Monogatari Series - Volume 26 - Chapter 1.34

034

“It feels like I’m going to heaven—since I tied things up with such an unnecessary statement, is that how you found me here?”

If so, I was way too negligent, and that’s really pitiful of me—said Associate Professor Iesumi quite languidly, after we met for the first time in about a week.

I shook my head “no”.

“To be honest, I haven’t even read the letter properly yet.”

“Then please read it. It’s the letter left behind by a missing person, right? Even so, I didn’t think it would be deciphered so quickly.”

A testament.

That was not what Associate Professor Iesumi called it.

“Did you use an app?”

“No… Well, something like that.”

Well, I wasn’t going to tell her… The day of her disappearance, the letter she had left in her office had been discovered by me along with Meniko, who had accompanied me.

Not just four languages—she could probably speak over forty languages. Even I’d been surprised to find a college student who could speak Latin.

Even if it was a cryptogram mixed with Swiss German, Swiss French, Swiss Italian, and Romansh, it was nothing but a mental exercise for her… Well, she didn’t have a lot of time on her hands because of club activities and stuff, so she thought it took quite some time, but it was still a lot speedier than me tackling it myself.

The translation may have ended up a bit light-hearted thanks to her, but that’s something I could overlook…

“Didn’t you think I’d hand the letter straight to the police, or maybe even the university?”

“I can tell just by your quiz results that you don’t have the personality for something like that. Araragi-kun, you always try to fill in the answers to questions that you have no clue about, right? You don’t like to turn in an answer sheet that’s been left blank. You might rely on friends or apps, but I never once thought you’d relinquish a letter addressed to you without knowing what it said.”

“…If you can profile me like that just from my quiz results, you really are a good teacher.”

“Although I’m a fake. Can you answer my question? If you didn’t read my letter, Araragi-kun, then how did you find me here? In other words, the place I disappeared to.”

A little bear doll with an eyeball attached to it guided me here—but of course, I couldn’t say something like that. Instead, I said this.

“Associate Professor Iesumi, don’t you have a habit of throwing things you don’t need onto the roof?”

“Eh?”

Associate Professor Iesumi looked at me with an expression of bewilderment—but, in fact, this was the university building’s rooftop.

As soon as Ononoki-chan’s familiar collided with the school building, it began to climb up the wall just like that… Free climbing. At first, I’d thought it pitiful that its creator had not bestowed upon it the wisdom to circumvent obstacles, but I soon realized—the one who lacked wisdom was actually me.

I was the most pitiful one.

I should’ve noticed earlier that Associate Professor Iesumi’s office was located in said school building—and that the office was on the top floor, just like Room 333 of the apartment building.

A university professor who abruptly disappeared.

The office was empty, and nobody had seen her leaving the school building. She hadn’t gone home, and she’d left her car behind—but maybe no one had searched the roof of the school building, which was naturally off-limits, right?

It wasn’t so much as a blind spot as it was the first place you’d cross off the list, saying, “That can’t be it”… The idea that she was holed up in her apartment was still more plausible. At least at home, she would have had a good living environment and would be able to order everything she needed online—whereas on the school building, there was no electricity or even running water.

She would have zero lifelines.

It was unsuitable as a hiding place or a place to flee to… But if she wasn’t thinking about living or surviving, then it was a different story.

If she was just trying to escape.

If she was just trying to escape from this world—then the rooftop was the best place to do so.

“Did you think I’d jump to my death? I want to ascend to heaven. I don’t want to fall to the ground.”

Associate Professor Iesumi looked emaciated and gaunt—she was leaning against the fence, and didn’t even look at me until I called out to her.

To be honest, I thought I hadn’t made it in time and she’d become a Buddhist mummy… But she was still alive.

Though it was dim, her consciousness was still there.

“I’m good at living without drinking or eating. To the extent that that’s the only thing I’m good at.”

With the fence behind her back, that fence looked like it was part of a cage… It was as if she was still trapped. Trapped in the cage that her parents put her in.

But indeed, in this situation, there was no need to be afraid of her jumping off… I guess Ononoki-chan, who’d been on stand-by under the school building, wouldn’t have her time to shine.

Incidentally, to prepare for any falling objects, Ononoki-chan had collected the eyeball from the little bear doll… This was because she wouldn’t be able to catch anything without her sense of perspective. But it also meant that the little bear’s life was much too short.

It would be a bit too arrogant to mourn its life, but even more so than its navigation to the rooftop, the fact that it was discovered on the rooftop of the apartment was more helpful in guiding me to this very location. So I couldn’t help but be curious about its origin.

I’d acted like I hadn’t read the letter properly, but the truth was that I had read it properly… There had been a point where she’d mentioned teddy bears, but she hadn’t talked about this key chain itself.

From her reaction, it made me doubt whether or not it was something Associate Professor Iesumi even threw away… But, before that.

“In that case, would you like some water? Although it’s carbonated.”

“Hm?”

Associate Professor Iesumi strained to look.

She may have realized that the carbonated water had come from the trunk of her car, but she didn’t say anything about it.

“I’ll pass. If I drink water when I’m this hungry, I’ll get refeeding syndrome.”

That was her response—water shouldn’t cause refeeding syndrome, but it was too heavy of a statement coming from someone who had experienced having water as her sole source of nutrition. But had I really just barely made it?

In fact, a considerable number of days had passed… As I recalled—the maximum length of time a person could go without eating or drinking was, yes, about three days.

Not to mention, it was the middle of summer, underneath the blazing sun.

There was no way I’d made it in time.

“No, no, you’ve done very well. Good for you. I’m sure your parents will be very proud of you. You’ve managed to capture a major criminal alive.”

“…We can think about what to do later, but for now, why don’t we get out of here? It’s dangerous.”

“Dangerous? Why?”

Because there might be a blanket coming to get revenge on you—or so I thought about responding, but I decided not to.

Since I managed to find Associate Professor Iesumi while she was still alive, it definitely hadn’t been pointless, but after reading that deciphered letter, I realized it was a needless worry.

Surely, the Iie-chan doll had done nothing but escape—just as the mother had done from her mother.

That’s right. Speaking of the letter…

“Sorry. From what I read of the letter, there’s something I didn’t quite understand… So was it you that stabbed the Iie-chan doll with the fruit knife, Associate Professor Iesumi?”

“Eh…? Stabbed what?”

For the second time, Associate Professor Iesumi looked bewildered… It wasn’t that the term “Iie-chan doll” didn’t ring a bell—it was as if she really didn’t know what I was talking about.

I’d been thinking about adding onto that by asking who stabbed the father doll… But I guess I’ll stop here.

In the letter, Associate Professor Iesumi confessed that she’d been the one to make the dolls, but she never wrote that she was the one to stab them.

The bear doll on the roof. The clothes that attacked.

The reason why there was no child seat installed in her car was because the existence of Iie-chan was false in the first place, and Associate Professor Iesumi’s handiwork was limited only to her house… Though this major criminal had laid herself bare with this confession, there were still many mysteries left to be solved.

Not to mention, how much of the letter was actually true…? I didn’t think that Associate Professor Iesumi was much of a liar, but there were quite a few things in there that didn’t seem like they could be true.

But it wasn’t my job to solve those mysteries.

All I could do was to fill in the answer sheet without leaving any blanks.

“Did I go wrong when I sought help from you, Araragi-kun?”

Associate Professor Iesumi, who was unable to stand up, spoke to me as I offered her a hand, but it sounded like she was talking mostly to herself.

Yeah, you could say that.

She’d mentioned in her letter that it wasn’t her intention to ask me to clean things up for her, but as it turned out, instead of tidying up, I’d just about destroyed Associate Professor Iesumi’s apartment and car as much as I could… If she had only listened a little more carefully to the rumors from my dear childhood friend, she would have realized that I was a completely undependable and lazy son.

So, even though in my mind I agreed with her wholeheartedly, I changed my mind, as if that wasn’t it at all.

“No. You went wrong when you tried to die,”

I answered.

It was a compensatory answer that was unlikely to receive any extra credit.