Monogatari Series - Volume 26 - Chapter 1.04

004

“Uh-huh. I see. Basically, oni onii-chan, or for short, onii-chan, in order to receive extra credit for the midterm exam you failed, you ended up taking on a job as the professor’s babysitter during summer break.”

“It should’ve gotten through to you that this isn’t such an easygoing project!”

It wasn’t a project to make fun of.

It wasn’t even a project.

Or rather, the biggest mystery was why Ononoki-chan was gracefully lying on the back seat of my car, a Volkswagen New Beetle—as I was rushing from one of Manase University’s parking lots towards the apartment that Associate Professor Iesumi had told me about, she’d suddenly said to me, “Speeding is bad, oni onii-chan,” as if it were completely natural.

And why was it that she was wearing something as cheeky as a maxi dress that showed off her body line, instead of her usual draped skirt?… My car doesn’t have a dress code, you know?

“Your sister forced me to wear this. That girl thinks I’m some sort of dress-up doll or something. At that point, I didn’t know what I’d be forced to wear next, so last night I evacuated like it was an emergency, escaped to this car, and spent the night.”

“Don’t use my car as a panic room.”

“Your parents bought this car for you, didn’t they? You spoiled brat.”

Ononoki-chan spoke with her usual expressionless monotone, rolling over in her seat—she’d turned her back to the driver’s seat, but as far as I could see in the rearview mirror, her dress was so open-backed that her shoulder blades were clearly visible.

What was my (smaller) little sister making the doll of a tween girl wear? Don’t raise Ononoki-chan’s level of exposure.

That body is all dead flesh, you know?

Anyway, it seemed that Ononoki-chan had already been rolling around in the back seat of my car when I’d left my house for the university—because she was a doll, and a corpse doll at that, she was a master at hiding her presence.

And after that, she’d spent the entire day in the car… With the season being what it was, a living person would have gotten heatstroke. If she’d wanted to, she could have used her special technique to go home on her own, but it seemed Ononoki-chan had chosen to take a nap instead.

There were days like that.

If I had to say it, even I, Tsukihi’s older brother, would most likely feel the same way if I were forced to spend all my time in the same room as her.

However, even though Ononoki-chan had been freeloading at the Araragi residence for quite some time now, it seemed she’d gotten so used to it to the point that she felt comfortable escaping to my car… It wasn’t a situation that made me exuberant, but I was a little moved.

“Spoiled, huh… Well, I don’t know if I’m all that spoiled, but I’m definitely blessed.”

“That’s for sure. Your life is on the level where you only died and fell to hell a couple of times, after all.”

In the moving car, Ononoki-chan kept turning over and over, as if she was looking for the best position to be in. Combined with her new clothes, she was like a fish that had washed up on land.

Though she was a corpse, she was pretty lively.

“At the very least, I was never abused.”

“That’s for suuure. There are no parents that don’t love their children.”

Because of her monotone voice and expressionless face, Ononoki-chan’s intentions were even harder to read than Associate Professor Iesumi’s, but she probably wasn’t saying that in earnest.

The correct phrase was, “There are some parents that can’t love their children”—at that point it wasn’t really correct anymore, but whether you said it with a monotone or not, “There are no parents that don’t love their children” was not very kind.

Not kind to the children that aren’t loved, and not kind to the parents that can’t love.

“Well, oni onii-chan, I think the abuse and violence you once took from Senjougahara Hitagi could be considered dating domestic violence… It makes me laugh to think that, maybe that was the remains of the bad influence that the so-called heroine received from her ‘mother’.”

“It makes you laugh?”

Stay expressionless for the rest of your life.

I watched the anime version of Zoku Owarimonogatari, you know… So you were talking to me with such an irritating expression in your heart?

“And you like to pass it off as a gag, oni onii-chan, but Kanbaru Suruga’s messy room can also be considered a result of the darkness in her heart. No wonder Oshino Ougi is hanging out with her. How in the world did Gaen Tooe raise her only daughter?”

“I doubt that she was abusing her, but from what I could tell from talking with her in the mirror world, she didn’t seem like the type of person to be good at raising children…”

“It depends on the definition of abuse, too.”

“This isn’t a formal debate. I don’t want to hear it.”

“But I think when it comes to Nadekou‘s parents, they would find it completely unexpected if you accused them and said, ‘What you did to her was abuse’. I bet they’d loudly assert that they were giving the utmost affection to their beloved daughter. Although now, they’re finally kicking her ass for becoming a shut-in, telling her to go to work if she’s not going to move on to high school, but even that could be called abuse, wouldn’t you say? They’re trying to throw out a fifteen-year-old girl, after all.”

Mm…

Or rather, so the Sengoku family was going through something like that… I couldn’t help but worry about my sister’s friend, who I’d cut ties with in a completely different manner from the “usual kind” with Oikura. Although I didn’t have the qualifications to worry about her anymore.

“You don’t need to be qualified to worry about someone. Now, let’s go to Nadekou‘s house right now.”

“Don’t try to stir the pot of my relationships. And stop calling her Nadekou.”

“And oni onii-chan, don’t try to get in the way of my and Nadekou‘s relationship. You wanna die?”

“I don’t want to die. Why do you have to go that far… We’re heading for Associate Professor Iesumi’s place right now. Apartment number 333. Were you listening?”

Nevertheless, I was grateful to have someone to talk to, even though I was babbling like this… If I hadn’t, I probably would have panicked, ended up exceeding the speed limit, and caused a traffic accident—well, probably not, but I would have been stopped by the police, which would have delayed my arrival even more.

“You’re already pretty likely to be pulled over with a tween girl in the back seat of your car… Should I try opening the window and shouting ‘Help!’”

“Don’t suddenly change your character to a little devil character after coming all this way.”

“The point of my character is that it’s constantly changing. Did you forget? Anyway, isn’t it possible for you to just surrender and explain the circumstances to the police?”

“Wh-why? There’s nothing at all that I feel guilty about. Even if I thought about plucking those shoulder blades as though they were wings, I’d be perfectly free to do so in my head.”

“That’s the mindset of a grotesque murderer who can’t be aired on television. To pluck them as though they were wings, it sounds like your dark passions towards that kitty onee-chan are mixed in, too.3 But not you. I’m talking about the other person with the ‘hane‘ character, Hagoromo. Not your case, but the professor’s case.”

“Not that there’s a case regarding me. But huh? What?”

“Locking up your daughter in your house and not coming home for three days is enough to call the police, right? What are you doing, obediently going to check on the situation in your car? As I said during the last case with the transistor-slender girl, oni onii-chan, you should learn to leave things to the police. I understand how you feel, but the police aren’t your enemy, onii-chan.”

“What about my feelings are you saying you understand? It’s not like I think of the police as hostile. Don’t treat them like criminals. But aside from that, Ononoki-chan, you’re making a good point, and I was on the verge of doing so.”

“Really? You’re not just saying that because you don’t want me to kill you?”

“I’m not… Why do you want to kill me so badly?”

“If you were on the verge of doing so, then tell me the reason you didn’t. Otherwise, I’ll turn your beloved car into a demolished car.4 You included.”

That was some pretty scary stuff coming from a girl lying on the back seat, not even trying to get up… But I wasn’t about to be turned into scrap. Well, I suppose she was the right person to talk to.

She was a specialist, after all. Not a specialist in child abuse, but…

“There was one thing I found curious during my conversation with Associate Professor Iesumi. If it weren’t for that, I would have called the police long ago. All the while booing and jeering at her, ignoring the respect I should have for my superiors. I have this handy item called a cell phone, after all.”

“Are you saying it’s more convenient than I am?”

“Even if you are the tsukumogami of a corpse used for a hundred years, don’t kindle a sense of rivalry with a cell phone.”

“Make it clear which one of us tools is more useful before you keep going. Corpse doll? Cell phone? Which one?”

“Why those two… All right, the corpse doll.”

“Very well. I’ll let you off for today. You were lucky that things didn’t end in your death. And, the thing you found curious was?”

“More like something I found—odd. When I probed into it, it turned out that it wasn’t that Associate Professor Iesumi didn’t find her daughter cute from the very beginning. Rather, she had thought that she’d been blessed with the cutest daughter in the world—but, one day, out of the blue, she suddenly stopped thinking of her as cute.”

She stopped.

Thinking of her as her own child.

“It was as if she’d been swapped with a different child—that was what Associate Professor Iesumi had said. Hey, Ononoki-chan. Ononoki Yotsugi-chan. Doesn’t this sound a little familiar to you? Like a story about an oddity.”

Something.

Very close to oneself.

“…I’d like to ask something.”

Ononoki-chan paused for a moment, and then she asked,

“What’s that girl’s name?”

It seemed that there had been something that made her specialist’s antenna react.

“Iesumi Iie,”

I said.

I pronounced the name that had been told to me—at the very least, this was a person’s name, with the hope that that the child would grow up to be able to say “no”5 to an unacceptable reality.