Monogatari Series - Volume 27 - Chapter 1.13

013

The completely unprecedented and utterly bizarre phenomenon of Oikura apologizing to me, which would never happen even if heaven and earth were to flip over, had in fact happened. And, after having attained a level of certainty, my next action was to return to my parents’ place—or, to be precise, my homeground. I’d already returned during New Year’s, so ultimately this wasn’t much different from when I’d been commuting via car (or so I contemplated during my homecoming41), but with things as they were, there was no time for me to take a break at my lodgings.

It was fine to settle down, but I couldn’t sit back and relax.

Needless to say, there was the instinctive desire to get as far as possible, as fast as possible, from the strange and peculiar character of an apologetic Oikura Sodachi, but as soon as I understood the situation, I also realized, upon thinking about it for a bit, that the situation had gotten a little out of my control.

I didn’t want to admit it, though…

I wasn’t entirely retracting my previous statement, but even though I’d said, “Let’s settle this,” with a carefree mood, I couldn’t exactly say this was within my field of expertise… I could almost hear someone say to me, “Do you even have a field of expertise to begin with?” but at the very least, I definitely had a field of inexpertise.

When it came to oddities that made mental attacks like this, there was never a case in which I behaved in a useful way… There was no place to exercise the immortal power of a vampire. Speaking from experience, even though vampires had attained perfection physically, the longer the life they lived, the weaker they were to mental attacks.

It wasn’t like I could send the apologizing Oikura flying with the brute strength of a vampire… This was different from when I could face apparitions with a physical presence like the bakeneko or the monkey’s paw or the snake god (not that I was all that useful against the bakeneko or the monkey’s paw or the snake god, but let’s put that aside for now).

If anything, it was closer to the situation where I faced the crab that had caught Senjougahara Hitagi… At this point, it was like we were returning to our starting point, or dragging back up the bygone days of the far past, and I was a bit fed up with it. But if this was following the same trend as Hitagi’s case, then aha, that was probably it.

Oddities have their own appropriate reasons.

No matter how strange, no matter how odd they are, they follow a certain logic—that’s also why we shouldn’t be blaming anything and everything on oddities. Even if some strange phenomenon occurs, it will be the fault of humans.

And so, I made a triumphant return to my homeground.

Well, it was less like I was returning home in glory and more like I was coming home with my tail between my legs, but fortunately, while I was kidding about the triumphant return, I wasn’t merely running home to escape.

I was returning to seek assistance.

Maybe people could only be saved on their own, but that wasn’t necessarily the case when it came to saving others—if anything, the more the merrier, or so was Araragi Koyomi’s stance.

It was just that I couldn’t gather that many people.

There was no hope for my popularity.

Since entering university, I would usually rely on Ononoki-chan for cases like these, but unfortunately, because she had overdone her support for me who she was just supposed to be surveilling (my bad), her actions were currently being restricted indefinitely. Well, even if it weren’t for that, that muscle-obsessed shikigami tween girl was even more of a power-based character than a vampire was, so a weirdness like this was probably not her specialty either.

Plus, I wasn’t looking to rely completely on a tween girl.

Speaking of specialty, in times like these I should be asking a specialist for help, but I’d unfortunately completely cut ties with everyone in that field, so that wasn’t something I could rely on—hmm, even if she was just taking advantage of our friendship, was it still a mistake to break off the connection with Gaen-san?

That Hawaiian-shirt guy, who handled the case with Hitagi’s crab, was probably off wandering somewhere… I didn’t have the contact information of Ononoki-chan’s master, Kagenui-san, but even if I did, that violent onmyouji was someone I didn’t want to approach first, if possible.

Kaiki? Who the heck is that.

In the first place, if I wanted to rely on a specialist, I needed to be able to provide the appropriate level of compensation, so as a university student who didn’t work a part-time job and lived purely off of an allowance, it was a difficult option for me to take—that appropriate level was beyond me. I’d already learned enough from having to bear a debt of five million yen. And that wasn’t even from student loans.

However, that didn’t necessarily mean that my path forward was blocked in every direction… You could say that from the very beginning, I’d already thought of a potential way to break out of this troublesome situation. That was why I was driving home in my Volkswagen New Beetle, in order to face my inner self that I’d left behind. No, not my inner self—if we were two sides of the same coin, then it would be like my back side…

Yes.

Araragi Koyomi’s back side—Oshino Ougi.

“Ka ka. Though you’d fought fiercely to graduate from that, it seems it’s still following you around, that darkness. Don’t you think so?”

When I looked over, in the passenger seat of the New Beetle, or more precisely, in the child seat that had been placed in the passenger seat of the New Beetle, a golden-haired young girl sat there reclined, as though enshrined—the former iron-blooded, hot-blooded, cold-blooded former vampire, a different Oshino that had been one step ahead, Oshino Shinobu, had appeared.

No matter how regally she reclined, she was ultimately not on top of a throne but on top of a child seat, so that haughty and arrogant attitude actually made me feel relieved inside.

If even Shinobu had begun to start apologizing to me, my mental state probably wouldn’t be able to take it—if she had said something like, “Sorry for sucking your blood on that spring break,” I really would follow along with the trend of most vampires and kill myself. Even as a mere shadow of a vampire.

“Hmph. A useless concern. I have never once bowed my head to anyone. I am the King of Oddities, after all.”

“I-is that so…? But, on that spring break, I feel like you said ‘I’m sorry’ a whole bunch of times to me before sucking my blood…”

“When I say it with my manner of speech, it would have been in the imperative form, like, ‘Be sorry!’ I might have even said, ‘Say you are sorry.’ ‘Tis like how you can confuse ‘bye’ with ‘by the way’.42 Something like that could hardly be considered an apology.”

“I feel like you also apologized a lot for destroying the world with a careless mistake…”

“That happened in another world. Whatever could you mean? I have no recollection of it.”

Maybe she was just playing dumb, but when she used that manner of speech to say she didn’t remember, it made it sound like she didn’t remember because of her old age… Well, she was six hundred years old. But I didn’t want to point it out and have her start fiddling with her brain like she did in the past… If anything, I wanted to keep the interior of my car clean.

I didn’t even let her eat donuts inside.

“But my master, you sure are a cold man. How deplorable. If you were seeking help, you should clearly have looked to me, your partner for life, as the very first person.”

Oh, sure.

Even though you didn’t even show your face last time.

“I’m not good with this sort of thing, so neither are you, right? For a mental-based phenomenon like this. I was seriously worried that you might hold an apology press conference for me, you know?”

“Ka ka. A similar concern could be held for you, too. ‘Tis not the time to be worried about me. Have you considered the possibility that, after naively returning to your hometown, you might suddenly be overcome with regret for everything you’ve done to the little girl, the tween girl, the young girl, and your two sisters?”

“What are you talking about? I don’t know anything. You got any proof?”

“Rather than someone approaching old age, you just sound like a criminal. I sentence you to six hundred years in prison.”

However, just as she’d pointed out, it was unclear how long I could stay cracking jokes like this. Thanks to Oikura, I’d become convinced that some sort of incident was occurring, but I had yet to grasp the source of the phenomenon. There was no guarantee that neither Shinobu nor I were safe from being captured by delusions of sinfulness—and with regards to our master-servant relationship, that was something that we’d both agreed on to never apologize to each other about, so if we were to be hit, it would be lethal.

The world could be destroyed again.

“In that case, what of that darkness girl you are planning to rely on? There’s no guarantee that she will remain sane.”

“Well, Ougi-chan was never sane in the first place.”

“She might come apologizing to you. Saying, ‘Sorry for being just a little bit meddlesome last year,’ or something like that.”

“That apology just sounds more like a New Year’s greeting…”

I couldn’t say that I wasn’t concerned, but considering that I was still fine, I figured Ougi-chan was, as well… As long as Ougi-chan and I were two sides of the same coin.

Two sides of the same coin.

That’s why I was turning to her for assistance… If there was anyone who was an expert on front and back sides, it was Oshino Ougi. And speaking of another world, when I’d gotten myself lost in the “Mirror World” some time ago, it was Oshino Ougi that had rescued me in the end.

“That lively, energetic, positive Oikura from back then was already bad enough, but this apologetic Oikura is seriously too hard to look at… If she doesn’t regain her senses and start cursing me out, there would’ve been no point in me moving in next to her.”

“As I have been saying for a while, you should be the one to apologize. To that generic girl.”

“Don’t call Oikura generic. She’s not just some cheap knockoff of Hitagi.”

Unlike last time, not everything had been flipped over, and that was probably something I should keep an eye on… And by everything, I didn’t just mean everything in the world, but also everything on a personal level.

For both Senjougahara Hitagi and Oikura Sodachi, if you ignored the part where they were apologizing incessantly, you could say they were driving smoothly… It was just that they were traveling down the highway of apologies.

“Rather than highways, it’s more like they have the force of those German motorways. What was it called… Bahnauto?”

“‘Tis the Autobahn. Bahnauto would just be ‘burnout’.”

“I actually thought I would burn out, though. Without even leaving any charcoal behind. …Ah, but, speaking of the ‘Mirror World’, over there, you were ‘Princess Beauty’.”

“Hoho. Though I am still beautiful even now.”

Shinobu made to smooth down her blonde hair, all the while still in her child seat.

How lax of her, even though her seat belt was tight.

“‘Twas simply that the princess became a slave. I would not mind if you called me ‘Slave Beauty’ from now on. But what of it?”

“It was something I remembered when Hitagi brought up suicidal thoughts, but when you were ‘Princess Beauty’, you were so noble and virtuous that anyone who was in audience would be so overcome with an inferiority complex that they’d feel, ‘It’s inexcusable for me to be alive,’ right?”

As I’d mentioned before, I’d felt that it was better to not have Shinobu cooperate in dealing with this phenomenon, but now that she had already shown herself, that was something we probably needed to discuss… I believed that Hitagi’s suicidal thoughts were just rhetoric, but as someone who’d come close to ending his own life in front of “Princess Beauty” in that “Mirror World”, I wanted to prepare for the worst.

To put it like how the Boy Scouts would put it: “Be Prepared, For the Worst”.

“Are you trying to say that I am the culprit behind this case? Goodness, how dare you make such a false accusation? Very well, go ahead and arrest me. I shall be let go soon enough.”

“You’re the one sounding like a criminal. Like one of those upper-class criminals.”

Well, of course.

She wasn’t just upper-class, she was a princess.

And even a king.

“But, the time I spent as a princess was six hundred years ago, and that’s much too far back to remember clearly. Not to mention, ‘twas not an oddity phenomenon at all.”

“Really?”

“‘Twas a trait of mine from before I became a vampire, you see—and ‘twas for the sake of losing that trait that I became Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade—or maybe it was not…”

Her memory really was fuzzy.

But, now that she mentioned it… If I was being careless, I could easily mix this up with the vampire’s skill of “fascination” that Hanekawa had once told me about. But that “Sorry for being alive” thing might only seem like, but not actually be the same as, Hitagi’s and Oikura’s, and even Boyfie-kun’s, aggressive apologizing.

Or rather, it would be bad if they were the same.

“So you’re saying that that was not one of your traits as an oddity, but one of your skills as a human? In that case, I have a hypothesis. Basically, Meniko and I have become so charming and gracious as humans that we started affecting our surroundings…”

“Ha! Ha ha! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!”

“Oh, the vampire way of laughing.”

Well, I nearly made myself laugh with what I’d just said… Hamukai Meniko might be a rather eccentric oddball, and she was pretty popular on top of that, but after bringing up the princess class, it was unreasonable to expect that level of charisma from her.

And as for me, it went without saying.

I didn’t even want to say it.

Charisma? More like early summer.43

“Early summer doesn’t exactly suit you, either. You’re more like midwinter.”

After laughing her heart out, she immediately retorted as soon as she caught her breath (what was this, a flash freeze?).

“Not even I can say for certain, but this doesn’t seem like the work of a living human, you and your friend included—as you’ve judged, ‘twould be appropriate to see this as the work of a non-living oddity. One that cannot be handled by brute force. …Of course, there still remains the possibility that a living human is making use of a non-living oddity,”

she continued.

While it was conditional, it seemed she was provisionally in favor of my independent actions—how reassuring. Well, there have been plenty of times when the two of us working together had ended up being a mistake, so I couldn’t lower my guard just yet.

“Then, do you have any ideas, not as ‘Princess Beauty’ but as the ‘King of Oddities’? Is there an oddity that can operate mentally like this?”

“Well, I was never a gourmet. They may have been sources of energy, but I was never too knowledgeable on the variations of oddities. I can only roughly classify them based on the nutrients they give.”44

“But you told me about the kakoi-hibachi back then.”

That was an oddity that affected the body—I think? Or was that more like the placebo effect, and it was an oddity that affected the mind?—so the foundation of it was basically like a scam.

“That was just me parroting what that Hawaiian-shirt brat told me. You know, a girl outside the temple gate.45 Like how I am bound to your shadow now, it was when I was bound to the ruins of that cram school that I received that lecture.”

“Ah, that’s right. Kujaku-chan’s case was also from hearsay, wasn’t it.”

“I have pretty much forgotten all that, too. Right now, when you suddenly said something incomprehensible like the kakoi-hibachi, you left me extremely dumbfounded.”

What an unreliable memory… At this rate, she might actually have forgotten all about what happened with Shishirui Seishirou, too.

You really shouldn’t live that long a life.

Though I wanted to live one.

However, putting aside the teachings of that Hawaiian-shirt guy, there were lots of things that you needed to forget in order to continue living… Like crimes, or sins.

Receiving harm and causing harm.

Even if the perpetrator forgets, the victim won’t forget—I guess it was like, the person who forgets will forget, but the person who is forgotten won’t forget? In that case, I suppose I had no choice but to place my expectations on the niece of that “Hawaiian-shirt brat” Oshino Meme, also known as Oshino Ougi… She herself was certainly not an authority on oddities, but this was clearly in her genre.

You might even say it was her favorite dish—after all, Oshino Ougi was an underclassman that enjoyed putting psychological pressure on me.

Mental attacks were her forte.

“......”

I had never seriously doubted Shinobu, who was once “Princess Beauty”, but as a matter of fact, wasn’t it pretty possible for Ougi-chan to be the mastermind behind this incident?

If that was true, then me driving my car back home was more like a moth flying into a flame, but the present situation was such that I had no other option I could take. Although we’d more or less settled things before my graduation,  I still needed to take all possible precautions, lest she take revenge against me.

Well, that basically meant I couldn’t be too patronizing to my old junior—I had to steel myself for when we finally met.

“Still… It’ll be pretty difficult to meet with Ougi-chan just by going back home. Even starting from where she lives, it’s a complete mystery.”

Ougi-chan was presently a second-year at Naoetsu High, so perhaps a simple visit to my alma mater would suffice, but as an alumnus whose memories of his high school life weren’t particularly pleasant, I honestly did not want to go back there if possible.

Otherwise, I hadn’t really thought about it, so what to do? With a phenomenon exceeding my comprehension currently occurring, it was true that it wasn’t exactly the time to be acting selfish…

So, if there was no other option, I wasn’t against taking that route, but before that, I could still make all the moves that I could make—after all, I couldn’t overlook the fact that the current Oshino Ougi, who I’d described as my back side, was also involved with yet another junior of mine: Naoetsu High’s superstar and the ace of the basketball club, Kanbaru Suruga. She had gotten close to that girl that had once prayed to a monkey, and, well, was being just a little bit meddlesome.

Basically, the correct move was to enter the address of Kanbaru’s house into my navigation—thinking about it, the last time I’d met Ougi-chan was outside the gate of Kanbaru’s house, so, while I was at it, maybe I’d go and clean up my cute junior’s room for the first time in a while.