Monogatari Series - Volume 25 - Chapter 9.05

005 

The epilogue, or maybe, the punch line of this story. 

In the end, no matter what route I chose, no matter what parallel world I went down, the ends of every branch seemed to probabilistically converge towards much the same conclusion. It may seem like a very mathematical moral to this story, but this wasn’t actually the case. 

Even if all roads were blocked on this three-way intersection, there was still a route in which I could survive. 

My first mistake was assuming that I was only limited to three options. 

Even if cowering where I stood was out of the question—despite being at a three-way intersection, available paths spread out in all directions. I wasn’t a shogi piece, so it wasn’t like I was restricted to the spaces on the board. In that case, I’d be better off choosing a route that involved confronting neither Saijou Tamamo, nor Yukariki Ichihime, nor Hagihara Shiogi—and it wasn’t that hard to do. 

The steps were what I could call, “back-and-forth”. 

Well, to be exact, it would be the footsteps I would take… I’d only analyzed the three combatants based on how threatening they were, but that was an extremely grave error on my part. Well, of course, I’d needed to take into consideration their respective threat levels, but “only” doing so didn’t expand the range of decisions I could make— if anything, it reduced it. In the first place, the threat levels for all three of them had far surpassed the threshold, so it was all the same to me whether their combat prowess was 100 points, 1,000 points, or even 10,000 points—since my own combat prowess was less than 1 point. 

In that case, I needed to focus on something else. Something that I could compete in. 

For example… Yes, what if I “only” looked at their movement speed? 

Now matter how they were trained, a human body could only reach a human’s running ability in the end—they wouldn’t be able to run faster than a car, and when compared to a train, we humans would all be more or less on the same level. 

Furthermore, even if we were all on the same level, we weren’t exactly the same. 

Each person had their own individual speed. 

A-kun went out to go shopping at a rate of 5 km/h. In order to give him more tasks to do, B-kun chased after him 30 minutes later at a rate of 6 km/h—and to deliver the wallet he’d forgotten, C-kun went out 30 minutes after that at a rate of 8 km/h. How long would it take for B-kun to catch up to A-kun, who departed 30 minutes earlier? How long would it take for C-kun to catch up to the other two? 

Of course, as people like to say, applying a problem like this to reality brought about various logistical inconsistencies. Like, “How far do they even plan to walk?”, or “Aren’t there any traffic lights?”, and so on—and the most extreme of those would be, “There’s someone 

chasing after you, so turn around and go back!” And I would utilize that inconsistency. 

Among the three high school girls, the one with the fastest pace was, to my surprise, the one walking briskly down the middle of the royal road, taking elegant and composed steps, Hagihara Shiogi. As it were, she was just walking normally, but if we were to assign her pace a score of 100 points, then relatively, then the one with the slowest pace, once again to my surprise, was Yukariki Ichihime. Because she was walking while stringing up her spider’s nest in all directions, her pace had slowed down considerably—so compared to Hagihara’s 100 points, Hime-chan’s pace would get a score of around 80 points. And, as for Saijou Tamamo, who proceeded forward while swaying and shaking with a lightning-bolt-like trajectory, I’d say she was somewhere in the middle with 90 points. 

Of course, this was just their basic speeds, and I could only gaze in wonder at Tamamo-chan’s keen and eccentric movements when reacting to “moving targets”. And even Hime-chan could move at an above-average speed if she abandoned all pretense of secrecy. As for the speed of Hagihara’s silver bullets, they were difficult to track even with a vampire’s eyesight. However, I could still use it as a basis—a basis for choosing my path. 

First off, I’d take Route Left. In other words, I would head for the spider’s nest. 

However, I wouldn’t run at full speed. I’d run at a speed of about 100 points, fast enough that I wouldn’t be chased from behind, and proceed straight down the left path—at least, only partially. Before running into Hime-chan, before getting caught in her radar, I would turn around. 

I would turn around and return the way I came—using that inconsistency of my choices in a consistent manner. Of course, it would be ideal if I could return backwards without being seen by Hime-chan, but it didn’t matter if she did see me. In the end, her role was just to “stand in my way”, and that spider’s nest was made just for that, so she wouldn’t abandon it to chase me too far—since the other routes were blocked by the berserker and the tactician, after all. 

Or they “should have been” blocked. 

However, before I could “return to the start”, the tactician that walked at a 100-point rate would arrive at the center of the three-way intersection. There, she would have to make a decision. 

She’d be confronted with the same choice as I had—should she go down the left path, or the right? As long as her objective was a pincer attack, she absolutely needed to choose one of them, but which path should she take to continue the pincer attack? 

In other words, I was transferring my options to the other party— however, if she thought about it for just a little bit, she’d realize that she had no other option but to take the right path. After all, if I’d gone down the path where that radar lay in wait, then she wouldn’t be worried about letting me escape… But if I’d gone down the path with the out-of-control berserker in charge, then there was a million-toone chance of an unexpected defeat. That’s why she would have to proceed down the path on the right. 

And so, the tactician would take the right path, and the unguarded back path would then be open for me to escape at a 120-point pace— an unguarded escape route would be created. 

Well then, let’s go with that plan in 006. 

Having my stomach be turned into a Z sign while listening to nursery rhymes, being caught in a forbidden fowling net and getting strangled by a girl’s hair, or getting shot by a silver bullet even after I’d become a human… If I was going to meet such wretched fates, then I would rather just die sooner—was not what I thought in the slightest. Even this route may fail against the tactician’s iron fence, but if so, then I just needed to look for another route. 

It didn’t sound too bad to be stuck in an endless loop where I got to play with high school girls from another world forever, but I would much rather prefer to enjoy myself with everyone I was going to meet from now on—so until I find the route I could use to escape, I’ll revive myself over and over again. If there’s no route, then I’ll just make one. 

And, someday, I’ll turn into that boring, 23-year-old adult. 

Even if I’m torn to shreds, my heart won’t break. 

My purpose won’t be cut off here. 

My name is Araragi Koyomi. 

After just barely escaping from that hellish spring break with my life, unlike when I’d been a vampire, my life was something I wanted to cherish.