Monogatari Series - Volume 29 - Chapter 1.23

023

The epilogue.

Three years later, at the age of eighteen, I began preparations to move to the capital and leave the apartment introduced to me by Gaen-san behind—and this time, I wasn’t just referring to setting out for the prefectural capital as “moving to the capital” for fun. It was the actual capital.

I was heading for Japan’s capital, Tokyo.

Nothing had been officially announced yet, so I would have to hide any specifics, but after four years of hard work, I managed to make it into the semifinalists of a manga award named for a certain god, so I was looking for a new place to live in advance.

That age just barely made me an adult, at eighteen years old.

The age of majority really did lower, didn’t it…

From here on out, I would draw one-shots, work as an assistant, create storyboards for the sake of getting serialized, and ultimately release my own volumes. Considering the length of the journey I had in front of me, it felt like a level of difficulty beyond my specialist training or my survival life, but it gave me a bit of relief to know that I wouldn’t have to be indebted to Gaen-san anymore.

Or so I wanted to say, but most likely, Gaen-san would have to be my guarantor even in Tokyo… Because, even after three years, I still wasn’t exactly on good terms with my parents.

Though I didn’t mind.

In the end, being indebted to Gaen-san wasn’t exactly something I disliked.

Well… Despite not being on good terms, I’ve gotten to the point where I could talk to them a little. Though it was only a little bit at a time, ever since what happened with Uroko-chan.

Even if I were to fulfill my dream of becoming a mangaka, they weren’t the sort to do a complete about-face, after all… As for mending this parent-child relationship, I’ll leave it all up to the slow passage of time.

Perhaps, when I start to approach my sixtieth birthday or so, we could sit down for some tea—they say that parents won’t be there by the time you wish to show filial piety, so please live long lives.

I was flying to Tokyo by plane.

Technically, going by trains was much faster, but ever since that day, when that plane to Okinawa ended up crashing, I had ended up completely shutting out planes from my mind—so I realized I had better dispel my misgivings, or I would never be able to ride a plane in the future.

Unlike that time, of course, I would be flying in economy class, within my means—but, huh?

After arriving at the airport and using the touch panel at the self-service counter to check in, the seat I reserved had been upgraded to first class?

For premium members, these were known as involuntary upgrades, which could happen for free on rare occasions… But this was so perplexing it was almost scary, so I called out to a nearby guide robot moving around on its own. These sorts of AI robots had become pretty commonplace in airports, though from a sci-fi perspective, it felt a little menacing…

“The upgrade was performed by that guest over there.”

The robot responded as such with a deep masculine voice, and when I looked in the direction indicated, a man with an ominous and disquieting air, much too unsuitable for the new life I was about to set out on, was indeed seated intrepidly in the waiting area, looking at me.

“Yo, Sengoku. I can hardly recognize you.”

“Kaiki-san… So you were alive after all.”

Of course.

I figured it would be something like that… I was feeling zero surprise. He was never the type of guy that would simply die from a traffic accident. Though he wasn’t exactly the type of guy to die from old age, either.

“Hmph. Though it would be nice if I could die from a traffic accident. Then I can go in the same way Tooe-sensei did.”

“? Ah, your private tutor, right? And also Gaen-san’s older sister. I heard from Uroko-chan.”

“She taught me lots of things—about how to fool innocent children.”

It wasn’t really the sort of reminiscing I wanted to hear when I was about to set sail (?)...149 By doing stuff like upgrading my plane ticket as he pleased, was he somehow able to fool the guide robot? I heard that the con men of today could be rather skilled in the IT department.

“Don’t worry about it. Consider it a parting gift from me—I haven’t done anything like reserve the whole plane, so you can relax.”

As if I could relax.

Don’t say things that remind me of the crash.

However, I probably should be easily accepting of the goodwill of others—it was a seat that was quite beyond my station, when I’d only just won an award and hadn’t even debuted, but as Ononoki-chan often said, I needed to keep my aspirations high.

High in the sky, like an airplane.

“I see. You really have changed, Sengoku. Your appearance did, too…”

“Oh. You mean these clothes? Tsukihi-chan picked out these clothes for me… Like Ononoki-chan, recently I’ve completely become Tsukihi-chan’s dress-up doll.”

Including my hairstyle, it was all left to her.

Her taste for those sorts of things was top-notch, that Tsukihi-chan.

She wasn’t going to do anything like cut my bangs too short, so there was no need to worry.

“It’s a pretty big deal that you’re able to accept all that so easily—by the way, Sengoku. I was wondering if you could resolve a concern of mine before you set off on your journey.”

As a specialist.

Well, if he said that, then I couldn’t refuse.

Not that I could refuse after he’d upgraded my seat to first class… Perhaps it was that law of reciprocity that was often used in scammers’ terminology.

“Three years ago, when you encountered Araundo Uroko on Iriomote Island, what exactly did you do? How in the world—did you drive off that snake into retirement?”

Saying that I drove her off made me look bad, didn’t it?

It’ll cause bad rumors about me to spread.

“I didn’t do anything too impressive. It was what Gaen-san had sent me to Iriomote Island to do, after all—it was why she’d had me meet her daughter.”

“...And that means?”

“I drew a picture. Of Uroko-chan.”

I made her into a work of art.

In other words, it meant the same as what I’d done to Nakuna-chan or Sajou-kun—by representing the retaliations of the curses they’d been inflicted with in my sketchbook, I lifted those curses.

So basically, I did the same thing to Uroko-chan, the originator of all of those curses—those scales that covered Uroko-chan’s arms and legs, I carefully peeled them all off, one by one. Like drawing a hundred thousand strands of hair—remembering it now, it was like drawing in pointillism, and I thought I would go crazy.

My survival experience just before that had become useful in the most unexpected way—snake scales don’t peel off as easily as fish scales, you see. It’s like they degenerated, or they unified into a single whole.

“So you’re saying you picked off her snake legs? For that snake that possessed five heads, you cut off her four limbs—”

“I didn’t cut off anything. All I did was peel off her scales.”

It was the opposite of materialization.

She’d been receiving the retaliations of her curses, her just deserts, for fifteen years, but by drawing them with paper and pen, I turned them into fiction.

Into emptiness, like the hollow of a giant tree.

At the same time, it meant the disappearance of the curse itself.

By taking away the effect, I eliminated the cause.

“So, when Gaen-senpai sent you to her daughter’s location—it was to break the curse that had bound her? So she wanted you not to overthrow her, but to help her, is that it?”

“Well, Gaen-san never said so herself. Not before, and not even after—”

However, she didn’t deny it, either.

That much was surprising in itself.

If it was wrong, then she could have easily denied it, but that onee-san that loved to chatter away had said nothing, for once.

“Well, her daughter was also something like a stubborn binding spell for Gaen-senpai. She was her daughter, but also like her older sister, too. So Gaen-senpai wouldn’t be able to be honest about her feelings—however, it’s also a bit cruel. If you took away the curse affecting her four limbs, then it probably wouldn’t be good for Araundo’s business.”

“That’s true. In the end, I was sent to Iriomote Island for the sake of drawing those snake legs. Really, that was all it was—everything else was pretty unnecessary. It’s possible that she even had me sketch Nakuna-chan, who’d been hit by the curse’s retaliation, as a preliminary step. Not for ascertaining the snake’s location, but as practice for the final objective… Or perhaps I should call it a practice piece.”

I didn’t know her true intentions.

Perhaps not even Gaen-san herself knew… Even if she was the ‘onee-san that knew everything’, no matter how many years passed, she would never become the ‘mother that knew everything’.

“I don’t get it. I really don’t get it,”

Uroko-chan had said.

Three years ago.

She, who had become my model and my motif, made no move to stop me. She certainly was capable of doing so if she wanted to, but without leaving her rattan chair, she continued to mumble about how incomprehensible it all was.

“If this is a harsh and difficult task for you, then there’s no need for you to do this—so why are you trying to save me?”

I’m your enemy, and Mama’s enemy, too.

But despite that, Nadeko-chan, why are you trying to peel off my scales?

“I may be your enemy, but unlike what Oshino Ougi is to Araragi Koyomi, I am not an enemy that you absolutely must confront—I’m just a snake that you’re free to run away from. Though it was in an indirect manner, your life ended up extremely distorted because of me, so it would be fine if you hated or resented me. And even if not for that, I’m still an evil person, and an evil snake. What’s the point of saving an endangered venomous snake that will naturally become extinct in the near future?”

“That’s not really it.”

That was how I responded, back when I was at the age of fifteen—to be honest, I’d given a half-hearted, noncommittal response. Since I was in the middle of wholeheartedly drawing each and every scale, I couldn’t do anything about my slapdash answer.

However, I could imagine that, because I’d given my answer in such a state, it was able to come across as not showing any deception or shame or pretension.

“I’m just doing what everyone has done for me.”

“............”

“What your mama, and your mama’s friends have all done for me.”      

Without stopping my pen, I continued.

Letting my words flow as I thought of them, as though my words were paint.

“You see, I’ve been saved by lots of different people. Even when I was placed in a survival situation, I was saved by thinking about those people—and it wasn’t because I was a good kid, or a good person, or I took things seriously, or I was pitiful, and certainly not because I was cute.”

And it wasn’t that the people that had saved me.

Were particularly good people, either.

There was a lolicon, and there was a con man.

“But it’s not like you have to be a good kid to go out and save people, and it’s not like you’re only allowed to save good kids—rather, don’t you think it has more of an effect if a bad kid saves another bad kid? Don’t you think it makes for a better picture?”

If you could only be nice to people who were nice to you, such a strict society could never work out—I would have ended up dead a long time ago.

But, like how Tsukihi-chan professed to be an ally of justice, and like how Nakuna-chan acted as the leader of her group—I was just doing something that I wasn’t suited for.

“Don’t think that people can only be rescued if they’re worth rescuing. You don’t even need to say, ‘Thanks for saving me’—I’m just doing this because it’s my job, after all.”

“Because it’s your job?—that sounds like a line you inherited from Mama.”

Professionalism you inherited from Mama.

Uroko-chan gave a wry smile. That smile was also something inherited from Mama.

“—Nadeko-chan, I’m sure you felt this deeply during your supposed uninhabited island life, but the prevailing theory goes that humanity became humanity after discovering the concept of fire. But I like to stray from that course of things. It’s always been my way of doing things to use back lanes in secret. That was how I was born, and that was how I was cursed.”

Of course.

Though I’d say I was pretty high in the rankings of how many times I’d become a lost child that went astray from the pack… However, rather than humanity having become humanity after discovering “fire” being just a prevailing theory, wasn’t it just the accepted theory? It wasn’t something you could just refute and offer your own counter-theory.

Just as she’d said, my uninhabited island life began when I managed to wield “fire”... With the extremely primitive method of striking rocks against a boulder… I didn’t know if my humanity started to overflow at that moment, but at the very least, there was no mistake that that had been the starting line. If I had not started that “fire”, my own history of humanity could not have begun, and the Sengoku species would have quickly gone extinct. However, if there was a popular answer outside of that… Well, perhaps she was going to say that humans became humans when they learned to use “tools”?

In my case, for the sake of starting a “fire”, I had needed to use “stone” as tools… On top of that, I’d made a somewhat waterproof hearth, carved out a boulder to use as a bowl, and, though the production value hadn’t been very good, I’d even made a harpoon.

It was often said that tools were only used by humans.

“That’s not true at all. There are plenty of animals that make use of tools… There are even animals that create tools, too. The formation of a society based around community life is not a condition unique to humanity, either. That should be pretty obvious when you watch how ants and bees live.”

In that case, as someone who had fallen astray from the pack, that put me on a lower level than ants and bees… Of course, even in the societies of ants or bees, there had to be some nonconformists that would end up falling astray.

Thinking about it, a vast jungle made up of countless plants could also be considered a pack, so to speak… Not in the sense that it was very packed and stuffy,150 but in the sense that forming a strong group was what made an ecosystem.

Rather than a species, it would be a genus.

And I had been able to prove the helplessness of humans, when faced with such a group.

Then, if it wasn’t “fire”, if it wasn’t “tools”, and if it wasn’t even “society”, then what was the reason for the progression of humanity? I could say it was as expected of Gaen-san’s daughter, as I was feeling like I was back in class.

She sure was good at this, to make me of all people think that I was back in class.

“My answer won’t be all that surprising or pretentious. It’s what you’re doing right now, Nadeko-chan. Humanity became humanity when they became capable of drawing ‘pictures’. That’s what I think.”

“? What do you mean?”

Drawing pictures… It was an unusual answer.

It was completely surprising. Anyone was capable of drawing pictures, right?

“You’re saying that in a way a genius would. You’re making me as taken aback as a frog being glared at. However, that’s exactly why I can say it. That’s right, anyone is capable of drawing… As long as they’re human.”

“...I still don’t get it, sensei.”

It was true that there was the possibility that I’d been able to light a “fire” at the time, not because the act of throwing rocks at a boulder had been enough, but because my “Skill of Snake Legs” had activated… Perhaps I could have unconsciously drawn a picture of the element on the surface of the boulder.

And, though I’d been continuously failing at making tools, I’d ultimately managed to obtain clothing by drawing a “picture”... However, that wasn’t exactly a skill that was possessed by just anybody. It was like a heretical trick, unavailable to the masses. A bit of individuality that couldn’t be published in a survival guide.

Just like how drawing Uroko-chan.

Was a role meant only for me, which couldn’t be done by just anybody.

“I’m referring to the ability to share information, and even wisdom. By drawing ‘pictures’, and then by looking at ‘pictures’, humanity was able to spread their society throughout the world… That’s when they were able to surpass ants and bees. Of course, normally you’d think of it as ‘writing’, but the idea that ‘writing’ originated from ‘pictures’ is not a theory with a prevailing or dissenting opinion, right?”

That was true.

That was exactly what hieroglyphs were, and even when it came to the formation of kanji, they said that the character for “human” formed from the shape of two people supporting each other151—how might the alphabet have been formed?

Symbols were essentially a type of drawing.

If so, there might be no way to achieve it on an uninhabited island in the wired or wireless form, but perhaps the Internet was the ultimate destination of humanity’s progression—whether as images or videos, or even as text, we were essentially exchanging each one as its own “single picture”, only a few inches wide, through our LCD screens, after all.

“What might have early humans felt when they were drawing those geoglyphs and cave paintings? Surely, they must have felt something like, ‘I want people to see these,’ and ‘I want to show these to people’, right?”

The desire to convey to other people.

That was the reason for the diffusion of culture, said Uroko-chan—just like the meaning of her name, her words had been a bit roundabout,152 so it was hard for me to understand what she was trying to say, but would I be able to understand a little better by putting even those feelings of hers into my art?

Diffusion.

Even before the formation of this information society, humanity had been sharing events, phenomena, and their feelings with each other—and if that sharing was in fact the reason for the formation of human society, then you could indeed say that the act of drawing pictures was key.

The history of humanity continued to receive portrayals across the land.

And then, across the sea—and from now on, across the universe.

The portrait of humanity would be drawn.

“...Haha.”

I ended up laughing at myself.

Because, as someone who was actively moving my hands to draw a picture, I was thinking that it wasn’t actually that much of a big deal… As an artist, I wasn’t trying to speak like a genius, and I wasn’t trying to be self-deprecating, but it really did sound like that idea was too lacking in modesty.

However, if it really was in the instincts of humans to draw, like how children wanted to scribble on the walls of their new home, then perhaps it was possible to build up this theory, and not just as a counter-theory… On that level, I was okay with supporting it.

To seek out paper and pen.

Perhaps that was not my desire as an aspiring mangaka, but simply human nature—

“...When I was in distress on that uninhabited island, and when I was not affected by anyone’s gaze or opinion, even so, I still thought that I wanted to draw pictures, that I wanted to draw manga. But rather than having the special determination to do so, and rather than having the persistence to not give up on my dream, does that mean it had simply been a step in a reversion to my primal roots?”

That feeling of longing was a feeling that served as a form of salvation for me, but with such a blunt, heartrending interpretation, I couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed. And yet, at the same time, I was weirdly convinced.

“Well. Personally, when I watched you, Nadeko-chan, in such a state, I actually gained confidence in that interpretation. After losing everything, without having anything, being unable to eat or drink or converse or be satisfied, what actions would a human end up taking…? Nadeko-chan, you were the one to teach me the answer to that.”

It was a bit heavy of a responsibility to be used as a basis for all of humanity.

If anything, I’d prefer if you interpreted it as me having been a bit of a blockhead.

“Hm. I know little about art, but it seemed to me that when humans find themselves in distress on an uninhabited island, they won’t cast curses—instead, they’ll draw pictures.”

“That’s rich, coming from someone living it up at a resort.”

“Even when at a resort, people will try to take photos, at least. Even if it’s for the sake of uploading to Instagram, that makes another single picture.”

So she used Instagram, did she?

Well, she’d been continuing her business of selling curses even now.

If she had been advertising her business there, then of course it would spread among the youth—or perhaps that spread could be called diffusion, instead.

“People aren’t capable of writing if they don’t learn how, but pictures can be drawn even without learning. There’s no need to receive an education for drawing. It’s on the same level as eating, drinking, and sleeping. To say it how Mama would say it, it’s something that ‘everyone knows’—and in the end, that utterly commonplace thing that ‘everyone knows’ is what saved you, Nadeko-chan, and it’s what’s saving me, too. As a sorcerer, it’s not something I’m happy about—but, as someone responsible for scattering charm talismans all about, if my ultimate destination is to be sealed in pure-white paper, perhaps I’m just reaping what I’ve sown.”

Reaping what I’ve sown? There was no one more fitting for those words than Sengoku Nadeko.

It was what I’d sown.

And, I would be reaping them myself.

“Charms are also a kind of shared illusion, you see. It’s a bit unusual to say that the destination of humanity’s progression is not reality, but an illusion, but it’s the truth. Even so, even while I’m talking as though I’ve ‘figured out everything’, for me, drawings and paintings are not things to be drawn and recorded, but things to be read and understood—in order to share that information. I may have taken photos before, but I’ve never thought about taking the initiative to draw my own pictures.”

And perhaps that was because she was Gaen-san’s back side, and because she was her daughter—Gaen-san never gave off the impression of someone that liked to “draw pictures”. I didn’t know what she was like in her teens… But she seemed like she would have read tons of books. Including manga.

“That’s right. Mama was an avid reader. A reader, and a thinker. So that’s why she’s ‘drawing’ plenty of ‘pictures’ now, as the specialists’ commander.”

It sounded like she was ‘drawing pictures’ in the sense of working out battle strategies or formulating plans—in that sense, my sketch of Uroko-chan could also be considered a work that was drawn by Gaen-san.

Not working out strategies, but a work of art.153

“And you get the impression that the characters move on their own. In both strategies and art, things don’t work out exactly the way you envision them—Mama is the type of person to let her actors improvise, while I, her daughter, prefer to plan things out meticulously, but even so, this conclusion was outside of my expectations.”

“Is there really anything outside of your expectations? For the mother and daughter of the Gaens.”

“Of course, we take great pleasure in things outside of our expectations.”

Uroko-chan smiled at this.

In a very Gaen-like manner, as though speaking on behalf of her mama, as well.

“Within the scope of my official duties, it’s true that the extent to which my charms ended up spreading was mostly beyond expectation—to an almost overindulgent level.154 When information and wisdom are shared with a large group of people, the more it spreads, the more it can increase exponentially, and the more its content can be altered. It’s like a game of telephone on a global scale, something that not even AI can fully grasp. In the same way pictures can be transformed into text—information can be encoded into symbols, and end up misrepresented. If you ask me, that’s also a curse. A high-speed curse.”

“Are you making a pun on ‘curse’ and ‘sluggish’?155 Though I did get the earlier pun about ‘official duties’ and ‘overindulgent’...”

“See, we already had a problem in this game of telephone. Like a mistake that can occur in the countless iterations of gene replication. When images can be shared by all of humanity, it’s possible for the collective to crush the individual. If the word of ‘love’, or the concept of ‘dreams’, or the image of ‘motherhood’ weren’t shared by all of humanity, then Nadeko-chan, how easier do you think it would have been to live your life?”

“It—probably would have been a lot easier.”

It would have been easy-peasy.

However, that was but another standard image.

The desire to not be tainted by the social framework, shared rules, and common sense—all of it was included as part of a single picture.

It was because there was such a strong image of ‘love’ and ‘dreams’ and ‘motherhood’, that it was possible for their respective antitheses to be produced.

To be born.

It was nothing more than a matter of the order, or the chronology. If something produces its antithesis, and that antithesis produces a further antithesis, it paints a different picture from the back side of the back being the front. After all, not everyone will accept the information and knowledge they receive, and pass it on without resistance… And it wasn’t necessarily the case that individuality ended up crushed. It was because there were errors in gene replication that those gave birth to new things.

Even in a group, everyone had their worries, and everyone had their curses.

My middle school was the same. In fact, it had even been a place where oddballs were permitted to exist. Of course, we tried to fit them into rigid stereotypes all the same, but at the very least, we did not completely shut them out for the reason that they were oddballs. It was just that, if they were to get carried away and jump out of their cages, they would only find an even harsher society that mercilessly rejected them, spreading out before them like a jungle—and they would only realize this after jumping out, turning into a complex for them.

“I wonder, Nadeko-chan. Will you use that complex as fuel for your creativity, too? Being an outlaw and being hungry is what cultivates a rebellious spirit, after all. That’s something my own existence can prove.”

“I dunno about that. I can accept being an outlaw, but I’m a bit fed up with being hungry. I’ll have to keep working as hard as always, but I was never really a fan of the whole ‘using adversity as a springboard for growth’ thing.”

Of course, I did enjoy it in manga stories, and it did move me emotionally, and in the episodes from my great predecessors, the feeling of crawling your way out of adversity was an idea that drove straight into my heart. However, if I were telling my own, true-to-life tale, my honest impression was that it gave off an unsatisfactory feeling.

“If so, that honest impression of yours is what makes up the foundation of your complex,”

said Uroko-chan flatly.

At this point, it felt less like I was sitting in class and more like I was sitting in therapy—especially because drawing pictures was a standard curriculum of therapy.

“Your negative feelings towards adversity is what makes you say that, Nadeko-chan. You’re refusing to acknowledge the fact that ‘you succeeded because you were unhappy’—it’s an inferiority complex towards your inferiority complex. It’s not too different from saying, ‘I never asked to be born,’ or, ‘I didn’t want to be born to these parents’—an unproductive paradox, where it would’ve been impossible to even state that displeasure unless you’d been born in the first place. After having gone through hell and back, no matter how much you succeed from this point forward, if you start to feel that you are losing out to those who have managed to succeed without facing any adversity… In the end, you are just averting your eyes from the adversity you faced in the past.”

“...Are you trying to curse me? Uroko-chan.”

Was she trying to increase the number of scales on her arms and legs even more than this?—I really would like to avoid having to deal with a curse that kept spreading to no end, no matter how much I drew and drew. I wasn’t doing this digitally, so it wasn’t like I could handle them with copy-and-paste, those countless scales.

“As if. I’m just talking about the prevailing theory. It has nothing to do with my own personal theory. This isn’t even speaking on behalf of Mama, but just the voice of the world. You know, even Araragi Koyomi has encountered many conflicts. If he hadn’t met those many ‘unhappy girls’, including a vampire on the verge of death, he certainly wouldn’t be the man he is today. Depending on how you look at it, you could say he grew up feeding on the misfortune of others—though I can only imagine what it would be like to find happiness in taking care of a vampire as a child, it probably wasn’t easy. In the same way, Nadeko-chan, I’m sure you don’t find it easy to acknowledge, ‘I became a mangaka because my friends cursed me,’ or ‘I became a mangaka because the onii-chan that I loved broke my heart.’”

She was trying to get me to drop my pen, huh.

Or perhaps, the scale that I was about to draw next was the scale that had come about as a result of Nakuna-chan’s curse—and it was Nakuna-chan herself rejecting me.

Or—was I rejecting myself?

My adversity, my complex, my past, myself.

Well, if I had to say it, what I didn’t want to recognize was not the fact that I was cursed, but the fact that I’d cast my own curses—especially, the era in which I’d reigned over a mountain summit as a god was a disgrace I did not want to talk about. Even now, was I still unable to face my sins and my curses?

If so, the scales that were the hardest for me to draw.

Were my own scales.

Detours, which I wanted to put off. Rain and dew, which could only be roundabout.

A hollow—which resembled emptiness.156

“While those difficult-to-draw scales can serve as your armor, Nadeko-chan, at the same time, they’re also scabs that you must peel off. Because scabs are not the wounds themselves, but proof that your wounds have healed.”

“............”

“The world has become a place where it’s hard to even dare to dream, but at the same time, times have changed such that dreams are easier than ever to fulfill. I won’t say that our society has grown richer, but, inversely proportional to that, the possibilities of any future have widened immensely when compared to the past.”

Was she referring to how, if one were to write “mangaka” on their career survey forms, people were less likely to get angry at them in the current era? In elementary school, when Tsukihi-chan was asked, “What’s your dream?”, she answered, “I want to build a school”... It was quite the disparity from me, who’d given the safe answer of “I want to be a bride”... Or rather, I could feel the difference in status.157

“In the current era, writing ‘bride’ would be less of a safe answer, though. Rather, it’s now widely known that envisioning a stable future is but a happy illusion, and being carelessly motivated to pursue one’s passions has now become the norm. Not a portrait, but that image of the future—perhaps I could even call it an image of lies—has spread as a single picture. Even though things may not always go as planned, it’s become less difficult, in terms of both tools and environment, to attempt to fulfill your dreams in some shape or form—our society truly is blessed.”

Blessed?

That was a word unbefitting a purveyor of curses.

“No, no, it’s very befitting. Because I’m worried about Nadeko-chan falling to ruin from being bound by celebrations, not by curses—a blessing can also become a binding spell, after all. If a person ends up giving a speech at some award ceremony, and they say something like, ‘I have come this far because of my loving parents and my friends who have guided me,’ without any emotion, er, without any resistance, then I would say that that person has finally succeeded.”

She’d very clearly said “without any emotion” before correcting herself… Depending on how I looked at it, it almost sounded like she was trying to curse the act of speech-giving that had become popular, but regardless, it wasn’t as though I didn’t understand what Uroko-chan was trying to say.

It came through to me, like a picture.

In my case, if I were to write ‘To my parents’ or ‘To my first love’ in the dedication of my first printed volume, that would serve as a signpost that I had achieved success… It seemed like a pretty high hurdle to overcome.

Saying thanks, huh?

In the past, I’d spoken words of gratitude much more meekly.

Though I had intended for my apologies to not be completely emotionless.

“It’s possible that, after you succeed, you’ll let that success become your complex. There may be a future in which you say, ‘It wasn’t supposed to be like this’, after your dream has come true—after being pampered and spoiled, your personality may turn warped, you’ll become unable to trust anybody, and you might end up being unfulfilled by your fulfilling life. Perhaps you might realize that you felt more alive when you were starving on an uninhabited island. Worrying about success becoming a trauma might be a luxurious concern, but isn’t it a pattern you often see from other successful people? No matter how many hits one has produced, they’ll eventually grow old and wither away. Like how you’ve heard, ‘You used to be so cute before,’ Nadeko-chan, you’ll now have to work hard in order to hear, ‘Your work used to be so interesting before.’”

“You’re saying some pretty nasty things.”

“Even though you’re trying to help me, all you’re getting in return is me saying these nasty things. And similarly, people won’t see the drawings you want them to see, and they’ll curse you even when you were just trying to amuse them.”

But even so, can you still say it, Nadeko-chan?

That you’re doing this work because you like it.158

“...Yes, I can.”

That was my response.

It hadn’t been an immediate response, but as though chewing on my words—I drew a single scale.

As though I was chewing like a snake, I tied it off.

This was my deadline.159

“I can say that. By doing so, it’ll heal my wounds.”

I was pretty used to violent fluctuations.

And I’d gotten pretty used to violent turbulence, too.

“You sure aren’t cute at all, Nadeko-chan.”

Why, thank you very much.

To hear that was a delight.

“A bad kid saving another bad kid makes for a better picture, huh?”

In that case, she said.

Still sitting in that rattan chair, Uroko-chan took off her gown—like a snake shedding its skin.

“This will make it easier to draw me, right?”

Well, I did say that it’s easier to draw people in the nude… But drawing the smooth, stark naked figure of a fifteen-year-old girl was not something I could put in a picture.

Even harder to draw than her scales was Uroko-chan herself.

She’d inherited quite the good personality from her mama, hadn’t she.

“...And with that, Uroko-chan closed down her business, and began attending school from the resort. I think she’s a third-year in high school by now.”

That being said, I hadn’t attended school for even a day since then… I hadn’t gone to my middle school graduation ceremony, and I hadn’t taken any high school entrance exams… I wasn’t certain about what year she was in, but I was fairly sure that she was going to and from school by boat.

She was making a living by catching habu snakes. Probably.

It would be nice if their school had a parents’ day before her graduation.

“Hmph. How foolish. Even though high school is probably more full of curses than anything.”

“What kind of a high school life did you have, Kaiki-san…”

Had it been around that time when he received private tutoring from Gaen Tooe-san? Though I couldn’t even begin to imagine what Kaiki-san was like in his teens… I began to wonder if one day, I might get to the point where someone would say the same about me.

Someday, maybe fifteen years from now… My immature teenage years, which seemed like they were eternal or everlasting, would end up being hard to even imagine.

“Anyway, good job. You were able to deal with the curses, something that neither Gaen-senpai nor Araragi, nor even Gaen-sensei had been capable of doing… It’s not really my place to say, as someone who’d strayed far off the established routes, but Sengoku Nadeko, you are now a specialist that anyone would be proud of.”

“A snake specialist? Flattery won’t get you anywhere.”

“I suppose that’s a tremendous loss for me—but I’ll say this again. The fact that you’ve become capable of honestly and straightforwardly accepting my praise is proof of your growth. However, that’s the problem. Sengoku. That’s the problem. From what I can see, that’s what’s still a mystery to me—let’s say that Gaen-senpai’s goal was that all along. I can accept that you were able to figure out her true intentions, while I had missed the mark—however, even if I did miss the mark, wouldn’t you say the question itself is still left over?”

“Left over? What is?”

“The original question, of why Araundo Uroko even made Iriomote Island her base in the first place—even if Gaen-senpai hadn’t dispatched the three of us to figure out why, that ‘why’ still remains, right?”

Ah.

I see, I see—what he said made sense. Even though a different answer had been found, that didn’t bring an end to the question from three years ago, the question we hadn’t actually been dispatched to resolve.

I was full of blunders, wasn’t I.

“...However, Kaiki-san, I have to say that it’s because you didn’t make it to Iriomote Island that you’ve held onto that question for so long. Because you didn’t get to enjoy a two-week vacation like me.”

“Oh? So you’re capable of sarcasm, now, Sengoku?”

“It’s not really sarcasm, but painted over by nostalgia.”

Or maybe it was goat meat.160

Though I wouldn’t call it snake meat.

“But you don’t need a reason to live on Iriomote Island. Because that island is practically heaven on earth.”

Just between you and me, I even used Iriomote Island as the setting for my award-winning work—with the cunning act of using an Iriomote cat as the motif.

“So you can say such good things, too. And so, are you going to tell the stories of your nostalgia? Your tales?”

“Well, it’s my job to portray them, now.”

“I’m convinced, Sengoku. And I’m relieved. I was the one that said all those irresponsible things on that mountain to spur you on, after all—and by now, that had been my only regret.”

What was this con man even saying?

Convinced? He probably didn’t even pay taxes.161

But, if Kaiki-san hadn’t deceived me at that time, I probably wouldn’t be where I am now—I probably would never have boarded a plane for my entire life.

“Kaiki-san, if you ever feel like retiring from being a con man, just let me know. I’ll make you into one of my works.”

“I’ll pass. I’ll live as a con man, and die as a con man.”

I’ll be a con man even in death.

That’s my curse.

Saying all that again… Speaking of which, I also had a question I wanted to ask, the next time we met. It was a bit boorish of a question after all this time, but I wanted him to clarify the mysteries surrounding his death.

“Hey, Kaiki-san. Three years ago, when the plane crashed, how did you survive? What sort of deceptive technique did you use—”

I said.

And when I asked, the guide robot said,

“There are thirty minutes left until boarding, so please proceed to the security checkpoint. If you have any carry-on luggage—”

as it pushed me from behind.

As expected from AI, it really couldn’t read the mood. But, it was that time already… Being late to board a plane was as awful of an omen as a plane crashing. The plane probably wouldn’t wait for me, even if I was first class.

“Sorry, Kaiki-san. I have to go—”

When I turned away from the waiting area to face the guide robot, oh my, the sinister con man had already vanished from sight—so it ended up like this just from taking my eyes off him for a second, huh.

Criminals sure were quick to flee.

And it seemed he wasn’t going to reveal his deceptive techniques so easily—even if I wanted to press him for answers, he hadn’t left any contact information behind, so whatever. If I became a best-seller and made a huge fortune, he would probably come to see me again.

And, when that happened.

Perhaps I could let him deceive me again.

I’d been a bundle of nerves for my first security inspection and boarding in three years, but starting my new life in first class gave off such a luxurious and special feeling that I was able to relax as soon as I sat in my seat. They even provided slippers that were probably more expensive than the shoes I was wearing—at this level of pleasantness, I’d almost forgotten to set my smartphone to airplane mode.

Since it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I figured I could watch a movie through the in-flight entertainment system, so I was thinking I may as well turn my phone off entirely, but at that very moment, as if it had been perfectly timed, a message arrived.

I was saying “as if it had been perfectly timed”, but the sender of the message that came with such perfect timing was, of course, my guarantor.

“Nadekko! Congrats on getting to Tokyo (:-)

There’s a centipede extermination going on in the city, but do you want to join?

Yotsugi will be there, too ☆”

It was an invite that had completely seen through my financial situation and helplessness, so I couldn’t help but smile. Really, I was no match for that master and disciple. Like parent, like child. The child of a frog is a frog, and the child of a snake is a snake. Understood. I may as well take this opportunity to earn the money for my security deposit in advance. If there’s any change left over, then perhaps I could visit an island in the south for some reference material. The future ahead of me was long, so I had better enjoy it.

A journey of a thousand miles was still a one-way road.162

And for these legs that walk the path of snakes, I’ll continue to draw them out.