Monogatari Series - Volume 26 - Chapter 1.18

018

From there, Ononoki-chan’s movements became exceedingly swift—compared to an easygoing person like me, it was a marked difference.

Completely.

She’d sarcastically described me as nice and as a good person, but if I really were nice and a good person, I would have started a full-scale search for Associate Professor Iesumi the moment she disappeared.      

Especially because it wasn’t an elementary school student, a middle school girl, or a high school girl who had disappeared, but a university professor, a “fine adult”, who had disappeared of her own volition—I’d made the decision that I shouldn’t recklessly chase after her. But that decision made out of a sense of false wisdom was nothing more than an adult decision.

An adult decision that only a child would make.

It might be necessary for me to reflect on my high school failures, but that was different from completely denying the rash behavior of those days.

This time, it was different.

Well, there were some circumstances that prevented me from doing what I did back then, like being under Ononoki-chan’s supervision and my relationship with Shinobu, but just for today, I’ll make a little comeback.

It wasn’t a redo.

It was for the sake of a completely new start.

“Oni onii-chan, your straightforward assumption that the abused doll that escaped is going after the ‘parents’ is, well, probably right. There’s nothing else to do.”

“……”

“So, I’m largely in favor of the plan to anticipate the doll and protect them. We’ll need to be on guard for the abused doll’s growth rate, but right now, since it’s just been born, it should be possible to keep it in check.”

“Yeah… The question is, how will we be able to find the Iesumi couple before the Iie-chan doll? Each of them has their whereabouts unknown, after all.”

“The same can be said for the abused doll. Even for that abused doll, the parents have gone missing. However, that couple is essentially like the doll’s ‘biological parents’, after all. It wouldn’t be strange for it to have a search power, like a homing instinct, that will let it find them quickly.”

Like 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother?

Well, a skill to pinpoint the location of one’s target wasn’t something particularly unusual for oddities… This example went in the opposite direction, but when I was a thrall of Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, she would always be aware of my location.

“Whatever. If it has a searching power, then what we have is researching power.”

“Researching?”

“It’s my forte, you see. Investigation. Although you always talk about me as if I’m some destructive force, oni onii-chan.”

She’s holding a grudge, huh.

It made me want to admit defeat.18

Although, to be precise, I’d called her a god of destruction.

“Well, sure, Ononoki-chan, your ability to research is one of your specialties on par with your ‘Unlimited Rulebook’, but if her colleagues and friends couldn’t find her after doing everything they could, what could we do…?”

“I find it hard to believe that everyone really did everything they could to look for her—they probably felt the same way as you, because it was the disappearance of an adult… But even if that goes for the wife, it’s not necessarily the same for the husband, right?”

“Hm?”

“We can still find the husband. They may have been separated, but it’s not like he’s gone missing. He may be living independently of his wife, but it’s not like he’s completely cut himself off from the rest of the world… We should still be able to get in touch with him.”

I see…

I’d ended up thinking of the two of them as a set, but if I were to approach them separately, then it made more sense to go for the husband rather than Associate Professor Iesumi herself. Unlike Associate Professor Iesumi, whose roots were in Switzerland, it should be relatively easier to find traces of him.

If we assumed that Associate Professor Iesumi returned to Switzerland, then the husband was more likely to be in danger right now… After all, it would take days for that flying blanket to get all the way to Switzerland, right?

“Although, I’m reluctant to agree with the theory suggested by Oshino Ougi, the one that said that it was the husband that stabbed the abused doll in the back.”

Oh… It was Ononoki-chan’s first comment about the knife stabbed in the back of the Iie-chan doll.

It was true that there was still the possibility the husband wasn’t involved in this matter at all… If he wasn’t involved in the abuse of the Iie-chan doll, then there was no reason for the Iie-chan doll to target him, which meant it would sadly be pointless to look for him and protect him.

“Well, as a stuffed doll, it may have considered the separation and leaving the house as ‘abuse’ from the father, so it wouldn’t be completely pointless.”

“Eh…? If that’s considered abuse, then wouldn’t there be no end to it?”

“There is no end to it. Why do you think there are limits to abuse?”

“……”

The separation of a couple should be within the scope of basic human rights, so accusing them of abuse was excessive no matter how you looked at it… Although, if I were the child of that couple, I guess I would still want to complain.

Especially if it were to happen before I could understand what was going on.

“Also, there’s the possibility that the missing sensei is being sheltered by her estranged husband. That might be too much to hope for, but he could have some idea of where she went, right? Even if he’s not a ‘child murderer’, even if he’s not a target, there’s still meaning in looking for the husband.”

“Right… I have no objections. But, what will we do specifically? If we ask someone at the university, do you think one of them might know where the husband is? Maybe someone in the office may have been invited to the wedding reception…”

I didn’t know if they’d even had a reception, but I guess it was a starting point—and for that, I would first need to get the help of a student who, unlike me, had deep interactions with the teaching staff…

The help of my girlfriend, who, unlike me, was steadily expanding her social circles.

“There’s a faster way, without having to make such a detour.”

“? And by that, you mean?”

“The third door. There’s still a door we haven’t opened in sensei‘s home, right? Didn’t you assume that the room at the far end was probably a bedroom and study used by the husband?”

Ah—yeah. That was right.

It was just when I’d thought about checking it out that I’d been hit by the surprise attack from the blanket hiding in the crib.

When he left home, he had to have taken some of his belongings with him, but if he hadn’t officially moved out, there should still be clues as to the husband’s whereabouts—like the address to his parents’ home or his workplace.

Even if we didn’t find anything in that room, there was still a good chance that mail addressed to her husband was stored somewhere in her house, like in a cabinet.

However…

“Sorry for saying something like this, Ononoki-chan. But I’m not sure if I want to go back to that apartment… It’s about time one of the residents noticed that all the cars in the parking lot had flat tires, so there might be a commotion…”

In the worst case, that large-scale “prank” may have been reported to the police, and the whole apartment building could be on lockdown. I probably wouldn’t be on the wanted list, but since I’d left my New Beetle there with its license plate, it wouldn’t be difficult to identify me, its owner.

“I think you’re being too cautious, and I’ll make sure to arrange things so that Gaen-san intervenes properly… But, oni onii-chan, did you forget? Besides destruction and investigation, I have one more tool-like function I can use.”

“One more… Wh-what was it again?”

It was a sensitive part of her identity as a tool, so I didn’t want to answer immediately in case I made a mistake… But when it came to Ononoki-chan’s third function, it would be far and away the very best.

You could even call it her first function.

Ononoki-chan nodded.

“Movement. High-speed travel. So that no one sees us, we can jump directly from here using ‘Unlimited Rulebook’ and enter through the balcony.”

“Ah—”

So there was a method like that—a short trip making use of Ononoki-chan’s explosive power.

If the Iie-chan doll was a flying blanket, then Ononoki-chan was a flying corpse, so that resolved the problem.

We’d be able to slip past anyone on the lookout.

Incidentally, if you asked me why I wasn’t able to come up with that idea on my own, then—though it could be fine if I were still a vampire—it surely wouldn’t be safe for the current, nineteen-year-old, flesh-and-blood me to accompany Ononoki-chan in her high-speed travel.

At the very least, I’d become hypothermic or hypoxic.

Depending on the altitude, I could freeze and suffocate to death—the reason Ononoki-chan could use such a violent means of transportation with impunity was because she was a corpse and a doll.

However, it wasn’t the time to be complaining—though it was the middle of summer, I pulled out the thickest clothes I could find, even a ski cap I pulled out of the depths of my wardrobe, and clung to Ononoki-chan tightly.

A passionate hug.

After all, another likely cause of death would be death from slipping and falling… Which was even more likely since I was wearing gloves.

As a countermeasure to hypoxia, I would’ve liked to take an oxygen tank with me, but unlike Kanbaru, I wasn’t an athlete… So I didn’t have one in my room. I didn’t have the time to go out and buy or borrow one, either, so I decided to make things simple and hold my breath for a minute.

“I won’t mind if you want to become a vampire just a tiny bit, okay? I won’t forgive you for deceiving Nadekou, but this much is all right.”

Her standards were pretty hard to get, but Ononoki-chan’s offer could be her setting a trap, so I respectfully declined… And so, after my rather unusual change of clothes…

“‘Unlimited Rulebook’.”

We set off.