Monogatari Series - Volume 28 - Chapter 1.17

017

Living things were made up of the food they ate.

For example, if a crayfish is fed only mackerel, its shell will apparently turn blue… And the poison of the fugu is not something it produces naturally within its body, but an accumulation of the tetrodotoxin from the continued consumption of poisonous plankton.

It was the same for humans.

Of course, it had its limits… Eating lots of seafood did not make you better at swimming, and eating chicken would not give you the ability to fly—in the first place, chickens themselves could not fly. But even so, whatever you eat—whether that’s meat or vegetables, animals or inanimate objects—will become energy.

No matter the meal, it will be energy-drained.

If you eat gold leaf, you’ll end up feeling luxurious.

Even if it has no taste.

Eating habits, food culture, nutritional balance, proteins, sugars, fruits, sweets, carbonated drinks, alcohol, fermented foods, an unbalanced diet, preserved foods, low-calorie foods, a low-carb diet, hunting, fishing, vegetarianism, condiments, seasonings, space food, fasting—famine.

And, eating humans.

If it was true for humans, then it was true for vampires.

Eat or be eaten—just as Ononoki-chan had said, the idea of eating as a kind of memorial service may be rare, but it was certainly not unique.

For an extreme example, even I would say “Thanks for the meal” before eating—thanks for the life I’m about to partake in.119 And I’d been taught that leaving food uneaten on the table was an act of blasphemy towards that life.

Wasting food was the same as wasting life, and playing with your food was the same as playing with life, was how I’d been brought up—it was like a moral upbringing, at the same time, the idea was instilled down to my bones that we were living beings that needed to consume the lives of other living beings to live.

I’d understood that long ago, but especially by the time I was a high schooler.

Don’t you know I’ll die if I don’t eat?

Yet when Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade said this to me with a blank expression, I was unable to accept it—I couldn’t acknowledge that eating was a show of respect, and a show of thanks.

In that spring break, despite every nook and cranny of my body having become a vampire, I, Araragi Koyomi, said this.

I am human.

However, what if, at that time, she had responded with:

It is because you are human, no?

“Hm? What’s the matter, Araragi-kun? I don’t care if you’re nocturnal now or whatever, but if you’ve finished your remote meeting with your little sisters, then you should go to bed when it’s bedtime. We don’t know when you’ll start suddenly showin’ symptoms. You can pick whatever room you’d like.”

“Right. Ononoki-chan is getting some rest, too. Since I ended up overusing her for a bunch of things again.”

“Sheesh, whose shikigami is she supposed to be?”

After finishing my inspection of the coffin room, I had parted ways with Ononoki-chan and had headed straight for the Corpse Castle’s library—though she was advising me to go to bed, Kagenui-san herself was staying up late.

She probably had a lot of things to think about. For someone who was usually pretty thoughtless. And there was no doubt that her problems had only multiplied by our arrival here… Rather than pointing the way to a solution, it felt like we’d come here from Japan specifically to be nuisances.

From there, I was about to bring her yet another source of worry. It was like I hadn’t made any progress in the slightest.

But even so, I had to keep moving forward.

I couldn’t just give it a rest.

“Excuse me. Despite being nocturnal, the jet lag and the long flight has made me feel pretty dizzy, but still, Kagenui-san, I wanted to consult you about something before going to bed…”

As I wondered what time it was now in Japan, and if it had become “tomorrow” by now over there, I took the seat diagonally across from Kagenui-san.

It was a countermeasure against the novel coronavirus that had already become a habit for me. It was something I didn’t forget, even at a time like this.

“What is it? Y’wanna learn the most efficient way to earn credits in university?”

She was really interested, wasn’t she?

Incidentally, I hadn’t expected this remote situation to last very long, so I’d ended up signing up for a completely messy schedule.

However, my concerns (obviously) did not have to do with that.

Rather than a consultation, this was more a ghost story.120

“You don’t have to hold back, y’know? I might not have the know-how for remote lectures, but if you use my methods, you should be able easily catch up from being a month behind—”

“As a matter of fact, there’s a chance that we might be able to return to Japan as soon as tomorrow. Me, and even you, Kagenui-san. If my idea is correct.”

Kagenui-san said, “Tomorrow?” and raised her head.

Honestly, “tomorrow” was an exaggeration. Even before that, what did I mean by “If my idea is correct”?—was there ever a single time that my ideas had ever been correct?

If anything, it was more, “If my bad premonition was accurate”—for that, I’d always hit the bull’s-eye.

“All right. If you’re tryin’ to learn how to bluff, that’s a great start.”

“It could be completely off the mark, and maybe it’s an idea that you specialists have already looked into. So I just wanted you to evaluate it, Kagenui-san. Would you mind hearing me out?”

“Of course. After all, it’s been hard not to get a hankering for some Japanese food. …That wasn’t meant to be a pun on natto, by the way.”121

Kagenui-san said so, as if to keep up appearances.

Er, that wasn’t really something you needed to keep up appearances for… Though I’d heard that they don’t eat natto all that much in the Kansai region.

They didn’t eat it, huh… A matter of preferences.

“Um… Where should I begin? I haven’t exactly gotten all my thoughts in order.”

“Just start from wherever. I can put it all in order myself.”

How reliable.

Though she’d only ever acted as a power-type character together with Ononoki-chan, she was surprisingly the logical type—there was a lot I could learn from her, as someone who could only come up with brute-force plans.

After clearing my throat, I began to speak.

“Kagenui-san, how much do you know about the legend of ‘Princess Beauty’? Ononoki-chan didn’t seem to know too much about it, herself.”

“I dunno all that much, either. Not like I can go and interview the person herself.”

Well, I myself hadn’t gotten the story to that level of detail. On top of Shinobu not remembering it very well, she probably didn’t want to talk about it very much, either—I had only learned what I did as a result of stumbling into the “Mirror World” by chance and hearing the story from “the person herself” in a place much like heaven.

It was highly irregular.

As such, I began with an explanation of that story, and then I presented the commonalities between the curse of “Princess Beauty” and the anti-vampire virus—originally, I’d planned on letting Ononoki-chan report that information, but ultimately, as the one proposing the idea, it was better if I explained it myself.

At this point, it was only the preface, after all.

“I see. I dunno if the word ‘destruction’ really applies in the same way to both of them, but I get the feeling we can’t just consider them completely unrelated. The theory that the curse of ‘Princess Beauty’ was revived when the King of Oddities, Heartunderblade, was turned into the former Heartunderblade is also pretty compelling—but if that’s all, then although I can give you the credits, it’s not worthy of an A or a B. It’s not ‘Excellent’ or ‘Satisfactory’, either.”122

What era would that make me a student from?

A temple school in the Edo era?

“I’d bet Yotsugi already pointed it out, but the differences are a lot bigger than the similarities. Especially the route of infection—or was the curse of ‘Princess Beauty’ actually so powerful and so virulent that just hearin’ rumors about it could drive someone to suicide?”

“Considering that it had gone as far as bringing an entire country to ruin, it’s not impossible, but even if the curse was actually revived, I wouldn’t think it came back as the exact same curse of ‘Princess Beauty’. The mutations that Ononoki-chan mentioned would have certainly occurred.”

The mutation of oddities.123

Because they were essentially rumors, it was inevitable they would end up changing like some game of telephone—just as how the vampires of six hundred years ago were not entirely the same as the vampires of the present day.

Not even traditional art would be the same when compared to its origins.

Apparently, the recently-popular Amabie originally used to be called Amabiko.

A game of telephone—a game of contagion.124

“Of course, I do bear some responsibility for the downsizing of Shinobu, but though she’s no longer a vampire, that doesn’t mean she’d reverted back to being human or even a princess. Analyzing it as the originator of the idea, I’d say it’s pretty doubtful that the curse would even return.”

From what I’d heard, it was a curse that was triggered based on beauty.

If the question was if Shinobu regained her beauty by turning into a golden-haired young girl, then it might be lacking in consideration for my partner to deny it outright, but if anything, she was self-indulgent, slothful, lackadaisical, lethargic, contrarian, lazy, selfish, and a spoiled brat.

As for whether or not she was beautiful, I’d say she had been far more beautiful when she was a vampire—a demon so beautiful that my eyes would be blinded, my blood would boil, and my spine would get chills.

“From experience—that is, from what I’d experienced in the Mirror World and in heaven, not having experienced it in reality—when it came to the allure of ‘Princess Beauty’, her outward appearance was a matter of course, but I’d say that it pointed to her inner beauty as well.”

“Haha. Like the Pretty Boys Detective Club,”

said Kagenui-san, laughing.

What was she laughing about—was she in the pretty boys’ faction?

“Well, I ain’t duty-bound to back you up on that, but I’d say that the former Heartunderblade became self-indulgent because she desired as such. In other words, having her blood sucked by Suicidemaster was not a promotion, but a degradation. In that case, the nullification of the curse should still remain in effect—but what then, Araragi-kun? I dunno what you’re tryin’ to do by refutin’ your own hypothesis, but I’m lookin’ forward to what’s up next.”

“Well, that’s the thing. It’s established practice for me to start my own fires and put them out, but for Shinobu… Or rather, for Princess Acerola, she was released from the witch’s curse by having Suicidemaster suck her blood. In a way, it feels like the ending of a fairy tale… But, even if that was fine for ‘Princess Beauty’, whose blood was sucked, did Suicidemaster, the one who sucked the blood, really come out of this unscathed?”

“Hm?”

“I’ve seen Shinobu take the oddities she’s eaten or the energy she’s consumed and make them into a part of herself. Among those, there was the case of her eating her first thrall, Shishirui Seishirou, which turned into a pretty big deal, as you are well aware—by taking in the consumed oddity as energy, she both receives its influence and spreads it around.

And that influence could be a negative one.

Shishirui Seishirou himself had used his energy drain to receive influence from Kanbaru’s left arm—from the mummified monkey.

In the first place, though he was supposed to have committed suicide, Shishirui Seishirou had managed to revive in the modern era in such a manner—he had greedily gobbled down the fragments of oddities that were floating around the grounds of the Kitashirahebi Shrine.

Which ultimately led to the birth of Oshino Ougi.

“...I still don’t see where you’re headed with this. I already know that, as the King of Oddities, the former Heartunderblade can take the energy she’s consumed and make it a part of herself, but vampires have always been those kinds of beings, as well as non-beings. But what about it?”

“If it’s something Shinobu can do, then it’s also something Suicidemaster can do. Or rather, it’s not something Suicidemaster can avoid. Basically—not today or last year, but six hundred years ago… What if the curse of ‘Princess Beauty’ migrated from Princess Acerola to Deathtopia Virtuoso Suicidemaster?”

Migration.

Or—a contagion.

“So, that was the first thing I wanted to ask about. Although Shinobu was freed from her curse when she became a vampire, Suicidemaster took the curse upon herself as compensation. How plausible would you say this hypothesis is?”

When Suicidemaster consumed “Princess Beauty”, she was left with the unbalanced diet of being unable to consume anything other than “Princess Beauty”—and the influence here could not be treated as a simple matter of preference, but a kind of allergy or even the negative influence of a toxin.

“Sounds very possible. It’s almost like it’d be even weirder if that weren’t the case—and it’s hard to believe a single vampire would be able to fully digest a curse that was that heinous.”

Like indigestion, said Kagenui-san.

“But if that’s all there is to it, then I can’t fully digest that hypothesis, either. In the end, the witch’s curse may have migrated over, but it ain’t like the destructive spell is taking effect from within Suicidemaster’s body. Hard to say that her insides are particularly beautiful by any standard.”

“Indeed.”

It might have been improper of me to agree with an “Indeed”, but from the impression I’d gotten from briefly speaking with her last spring, Suicidemaster’s tough and cool personality was not one that I wanted to get too close to. Naturally, her pompousness had been reduced on the sickbed of her throne, but Shinobu could only become her sworn friend because she was equally as pompous.

If she was like that right now, then I could only imagine what her personality could have been in her heyday.

“...Although, since the act of sucking the blood of ‘Princess Beauty’ would be equivalent to a suicidal act, I wouldn’t say that it’s not beautiful at all.”

“What a surprise. Araragi-kun, are you the kind of guy that thinks that self-sacrifice is beautiful?”

“No. If anything, I’m the type to think that it’s ugly.”

“That’s just self-loathing, then.”

Don’t aim for my weak points.

That hurts even more than your punches.

“There are plenty more retorts I could’ve made, but I can hit you with all of ‘em later, so for now, let’s keep going. The curse of ‘Princess Beauty’ migrated over to Suicidemaster six hundred years ago. And the curse remained dormant within her body. In epidemiological terms, it’d be an incubation period. A six-hundred-year-long incubation period—well, I guess there are viruses that are on such an astronomical scale. For humans, it’d be like shingles for the chickenpox virus. So? Now we just need the reason for it takin’ effect after all this time… And the reason for it mutatin’.”

“Right. This was already pointed out by Ononoki-chan, but the causes of death are different, after all. Killing yourself from being affected by overwhelming beauty, versus dying by becoming desiccated from dehydration. Perhaps the route of infection could be explained with just a minor change, but for the infection itself, a simple mutation won’t cut it.”

“What an excellent shikigami I have. She can get an A from me.”

Somehow, Ononoki-chan had earned the credits… But what university was she even going to?

Had she skipped grades?

In layman’s terms, it was likely that a virus spread by droplet transmission would mutate to spread by airborne transmission, and that was in fact one of the most feared possibilities for the novel coronavirus—but it wasn’t a trivial matter for the symptoms themselves to change completely.

It was a level of mutation that would make it seem as though the hypothesis itself was wrong.

“At first, I thought about if Suicidemaster’s visit to Japan could have had an influence. A lot of high school girls had been turned into mummies back then, right? And even Suicidemaster herself. So, I figured the dried-up vampires here in Europe might have some relation to that—if vampires are strongly influenced by the blood they suck, then it wouldn’t be strange for Suicidemaster to have been dyed in the doom and gloom of the girls’ basketball team.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

“That's what I thought. So, with Ononoki-chan’s help, we went around opening a bunch of the coffins in the morgue—”

“Seriously, whose shikigami is she supposed to be? And just a while back, she’d been working so hard as though she were Nadeko-chan’s shikigami.”

“—But after comparing the high school girl mummies and the vampire mummies, the way they were dried out was completely different. Of course, Japanese high school girls and European vampires differed in lots of ways, like physical make-up and skeletal structure, but still, it was hard to say that they’d undergone mummification following the same rules.”

“Honestly, that’s something I’d like to have a specialist coroner verify. Rather than leaving it up to your amateur judgment, Araragi-kun.”

“No, for this particular matter, it might’ve been hard even for a specialist to realize. It might’ve even been harder for a specialist to realize.”

“Huh?”

Kagenui-san tilted her head.

Oops, my explanation had been lacking—at the same time, it was something that was hard to explain. It would be quite insolent of me if that came across as me saying that my judgment as an amateur was better than that of a specialist.

“Er, that’s not it… What I meant to say was, the differences between the two types of mummies was so obvious that anyone would realize upon looking at them. That’s why this case has no relation to the high school girls of my alma mater. On the surface, at least… However, I am almost certain that, considering the timing, Suicidemaster’s trip to Japan to visit her sworn friend was the catalyst for the reactivation of the witch’s curse, which had lay dormant within Suicidemaster for six hundred years.”

Incidentally, or perhaps not so incidentally at all, the hypothesis that the debilitation of Suicidemaster was connected to the enslavement of Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade remained as strong as ever.

I didn’t know what the true intentions of that true ancestor were, but if she did think, “My time’s almost up,” and come to Japan to see her old friend before she died, then I couldn’t help but be troubled about having been the underlying cause.

If the fact that I had saved Shinobu—and the fact that I had not saved Shinobu—was indeed the cause.

“I see. So after six hundred years, the reunion with the former Heartunderblade itself was the trigger for the reactivation of the curse? Due to a chance meeting with the source of the curse—”

“I think the chance of that is very high. The chance that the curse was stimulated by ‘meeting’ Shinobu—however, that still doesn’t explain the mutation. If vampires all over Europe had started to commit seppuku instead, then we could have considered this resolved.”

“Rather than resolved, more like utter chaos. It would be an outrageous way of spreading Japanese culture across the world.”

“So, there had to be some other component involved. Even if that component was not a high school girl from Japanese culture—I’d finally managed to realize this after getting this far, but before Suicidemaster sucked the blood of ‘Princess Beauty’, at almost the same time, the death-prepared, death-certain, death-inevitable vampire had consumed another being, you see.”

“Another being?”

“Or, another non-being. Tropicalesque Homeawave Dogstrings.”

Her first and only thrall.

The butler of this “Corpse Castle”.

“Though she should have decided that she would only be eating ‘Princess Beauty’, she happened to welcome her butler into her stomach. That vampire, who had tried to kill ‘Princess Beauty’ and had only gotten killed in return, should have ultimately had his remains eaten by Suicidemaster as a memorial service.”

“...Yeah, sounds about right. And?”

“However, even if he was memorialized, it doesn’t mean he would have necessarily attained nirvana, right? Although, it’s not clear whether or not vampires can even attain nirvana in the first place… But regardless of how spectacular a funeral is held for you, if you have any regrets left in this world, you’ll lose your way.”

Just like what had happened to the god who was a lost child, Hachikuji Mayoi.

Whether through memorial services or prayers, there were some thoughts that could not be buried.

There were some corpses that could not be mourned.

“Especially if he was killed by the curse of ‘Princess Beauty’, there would be no way that he didn’t leave behind any regrets. In particular, unlike someone like me, and even unlike Shishirui Seishirou, Tropicalesque was allegedly an extremely devoted thrall to his master—he would have rued the fact that he’d died earlier than his master and made her go through the trouble of memorializing him.”

Though that was something I could only imagine.

It was immeasurable, unfathomable, when looked at through the lens of human values—how much would one aspire to be eaten by the master they served?

How much of an honor would they consider it?

“But, what I can say for sure is that the pairing had to have been bad.”

“The pairing?”

“In European terms, it would be like a mariage, I believe…125 You know, like watermelons and tempura, or unagi and umeboshi…126 Stuff like that.”

“In that case, mariage would be the complete opposite. But you’re talkin’ about foods that would make you feel sick if you ate them together, right?”

Right—well, the thing about watermelons and tempura was just a superstition, but it was true that some foods that were safe to eat individually could transform into something nearly inedible (though not to the level of being poisonous) when prepared together or eaten at the same time.

Transformed. Mutated.

“It’s not just the site of an infectious disease where you won’t be safe during mealtimes—and there are rules about not feeding chocolate to dogs, or onions to cats, too. They also say that you shouldn’t give honey to infants.”

“Or mochi to the elderly.”

Well, that was slightly different… Although, you could say it was more or less the same.

While Tropicalesque was a thrall, he could hardly be considered chocolate or onions or honey or mochi, and yet—his affinity with ‘Princess Beauty’ was the worst.

They would never be able to agree.

Their relationship had been one of killing and being killed.

And the two of them had been consumed by one vampire in the span of a single day—devoured with gusto.

In that vampire’s belly, they would get mixed up, the thrall and the curse.

As if that would allow him to rest in peace. Despite dying, he wouldn’t be able to fully die—despite a memorial service being held, he wouldn’t be able to fully be memorialized—despite trying to attain nirvana, he wouldn’t be able to keep himself from losing his way. After six hundred years, it would be more unreasonable if that didn’t make him depressed—

“...So, rather than Suicidemaster’s encounter with the former Heartunderblade being the trigger for the curse’s reactivation, you’re saying that the reunion of Tropicalesque, laying dormant within Suicidemaster’s body, with the former Heartunderblade, the target of his resentment, was what satisfied the conditions for its activation?”

“Yes, and I believe that meets the conditions for the curse’s mutation, too. Rather than a single virus continuously multiplying and mutating as a result of mistakes during gene duplication, this allows for a far more dramatic mutation—wasn’t that how new strains of influenza were created?”

For a rough explanation, the human influenza virus and the avian influenza virus mixed together within the body of a pig, forming a new strain of the influenza… It went something like that.

The curse of her sworn friend named ‘Princess Beauty’ and the loyalty of her butler named Tropicalesque… If they were absorbed into each other within Suicidemaster’s stomach, and if they fused together as concepts—then couldn’t something quite disgusting and destructive be born? That was what I wanted to ask.

A horrendous flavor of tropical juice.

High school girls really had a tremendous influence. In fact, a good number of fads in Japan could be attributed to them—so my thoughts had been pulled towards them, as well. However, the influence of a thrall who met an untimely end would be substantial—perhaps surpassing that of the host, Suicidemaster, even.

“So it’s like the witch’s curse was not simply revived, but reborn—and I think that also explains why the infection broke out after her deportation to Europe, instead of spreading first in Japan.”

Well, putting aside if there were even any other vampires in Japan… At the very least, neither I nor Shinobu had exhibited any symptoms in the past year.

“You mean the time lag between infection and showing symptoms, right? Let’s see… To be honest, the explanation makes everything come together so perfectly, it’s actually makin’ me skeptical…”

said Kagenui-san carefully.

I was already thankful that she didn’t outright dismiss, or laugh down, the patchwork ideas of an amateur—if anything, I could only worry that my future amateur ideas would not be worthy of a similar level of consideration.

“The reason for its renewal was due to food poisoning as a result of a bad pairing—let’s call that the super-toxification theory. But, for the curse of ‘Princess Beauty’, which drove humans and vampires, animals and plants, witches and countries, anything and everything without distinction, to suicide… What would be the reason for such a curse mutating into a curse that dries out vampires and turns them into mummies?”

Viruses could not be considered living beings and had no will of their own, and though the novel coronavirus may have seemed as though it was harassing people, it was not doing anything like picking a fight with humanity, or even nastily plotting humanity’s destruction. An epidemic was nothing more or less than an epidemic—it was not an enemy.

Similarly, goals did not matter for evolution.

Animals wanting to lengthen their necks because they couldn’t reach food with their mouths, or thinking it would be convenient if their noses were longer—the process of evolution would not be spurred on due to those reasons. It was simply the cruel law of survival of the fittest.

However.

On the other hand, if there did indeed exist a will, and there did indeed exist a goal, then evolution could be controlled—for example, genetically modified organisms, or the selective breeding of pets and livestock.

If an animal couldn’t reach food with its mouth, then we could use our hands to grab it for them, or use our feet to get it from somewhere else. And that could provide a bit of direction to their evolution.

And in this case—they did exist.

A curse might only be able to activate automatically if the conditions were met, but for the thrall that was consumed at the same time, he had a will as clear as that of an earthbound spirit, and he would faithfully pursue his goal from within his master.

Stubbornly, like a butler.127

His dying wish—like a genetic sequence.128

“You sayin’ that Tropicalesque tried to utilize the witch’s curse to try and destroy all the vampires in the world? As revenge for his own death? How strong of a grudge would he have had?”

“There may have been ‘ghosts’ or ‘snakes’ with such strong grudges, but if it was merely out of revenge, I don’t think the curse would have become that powerful. But if there was anything Tropicalesque might have regretted, enough to not fully die even after dying—it would not be because he was killed, but because he had failed to kill.”

“—Because he’d failed to kill the former Heartunderblade, or rather, ‘Princess Beauty’.”

Even so, it wasn’t out of spite.

It was neither enmity, nor was it a grudge.

It was loyalty.

As her thrall and as her butler, he simply could not accept the thought of her master becoming friends with the princess who cursed her—so he tried to kill her, and thus had the tables turned on him.

If he was able to fuse with the very curse that killed him—how would that butler want to use the energy of that curse?

What direction would he point it towards?

And who was it that he’d met, which led to the awakening of the binding spell that had been lying dormant?

“So it wasn’t that he wanted to cause the destruction of all vampires—but even in death, he was trying to kill the former Heartunderblade… The golden-haired young girl, Oshino Shinobu.”

“Yes. Out of loyalty.”

It was something that I entirely lacked.

Most likely, it was something that Shishirui Seishirou lacked, too.

So while it was impossible to say that I could understand how he felt—perhaps it would at least be fine to describe those feelings like this.

It was…

It was an extremely beautiful display of loyalty.

“...For a moment, I was nearly taken in by your clever words, Araragi-kun, but he hasn’t actually managed to kill her. Once again, you could say… Though he’s gone and gotten a bunch of other vampires killed.”

“Sorry, and my explanation was lacking, if anything. I mentioned giving direction to the evolution, but in the end, he would have had to basically leave it up to fate. It won’t always work out perfectly.”

Even with a will of his own, the evolution could still fail.

For example, I had come up with various plans for my fresh start as a university student, but then a great upheaval had struck the world. With remote classes becoming the norm, my project to make a hundred friends had been reduced to nothing.

What would happen to me in the grueling job search that awaited me in the future?

How many creatures were there that ended up perishing as a result of their evolution…? And, how many monsters?

“As I mentioned earlier, at the moment the curse became active, his master had already been deported to Europe, away from Japan where Shinobu was. Perhaps that’s why it’s spread by airborne transmission… Or aerosol transmission. Considering that vampires can become mist.”

Recalling that old battle with Episode that had become nostalgic for me, I continued by saying, “From this point on, this is all just going to be conjecture, but…” Well, it wasn’t just from this point on but everything from the very beginning that was a product of my conjecture, but I figured I’d state it once again.

“Though the deportation created a distance of, not two meters, but half the circumference of the Earth from the target, the curse that was activated continued to aim for Shinobu and Shinobu alone. Stubbornly, the infection spread. To try and reach the other side of the world.”

An epidemic that spread from vampire to vampire.

From the center of Europe, it tried to spread out—and out and out and out—and, with the progression of the pandemic, it would eventually arrive at the Far East island nation.

If so, then it was not quite an aerosol transmission.

It could be called a vampiric transmission.

“It was a contagious disease that only infected vampires not because those vampires were the targets, but because they were the midway points, the base stations, the layovers, and the catalysts—vampires were the means of transportation to reach the other side of the world.”

“Means of transportation, eh? In other words, you’re sayin’ that the true form of the anti-vampire virus is actually a vector-borne disease spread with vampires as the vector. But if that’s the case, then wouldn’t it have been even better to infect humans with it, too? If the ultimate goal of all those layovers was to reach the former Heartunderblade for its final destination, then I get why it’s a contagion that affects vampires—but I don’t see why it couldn’t use humans as a means of transportation, too.”

“Yes. For the Black Death, which has left a strong impression in Japan for starting a pandemic in Europe, it was originally a bacterium that had stowed away into Europe as a result of global trade, after all.”

The reason for the novel coronavirus’s rapid spread across the world is in large part due to the growth of air travel, and the further internationalization and globalization of humankind—the breakneck speed at which the novel coronavirus spread in infected areas gave off the impression that it was incredibly contagious, but in fact, it was not actually all that outstanding. Nevertheless, it propagated at a rate historically incomparable to the Black Death or cholera or smallpox, spreading out like vital infrastructure.

A thousand years from now, I could imagine infections utilizing rockets or space elevators to reach Mars in an instant. So if the anti-vampire virus were to be spread globally and efficiently, it made the most sense to use humans for the layover points—to employ humans, who encompassed territories wider than vampires, with larger areas of activities.

“...However, that means of transportation had already been occupied. By the time the mutation had caught up.”

“Aha—y’mean viral interference?”

I nodded.

Well, there was no way to scientifically verify that humans could not serve as vectors for the curse because of the spread of the novel coronavirus—I doubted there were many of us rare potential guinea pigs like me and Shinobu, or perhaps the half-vampire Episode.

However, it didn’t really matter whether or not viral interference could actually occur.

Because the novel coronavirus had been one step ahead in sweeping the world—humanity’s internationalization, travel, and non-essential and non-urgent outings had been brought to a halt all at once.

A lockdown.

In Japan, there may have not been any lockdowns from a legal standpoint, but I still remembered requests to voluntarily refrain from any traveling that crossed prefectural borders—but even that would not be enough to fully prevent the infection from spreading.

However, for the anti-vampire virus, which needed to reach the other side of the world, using humans as the vectors could not necessarily be considered the shortest possible route.

Rather, limiting the route of infection to only vampires, who were unlikely to be infected with the novel coronavirus—which could theoretically be proven—would be an exceedingly logical and calculated course for the virus to take.

Compared to birds or bats.

“I haven’t gotten around to thinking about why the symptoms involve dehydration and mummification, though—”

There was probably a reason for that, too. Perhaps Tropicalesque’s personal preferences from deep within his psyche had gotten mixed in, but if so, we’d have to leave the matter unsolved. His master, Suicidemaster, had had a propensity to go into cryptobiosis after getting food poisoning, but that seemed like a rule unique to her, so…

“Well, leaving behind the body does make it easier for the disease to spread, but that’s about as far as I can infer…”

And yet, it didn’t sit right with me.

At that point, it was no longer the dormant unconsciousness of the dead, but something that was clearly deliberate… But in fact, diseases that affect plants did use the very same process to expand their range of infection…

Was the purpose of mummification simply long-term preservation of the corpses?

Like dried fruits?

“All right. I get it, so there’s no need to keep thinking about that point. We can just chalk it up to a mutation for now—I wasn’t gonna make you think of everything, Araragi-kun, and we gotta leave some mysteries unsolved for Gaen-senpai.”

So Kagenui-san herself wasn’t going to solve the mysteries…

Well, she didn’t seem like the type to be inquisitive and solve mysteries.

“But there’s one more thing, one more mystery that could make or break the entire case. According to your logic, Tropicalesque, warped as he was, was spreadin’ the curse-based contagion out of loyalty to his master, Suicidemaster—but, you’ve met her yourself, Araragi-kun. Suicidemaster is on the verge of death due to that very disease.”

“That would be the most apparent sign of the evolution’s failure—even though it was a curse to protect Suicidemaster and to kill Shinobu, the curse, strong enough to bring down an entire country, ended up affecting his master, as well.”

A virus could not let its own host die. If the host died, the virus itself would die, too—however, that was only theoretical. In actuality, there were endless viruses that were eradicated for that reason.

There was no strategy for survival or anything of that sort.

Whether or not there was a goal in mind, failure was failure, and death was death.

Despite being immortal, death was still death.

To begin with, Tropicalesque had already died six hundred years ago—all parts of him but his loyalty.

“Guess there’s also the flesh-eating bacteria that’s like that, now that I think about it—however, Araragi-kun. If it’s like that, then it can hardly be called loyalty, now, can it?”

“Um… I’m not sure. It’s true that Tropicalesque’s dying wish is completely ignoring Suicidemaster’s own wishes… But his desire to single-mindedly serve his master, even if it led to him being disliked or hated—”

“That ain’t loyalty anymore. It’s love.”

Hearing those words come from the person who seemed least likely to say those words made me feel as though my head had just been stepped on.

But it didn’t seem that Kagenui-san had meant to say anything particularly strange, as she continued.

“In that case, though, I’ve made a huge blunder, huh? By callin’ you and the former Heartunderblade over here. Though the former Heartunderblade is the target of the curse, I went and expressly summoned her here, even in the middle of this pandemic,”

she said.

“...If only for the sake of keeping the pandemic under control, it was the best thing to do. Now that the target is right by the host, Tropicalesque has no need to continue expanding his area of infection.”

It was wishful thinking, but at the very least, containment should be possible—a much simpler process than having to enact lockdowns for the novel coronavirus.

As long as the spread of this virus had a goal, and a sense of direction.

As long as it was possible to understand its transformation and mutation.

A specialist would have any number of ways to deal with it.

“But what if you and the former Heartunderblade are already infected by now?”

“Oh? Are you worrying about immortal vampires? Kagenui-san.”

“I’m gonna tear you to shreds. Until not a speck of you is left.”

Scary…

I’d gotten carried away—after all, I’d been talking for way too long. To think I’d ended up going on and on about gossip with no evidence.

“That’s for sure. For Araragi-kun, that gossip of yours barely earns you a B, but it ain’t as much as an A—it’ll probably take more time to verify the truth. The specialist coalition’s at the end of its rope, so any new hypothesis would be welcome, but saying that we could return tomorrow was way too exaggerated, even for a bluff.”

“Right. And so, we’re finally getting to the real issue.”

“You’re kiddin’, right? Then what was all of that up to now?”

Like I said, it was idle gossip.

However, based on this idle gossip, there was a potential treatment for the dying Suicidemaster that I wanted to try—and, at the same time, it could also be linked to saving Shinobu, if she had already gotten infected.

And, of course, it could save me as an afterthought.

“A treatment that you wanted to try?”

“Yes. Based on this idle gossip, I wanted to propose an operation. But it’s not a surgical procedure, and it’s not like medication or vaccination, either—it’s diet therapy.”

Or, you could put it like this.

Perhaps the words sounded even cornier coming from my mouth than from Kagenui-san’s, but I couldn’t afford to miss out on riding this wave.

What I wanted to administer—was love.