Monogatari Series - Volume 25 - Chapter 3.05

005 

After that, we tried searching through the rest of the room, but nothing else stood out as a hint to our eyes—by the way, Chinou-chan claimed “This area is suspicious,” and persistently investigated a trivial light switch. 

Her sabotage went too far. 

“So, it looks like we have to get a 4-digit number out of those 15 characters, but…” 

Although I stared at the hiragana I wrote on the blackboard for a long time—written in the order of discovery for now—umm, no meaning came to my mind. 

I can’t make any sense of it. 

I didn’t get it with just one character, but the sense of mystery only increased now that there are 15 of them. 

“But well, thinking normally, it could be an anagram… A word game where we move the order of the characters to create a sentence…” 

“Yeah. But even if you want to switch them around, it’s no easy feat. Let’s think after a little break.” 

You were basically on a break the whole time. Even for the desks, you only searched through 6 of them.” 

“I investigated thoroughly.” 

“You investigated slowly, rather.” 

“But you know, I discovered 5 hiragana.” 

“That pisses me off even more. What’s up with your insane luck?” 

“It would be a lie if I didn’t answer that it was the luck of the chosen ones.” 

“Then use your luck of being a chosen one to rearrange those 15 characters.” 

“Please don’t ask for the impossible. There are 1,307,674,368,000 different patterns for rearranging 15 characters, you know?” 

“If you can calculate that on the fly, I’m sure you’ll be able to figure this out on the fly too.” 

Don’t show off your talent so nonchalantly. 

However, one trillion… 

It far surpasses the ten thousands of the password. Is it just me or was this escape game’s difficulty increasing? 

“No. Hold on, Chinou-chan.” 

“I won’t.” 

“Stop that and hold on. Don’t disobey meaninglessly. Look, even if there are 15 hiragana, some of them overlap, so we can reduce the number of patterns, no?” 

“Right.  and  are in there multiple times. Good job, Koyomi-san! With that, even you can do it. Come on, please arrange them. In the meantime, I’m going to take a breather.” 

“Don’t take any breaks. For your entire life.” 

“My entire life, is it? How harsh.” 

However, although I said some harsh things, I could understand Chinou-chan’s feeling of wanting to be spared from it. Even if the number drops one or two orders of magnitude below one trillion, that’s like taking a cup of water out of the ocean. 

As I thought, there was no way of resolving this anagram with no criteria. Not only will we end up with an infinite number of meaningless sentences, but depending on spurs of the moment, we would end up with sentences with vague and complex meanings. 

“… That reminds me, Chinou-chan. Earlier, you talked about having teammates, but setting aside the girl coming to reduce us to ashes, is there any possibility of the other magical girls coming to save you?” 

“There is none.” She asserted. 

With the tone of someone who properly understands their unpopularity. 

“By the way, teams are made of five people. We’re called magical girls, but it feels more like a squadron.” 

“Hmm.” 

She has four comrades and yet no one will come to save her… Then they’re not comrades but almost enemies, no? 

“Right, right, Koyomi-san. When I evoked fighting as a squadron, you could have joked that fighting with five against one cryptic opponent feels like a lynching, but I don’t approve of leaving the numerous combatants that they take along for the fights out of the equation.” 

“Well, isn’t that a sharp remark.” 

I wish she used that discernment to solve the code… 

“Not including those small fries severely denounces not the low state of your consciousness towards human rights, but towards cryptics’ rights, I guess.” 

“At this point, you’re calling those combatants ‘small fries’; your consciousness of cryptics’ rights is pretty low too, in my opinion…” 

“That, that. Exactly that. I can’t get enough of people retorting on another retort, like Koyomi-san just did. I can’t get enough of breaking through the lowered guard of people that think they can retort from a safe place.” 

One day, instead of getting bluntly retorted at, you’re gonna get bluntly stabbed.” 

Your position feels like a pretty dangerous one to me. 

At any rate, even if I’m usually ridiculed for being in charge of retorts, I can’t idly bear with Chinou-chan like that forever. Really, I can imagine the hardships of Chinou-chan’s teammates… Mm. 

Teammates? 

I turned my back from the blackboard and looked at the desks once more—rather than the desks, at the seats. 

The seats—right. 

The seats lined up uniformly were no mere desks bereft of individuality. Each of them were meant to be occupied by a person. 

The classmates—are fixed. 

The classmates of when I was a first-year high schooler. 

Not teammates, but classmates. 

“… Chinou-chan. Once more. Let’s investigate the desks once more.” 

“No way.” 

“Sorry, sorry, I phrased it in a way that made Chinou-chan think she had a choice. Let’s search. No complaints allowed.” 

However, this time, we’re going to note the owner of the desks that have a hiragana inscribed on them, too. 

I said so.