Monogatari Series - Volume 26 - Chapter 1.19

019

So, do you think that I somehow managed to obtain the information of Associate Professor Iesumi’s husband in the last of the three bedrooms, and, without even pausing for breath, I went with a hop-step-jump straight to where the husband was? Do you think I went to warn a complete stranger, saying, “Hey, you and your wife are being targeted by a flying blanket”?

On the contrary, it was not so.

The road movie of me was not written in the style of a Hollywood script—and let me just say now that I love Hollywood movies. Long live commercial movies! Contributing to the box office is what makes life worth living. At least, that’s how I wanted to live, but it always ends up being, “How did things end up this way?”

As for what happened, allow me to tell you.

Things were going well until we arrived at the balcony of room 333… And technically, things were not going well even then.

Because, as expected, I was gasping for breath.

The measures I took for temperature and oxygen worked to a certain extent, but I was too defenseless against the air resistance that came with high-speed travel… I felt as if I’d been beaten up all over, and my physical strength was severely depleted.

And so, while I was trying to catch my breath, Ononoki-chan broke the window with a punch… It seemed her first function was not movement, but destruction after all.

After deciding to leave the clean-up to Gaen-san, it seemed like she’d lost all hesitation to destroy the house… No, she hadn’t had the slightest hesitation from the moment she kicked down that second door.

However, since the window that broke led to the living room, it seemed she wasn’t completely without thought… I wanted to examine Associate Professor Iesumi’s bedroom, as well as the nursery (the root of the problem), as best as I could. Before scattering glass all around.

However, the highest investigation priority was the innermost room—this time, Ononoki-chan and I ended up actually trespassing into the apartment (still with our shoes on, so as not to get hurt by the glass), and headed for the room.

And then, we opened that third door.

Unlike the second door, it wasn’t locked (or rather, the third door didn’t even have a lock itself), so there was no need for the god of destruction to break down the door—and finally what we found in the room was… The husband’s payslip? Residence card? New Year’s cards? A collection of commemorative stamps? A rare book on the bookshelf? A treasure map? A social network account?

Absolutely not.

What we witnessed was a stuffed doll overflowing with a handmade feeling—in a sense it was something we’d seen just the other day, so it wasn’t particularly new, nor was it worth being surprised over.

However, it wasn’t exactly the same, and I couldn’t help but gasp—first of all, it was not in a cage, but lying on top of a bed.

And instead of a blanket, the top half was made with the quilt part of a futon, while the bottom half was made with the padded mattress part of a futon… It was kind of like balloon art made with two balloons.

In other words, it was huge.

It wasn’t the size of a three-year-old.

What lay face-up on the bare mattress of the bed was a doll the size of an adult, the size of an average adult male.

The face was the same. “Henohenomoheji“—yes, resembling the Iie-chan doll from the other day… “Like parent and child”.

It wasn’t balloon art but futon art, but there were similarities between the two dolls even in the way they were made—like when you read both “Kokoro” and “An’ya Kouro” and feel that they were written by the same author.

“Are you really in college? ‘Kokoro‘ and ‘An’ya Kouro‘ have different authors, oni onii-chan.”

Was that right.

I’d remembered them together, as An’ya Kokoro.

However, in that sense, there were differences, as well. Perhaps I should see it as both a difference and a similarity, but—the fruit knife.

At the time we discovered the Iie-chan doll, the fruit knife was stuck in her back, so it was not immediately visible. But this time—though it wasn’t like making the knife obvious had been given priority—the knife was stuck in the middle of the doll’s face.

It had been violently stabbed in.

You couldn’t see the blade at all, and even the handle portion was stuck about 1 cm into the doll… In terms of the “henohenomoheji” face, it would be right between the “heno” and the “heno“—in other words, right between the eyes, deeply.

Even with the meager length of a fruit knife, it was so “deeply” that I wondered if the knife pierced through to the bed… If a blade were to be thrust into that part of the body at such an angle, even a vampire would die once.

But what about a doll?

A stabbed corpse on a bed. Lying spread-eagled, it didn’t show any signs of movement… Well, that seemed obvious. Yeah, it was obvious, but…

“If we’re to consider this an adult male—then, if there’s the doll you named the Iie-chan doll, would this be the father doll?”

Ononoki-chan spoke decisively.

The father doll.

If it had been me, it would’ve taken at least three days to work up the courage to come to that conclusion, but I guess she was a professional who was used to this sort of situation.

“No, no, I gotta say I’m pretty spooked. To be honest, I don’t feel so good. I may be expressionless, but I’m not heartless.19 It was like this when we looked for the transistor-slender girl and investigated the Beniguchi family, but when I take on onii-chan’s requests, this is all there is, huh. As expected of a specialist of child abuse, there’s never a dull moment.”

“It’s not like I was the one who made this doll.”

“Then, who did?”

“……”

Who… If it was the same creator as the Iie-chan doll… The prime suspect would be Associate Professor Iesumi. But then, what about it?

What “bad feeling” would this be?

The Iie-chan doll in the cage in the nursery was also creepy, but I was still able to accept it as a stuffed doll… In other words, it was the right size.

But the father doll lying in this room was on a completely different level of creepiness… A large reason being that it was too huge to ignore.

A large size being that large reason.

I didn’t really see life-sized dolls except at some kind of events, after all… Rather than a stuffed doll, it was more like a mannequin.

And not like the mannequins you see in boutiques, but those… Mannequins placed in the driver’s seat of a car in videos meant to show the dangers of traffic accidents. As if this mannequin was going to drive into a wall without a seatbelt and fly face-first into the windshield—I could sense that sort of danger from it.

“Although I would say it’s more like a murder investigation, oni onii-chan. You know, like a deduction scene where they use a mannequin in place of the victim to recreate the big trick.”

Aha, that was a more appropriate example… After all, it wasn’t like the father doll was going to be in a car accident, because it already had a fruit knife stuck in its face.

It was a past event.

A past that was irretrievable.

I looked again at the doll on the bed. To tell you the truth, I would have preferred to not look at it with wide-open eyes, but I mustered up the courage to look straight at it… The size of the doll had to be that of an adult male. In other words, it was hard to view this as a female doll. My bigger little sister might be around the same height, maybe even taller, but in terms of skeletal structure, it seemed to have been designed with a male in mind.

It was strange to discuss skeletal structure for a stuffed doll made of cloth, but… Well, maybe it was the aftereffects of high-speed flight, but I couldn’t think clearly. I needed oxygen for my thoughts.

Plus, it was hot.

There was no point in continuing to wear these thick clothes anymore, so I might as well take off the jacket… I realized I was drenched in sweat. Half of it was probably a cold sweat, though… But I still couldn’t wrap my head around it. Was it due to a lack of oxygen, after all?

“The fruit knife is the same one that was stuck in the abused doll. And I don’t mean the same type of product. I mean it’s exactly the same one.”

She was being modest, but Ononoki-chan was analyzing the situation dispassionately, as if it were a crime scene investigation—well, Ononoki-chan didn’t need oxygen, after all. It was doubtful if she was even breathing.

However, exactly the same? Exactly?

I’d assumed that the fruit knife that had been stuck in the Iie-chan doll had flown away with it, wrapped up in that flying blanket, but I hadn’t been too concerned about it… But had it been in this next room all this time?

Stabbed into the father doll?

“…You’re certain? From what I can tell, it could just have been mass-produced?”

“The fingerprints on the grip are the same as the ones on the fruit knife I saw the other day.”

“O, Ononoki-chan, you can even analyze something like that!?”

Are your eyes a black light?

“That’s a lie, pyon. There’s a production number engraved on the edge of the handle. I’m saying that those numbers are the same.”

Don’t just say “that’s a lie, pyon”.

Don’t try to get through it with cuteness.

It would’ve been amazing enough just remembering the production number, but the pretense of being able to analyze fingerprints with the naked eye was so big that I failed to be impressed.

If you’re going to call yourself a tool, don’t do any false advertising.

But, the production number…?

“It’s probably a pretty good knife. Made in Switzerland. Maybe a limited edition with a serial number produced by a master craftsman?”

Seriously? Even though I’d called it mass-produced?

I couldn’t help that I couldn’t see the fingerprints, considering I was no longer a vampire, but I was disappointed in my eye for appraisal.

But it seemed to fit better than thinking that a college professor living in such a nice apartment used such a cheap fruit knife… Swiss knives were a famous brand in their own right. However, even though it fit better, I wanted to express my disapproval.

“Isn’t that a bit weird, Ononoki-chan? It would be impossible for the knife stuck in the back of the Iie-chan doll to simultaneously be stuck in the face of the father doll in the next room, right?”

“It’s not impossible with micro-quantum theory.”

“How pretentious.”

“But it’s not weird with some simple deduction. It’s not like we saw the knife in the two dolls at the same time, right? All you have to do is take the knife out of the back of one and stick it in the face of the other.”

The quantum theory had become a bizarre theory20, but well, that made sense logically—however, the problem was, someone had to perform that act of taking out and putting in the knife.

The homeowner was missing, and the husband, who I’d suspected was the “murderer” of the Iie-chan doll at the instigation of Ougi-kun—

The husband… was the father doll?

No, no. Whoever did this.

Whether it was the wife or the husband, or someone else.

That “stabber” stabbed the Iie-chan doll in the cage, and then they left once. And after we witnessed the stabbed Iie-chan doll, they came back, pulled the knife from the back of the Iie-chan doll, stabbed the father doll in the next room in the face, and then left again—whoa, whoa.

Even if “the criminal will return to the crime scene”, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a criminal that goes back and forth like that—

“Ah! N-no, Ononoki-chan! It’s true that I’ve been going back and forth to this apartment three times, but I’m not the criminal! Believe me!”

“I’m not doubting you. I can’t believe that you would joke around in this situation, onii-chan, but I like you.”

I’d ended up getting her favor.

It wasn’t a joke, though… In this situation, it was true that the most suspicious one would be me… That is, the possibility that I was playing a prank on Ononoki-chan. It would certainly be like me to overlook something like the fruit knife’s production number.

“I know that I’m not the culprit, but that’s really the most suspect-like line I can think of.”

“If you put it that way, then it could also be a prank on my part. A prank to set you up.”

“Set me up…? Didn’t you like me?”

“There are a hundred times as many things I don’t like as there are things I do like about you. But that’s not important. The prime suspect isn’t me or you, oni onii-chan. Not even the homeowner sensei or her husband.”

“? Then who is it?”

“The abused doll. Since it can move around.”

…Ah.

I see. That could also be division of labor.

Just because the murder weapon was the fruit knife, it didn’t mean that the culprit that stabbed the Iie-chan doll in the back was the same as the culprit who stabbed the father doll in the face—and the “victim = culprit” structure was a standard technique in mysteries, even more so than threefold locked rooms.

Although, the victim was a doll, so it was rather novel that it didn’t even have to pretend to be dead… Sometime between that day and today, had the Iie-chan doll pulled the fruit knife from its back and “murdered” the father doll in the next room?

“…The Iie-chan doll and the father doll. Is it okay to assume that their creator was the same person?”

“It does seem that way.”

Ougi-kun had hypothesized that the balloon-art-like stuffed doll creator and the artist who drew the “henohenomoheji” face were two different people, but it didn’t matter if the creator was one or two or more people working together… But it did mean that the Iie-chan doll didn’t make the father doll.

The father doll was originally in this room.

It lay spread-eagled.

And then it was stabbed.

“Revenge…? Would that be it? Um…”

I’d almost forgotten due to the rush of developments, but the reason I’d come here was to look for clues to help me find the estranged husband—to protect him, even though he could be targeted by the Iie-chan doll.

However, before even coming close to accomplishing that, are you saying that revenge had already been fulfilled? In the next room? Against a stuffed doll?

As payback for the despicable act of being stabbed in the back, it stabbed the doll in the face while looking into its eyes—although both the eyes doing the looking and the eyes being looked into were “henoheno“.

“Ah—or perhaps, could this have been a rehearsal? For when it was actually going to enact revenge on its ‘father’—”

“That way of thinking is very incompetent and cute, oni onii-chan.”

Ononoki-chan, as expressionless as ever, crossed her arms—and posed a question to that incompetent and cute me.

“But does that father even exist anywhere in this world? Are you sure that the estranged husband exists? Is it true that that intellectual sensei is even married?”