Monogatari Series - Volume 29 - Chapter 1.12

012

It was hard to pinpoint the exact cause behind my first step into the world of specialists. There were various circumstances like formerly being a god, and even further back, being cursed by Nakuna-chan or killing snakes with my own hands, but in the end, I couldn’t ignore the point that Gaen-san had simply “acknowledged my abilities”.

Or rather, that was probably all that mattered to Gaen-san… There was absolutely no way that she valued my character strengths or had high hopes for my future.

She wasn’t doing it to bail me out.

Though it was true that I’d been skillfully guided into this ability of mine by Ononoki-chan—to describe it stylishly like a manga, it would be “the ability to turn the manga I drew into oddities (or shikigami)”.

“If you ask me, it’s like a ‘Skill of Snake Legs’—like appending unnecessary legs to you, a former snake god.”100

That had been the opinion of the skill’s developer, Ononoki-chan.

Regarding those unnecessary snake legs, there had been a bit of a disturbance, or rather, a bit of an uproar—it was a tale that had already ended, so I wasn’t going to say too much on the matter, but as a simple summary, self-portraits of me in a school swimsuit or bloomers had produced a large number of Sengoku Nadekos that had run rampant about the town.

Anyone in their right mind would run away from their hometown.

It was a skill where I didn’t know how it would develop in the future, or if it would suddenly disappear one day, so I was under the constant supervision of Ononoki-chan, under orders of Gaen-san (in other words, a “target of surveillance”). And while I was mainly being used for their benefit, it was true that I was able to make ends meet with this talent of mine—it was thanks to this shikigami-wielding (paper-wielding)101 ability that Gaen-san had provided me with work and a place to live.

Practically speaking, it was kind of a mixed blessing, because as long as I couldn’t completely control this ability, it wouldn’t be permitted for me to become a mangaka (if the manga I drew would completely transform into oddities, I couldn’t even begin to aim for a hit that sold a million copies), so I’d been taking the utmost caution and been solemnly abiding by the specialists’ instructions and leadership. But if I were to seal away my “drawing ability” in this situation, it would be a form of bondage that was much too masochistic.

Even though I was engaging in illegal fishing on the level of using mist nets, it was crazy that I was following this one rule for so long… With this, I had no right to be astonished by the protective mindset of allowing Iriomote cats to eat me.

I was like someone who would devote themselves to stockpiling food and then fall victim to starvation.

Conversely, I should be astonished at myself for having survived this long without breaking this rule, but on the other hand, it was true that I shouldn’t so freely use this skill until I was cornered by this much.

Not freely, but fearfully.102

It was dangerous enough to be unconsciously sealed away.

It was close to choosing between self-restriction and self-destruction.

This “doodling” could even influence my own mental state, immature as I was… It absolutely would not do to once again create those “four Nadekos” from that previous disturbance.

It could not be allowed.

Of course, it would be ideal for me to draw “Nadeko in charge of procuring food”, “Nadeko in charge of building a hut”, “Nadeko in charge of sewing clothes”, and “Nadeko in charge of searching for survivors” on the face of a boulder and work together as a team of five, myself included. And with that new start in my uninhabited island life, the probability that I would reach a brighter future would be fairly high—however, it was more likely that I would simply repeat my prior mistakes.

It would just become a different reality TV show.

And, unlike before, I couldn’t count on Ougi-san’s help—though at the time, it was more like Ougi-san was just making things worse—but no matter how lonely I was, the thought of creating a clone of myself that could think independently made me afraid, as if I might end up talking to the houseplants in my room.

I couldn’t afford to make my unstable mentality any worse.

In the first place (just like it had been last time), expecting such a logical division of roles was nothing more than a drawing of rice cakes.103 The power to create shikigami was completely different from the power to control shikigami.

If so, I was better off just drawing rice cakes.

However, soon after I first activated this ability, according to what had been tried by the former vampire, Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, now known as Oshino Shinobu-chan—this “Skill of Snake Legs” was not suited for bringing any sort of food into existence.

When I tried to create donuts from what I drew, they ended up with the taste of papier-mâché—part of it had to do with my own drawing ability, but there were most likely limits to what I could actually materialize. And it was one thing to draw on paper, but if I were to draw on stone, I was afraid my teeth would break if I tried to eat something… It wasn’t like I was a wolf trying to gobble up seven young goats, and if I filled my stomach with rocks, I’d drown in the ocean. I would get to know exactly what it meant to gain weight.

No matter if goat meat cooking was a specialty of Okinawa.

By the same logic, I figured living beings were impossible, too—at least, there hadn’t been any successful precedents. But surely it was taboo to bring forth a living being, and the brakes in my unconscious mind were being applied even more strongly because of that.

Basically, I wouldn’t be able to produce any sort of livestock like fish or cows or meat—maybe it would be different if they were blatant oddities, like Anti-Nadeko or Gentle Nadeko or Fawning Nadeko or Divine Nadeko… No, the consumption of monstrous apparitions should only be exclusive to the Oddity Killer, Shinobu-chan.

So, in terms of what I wanted to produce, as well as what was possible to produce, the priorities should be a “house” and “clothes”.

Out of the basic needs of “clothing, food, shelter” that I wanted, it would be “clothing” and “shelter”.

I had grown quite fed up with my life of being naked and covering my whole body with sand—this was nothing like Ibusuki. I wasn’t a desert scorpion or anything. It was true that Nakuna-chan hated me the way snakes and scorpions hated each other, but between snakes and scorpions, I was on the snakes’ side.

Or did desert snakes burrow in the sand, too?

For winter hibernation and the like.

Winter hibernation in the desert… It didn’t really feel right for me.

Anyway, after having gone on about the different concerns about my ability to the point of getting sick of it, I probably should be prioritizing a “home” to avoid the harsh sunlight and squalls. But even though I should theoretically be able to produce inorganic substances, I had never actually been able to do so.

This was likely not due to a restriction of my ability, but due to me still being inexperienced and unable to fully make the best use of my skill—a gigantic oddity may have been possible, but a gigantic house was impossible.

Thus, I couldn’t make any planes or boats, either.

It was possible that, not just the size, but also their physical power exceeded my capabilities—perhaps I could make a miniature house or a minicar or a ship-in-a-bottle, but I wasn’t going to try my hand at those just for amusement.

If it were possible for me to build a mansion, I would have been able to handle moving out to live on my own without needing to rely on Gaen-san—or perhaps I was mentally rejecting the idea of building a house, like how I believed it was taboo to create life.

“Building a house”, and “building a family”.

They felt like taboos I needed to stay away from.

Incidentally, there would be the obvious suggestion that I could depict “fire” or “water” to liberate myself from pitching practice, but to that, I could only give the pitiful response that “my drawing ability was too lacking”.

Drawing the elements was actually extremely difficult.

For those things, you could just process them digitally, so… If only screentones could grow in the wild on this island… However, for the method of continuously throwing rocks at a boulder to light a fire, I found myself wondering if that had only been viable because my skill was involved.

In any case, my disposition, which appeared cheat-like at first glance, turned out at best to only be useful in making “clothes” in my current situation—however, I wasn’t going to ask for more here.

It was something to celebrate, that I would finally be able to wear clothes.

Like the plan I’d dreamed up, if I were to wear clothes, my range of exploration could expand to deep in the mountains, I could procure food and drink in the form of fruits and nuts and watering places, I could go around looking for good real estate in caves or limestone caverns, and, although seventy-two hours had already passed, I could go on a search for other survivors from the same plane. The dead-end routes I could take for my life on this uninhabited island were now stretching out in all directions.

They’d received an update.

And so, I drew some clothes on a boulder.

Since the clothes were something I was going to wear, I was a bit afraid of making a mistake while drawing them, so I figured I’d trace out a draft with my index finger on a boulder near the water’s edge—using seawater for the ink.

I called it a draft, but it was basically a sewing pattern.

And once I carved along those traced lines using a sharpened rock, I would be able to complete my own version of a mural—though I’d never tried my hand at wall art before, and before that, I had never tried to activate my “Skill of Snake Legs” on my own.

I’d always had the support (or the surveillance) of a specialist like Ononoki-chan or Shinobu-chan, or Gaen-san or Kagenui-san, under extremely safe conditions—and despite those safe conditions, I had still committed numerous blunders.

I could only feel apprehensive.

Thinking over the matter once again, was it really okay to use such an extravagant skill in a self-serving manner, for such a mundane reason as wanting clothes, without the permission of a specialist? Wouldn’t I just be twisting the conventions of the world without any consent?104

Because of my regret for my previous failures, such doubts had entered into my head, and yet, in spite of all the trouble I had caused, Gaen-san and the other specialists had never said anything along the lines of, “Don’t do anything starting from now.”

They could certainly have done that if they’d wanted to, but they hadn’t restricted me or prohibited me.

It was likely partially because they had the confidence that they could easily stop me if I were to run wild, but I had the feeling it was meant as a form of encouragement, telling me, “You’ll do better next time.”

Wouldn’t it be a betrayal to those people if I were to shrink back, not fully demonstrate my capabilities, and be too afraid to even try to master this skill?—so it should be fine. I was making sure to take the utmost care.

It wasn’t as though I was challenging a new art style, which wasn’t even possible right now, to draw food or living beings or a home or the elements with a reckless, devil-may-care attitude—rather, if I couldn’t even materialize a single article of clothing here, I should not have followed Kaiki-san in the first place.

Now, what clothes did I want to wear?

Even Japanese-style clothes would be fine.

As mentioned previously, it wasn’t very realistic to draw clothes with complicated structures—and compared to drawing with a stick in the sand, drawing with a sharpened rock on a boulder would be even harder. Clothes that weren’t very dressy, that were as smooth as possible, without very many wrinkles—on top of that, clothes that didn’t expose any skin, that completely covered the body. In that case, the best thing would be full-body tights akin to a wetsuit, but if I were to try and draw something with so little distinguishing features, it might actually be harder to tell what the drawing was meant to be.

Without even trying, I could easily imagine that it would end up like a mural depicting aliens—and in my case, it was problematic that I was capable of imagining it.

What was I going to do if I spawned not just a living being, but a being from outer space?—it was as though I really would recreate the Nazca Lines. A genre shift from survival on an uninhabited island to battles in space was something I preferred to avoid—although, survival on an uninhabited island was something I preferred to avoid to begin with.

Right—my imagination was what mattered.

In other words, as long as I could understand what the drawing was, then even if it was a bit poor-quality, even if it looked like some weird hieroglyphs to other people, that was fine—not to mention, there were no “other people” on this island to remark on my caricatures.

Clothes that I was capable of easily imagining—clothes that I’d worn most frequently over the fifteen years of my life. Clothes that were so etched into my mind that if I were to see something similar, I’d think, “Could those be related?” Clothes that had already been made into a sewing pattern within my mind.

A school swimsuit? Bloomers?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I didn’t even want to pretend that those were potential options.

I’d spent over a year in a tracksuit ever since I’d dropped out of school, but in terms of sheer number of times I’d worn it, it had to be that outfit that won out. Like how it would rain thirty-five times in a month—there was a time when I wore those clothes as a matter of course, every day, like my normal outfit, without question.

Although, I never thought that I would ever wear those clothes again.

The school uniform of Nanahyakuichi Middle School.