Monogatari Series - Volume 23 - Chapter 1.42

042

…Huh? What the heck?

Her story had ended so quickly that my comprehension couldn’t keep up—to that heavily thematic and therefore weary downer of a story, what had the punch line been again?

Food poisoning?

Was she saying that the blood of Japanese high school girls wasn’t suited to her constitution? Just like how travel guidebooks always have it written down somewhere whether or not you can drink water at your destination—whether it’s soft water or hard water, unboiled water or drinking water…

Of course, there was also the simple fact that if you suddenly eat something right after starving yourself, you can get sick from it. There have been cases where people have suddenly eaten meat right after dieting, causing an upset stomach—or, in the worst-case scenario, stomach rupture—

Or perhaps.

The high school girls’ poison. Mud. Murky.

Even Gaen-san, hardened by years of experience, had been brought down a notch by the murky depths of the girls’ basketball team of Naoetsu High, but could that murkiness have come through in their blood, yet another mass of personal information? That’s exactly what the Japanese would call, “affected by toxicity”—that murkiness.

Was it in their blood, too?

All of this was just conjecture, and it was probably a complication caused by a multitude of reasons—the explanation that should not be forgotten is that, no matter what country, what shape, what type of non-toxic food, blood or flesh, Suicidemaster’s body simply could not accept any other human besides “Princess Beauty”.

Rejection. Anorexia.

That in itself was fine.

That in itself, along with ethics, could be put aside for now—in that case, it would end up that Suicidemaster desiccated immediately after biting into a high school girl.

Falling into cryptobiosis.

It would end up that she turned into a mummy.

Though there was some embellishment in her talking about herself, it didn’t seem like she was lying… But wasn’t there something weird about that?

There were four, perhaps even five victims.

But if she turned into a mummy the very first time, then the serial nature gets cut off—the serial nature?

Serial nature?

Shinobu had said that Suicidemaster had denied being the culprit of the ‘serial vampirism incidents’, if I remembered correctly—but that would mean?

“…Oops. Even this onee-san that knows everything has lost her edge.”

Gaen-san’s voice came like a downer from where she sat.

“In this state, I won’t be able to look good to my juniors. I swear I’ll never call myself ‘Gaen THE Know-It-All Izuko’ again.”

Er, it’s not like you’ve ever called yourself by that bizarre name before.

What’s with that ‘THE’?

“If I was going to use as a basis the idea of turning into a mummy after failing to become a vampire, I should have kept in mind the possibility of turning into a mummy after performing the act of vampirism—I’d known about it, but examples of such are pretty valuable.”

Basis and valuable.11

To that usage of homophones, our visitor from abroad raised her golden eyebrows curiously, but I felt similarly—what did she mean?

It didn’t really help if you figured it out first.

Even if the cause of her mummification was food poisoning, didn’t that just add to the number of mysteries?… What was going on?

At least, I understood the circumstances that led to her mummification.

There are two reasons why you want to eat something. Because you like it, and because you hate it—and there are two reasons why you don’t want to eat something—because you like it, and because you hate it.

Both were wise sayings from Hachikuji Mayoi, but for that reason, that’s why Suicidemaster went for whatever she could lay her hands on, without being particular or fussy about what she chose.

She went for whatever she could lay her hands on, in a manner quite unbefitting of a gourmet—not to mention, not counting her consumption as a “meal”, like the wisdom of a dieter.

Well, you could say the moral to this story was that such cunning wisdom comes at a price, just like in dieting—however, the mystery of who buried Suicidemaster in the mountain after she fell victim to food poisoning and became mummified via cryptobiosis was never fully resolved.

Though I’m sure Suicidemaster herself felt like she wanted to climb into a hole, who was it that literally put that vampire that failed to suck blood underground?

Who was it that buried her alive?

“The high school girls that became mummified after failing to become vampires—the vampire that became mummified after failing in her vampirism—if I were to add one more pattern to this.”

It would be a high school girl that succeeded in becoming a vampire.

That was what the administrator of the specialists said as she stood up.

“I finally understood the reason the series of crimes didn’t seem to fit together—it wasn’t just one vampire master. Along the way, the vampire was replaced by another.”

“R—replaced?”

In mysteries—and this wasn’t just limited to Ellery Queen—there were tricks that were considered fair… But I thought having multiple crimes was considered unfair?

And it wasn’t like vampires were coming to this town in droves, not to mention there were the results of the DNA test that I’d just heard about—ah.

Late as it was, I finally arrived at understanding.

Upon realizing what the conclusion was, I realized it could only be that—a replacement, a substitution.

Until just the day before yesterday, I hadn’t really thought about what would have happened if I had failed to become a vampire, and for some reason at some point, I had assumed that all vampirism had failed in this specific, unusual case—but of course, there was a case where that wasn’t for certain.

The case where they succeeded.

The case where, even if the vampire master became a mummy as a result—the thrall was still alive and well.

In other words, if you consider that the high school girl, who was arbitrarily bitten by Suicidemaster the moment that they met, continued on to bite the other high school girls afterwards, then that resolves the strangeness of the crimes not fitting together.

It’s no wonder that the DNA test resulted in a “pretty close match”—if it’s a parent-child relationship or a descendant relationship, then of course the vampire genes would match.

Whether it was heaven or paradise, as a person who tasted Princess Acerola’s saliva in that place, I had to say that it was extremely unnatural how lacking in etiquette it seemed for a gourmet vampire who had experienced the same taste to go on to target only the youth of Japan. But if it was a high school girl targeting other high school girls, it made perfect sense—no.

It wasn’t just a high school girl targeting other high school girls.

If it was a member of the girls’ basketball team targeting other members of the girls’ basketball team—it made even more sense.

I could think of any number of motives—their murkiness.

Spartan training. Peer pressure. Frustration. Envy. Rivalry. Punishment. Disharmony. Collective responsibility. Discord. Suspicion. Paranoia. Injuries. Stress. Unease. Academic decline—

“Eh? But, wait just a moment, Araragi-san. Hasn’t the suspicion on the girlsbas been cleared up already? Have you already forgotten my distinguished contribution as an intermediary for your phone call?”

“Hachiku-jin, it would be troublesome if you went that far to take responsibility for acting as an intermediary for my phone call.”

True. That was true.

Using the list as a reference, Gaen-san had already confirmed the safety and innocence of every member of the girls’ basketball team—on top of safeguarding each of the hundred members, they were also supervising them.

However.

There must really be something wrong with me, to not have realized until now that there was one member of the girls’ basketball team that was not being supervised—Kiseki Souwa.

I’d more or less assumed that the “missing person”, as Kanbaru had described it, had also fallen victim to the vampire, but even if that had been the truth.

That didn’t necessarily mean that she’d been mummified.

Perhaps, she had succeeded in becoming a vampire—and perhaps, in the darkness of the night, she may be seeking revenge on her former human friends.