Monogatari Series - Volume 27 - Chapter 2.05

005

Since I had come all the way here, I thought I’d wander around my hometown for a bit before going back home, but on the off chance that I was caught by the network of a truly angry Tsukihi-chan, I’d have no hope of resisting (even if the Fire Sisters had broken up, they were still the face of the town—they hadn’t stepped down from their seat of power), so after parting ways with Ougi-san, I decided to head straight back to the capital.

With a real helter-skelter feeling.

Well, that was just in terms of how I felt, but the reality was not as light as I made it sound. The huge suitcase, whether I was walking, riding a train, or riding the bus, was still oversized luggage. Even if it weren’t for Tsukihi-chan, it certainly would not have been sane to wander around my hometown with something like this. It was a good thing I was braless.

Or rather, maybe I should’ve just had it sent cash on delivery… Well, there was no particular reason for it, but it felt a bit dangerous to have Ougi-san learn my current address. Well, no matter how cautious I was against someone like that, it was probably meaningless…

In the first place, the goal of this retrieval was to make sure I didn’t leave behind traces of my desire to be a courtroom sketch artist in the hands of my parents (though you could say I’d left home because I’d failed to do so), but since I’d already accomplished my goal, I could just throw them away in a trash can somewhere, or bury them on a mountain, or burn them on a riverbank, but no, no, that would be going too far.

As Ononoki-chan would put it, it was like my dark history, but I wasn’t quite willing to act as though my past didn’t exist—they might just be scribbles I’d stockpiled over time, but if it weren’t for these practice pieces, I might still be reigning at the Kitashirahebi Shrine even now. Perhaps, a thousand years from now, the contents of this suitcase could be a vital source of information for the sake of programming an AI Sengoku Nadeko.

With those thoughts running through my head, I returned home with my large collection of drawings in tow.

“Goodness. You sure are well-prepared to have gotten a suitcase already, Sengoku. You’re pretty motivated for someone about to head to a danger zone. I’m glad. My excitement is also off-the-charts.”

In front of my apartment building was Ononoki-chan. It was a building without an elevator, so I’d been planning on borrowing the strength of that power-based character from this point on, and this saved me the effort of calling her. However, the one that called out to me was not the eyepatch-wearing doll (Ononoki-chan referred to me as “Nadekou”, or sometimes “Nadekoushaku”141).

It was the one standing next to Ononoki-chan.

A man of high stature, clad in a suit fit for a funeral that was blacker than the night, darker than the darkness—even though the sun hadn’t set just yet, his presence made the surroundings seem gloomier and chillier. An ominous specialist.

Even so, it was the first time I’d met this person in full dress, so to speak—

“Ka–Ka–Kaiko-san.”

“It’s Kaiki.”

Right, Kaiki-san. Kaiki Deishuu-san.

I remember, okay?

About this time last year, he was the specialist that had reverted me from a snake god to a human—a specialist, and a con man. Like Oshino-san or Kagenui-san, he was a member of Gaen-san’s faction—or was he?

If anything, he was more like a lone wolf… But still, when he stood lined up next to Ononoki-chan (who was officially Kagenui-san’s shikigami), they really looked good.

Not that the combination of an old man and a tween girl was really to my liking… To be honest, my memory of those days weren’t very clear, but it was certainly the case that I’d never had the chance to thank him after that happened.

But our sudden reunion most likely had not been arranged to give me the opportunity to thank Kaiki-san—nor to give me the opportunity to apologize for almost killing him.

That was my hunch from seeing Ononoki-chan’s expression. Though she was expressionless.

“Sorry that it seems like I’m ambushing you, Sengoku. But this house-sitting doll refused to let me inside—what do you think about her treating me, your benefactor, as a criminal?”

“Th-that’s because, Kaiki-san, before you were my benefactor, you really were a criminal…”

“You tell him, Nadekou. Tell him how you were cursed by multiple people as a result of the ‘charms’ that he sold to middle schoolers for a quick profit.”

Ononoki-chan was openly displeased.

They may look good when lined up together, but it seemed they weren’t really on good terms… But, that was true.

From Nakuna-chan’s curse and Sunshi-kun’s curse, if we traced it back to the source, we’d run into this con man—in addition, Tsukihi-chan’s sister Karen-chan had also been bedridden for a time due to the curse that Kaiki-san had cast upon her.

I would have to be way too generous to greet him warmly after that.

“Don’t be too bothered by all that stuff from the past, Sengoku. You sure are small-minded, though I was the one to revert that mind back to being human.”

Kaiki-san shrugged with a “Good grief”.

He was acting as though he was dealing with a spoiled child, but it was just an example of the guilty being audacious—when it came to a trueborn criminal, he was definitely on another level from Nakuna-chan or Sunshi-kun or even Tsukihi-chan.

To say nothing of condemning me, he was condescending…

If I had carelessly tried to thank him, he probably would have demanded reward money. Even though I was a runaway, destitute middle schooler.

When all’s said and done, it was undeniable that Kaiki-san had saved me, so with the limited knowledge of morality I’d heard of, I’d been thinking that I needed to thank him when we reunited, but now that we’d actually reunited like this, all it did was make me mad.

As mad as a snake.142

“No, no, don’t look at me with those eyes, those snake eyes. It’ll make me sad. All that stuff was my bad, I’m sincerely repenting for them. I’m truly sorry. Everything was my fault. Okay, with that, everything’s resolved.”

“Ononoki-chan, send that guy flying.”

“Understood, Master.”

“Your master isn’t even Sengoku.”

Ononoki-chan really did take on the stance of using “Unlimited Rulebook”, so, as if to dodge her fingertip, Kaiki-san took a step closer to me.

Good grief. For this guy, not even the “ayamarei” that Ougi-san brought up seemed like it could work.

But really, when an actual criminal appeared before me, then about forgiving or not forgiving, about apologizing or not apologizing, all those discussions we had quickly became meaningless.

It felt like nothing more than wordplay.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Sengoku. The affection that Ononoki shows towards you is likely just a manifestation of your love towards yourself. After all, this is just a doll that is extremely influenced by her surroundings.”

What an unpleasant thing to point out.

To think that the truth behind Ononoki-chan loving me was really me loving myself… To say something so unpleasant that it was actually reverse empowerment. Nakuna-chan or Tsukihi-chan couldn’t even begin to compare.

If anything, I thought I didn’t have that much self-love… But I didn’t know for sure. After all, it was me.

“But even so—I hardly recognized you. In just one year.”

“? Are you talking about my hair?”

“No. I foresaw your hair being like that.”

Yeah, right.

What a meaningless lie to tell.

“And I may as well thank you in advance for avenging me and taking out my enemy. I can’t have you demanding money from me later.”

“? Your enemy?”

“It’s not something you need to know, Nadekou.”

An information embargo had been placed on me.

If Ononoki-chan, who loved me so much was saying that, then I probably didn’t need to know, or I was better off not knowing… But it did make me curious when they openly kept it secret from me.

“Just tell her the news already. You’ve heard from Gaen-san, right, Kaiki onii-chan.”

So she called him Kaiki onii-chan.

Weirdly enough, it made his likability increase.

“From Gaen-san?”

If it was the next step in my training, then she could’ve just gone through Ononoki-chan or contacted me directly… In that case, did that mean Kaiki-san wasn’t just a messenger?

Though it seemed that Ononoki-chan had already heard…

“Yes. Because of the matter with you, I ended up being excommunicated by Gaen-senpai… But I’ve been told that if I cooperate with your training, I’ll be able to make amends with her faction, so I jumped at this fortuitous opportunity. If it’s for Gaen-senpai’s sake, money means nothing to me. I’ll work at no cost.”

It seemed a large sum of money had passed behind the scenes.

And he’d mentioned it quite nonchalantly, but when he suggested that he’d been cut off by Gaen-san because of me, it was hard to dig into that… I suppose that was the technique of a con man.

But it turned out that Gaen-san cut ties with a surprising number of people, huh.

Perhaps those two that had been cut off had something in common.

“Plus, I was worried about what happened to you after that.”

“You really are telling nothing but lies…”

“No, no, I’m serious. I’ve been so plagued with worry that you got back together with Koyomi-onii-chan, or you turned back into a god, that it kept me awake and whistling at night.”

You’re going to cause snakes to appear.143

But it seems he generally thought of me as unreliable.

“I suppose the lesson to be learned here is, ‘Children will grow even without parents’—or perhaps, ‘Once you part with a gentleman for three days, you should view him with new eyes.’”

I was a lady, though.

Also, don’t try to force yourself into the position of my father, you curse originator.

“That’s it,”

said Kaiki-san.

“When you call me a curse originator, the fact of the matter is that I was but an insignificant retail store. I made forgeries of the curses that I’d acquired, and then simply mass-produced them cheaply.”

“It would’ve been better if you died, though.”

The interjection from the specialist in immortal oddities was scathing. Pretending he didn’t hear it, Kaiki-san continued.

“But if we trace back that serpentine line back to the very beginning, we’ll find ourselves coming full circle to Araundo,”

he said—Araundo.

The huge, five-headed snake—Araundo Uroko.

“That was why Gaen-senpai had you retrieve those curses. To ascertain the origin of the snake curses that I had been responsible for spreading, so to speak.”

In order to find the snake’s headquarters.

And round them up in one go.

I inhaled sharply at Kaiki-san’s words… I hadn’t realized such a magnificent plan was hiding in her intervention in the discord between me and my classmates.

“Someone like Araundo is a snake that I have zero connection to, but because of the circumstances, I’ve found myself taking command of our little team.”

More like you’re way too connected. You’re a related party!

But, taking command… Of me… And Ononoki-chan? When I glanced at her, the tween girl was silently nodding—at some point, Ononoki-chan and I had become capable of communicating with just an exchange of looks.

But even so, it was quite a bizarre team…

A con man, a courtroom sketch artist aspirant, and a corpse doll.

It sounded like we’d pull off some theatrical-level heist.

But aha. I thought we’d been leaving the matter with Nakuna-chan and Sunshi-kun hanging for quite some time, but it turned out that Gaen-san hadn’t been just playing around.

For one, she had used the clue I’d recovered to track down the target’s hideout… For another, she’d found her junior who had been excommunicated and had escaped, and she’d negotiated with him.

Meanwhile, I had just been messily arguing with my parents…

“For the team name, how about Hypocrisy Co., Ltd.?”

“I feel like I remember that name being used before.”

But don’t include me in your ring of crime.

I’m trying to become a courtroom sketch artist…

And while it wasn’t my place to try and understand the mind of Gaen-san, who I was much obliged to… When looking at this team composition, it didn’t feel like that head honcho had planned anything at all.

Obviously I was just an apprentice, but with the excommunicated Kaiki-san as the leader, and including Ononoki-chan who was still going through discipline with one eye being confiscated… It was the very definition of a sacrificial team that could be discarded when push came to shove.

A paper team with no real substance.

Normally, in times like these, we should be forming some sort of dream team, but this was more like a nightmare team… Even if my signature move was to suck up to powerful people, I couldn’t help but hesitate at the thought of going in under this umbrella. To be obsequious towards a con man made me too much of a scoundrel myself, didn’t it?

Also, we just have to take the team name and the team composition as given?

“You can’t just suddenly spring this on me, Kaiki-san. I don’t exactly have free time—well, actually, I’m extremely free, but I was going to use that free time for my startup plans. I wanted to draw a hundred fifty pages of storyboards this month.”

“Dispose of all your plans. Detest them.”144

“I-isn’t telling me to detest them too much…?”

“First off, even though you’ve already made preparations for the journey, you’re just acting to inflate your value, right? That’s something you learned from me.”

Eh?

Preparations… Ah, was he talking about this suitcase? This was the suitcase I had inherited from Ougi-san, filled with more than a hundred fifty pages of worthless manuscripts…

Speaking of which, in the beginning, Kaiki-san had said something about heading to a danger zone, right? I didn’t think that he’d figured out the contents of my suitcase, but I had assumed it was a snide remark and me stepping into the manga industry… But preparations for the journey?

“That’s right. Our flight has already been reserved—we’re heading off to Okinawa, Iriomote Island. That’s the current hideout of the headquarters of the snake that squirms with evil spirits, Araundo Uroko.”

“O–Okinawa? Iriomote Island?”

“No. If you ask her, it’s not the front, but the island in the back.”145

Kaiki-san sounded like he was wrapping things up with that nonsensical statement, but please wait. By “flight”, were we flying off to Okinawa right now?

“I’ve never been to Okinawa before. Actually, I’ve never even been on a plane before, you know? My first trip outside the prefecture is to Okinawa? That Okinawa? With a bunch of scary snakes?”

“A perfect place for an expert snake-catcher like you to show off your skills. You’ll make easy money,”

said Ononoki-chan.

She was monotone as always, but she seemed excited at the thought of going to Okinawa.

“Congratulations, Nadekou. You can boast about how your first trip outside the prefecture was to Okinawa—to fishermen.”

“How could I boast about it when fishermen already live there? Wh-what about you, Kaiki-san? You don’t really give off that impression, but you’re the leader, and you’re staying as calm as a tour guide, so does that mean you’ve been to Okinawa before?”

“Nope.”

Kaiki-san slowly shook his head.

With sunglasses on his face.

“It’s quite the coincidence, but not once in my life have I ever been to Okinawa.”