Monogatari Series - Volume 28 - Chapter 1.13

013

I’ve been complaining about this and that in regards to the pandemic, but in actuality, it was not as though I myself had been infected, nor did I know anyone around me who had been infected. As such, besides the classes of the university, which I’d so laboriously managed to enter, becoming online, I was only able to truly understand the severity of the situation when the things I found enjoyable or the things I was looking forward to were postponed or cut back or canceled.

It forced me to recognize that the world had changed.

Even as someone who said things like, “I won’t make friends, because my strength as a human would decrease,” I had still become deeply obliged to the various forms of fun entertainment, to the extent that (to borrow Ononoki-chan’s words) they could be prohibited… In that sense, the period of self-restraint could also be construed as a period of being on stand-by.

Or, idle time.

It would be fairly wrong to say that I’d been looking forward to it, but our meeting with the death-prepared, death-inevitable, death-certain vampire, Deathtopia Virtuoso Suicidemaster, was achieved surprisingly smoothly without being postponed any further—I’d been right on the mark in my assumption that things could proceed pretty quickly when it was Kagenui-san we were dealing with.

Putting aside the question of if things were proceeding more quickly towards death.

Well, both Kagenui-san and Ononoki-chan had only repeated their warnings and words of caution in unison, but they never wanted to get in the way of Shinobu’s wishes for a meeting, so it was only a matter of course… It was just that I’d expected we’d be kept waiting a little more, so it was a bit of a surprise.

In other words, it meant that it was possible Suicidemaster did not have enough time left to keep us waiting—but also, it was neither a remote conference nor an online meeting but a fruitful face-to-face meeting that came to fruition,93 and the delicate situation made me a little worried.

Compared to the plastic dividers used in restaurants, or the partitions often seen on TV… A much narrower distance was formed by the drapes that hung respectfully between us and the throne, though they were by no means transparent—from what I remembered, it was a partition that resembled the one from when I’d had an audience with “Princess Beauty” in the “Mirror World”.

In Japanese terms, it was like a bamboo screen.94

It was a partition used in accordance with the convention of upper-class people not showing themselves so easily, but it was also a curtain used as countermeasures for infection—though, in this particular case, it seemed most likely that its biggest function was to serve as the curtain surrounding a hospital bed.

In order to just barely protect one’s privacy.

“Ka ka… So you came… It makes me happy, in a tough and cool way. Rola—wait, that’s not it. You’re not Rola anymore. I gave you a new name… What was it again…?”

If I hadn’t heard from Kagenui-san in advance regarding the symptoms of this disease, I would have thought that the voice I heard from behind the sheer fabric came from an elderly person—well, it was true that Suicidemaster was of an age even beyond that of an elderly person, but at least when I’d met her last year, she’d been a young girl no different from Shinobu.

Or rather, she was even younger, at six years old.

That had been an indicator that she’d grown that weak… But the silhouette from behind the curtain was extremely far off from the image of a girl, but more like that of a withered tree.

Or even a decayed tree.

She lay sprawled across the throne, and did not even raise her upper body.

She couldn’t raise it.

“Yeah… That’s right. The iron-blooded, hot-blooded, cold-blooded vampire, Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade… That was it.”

“...Indeed.”

With a hoarse voice, Shinobu agreed.

She did not go out of her way to say that that name had already become a thing of the past—before that, she must have received that much of a shock.

At Suicidemaster’s condition.

Not just at her appearance, voice, or silhouette, but also at her response, where even the name she had come up with as her sworn friend’s direct progenitor had become uncertain—her memory had become clouded.

Even her consciousness had become clouded.

Though she was putting on a bold front to hide her weakness, it was impossible to conceal, and that had almost left Shinobu at a loss for words.

However, it was Shinobu who put on a bold front in response.

As though she was ignoring the poor condition of her sworn friend…

“I did not expect that I would once again be seeing you in this ‘Corpse Castle’. Back then, the both of us were so unbelievably young, were we not?”

she said.

“Yeah… We had nothing but the indiscretions of youth.”

Such was Suicidemaster’s belabored response.

It was a response that I found hard to judge if Shinobu’s words had fully reached her, or if she was simply saying something arbitrary to pretend that she understood.

“For me to return to this castle in this state… Ka ka. It’s hilarious. I was born in this ‘Corpse Castle’, and now I’ll die in this ‘Corpse Castle’.”

“But you have died in places all over the world, have you not?”

“Is that right…?”

At Shinobu’s slightly-too-harsh retort, Suicidemaster only gave an ambiguous response—it had only been a couple of exchanges, but it was already too hard to watch.

It felt like my heart was tightening.

The symptoms were completely different from those of the novel coronavirus, but it felt like I was personally witnessing how terrifying an infectious disease could be—even through the partition, it came across to me more than enough.

Regardless of what had been in between, being in front of “Princess Beauty” in the “Mirror World” or in heaven had also made me tremble excessively… I’d been thinking that I didn’t want to intrude upon the two vampires’ rendezvous, but this wasn’t an atmosphere in which I could have cut in in the first place. There was no room to feel consideration or alienation. I could only stay silent.

“I would like to ask this just in case, Deathy,”

said Shinobu.

Perhaps she’d regained her composure, as I couldn’t feel her wavering heart even through our link—I thought she was putting on a bold front, but maybe she had truly managed to keep her heart from wavering.

The fact that she’d lived for six hundred years did mean that she held six hundred years’ worth of experience.

She might have already known this was the case from the hunch she’d had in Japan—rather than a hunch, it might have been a premonition.

“Do you want any help?”

“Nah.”

Even that immediate reply was frail. Pitiful.

Full of helplessness.

“Honestly, it’d be great if you left as soon as possible—I don’t wanna risk infecting you. Not you, or your thrall.”

It seemed she hadn’t overlooked my presence here, as Suicidemaster said so in acknowledgement—so she was fully aware of the state that she was in.

She was capable of informed consent.

“I’ve experienced loads of different causes of death, but I think dying from this infection will complete the set. I don’t have even an ounce of regret, or an ounce of leftovers to eat.95 As someone worthy of certain death, I’m satisfied having died ten thousand deaths.96 Just like my other name says.”

“...I see.”

“What… You doubting me?”

“No, there is no room for reasonable doubt. After all, both you and I have lived for far too long. If anything, ‘twould have been better if the two of us died six hundred years ago.”

“Ka ka… Exactly. But there’s no need for you to die, too. For now, anyway. I’m grateful that you came all the way from that island country in the Far East to see me, but I really have no regrets. If you don’t mind, I’ll be one step ahead of you in getting some peace.”

As Suicidemaster said that, her tone of voice did not sound peaceful in the slightest—and Shinobu said, “Well, unlike me, you do not flail about in an effort to survive, eh?” as she shrugged her shoulders.

“Very different from me, who failed to die completely. I have decided to live in that shame, and I have made my peace with that… Yet, ‘tis not a way of life I would particularly recommend.”

“Weeell… I would’ve gone with that, too, if I could. So I’d like to say my thanks to that thrall of yours. Thank you for enslaving Rola.”

I remained silent, but oh. She’d said her thanks to me.

To me.

It hadn’t immediately struck me that Rola was Shinobu’s name when she’d been human, so I couldn’t respond right away, and I wasn’t even sure how I could respond after being thanked like that—if anything, what I’d done to Shinobu was an act of barbarism that should’ve drawn the ire of her sworn friend—but I managed to say,

“I’d like to thank you, too, for allowing me to meet Shinobu—”

in a panic.

At this point, it had become something like greeting the parents before marriage… Well, they were sworn friends, and Suicidemaster was something like a guardian to Shinobu, so perhaps that impression was not entirely off-base.

Normally, this should have been a formality performed in the April of last year, but even so, you could say it was a transfer of authority that likely could not have occurred if it weren’t for this pandemic.

If she had not been rendered so powerless, it would have been impossible for me to exchange such pleasantries with Suicidemaster—with a genuine oddity.

In any case, I felt nothing but gratitude.

Precisely because Suicidemaster had turned “Princess Beauty” into a vampire, I was able to meet her during that spring break, about six hundred years later.

“Thinking about how I could’ve made the same mistake with Kissshot as I did with Tropicalesque… Just dying wouldn’t be enough for my atonement. But it seems like I don’t need to worry there.”

Tropicalesque… The butler.

The vampire that served as caretaker of this “Corpse Castle”.

“I shall never become like him. I cannot. Though he was a slave, Tropicalesque was a vampire that enjoyed taking the royal road, despite not being royalty.”

“Seriously. That slave was just too much for me—ka ka. Guess I can finally get to go and apologize to him. Really kept him waiting, huh.”

…As far as I knew, there was no concept of the “afterlife” for oddities. It was only humans that could fall down to hell, and it was only humans that could ascend to heaven—or so it should have been, but, well, perhaps it depended on the country or culture or linguistic area.

It would be extremely tasteless of me to call it out right now.

The vampire that Shinobu said she had killed… The oddity that was killed, not by her as the “Oddity Slayer”, but by her as “Princess Beauty”.

If he was a vampire that enjoyed taking the royal road, then if he had lived to the present day, would he have been someone that took on the full brunt of this pandemic?

No, if he really did enjoy taking the royal road, then there’s no way he would have lived for over six hundred years… Even if his physical body could hold up, he wouldn’t be able to withstand the erosion of his mind. The only ones capable of withstanding that would be heretical vampires like Shinobu and Suicidemaster.

They really were sworn friends.

Though one part of those heretics was about to be brought to sleep.

The sleep of death.

“So? Kissy. Didn’t Kagenui tell you to ask me something?97 You’d better ask me quickly… If you don’t fulfill your role, you won’t be able to cut this meeting short, even if you wanted to.”

“If it is possible, I would like to keep this conversation going for about a hundred more years.”

“Give up on that.”

“How hilarious, to tell me to give up on something. Now that we have met, it would not matter to me in the slightest if I were to break the promise with that vampire hunter. Although, I suppose I should try to save face here.”

Shinobu was taking on a haughty attitude—sorry to say this while you’re trying to act cool, but I’d like it if you did that, too. I could understand getting big-headed after meeting with your sworn friend, but don’t forget that breaking our promise with Kagenui-san here meant losing our means of transportation home.

Our outing was still an outing until we made it back home.

“Well, for me… It’d be nice if I could give you, my closest friend, this achievement as a parting gift, or as a form of inheritance, but unfortunately, I’m not trying to keep it a secret. I seriously don’t know… I don’t know when or where I was infected.”

I don’t have a clue.

So said the death-prepared, death-inevitable, death-certain vampire, and I didn’t sense any falsehoods in her words—or rather, I sensed that, as a vampire on the verge of death, she didn’t even possess the strength to tell any lies.

Her remaining lives were zero.

“That’s what I told Kagenui… But unfortunately, she doesn’t really trust me right now. If I do have any regrets, it’s that I’ll be dying while still on the bad side of that specialist…”

Was that supposed to be a joke, as opposed to a lie?

Had she mustered all her strength to crack a joke?

In the first place, Kagenui-san treated all immortal oddities as evil, so I didn’t think she hated Suicidemaster for personal reasons… However, it was also true that she had enlisted our help because she thought there were still secrets to uncover.

If it were the case that, even unintentionally, she was still keeping something hidden…

“Even if you do not know when you were infected, do you not know the last moment in which you were certainly not infected?”

Despite all the bad-mouthing, it seemed she still planned on doing her job, as Shinobu posed that question—when was the last moment she was certainly not infected? Though it was likely hard to say for sure, given the incubation period or the asymptomatic period—

“Last year, when I went to Japan to visit you, I’m pretty sure there weren’t any problems. Not that I was in tip-top shape… Honestly, I was already thinking ‘I’m about to die soon’ by that point. But I was assuming it would end up being death by starvation. Never thought it’d be a disease like this.”

So it had been true that she had come to visit Shinobu after having foreseen her own death—not that she herself had said so, but, well, some things went without saying.

“And what happened after you were deported by Kagenui? I know you must be tired of these questions, but I cannot just refrain from asking.”

“I wandered around under the hunters’ supervision… Even so, it’s not like I was able to get around much. But apparently, the routes I took ended up exactly tracing the map of infection for the pandemic—it’s fairly likely I was patient zero.”

Patient zero—so that was why she was being quarantined like this, in such a special way. The anti-vampire virus, with a fatality rate of almost one hundred percent—the fact that she was an exception indicated by that “almost” was probably part of why she’d become a subject of research.

For now, anyway.

Though she was about to be an exception no longer.

However, whether she was the first or the second or even the hundredth or the ten thousandth patient to be infected, it wasn’t really a competition, and there wasn’t really any meaning to the number—if anything, since Suicidemaster had been under the supervision of specialists since her deportation, they should have a complete understanding of the route of infection.

They’d know more details than Suicidemaster herself, what with her foggy recollection—nevertheless, the origin of this illness was still unknown.

And that was what was so strange.

“Is it okay if I ask a question, too?”

I wasn’t sure if she could see me from behind the sheer fabric, but I raised my hand to ask Suicidemaster a question.

“This might have less to do with the infection and more to do with the ecology of vampires, but… What is it really like for vampire communities? I get all the stuff with thralls and slaves, but how often is it the case that vampires become friends, like with you two?”

“‘Tis nonexistent.”

Perhaps she was showing consideration so as to not place extra burden on her sworn friend, but it was Shinobu that answered my question born from ignorance.

“There is a strong awareness of each vampire having their own domain. And because they can produce thralls through something like parthenogenesis, there is no meaning to forming a group or a society. As such, they are not very social creatures. Our association comes from the fact that Deathy had formed friendly relations with me when I was still human.”

I see.

It was true that, after she’d become a vampire, Shinobu had parted ways with Suicidemaster, and they hadn’t seen each other again for six hundred years—strictly speaking, they had only reunited after Shinobu was no longer a vampire.

Well, what I had really wanted to know was, even if Suicidemaster really had been a super-spreader, then how exactly would she have spread this contagion to the other vampires scattered across Europe?

Social distancing measures differed from country to country, but even if this disease were spread by airborne transmission, which had a wider range than droplet transmission, it wouldn’t have been able to spread to any other vampires if they hadn’t been in that range, right…?

Closeness—secrets.98

“I… I wasn’t exactly well-connected. It was actually a surprise to me to learn that there were so many vampires still alive.”

She had said something similar to Shinobu.

To the very end, they were like birds of a feather that flocked together—in that case, it was probably true when she said she wasn’t well-connected. But that meant the question of how the infection had even spread lingered even more strongly.

Well, even if you avoided the Three Closes or avoided dining together, epidemics became epidemics because they spread when they did—this was more about the novel coronavirus, but the fact that there were no one-hundred-percent perfect countermeasures surely applied to every epidemic.

As if it was possible to dodge microscopic particles.

It wasn’t even a game of dodgeball.

“If I ended up eradicating the race of vampires, who were just barely scraping by, then it would truly be heartbreaking. I’d like to apologize by offering my life.”

“We all know you are not so admirable.”

“But it’s true that I don’t want to get you infected. Guess the tips of my fangs really have grown dull. Maybe you wouldn’t get infected in your current state, but still, I want you to take care.”

Normally, the one being told, “Take care,” should have been Suicidemaster on her sickbed, but she’d said so all the same.

“There’s also the fact that I don’t wanna show any more of my shriveled-up self. If possible, I’d like for you to remember me as being tough and cool to the very end.”

“‘Tis not as though you have ever shown me the cool side of yourself. As far as I have seen, you were always dying in some way or another.”

Saying that and without taking a step closer to the throne, Shinobu turned on her heel—perhaps it was the style of those with the Oshino name to not say any parting words.

Or.

Perhaps she intended to return to this audience chamber once again.