Monogatari Series - Volume 25 - Chapter 9.03

003 

Taking the path on the left as the natural decision to make, I ran down it at full force—without much room to hesitate, what was important was the courage to make a decision. After all, the right path had a girl with cropped hair, wearing bloomers, and wielding two knives tottering unsteadily in my direction. Anyone who picked such a path would have to be a complete and utter idiot. An idiot that wouldn’t get better even if he died. An idiot that was better off dead, regardless. 

Even so, I was reluctant to retreat behind me and face off against Shiogi-chan. After all, she was the leader of the three-man cell of rangers. To go head-to-head against someone who possessed an ingenuity that could compare to Hanekawa’s was not something that appealed to me. 

And so, by process of elimination, I decided to take on Hime-chan. 

She was a girl with giant yellow ribbons on her head—she looked so young that it was hard to see her as the same age as Kanbaru, but of course, she was still a good enough soldier to attend Sumiyuri Academy, so I couldn’t let my guard down against the cuteness of those ribbons. 

Fortunately, I could see what was in her hands. 

I could see what was in her gloves. 

She was a user of strings. 

She was stringing up a system of “invisible threads” in the surrounding area in order to get a grasp of the situation and begin searching for the enemy—as such, it would be an impossible task to dodge her and slip past her on this straight road. It would be as hard as trying to steal a jewel guarded by a security system of infrared laser beams. 

Normally. 

However, I was endowed with the eyesight of a vampire—while a normal human’s sight might not be able to perceive those superfine strings, they were not “invisible threads” to me at all. If I was in perfect form, I would even be able to see infrared beams. 

I wouldn’t say that evading the strings that had been set up threedimensionally on this straight road was like taking candy from a baby, but they weren’t so hindering that I needed to run any slower than I was. 

If anything, the strings were surely a hindrance to Hime-chan instead. 

It was as if the zigzagging spider’s nest that she constructed had actually become a spider’s thread that was coming to save me—they say that spiders only walk on the vertical threads of a web, right? Then I could simply run while hiding in the horizontal threads. 

In the first place, moving while setting up a web was not something that could be performed at a fast pace—Hime-chan would have to proceed slowly. I hadn’t exactly thought that far when choosing to take the left path, but it seemed now that I could move as I pleased while slipping through the gaps in the web. 

However, at my incredible feat of running at full speed without touching or cutting even a single one of those “invisible threads”, the girl with the yellow ribbons, Yukariki Ichihime, simply watched over me without even blinking an eye. 

She simply displayed a cute smile upon her cute face. 

“Huhuhu. It sure is brave of you to perform a suicide attack, Araragi-san. But from Hime-chan’s point of view, that barbaric act is just like a moss to a flame,” she said. 

What, was her signature move to get proverbs wrong? 

Sorry, but in our world, that was a fundamental skill that anybody was capable of using. 

You’re a hundred years too early to think you can charm me with such a traditional character trait, string master—however, her actual signature move, naturally, was not playing with words, but playing cat’s cradle. 

Today was a nice day in spring, but if there were any moths flying into flames, I would certainly be one of them—I’d leapt straight into the spider’s nest because I’d had the confidence that I’d be able to get through, but I hadn’t predicted how the nest would move. 

No, of course I’d known it was possible. 

This web wasn’t just something that could lie in wait—it could even attack. 

These threads were not threads to tie up the enemy, but threads to slice up the enemy. 

So I’d more or less prepared myself to respond to however the “invisible threads” decided to come at me—but what landed outside of my expectations were the dynamic movements of those threads. 

All of the threads returned, back to Hime-chan’s hands. With a swoosh, swoosh, swoosh—they’d retracted and wound back up into her gloves. 

Compared to walking along while stringing up the spider’s nest, it seemed that she didn’t need to be as high-strung about retrieving the threads—well, it was a simple matter of following the reverse procedure of stringing them up, and thinking about it, it was obvious that I’d managed to get this far because the “invisible threads” were visible to me, so there was no reason to bother winding them up surreptitiously. 

And, on that note. 

There was no reason for Hime-chan to perform her next action surreptitiously, either. 

If I was able to see them, then she may as well show them to me. 

She took the threads she’d just gathered up and immediately reused them—her role was normally for logistical support, but when it was necessary, and also when it wasn’t necessary to keep the strings out of sight, she was capable of reconstructing her nest in an instant. 

And this time, it wasn’t the nest of a spider. 

Or rather, it wasn’t even a nest—it was a wall. 

In an instant, a “wall” appeared before my eyes. 

They were no longer “threads” that had been strung up—an entire “surface” had been knit together. 

Without needing to fuss over the details of where to hang it or what to hook it on, she had knit the “net” across the two telephone poles to the left and right—and it was an extremely fine net, as if a hundred million volleyball nets had been put together. This wall was something I could not dodge, even if I could see it. 

Just physically, there was no gap through which a person could pass through. 

“……!” 

Of course if you bundled threads together, you could make a rope, and if you bundled ropes together, you could make a net—I’d hit the brakes as fast as I could, but I was too late. I collided head-on with the wall. 

I’d sworn to keep moving even if my legs were cut off, but I had ended up being stopped by this. 

However, threads were still threads in the end. 

If this were a single piano wire, and I’d been running at a speed of 80 km/h, then I surely would have reenacted a Hollywood-like scene where my head was cleanly cut off, but if the “invisible threads” were bundled up into a clearly visible wall, then even if I collided with it at a speed that humans were capable of (about 15 km/h?), then I would only end up getting tangled up in the threads. In that sense, you could say this net was a safety net. 

It was like, if you lay down on a single needle, it would pierce into you, but if you lay down on ten thousand needles and distributed your weight, then they wouldn’t even be able to pierce your skin—not to mention, this wall, like the spider’s nest before it, surely worked to protect me as well. 

After all, if you erected a wall in the middle of a straight road, then in terms of oddities it would be the same as a “nurikabe”,  seeing as it stood in Hime-chan’s way just as it did mine—but it wasn’t the same at all. 

Strictly speaking, it was less like I’d collided with the wall and more like I’d gotten stuck in the wall—after all, it wasn’t a wall made of concrete or plaster, but a wall made of threads. As mentioned above, I’d gotten tangled up in those threads—and it was less like I’d stopped running and more like I was floating in the air. 

One of my legs and one of my arms, as well as my head, had burst through to the other side of the wall. 

I could perfectly lock eyes with Hime-chan. 

She had an extremely happy grin on her face. 

There wasn’t even an ounce of malice in that grin—but there wasn’t even an ounce of innocence, either. 

“Uhuhuhu. You’ve fallen into my trap, Araragi-san—literally.” 

“……” 

Ah, so that was it. 

This wasn’t a nest, and it wasn’t a wall, either—it was a trap. 

If I remembered correctly, something like a fowling net… The kind you used to catch wild thrushes and the like… With my entire body being caught in it like this, I could move neither forwards nor backwards… Yes, my weight had been distributed… 

But fowling nets should have been banned as a hunting method in modern times due to their viciousness… “… Won’t you help me out?” 

I gave it a shot, since I had nothing to lose. 

“No way. The early Hime-chan catches the bird, you know.” 

It sounded like she’d gotten a proverb wrong yet again, but in this case, it was quite “literally” so—she put her hands behind her head and quickly untied her yellow ribbons. 

She loosened the hair she’d tied up—seeing it like this, her hair was longer than I’d thought. 

But why was she letting her hair down at this time? 

“Well, Hime-chan used up all her strings in order to make that fowling net. So I was thinking I’d prepare something in place of those strings.” 

“Th, then, are you going to use those ribbons? It’s true that they’re just cloth, which is a bundle of threads…” 

“No, no, these are precious ribbons that I received from my master, so I couldn’t possibly use them in such a hurtful way.”  So, I’ll use my hair, instead. 

Saying this, Hime-chan bounded towards me, who’d been rendered unable to move an inch—and wrapped a lock of hair around my neck. 

The action was like she was wrapping a scarf around me, but if you thought it was anything like such a scene shared between fellow high schoolers, there was not one aspect of that in the current situation. In the first place, I was completely stuck in her trap. 

The early Hime-chan catches the bird—or strangles it. 

“Then, farewell, Araragi Koyomi-san. Your purpose will be cut off here.”  

During spring break, I’d died in roughly a thousand different ways, but being strangled to death by hair was certainly not one of them—

for a good-for-nothing like me to die like this, it was perhaps not so bad after all. 

However, even in my fading consciousness, this came to mind. 

If only I hadn’t chosen the left path— 

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9  The nurikabe (塗り壁, lit. “plaster wall”) is a youkai from Japanese folklore that’s said to manifest as an invisible wall that impedes or misdirects travelers walking at night. 
10  She’s referring to Shisei Yuma, the person who taught her to use strings, as explained in the third volume of Zaregoto. 
11  She replaces the word 糸 (ito, “thread”) with 意図 (ito, “purpose”).