Monogatari Series - Volume 24 - Chapter 2.05

005

As night fell, I visited the Kitashirahebi Shrine. The setting sun awoke the disgraced shadow of a vampire, the blonde, gold-eyed young girl, Oshino Shinobu, who’s now sitting on my shoulder, as per usual.

Joining us was someone who typically stayed with my youngest sister, the plush-pretending corpse doll, presumably having some free time on her hands, the tsukumogami, Ononoki Yotsugi – wait, what? Why?

‘I see, now I understand. No wonder even as Araragi-san saw me in my cute year five schoolgirl state, he didn’t launch into me, hug me tightly, and make weird noises – having just heard of a year five girl getting kidnapped, it’d be impudent to grab and hug this year five girl; it’d shift the whole topic.’

Nodding incessantly towards me – the visitor – was a year five primary schoolgirl. Or rather, a god.

The god that Kitashirahebi Shrine worships.

Hachikuji Mayoi.

If you look at her, she looks like any ten-year-old girl, but in actuality, she was killed in a traffic accident over a decade ago – a spirit-like existence.

She’s also called a ‘lost cow’.

She was almost swallowed by something called ‘the darkness’.

There once was a snake god – I feel this explanation is getting messy real fast, but then again, what happened was pretty messy in the first place.

And I honestly can’t find the energy to keep explaining any more.

‘I agree. Besides, if we get into specifics, it might spoil people.’

‘As I’ve said, why do you think everybody’s starting from this book?’

Surely they’re a small minority?

‘Then again, I don’t think there’d be nobody starting from this book, so I do wish you’d give me a proper introduction. “Corpse doll” this, “corpse doll” that – Mister Vampy’s being all serious I see,5 but please, call me a “tween girl” instead, like you’ve always done.’

Ononoki-chan requested expressionlessly and flatly – for she is a corpse. Her flat voice is making me feel pressured.

‘Seconded. Same applieth to me. I quake at the prospect of any soul mistaking me for a blonde, gold-eyed young lady, even amongst the most minor of minorities.’

‘You are a blonde, gold-eyed young girl.’

Everybody can see that.

A young girl on one shoulder, a tween girl following me, headed towards a shrine; who am I, some guardian in the summer festivities?

Not that I mind. Quite the contrary, in fact.

‘Please don’t, just because you like it. You’re making yourself really look like a kidnapper’, Ononoki-chan said. Even before I explained everything to Hachikuji (and Shinobu), she already seemed to know everything about that family – seems she’s been listening in earlier today through the room next door as I chatted with Higasa-chan.

And I thought she was outside this whole time…she’s always there whenever I don’t want her to be. Some good hearing she has.

Then again, Ononoki-chan wouldn’t be here were it not for my frequent mishaps in high school; I’m under her surveillance via Gaen-san, so I guess it’s inevitable for her to know what I’ve been up to – I could get into trouble again, after all.

Even as someone at uni.

‘Hu-hu-hu. At long last, it appears the Loli Trio, aka Lolio, have regrouped once again’, Hachikuji said.

The trio name thing aside, she seems happy.

Ononoki-chan remained expressionless; Shinobu was cringing at the sound of that name, but as far as this reunion goes, she seems okay with it…the young girl has come round, surprisingly. Even though her body hasn’t become rounder, it is still more rounded, cumulatively speaking.

‘However, Hachikuji. Can you refrain from saying “Loli Trio”? It doesn’t even get used in the audio commentaries, that. Even leaving Benikujaku-chan aside, the censors have been clamping down these days.’

‘Oh my. I didn’t know you were such a chicken, Loliligi-san.’

‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody call me something that direct before, however, Hachikuji, it’s not Loli…Lolili…it isn’t some drug like Loxonin; my name is Araragi.’

‘You really have become a chicken! Whatever happened to the old programme? Loliligi-san’s completely unlike Loxonin. What happened to you, Araragi-san? Where’s the Araragi-san who’d lick a little girl’s eyes, who’d silence a young girl with a kiss, who’d happily get stepped on by a tween girl; where’s he gone?’

In prison, from the way you put it.

Don’t lift things out of context.

‘I’m under the impression that those were the tamer episodes, Mister Vampy…’

‘No, Ononoki-chan. Back when I got stomped on, it was you who took the initiative, right? With your foot. With your lovely steamed foot straight out from your boot.’

‘You lost me at “steamed foot”.’

Fair enough.

It’s true that countless crimes have been documented and published; I don’t know for how much longer those book stores are going to stock those older volumes, which is to say the people who started from this book might shockingly not be in the minority.

Let us then move forward like this is a debut novel.

Also, the highly questionable, barely publishable naming sense behind ‘Loli Trio’ aside, I believe we have assembled the strongest possible line-up in searching for a kidnapped year five schoolgirl.

Hachikuji may have said ‘at long last’, but when was the last time all of us were together?

Yes, there was the ‘mummy incident’, but I feel that was less a team and more a series of coincidental bumpings-in…so would I have to go back to right before I graduated high school, when I was about to face Ougi-chan?

Then again, as Shinobu’s face tells, the three of them couldn’t be said to share a good relationship…even so, I wouldn’t dare say they couldn’t be trusted upon.

Yes, it may look like a mystery uni student went up a secluded shrine to play with some young kids at night, which isn’t exactly a good look, but I’ll just have to hold that thought for now…

Neither am I dwelling upon how that paragraph reflects poorly on law enforcement around this neighbourhood.

‘A difficult call, this is. But, thee. As thy servant, I wish not to be critical of thine habit of helping others, yet would the local constabulary not be more suited to a task of this nature, perchance?’ Shinobu said.

She may say she wouldn’t complain, but it’s plain to see that without any doughnuts coming her way, she feels she isn’t being justly rewarded.

‘Would notifying the authorities this instant not what thou ought to do? Thou should take over and continue the work those negligent parents failed in.’

She may have been a legendary vampire from a faraway land of a faraway time, but she did say something completely sensible – she’s completely assimilated into modern Japanese life.

Back when Shinobu was feeding on my blood, she was the ‘master’, so there is a certain amusement in seeing her with the same self-important manner, even though she now has to refer to herself as a ‘servant’ – as for me, I’ve always seen her as an equal partner.

‘I’ll do that if I really have to, but I don’t think now is the time. This is all solely from Higasa-chan, and I haven’t checked if it’s true myself – so I’ll start with that. I’ll let Ononoki-chan do it.’

‘Ye dun’ min me?’

I was met with a Kansai dialect retort. An expressionless Kansai dialect retort.

Then again, considering that the corpse doll’s ‘master’ is the violent onmyōji Kagenui Yozuru, it’s only natural for her to have picked up a few Kansai phrases.

Ononoki-chan is, after all, an oddity who’s easily affected by her surroundings – anyway, it is true that Ononoki-chan’s an expert on investigating, so verification should be in her wheelhouse.

She’s highly mobile, and also highly adaptable.

Leaving Shinobu (who’s tied to my shadow, together with me on the same boat, and inextricably tied together with my movements) aside, I wasn’t going to give Ononoki-chan any extra work on top of having to watch me, but now that she’s here, I might as well give her something to do.

I’m using whoever I can get my hands on, even if it’s a tween girl.

‘Hmph. Sure, then, I suppose. To kidnap a ten-year-old girl and send her parents her tooth, such a person is closer to a monster than a human being.’

And with that, Ononoki-chan found an excuse to labour in her off-hours – well, she is basically right though.

Back in the day, with such a heinous crime, it’d be reasonable to point to oddities as a cause; even if a kidnapper does show up, they’d be treated as an oddity too – in short, what matters now is figuring out what exactly we’re dealing with.

‘But in return, I’d like to ask for your loving affection once this is done.’

‘Shut up, don’t say it like we’ve been there before. Showering you with affection is something I’ve never done, not even in high school.’

‘So what do you want me to do?’

As the watcher and the watched finished their conversation, or should I say, as we finished our usual banter, the god – Hachikuji – raised her hand.

‘Shinobu-san’s tied to your shadow, and Ononoki-san’s there to watch you, so it’s only expected for them to move together with Araragi-san; but for you to visit my shrine in the dead of the night, that has to be out of your own will. So tell me, Araragi-san, what do you ask of god?’

She’s a good conversationalist.

Perhaps it shows she’s becoming a more godly figure – even though from the outside, nothing’s changed from when I first located her in town.

She still looks like a ten-year-old girl.

‘Araragi-san, I may as well say this early on. You’ve been rounding my age to ten years old, but need I remind you that I’m actually eleven? Just as Shinobu-san is actually five hundred and ninety-eight years old.’

‘Allow me to correct thee. I am now five hundred and ninety-nine years of age. Probably.’

‘Pretty sure you’re officially set as ten now. Besides, doesn’t “Nijūichikuji-onee-san” roll off the tongue nicer than “Nijūnikuji-onee-san”?’6

‘What does that onee-san have to do with this? Isn’t that character not part of this world?’

‘Anyway, I’m not asking for divine intervention. None of this unreasonable “use your divine powers to catch the kidnapper” business – all I want is some of your perspective. Not as a god, but from back when you’re a lost cow.’

‘When I was a lost cow? Hmm.’

Hachikuji nodded.

She nods whenever she doesn’t get something.

I’ll make a retraction here and say she’s still not used to being a god – not that that’s a bad thing this time around.

Because what I’m after this time is Hachikuji’s experiences before she became a god – yes, we’re going to have to take action at some point, but if we get the premise wrong, then that wouldn’t help at all.

‘Higasa-chan may have crossed this off, but I still think this kidnapping might simply be the kid leaving home out of her own will.’

‘Huh?’

From her reaction, it seems Hachikuji still doesn’t quite get it – seems I’ll have to go the extra mile just to ask god for help.

She’s not observant on that front.

‘So that is why, as thou say, “now is not the time”, my master? If she merely took leave from her abode, to involve the police would see her desire to return home all but vanish.’

Conversely, having left behind country after country, the well-travelled vampire got what I meant instantly.

‘Mm hmm.’

I continued.

‘From what I can tell in this game of telephone, the parents don’t seem to be doing their job quite properly, and the home itself isn’t exactly ideal for a year five primary schoolgirl…even so, the thought of running away from home has surely crossed everybody’s mind at some point.’

‘So that could be why the parents haven’t noticed even if Benikujaku-chan left home alone – perhaps she left precisely because her parents are the kind not to notice. That could be a valid deduction. However, Loliligi-san –’

‘Stop trying to make “Loliligi-san” a thing.’

‘I blame you for not doing our regular programme. It’s all clogged up in my system now. And all because you haven’t finished your part yet, Loliligi-san.’

‘Sheesh, if you insist. I am not Loli…Loliki…I am not the trickster god, Loki; my name is Araragi.’

‘That’s a cool one; Loki, the trickster god. I guess you can call it a god-tier comeback. A trickster-god-tier comeback.’

Thus, with Hachikuji astounded, we completed the sequence (she really is a stickler for the rules, isn’t she?).

‘But what about the front tooth? The front tooth that came from Benikujaku-chan. You can’t say that was a trick of some sort’, Hachikuji continued.

‘Mm, that’d be Higasa-chan’s counter-argument, which was enough to convince me then. Yet unlike giving them a heart, you can definitely stage giving them a tooth.’

‘Stage? What? So you’re saying she pulled out her own tooth and tossed it in the postbox? Araragi-san, is that what you think a year five primary schoolgirl is capable of? Not everybody likes hurting themselves the same way Araragi-san does’, Hachikuji replied.

Whilst that did happen, it’s not like I wanted it to happen…

Yes, I admit, I have my self-flagellating tendencies, but now that I’m at uni, I do want to avoid these situations as much as I can – I don’t want a repeat of what happened in term three.

‘Oh, I know exactly what goes on when you’re a year five primary schoolkid. It’s about the time they get replaced, don’t they?’

‘Replaced? What gets replaced?’

‘Their teeth.’