Monogatari Series - Volume 25 - Chapter 12.03

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“At first, it was a rat’s sculpture. 

“That little creature that goes squeak. Squeak squeak. Do you know of it? You know of it, right? 

“And as for why it was a rat, well, it was that year’s zodiac animal. “It took place at a temple, you see. 

“You probably know about this already, but in Kyoto, where we live, there are lots of shrines and temples. Like, if you throw a stone, it will for sure end up hitting a shrine. 

“Though you shouldn’t throw stones at temples... Ahaha! 

“They say you can touch the Buddha’s face up to three times, so maybe he’ll forgive me? 

“Mm? You’re knowledgeable about shrines, Araragi-kun? KitaShirahebi Shrine? Hmm. I didn’t know shrines with no gods existed. 

Tell me more about it later, okay?! It’s a promise! 

“I know, Tomo-chan, I know. 

“I’m not going on tangents, I swear. This is a serious story, after all. 

“Araragi-kun’s knowledge about shrines translates to one about temples in my case. 

“Plus, snakes aren’t exactly unrelated to my story. 

“Ah, but like, even though I’m calling it ‘my story,’ I heard about this from Ikkun originally—Ikkun knows a lot of cool stories. 

“If you may allow me to play the big sister, Araragi-kun, I too had a period when I was tormented with worries, just like you are now. Back when I had just become a freshman. I feared I wasn’t doing enough. That I wasn’t good enough. 

“Then, although he didn’t tell me I was, Ikkun instead told me about this temple’s history—about the rat’s sculpture. 

“Once upon a time, long, long ago. 

“A certain famous monk had completed a magnificent sculpture of that year’s zodiac, the Rat, and quickly received praises from the whole nation—that rat was apparently so vivid, people thought it could start moving any moment. 

“So vivid it could start moving any moment, huh. 

“Hearing it now it sounds like a ghost story—mhm? 

“What is it, Araragi-kun? You reacted to the word ghost story? Ahaha, you must be a scaredy-cat! So funny! 

“But don’t worry! I bet some people thought the same as us even at the time—and so, these people trapped the rat in a cage so it wouldn’t escape! 

“You could say that emphasizes how splendid that sculpture was, but you could also argue that trapping it in a cage ruins the art. 

“You know the...Louvre Museum? I think it’s called that? 

“Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is hung there. I saw it the other day on TV, it was inside a thick glass case. Apparently it got stolen a few times, so it’s kinda the natural result, but I doubt Da Vinci-san wanted people to look at his painting from beyond a glass pane—I thought at the time. 

“Or didn’t, maybe. 

“I don’t know what the famous monk who’d carved the sculpture thought about it, but when he saw his work displayed inside a cage, he apparently said this: 

“‘It is futile.’ 

“‘You may imprison it, but you will never be able to restrain the soul I imbued it with.’ 

“‘This sculpture has already left my hands.’ 

“‘This rat is already free of my priest-on.’  

“...Yeah, sorry. I came up with ‘priest-on’ myself. Ikkun didn’t say it, nor did the monk. 

“By the way, having heard this much, you probably predicted my story’s punch line to be that the next day they found the cage empty and that the rat had escaped somewhere, it had disappeared—or something along these lines. 

“Well, that’s a damn good prediction! 

“That’s indeed what happened ultimately, but the course it took to ‘disappear’ was quite unexpected. 

“Rather than unexpected, way too surprising. 

“A change—yes. 

“Bizarrely enough, it’s like you were saying earlier, Araragi-kun; even when they don’t do anything, people age. Just like how high schoolers will one day become college students. 

“After a year, the zodiac changes. 

“The next day—well no, the next year. 

“The rat’s sculpture inside the cage—had turned into an ox’s.” 

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2  The sentence here is この鼠はもう、節操がない (lit. “this rat no longer has any integrity”), with the word 節操 (sessou, “integrity”) being pronounced the same way as 拙僧 (sessou), which is the humble way in which the monk is referring to himself, meaning the sentence can be interpreted both as “this rat is free to change” and “this rat no longer has me”.