Monogatari Series - Volume 28 - Chapter 1.11

011

Apoptosis.

The phenomenon can also be referred to by the term suicide genes, but considering the details behind the use of the term “own goal” instead of “suicide point”,82 I wasn’t sure how long the term “suicide genes” would last, either—however, considering Shinobu’s sworn friend who went by the name of Suicidemaster, it may be a more appropriate term to describe the state of the Acerola Kingdom (temp.).

Appropriate, and yet inappropriate.

If the allure, or curse, of “Princess Beauty” were to be scientifically analyzed, her trait of driving any form of life into killing itself could perhaps be described as an infestation that rewrote all genes into suicide genes.

The person herself had become an immortal vampire and departed from her country, but her influence remained dyed upon the land, unchanged—Shinobu had described it as political circumstances, but it seemed unlikely that the reason neighboring countries did not claim this land for themselves was completely unrelated to that curse.

All the more so if the surroundings themselves were ruined countries.

I couldn’t say anything for certain, since it all occurred extraordinarily far back in the past, but I figured making it clear could potentially bring us to the heart of the matter regarding the anti-vampire virus.

Because it was a land where nothing could live.

It would not be bizarre if it brought forth an oddity that could kill the immortal.

No—it would be a part of the bizarre.

“Unlimited Rulebook—”

There was the possibility that we had already been infected, but the three of us departed on our final flight towards the “Corpse Kingdom” as though we were seeking refuge from the cluster outbreak—by now, I had gotten pretty used to the turbulence.

I’d probably be fine for about two more jumps.

No, that was a lie.

I was already fed up with just the idea of returning home… Even in the best-case scenario where we were able to resolve the matter of the anti-vampire virus, if there was nothing to be done about the threat of the novel coronavirus, we would have no choice but to once again rely on ONK Airlines for the return trip, not with a direct flight but with multiple layovers.

Though, before that, it would be nice if we were able to return at all.

In any case, after about three hours (including the break) since we departed from Japan, we arrived at our final destination of the “Corpse Castle” in the broad daylight of summertime—because the Acerola Kingdom (temp.) had captured my attention with the ground surface, I hadn’t paid much heed to the sky, but because my vampirism was stronger than usual, the sun felt that much more radiant.

I’d heard that, in Europe, the rays of the sun were harsh even normally… It would have been nice if I’d brought sunglasses with me.

Squinting from the radiance, I looked up at the “Corpse Castle” where Kagenui-san and Suicidemaster awaited us—to be honest, I wasn’t looking forward to it all that much.

After all, it was after I’d seen that sight—that blight.

Since it was similarly a ruined country, I’d assumed that the “Corpse Kingdom” would look more or less the same, and in fact, when I was barely able to look down upon the Earth with my arms wrapped around a tween girl, the kingdom adjoined the Acerola Kingdom (temp.) to the extent that I couldn’t even tell where the border was.

Well, the level of awareness of national borders in an area like this was likely at the same level as the inhabitants of an island nation, as Hanekawa would put it… However, when I looked up at the “Corpse Castle” from our landing coordinates, the building looked weathered and crumbling here and there, but it still retained most of its original form.

The fact that the castle alone retained its original form amidst the desolate surroundings made its grandeur and strangeness all the more striking—this was the castle of the death-prepared, death-inevitable, death-certain vampire, Deathtopia Virtuoso Suicidemaster.

Death—something that would never fade.

And nothing gave off the impression of death more than this.

“In the first place, Deathy herself abandoned this castle quite a long time ago. I believe it was quite soon after I became a vampire that she left. As someone interested only in food, she lacked the life skills to manage such a huge castle.”

Of course, it seemed pretty natural for an immortal vampire to be lacking in life skills—but what about the time she did spend here?

“Did she hire a maid or something?”

“My sworn friend is not like you in the slightest, but ‘tis true that she employed a butler to manage the castle’s chores. What was his name again? That’s right—”

Tropicalesque Homeawave Dogstrings.

“—Was the name. Like me, he was a former human turned into a vampire after Deathy sucked his blood, but Tropicalesque was treated as one of Deathy’s thralls.”

“Did that Tropicalesque guy happen to have any connection to ‘Tropical-Rouge! Pretty Cure’?”

“Of course not. Do not try to look for collaboration opportunities.”

The thirteen-year-old scolded me.

This was perhaps the most important thing, but when scolded by a thirteen-year-old, it really gave me the feeling that I was being scolded…

It was completely different from when I was playing with an eight-year-old.

As expected of the real-life PreCure generation.83

“But how did that thrall Tropicalesque end up leaving the castle?”

“To tell you the conclusion without spoiling too much, I killed him.”

"............”

Please provide a little more detail.

I’d be okay with a little bit of spoilers.

“I suppose I can add that killing Tropicalesque was the direct cause of my decision to become a vampire.”

That additional information was liable to cause even more misunderstandings, but while Shinobu was being self-abasing, she was by no means intentionally pretending to be evil—I was not particularly fond of the argument that “killing one person makes you a murderer, but killing a hundred people makes you a hero”, but considering she had brought an entire country to ruin, it was clear that it should change the criteria a bit.

The standards for good and evil would shift.

And that would also apply to how the world was destroyed in a parallel timeline… In that respect, it resembled how my views on life and death had changed due to the pandemic.

After learning what kind of past Shinobu had been carrying, it was no surprise that Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade could not comprehend what I had gotten so mad about during that hellish spring break. In neither a good way nor a bad way, there was a division between her views and mine such that it was natural they did not agree.

A separation.

At present, if that gap had been bridged to some extent, I wasn’t sure if I could consider that good or bad, either—there’d been some talk about how the old me would not have been intimidated by the prospect of traveling under these circumstances, but at the very least, it if were the spring break version of me, accompanying Shinobu to two separate ruined countries probably would not have happened.

The idea of traveling during the pandemic had given me pause, but the flip side was that, because the pandemic had shaken my sense of values, I had gained the resolve to go on this trip.

“The castle has lasted surprisingly well despite having lost its master and its caretaker. Though they say a house will soon fall apart if no one lives in it.”

“It’s not as if a vacant house will have a caretaker.”

As expected of a former resident of an abandoned building.

“For this castle, you could say that it’s because the master left that it’s managed to last until this long,”

said Ononoki-chan, lifting the hem of her skirt and rubbing her legs—it seemed her knees had reached their limit. I felt apologetic to the point of wanting to massage her legs for her.

“And that’s why, in the present day, it can serve as an isolation ward.”

Isolation ward… I see.

That term came off as sounding a bit too strong, but it had now become common sense that, when it came to an infectious disease, proper zoning was absolutely essential.

In one sense, it would simply be isolating at home, but for Suicidemaster, who had lost her thrall and parted ways with Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, she had once again returned to her castle six hundred years after leaving it.

Could this also be seen as not leaving home, but returning home?

“...Will it be okay to visit her?”

“As long as you get permission from the attending physician, or rather, the attending onmyouji.”

From the faint trembling of her voice, it was clear that Shinobu’s thoughts went beyond just, “I’d like to witness the moment of my sworn friend’s death, even if it’s just a glimpse,” but Ononoki-chan responded flatly in her usual monotone.

Usual or not, as a corpse, the makeup of Ononoki-chan’s vocal cords meant that she couldn’t speak in anything but a monotone. However, her flat response was likely different from mere apathy and instead a simple statement of the truth.

“And that’s only if she’s still alive.”

No—the truth was even harsher.

We crossed a drawbridge that spanned a waterway that had completely dried up, and when we entered the castle itself, I got this impression—it was something like a save point. It was entirely an expression from the era of video games, but the scene before me felt that much unreal—though there was no need to go on any more mighty leaps, but I couldn’t help but feel restless, that I was still up in the clouds.

Because in what appeared to be a ballroom, and in every room after that, there was a massive number of coffins lined up—rather than lined up, perhaps it was more precise to say they were piled up.

Like Tetris.

Though that was another video game comparison.

There were so many coffins that there was almost nowhere to walk—the stage had been set such that wherever I walked, it was likely one of my feet would plunge into a coffin.

It was completely the morgue of vampires.

The Corpse Castle—a place of corpses.

“The tough thing about this contagion is that those that pass away from the anti-vampire virus do not have their corpses turn into ash and disappear. But perhaps this is a familiar sight for the six-hundred-year-old Granny Shinobu?”

“Who are you calling Granny Shinobu.”

The thirteen-year-old Shinobu made a disgusted face.

However, that disgust was probably not directed at Ononoki-chan. Well, if we weren’t going as far back as the Black Death or the Spanish flu, then things hadn’t gotten to this extent in Japan (for now), but it was a sight that could just as easily be seen from the current novel coronavirus.

“When I was isolating at home and taking online lessons, I often felt that this must be what wartime was like, but I figure wartime was actually worse than that.”

I’d made the comparison of fighting a virus to war before, but after hearing the argument that excessively treating viruses as hostile could lead to viewing patients and the deceased hostile as well, I felt ashamed of my own ignorance.

And of course, they wouldn’t be holding online lessons during a war.

“That’s right. However, from a global perspective where wars are being waged with information technology, you could say it’s wartime right now.”

Ononoki-chan’s words sounded like something Hanekawa would say—one aspect of globalism was that it allowed for a wider spread of the infection, but could another difference between past epidemics be the ability to gather various opinions from many directions all at once?

“Well, they say that for the Spanish flu, if it hadn’t been in Spain, there wouldn’t have been a flu. Because misinformation spread just as much as the virus did.”

The terror of groundless rumors, huh?

Well, in that respect, misinformation was still prevalent in our current information society… In the end, before coffins, humanity was powerless.

And perhaps, even vampires.

“For vampires, the sickbeds they are hospitalized in can become the very coffins they are laid to rest in. That’s the only difference between them and humans.”

“...Among all these coffins, there’s no chance that Dramaturgy or Episode is sleeping in one of them, right?”

“There’s none. Or so I’d like to say, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that had become the case while I was out.”

“Hmph. ‘Tis more astonishing to me that so many vampires still exist in this modern society.”

Shinobu was speaking in a way that showed no consideration for the feelings of the bereaved—though when it came to vampires, the bereaved would not be family, but thralls.

But at the same time, she had a point.

Even if Europe was known for its vampires… Did this mean that interest in the occult had not yet died out?

“Though it’s on the verge of death. Oh, but to provide a bit of good news, unlike the novel coronavirus, the risk of dying from the anti-vampire virus apparently has no correlation to age. Whether you’re six hundred or eight or thirteen years old, the fatality rate is completely the same at one hundred percent.”

It was the same fatality rate as rabies.

That wasn’t good news in the slightest, but perhaps this information could be a form of consolation for Shinobu and Suicidemaster, who had lived longer lives than even Dracula.

There wouldn’t be any intergenerational divides coming from those having lived longer carrying a higher risk.

“There are specialists that have come up with hypotheses as to what is exactly considered a vampire among the various kinds of oddities. Like zombies, there are heaps of oddities that suck out the lifeblood of humans, after all. But onee-chan, who can be pretty crude, sides with those that think that there’s no meaning to the detailed classification of immortal oddities.”

I couldn’t help but shudder at the thought of such a faction, but one way or another, it seemed she was still an onmyouji after all… You could say it was up to the individual how much the “oni” of Japan coincided with the “oni” in vampires.84

Right, but it was less important what each individual specialist thought and more important what the anti-vampire virus thought—not that a virus held any intentions.

If we return to times of peace, maybe someone will make a game out of anthropomorphized viruses.

“For the time being, we’ve been sealing the lids of the coffins, but it’s not like we’ve vacuum-packed them. There’s no guarantee that the virus won’t leak out, so let’s move along. Onee-chan’s in the library up ahead.”

“Library? So such a room existed in this ‘Corpse Castle’.”

Perhaps she didn’t remember because it was six hundred years ago, or perhaps books were not so popular in the time of ‘Princess Beauty’, for Shinobu had said that sounding rather clueless—as for me, I was thinking that the match-up of Kagenui-san with a library was more astonishing.

“Though the books have all completely deteriorated by now. They were so poorly preserved that they’ll crumble when you touch them. It just happens to be a room that’s not too close but not too far for the sake of monitoring Suicidemaster fighting her illness in the throne room.”

“I see.”

That made sense.

But also, it meant that Kagenui-san was stationed as the guard that we would have to overcome to meet Suicidemaster. If Shinobu did not remember that a library existed, she surely would not remember if there were any secret paths to the throne room, so an encounter with the violent onmyouji was inevitable.

“By the way, are there any more specialists here? At the ‘Corpse Castle’.”

“Of course, with this pandemic being the number one priority, we’re receiving contact from experts in various fields across the world, but we’re avoiding gathering all in one place so as to not crowd together. Just like any other job right now—only onee-chan is stationed permanently here.”

“Uh-huh… Does that mean that Kagenui-san is a specialist with global recognition?”

Hearing that we hadn’t been the only ones called made me feel as though I’d literally gained a hundred allies (regardless of whether they would consider a scoundrel like me an ally), but while I would have easily accepted it if it were Gaen-san in this important position, I’d been thinking of Kagenui-san as more the outlaw-type to be branded as a heretic in these academic societies…

“Oni onii-chan, your perception of onee-chan is as awful as ever, but unfortunately, there are people who hold those viewpoints. People that view her as a heretic.”

“So she is, huh.”

“However, onee-chan has a long history with Suicidemaster. And on top of that, she was rated as being qualified for the role of monitoring—but that’s just trying to be positive, and it’s really the short end of the stick.”

A long history…

Last April, before the world had changed so drastically, she had hinted as much, but ultimately, I hadn’t heard the details.

A long history, to the point of having killing intent.

Back then, because the modern Suicidemaster had become even more powerless than Shinobu, it had dampened the mood of Kagenui-san’s killing intent, so things had come to somewhat of a resolution—but if Suicidemaster, fighting her illness in the throne room, had become even weaker, then there was no need to worry about things getting heated… It was a small bit of relief.

The relationship between Deathtopia Virtuoso Suicidemaster and Kagenui Yozuru—and, the relationship between Deathtopia Virtuoso Suicidemaster and Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade.

And I can’t say she has no relation to me, either.

“We’ve arrived. This is the library. Have the two of you prepared yourselves? To be beaten up by onee-chan.”

And why should we be preparing ourselves for that.

That was what I wanted to say, but from experience, Kagenui-san was the sort of specialist where it was essential for me to prepare myself even if we didn’t possess any vampiric qualities—if so, then I would prepare myself.

Prepare for my heart to be beaten up.