Monogatari Series - Volume 29 - Chapter 1.20

020

When I learned that the enemy boss was enjoying a luxurious stay at a resort hotel while I was withering away on the nudist beach, I thought I would black out right then and there, but considering I had been in a social position in which I could travel to Okinawa riding first class (though the plane did ultimately crash), I couldn’t complain.

Still, I wanted to complain.

Well, even if she was a last boss that secluded herself from the world, she probably didn’t want to live in any cruel environment, so she was free to choose whatever hideout she wanted… But I couldn’t contain my urge to vent my anger at her.

The anger of Yamata no Orochi.134

“It’s not like you were the eight-headed Yamata no Orochi. If anything, you were a hundred-thousand-headed snake, weren’t you?”

“We don’t need to talk about when I turned into Medusa. By the way, Ononoki-chan. Let’s say that we’ll come to terms with what happened to Kaiki-san in our own way—but how did the public react? A domestic flight crashing has to be a pretty serious incident, right?”

Of course, it would have been just as serious if it had been an international flight, but if the passenger list were made public, it would surely also come to light the bizarre way in which the seats had been reserved. Even if not for that, since I had not known the details of his theatrical scam, I had properly given my real name when I’d boarded, so the full name of “Sengoku Nadeko” had to be bouncing around TV and online news.

“True. Your weird name.”

“Don’t call my name weird!”

“Alas, I’m sure the sharp-eared Tsukihi-chan will be absolutely delighted… She’ll probably go around saying, ‘My dear old friend has died in an airplane crash! How pitiful I am!’ or something.”

“Your mental image of Araragi Tsukihi is terrible!”

Except she might actually say something like that.

I knew very well, because she was my dear old friend.

We could understand each other in a profound way.

“There’s no need to worry. Although, that’s only if you can even stop worrying, being able to understand a dear old friend like that… According to some light research I did, apparently Gaen-san must have taken it into account from the beginning, since she had the news of the airplane crash covered up.”

“She can do something like that? Covered up the news of an airplane crash.”

Before, when I (and my alter ego) had run rampant at a bookstore in my hometown, she had completely covered up the disturbance without leaving so much as a trace… But how in the world did she suppress this aerial incident, which was being observed by radars across the world?

“Even if I were to die, news of my death might get covered up, too…”

“Hahahaha.”

Yikes.

Ononoki-chan had just laughed… Though it had been with just her voice, without making any expression… Wasn’t it the first time she’d laughed since Nisemonogatari? Was she trying to gloss over the matter by catching me by surprise…?

Was she trying to cover up the cover-up?

If anything, it was more likely that Gaen-san had done so to cover up the matter of Kaiki-san, her direct junior—but I was surprised to hear that even the top brass had taken all this into account, making me wonder, how much more accounting could they have done?

The onee-san that knew everything.

At this point, it was hard to know who was the real evil boss—which side was good, and which side was evil?

It was a theme I wanted to attempt to tackle in my manga.

“Just make it refreshing by sending all the bad guys flying. It’s just manga, after all.”

“Don’t make light of manga. Because in manga, it can be refreshing even when the good guys get sent flying.”

“So someone’s going to be sent flying, regardless?”

Well, nowadays, that wasn’t as common.

How long would depictions of extreme violence be allowed?—even as an aspiring mangaka who needed to defend manga, it was hard for me to say that I didn’t have some concerns when I read manga from half a century ago.

Morality and ethics differed from era to era.

“Even without singling out any masterpieces from the past, there are plenty of insane things in the current era. From genres different from the manga that you idealize, plenty of ero guro absurdist masterpieces.”

“Of course there are… They’re not necessarily only in different genres, either. When there is light, there is shadow, and when there is black, there is white—if I only fill my bookshelf with manga I like, there won’t be any variation.”

“Then, you’re fine with not sending Araundo Uroko flying, right? You’ll resolve things by talking it out.”

“...Mm…”

Well, it was true that I didn’t want to send her flying.

However, although I’d said that the curse cast upon me by my friends could be traced back to Kaiki-san’s business, if we went back even further, the truth was that those curses had actually been let loose by Araundo-san.

If there was an unsatisfactory feeling from Ononoki-chan’s professional mindset of not getting revenge for Kaiki-san, I could also say that it would feel a little unfair to peacefully talk things out without any ill will.

No matter how starved of conversation I was.

“I guess it would depend on the flow of things. But don’t worry, I’m sure she won’t curse you.”

“Araundo would have to be pretty overemotional if she cursed me just by the flow of things… Although, curses might unexpectedly be like that.”

Perhaps she’d lost interest in this fruitless discussion, as Ononoki-chan said, “Since we were talking about probability earlier, let me just say this,” changing the subject choppily.

There was no shared context.

“It’s pretty unlikely for this to happen, so I thought about just not mentioning it at all, but ultimately, I have the responsibility to explain things, and you have the right to know.”

They’re two sides of the same coin of freedom of expression.

So said Ononoki-chan—but what did she want to talk about?

What did she want to express?

“You remember what we talked about before?“

“Uhuhu. I remember everything you’ve told me, Ononoki-chan.”

“Don’t try to make a pass at me. If that’s how you buttered yourself up for Tooboe Nakuna or Araragi Tsukihi, then I’ll hold no sympathy for you—but, it’s about the episode in which Gaen-san, in her university years, constructed a corpse doll (that is, me) with four of her underclassmen.”

“Ah… I feel like you may have mentioned it, or maybe not…”

“I knew you’d be like that.”

Gaen Izuko. Oshino Meme. Kaiki Deishuu. Kagenui Yozuru. And the last one was—Teori Tadatsuru, was it?

Right, right, I had recalled his name earlier when I’d been on the verge of death.

“At this point, it’s hard to say how much of their independent research had actually been serious, but as a result, the corpse doll known as me was born, and the five university students were cursed—and most of the cursed university students ended up having to leave school.”

“Huh… They had to leave school because they created you, Ononoki-chan?”

“They were pretty intense curses, after all. It was impossible to continue down the path of their studies while bearing those burdens. It might have been possible for Gaen-san, but as the leader, she took responsibility—if anything, onee-chan was the unusual one for somehow earning her doctorate while being unable to walk on the ground.”

It wasn’t exactly my place to say, considering I’d dropped out of school myself, but Kagenui-san really was abnormal, wasn’t she… So she’d earned her doctorate, had she? You really couldn’t judge someone based on their appearance or their personality or their behavior.

“If you decide to leave university midway, you’ll end up like Oshino onii-chan or Kaiki onii-chan.”

“That’s something I absolutely would like to avoid.”

“Of course, if there’s someone that was particularly strongly influenced by those two, it would be Hanekawa Tsubasa, who abandoned her studies.”

“What terrible influences they are.”

So, what exactly was the point of reviewing this information?

Was it a check to see if I had only been pretending to pay attention in my chats with Ononoki-chan? It was something Nakuna-chan and Tsukihi-chan often did.

“The two of them would intentionally repeat the same topic to test their friends’ loyalty.”

“Did they really consider them friends? No, that’s not it… Well, those university students were able to settle into the curses affecting their bodies, and it seems as though everyone has found ways to deal with it—one of them was even able to forcibly lift the curse by falling to hell.”

Well, even if she said “one of them”.

By process of elimination, it could only be Teori Tadatsuru-san.

“It was like a chronic disease, so to speak, and nobody really minds anymore. So, I’m only bringing this up now to serve as a reference—Sengoku Nadeko.”

“Um… Uh, yes.”

The passenger list hadn’t been publicized in the end, but being called by my full name always made me a little nervous. Especially when it was from Ononoki-chan, who rarely used it. Though I felt a little weird about growing accustomed to being called Nadekou.

“This time, even though you didn’t do so intentionally from what I understand, you were able to revive me from my watery grave—in other words, you ‘resurrected a corpse that had died’. It’s possible that this action could end up being a violation of the rules.”

“The—the rules?”

“Going against the natural way of things. Basically…”

You might end up becoming cursed.

By something.

“God only knows if my revival will be treated as just the repair of a doll, or if it will be treated as an actual rebirth—presumably, Gaen-san and Kaiki onii-chan put you as the focal point of their plan because they assumed it would be treated as a repair, but they are two out of the five people that had failed once before.”

If she was saying that, then I had failed not once, but plenty of times—I’d assumed my actions had been an extension of what I’d done to Ononoki-chan’s broken-up corpse at the Kitashirahebi Shrine, when I’d put her back together like a puzzle. But, according to Ononoki-chan, my actions might be on the same level as the actions of the five occultist university students.

In the first place, there was already the question of if the Ononoki-chan sent to her watery grave and the Ononoki-chan revived by my “drawing” were in fact the same person—or rather, the same doll. It was essentially the philosophical zombie problem.

Was she the real zombie, or the philosophical zombie?

If I was judged to have created a new corpse doll from scratch out of that star sand—then there was no way I wouldn’t end up cursed.

I would become an accursed girl.

“Th-then, will I become unable to walk on the ground, like Kagenui-san?”

Was that why she was carrying me on her back? Would Ononoki-chan ultimately support me with a single finger? Although that was partly possible due to Kagenui-san’s own physical ability.

“Or, like Gaen-san, will all sorts of knowledge be forcibly crammed into my brain?—or, like Kaiki-san, will I end up only being able to tell lies?—or, like Oshino-san, will I keep losing my place of residence?”

“Since the five of them committed the violation together, the curse was split into five equal parts, but in your case, you did it all on your own. So it’s possible you’ll take on the full curse.”

What a shock.

Why was this happening to me… There was no way I’d be able to deal with the curses, which were split across those five specialists, all on my own.

It was a massive defeat that was too heavy to handle.

“It could bring even a professional to shame. Or perhaps, you could be hit by a completely different curse. Like something that would prevent you from ever drawing again.”

“You’re coming up with an even more terrifying possibility…”

“Or maybe, you might still be able to draw, but no manga you draw will ever be interesting.”

She was saying it jokingly, but it sounded completely horrific to me… At this stage, it was just a cautionary mention of a potential drawback, but still, it was a warning I absolutely needed to keep in mind.

When I returned, it would probably be good to have Gaen-san perform a detailed investigation—although, if Gaen-san had taken all of this into account when she dispatched me to Iriomote Island, then perhaps I should be seeking a second opinion from outside the Gaen faction.

Going against the natural way of things—to play with life as one pleased certainly seemed like a grave sin. So this was where Kagenui-san’s roots lay, as a specialist in immortal oddities.

Kagenui-san, the only one to have graduated from university without deviating from her path…

“...In the first place, why did those five people decide to make you, Ononoki-chan, anyway?”

“That’s the same as asking why you draw manga.”

“And by that, you mean?”

“Half for fun.”

How rude… Was what I wanted to say, but from an extreme standpoint, it was probably harder for me to find a reason for the half that wasn’t “for fun”. As someone who’d thought only about wanting to draw, even when on the verge of starving to death—in other words, it was with that much zeal and passion that those five university students decided to manufacture Ononoki-chan.

Back when those specialists hadn’t been anybody in particular.

“That’s right. It’s possible that those five are, even now, still searching for the other half that isn’t just ‘for fun’. However, if we consider the new information learned from Kaiki onii-chan on the plane, we might be able to come up with an additional part of the motive for the ringleader, Gaen-san—perhaps I was meant to be a substitute for her daughter.”

“............”

“Much like how she’s currently projecting her daughter onto you, I have a theory that that boss had once projected her daughter onto me. Perhaps we could even call it her youthful indiscretion—if so, then like how onee-chan once projected her real younger sister, who was killed and eaten by the fangs of an immortal oddity, onto me, I could only be a project ending in failure.”

She was casually revealing a new backstory, wasn’t she.

Was it because this was the end?

A real younger sister—and a real daughter.

“Though I was a fake younger sister, and a fake daughter. That’s the reason I first appeared in Nisemonogatari.”

“That explanation was obviously made up after the fact, though?”

“It’s true that onee-chan projected her real younger sister onto me in the past, but I’m not being too thorough about my speculations about Gaen-san. I’d called it a theory, but that theory is full of holes. Or even hollows. It might even be more appropriate to consider it as it being practice for today, this very day.”

With Ononoki-chan saying that, we finally broke out of the rugged part of the jungle—there was still some distance left in front of us, but I was finally able to see some paved roads.

Roads. Cars. And a town…

The first man-made object I was seeing in two weeks…

Well, no, if Ononoki-chan was considered man-made, then I had long since laid my eyes on her already, and the uniform I’d created was also man-made. Even so, the sight before me left me was so emotionally moving. It made sense for a starry sky, but to think I’d find myself moved by seeing people’s houses…

“In order to one day overthrow her real daughter that she’d abandoned, she manufactured a fake daughter together with her loyal underclassmen, steadily preparing for the parent-child confrontation that she would one day have to face—and, having found the ideal courtroom sketch artist in you, she resolved to face her.”

I see. It did seem like something Gaen-san would do.

Though it didn’t seem like something a mother would do.