Monogatari Series - Volume 26 - Chapter 1.12

012

If I fixed the broken door quickly enough, perhaps I would make it in time for at least the afterparty of the girlsbas social—at least, that was the sweet-sounding plan I tried to devise, but that plan went awry.

Of course, I was making it sound like I was dying to attend that social, but I wasn’t exactly a sociable person in the first place, so no matter what the purpose was, I wasn’t exactly good with parties… When it came to the Fire Sisters’ disbanding party, that troublesome guy who attended only reluctantly? That was me.

It was a party for middle school girls, huh… Well, I could do something about my social skills while I was still in college, but it seemed that I’d have to give up on attending the social altogether.

Because the door to the nursery was damaged beyond repair, so much so that I couldn’t do anything about it—no, that wasn’t the reason.

If that had been the case, then ultimately, I could’ve used my secret trick. I could have relied on the former legendary vampire Oshino Shinobu’s—the former Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade’s—“matter creation ability” to perfectly reconstruct the door from nothing… Although one condition was that I would have to wait until nightfall, but if so then I could simply have gone to the social while it was still daytime (maybe I did want to go after all?) and then come back to this room at night.

I would also have to pay compensation (in donuts)… However, that carefully thought-out plan ended up being useless. The state of that second door was such that it perfectly suited my independent spirit in wanting to resolve things on my own if at all possible… It was probably a good thing that Ononoki-chan kicked the door with her bare foot. If she had been wearing her usual boots, or if she had gone and used her “Unlimited Rulebook”, then a hole could have been formed in the door itself. But the only damage that had been incurred was a faint footprint on the door and a few broken screws—even the hinges were mostly intact.

This was a level of DIY that I could manage with my skills—but then, why was it that I couldn’t go and gleefully get pampered by high school girls?

The situation wasn’t that complicated, but it was very important, so allow me to explain it step by step—about this development that was less of a situation and more of an anomaly.12

Even though I’d been given a key, that didn’t mean that I had nothing to hide, so I snuck in through the back door of the building as if I was trying to avoid the security cameras (which made me even more suspicious), and took the stairs instead of the elevator to the third floor, room 333—after all, with the homeowner missing, I didn’t want anyone to think the kidnapper had come back to destroy evidence. I could say that I hadn’t kidnapped anyone, but the facts were extremely close to that scenario, and that closeness could be a problem… My behavior was becoming more and more suspicious.

Well, it’s impossible to avoid the cameras completely unless you become a complete vampire (then you won’t be reflected in mirrors, so you’d be safe except for mirrorless cameras. Mirrorless was probably fine, too), so at some point I just had to take a “so-what” attitude… And apart from that, there were other precautions I needed to take.

Now that I’d arrived at the possibility that the separated husband was the “child murderer”, I most certainly needed to be cautious that Room 333 might not necessarily be empty when I came… You might say that something like that was going a bit overboard, but I had to say that it was entirely possible for me to bump into the husband that had returned to the nursery.

It would be a terrible scene to be found in.

Even though I’d never gone through such a sad state of affairs with my actual girlfriend, why should I have to suffer like some married woman’s secret lover?… However, since I, the breaker of the door (rather, an accomplice), had made my triumphant return here, it wouldn’t be unusual if the husband were to return for the second time.

Not to mention the possibility of it being a situation like that Russian movie, The Return… The idea that the husband was the “child murderer” was, at present, simply my (and Ougi-kun’s) own conjecture, so even if he weren’t, it’s conceivable that he might return home out of worry for his missing wife. In that case, we would not be of equal status. I would one-sidedly be guilty of breaking and entering.

It’d been tense when I’d opened the front door imagining a locked-up abused child, but it was also quite thrilling to open the door imagining that the father might be there.

So, after much deliberation, I decided to ring the intercom… And there was no answer. No reaction. Could I feel relief from that?

Nope, I should take precautions over relief.

Because there was one more development that I needed to take into consideration. That was the possibility that the heart of the problem, “the missing Associate Professor Iesumi herself”, was simply holed up in her house—instead of disappearing or returning to Switzerland, what if she was just not contacting her work or friends, not leaving her apartment, and not using her answering machine?

It seemed like a classic trick that was often overlooked, but it was actually a stay-at-home policy that was possible because of modern society. Any necessities of life could be delivered through online shopping… Well, there would eventually be a limit to it, but even so, a person could easily spend their life like this for a week or so.

This was assuming she had the strength of mind to remain stubbornly silent even when university officials and friends were visiting her incessantly… Meanwhile, I was feeling so guilty after canceling on the social last-minute.

Oh yeah, once upon a time, I’d locked myself in the gymnasium storehouse with the intention of disappearing (please don’t ask me for details), but a single message from Hanekawa was enough to shake me… So, if Associate Professor Iesumi was responsible for her own disappearance for whatever reason, I had to think that the possibility that she was hiding in her home was rather thin.

Even the possibility of exchanging greetings with the husband was clearly higher—but if I didn’t properly simulate the pattern of reuniting with Associate Professor Iesumi after a few days, I figured I’d get flustered… Could I say something like, “I’ve come to return the key”?

Or should I just pretend to be a great detective and say something cool, like, “I knew you were here all along…”?

All the while, making an expression of understanding.

In any case, there was no answer when I pressed the intercom—from here on, my role was not to be a visitor, but to be a repairman.

Though it wasn’t necessarily the home of a person I knew well, it was still my second visit to the house, so I wasn’t going to get lost just from walking down the hallway of this apartment—no need to invoke the god of lost children—and I soon arrived at the nursery.

I should add that there was no sign of anyone from the living room or the first door in the hallway (most likely Associate Professor Iesumi’s bedroom)—thus, the theory of the university professor having become a shut-in had all but disappeared. Rather, I should reflect upon my apparent carelessness in having left the door to that bedroom open the other day.

The second door was more than simply left open… but the extent of the destruction was such that it could be restored to its original state by hand, as I’d already mentioned.

Let’s just rejoice in that.

However, the thought of rejoicing didn’t pass through my mind at all, because it wasn’t just the door to the nursery that had been broken.

“…Huh?”

The big problem was—the door to the cage in the corner of the nursery was broken. The other day, when I viewed this room with its blackout curtains drawn, the door of the cage had been properly bolted—but now, it was broken in a way that was almost irreparable.

It was as if it had been a cage to confine some sort of monster, and that monster forcibly pried open the iron fence from the inside… It had been warped like candy. Rather than saying the door had been broken, it was more like the door had been melted—but, needless to say, there were no monsters inside that cage.

And.

The abused doll that had been stabbed in the back with a fruit knife had also disappeared from the cage. Like her maker, she had gone missing—