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Monogatari Series - Volume 29 - Chapter 1.09




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009

If you’re wondering how I handled the matter of going to the restroom, I’ll leave that up to your imagination. The era of me being nothing but cute had long since ended, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have things I was shy about—it was important to be refined even in ways that couldn’t be seen. If Ononoki-chan, who’d set her eyes on the future, were here, she’d probably mention something about the shortage of toilet paper or the lack of menstrual products, but unfortunately, it wasn’t that time quite just yet.

By now, I understood pretty well that help wasn’t coming.

For the time being, I’d stopped moving about because I’d managed to secure “safety” and “survival”, but it was about time for me to transition to the next phase of looking for survivors.

There was no point in just getting used to the situation.

Instead of waiting for help, I was going to go and help.

I had to admit that, over the past two weeks, I’d been feeling a little lethargic—it seemed to me that I had begun to feel lazy about starting anything new because of my malnutrition.

It could only mean that, even now, I was still slowly but surely heading towards my own death.

At this point, feelings of gratitude were welling up in me towards my parents, who had given birth to a girl that wasn’t nothing but cute, but also surprisingly tough (I’d gotten to the point that I could be pretty casual about the words “nothing but cute”, but I was sure my appearance looked rather feral. That was something I could tell even without a mirror), but there were limits to my toughness—ultimately, searching for survivors was also for the sake of my own survival. Compassion is not for the good of others, they say.

My mental state had reached its limit, as well.

It was possible that this was harder on me mentally—okay, this might be slightly skewed from feeling lonely or finding it hard to live on an uninhabited island, but please hear me out.

I really wanted to draw!

It was not that I was so emotionally moved by the scenery of this southern island that I needed to pick up a pen and draw, like Gauguin’s attitude towards things. It was simply that I hadn’t gotten to draw anything for such a long period of time that I was starting to lose my mind, even more so than when I’d played at being a god.

I was losing my mind from withdrawal symptoms.

I realized for the first time, after being forced into a situation where I couldn’t draw, that, oh, I really did like drawing manga, didn’t I—not to mention, it was only in times like these when outstanding ideas, ones that seemed like they could sell millions of copies, would start popping into my mind.

Well, maybe those ideas were just hallucinations, but the feeling of missing one precious opportunity after another had grown so big that, if I were asked the question, “If you could only bring one thing with you to an uninhabited island, what would you bring?” I would answer, without hesitation, paper and pen. That was actually two things, but consider them inseparable parts of a single whole.

It was a bit weird to say this, but it gave me a sense of relief, too.

For a while, I’d doubted myself, wondering if I was only pretending to envision my future as a mangaka, with it being highly likely that I was only using that as an excuse because I simply didn’t want to go to school—but even when I was so overwhelmingly left alone, without anyone to influence me, I was able to think about drawing. It was clear that, at the very least, my feelings themselves were real.

Thank goodness.

And so, I was feeling relieved, though in no way did that neutralize my withdrawal symptoms. Plus, the reality was that my overused fingers had been damaged to an almost irrecoverable state.


It wasn’t just a matter of calluses.

There were tons of cuts and scrapes all over my body without me ever having gone into the woods, and even if there was no bathroom scale on this island, I could tell I’d lost close to ten kilograms of weight over the past two weeks.

I wasn’t at the point where my ribs were sticking out, but I’d lost so much fat that it felt like my abs would be visible soon… Were there even any crazy passionate fans that wanted to see Sengoku Nadeko with a six-pack?

The sleeping bag made of sand, which I’d thought was a good idea, ended up being not so good as the days went by. Because the weight was like a comforter’s, it was probably putting that much more stress on my body—so my body wouldn’t really be getting any rest, even when I was asleep. I might as well be trying to sleep while having picked up a heavy konaki-jijii ghost.86

Or perhaps the sand-throwing sunakake-babaa.87

If I were to keep this lifestyle going, my condition would gradually get worse and worse—for the sake of searching for survivors, for the sake of searching for food that was far more filling and nutritious, and for the sake of searching for any kind of home that I didn’t have to build myself, like a cavern, it had become clear to me that I needed to make some clothing.

I was certain.

When I was still a middle school girl, I’d been a girl whose girl power wasn’t particularly high, but who would’ve guessed that this predicament would make me fashion-conscious? Becoming a castaway was quite something.

Well, it wasn’t as though I hadn’t come up with any ideas at all for my clothing over the past fourteen days, so there was a plan I wanted to try out—when my thoughts turned towards seeking materials from the ocean and not the mountains, a seashell bikini being the first thing that came to mind was an error caused by my mind being poisoned by modern society.

The idea of using fish skin might have been good if it were feasible, but come to think of it, didn’t seaweed grow naturally in the sea, just as trees grew naturally in the mountains?

Kelp.

Unlike leaves or tree bark, it didn’t have an irritating texture, being slimy almost as if I was applying moisturizing cream, so it made for the ideal fabric to protect my sunburned skin—it wasn’t the angel’s raiment but the ocean’s raiment, and if push came to shove, I could even eat it, making it a doubly useful material.

There wasn’t even a need to use a sewing pattern to make them into proper clothes. With kelp that was long enough, I could simply wrap it around my body like bandages, making it no different from protective clothing—although, it would be pretty smelly.

It would carry the smell of the sea.

In terms of the fragrance, my feral self couldn’t really complain about the kelp, so I just needed to put up with it… So, if I were to close my eyes tight and ignore all the various little problems and focus on the most important problem that needed solving, it would be that I had only gone into the shallow parts of the ocean, for fishing or otherwise, which meant that I had not gotten a single glimpse of seaweed.

To be precise, I’d seen a lot of small bits, but what I was looking for right now was kelp-like seaweed at a size that could at least be used as a bandage—instead of staying at the “beach”, I would need to seriously go to the “ocean floor” in order to find it.

In other words, it meant I needed to go further out to sea.

Extending the safety rope… Special training for swimming… Special training for diving… Would I be able to find some kind of plant that I could use for a snorkel…? And I needed to manufacture some sort of sickle to harvest the slippery kelp from the base—even though it was the ocean, a mountain of work had just piled up. Without complaining about my motivation levels, I needed to remake my harpoon, too…

Ah, jeez, I really wanted to draw manga.

I definitely wanted to make these experiences into a manga. And not a novel.

Having faith that this route would connect to the future, I squirmed my way out of my sleeping bag of sand, beginning my activities for the day—my caterpillar movements were getting better and better.

Perhaps my pen name could be Gregor the Muzamuza.88





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