Monogatari Series - Volume 25 - Chapter 7.05

005 

Realistically speaking, the idea of swinging a sword at Hanekawa was nothing but a flight of fancy that I would never do unless I was in a situation like Golden Week, but in any case, considering that Princess Hitei had lain in wait for me with such meticulous preparations, I surely didn’t have any other choice but to accept the battle—especially as I didn’t have the time to take things leisurely. 

Because we weren’t in an indoor pool. 

We were outdoors at a location where the sun shone brightly down on us—since the pool was placed slightly apart from the school building, we probably wouldn’t be spotted by anybody anytime soon, but still, if we were to be discovered by an outsider in this situation, I didn’t think it would end very well—although, as long as I was at the pool on the grounds of Tsuganoki Second Middle School, I suppose that would make me the outsider. 

For an outsider to be playing with a Japanese sword next to a blond beauty in a school swimsuit, that would immediately become a matter for the police—not to mention, that school swimsuit was my sister’s. 

It went past the point of being a degenerate. 

I had to deal with this quickly, if I also wanted to prevent being questioned in a family meeting tonight... And so, I crouched beside the glass case and peered inside. 

Incidentally, I was using the terms “box” or “case” for convenience, but really, it was probably more accurate to call it a “lump” of glass... 

Princess Hitei had said something along the lines of being unable to carry it without the help of buoyancy, but it was heavy enough that even I wouldn’t be able to carry it for long. 

For some reason, it gave off the impression of being a fossil. 

Well, Princess Hitei surely hadn’t brought this from that far in the past to be able to consider it a fossil, but I did remember seeing pictures of ancient bugs that were trapped in transparent amber. 

But, since the glass was clear, the impression was more that of an unsheathed blade that had been frozen in ice. 

Though I wasn’t sure whether or not it was the right approach to take, I tried measuring the size of the cuboid... Although, I didn’t have a tape measure on hand, so it was just a rough estimate using my hand as a ruler. 

Going with about 20 centimeters for the length of my hand... It was about 1.5 meters vertically, 30 centimeters horizontally, with a height of 30 centimeters, I suppose? 

And the unsheathed Japanese sword inside was approximately 1.3 meters in length... I didn’t have any precise knowledge on the subject, but, well, I guess it was pretty long for a Japanese sword? Although, since I couldn’t help but compare it to how absurdly long Youtou “Kokorowatari” was, I couldn’t say for sure... 

“‘Meter’ and ‘centimeter’. Do you perhaps also use ‘inch’ and 

‘yard’ as well?”   said Princess Hitei, interrupting me as I kept circling 

Toutou “Tetsu” while muttering to myself. “Though you said something about how I gave off a mixed-Japanese-Western impression, Koyomi-kun, aren’t you guys really the ones that are more mixed?” 

“... Princess, you said that your era was from the time of national isolation, correct?” 

Recently, there had been theories that were made suggesting that the national isolation hadn’t been as strict as it sounded... It would probably be just as stressful to ignore her remarks, so I had turned just my head to respond to her—when I looked, Princess Hitei had taken a seat at a shaded bench, as if to avoid UV rays, and was playing with a cell phone. 

Of course, it was my cell phone. 

It seemed she had gone and retrieved it from the jacket that I’d taken off—could she possibly be surfing the net right now? 

Was she using it to research modern culture? 

Though I wasn’t as bad as Oshino, as someone who was decidedly not good with devices, the movement of her fingers seemed impressively fast... 

“... You’re very studious, aren’t you,” I said, sarcastically. 

“I deny that. I’m not studying, I’m playing,” said Princess Hitei, not taking her eyes off the screen. “I’m taking this time to play a reenactment of the Sengoku era.” 

“......” 

In other words, she downloaded an app onto my phone all on her own and was enjoying a game about the Sengoku era? How could you be so shameless, and also, how could you even use that device so skillfully? 

Did this person really come from the past? 

“What era are you from?” I asked to Princess Hitei, not out of doubt for her (although I was doubting her). 

“There’s really no point in asking that. As far as I can see from playing this, it doesn’t seem like our worldview and your worldview are properly connected.” 

“They’re... not properly connected? Um, so is it something like parallel worlds?” 

Though my understanding of the matter was shallow, I knew that it was an essential term related to time slips. So it could be said that, even if it wasn’t time travel but precognition, even so, at the very point the future is predicted, it would already have changed that future. 

“Perhaps not ‘parallel’, but ‘double’. Well, it’s not like I can say for certain, either. In the end, I’m just one of many cogs in the machine— but, when I think about the possibility that, somewhere along the way, there could be a connection to this peaceful and foolish era, then it feels like it’s worth it for me to try. I’d love it if nothing was left for posterity, truly.” “......?” 

As someone who was peaceful and foolish, I had no way of understanding what Princess Hitei was trying to say, or even, what Princess Hitei was trying to do—but at the very least, it didn’t seem like she was trying to hinder or confuse me. 

Well, it didn’t matter if she ended up confusing me anyway. 

I turned back around. 

This time, I tried inspecting the surface of the glass by touching it directly—I felt it all over, even turning it over to touch the bottom, as if I was polishing it. 

Obviously, it didn’t seem like it was made with any mechanisms like a switch or something sliding open—it wasn’t like a puzzle box. 

There was no indication that it would open up if I guessed the right password, either—it was glass, after all, so if it had a gimmick like that, I’d be able to see it easily. 

All that was in the glass was a single Japanese sword. 

To pull out the Japanese sword in this state without damaging the glass—mm, uh-oh, I just couldn’t think of anything. 

I had no idea where to even start, just like how this polished glass had no starting point—it didn’t seem like the glass itself was anything special, since ultimately it was supposed to be just a “scabbard”. 

It was the sword that had the special quality of being able to slip through things... In other words, if I could figure out how to activate that special quality in this state, then would the sword fall out of the glass, just like that? 

But if that was possible, then there would be no point in having this “scabbard”... Was I supposed to assume that the sword’s special quality wouldn’t activate if I wasn’t touching the sword somehow, like grabbing the hilt...? 

If that was the case, then I probably wanted to do something to the glass itself. Even if the glass was supposed to be a “scabbard”, that didn’t mean it was against the rules for there to be some sort of trick to it—ah, shoot, my thoughts just went back to the start. 

I was essentially going in circles. 

“Princess Hitei...” 

Once again, I turned to face the princess, this time with my entire body—but it wasn’t because I had any ideas. 

It was just that I thought I might be able to glean some hints from conversing with her. 

Though it was a little underhanded, that wasn’t something I could complain about. 

However, the bench was empty. Only the cell phone had been left behind—eh, did she succeed in unifying the entire country in that Sengoku game already? 

Then, where did she go? 

It would’ve been preferable if she didn’t walk around places in that get-up—was what I’d thought, but when I looked around, she was just swimming in the pool. 

Before, she had gone in to pull the sword out from the bottom of the water, but now, it seemed she was just enjoying going swimming—speaking of which, even when she was getting the sword, she’d made lots of useless strokes while swimming... She was really in a vacation mood, wasn’t she? 

“Pwah... Did you say my name, Koyomi-kun?” 

Princess Hitei popped out in the center of the pool and faced me— since she was tall, her glamorous upper body was still above the water even if she stood at the deepest point, making me unsure where to look. 

“No... Um.” 

Normally, I was a pro at chatting idly, with a specialty in continuing conversations without any particular subject, but right now, I was completely at a loss for words. 

Because she kept catching me off guard at every turn, it was a little hard to do. 

So I just went straight to the heart of the matter with a direct question. 

“Princess, what do you plan to do with Youtou ‘Kokorowatari’? From what I understand, what you’re gathering is, if anything, only the swords made by that Shikizaki Kiki person, right?” 

“For that Shikizaki Kiki person to make swords, he needs the expertise regarding swords from the future. What I need to change is not just the future, but also the past.” 

“I see... An alteration, huh.” 

“However—let’s see. If there was an oddity that I did want to kill, then I suppose it would be a ghost from the past.” 

A ghost—in the end, it seemed that the case of the Tea Ceremony Club’s “eighth person” would be resolved as not actually existing, but good grief. Whenever I act for Tsukihi’s sake, nothing really ever goes well, as always. 

“Or perhaps I shouldn’t call it a ghost, but a fate. It’s not just me, but everyone from that era, that’s bound to something like that, you see. Even that unpleasant woman, even Shichika-kun, even the Maniwa Ninja Corps—and even that idiot Emonzaemon.”  

“... Well, I don’t know about ghosts, but Youtou ‘Kokorowatari’ can’t cut strings of fate.” 

If there did exist a sword that could sever ties like that, then even I almost wanted it. 

No. 

I guess I didn’t need it. 

“Huhu. Ah, also.” As if she hadn’t been speaking seriously, Princess Hitei suddenly pulled back and said, “Hey, Koyomi-kun. Even if you try to indirectly get the way to draw the sword out of me, it’s no use, okay?”  

It was as if she’d completely seen through my intentions—like a clear blade. 

“After all, I don’t even know the right answer, either.” 

“Eh?” 

“I’m sure the demon blade is the same, but the Deviant Blades choose their owners, you see—unfortunately, I’m not a swordswoman. Far from a sword, I can hardly carry anything heavier than chopsticks.” 

She was saying stuff like that so airily. 

Even though nothing went past her. Even though nothing was overlooked by her. 

What the hell, didn’t that mean this approach was completely meaningless...! No, actually, was she really letting me know the “only the chosen one can draw the sword” condition this late? 

If you said that, then I wasn’t exactly a swordsman, either. 

And I wasn’t exactly suited to play the role of a hero that pulled out a sword from a stone, either—and if not even Princess Hitei was aware of the way to do so, then I couldn’t help but doubt whether or not it was even actually possible to draw the sword. 

That would mean that it wasn’t even a fair battle, but thinking about it, Princess Hitei’s objective probably wasn’t even to have a fair battle—her objective was, after all, Youtou “Kokorowatari”. 

If that was the case, then this task that was already rather aimless would spike even further in difficulty—it was like being told to catch a tiger that was on a folding screen.  

She wasn’t a princess, she was a shogun. 

This didn’t just feel like it was against the rules, it was actually against the rules, but, it was also my mistake for not checking beforehand—I should’ve set an additional rule that, if I was unable to draw the sword, then Princess Hitei would have to demonstrate the correct way to draw it. 

Since I’d gone into it with the intention of winning, I’d forgotten to consider those kinds of things... Shit, rather than being anyone like Kagenui-san or Gaen-san, wasn’t she just a swindler like Kaiki? 

“I’m not a swindler, I’m a strategian—or, at the very least, I’m just imitating what that unpleasant woman does. The real one is even worse, you know?” 

I definitely don’t want to become someone as dastardly as her, said Princess Hitei even as she imitated her, before going back to her swimming. 

No, calm down. 

It wasn’t completely decided that it was impossible to draw the sword. 

And, the fact that there was no perfectly correct answer was not something that worked against me—in fact, Princess Hitei was taking on quite a risk herself. 

As long as the person who set the battle herself didn’t know the correct answer, if I could simply clear the conditions no matter what I did, that would be considered correct—the scope of the problem was rather large. 

A clever strategy always had to have a way to turn it around and use it against them. 

That’s why, even if I hadn’t discussed it with this shogun beforehand, the answer wasn’t clearly decided, which meant that I could still use my wits—for example, if the condition was that I “couldn’t damage the glass”, then what if I “melted the glass at a high temperature”? 

It was something I came up with on the spot, and I didn’t not come up with it on the spot (a double denial)—”melting” the glass could be loosely interpreted as “damaging” it, but at the very least, the surface of the glass would be completely smooth—rather than it being in a cuboid shape, it would be all smooth and liquidy. 

Of course, if I actually touched that smoothness, I’d be inflicted with major burns, and there was also the question of how I’d even produce such a high temperature, but I’d be able to take out the sword that was encased in glass completely unaffected—or would I? 

If I subjected the glass to temperatures high enough to melt it, high enough to give me major burns if I touched it, then would the Japanese sword inside really be unaffected? 

Wouldn’t it just melt along with the glass? 

Um, if I remembered correctly... As far as I remembered from reading manga, glass melts at around 1400 degrees? While the melting point for iron was somewhere around 1500 or 1600 degrees... Wasn’t that pretty close? No, the temperatures were so high that a difference of 100 or 200 degrees seemed almost negligible, but thinking about it coolly, it was actually a pretty big difference, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it a heat that I could think about coolly? 

However, this wasn’t a laboratory, so I highly doubted that I’d be able to control temperatures to within 100 degrees—and, for a more minor detail, a Japanese sword wasn’t even iron, right? 

Steel? Tamahagane?  It was some sort of alloy... Since it was forged in heat in the first place, couldn’t that actually make it weaker to heat? 

Although the swordsmith named Shikizaki Kiki may not necessarily have made swords in the proper way... Even if it didn’t melt together with the glass, there was no guarantee that the Japanese sword would turn out with no damage. 

And I couldn’t assert that such a sink-or-swim method was possibly the “correct way”—I wasn’t brave enough to do that. 

Then... Something even wittier? 

What if I used the sun? 

I could hold up the “scabbard” over my head, expose it to the sun, and cast the shadow of the Japanese sword onto the side of the pool, saying, “See, I pulled it out of the ‘scabbard’!”—but holding up this lump of glass that high and keeping it held up would be pretty hard for me. 

Then, if I used buoyancy in the water—but did shadows show up nicely in the water? It would definitely waver a lot, right? And even if shadows did show up, it seemed like the glass would also cast a shadow—after all, the transparency of glass wasn’t 100%, either. 

Especially not for a lump like this. 

Even if the shadow of the sword fell onto the ground, it would be meaningless if the shadow of the “scabbard” fell as well—if it fell. 

If I dropped it? 

“Have you figured out the answer by now? Or will you surrender? I’ll just say it in advance, but if you get the way to draw the sword wrong, Toutou ‘Tetsu’ will automatically disappear, so be careful.” 

Before I noticed, Princess Hitei had gotten out from the pool and was standing behind me—really, she was someone you couldn’t keep your eyes off of for even a second. 

She was brazenly going “I’ll say it in advance” while adding it as an afterthought, too... And it wasn’t like objects could just disappear like that, so she was probably just putting psychological pressure on me, making it harder for me to use trial-and-error to solve the problem. 

But, without even showing a hint that she was doing that, she said, “Here you go,” and offered me her bath towel. 

Did she want me to dry her off again...? Don’t just say “Here you go”. At least say please! 

But, even though I didn’t have a subservient personality towards princess-types, it was a pain to reject her demand, too—well, I’d been called “my servant” over spring break, so perhaps it wasn’t a totally unfitting role for me. 

I took the bath towel and began to wipe the moisture from Princess Hitei’s hair—moisture. Water? 

“......” 

“Hm? What is it, Koyomi-kun? Suddenly making a face as if you’ve just gotten free from a stressful situation.” 

“It wasn’t that I got free from a stressful situation—I figured out how to get the sword free from the glass,” I said. 

And I spread the bath towel wide and put it over the glass “scabbard”—I then rolled it over to cover it from all sides. 

On top of that, I tightly tied the ends of the towel together, making sure the knot wouldn’t come undone. It was like I’d wrapped the “scabbard” in a furoshiki.  

“... What are you doing, Koyomi-kun? What I wanted was for you to wipe me down.” 

“There’s no need to be so flustered. After all, I can wipe you off after I’ve made you break into a cold sweat.”  

I smirked as if I’d said something rather clever, but it wasn’t as if Princess Hitei had been particularly flustered or panicked—she was simply watching over my actions without any interference. 

It felt like my joke had fallen flat, but I regrouped my thoughts and grabbed the bath towel bundle with both hands, lifting it with all my might. 

As expected, it was considerably heavy, making my upper arm muscles tremble, but I somehow barely managed to hold it up over my head. 

“My, my. Don’t tell me you’re planning to pass sunlight through it to cast a shadow and say, ‘See, it’s out!’ If that’s your answer, then I’ll deny it.” 

No need to worry. 

In any case, as long as it was wrapped by the towel, any shadow that fell would be completely dark—no silhouette of the Japanese sword would be seen. 

What I planned on making fall was something else—no. 

It was the very thing itself. 

My arms had pretty much reached their limit, so I took the towel bundle, contents included, and threw it at the poolside concrete. 

Crash!—it went. 

A rather unpleasant sound rang out, sounding muffled from within the bath towel. The lump of glass had broken, not by the force of me throwing it, but from its own weight. 

Of course, if my objective was just to break it then there would’ve been no need to wrap it in a towel, since it would actually lessen the impact, but it wouldn’t be good if people were unable to walk around the poolside of my sister’s school with bare feet. 

I’d done it to prevent the broken glass shards from scattering everywhere—and I was relieved that all the glass had broken inside the towel, as planned. 

Princess Hitei’s eyes had widened in surprise—or not. 

Instead, she looked at me with a completely composed smile and said, “What are you doing, Koyomi-kun? Of course, if you break it, you can take out the sword inside, but didn’t I add the condition that ‘you can’t break the glass’?” 

Rather than becoming agitated, her behavior was as if she was certain of her victory—no, don’t panic, I shouldn’t be the one to panic here. 

The princess simply hadn’t realized yet. 

She just hadn’t realized her own defeat yet. 

That was natural, as I had hit upon her blind spot—that is, I had put into practice information that she had no way of knowing, being a traveler from the past. 

“I haven’t damaged it at all. Princess Hitei, when you jump into the surface of the pool, swim through the water, or splash water when you shake your wet hair, would you call that ‘damaging the water’?” 

“I would deny that. There’s no way I would think of it like that. 

However, that’s only because it’s water—” 

“It’s exactly the same for glass. Because glass is water, after all.” Water—or, more precisely, a liquid. 

This wasn’t some random tidbit that I was being pretentious about, but something learned in high school classes—qualitatively, while it was solid, the molecular composition of glass was closer to a liquid state than a solid state. 

It was a substance where the molecules didn’t crystallize. 

Without even needing to go out of your way to melt it with high temperatures, depending on your point of view, glass was already in a liquid state from the beginning—and that. 

That was something everyone in the modern era knew. 

“That’s why, even if it gets broken or scattered, it’s not damaged—I believe that satisfies the clear conditions you’ve set, Princess Hitei.” 

As she was a character from several centuries ago that even called glass “vidro”, it had been a gamble as to how much she knew about molecular composition or the three states of matter, but the ever-sowise Princess Hitei probably had no choice but to understand, whether she wanted to or not, as a result of that wisdom—of course, I didn’t believe in the slightest that this violent way of doing things was the correct way to draw Toutou “Tetsu”, but it was the princess that had denied any “correctness” in the first place. 

No, if we’re going that far, then even before that, choosing the poolside as the location for this battle was Princess Hitei’s decisive mistake. 

Whether she thought it was an appropriate place to hide the glass “scabbard”, or she thought she could coerce me by wearing my sister’s school swimsuit, or she simply wanted to enjoy a vacation—because she’d chosen our location to be at the water’s edge, I’d been able to hit upon the fact that, at least by composition alone, glass wasn’t very much different from water. I’d managed to get a hint from her in the end, even if it wasn’t from our conversation. 

Even though it didn’t have to do with being at a poolside. 

This was what they meant by, the crafty schemer drowns in his own schemes!  

“I deny that. Like I said, it’s not a schemer, and it’s not a swindler. This is how a strategian does things—and that strategian would never drown in her own schemes, unpleasant as she is,” she said. 

Even at this stage, Princess Hitei hadn’t fallen into dismay; if anything, her haughty smirk had grown even wider. 

“Koyomi-kun. If you want to see me in tears, then why don’t you try unwrapping that bundle? Perhaps the vidro was stronger than you expected, and didn’t break completely?” 

“......?” 

Why hadn’t her composure collapsed yet? 

Why was this adult woman, in a school swimsuit, still putting on an air of self-importance—feeling uneasy that I’d lost sight of something important, I did as I was told and moved to unwrap the towel. 

Ah, that’s it, perhaps it wasn’t just the glass that broke, but also the Japanese sword—was that what Princess Hitei was implying? Well, but the selling point of Japanese swords was that they didn’t easily bend or break, right? Unlike the characteristic of glass that made it “easy to shatter” as a result of its molecular composition—however, if Toutou “Tetsu” really did break from the shock of hitting the ground, then I would certainly have no choice but to admit my defeat. 

Well, whatever happens, happens... Praying for the best, I untied the knot—at first glance, just as I had planned, the glass had broken completely. Well, that was a matter of course. 

As for the Japanese sword—it wasn’t broken. 

Well, it wasn’t that it wasn’t broken. 

It... wasn’t there. 

“... Huh? Eh? What?” 

Within the untied bath towel—it was packed with shards of broken glass, but the Japanese sword that should have been in those shards was nowhere to be found. 

As if. 

As if it had slipped down to the depths of hell. 

“If you get the way to draw the sword wrong, Toutou ‘Tetsu’ will automatically disappear—I warned you in advance, didn’t I? Since it vanished, that basically just means that you got it wrong.” 

“......!” 

So that wasn’t just a bluff...! 

I’d been sure it was psychological warfare done as an afterthought... But, if it actually went and disappeared on me like this... It seemed like some kind of sleight of hand, but after it had been wrapped in the towel, the only one to have touched the “scabbard” was me... There was no chance to use a trick...! 

“Ahaha. So it seems like you, Koyomi-kun, were the one to end up in tears? As well as—breaking out in a cold sweat.” 

Princess Hitei quietly closed her iron-ribbed fan, and spoke to me, unable to recover from my astonishment. 

“I’ve never done anything so spirited even for Emonzaemon’s sake—but shall I wipe that sweat off for you?” It was quite a generous declaration of her. 

---------------
11  All units of measurement here were originally in English. Interestingly, Princess Hitei uses hiragana for foreign words, where a modern person would use katakana. 
12  Yasuri Shichika, along with Togame, is the protagonist of Katanagatari. The Maniwa Ninja Corps are a clan of ninja that are also looking for the Deviant Blades. 
13  A reference to a Japanese tale known as Ikkyu-san and the Tiger, in which a Lord decides to test the wit of a young monk named Ikkyu by asking him to catch a tiger drawn on a folding screen. 
14  Tamahagane (玉鋼) is a type of steel made from iron sand used to make Japanese swords, knives, and other kinds of tools. 
15  Furoshiki (風呂敷) are a type of traditional Japanese wrapping cloth used to transport clothes, gifts, or other goods. 
16  Araragi makes a pun with 焦る (aseru, “to be flustered”) and 汗 (ase, “sweat”). 
17  A Japanese adage : 策士策に溺れる (sakushi-saku ni oboreru), meaning “craft brings nothing home” but also containing the verb for “drowning”.