Monogatari Series - Volume 26 - Chapter 2.07

007

On the second page of my sketchbook, I wrote down an itemized list of everything I currently knew, as though I were making character sheets for a manga—as a trainee, I didn’t have the authority to learn some of the more private details, so the information that Gaen-san had given me was somewhat lacking.

And though I’d already known, after writing out the information and adding some simple illustrations, I was able to realize something anew.

As a “veteran” of sorts, I could imagine quite realistically the pain that the victims—Alfa-san, Bravo-san, and Charlie-san—must have felt when being strangled by the jagirinawa. But that level of recognition wasn’t nearly enough… I hadn’t even considered the feelings of the victims’ families, especially the one who’d discovered them.

Especially for Household C… How awful must it have been for the son who’d discovered his mother hanging and had to rescue her? For the sake of their privacy, Gaen-san had not mentioned the ages of anyone involved, but if he had been a grade schooler, he might suffer from PTSD for a lifetime.

It would be rough even for a middle schooler.

“Even I’ve recently been thinking, ‘Go to hell!’ to my parents every so often, but that kid won’t be able to say those typical things in his head anymore.”

“Thinking that your parents should go to hell isn’t exactly typical, though… Well, taking into account the treatment you’ve been getting, I suppose it’s healthy enough that you’re not saying that you want to kill them out loud. Congratulations on entering your rebellious phase, Nadekou.”

I couldn’t say I’d received any proper ethics training, but I renewed my resolve to prevent another tragedy from occurring, for the sake of that child—although, all it said that he was a son, so it was possible that he was someone far older than me, someone in his thirties. Even so, there was no one that would stay calm after discovering a family member being hanged.

“But I would like it if I had a better summary of each individual case. I know that I’m still a rookie, and that I’ve made a lot of messes and still don’t have Gaen-san’s trust, but it’s not like I’m asking for a copy of their family registers. I’ve heard that Oshino-san was quite blunt and persistent in prying into his clients’ circumstances, you know?”

“That’s just Oshino onii-chan’s way of doing things. As for my onee-chan, she doesn’t even listen to people at all. And Gaen-san doesn’t even need to hear them out, because she already knows.”

“Mhm…”

“And despite already knowing, she might deliberately ignore them. After listening to a client’s situation, a specialist might get too emotional to take the right actions, or even worse, they might get caught up in that situation themselves. If you want to avoid cases like the mummy retriever becoming a mummy themselves, it’s safer to be ignorant.”

“Like how people that can sense the supernatural can actually be weaker to haunted areas?”

“Yeah, like that—wanting as much information as possible is a royal road that only Oshino onii-chan can walk down, due to his neutrality at all times, against all others. And oni onii-chan is always failing when he tries to copy that.”

If you think he’s failing so much, you should teach him a few things… But that person certainly seemed like he would get swept up in others’ situations and emotions.

“It might be important for you to maintain a clear vision of what kind of specialist you want to become. Speaking of which, with the way you like to think about things while making little notes and drawings, you’re the same type as Kaiki onii-chan.”

“Really?”

“With such a sinister face,  he’s pretty artistic.”

A sinister face didn’t really have any relation to artistic ability… But, sure, I guess? Was that why that con man was so understanding about my dreams, back then? Don’t tell me he had aspirations to become a mangaka in his teens, too…

“I was too anxious to ask that question to Kaiki onii-chan myself, but it’s surprisingly possible. Drawing out his plans for cons is like drawing out a story, after all. He plans things out by gathering data, using his imagination, and preparing lines for the characters that will appear—it was basically like that when he went to deceive you, right?”

“That’s right… That person, he…”

I nearly lost myself in my recollections, but after thinking about it even more, it was the fault of that con man that I’d ended up getting strangled by the jagirinawa, too. I didn’t want to stubbornly retread old ground, but I couldn’t help my suspicions. Could it be that this snake’s den was also a part of Kaiki-san’s con game…?

“It’s possible. That’s a good observation.”

She wasn’t defending him.

Even though she called him “onii-chan”.

“Coming from someone who nearly killed the person they loved and called ‘onii-chan’. Both for Koyomi-onii-chan, and Kaiki onii-chan.”

“I don’t call Kaiki-san ‘onii-chan’, though…?”

“Even so, although that con man is a con man, he’s not a murderer… I don’t know if he’s the kind of person that would just curse someone to death.”

True.

Hanging the residents of this apartment wasn’t going to lead to even the tiniest profit—and it was unlikely that they were (failed) murder attempts for the sake of insurance payouts, since they were staged as suicides.

“I’ve heard there are insurance claims that pay out for suicides, but it’s still bizarre to have three consecutive suicides when there’s no connection between the residents of this apartment.”

“Three consecutive—”

It had been a part of the limited information I’d received.

Though I didn’t know the precise lengths, the residents had lived here for three years, two months, and three weeks—I didn’t know when the room had become a snake’s den, but it was easy to get the impression that the time it took for a resident to get hanged slowly grew shorter.

For Household A, it was possible that the curse only took effect after a single day, so it was hard to say for sure. But it did support the theory that the curse grew stronger the more it happened.

A death really might occur for a fourth case…

My arms trembled at the thought that someone’s life or death depended on my doodles… And they weren’t trembling with excitement. Well, the truth was that Ononoki-chan was there for me in case I messed up, and if she wasn’t enough, I assumed Gaen-san was ready to follow up… But it would be wrong for me to rely on that.

Since I was forbidden from performing the test of hanging myself from the chandelier, I could only guess at how the snake’s den worked in light of my own experience as a victim, as Gaen-san had hinted.

It takes a snake to know a snake.

Not a royal road, but a road of snakes—that was what I would look back on.

Right, first off, Kaiki-san the con man had come to my town and sold my former friend a curse—or rather, a charm…

“Huh? But the charm itself didn’t actually work, right? The curse itself was a scam. Then there’s no way Kaiki-san is involved in this.”

“That’s a good observation.”

You don’t need to bother with giving me hints, so just change up your lines a little.

“But if you’re going to draw anyone, then draw me. If you draw yourself getting hanged using your own artistic ability, I’m worried that will turn into a curse in itself. In that case, since I’m already dead, I won’t die from being hanged.”

“…That’s a good observation.”

I didn’t want to draw my friend being hanged… But if I drew an unrelated third party getting hanged, that could turn into a curse as well, so I would have to depend on Ononoki-chan for this one.

Although, if I drew with such low motivation, it seemed unlikely that a hanging would actually occur… If only the invisible snake would show up in such a gloomy drawing, then that would be a wrap.

“It’d be a wrap after the snake wraps around my neck? How amusing.”

“You aren’t amused at all!”

“So instead of using live bait to catch that hanging snake, it’ll be a lure instead. Can I make a request? Draw me so that I look like I’m writhing in pain. With my one eye bulging out of its socket. Then we can use it as official art for the anime.”

“Art like that will just cause the anime to be canceled!”

It would be unrealistic, but I decided to draw the hanging Ononoki-chan with her eyes closed and a peaceful expression. As though you couldn’t even tell she was dead… Well, she was already a corpse, so of course she would be dead.

Putting aside her expression (or lack thereof), I’d already drawn Ononoki-chan about a million times in every pose from every angle, so much so that I could even input her data into a 3D printer, so it was easy to draw her hanging. I could even draw her with my eyes closed. Not to mention, her maxi-length one-piece was remarkably easier to draw than her previous layered skirt.

I thought things over as I drew.

The jagirinawa that I’d experienced had basically gone out of control… Though it would normally have been a curse with no effect, I had ended up manifesting it at the focal point known as the Kitashirahebi Shrine.

I could hardly think that Alfa-san, Bravo-san, and Charlie-san had all followed in my foolish footsteps, three times in a row… In other words, the proper version of the jagirinawa‘s curse must have been invoked in this very room, which made me curious as to the motive.

“What happened to the resident that lived here before Household A? There was no Zulu-san of Household Z that was hanged, right?”

“Right. The residents before them and the residents even further back were all able to move out peacefully and safely.”

“…Mhm.”

It was difficult to gauge how old this building was from its design, so I’d wondered if Household A was actually the first residents of this apartment, so that response was a bit unexpected.

So basically, if the room was a snake’s den right now, then there had once been a time that it wasn’t… Mm… Huh? Then, what if Alfa-san of Household A had done something to get him cursed by the snake? And that curse would have simply remained in the room and affected Households B and C as well—no, it was a convincing hypothesis, but there was no explanation for the step-by-step increase in the speed of the curse.

If I took into account only the events that occurred without any preconceptions, it would seem like Household B was more strongly cursed than Household A, and Household C was more strongly cursed than Household B—wait a second?

Turning that around, why hadn’t anyone except Alfa-san, Bravo-san, and Charlie-san gotten hanged? If I was going to think about how shocking it was for a child to be the one to discover his parent’s hanging, then I should shrewdly consider why the parents were not the one to discover their child’s hanging.

If this was truly a cursed room and a snake’s den, then there shouldn’t be any pattern to the targets—regardless of if they were a family or a couple, there was something suspicious and unpleasant about the fact that the victims’ attributes were spread out across “father”, “girlfriend”, and “mother”.

It made me feel a sense of unease as though the curse’s motive was less, “Anyone will do,” and more, “It was spread out on purpose”. Like that urban legend I’d seen online about a music player that would deliberately spread out songs to make it sound random when you shuffled the playlist…

“That’s a good observation. But just by saying you’d seen it online, you can involuntarily cast doubt on your credibility, so you should phrase it like this just to be safe. ‘It was confirmed via the Internet.’”

Ooh.

Nice correction.

It suddenly sounded like something from an IT department.

“If you want to sound even more convincing, you can say, ‘The accuracy of this information is yet to be determined, but after data mining from multiple sources, these are the facts that can be inferred at this time.’”

“Amazing… It sounds amazing, but all I did was surf the web…”

“It’s half-convincing rumors that give rise to stories about oddities, so credibility isn’t actually a requirement, but if this were truly a cursed snake’s den, it’s abnormal that it wasn’t the whole family, or the entire couple, that was hanged.”

Calling it abnormal made it sound like she actually wanted them to be hanged… The hangings had only failed because they had been discovered, but why hadn’t the discoverers also been cursed?

Was there really a curse that only targeted one person per household? It wasn’t like this was some special sale at a supermarket…

“…All right. I’m done. I’ll call this ‘The Hanged Tween Girl’. For the hanging material, I went for a basic plastic tape.”

“Now that you’ve drawn it, it’s more gross than I thought it would be. That calm, resting face makes it look like I’m actually dead. Although I actually am dead. …And is plastic tape really basic? Since it’s such a commonly used tool, it leaves an even more gruesome impression… I’d just like to check, but you don’t hold any ill intentions towards me, right?”

“No, no, no, no. I like you a lot, Ononoki-chan.”

When Ononoki-chan showed her sensitivity for a moment, I responded in a flustered state—my drawing ability had ended up coming out in full force. I’d thought that my motivation was low, but when I began drawing, my hand really did end up moving on its own.

“You’d better tell me if you do have something against me. So that I can fix it.”

“Really, there’s nothing! Nothing but love, Ononoki-chan.”

At this point, it was less that I had grown attached to her and more that I was being haunted by her… Just like how this room was being haunted by a snake—but was it really being haunted?

I was quite satisfied with the quality of “The Hanged Tween Girl”, but yet again, it had not managed to depict any invisible snakes like some sort of spirit photography—it seemed even this fourth approach was a swing and a miss.

Not a “three strikes and you’re out”—I’d gotten to four strikes.

With nothing showing up after going this far, I was starting to think that it really was just a coincidence… Perhaps it was because it wasn’t a curse that things seemed so unnatural from a specialist’s point of view?

Though it was even more unnatural to believe that the hangings were completely unrelated to each other, and each victim had planned their suicide independently due to circumstances unbeknownst to me… Although it did explain why it didn’t end up as a family suicide.

“What about the scale marks that all three victims had in common?”

“Oh, that’s right. Those were there—but could those have just been misidentified? Like, you were expecting to see it, so that’s what it looked like to you… Like a Rorschach test.”

Even as I said that, I knew that the argument was forced. It might be possible for someone as careless as me, but with someone as influential as Gaen-san involved, there was no way someone would make such a bonehead play.

On the other hand, the only direct evidence that (quite literally) entangled the jagirinawa to this case were the bruises around the victims’ necks.

It would be one thing if we were still in my town that encircled the mountain on which the Kitashirahebi Shrine stood, but it was hard to see how a capital city like this could be swarming with snakes…

“Is that your intuition as a snake-catching master? Then I’ll believe it.”

“This isn’t meant to be me complaining about how Gaen-san is testing me, but could it be that this is just a trick question?”

“A trick question?”

“A case where the correct answer is that there’s no oddity involved. Even on school exams, you’ll have questions like, ‘From A, B, C, and D, select all statements that are true,’ but A through D were actually all false, right?”

“Indeed, now that you say that, that does seem like the kind of trick Gaen-san would play. That’s a good observation.”

Was she stubbornly repeating that to make it a catchphrase for an eyepatch-wearing character?…

In that case, that wouldn’t be a good observation.

“I’m not just trying to gloss over it, and I’m not just trying to make it a new catchphrase—that sort of judgment is crucial for a specialist to have. If you were to treat anything and everything as an oddity phenomenon, it would not only be dangerous, but also irresponsible.”

Was this also what Oshino-san was trying to imply when he said that we shouldn’t blame everything on oddities?

In that case, I shouldn’t make a premature decision.

It was probably rude and disagreeable to try and read too much into the intentions of the examiner, but my life was on the line… If I answered incorrectly here, then I’d lose my job, be kicked out of my house, and end up on the streets.

It was a world of difference from a correct answer.

…Though I’d said some admirable stuff like wanting to prevent another victim or caring about the discoverer’s PTSD, it turned out that I was really just acting in self-interest to secure a place to live after graduation, which dampened my spirits a little.

“That’s totally fine. You’re not a god anymore. A sincere, selfless devotion is fine for oni onii-chan, or for short, onii-chan, but it would be a pain if everyone was like that. In the end, Gaen-san judged onii-chan’s approach to be a failure, anyway.”

“So he failed.”

“For now, anyway. By the time he graduates from university, maybe that devotion of his will have grown up a little—well, onii-chan’s first step should be to move out of his home, too.”

“That’s for sure.”

If he did that, then it would make it easier for me to live in the Araragi household—just kidding.

“So it’s fine if you’re a little selfish. It’s fine to read into Gaen-san’s intentions, and it’s fine if you don’t consider them at all. I may have said that you have to follow the client’s request, but ultimately, even that doesn’t matter.”

“Um, I think that’s going a little too far…”

Even without it being said, I was aware that I was already acting fairly selfishly by skipping school and trying to move out, but I couldn’t go so far as to ignore the apartment building owner’s altruistic desire to prevent deaths from occurring.

“It ain’t altruistic at all. I won’t deny that that’s a part of it, but from the owner’s standpoint, that’s definitely not all there is to it, so you don’t need to worry about it.”

“? What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean?”

For some reason, Ononoki-chan and I were bantering like a pair of lovers… Not to mention, I was in the boyfriend role. Maybe I should slam her against a wall? Using the Kuchinawa-san version.

“I’m the one asking, what the hell do you mean, hmmm!?”

…That’s just domestic violence.

Heaven forbid.

“The owner said that he would be in trouble if someone were to die in this room. Because it would become stigmatized property,”

said Ononoki-chan.

Stigmatized property… Oh yeah, I remember hearing something like that in the beginning. If the hanged victims were to pass away, then the room would become stigmatized…

“Do you know what stigmatized means?”

What kind of idiot do you take Sengoku Nadeko for?

Of course I know, even if I don’t know everything.

For any real estate in which there have been strange deaths (not limited to suicides)—whether it’s an apartment or a single-family house, and whether it’s for rent or for sale—there’s an obligation for that death to be reported, right? I’ve heard that you have to include a proviso saying that such-and-such incident happened at this location, which makes it harder to process real estate…

There was no need to specify that this room was a snake’s den, but the owner would still be required to mention the fact that a person had died here in an unusual manner.

Ah, still, the owner surely didn’t make this request to Gaen-san for that reason alone, but since this was a business transaction, it wouldn’t be unusual if he took that simple calculation into account.

“Basically, because Alfa-san of Household A survived his hanging, the couple in Household B was able to move in without being informed. And similarly, because Bravo-san of Household B escaped her death, the family in Household C was able to move in without being informed…”

“That’s right. If Alfa had lost his life, Then the tragedies that came afterwards may not have occurred at all.”

It was a harsh way of putting it. But it was true that if there had been a notice about the previous resident’s suicide, it would be unlikely that the couple or family would consider moving in… This may be a designer apartment, and one of the best rooms in the building, but even if they were informed that a suicide had occurred—if they were informed?

“……”

“Hm? What’s the matter, Nadekou? You’re looking down again, just like you did in the past. But you don’t have any bangs, so your face isn’t hidden at all, you know? Are you ashamed of yourself after your lack of understanding of humanity was thrust upon you?”

“No, that’s not it… But when was my lack of understanding of humanity thrust upon me?”

Rather than being shocked at my own lack of understanding, I was more shocked that something so immense was thrust upon me without me knowing it, but putting that aside.

“I may have figured out the culprit. The instigator behind the snake’s curse.”

“Oho? Then, there really was a curse. And it wasn’t just a trick question from Gaen-san. Then tell me, who’s the culprit?”

It was the same monotone as ever, but Ononoki-chan seemed greatly interested as she interrupted, so I said,

“It was a trick question. Mm… It might even be heinous,”

in response.

“The culprit—is me.”

“…Ah. The usual, I see?”

“Don’t call it ‘the usual’!”