continued.