Monogatari Series - Volume 29 - Chapter 1.15

015

It wasn’t that I’d been bitten by a vampire.

I’d said I’d been bitten on my neck, but it was actually the “neck” of my leg—my ankle.115

The ankle, from when I’d taken off my socks and put on my school shoes over my bare feet—to be even more precise, it was near my Achilles tendon. Considering it was a location that was even the weak point of the hero Achilles, there was no way it wouldn’t make me cry out in pain, too—or was that actually Benkei?116 It didn’t matter who it was, because I collapsed to the ground, inside the hollow, with hollow eyes.117

I see.

So it was like this.

As I expected, there was plenty of room even if I lay stretched out in a spread-eagled position—and, it was the very moment I’d taken a step into the dimly lit hollow to confirm that.

The moment I stepped in, I was bitten.

By a snake.

Reflexively, and maybe even instinctively, I waved the harpoon I was carrying to chop off its head—and its head had a distinct triangular shape.

I was pretty confident from the squalls and coral reefs that this island was within Okinawa, but from this, I was certain—because this was a habu snake.

It was the first time I was seeing one, but there was no mistake.

But, this was a blunder.

The greatest mistake in the life of a master of snake-catching.

“It—huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurts!”

And so I screamed, in my collapsed state, not worrying about my reputation or appearance—of course, there was no one around anyway. I just needed to raise my voice to distract myself.

Like a withered tree falling in the forest.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

I couldn’t even manage to writhe in pain.

Was the venom of a habu snake a neurotoxin or a hemotoxin? What did I need to do in a situation like this? There was something written in the guidebook that I’d skimmed through—antivenom? A phone call? I didn’t have either of those on hand. I didn’t have them on foot, either.

Why did this happen? Why did this happen?

Why did this happen? Why did this happen?

It was my ankle that was bitten, and only my right ankle at that, but any and every part of my body was breaking out into a cold sweat, as if I’d been bitten all over with no room to spare—it felt like I was hemorrhaging from my entire body.

I almost wanted to chop my right leg off.

This unnecessary snake leg.

No, no no, instead of chopping it off, I needed to stanch the blood flow… Wash the openings, and restrict it—if I returned to the waterfall lake, the guide rope should still be there, so I could use it as a tourniquet…

My brain was just barely managing to work, though slowly, but I couldn’t move a single finger of my body. This was what it truly meant to not lift a finger. In the past, when Nakuna-chan had cursed me, my body had been completely wrapped up by an invisible snake, but that pain was no match for the real venomous snake that had just bit me.

The idea that reality was the most powerful…

Compared to Nakuna-chan, who had ended up riddled with holes all over, the holes in my Achilles tendon were near infinitesimal, but I was completely incapable of courageously getting back onto my feet.

And, as I was lying face-up in this hollow.

“Hollow… Uro.”

Uro.

Uroko.118

Araundo—Uroko. Gaen Uroko.

To think that the location I wanted to make into my new base was actually a snake’s den—however, going back to the original reason, didn’t I board the plane in order to look for Araundo-san’s hideout?

As a result, I was sealed away on this uninhabited island—and met a habu snake.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah… Aaah…”

Even though I was neither swimming in the ocean nor taking a cold bath in the river, the air in my lungs was starting to completely leave my body, and my scream was about to be forced to conclude.

Like a fire sputtering out.

I couldn’t even pass out, because I could only feel that every part of my lightly tanned skin had become a pain receptor.

Within my mind, which was the only part of me that I just barely had control of, I began to seek the answer to the question, “Was this actually a trap?”... Had my luck simply been bad, and had I simply not been careful enough? Had I just been conceited by thinking that the mountains were my territory? Before stepping into the hollow, should I have checked with the tip of my harpoon to see if there were any previous inhabitants?

Or perhaps—thinking about it now, had the enticing detached house made of wood, prepared perfectly on the riverbank, actually been calculated to ensnare the prey known as me?

If it was the former case, then that was fine.

If so, I would give up.

On the mountain of my hometown, crowned by the Kitashirahebi Shrine, I had killed so many snakes in order to lift the curse that had been cast upon me—it was quite the poetic justice here to die from being bitten by a snake in the end.

It was a beautiful conclusion to all that foreshadowing.

In order to eat, I had used rocks to catch fish.

But compared to a crime like that, my snake-killing was on a completely different scale.

After living through my survival experience, if only for a short time, I had finally gotten to reflect on the wrongdoings I’d committed when I was young.

Yes, indeed.

What I should have done back then was not to run into the mountains and sacrifice a large number of snakes to break the curse—it was to talk properly with my friends, who I had been unable to confront or even make eye contact with.

Sorry, Kuchinawa-san.

I’m very sorry.

"...............Ah, ah, ah, ah.”

I continued to think while squeezing as much air as I could from my empty lungs. For the sake of distracting myself as much as I could from the pain I was feeling.

However, if this was not simple poetic justice, but a trap that had been set by the snake charmer—then I could not simply lie here crying and hope for a quick death.

Even if I was still a trainee, I was still a specialist.

And, as a professional.

I may have collapsed, but I was not going to yield.

“Ah… Uh.”

Right… I was a snake-killer.

I still couldn’t lift my body, but I consciously stopped my scream that was leaking out before it died out on its own, and used the energy from the little oxygen I had left to move my sock-wrapped fingers, the fingers that I could not lift a single one of, to crawl towards the interior of the hollow and fumble around.

Fumbling around haphazardly.119

For the rope that I could use to tie my ankle with.

In other words, the body of that habu snake that I had just killed.

I had only just said that I was reflecting on killing snakes to lift a curse, but now I was about to use a snake’s body as a survival implement. My karma was growing increasingly deep.

Well, this was clearly for the sake of living.

It was an act that went beyond eating.

The venom might have already gone a whole circuit through my blood vessels even if I were to tie up my ankle now, but even so, I needed to do what I could.

After finally grabbing the rope, or rather, the headless corpse, it took even more time to tie up my ankle as planned using my sock-covered hands. If anything, tying it only seemed to double the pain I was feeling.

I’d been thinking about going so far as to cut my leg off because of the pain, but at this rate, wasn’t my leg going to turn necrotic and fall off anyway?

Well, it’s fine.

As long as I had my right arm.

After completing my first aid, which couldn’t really even be called first aid, I then attempted to escape from this snake’s den—the same way I crawled with my fingers wrapped in my socks, I would now try to do so wriggling my whole body.

This was truly a struggle to escape.120

My movements were more snakelike than when I’d been a snake god. These caterpillar-like movements, which I’d forged from sleeping in a sand futon, were being put to good use here.

If I could wriggle closer to the waterfall lake, even one centimeter at a time, then I could wash my wound… What if I went and found a leech to suck the venom out of me? Or, rather than that… If I could use my “Skill of Snake Legs” here… What could I materialize here to break free from this predicament?

What manga could I draw?

Perhaps this was a situation where I shouldn’t be drawing manga, but instead writing a will—in order to meet the deadline that was my life, with a hazy consciousness, I began to scrounge up material for a story.

As I crawled. As I crept and crawled.

Was it possible that keeping up a manga serialization would be even harder than this?—if possible, I wanted to produce an antivenom for habu venom. That’s what I wanted, but I wasn’t fully aware what an antivenom was actually supposed to be.

Did it have something to do with blood?121

I’d had some faint knowledge of a tool that could remove snake venom, but I had no idea what shape such a thing could take… I probably would be able to imagine a painkiller medicine, but I had the feeling it would end up the same way as donuts or other food.

If so, then even if I knew what exactly antivenom was, it probably wouldn’t have any effect—however, if it wasn’t food but medicine, then there was a good chance I could at least benefit from the placebo effect. Because the mental image was all that mattered for materialization. In that sense, it wasn’t so bad to be ignorant—especially when I was close to dying.

In this critical situation—rather, in this situation with me on the verge of death, my ability to draw was surprisingly useless. Truly, my “Skill of Snake Legs” was only useful for needless addendums when there was enough room for it.

It was weak when it came to dealing with reality.

With that, I found myself thinking that it might even be better to just eat one of those mushrooms that was nearby in the hopes that it would serve as a counteracting poison… No, no, I was becoming too desperate.

If I wasn’t going to believe in myself and my own drawing ability, then who else was going to?—but, myself.

What if… I drew myself?

Not that I would be doing what I’d resolved never to do again—not that I would be drawing my alter egos, Gentle Nadeko or Anti-Nadeko or Fawning Nadeko or Divine Nadeko.

But I could draw none other than “myself”.

Sengoku Nadeko.

…Basically, my final composition, almost like a last will.

Even if I were to die, the me created as a work of art would remain—like a replacement trick that you might see in mystery novels.

Supposing that, in all probability, I were to fall here—though I’d technically already fallen—but if I were to die here—if I materialized “myself” as an oddity, with the exact same experiences and thought process as the current me, then that new me would be able to live on in my place.

If I could do this, it would almost be like a philosophical zombie, or basically an immortal oddity, but my backup—no, in this case, I would be serving as the backup for “myself”—it would not be my alter ego, but the real me that would remain for the future.

I wasn’t just saying something outlandish. Even those legendary mangaka, the ones who were placed on the same level as gods, did the same thing to leave themselves behind after their deaths.

By putting themselves into their creations.

So, if I could do this, then I would be able to convey my experiences of drifting ashore to this uninhabited island, my survival life, and how I was bitten by a habu snake inside a tree hollow to Ononoki-chan, Kaiki-san, and Gaen-san without leaving anything out.

Even if I died here.

I would still remain in their hearts.

In other words, the shedding of the shell known as me—I thought I’d hit upon a brilliant idea that I should be executing immediately, and yet, this was something that could only be described as a trap.

What was the point, if I myself was going to become an oddity?

What exactly had I learned from Ononoki-chan, who was an artificial oddity created by five university students—by creating that corpse doll, Gaen-san, Kagenui-san, Oshino-san, Kaiki-san, and, though I’d never met him, Teori-san… I didn’t dare forget the unimaginable curses they’d needed to bear for the rest of their lives.

Was I going to make someone bear my curse—the “reader” of my work?

Tsukihi-chan, or Nakuna-chan?

If you curse someone—dig two graves.

What use was there in leaving behind this curse-like pain for posterity—for me, my art was not meant to be a last will or a grudge.

It’s fine if it hurts.

But it needs to be so thrilling that it makes you forget the pain.

Realistically, if I were to reproduce myself faithfully, I would likely end up reproducing those two holes in my ankle and even the venom in my body, so I had the hopeless prediction that the newly-born Nadeko would also collapse immediately as she was created.

Why would I want to bring forth such a tragic and heartbreaking version of me? If I was going to produce myself, I would prefer to leave behind, as a work of art, a version of me that had conquered the pain.

I was a creator. I shouldn’t just give birth to myself—I should give birth to something that was more than just me.

Give birth…

Gaen-san’s daughter—Araundo Uroko.

What did Gaen-san have in mind when it came to facing—or not facing—her daughter after fifteen years? That was something I wanted to ask.

What did Gaen-san have in mind when she gave birth to her daughter?

She didn’t seem like the sort of person that would think about handing over the world to the next generation, but if Kaiki-san wasn’t lying when he said that Gaen-san was projecting Araundo Uroko-san onto me, then she had to be harboring some sort of feelings.

I wanted to ask her.

So, let’s go ask her.

Let’s go and properly ask that onee-san that knows everything.

I’d been thinking that I couldn’t ask anything out of fear, but with things like this, there was nothing to be afraid of. But in the meantime, I’d been crawling in such an unsightly manner where I didn’t even know which way was forward, but before I knew it, I had reached the riverbank—my Nanahyakuichi Middle School uniform had become muddied beyond recognition, but if it hadn’t been for this protective gear, crawling would likely have been impossible for me in these rugged mountains.

Even snake legs had their uses.

They weren’t just limbs that I would cut off without a second thought, just because they weren’t my dominant arm.

Now, to disinfect my wound in this stream… My entire body was drenched in sweat, but I needed to make sure to only put my right leg into the water, because I didn’t have the strength to stand in the water otherwise—such a thought ran through my hazy mind as I tried to change positions by pivoting on my lower back.

And, while changing positions.

I hadn’t been fully aware, but my field of vision had all but ceased functioning—even though my eyesight should have been good, whatever I could see had a level of clarity as though looking at it through water, and thus I could barely make out anything.

However, I could sense it. The heat.

Supposedly, snakes had something called the pit organ that allowed them to sense, and bite at, their prey by their heat—and the heat I felt was exactly that, the heat of an animal biting at its prey.

The heat of a cold-blooded animal.

"............”

In front of my face, right up close and personal, was a habu snake several times larger and several times longer than the one I’d stepped on in the hollow, crawling in the same way I was.

I had seen many different snakes in many different forms up until now, but I had never seen one while lying on the ground like this, with the perfect angle to meet the snake’s gaze. I was getting to know how a frog felt when it was glared at by a snake, even though I was a former snake god.

A cold-blooded animal—however.

That gigantic habu snake was not looking at me as if I were prey, but as if I were an enemy.

“Are… Are you angry?—That I killed one of your kind.”

Or was it angry that I had used the corpse of one of its kind as a tourniquet—no, it would be a different story if it were an oddity, but expecting such emotions out of a real snake was pure fantasy.

This wasn’t a game, either. What was the point of anthropomorphizing it?

If I was feeling any anger coming from this gigantic habu snake.

It was surely my own anger.

I’d said that it was for the sake of living, or it was for the sake of eating, but those two weren’t so easily differentiated—and that was likely the case for anyone and anything.

Even if I asked what Gaen-san was feeling towards her daughter, I probably wouldn’t get a clear answer—it was likely the same as my own parents’ feelings towards me.

A daughter was not a mirror, after all.

…In that case, being bitten by that habu snake wasn’t the trap of a snake charmer or anything. It had to have just been according to the laws of Mother Nature.

I had just seen myself in that habu snake.

My malice and enmity, my resentment and curses, and my counter-resentment and returned curses.

My guilt.

So, I had no choice but to meekly accept my fate—without any relation to hope or despair or happiness or sorrow or like and hate, without it being even poetic justice, my fate as part of the food chain.

“Ah, but—there’s no way this snake can eat me—even if they say that snakes will try to swallow a human whole when they’re only an inch long—”122

Not for the sake of eating, and not for the sake of living.

But just for the sake of killing—this cold-blooded animal, for no reason at all, flew towards my collapsed body as though it had suddenly grown wings. Having already exhausted the last of my strength to the point that I couldn’t have changed my position the way I wanted it to, I was perfectly placed for the gigantic habu snake to aim for, not my ankle, but my neck itself.

Ahaha.

I was going to be just like Koyomi-onii-chan, wasn’t I?

While crying at that happy end that I should have been smiling at, within my field of vision that I could no longer see anything in, the head of the habu snake baring its fangs at me—

—Was bitten off.

Its fangs, its venom, they were swallowed whole.

Without once giving away its presence, it instantly came leaping in from the side—a single, dark brown, mottled beast.

An Iriomote cat.