Monogatari Series - Volume 27 - Chapter 2.02

002

“I’ve always been wondering about which of my friends would be the first to come visit me—but I never expected it would be you, the ever-so-cute Nadeko-chan.”

I’m in despair at my own lack of popularity.113

Nakuna-chan, who lay in her sickbed riddled with holes, said that quite unexpectedly.

And when I said riddled with holes, that wasn’t a metaphor to mean that what she was saying was completely inconsistent, but a description of how she looked—Nakuna-chan’s head, neck, collarbone, chest, arms, hands, and fingers had all been pierced through with holes.

Perforations that you could see through to the other side dotted her body at random—a person with trypophobia would faint at the sight.

Rather than saying that holes had formed in Nakuna-chan, it was more like Nakuna-chan was formed from stitching together the spaces between the holes.

Though I couldn’t see them, I had no doubt that her torso concealed by the patient gown she wore and her legs concealed by the bed’s blanket were in the same state—if I looked closely, I could see that the thin bedding had slight indentations here and there, where the holes would be.

To speak figuratively and imprudently, her body was like the chassis of a lightweight Mini 4WD—she wasn’t the same as Senjougahara-san, who’d once been caught by a crab, but wouldn’t her weight have gotten considerably lighter?

Of course, the holes didn’t actually exist.

The idea of holes existing was kind of a contradiction, even figuratively speaking (it reminded me of the donuts that Shinobu-chan loves—“eat the donuts leaving only the holes behind!”), but in any case, it was impossible for a person to survive with their body covered with this many perforations… Even with half the number, or even a fourth.

Depending on the location, even one was impossible.

Like, there was a hole in her eyeball, and I could see through it to the wall behind her, you know? And her neck was so full of holes that it wasn’t even hanging on by a thread114—if I were to describe it as a gigantic hole punch having gouged out her body, was that punchy enough to get the message across, even despite my poor descriptive ability?

I wasn’t very good at expressing things with words. I’ve been inarticulate for quite a long time.

With that in mind, if you would allow me to amend one of my previous statements, then the holes that covered Nakuna-chan’s body were not completely at random, when I looked closely—the locations were scattered all over, but there were always two equidistant holes that appeared as one set.

Two holes.

Does that remind you of something?

That’s right, they were just like the vampire bite marks in the nape of the neck of that person—however, in this case, they were not from the fangs of a vampire, but the fangs of a snake.

If a giant snake with giant fangs were to bite into her body all over the place… A human body would naturally end up like this. With these air holes.115 Of course, before that, they would usually end up dying…

They would lose their life to those holes.

Before, when I had been cursed by a snake, my entire body had become covered in scale marks—but the caster of that curse, Nakuna-chan, my friend who criticized me behind my back, had ended up in this state.

If you curse someone, dig two graves—that’s a phrase you often hear.

But in reality, for those holes that lacked existence116, there were more than just two… Even when grouping them into pairs, hadn’t she been bitten at least a hundred times?

In other words, if you curse someone, dig two hundred graves.

“What are you standing around for, Nadeko-chan? Have a seat… You didn’t just come to see my face, right?”

Blunt as she was, Nakuna-chan gestured to a chair… But I couldn’t let down my guard here. After all, Nakuna-chan was the type of friend to offer you a chair, and then pull that chair out from underneath you as you went to sit down.

It was true that I hadn’t come just to see her face… Not that I could see more than half of it, as it was covered with holes.

“Your body… Are you okay?”

While carefully gripping the folding chair with both hands as I sat down, I posed that question… It wasn’t a very good question to ask a long-term inpatient, but after seeing the number of holes far surpassing my expectations, I couldn’t hold it back.

“Oh, what a surprise. For Nadeko-chan to be worrying about me—and I was sure you’d come to get revenge.”

Though her laugh was somewhat self-deprecating, her biting attitude certainly reminded me of what she was like in the past, but…

“I’m completely fine. I’m fine, and I’m well. It’s not like I’m in the hospital because of any injuries. I’m just in bad shape. And I’ve started zoning out and daydreaming for longer and longer… So just in case, I’ve been hospitalized.”

A response like that wasn’t something I could just take at face value—daydreaming?

Daydreams, from white snakes…117 At least, it didn’t seem like she had any subjective symptoms.

Since they were far from simple injuries.

“Huh—did you cut your hair, Nadeko-chan?”

Nakuna-chan asked as though she’d only just noticed.

If it were a year ago, it would’ve been much like her to pretend to “notice belatedly because she didn’t care”, for the sake of irony or asserting dominance, but right now, that didn’t seem to be the case.

Sengoku Nadeko may have transformed from a hairstyle with bangs long enough to hide her face to the current very short haircut, but it wasn’t unreasonable that she didn’t realize until I came this close to her—after all, the knotholes in her eyes practically made her blind.118

Knotholes, or air holes, or snake holes.

I was shocked she was even capable of seeing.

“Yeah… A lot happened.”

“I see… Looks good on you.”

It had still been blunt, but I didn’t expect Nakuna-chan would give me words of praise… Whenever someone got a haircut, her response had almost always been the not-particularly-regal attitude of, “You looked better before.”

Perhaps the hospital environment was making me think this, but… Even without taking into account her perforated body, she seemed feeble.

Nakuna-chan had always given off the impression of being perfectly styled… But now, she looked entirely disheveled, with no signs of grooming herself.

Full of split ends.

Even though she was a character that never forgot to show off, even against someone like me who she saw as lower-class, to think she would allow anyone to see her in her emaciated state, dressed down in an ill-fitting patient gown… Not that I was one to talk, considering I’d come in a school jersey. Though she could just as easily have been wearing a thick cloak and carrying a regal scepter—I was reminded of her first words.

About how I’d been the first of her friends to come visit her.

In terms of the timing, Nakuna-chan should have been hospitalized around June of last year… And since then, not one person came to visit?

Even though it was Nakuna-chan, who’d been surrounded by followers, er, friends?

“Let me take a closer look… At your hair.”

Nakuna-chan beckoned me closer.

To do that when I was already this close, she must really not be able to see well… As I thought that, I pulled my chair closer to the bed, by about ten centimeters.

Nakuna-chan stared at me for a while—what, was my very short cut really that unusual?

That was what I’d been thinking, but it seemed that Nakuna-chan was not looking at my hair, nor my non-existent bangs, but my face, which had become exposed after I’d cut my hair.

“Really—it looks good. Good. Feels like my eyes are being healed.”

Nakuna-chan spoke as though muttering to herself—it probably actually was just self-talk. She wasn’t saying it to me.

“Good. Good. Good—it’s cute.”

“......”

“You’re enthralling. I can say that proudly.”

You’re a friend that I’m proud of—said Nakuna-chan, continuing her murmuring in a manner more absentminded than enthralled.

“Compared to you, just look at me.”

With that, Nakuna-chan felt her face with both hands—her hole-ridden face. My heart pounded as I watched, worried that her fingers might slip into those holes.

Don’t treat your face so roughly…

“It’s embarrassing to welcome you with this no-makeup face, Nadeko-chan—even though I tried so hard to be stylish so I’d be fine even when I got compared with you. In the end, Nadeko-chan, I’m worthless without you beside me—I lose all motivation, and I end up like this.”

When she said “like this”, she surely didn’t mean the way she was riddled with holes—however, the way she implied that her disheveled hair and dressed-down patient gown were because I wasn’t there beside her was an unexpected attack.

Was it just a feeble remark from her emaciated state? Or had her true thoughts leaked out through her holes?

Like a recorder.

As if misunderstanding my wavering emotions—

“Are you thinking, ‘You deserve it’? Nadeko-chan,”

said Nakuna-chan.

“Or do you just think it’s funny? To see your bully being reduced to such a state. After all, even the ones I considered old friends, my classmates with whom I’d spent so much time gossiping with, are now bad-mouthing me.”

So I really had been bullied.

Because I didn’t want to acknowledge it, I’d pretended not to notice… But, even after hearing that, “You deserve it” was something I didn’t think. And couldn’t think.

Honestly, when I’d heard that Nakuna-chan had been hospitalized, I wouldn’t say that I didn’t foresee myself having those feelings, but after seeing Nakuna-chan all full of holes like this, those fleeting feelings vanished in an instant.

They’d evaporated, and they’d recoiled away.

Because I hadn’t foreseen that she had received this awful of a punishment, from the heavens or from the gods… Frankly, compared to this, the curse I’d received was for beginners.

I never thought there was something this high-level.

“There’s no way your old friends are all bad-mouthing you… Right? Maybe they’re folding you a thousand paper cranes, and it’s just taking a while…”

Put on the spot, I’d ended up following up with a foolish response, but…

“I’m following them all on social media. Publicly and privately, they’re saying everything they want to say.”

Nakuna-chan’s following was even more foolish… You absolutely should not be looking at those accounts.

In other words, Nakuna-chan’s old friends essentially didn’t care whether their feelings were seen or not, so they were unanimously bad-mouthing her in public areas… An extreme disrespect for the former empress’s authority.

In a way, they were baring their fangs.

It wasn’t exactly a refreshing story.

Though Nakuna-chan’s heart was literally empty.119

“Then again, these days they’ve stopped bad-mouthing me entirely… It’s like I’ve been forgotten by the entire class. I wonder if they’ve decided to act like I was never there from the beginning.”

Well, in the first place, our classes have changed.

But it was possible that such an idea had never struck Nakuna-chan… After spending her time constantly in the same room, she might have lost her sense of time… She hadn’t said anything like, “Long time no see,” either, even though it had been a year since we’d last seen each other.

She spoke as though summer vacation had just ended.

Or perhaps the long holidays.

“But I’m not trying to change the subject. You’re actually thinking, ‘You deserve it,’ right? I won’t get mad, so just say it. You might feel better if you just say it, you know? C’mon, I might even get mad if you don’t say it. Isn’t it tough to keep things all awkward like this? Just let it all out. Maybe if you just try spitting it out, Nadeko-chan, you might realize that you actually felt that way all this time.”

She was really intent on getting that confession out of me… Hmm.

It really was true that I wasn’t thinking anything like, “You deserve it,” but if I were to tell her that outright, she might just get disappointed.

Or, in her own words, fall into despair.

“I wish there were even more holes in you, Nakuna-chan!” was, of course, something I didn’t feel at all… If anything, what I felt was more something like, the Nakuna-chan that I knew would try to look cool even in this terrible situation… It seemed that a part of me was expecting, wouldn’t she be able to remain cool and dignified?

Wouldn’t she be able to show a strength that completely ignored the snake’s curse…? Not just traces of that strength, not just showing off, not just a bold front for her inferiority.120

I was aware that I was asking too much of her.

With her whole body being full of holes (even if she didn’t have any subjective symptoms), if she had still been lively and energetic, that would be more terrifying than anything—however, back when I’d still attended school, what I’d felt from Nakuna-chan was exactly that terror.

Sturdy, unwavering, unbreakable.

She wouldn’t tolerate any defiance, from classmates or close friends.

In terms of “You deserve it,” then honestly, I didn’t really want to be looking at the sorry state Her Majesty was in.121 Considering what she’d done to me, I didn’t really have a reason to pity her, but still, it made me feel pitiful towards myself.

After seeing her looking this weak, it even made me think, what had I been so afraid of?— could all of her old friends have performed the same about-face?

“By the way, Nadeko-chan, I heard you aren’t going to school right now? Even though you aren’t even hospitalized? Is that because of me?”

Oh my, Your Majesty, it seems you haven’t been slacking off in your information gathering. I apologize for disgracing your ears with the news of my own truancy.

“Mm… That’s not really it—I guess.”

“What? Are you saying that I’m completely unrelated?”

It seemed Her Majesty had taken offense to that. What a difficult person. Difficult, or just peevish…122 And yet, I was telling the truth.

When it came to my truancy, I was the cause and the culprit…123 If you traced it back, perhaps you could say that Nakuna-chan was an indirect cause, but even if I hadn’t been cursed by a snake at the time, there was a high chance that something similar would have happened at the end of the year, regardless.

At worst, it could have been me on that bed riddled with holes… In that sense, thinking that Nakuna-chan deserved it would be completely barking up the wrong tree.

We were badgers of the same hole…124 Or rather, snakes.

Like attracts like—or does it attract snakes?

“I won’t say that you’re unrelated, but our relationship fell apart, didn’t it?”

“Oh? Nadeko-chan, did you stop referring to yourself as ‘Nadeko’ in the third person? Even though that used to be so cute. So childishly cute,”

said Nakuna-chan with a cynical smile—her teeth and tongue gaping with holes.

“Even though you seduced every guy in our grade with that natural cuteness of yours.”

“...Every guy in our grade is an exaggeration, isn’t it?”

“That’s true. At best, it was just Sunshi-kun.”

Sunshi-kun?

My thoughts of “Who’s that?” ended up being extremely apparent on my face. If I still had my bangs, I could have hidden my face, but my very short cut couldn’t even hide my eyebrows that were scrunched in confusion.

Short hair cannot hide even the Seven Wonders.125

That won’t do, Her Majesty will be displeased… Sunshi-kun, Sunshi-kun… Right, I’d heard that name somewhere… Considering the flow of the conversation, I could guess that he was one amongst those “guys in our grade”...

“Ah.”

“You shouldn’t be going, ‘Ah,’ like that… Like you only just remembered. Why are you forgetting the guy that confessed his love to you?”

“I, I just didn’t remember his given name. When you suddenly say it like that… I remember his family name, though. It’s Sajou-kun, right?”

I was trying to smooth things over, but this was by no means a deception… I really thought I’d hammered his full name into my mind, until just now. Until this very moment.

It was just a memory lapse.

It had simply slipped my mind from the shock of seeing Nakuna-chan in her current condition—my synapses hadn’t linked up. I really wasn’t lying. After all, it hadn’t been against my expectations that his name would come up during this conversation.

It was an unavoidable source of conflict.

The fact that he’d confessed to me.

“B-but, that was just a joke, you know? You say that he confessed to me, but that was really just a product of maliciously teasing a gloomy, downcast, inarticulate, and bashful girl.”

“A product of malice? You’re the one full of malice towards guys, huh. But that’s what it is about you, right, Nadeko-chan? That’s what’s cute about you. Does it still make you bashful to hear that?”

“Er… Well, that’s, um…”

It was a little different from feeling bashful, but it did make me flinch and look away—partly because it was hard to look directly at Nakuna-chan, but also partly because I had remembered those days when I’d been an inarticulate and bashful girl who had hidden behind the bangs she’d grown out.

“So, did you reject him? If that was all the product of malice. It seemed like you didn’t really give Sunshi-kun a clear reason, though.”

“Weeell, thaaat's, uuummm…”

In the past, someone had asked a similar question, and I remembered that my response had been, “No, because I have someone else I like” (it was a draining memory)126, but if I said the same thing now, I was afraid she would begin pressuring me by saying, “Who is it? Who do you like? Just try spitting it out.”

I wasn’t here to be pressured, and I wasn’t here to be afraid.

“Y-you know, Sunshi-kun? I already knew that you liked him, Nakuna-chan. It was too great of an honor, and I understood that an underling like me wasn’t fit for someone like him, so that was why I ended up turning him down…”

Uh-oh.

My old habits of sucking up to powerful people.

It had just been me trying to keep my head down and wait for the storm to pass, but there were those that saw this servility as cute, and even flirtatious… Sunshi-kun was one of those people, as was Nakuna-chan.

To think I was flirting, and then hating me for it…

It was like adding insult to injury.

“...Do you realize that I placed a curse on you because I was fed up with that attitude of yours?”

“Ah, no, you’ve enlightened me, just now. As always, Nakuna-chan, your teachings are deeply inspiring…”

No, that wasn’t it!

It wasn’t like I wanted to reconstruct the former relationship we had… What kind of “scrap and build” approach was this?127 If anything, we’d just end up right back where we started.

The question would then be, what had I come to do, really? But that topic was quite the problem.

“No, but, like, I’m serious. When you acted like that, Nadeko-chan, it felt like you were looking down on me, and I couldn’t take it anymore… When I thought that you were just trying to have your way with me, it pissed me off… But.”

But?

I was sure she would continue telling me off like that for an hour or so, but Nakuna-chan had brought out that adversative conjunction earlier than I was expecting.

“Now, I couldn’t care less anymore… It’s like, I don’t understand why that used to piss me off so much. It’s like my endurance meter was at its limit, but now it’s been completely drained…”

Perhaps it had drained out of those holes. That endurance meter or whatever.

As if her emotions were unable to remain in her body, spilling out through those holes like from a showerhead… As a result, she just gave off a hole-ridden, hollow impression.

Thinking that made me feel more maudlin than just emotional, but…

“That’s right. So even if it was your fault, Nadeko-chan, I’ll forgive you.”

With that offhand remark, it felt like I’d taken a punch to the face—I’d nearly fallen from the pipe chair, thinking that I’d actually been punched.

I had almost reacted ostentatiously.

Was she serious?

After driving me to a corner and then casting that outrageous curse, imposing a blend of physical and mental anguish on me, she wasn’t apologizing but offering generous words of forgiveness…?

It felt like the hairs of my very short cut were standing on end, like a reverse scale… Rather than Anti-Nadeko, it felt like I’d just barely avoided transforming into Divine Nadeko.128

I really was bad with her.

Or rather, I just hated her.

Even after becoming a husk like this—even after becoming a snake’s shed skin—it seemed her true nature wouldn’t change.

Well, from her point of view, that had to apply to me, too… After cutting my hair, I may have become more upright, more front-facing, and more articulate, but in the end, I might still be “Nadeko-chan, who couldn’t do anything without me”.

I’d been thinking something so unhinged as wanting to see her in her former dignified state, but after seeing her in real life, withered away as she was, I just ended up taking a tremendous amount of damage… But whatever, I’ll swallow it back.

And I’ll swallow it whole, that feeling of pain.

To endure what is unendurable is true endurance—even my endurance meter might be full of holes by now, so it was time for a new one.

I hadn’t come to try and get her to admit fault, either—so, what had I come here for?

“...Nakuna-chan. I have a favor to ask, so would you mind?”

“Hm?”

Nakuna-chan tilted her head to the side—with her neck full of holes, it made me anxious that her head might fall off.

“How nostalgic… To have Nadeko-chan ask a favor from me. You sure asked a ton of crazy things. But fine. I’ll grant your request. What is it?”

She was a benevolent saintess that took on the request without even listening to it… That was something I liked about her, wasn’t it?

For someone as timid and passive as me, she was someone I could depend on.

It was true that there had once been times when things had been going well with Her Majesty, or the saintess… Trying not to forget those times, I said,

“Can you be a model for one of my drawings? I’m aiming to become a courtroom sketch artist,”

and pulled out my sketchbook.