Monogatari Series - Volume 25 - Chapter 4.06

006 

We passed through the torii of Kitashirahebi Shrine and reached the foot of the mountain, but of course it wouldn’t be a good idea to ride with both of us when one of us was still blindfolded, so I figured it wasn’t a mistake to leave my bicycle there and head for the nearest station on foot. But as we grew closer to the town, the misgivings that I’d been secretly harboring became reality. 

Of course, that didn’t mean that there hadn’t been any trouble up until that point—even if I was acting in the role of his walking stick, it was still pretty difficult to walk on uneven footing without your sense of vision, so Mayumi-kun, as well as I, who he clung to, were covered with leaves and twigs. 

Though we didn’t get hurt from falling or the like, our clothes did get torn here and there. 

I was just in normal clothes, so it was fine for me, but Mayumikun was in a school uniform, so the damage could be pretty harsh. 

“It’s fine. If it gets to it, then I have a different uniform I can wear… 

Mumble mumble.” 

He’d said something like that, so it seemed it wouldn’t be too much of a problem. 

Although, it was interesting that, unlike with his glasses, he’d described it as a different uniform and not a spare. 

Did he have two different types of uniforms? 

“Well, it didn’t take as long as I’d expected, so while we’re at it, drop by my house and take a bath, Mayumi-kun. If you want, I’ll even go in with you!” 

“Uh, uh-huh. Well, I would go if I could.” It was clearly a firm rejection. 

Really, this kid was so modest. 

I thought it was rather heartwarming, but at that timing, I’d let my guard down a little—as suddenly, Mayumi-kun screamed. 

“Hyaah!” 

And with that loud scream, he fell onto his behind—and it wasn’t because he’d tripped on something. 

If he’d tripped, then, like before on the shrine grounds, he would’ve fallen forward instead. 

But unlike before, he’d fallen backwards.  

“The—the fish. The piranha.” 

Sitting on the asphalt, Mayumi-kun pointed. 

With a trembling finger, he pointed towards the sky above the town. 

There, I could not see anything. 

I. 

Couldn’t see anything. 

But it seemed—there was something there for Mayumi-kun. 

After coming down the mountain and approaching the town, it must look even bigger to him—that carnivorous fish. 

“……” 

Yes. 

I thought—something like this might happen. 

However, I should’ve taken it into much stronger consideration. 

If Mayumi-kun’s eyesight could pierce through dark clouds to observe the stars, then I should have guessed at the possibility that he would be able to see through even his own eyelids, or the necktie he was using as a blindfold. 

That’s why his glasses were an essential item. 

Of course, if he could always see through those things, then it would be impossible to even go to sleep at night, so I could guess that he had some way of controlling it arbitrarily, but even so, after approaching the town, and thus the piranha, then if he grew aware of it… 

He would be able to see it. 

Even if it were invisible, he’d be able to see through to it. 

And perhaps, it was because it was arbitrary—the feeling of “the more you didn’t want to see something, the more you would end up seeing it” was not something that was limited to people with special eyesight. 

I could only feel a sense of ashamed helplessness. 

Though we’d somehow managed to get off the mountain, there was no point in the end if we couldn’t make it into town. 

“What a mistake I’ve made… For someone like me, who’s called the ‘Zero Tolerance Butter Knife’, this is a huge disgrace.”  

“Um, do you really have a nickname like that, that sounds like it came out of the newest line-up of light novels?” Shit. 

In the first place, why was it a piranha, anyway? 

Oddities had their own reasons for existing—that was what the specialist, Oshino Meme, had said in the past, but in this case, what was the reason that Mayumi-kun held in this case? 

“Well, at any rate, you should probably take off that blindfold now, Mayumi-kun. It’s backfiring now, and it’ll actually be even more dangerous. Can you stand?” 

“Y—yes. Can you give me a hand?” 

“Of course. You fell pretty badly, but is your butt OK? Let me brush the sand off of you.” 

“There’s no need to trouble your hands for something like that!” 

After standing up, Mayumi-kun removed the necktie from his head, and tied it back around his neck—as someone who’d never worn a necktie before, the process seemed pretty tough. It made me feel a bit immoral, like I was strangling the neck of a pretty boy. 

“In general, neckties seem a little straining. Wouldn’t it feel better to keep your chest more loose?” 

“Not at all!” 

“But anyway, what should we do about this… If it comes down to it, there’s still the option of just forcing our way through.” 

“B—but, Araragi-san. What if it attacks us when we enter its territory?” 

“Hmm…” 

It was hard to explain it in a way that would convince him, but personally, I wasn’t too worried about something like that happening. If an oddity that was that hazardous lived in the skies above this town, then Oshino would have put some measures in place to deal with it when he came to this town—that collector definitely would not have ignored such a perfect ghost story. 

Even if not for that, no matter how gigantic this piranha was, perhaps the level of vampire I had become wouldn’t be a match for it—but I highly doubted that it would be able to win against that Oddity Killer known as the iron-blooded, hot-blooded, cold-blooded vampire. 

However, it wasn’t something I could declare. 

I couldn’t get rid of the possibility that it was an oddity that would be harmful towards Mayumi-kun alone—just by taking a single step into town, he might end up getting dragged into that world. 

And if that happened, I wouldn’t be able to protect him. 

In the end, since I was nothing but a former vampire, before the question of whether or not I could win against the piranha, I couldn’t even see it at all. 

“Just checking, Mayumi-kun. When you arrived at this town, you weren’t able to see the piranha yet, right? It was when you were about to go down the mountain that you suddenly saw it—is that right?” 

“Yes. To be even more precise, it was before I went down the mountain, on top of the shrine, when I got a sweeping view of the town. It suddenly went bam—like a dolphin jumping out of the water.” Although, rather than a dolphin, it was more like a whale. 

It was like he’d experienced some crazy whale watching. 

However, Mayumi-kun was pretty wild to climb on top of that collapsed shrine just to go stargazing. I didn’t know if he just did whatever he wanted because nobody was looking, but maybe he’d received divine punishment from that? 

Although, it should be a snake, not a piranha, that was enshrined there, not to mention the fact that that god wasn’t even there anymore. 

“Would it be impossible to just head in a direction that goes away from the town?” 

“It’s not impossible, but you’d end up having to go through some mountains, so rather than just making it for the last train, I don’t think you’ll even make it before daybreak tomorrow… Instead of taking that big of a detour, let’s just try to take the long way around to the station, trying to avoid the piranha as much as possible. If we aim for Minaminao Station instead of Nakanao Station…” 

If we did that, it might even be better to go back and get my bicycle, even if it took twice the amount of time—as I thought that, my eyes landed on a town map that had been installed to the side of the sidewalk. 

Even though I was a local, I was by no means familiar with the lay of the land in these parts—in the first place, I had no reason to come in this direction, except for when I was going to the Kitashirahebi Shrine. 

I wouldn’t say that I was completely unfamiliar with it, but I was afraid that the piranha might attack us if we didn’t choose our route based on the most accurate information, so no amount of caution was too much. 

It felt kind of like the game that grade schoolers played, where they pretended that the asphalt was the ocean, and you could only walk on top of the white lines… Although, since a carnivorous fish was flying in the sky, it was like the exact opposite of that game. 

Fortunately, the town map was pretty detailed. 

However, there was no indication of where we currently were. 

Was this a convenient map or an inconvenient one? It was pretty tough to understand… Um, since my house is here… 

“Hyaah!” 

There, once again, Mayumi-kun screamed. 

As if the idea of me brushing the sand off of him pained him that much, he barely managed to not fall on his behind this time, but, just like before, his face was in complete shock. 

I’d gotten on guard, thinking that the piranha was finally coming to attack us, but that wasn’t it—though Mayumi-kun had pointed at the sky earlier, right now, he was pointing at not even the ground, but the same map that I was looking at. 

No. 

More precisely—it was in front of it. 

“In, in front of that map—there’s a piranha. A smaller piranha.” 

“……?” 

Hearing that, I turned back to face the map. 

Of course, I couldn’t see it. 

The map was simply a map—however, Mayumi-kun was saying that he could see another piranha here, on top of the one in the sky. By a smaller piranha, that probably was referring to a piranha of a normal size—although it would still be enough of a threat. 

Reflexively, I jumped away from the front of the map. 

However, nothing changed after I jumped away—although Mayumi-kun probably wasn’t just pretending to be scared as a practical joke to surprise me. 

He could definitely see it—and only he could. 

… At this rate, I felt like I was cornered. 

It was one thing to be able to see a piranha in the sky far overhead, but if there was a piranha floating that close to us, floating perhaps even at eye level, then there was no way we could even walk through the town. 

It was like trying to swim through a fish tank. 

We would certainly drown. 

“Goodness gracious… I never thought that the future when I’d need to perform artificial respiration onto Mayumi-kun would approach so rapidly.” 

“Um, I’d like to avoid a future like that at all costs…” 

Even performing such witty banter at this stage wasn’t helpful at all. Mayumi-kun must’ve started to feel cornered as well, as he was biting down on his soft lip with his beautiful teeth. 

In his case, he was showing an expression that seemed less cornered and more like he was caught in a pincer attack, between the devil and the deep blue sea—but whether he was cornered or whether he was in a pincer attack, it didn’t change the fact that we were completely at a loss for what to do. 

Not to mention, the clincher—from overhead. 

As if rubbing salt into a wound, or maybe even a piranha into a wound, drops of water began to fall from straight overhead right onto our faces. 

Drops of water. 

The bad weather had finally reached this stage—at last, it had begun to rain. 

Furthermore, it wasn’t at the level of just gently drizzling—it was raining with huge drops of water. 

Just going off of experience, it was pretty clear that the rain would turn into a heavy downpour pretty soon. 

It was pretty clear, even in the darkness of the night. 

I’d been thinking that it would be pretty awful if it began to rain while we were still on the mountain, but at this rate, considering that we could still have taken shelter from the rain under the halfcollapsed shrine, you could say that coming down the mountain had backfired on us. 

To stand here out in the open, without even being able to enter the town, while getting more and more soaked—it was the definition of disastrous. 

We were like drowned rats. 

That made us sound like animals that would be easy for a piranha to eat—at this rate, it wasn’t the time to grumble over trivial matters. 

Thinking that there was no choice but to take drastic measures, I looked at my shadow. 

The weather made it an environment extremely difficult for shadows to appear, but even so, there was still a faint light coming from the direction of the town, which managed to produce a faint shadow from me. 

An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. 

An oddity for an oddity—no. 

An Oddity Killer for an oddity. 

An Oddity Killer that had been kept alive — “Ah.” 

Amidst the rain that had gotten to full force in the blink of an eye, Mayumi-kun spoke tersely. 

“It disappeared—the piranha.” 

“Eh…?” 

“From the sky—and from the map.” It disappeared. 

All of a sudden, he said that. 

It was so sudden, so unexpected, that I almost didn’t understand what he’d said, but it seemed Mayumi-kun himself was in a whirlwind of confusion, having been left utterly dumbfounded. 

Well, of course. 

For piranhas of various sizes floating in the air to disappear when it started raining—if they disappeared as soon as they were in water and not air, then wasn’t that backwards? 

Was it because rainwater wasn’t seawater? 

No, no, piranhas were freshwater fish. 

In the first place, the type of water shouldn’t matter if it was an oddity… Considering Mayumi-kun’s eyesight which could go through even clouds and neckties, it didn’t seem like curtains of rain would be enough to block his view of the piranhas, either. 

No, but wait. 

Water? 

In the first place, eyesight is something that gets adjusted when the information is transmitted to your brain… In the end, eyesight could just be a function of the brain… 

And, along those lines, light would also bend. 

It would get warped. 

And while we weren’t talking about Mayumi-kun’s warped personality, images weren’t necessarily transmitted in a straight line. If they passed through water, then they would get strangely distorted—even the clouds that Mayumi-kun had described as “bundles of water” were similar, although he’d still managed to accomplish his stargazing through them. 

They’d passed through and penetrated through. 

They passed through too well—they were too transparent.  And. 

The floating piranha. 

The sweeping view of the town—and the town map. 

“… Mayumi-kun!” 

In order to confirm the idea that had hit me like a bolt of lightning, I turned to face Mayumi-kun amidst this heavy rain—however, from his appearance, I was hit with an impact like a burst of wind that was enough to blow away my idea entirely. 

No. 

It wasn’t—his appearance. 

Having gotten drenched in the blink of an eye from the falling rain, Mayumi-kun’s uniform had begun to stick to the body, and the collared shirt under the body had turned see-through even without any power to see through things, displaying the curves of Mayumikun’s body. 

The bulge in the chest area and the narrowness of the waist were thoroughly exposed—and the makeup that had been described as 

“done up” had been washed away by the rain… 

“Ma, Mayumi-kun… Don’t tell me, you’re actually a girl!?” 

“Um, no, you had to have already figured it out at some point.” 

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10  The word used here is 後ろ向き (ushiromuki) which means “in a backwards direction”, but more figuratively can also mean “pessimistic”, which was used for Mayumi earlier. 
11  Araragi’s self-awarded title is 寛容飽和の柔軟刃物 (kan’you houwa no juunan hamono, “the flexible knife saturated with tolerance”), with a given pronunciation of ゼロトレランスのバターナイフ(zero toreransu no bataa naifu, “the butter knife of zero tolerance”).
12  Araragi qualifies 怪異殺し (kaii goroshi, “oddity killer”) with the similarsounding 飼い殺し (kaigoroshi, “keeping a domestic animal beyond its useful life”).
13  Araragi makes a pun on 通り過ぎる (toorisugiru, “to pass by”) and 透り過ぎる (toori sugiru, “too transparent”).