Monogatari Series - Volume 25 - Chapter 8.02

002 

When I awoke, I found myself in an unfamiliar place, which is something I had become familiar with after awakening (in both senses) in the ruins of a former cram school, but this time I felt a light panic that perhaps I had slipped through time or perhaps this was all a dream.  

I say all of this because the place where I woke up was a location I frequented during the summer break of my first year of middle school. And this place had something in common with the ruins of the former cram school, for it too was a ruin—an abandoned house. 

It was in a residential area, in a building that had been left to rot back behind the other buildings of the block. The only way to access the house was to take a small path between the other buildings, and from the looks of the place, it’s possible that nobody even remembered that it existed. I was in a room on the second floor of that dilapidated and forgotten building.  

Um... What was it again? 

I’m not in my first year of middle school right now, I’m in my third year of high school, right? So why... Aah, that’s it.  

Just recently, this nostalgic, and in a sense unpleasant, building had been used to solve some mysteries with a younger girl from school. So once that event was settled, in order to process my own feelings, I went back to that room on my own.  

Saying that I wanted to process my feelings is just an excuse. What I really wanted to do was go back to this ruin and confirm if all of my memories of this place were things that I wanted to forget.  

If I wanted to forget my summer with that fairy. 

Perhaps I just wanted to go back and verify that those memories were something that I would never forget.  

Even someone who lives their life as half-assed as I do can feel sentimental—and that’s fine—but the real question is, why was I sleeping here?  

Sleeping directly on top of a deteriorating, ruined floor couldn’t possibly be comfortable... Had I worn myself out with my entrance exam studies? Was I even sleeping? Had something rendered me unconscious and I only then came back to my senses? “Oh. Awake, are you?” Ah. 

I hadn’t realized it, but a girl had been sitting across the room from me. She spoke to me when I sat up—while holding a large pair of scissors in her mouth.  

Holding scissors in her mouth? 

Huh? How was she talking? 

Wait no—beside the point, sorry—who? 

Who was that? 

The dim lighting in the room made it difficult to see the girl. If my eyesight was still at the peak it had reached during spring break this would’ve been nothing, but the timing didn’t work out. In any case, it seemed safe to say that she wasn’t someone I knew.  

And I was pretty sure that I came here alone... 

She was wearing a knit beanie on her head and a knee-length pleated skirt—the skirt looked like it belonged to a school uniform, but the top didn’t seem to match. She was wearing a parka whose sleeves were way too long.  

She looked a bit like Ougi-chan... Wait, no, that design for Ougi-chan was made by the anime production company, wasn’t it? The appearance of the world is becoming rather unclear lately... 

Well, setting aside the question of whether she had a school uniform on, she was clearly a girl around my age—and you might expect one to think of Senjougahara given the presence of stationery, but the scissors that this girl had were too large to be called that.  

Senjougahara would probably say that they were an affront to aesthetics.  

Rather than scissors, they looked more like two large knives that had been joined to each other. For someone holding something that dangerous, she was remarkably calm. 

“Oh, does this bother you, Koyomi-oniichan?” Koyomi-oniichan? Why did she call me that? 

What happened before I lost consciousness? 

“I’ll just put them away for now. Hup...” 

And with that, the girl used her jaw to throw the scissors straight above her in the air—and at the same time stood up and raised one leg in the air to do a standing side split. 

I panicked for a second, since she was wearing a skirt and was lifting her leg in a way that gave a clear view under it, but then I realized that she was wearing spats under her skirt.  

So I guess instead of Ougi-chan or Senjougahara, now she was more like Kanbaru. 

But in this girl’s case, she had more than just spats on under her skirt.  

She had a strap around her leg that looked like a gun holster like you’d see in a western action movie—but apparently what fit into this holster was not a gun. The scissors turned a beautiful arc through the air and then dropped snugly down into the strap.  

“There, now we can all relax. Relaxing scissors.” 

“... I don’t find those scissors relaxing at all.” Those were some dangerous acrobatics.  

I was intensely anxious just watching it.     

“If you wanted to show off, the spats alone would have been enough.” 

“Oh, so you’re into spats, Koyomi-oniichan? There are many sides to your perversion, aren’t there.” 

It was unsettling to hear a girl I had only just met make conclusions about me so quickly (both in regards to her deciding that I’m a pervert and her deciding that I am into spats), but I could tell as soon as she stood up that she had not been trying to show off her acrobatics skills with a performance. 

That was her standard method for putting away the scissors.  

The way that the sleeves of her parka hung loose from her arms made it clear—it wasn’t a problem of the sleeves being too long.  

“Oh. This is what they call an ‘honorable wound’. I had my hands cut off by some hitman brothers. Don’t worry about it.” 

“... I see.” 

Hitman? Hitman brothers? 

To be entirely honest, everything that’s been said and done in this ruined building so far has been a reason to worry... 

“I have prosthetics that I can wear, but it’s such a pain that I forget a lot of the time. Of course, if I had them now, I wouldn’t have to lay low in a place like this. I’ll be reflecting on this mistake for sure.” 

“Lay low...?” 

Hearing a place where I had made memories called “a place like this” stung a little, but then again the place looked like it would fall down if there was a strong breeze, and I’ve probably referred to this place in the same way myself, so she’s entitled to her feelings. More importantly. 

Aah, that’s right. 

That’s when I remembered.  

What happened before I lost my consciousness.  

I came to this building with my mind full of complex and strange thoughts, then I went upstairs and entered this room on the second floor. And there. 

There, I entered the room, and someone who had been hiding inside delivered a high kick to my medulla oblongata.  

“Ah. You’ve gone pale, Koyomi-oniichan. You must have remembered. Yes, I did something rude to you earlier. I thought you were one of the people following me.” 

The girl with the knit beanie—otherwise known as the “someone who had been hiding inside”—laughed sheepishly and bowed slightly. 

I don’t think that being embarrassed helps anything. 

“P... People following you?” 

Realizing that the situation I found myself in was more dangerous than I could imagine, I scooted back away from the girl and asked, “Who are you? What are you?” 

“Me? I’m Zerozaki—Mutou Iori. Just between you and me, I’m a demonic killer.” 

She started to give a name, then corrected herself, then dropped a little profile that was impossible to ignore, and on top of that she added... 

“I’m currently a fugitive criminal.” 

Which I really didn’t want to know anything about.