006
The epilogue, or maybe, the punch line of this story.
Jumping at math as soon as I heard “science course” was too precipitated. Science courses have other subjects—such as chemistry or biology.
The science of metamorphoses and the science of life.
Put together, metamorphosing life, in other words, monsters— huh.
Well, unlike math I’m not particularly good at these, but once you make the connection the cipher is as good as solved.
You can solve it with middle-school-level knowledge.
“Not to sound like a sore loser, but Koyomi-kun, I had a hunch when you proposed to ‘sound it out’—every subject has mnemonics relying on sounds. And, in chemistry, there is one kind that comes to mind immediately.”
Right. Ones that stand out.
Naughty Margaret Always Sighs, “Please Stop Clowning Around.”
Saying it out of the blue might get you to wonder “who’s Margaret?” but I absolutely didn’t want to provide KuroneKo-san with a new mystery by asking her that.
Essentially it’s about the periodic table of elements.
And, speaking of the periodic table, it shows atomic numbers.
And unlike attendance numbers or the Japanese syllabary, the numbers go to 118 here—therefore, changing the numbers to elements is a breeze.
“39 / 99 / 53 / 95 / 16 / 2 / 53 /
16 / 15 / 68 / 26 / 6 / 73 / 7 /
32 / 3 / 74 / 53 / 16 / 1 / 9 / 8 /
45 / 68 / 19 / 53 / 16 / 16 / 33 /
16 / 8 / 8 / 7 / 33 / 53 / 19 / 10 /
74 / 1 / 68 / 85 / 6 / 57 / 16 /
16 / 5 / 92 / 90 / 68 / 35 / 5 /
90 / 68 / 53 / 16 / 16 / 92 / 15 /
68 / 16 / 68 / 53 / 8 / 92 / 16 /
16 / 8 / 53 / 31 / 23 / 63 / 15”
Becomes,
“Yttrium / Einsteinium / Iodine / Americium / Sulfur / Helium / Iodine /
Sulfur / Phosphorus / Erbium / Iron / Carbon / Tantalum / Nitrogen /
Germanium / Lithium / Tungstene / Iodine / Sulfur / Hydrogen / Fluorine / Oxygen /
Rhodium / Erbium / Potassium / Iodine / Sulfur / Sulfur / Arsenic /
Sulfur / Oxygen / Oxygen / Nitrogen / Arsenic / Iodine / Potassium / Neon /
Tungstene / Hydrogen / Erbium / Astatine / Carbon / Lanthanum / Sulfur /
Sulfur / Boron / Uranium / Thorium / Erbium / Bromine / Oxygen /
Thorium / Erbium / Iodine / Sulfur / Sulfur / Uranium / Phosphorus /
Erbium / Sulfur / Erbium / Iodine / Oxygen / Uranium / Sulfur /
Sulfur / Oxygen / Iodine / Gallium / Vanadium / Europium / Phosphorus”
Very smoothie-ly.
… I put on airs.
Saying “smoothie-ly” instead of “smoothly” was part of that. After all, there’s no way I could remember the entire periodic table—I can at most recite the first ten I learned through mnemonics.
Yet, KuroneKo-san exhibited her perfect knowledge of it—so she was plain smart, that girl.
“Well, I wouldn’t dare brag about being able to recite it spontaneously. I’m personally part of the school that thinks separating the lanthanides and the actinides from the rest on the table is cheating. I support that the table doesn’t make much sense unless we lump them with the others.”
There are schools of thoughts for stuff like that?
However, luckily, one doesn’t need to partake in one of these factions nor to know what the atomic numbers of einsteinium or europium are to progress further.
What I want you to remember here is the question KuroneKo-san sent to the suspect boy, that is, “Are you the culprit?” which would be an English sentence obtained through decoding. That caused me to despair even further because of the possibility the reply might be in
English, but… In this case, for atomic numbers, it is much more straightforward to write them using the Latin alphabet rather than kanji or katakana.
In other words, the elements’ symbols.
Therefore,
“Yttrium / Einsteinium / Iodine / Americium / Sulfur / Helium / Iodine /
Sulfur / Phosphorus / Erbium / Iron / Carbon / Tantalum / Nitrogen /
Germanium / Lithium / Tungstene / Iodine / Sulfur / Hydrogen / Fluorine / Oxygen /
Rhodium / Erbium / Potassium / Iodine / Sulfur / Sulfur / Arsenic /
Sulfur / Oxygen / Oxygen / Nitrogen / Arsenic / Iodine / Potassium / Neon /
Tungstene / Hydrogen / Erbium / Astatine / Carbon / Lanthanum / Sulfur /
Sulfur / Boron / Uranium / Thorium / Erbium / Bromine / Oxygen /
Thorium / Erbium / Iodine / Sulfur / Sulfur / Uranium / Phosphorus /
Erbium / Sulfur / Erbium / Iodine / Oxygen / Uranium / Sulfur /
Sulfur / Oxygen / Iodine / Gallium / Vanadium / Europium / Phosphorus”
Can be rewritten to be,
“Y/Es/I/Am/S/He/I/S/P/Er/Fe/C/Ta/N/Ge/Li/W/I/S/H/F/O/Rh/Er/K/I/S/S/A s/S/O/O/N/As/I/K/Ne/W/H/Er/At/C/La/S/S/B/U/Th/Er/Br/O/Th/Er/I/S/S/U/P/E r/S/Er/I/O/U/S/S/O/I/Ga/V/Eu/P”
It’s still quite a mess but we’re nearly there.
If we add commas and periods appropriately to up the readability of this list, no longer one of numbers but of letters, as well as changing the upper- and lowercase letters, we obtain:
“Yes, I am. She is Perfect angel. I wish for her kiss as soon as I knew her at class. But her brother is super serious. So, I gave up.”
And for the last touch, if we are to translate it to Japanese to better express the will of the creator,
“Yes, I am. She is a perfect angel. I wished for her kiss as soon as I met her in class. But her brother is super serious, so I gave up.”
I guess that should be about it.
Please be lenient with the awkwardness of my translation, part of it is due to my mediocre English skills, but the English version itself was limited due to inevitable restriction when writing with the chemical elements.
No wonder we saw a lot of 16s—with these rules it’s normal for one of the most common letters of the alphabet, S, in other words the atomic number for sulfur, to have a high appearance rate.
Still, that being said, he filled in quite a lengthy confession to KuroneKo-san’s interrogation (probably something like “Are you a suspect?”) when he could’ve simply said “Yes, I am.”
Perhaps he made such an essay that emphasized the awkwardness and embarrassment in order to hide his heartbreak from any third party. Or maybe it was to convey “this is none of your business” inbetween the lines—and in reality, that’s how it turned out.
The sender of the letter had apparently realized that his classmate, the “sister,” had quite the dangerous “brother” and gave up before receiving KuroneKo-san’s interrogation.
In that sense KuroneKo-san might’ve had a point when she said “There was no need to come see you at all”—even so, she didn’t seem to regret all that wasted effort in the slightest.
She rather showed a feeling of accomplishment.
“Aah, I feel so much better! Hurray to being alive!” She said while stretching, lying sideways on the bed.
From what I managed to pick up, she had originally undertaken this deciphering in order to protect her friend, but she had seemingly forgotten that intention—no, her true original intention might’ve been her thirst for knowledge from the very start.
If so, she must truly feel accomplished.
Although she was lying backwards on the bed, she didn’t get her priorities backwards—well, in the end, her being both a bothersome and a meddlesome high school girl didn’t seem to merely be a facade.
Not to forget she had what it takes to be a great detective.
Anyhow, I demanded the bed detective to not tell anyone what she knows about the spring break I lived through while she was in a good mood.
And for the deciphering, well it’s not like I contributed much to it, but I still acted cooperatively so it’s normal to expect something in return.
What Oshino would call a compensation.
“Hahaha, you need not worry! No fool would ever trust what I say!”
“Don’t say something that gives me another kind of worry!”
As I was weirdly convinced once again that she wasn’t suited to be an information dealer, KuroneKo-san asked “so please let me repay you in some other form. Is there anything I could do for you?”
“I wouldn’t have solved this cipher without you, Koyomi-kun, so I want to do anything in my power.”
“Mm? Umm, yeah but I don’t really need anything… Ah, right. Could I get these bloomers? I have a junior collecting those, you see.”
“I guess it’s time to depart! Let’s get away from this school as soon as possible! Outouin Academy’s infirmary, my next pieces of knowledge, and Samatoki-kun are waiting for me to get home!”
Saying that, despite being so reluctant about going home, she returned to her school, to her school’s bed—and in the end I didn’t get any compensation. However, I feel like her “I wouldn’t have solved this cipher without you, Koyomi-kun” wasn’t mere politeness.
As I stated earlier, I didn’t play any particularly important role, but even so, KuroneKo-san probably wouldn’t have solved it on her own— naturally, not because of a lack of knowledge.
It’s the opposite, a surplus of knowledge.
Had KuroneKo-san not known the tale of the high schooler who had his blood sucked by a vampire during spring break, she might not have strayed away from the path of correctness during that process—even if she hadn’t noticed that the drawing of a demon wasn’t a monster (in fact, only the creator knows whether that was an intentional hint) I can see her having the idea of the periodic table just from the numbers. That shouldn’t be impossible for her, with a perfect knowledge of that table—however, she knew.
Knowing of the urban legends, of the hearsays, of the rumors—led her to mistakenly question me, unknowingly inquiring to a fool instead of a sage.
I have to applaud her for still reaching the truth despite all of that. She was probably a sage among sages. Still, I can only say it’s ironic how her, pursuing knowledge with her life on the line, was led astray in her deduction by that same knowledge.
And, that goes for me too.
Although in my case the irony was more meaty—on that day, if I hadn’t known about the vampire, on that night, I might not have become a vampire.
At that moment, should I have known?
Or should I have died?
The solution to that question, however, cannot be attained through any kind of deciphering.
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6 Continuing from the previous note… The original line put together 化学 (kagaku, “chemistry”) and 物理 (butsuri, “physics”) to form 化物 (bakemono, “monster”). “Physics” was changed to “biology” in this translation to help making it work in English.
7 The original is 水兵リーベ僕の船 (suihei riibe boku no fune, lit. “Sailor Ribe, my ship”), which is the go-to Japanese mnemonic for the beginning of the periodic table, followed by Araragi saying “who’s Ribe”. English doesn’t have such a go-to mnemonic, so this one was used.
8 Playing again off the “live or die” / “live or know” pun from earlier.
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