Monogatari Series - Volume 29 - Chapter 1.16

016

“Even if an infection were to spread on a global scale, if you were living alone on an uninhabited island, such a pandemic would be completely irrelevant to you—but could you really consider that to be living?”

I recalled losing consciousness by receiving a blow to the head by something like a stick after hearing that monotone voice, which hadn’t just been in my mind—because it had been common for me to wake up while buried in the sand, my lifestyle had been completely disconnected from the concept of having a good night’s sleep, but even compared to that, I was feeling the most terrible heart palpitations, as though I’d jumped out of bed from a nightmare.

But despite those palpitations I was feeling, I found myself ignoring them due to a much bigger shock—after waking from a nightmare, was I in yet another dream?

“I’m surprised you’re still alive, Nadekou. Well, you were pretty close to dying, but still—”

Inside the hollow of the giant tree, which I should have crawled out of.

The corpse doll, Ononoki-chan, was crouched down beside me as I lay on my back—with the same blank expression as ever, and with eyes I couldn’t read her emotions from, she looked straight at me.

Well, it wasn’t quite that she was the same as ever.

Her eyes.

One of Ononoki-chan’s eyes, which should have been confiscated by Gaen-san as punishment for some rule violation committed without my knowledge, had been restored, and the corpse doll was using that eye to look at me, too—and it wasn’t just her eye that had been restored. She’d also changed her uniform into the layered skirt she’d worn in the past.

Those clothes that were hard to draw.

Why…? Why did she change clothes before coming here…?

Ah, but, none of that really mattered. I wanted to lift my body if I could and give her a big hug—just as Ononoki-chan had held me within the airplane, this time, I was going to firmly cling to her with my whole body.

But, as though affected by sleep paralysis, my leaden body could barely move, so instead, I squeezed out a voice, this time without screaming.

“Ononoki-chan—so you were still alive.”

“I’m dead, though.”

It was the usual response.

Though it was a trivial exchange, after two weeks of life on an uninhabited island and right after an emergency in which I’d nearly died of venom, it felt like an irreplaceable treasure.

I was no longer alone.

No matter what I said, it wouldn’t just be a monologue.

Ah, I thought I’d failed past the point of recovery, but with this, Robinson Nadeko Crusoe’s final mission of “searching for survivors” had at last been fulfilled.

Mission complete.

Well, considering the situation, it was more like Ononoki-chan found me and saved my life, so if this were a reality TV show, I probably wouldn’t get the prize money…

“No, I didn’t do anything to save you, Nadekou. People can only be saved on their own,”

said Ononoki-chan, quoting Oshino-san’s words.

Even though it was the same line, the impression it gave off felt considerably different.

“I’m being serious this time. I really didn’t do anything—it was already too late when I discovered you collapsed on the riverbank, and since nothing could be done, I figured I’d quietly watch over my friend as she slowly approached her death, so all I did was carry you into this cool, dark tree hollow to avoid the ultraviolet rays and squalls.”

“Scary…”

Her way of thinking really was like a corpse doll’s.

Was she intending on observing the decomposition of my body?

“The truth is, you really did get saved by your own strength, Nadekou. Tying off your ankle was the correct way to handle it, and even though you didn’t get that far, by crawling out to the open riverbank, you made it possible for me to find you—it’s actually very impressive. I’m reminded of onee-chan and Oshino onii-chan who survived in the North and South Poles.”

“If you’re comparing me to those two, I’ll be extremely grateful…”

Aah, I was actually having a conversation.

Conversations were great, weren’t they?

“As for what I did, I sucked out the venom from the two holes in your ankle, fed you tons of water from the waterfall lake via mouth-to-mouth, and then regularly wiped away your sweat.”

“You did plenty to save me!”

You did everything you could.

Since Ononoki-chan was originally a corpse, she was fine even if she sucked up the venom from my wound—though if it was the type of immortality possessed by vampires, they would actually be weak to venom.

“I would’ve liked to get some antivenom, though. I ultimately judged that leaving you here unconscious and in critical condition, or carrying you to a hospital via ‘Unlimited Rulebook’, were both too dangerous—I’m not an air ambulance, after all. I gave up on it, thinking that, if you were to die here, then it was because Nadekou could only amount to that much.”

She sure was quick to give up…

But, she was right.

She couldn’t just leave me in a place where habu snakes had attacked one after another—huh? What happened to the second habu snake…?

I rubbed the back of my neck.

I was feeling for any holes pierced by fangs, but far from two, I couldn’t even find a single hole.

“What is it? You want me to leave a kiss mark on the back of your neck? You sure are needy.”

“As if… It’s enough that my first kiss was with Ononoki-chan.”

“Well, it was an honor. Incidentally, my first kiss was with oni onii-chan.”

What in the world was that guy doing?

It was information I didn’t want to hear just after waking up. If I lost consciousness once more, I might end up suffering from a different sort of nightmare.

I’d forgotten what I’d been thinking about—um, let’s see.

“Well, I’m glad that you’re in good health, Ononoki-chan.”

“I don’t need to be told I’m in good health from someone who was about to die. Plus, an existence like me is the epitome of poor health. Though, my skin isn’t as sun-kissed as yours is, Nadekou. It looks like you’ve enjoyed a comfortable and satisfying stay at a beach resort.”

“That’s right, I got to play beach volleyball and Beach Flags…”

Well, I didn’t have a beach ball, so all I really got to enjoy was throwing rocks. A quite primitive way to play, and the only flags I raised were death flags.

“I’ll put my life in the southern lands up on Instagram later, so… Ononoki-chan, tell me. What happened to you, up until now? Did you wash up on this island, too?”

Being more starved of conversation than food at this point, I posed that question to Ononoki-chan—it was also true that, if I didn’t talk about something right now, I might lose consciousness once again.

If this was a dream, I didn’t want to wake up.

I’m begging you, please be compelling enough to prove to me that this isn’t just some hallucination coming from me on the verge of death…

“Right. Let’s see, where should I begin… Compared to the two weeks you spent, my two weeks really haven’t been all that impressive.”

“I was worried that, when the plane crashed, you and Kaiki-san were both sent to a watery grave…”

“We did. Get sent to a watery grave.”

“Eh?”

Because of her indifferent tone, it had always been hard to tell if Ononoki-chan was joking, but that was a bit too much for a joke, even for her—if she had been sent to a watery grave, then who was the Ononoki-chan before me supposed to be?

This just made it seem like I really was hallucinating!

Give me a break.

“Since I’m just a power-type character, I’m not exactly equipped with the capability to withstand an airplane crash.”

“Th-then how?”

In the first place, did the plane crash actually happen?

That massive snake tail that wrapped around the airframe—

“You remember, right? Before, when one of your alter egos hacked my body into pieces, the real you came along and put me back together.”

“Uh… Right. On the grounds of the Kitashirahebi Shrine, I used some dirt to do that…”

Beyond just remembering, it was a grotesque memory for me. It wasn’t something that I could describe as having become a good memory after time had passed.

It had simply been traumatic, seeing my friend’s body in pieces.

The fact that it had been one of my alter egos that had done the deed was also included in that trauma.

“Th-then, after being sent to a watery grave, Ononoki-chan, you were able to make yourself whole again in the middle of the ocean? You can do something like that?”

“I can’t. That goes beyond the limits of a zombie. Even if I’m a corpse, I’m still organic matter, so I don’t end up the same way as marine debris that gets collected on beaches. If I get sent to a watery grave, I’ll just continue to fall apart and be dispersed across the ocean.”

It didn’t seem like she was the kind of storyteller to keep me in suspense, for she said,

“At least, it’s not something I can do on my own—your power was absolutely crucial, Nadekou,”

thus revealing the secret without any pretension.

However, even when she said it so clearly, I couldn’t figure out what she meant—my power? Having been defeated by the mighty forces of nature and while on the verge of death, what sort of power could I have had…

“Your drawing ability. The ‘Skill of Snake Legs’... You drew one, right? A picture of me, on the beach.”

"............”

I did.

A 4-koma manga, at the water’s edge, with a wooden stick.

“‘This isn’t an uninhabited island, but an unlimited supply-land!’”

“Please? Don’t read it out loud?”

“Are you telling me your skill level has dropped, after such an unforgettable survival experience?”

Those were some harsh words.

Normally, I would straighten up and listen to them obediently, but right now, what I wanted to hear was not criticism—in the first place, how did she even know about it? That practice piece, which should’ve been washed away by the waves.

“Practice piece? I think you mean to say, ‘awful piece’.”

“Aren’t you being too harsh? You’re going to crush the heart of this budding young talent.”

“Yes. Your ‘drawing’ was indeed swallowed up by the ocean—swallowed by the ocean, where I had been scattered.”

“Ah—aha!”

When I drew that 4-koma, the thought of my “Skill of Snake Legs” was less in my mind than droplets of water on the back of a leaf—however, regardless of my intentions, it seemed that it activated anyway.

I see—so that was why Ononoki-chan was no longer wearing an eyepatch, as well as why she had reappeared in her former outfit.

Because I had drawn her as such.

The 4-koma itself hadn’t been all that satisfactory, and in terms of the drawings themselves, because my “pen and paper” were a “stick on the beach”, I couldn’t say I had drawn very well. However, what was important was my mental image.

A material image, for the sake of materialization.

Even my uniform, which I was quite familiar with, had materialized with just a rough draft—so even with such an extraordinarily bad drawing, the ever-so-familiar Ononoki-chan couldn’t be anyone else but Ononoki-chan.

“...No, but still. At this point, you’ve gone far beyond the limits of a zombie! Even if you had my support, to be able to revive not just from being hacked to pieces, but from being practically disintegrated—Ononoki-chan, that makes you even more immortal than Shinobu-chan!”

“Keep it a secret from onee-chan. If she finds out that my immortality is at this level, I’m afraid she might dismantle me.”

She had just entrusted me with an incredible secret.

Though she could probably revive, even if she were to be dismantled.

“I’m not trying to be modest here, but it was just good luck, and the situation was good. It was good that you drew that illustration of me on that beach—if you had drawn that awful piece on the surface of a boulder like you’d done with your dear old school uniform, my spirit wouldn’t have been able to enter that portrait of me. It would have been an awful piece in the literal sense.”

Not that there was any such thing as an awful piece that wasn’t in the literal sense.

However, it sounded a bit strange to me—it was true that the school uniform was drawn with the intention of materializing it, but drawing on the face of the boulder was definitely easier than drawing on the beach… With a wooden stick in the sand, the lines ended up much too thick, making it hard to draw.

“Oh my, blaming your tools, are you? How classy of you, Kōbō-sensei.”123

“What do you mean by Kōbō-sensei!?”

“I’d been thinking that maybe you were fully aware of what you were doing when you drew my picture on the beach, so I’m being particularly scathing out of shock. It’s my way of being tsundere.”

“No, you were always like that when it came to my manga, you know? I’m willing to let it go because I’m so happy I can talk to you after so long, but you’re going to bring me to tears soon, you know?”

Mm… But, what did she mean by “fully aware”? Was there a reason that it had to be on the beach, and not on a boulder?

Even if I wasn’t picky about my pen—was there a reason I needed to be picky about my paper?

As a user of shikigami (paper).124

“I’d been so impressed that you remembered your experience of reconstructing me out of the dirt at the Kitashirahebi Shrine and put it to good use, even in the midst of your survival life. It’s unfortunate that I thought too highly of you—don’t tell me, you didn’t even realize that that sandy beach was made up of star sand?”

“Star sand?”

What in the world was that?

If it was the Milky Way, I’d at least heard of that…

“Putting aside your ignorance, your lack of observation skills is way too dangerous. You’d better keep it a secret from onee-chan, or you’ll be the one to get dismantled.”

“Is it really that dangerous? My lack of observation skills.”

This human being was about to get dismantled for a reason completely unrelated to immortal oddities.

That was practically a crime!

“When grains of sand become pointy like the shape of a star, that’s called star sand. Okinawa is famous not just for its blue oceans, but also for its star sand.”

I hadn’t seen anything like that in my guidebook—but, oh. It was no wonder that my sand futon felt so prickly. It was basically as though I was sleeping in a futon of konpeito.

“The starry sky on this island was really pretty, so I wonder if that’s why—”

I absentmindedly responded with something noncommittal, but hold on, no matter how beautiful the starlight was, there was no way it could affect the shape of the sand. Was it different from the way ocean currents gradually shaped the sand over long periods of time, like sea glass? Or perhaps the nearby waterfall already had a special way of flowing…

Though a water current would normally just remove the points and make it round…

“But, it’s pretty romantic, huh? I can see why it got so famous. The sand futon may have been hard to sleep in, but thinking about how I was sleeping while swathed in stars every night, it’s not a bad feeling.”

“Though it’s not actually sand, but corpses,”

said Ononoki-chan, ungraciously.

Lacking in grace and romanticism and feeling.

“They’re the corpses of foraminifera that have washed ashore. That’s Latin for ‘hole bearers’.”125

“...Well, of course it would be hard to sleep in.”

What sort of coffin was I putting myself into?

So it wasn’t me that was the bug, but my futon.

“But thanks to that, I was resurrected. The dirt at the Kitashirahebi worked fine, but there’s no better ingredient for the alchemy of a corpse doll than corpses.”

After the squalls, the coral reef, and the habu snakes, it had now been the prosecution’s side that presented evidence to support the idea that this was the Okinawa region—however, calling the corpses of bugs “star sand” was putting it way too nicely.

“There’s also a theory that they’re actually corpses of stars. And a theory that the starry sky of this island, which you said was so beautiful, gave birth to baby stars and dropped them on land. And those baby stars were massacred by a great serpent living in the ocean, and their corpses became the star sand—that’s a folktale from here in Taketomi.”

A great serpent…

How many things were tangled up with snakes?

Right, speaking of which, I needed to tell Ononoki-chan that the hollow of this giant tree could have been a trap set by Araundo Uroko-san—although, as long as it was functioning properly as a cool, dark place, or as a rest stop, that could just be my worthless paranoia…

“No, it’s certainly possible, Nadekou. Of course, before carrying you inside, I made sure to properly investigate whether this hollow was actually safe.”

As expected of a professional shikigami.

Unlike me, she wasn’t going to go on a house tour so carelessly—she would perfectly check the flow of water, the thickness of the walls, and even the exposure of the sun. Though I could also say, it was because she was a corpse doll that would be fine even if she were bitten by a habu snake.

“However, as long as this island is Araundo’s stronghold, it wouldn’t be surprising to find traps anywhere. With that in mind, you did well in surviving this long.”

“No, I came close to dying a lot, and it wouldn’t have been long if Ononoki-chan hadn’t made it—hold on, ‘as long as this island is Araundo’s stronghold’?”

Huh?

And just a little while ago, she’d said, “that’s a folktale from here in Taketomi”, right?

“Hold on, don’t tell me you didn’t even realize that much? If so, just say the word, and I’ll save you from any further shame by killing you right here, as your friend.”

The weight of her friendship was on par with that of a sand futon.

Ah… But, it made sense.

The sunlight. The temperature. The starry sky. The squalls. The coral reef. The habu snakes. The star sand.

And—the Iriomote cats.

The dark brown and mottled endangered species that had saved me from the second habu snake, eating fang with fang—if there were Iriomote cats here, and if this was Araundo Uroko’s stronghold and in the town of Taketomi, then this island I had drifted onto had to be none other than Iriomote Island!