Monogatari Series - Volume 28 - Chapter 1.09

009

It was not entirely clear if my act of bringing a thirteen-year-old Shinobu down the stairs with me had come as a surprise to Ononoki-chan—not only was she expressionless already, but she had also finished eating her ice cream and had re-equipped her mask.

Gochisousa-mask.70

“Well, I figured you’d do that, oni onii-chan. You and Shinobu.”

“How annoying you are. Do not state my name without any suffixes as though it were normal.”

“Then, should I call you Shinobu-nee-san? Considering the way you look.”

Oshino Shinobu, thirteen years old.

Previously, she had put her hair up in braids because she had been strongly influenced by the version of Hanekawa that we’d met just before, so my chest felt like it was growing with anticipation regarding what hairstyle she would choose this time—though it was really Shinobu that was growing from eight years old to thirteen years old, and as if to dodge the matter entirely, she’d concealed her blonde hair completely with a wide-brimmed hat.

All Ononoki-chan said was,

“A hat-wearing character, huh? You’re just like Nadekou in the past,”

in her usual monotone.

This tween girl’s reactions were pretty boring.

So Sengoku had stopped being a hat-wearing character… I hadn’t heard anything like that from Tsukihi, either. That little sister of mine wasn’t supplying me with any information at all—speaking of which, Tsukihi herself was someone that would frequently change her hair, too.

Though I had little interest in how she did her hair.

Whatever hairstyle she wore, I just looked at it as though it were bed hair.

“Nadekou has been growing out her hair like you, oni onii-chan. She’s been so busy with work that it’s gotten all messy.”

“It seems you have not changed one bit, corpse doll.”

“Well, because I’m a corpse. It would be pretty creepy if the hair of a corpse doll continued to grow. Although, when I was working together with Nadekou, there was a part where it got completely cut off. My neck, that is.”

What sort of adventures was she having?

Rather than not having heard it, it was like I didn’t want to hear it.

This twin-demic was despair-inducing for me, but it was possible that, for Ononoki-chan, it was a familiar state of emergency that she regularly anticipated… It wasn’t as long as six hundred years, but Ononoki-chan was still the tsukumogami of a corpse used for a hundred years.

“Is that black cloak with a lace collar supposed to be cosplaying plague doctors? As an expression of gratitude towards medical workers, it seems a bit distorted, Shinobu-nee-san.”

I had thought it was something like Kindaichi Kousuke’s overcoat, but after hearing her mention how the collar seemed like one that those masked doctors would wear, I could see it that way, too—but not even Shinobu herself was aware of the inner workings of her unconscious mind.

It was not as obvious as when she put her hair in a ponytail or braids.

For a more normal explanation, it could just be that she wore a vampire-like cloak for the sake of returning to her home country… From a broader perspective, it did make her look more like a bat.

An outfit based in tradition.

It could even be considered formal wear, like how people wear kimono on New Year’s.

“Anyway, it seems my kindness was all for naught. It’s like this every time, I can’t go on. I try to be considerate, and I just make a fool of myself. All right, shall we get going then, oni onii-chan, Shinobu-nee-san?”

I was expecting her to have more to say, but surprisingly, Ononoki-chan let us off with a few light complaints in that monotone of hers before standing up from the entryway—it was a bit of a let-down, but if she wasn’t going to engage the brakes, that in itself made me nervous.

Weren’t you our anti-lock braking system?

Plus, the empty ice cream cup was still in her hand… Well, at least she was thoroughly enforcing the infection control measures, what with taking garbage back with her.

It was a corpse, or rather, an attitude to learn from.71

“No point in trying to stop me, anyway. …I don’t know how long you’ll end up staying there, but will your little sisters be all right if you leave the house like this?”

“Er, I haven’t figured out what to do with that family problem, but since it’s summertime in Europe right now… With the time difference, shouldn’t it be fine? If we go in a flash and return in a flash, not even an hour will have passed over here, right?”

“Looks like I’ll have to explain the general concept of time differences along the way.”

And this has nothing to do with how time machines work in Doraemon Long Stories, said Ononoki-chan as she left the entryway—and, until the very end, she had not removed her boots at all.

It was a shame that I couldn’t make her feel at home.

Shinobu and I hurriedly followed after her.

Seemed like this tween girl wasn’t going to take it slow once it was time to leave.

I would have preferred to watch a longer scene of her and Shinobu chattering away—but, along the way? It didn’t seem likely that we would be capable of long discussions during our leaps to Europe. I’d bite my tongue.

“Unfortunately, for long-distance trips like this, we can’t afford to carelessly take off from the yard of your house, oni onii-chan, because of the layovers. Taking into account the Earth’s rotation and gravitational pull, I have to choose our airfield carefully.”

Rather than an airplane taking off, that was closer to the launching of a rocket—I doubted we’d be walking as far as Tanegashima, but Ononoki-chan steadily trudged forward without showing signs of stopping.

Despite her being a considerate tween girl, her explanations were kind of lacking… It had to be the pronounced influence of her master.

Regardless of what it was like as a high school third-year, a twenty-year-old university student walking alongside a young girl and a tween girl surely did not look good from a public safety perspective, but, considering the times, the streets were deserted.

Well, even if not for recent circumstances, my beloved hometown being in the remote part of the suburbs meant that it was growing more and more deserted, year after year—plus, it probably wasn’t correct to refer to the thirteen-year-old Shinobu as a young girl.

What should I call her? A maiden?

“Time passes in the same way no matter where you are in the world, so even if there’s a time difference of ten hours, it’s not actually possible to travel to ten hours in the past—what do you think the International Date Line is for, oni onii-chan?”

Um, you didn’t need to actually correct me.

I didn’t actually think we could go back in time—I’d already had enough of time travel from the one time I did it with Shinobu.

“In the first place, I have to say your sense of danger is clearly lacking if you think we can go in a flash and return in a flash, oni onii-chan. Even though you don’t even know if you’ll make it back alive.”

“Well, if you say that, I’m at a loss for words.”

“Maybe you’ll at least get to say your last words.72 I had thought that, with the spread of this contagion, the population of the world would become conscious of the reality of death on a tangible level, but maybe it isn’t actually like that. Even in a situation like this, it’s a very human thing to still go and say, ‘I’m sure I’ll be fine.’”

Harsh words coming from a corpse.

And calling it a “contagion” felt like an especially strong word… It seemed like two or three levels tougher than calling it an “infection”.73

It seemed the thirteen-year-old Shinobu agreed, as she said,

“For vampires, ‘contagion’ is more apt than ‘infection’, indeed,”

giving her own impressions.

“‘Twas the same for the plague, and speaking of which, rabies falls under that classification, does it not? It seems it was relatively well-controlled in this country, but it is a disease with a fatality rate of almost one hundred percent.”

In the sense that rabies makes you develop hydrophobia, the symptoms of rabies did indeed seem close to vampirism—it was like, which came first, the chicken or the egg? So in this case, it was more like, which came first, the vampire or the contagion?

“Vampirism is also transmitted via bites, after all,”

said Ononoki-chan.

“I guess it's the same for zombies. Though I’m a corpse doll, so strictly speaking, I’m not a zombie in the typical sense. The fact that there are so many hit films about zombie panics may act as proof for how subconsciously afraid people are of contagious diseases.”

And yet, oni onii-chan, you sure are fearless, was how Ononoki-chan continued—it had seemed odd that she’d accepted it so easily, but perhaps she was still annoyed by my rash decisions, which had not changed even after I’d become twenty years old.

“Though, if there were zombie films that were big hits, there were also ones that were massive failures.”

“I’ll pray for you that this episode does not become a massive failure. Or a massive downfall. We have to support the film industry, after all. But really, what do you plan to do for your sisters?”

“Indeed. What is it that you are planning?”

Why was even Shinobu saying things as though she were criticizing me… It was troublesome when they were on bad terms, but it was also a problem when they banded together.

Don’t view me as your potential enemy, all right?

“If only Mayoi-nee-san were here, it would’ve been getting the trio back together. But ever since she became a god, we can’t just take her away so easily.”

She did have the heavy responsibility of protecting the town.

But, well, if it was an infection that was targeting vampires, there might not be any meaning to bringing Hachikuji, even if she held the position of god… Other than the fact that it would make me happy.

Plus, I had the doubt that Kagenui-san’s reason for inviting us was not so that we could assist her, but so that she could use us as samples.

And if samples wasn’t the right term, then as guinea pigs—perhaps she wanted to intentionally infect us with the virus for the sake of developing a vaccine.

It was what was happening across the world.

Though she was also an immortal oddity, Ononoki-chan had (for now) not been infected, so it was even less likely for the god, Hachikuji, to be infected—even for the novel coronavirus, there were animals that did catch the infection and animals that didn’t.

Dogs, cats, and even primates could get infected… Was that right?

“Dogs don’t get infected as much, apparently. It’s tough news for cat people, isn’t it. Speaking of which, it was on the news that a tiger caught it, too.”

If cats and tigers were susceptible, then that put Hanekawa at total risk, huh. Of course, we were still talking about the novel coronavirus, not the anti-vampire virus. However, there had been the special case of when Hanekawa had worked together with Dramaturgy…

“Also, I don’t necessarily have definite proof that I’m negative for that virus. To be negative about it, I might actually be positive. I might just be asymptomatic. If there are false positives, there are also false negatives—we’re pretty much still looking into that. So, you should expect it to take quite a while. Even if it was an exaggeration to say you might not make it back alive, it’s true that it might be on the scale of several years.”

"............”

“Well, I’m sure not even onee-chan plans on keeping you for that long, oni onii-chan… Speaking of long, then for oni onii-chan, there’s the long-term plan that Gaen-san has for you, after all.”

Eh? Gaen-san was including me in a long-term plan of hers? I didn’t know anything about that… Wasn’t she telling me something really unsettling?

If possible, I’d like to remain unaware about this.

“Regardless, with how it’s so strongly recommended you stay at home, isn’t it bad for you to leave the house for such a long time? You’ll be subject to extreme bashing from your little sisters.”

“That level of bashing is something that even I, with a mindset as hard as steel, find it hard to withstand… But I’ll send a message to my sisters. There’s no way I can tell them the truth, so, well, I’ll come up with a good excuse and try to gloss over it…”

Even if it was a necessity, I was essentially abandoning my post of taking care of my sisters that had been assigned to me by my parents, but after entering high school, my sisters had become much more responsible than I’d been expecting, so I wasn’t too worried on that front. It was in critical situations that they were strong, and it was especially in critical situations that they shined. I wish I hadn’t criticized them so hard for their activities as the Fire Sisters in middle school, if that was the reason for their mindset as hard as diamonds now.

The one who couldn’t live up to his parents’ expectations was just me.

“A good excuse, eh? If you would let me hear you out, then what good excuse have you managed to come up with? For going on an overseas trip during this time. For your ‘Go To Overseas’ campaign.”74

“Well first, I won’t tell them that I’m going overseas. That’s clearly unbelievable… I’ll say something about how I have to do a report or paper for university, or say there’s an upcoming exam, and that I’ll have to stay at my lodgings for a while. Or perhaps, I can say that Oikura was at the end of her rope after staying home all alone, and she reached out for help…”

“And is that not the most unbelievable lie? Perhaps that is not just a lie, but also a fervent wish of yours?”

What Shinobu was saying was basically true, and if possible, I wanted to call my childhood friend a “sworn friend”, too—anyway, I was hoping we could move onto resolving the next problem, but it seemed Ononoki-chan still had some reservations.

“Let’s say that everything gets resolved, but suppose you get infected by the pandemic targeting immortal oddities in Europe. Or suppose onee-chan infects you with it,”

she cut in.

Her cut-in was pretty cutting.75

“The second idea sounds scarier.”

“If that happens, then even if you don’t die, you might not be able to return to Japan. Because we can’t completely eliminate the risk of you passing the disease on to your sister.”

Ah, that could be a problem.

I hadn’t considered it. As was always the case for me.

If Ononoki-chan was fine, then I figured my sister would be fine, too… In the first place, you could say that oddities themselves were pretty far removed from the concept of life and death, so technically, all oddities could be considered immortal beings.

It was actually more uncommon to see oddities that had materialized.

“But it’s true that we can’t say anything for sure… I never planned on staying in Europe for the rest of my life, but now that I think about it, ‘not making it back’ could have that sort of meaning, too… Even if I were to insist that I’d be returning to my home country, I wouldn’t be allowed to even depart if I get caught by airport security.”

“In that sense, it won’t even be easy to make it back dead, either.”

Ononoki-chan was backing me up with something even harsher.

Aha, so the idea I’d been worried about, of confirming the identity of the body, was not actually very viable from that perspective… The fact that you were not allowed to witness the death of a loved one was yet another tragedy of this pandemic.

I’d never heard of a specific case in which that occurred, but I doubted they’d established a route to transport coffins for those that died of illness overseas…

“Realistically, doesn’t it make more sense to cremate them first, and then transport the ashes across the sea? As long as it’s a region where cremation is common… That’s the difficulty of globalism. Even the way oddities are depends on the country. Even if you say ‘vampires’, even if you say ‘Europe’, it’s different from region to region… The same way that Christmas or Valentine’s Day is completely different.”

Right, with Valentine’s Day in Japan, it ended up becoming the kind of day where you just eat chocolate with people you get along with.

And at the same time, our vampires in Japan and their vampires in Europe could basically be considered separate species—the six-hundred-year-old Shinobu could act as a medium between the two.

“Both viruses and culture will mutate. In other words, we can’t deny the possibility for this virus, which currently only affects vampires, to transform into something that starts to infect other oddities—therefore, we must contain it as soon as possible. I said that we were prepared for a long-term solution that could take several years, but obviously, there’s nothing better than a short-term resolution.”

“Then, let’s go with that.”

I wasn’t trying to poke fun at Ononoki-chan’s words, but I did find a solution to my current problem in them.

“We’ll go to the Acerola Kingdom (temp.) and resolve the pandemic right away. The novel coronavirus might be too much for us, but we can resolve the anti-vampire virus—if we do so, we can come back without leaving the house empty for too long, and there’s no risk of bringing back the contagion with us. Both my little sister and Hachiku-jin will be safe.”

“There’s a limit to how optimistic you can be.”

Her monotone had an astonished ring to it, but Ononoki-chan continued with, “But, it could be important to have that sort of attitude,” after that.

“When you draw out a war of attrition like this, it’s not uncommon to start downgrading from your original objective. Like giving up on ensuring that there are zero infected patients—you end up learning to deal with the horror. Of course, it’s a passable outcome, but it’s too early to give up on the idea of complete eradication, like with smallpox.”

And which virus did she think could be eradicated? Smallpox… I remembered learning about this in one of my classes when studying for exams, but in fact, smallpox was the only infection that humanity was able to completely eradicate. Even rabies was still in active duty across the world.

In that case, was there a hint in there somewhere?

I should have studied more properly.

“Speaking of which, even for normal overseas travel, there are regions where you’re only allowed to go as long as you get certain vaccines. But what about the Acerola Kingdom (temp.)?”

“Well, it has already fallen to ruin, after all,” said Shinobu. “Not even the worst plague will be able to exert its power there.”

That was how it was.

It was an unthinkable form of herd immunity.

“We’re here. This is a good spot to take off from. It’s where I landed when I arrived here, too.”

I was thinking we’d walked quite a long way while discussing various things, but where Ononoki-chan stopped with those words was a park that wasn’t too far away—it was Shirohebi Park, which we were all familiar with.

When I was in high school, I often made the trip here on my bicycle, but it wasn’t so far as to be beyond walking distance… I see, so beyond the conditions of the Earth’s rotation and gravitational pull, perhaps there was a spiritual condition as well.

Because, from the perspective of Hachiku-jin, who protected this town, the park was like a detached territory of the Kitashirahebi Shrine—it was in an extremely limited way, but this Shirohebi Park could even be a match for Tanegashima as a launch site.

Hmm, it had been a while since I’d last been here… It hadn’t changed much, or rather, it felt like it had become even more desolate—during this period of self-restraint, it should’ve actually become more common for parents to bring their children to play in parks, but here, there was no sign of life, as though it were surrounded by a barrier.

Was Hachiku-jin really all right?

The shrine didn’t get abandoned again, right?

“When a contagion begins to spread, humans will start to wonder whether or not gods and Buddhas really exist, after all. In times like these, people are surprisingly less likely to pray to the gods. It means that the threat of this overwhelming reality is even scarier than oddities—though, in terms of being a threat that can’t be seen with the naked eye, viruses and monstrous apparitions are the same.”

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Which came first, the soy egg or the char siu?

After saying that ramen-related thing, Ononoki-chan took position towards the center of the park.

Well, it was sad to learn that my hometown was becoming more desolate than I’d thought, but right now, the fact that there were no signs of life in this park was exactly what we wanted… The scene of me wrapping my arms around a tween girl and soaring into the sky was not one I wanted witnessed by anyone else.

People would start sharing warnings about a suspicious person.

“And I suppose I am to be stowed away like carry-on luggage.”

Shinobu said as much before diving into my shadow—was her choice to do so acrobatically a quirk of her thirteen-year-old form?

It was certainly an age where one would want to move haphazardly.

Perhaps she wasn’t yet used to the delicate mind-body balance from being right in the middle of puberty—in that sense, the tender age of thirteen was a difficult one to be in.

When my little sisters were thirteen, it was so difficult to handle them that I didn’t even want to recall it… Along those lines, I myself was not particularly decent when I was thirteen.

The aftermath of the mistakes I made in that period was that Oikura still continued to hate me. Well, in contrast, Oikura had been at her cutest when she was thirteen, but let’s leave it at that.

In any case, the twelve-year-old Ononoki-chan did not have the waist size to allow for both the twenty-year-old me and the thirteen-year-old Shinobu to grab onto her, so Shinobu hiding in my shadow here was indeed proper boarding procedure.

“Although we should really be carefully debating whether or not the twenty-year-old oni onii-chan wrapping his arms around the twelve-year-old me by himself is proper procedure at all.”

“True, because we do end up getting pretty close.”

“It wouldn’t be close, but a crime.”76

As she said that, Ononoki-chan spread her arms in a banzai pose—and I grabbed onto her torso. It was a bit too passionate for a hug, and I was latching onto her in such a way that if this couldn’t be called close contact, then nothing could be. But it was necessary. If my hands slipped mid-flight, even my body which was boosted by doping wouldn’t stand a chance.

I’d become a pool of blood.

There had been no change to my external appearance, but the twenty-year-old Araragi Koyomi was comparable to the thirteen-year-old Shinobu. Our immortal natures weren’t perfect.

“But, thinking about it, you did a good job stoically restraining yourself up until now. Even though, oni onii-chan, you used to rely on your vampirism to the point of overdependence. Your actions today are not exactly praiseworthy when taken as a whole, but I will praise you for that much.”

She was very much talking down to me, but hearing that made me feel a bit at ease… Especially in the current situation, where there was no such thing as a correct answer.

“With all that said, it certainly isn’t bad to feel oni onii-chan’s strengthened muscles up against my body for the first time in a while. Even if everyone else criticizes your rash and blind actions, I alone will praise them.”

Was she trying to win me over?

Although her bosom was indeed soft…77

“It’s because you say that stuff that you get criticized. I hope onee-chan grabs you and beats you to death in Europe.”

“I’d like to choose how I die, though.”

“That goes for anybody.”

After saying that, the corpse doll concentrated her energy towards the lower half of her body—well, she was still a corpse, so referring to it as energy wasn’t quite applicable, but she lightly bent her knees under her puffy skirt into a squatting position.

“Unlimited Rulebook—”

she chanted.

Attention, please.

Attention, please.

No matter how turbulent it is, it will have no effect on our operation—no matter how turbulent my heart is.