Monogatari Series - Volume 6 - Chapter 7.10

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“Shide no tori.”

Afterwards, that was how Shinobu Oshino began her explanation as usual. “To wit─a lesser-cuckoo aberration.”

The lesser cuckoo.

Family Cuculiformes, Order Cuculidae.

A summer bird, eleven inches in overall length, with a wingspan of six inches and five-inch tail feathers─its back is fawn-colored while its stomach is grayish with white mottling.

“Young leaves in my eyes, lesser cuckoos in the mountain, first bonito of the season─that lesser cuckoo. Those two spoke of it as a phoenix, but this bird of death is ill so grand as that word would suggest. In Japan, most people think of peacocks when they picture a phoenix, according to that shallow brat.”

Known primarily as the hototogisu, there were many ways to write the lesser cuckoo’s name in Japanese characters─and nowadays few remembered its association with phoenixes. Once upon a time, however, it was believed to be a migratory bird that could pass to and from the afterlife.

A fitting bird for the Obon season.

It went without saying, but the lesser cuckoo was one of the most familiar birds in Japanese culture. For instance, in the oldest surviving collection of Japanese poetry, the Man’yoshu, which was compiled during the Nara Period, there are over 150 poems dedicated to the cuckoo─as one of the season words utilized in classical poetry, it symbolized summer.

Unlike even the katydid and cricket, which had switched names over that time, one of the most surprising things was that the bird had already been known as the hototogisu over a thousand years ago, like some universal constant.

One of the bird’s most distinctive features is its cry─extremely distinct and immediately recognizable upon hearing, it is often written as teppen kaketaka.

O lesser cuckoo─do you feed on lizards too with that cry of yours?

“And ’tis not only the diversity of characters used to inscribe the bird’s name. It also sports an unparalleled number of aliases─outfacing any other species of bird. The brat jabbered a few. These are only the ones I remember, but there was the evening bird, the nightwatch bird, the bird of murk…the shoeclaw bird, the five-dew bird, the kokila, and of course─the shide no taosa.”

Shide no taosa. Like shide no tori─a bird that could travel to the land of death.

“I suppose that name might be the source of the legend─shide as in death, to depart to the afterworld. Shide no taosa becomes shide no tori, the lesser cuckoo. ’Tis aught but secondhand knowledge, of course,” Shinobu said.

Indeed, as a former vampire, aberrations were no more than feed and fodder, a meal or chow to her─and she was hardly enough of a gourmand to the finer points of her meals.

She was a glutton, not an epicurean.

Therefore─all of this knowledge must have come courtesy of the shallow brat, Mèmè Oshino.

It was just one portion of the great wealth of knowledge that Oshino had crammed into Shinobu’s head─during the three months they lived together in that abandoned building. Why Oshino would plant such knowledge into Shinobu’s mind (utterly useless from her point of view) was anyone’s guess.

“This aberration has no distinctive features that particularly stand out─it is twice-sod simplicity. With so little to spark interest, it is an aberration that few labor to study. Of course, since it falls under their field of specialty, I think it only natural that those two would be aware of the creature.”

From the ashes. A sacred bird, a bird of omen. The phoenix.

“Verily, the shide no tori’s identity can be compassed in one single point─it does not die. That is the import of its existence. It galls me to say this, but supposedly its immortality surpasses even that of vampires.”

Immortality─that surpasses even that of a vampire’s. Imperishability. Like the incarnated spirit of life.

“For every three generations of deer one generation of pine, and for every three generations of pine, one generation of bird. That is how long-lived birds were once imagined to be. Cranes were previously fabled to live a thousand years, and tortoises ten thousand, but anything that could live a thousand years must surely be considered a monster. Even I have lived but a half that span.”

Indeed.

Not only the lesser cuckoo, but birds of the air throughout the world were often compared to life itself─the idea that storks came delivering babies was a perfect example.

Perhaps the reason for this was that the manner in which birds built nests, warmed their eggs, and cared for their offspring with devotion caused humans to see birds as a metaphor for ourselves─as an extremely straightforward instance onto which we could project our own notions of childrearing.

Indeed, birds may have felt even closer to humans in this regard than other mammals.

However─if that hypothesis was correct, then the lesser cuckoo was an exception.

One of the most commonly mentioned characteristics of the lesser cuckoo was that it planted its eggs in other birds’ nests.

It was a brood parasite.

In addition to the lesser cuckoo, this was a well-known practice shared by the common cuckoo and the Hodgson’s hawk-cuckoo. They waited until a bird from another species left its nest and then knocked some of the eggs to the ground to lay their own─tricking the other species into warming and hatching them.

Nor do hatched cuckoo wait haplessly to be reared, instead using their backs to shove out eggs that were already in the nest, as well as chicks that hatch before them─that way it claims for itself all the nourishment that the parent bird brings.

“Among the eggs / Of nightingale / A lonely cuckoo / Is born / You cry not like / Your father / You cry not like / Your mother / From the fields where / The hare blossoms bloom / Come vaulting / Your echoing cry / Where you sit / In the flowering tachibana / It would cheer me / To listen still / Do not go far / I will give you a present / Stay here in the / Tachibana flowers / Of my home, sweet bird.

“That is a long poem from that Man’yoshu or whatever I mentioned earlier. I find it a wonder that in the days of antiquity, long before I or indeed any vampires were birthed into this world, a creature with such traits would exist. Of course, a concept such as childrearing is beyond my ken.”

Vampires multiplied not through procreation but rather through the drinking of blood. Obviously, as a vampire, Shinobu would have no reason to project onto the childrearing of birds. But, I ought to add, why the lesser and common cuckoos lay their eggs in another bird’s nest is still something of a mystery. That aspect of ecology exceeds not just vampiric but human understanding. Or perhaps, it isn’t that it’s poorly understood─it just seems incomprehensible.

If it was just a matter of outsourcing childrearing to other species of birds, then that made a world of sense since they could propagate with minimal effort. It sounded very efficient─but it was easy enough for them to be found out (naturally, if the parent bird found out, the cuckoo chick would not be reared), and even if the whole affair went perfectly, the end result was still that the original family in that nest would be uprooted and exterminated, reducing the number of families that could be targeted for outsourcing in the future─and since cuckoos were dependent on other species for their rearing, their own numbers would be forced to dwindle as well.

In that light, it was just like Shinobu said. It was amazing they had survived into modern times while relying on such an inefficient method.

“The aberration, as well─the behavior of the shide no tori takes after the real lesser cuckoo. To wit, it is a brood parasite─it lays its eggs in human nests.”

A brood parasite─that targets humans. That targets mothers.

“As a phoenix, a bird of the ashes, it transmigrates into the womb of a mother who has conceived─of course, the widely known phoenix of legend throws its body into a blazing fire once it grows old, only to be reborn from the flames as a tender hatchling once more.”

A blaze. A flame. Fire─a bird of fire.

Come to think of it, the lesser cuckoo was also said to traffic with the moon…

Turn your eyes / In the direction / Of the lesser cuckoo’s cries / And all you will see / Is the new dawn moon.

That was a famous poem even included in the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu.

In other words, Tsukihi─her name was written with the characters for “moon” and “fire.”

A cheap pun. It wasn’t very funny.

“In this case, the shide no tori’s case, the fire is, to wit, the mother’s womb. And so, strictly speaking, it is not thy sister that the bird possessed, but rather thy dam. Thy mother. Fifteen years prior, an aberration took up lodgings within her…”

And then one year later it was born.

Reborn─as Tsukihi Araragi.

The shide no tori.

“Like the bee aberration, this one has no even form of its own─but a major difference is that the shide no tori can mimic humans. Nay, perhaps we should say─it can only do so.”

Mimicry and camouflage─faking.

An aberration─that faked humanity.

Not the real thing, only an aberration.

“Broadly speaking, it is a harmless variety of aberration. It carries out no mischief on human beings─it is simply a fake. Verily─it is only immortal. It lives its allotted span, omitting any injury and healing any sickness. And when it expires─it reincarnates once more. Thus has it survived into the modern day─much like the lesser cuckoo.”

A Rolls Royce doesn’t break down.

I remembered the urban legend that Hachikuji told me. At the time I thought it was just small talk and safe to ignore.

A Rolls Royce doesn’t break down, and the shide no tori doesn’t die out.

It doesn’t die out, it doesn’t get injured, and it doesn’t fall sick. It was an aberration of the sacred realm, a phoenix. It simply continued to be reborn.

After a hundred years─two hundred years. Even a thousand years.

It survived─to arrive here? In my mother’s womb?

Karen was born in June and Tsukihi in April, making the math between their birthdays haphazardly close─but once you presupposed the existence of that aberration, even that unnaturalness seemed natural.

There’s a common riddle: “There are two girls. They are the same age and in the same class at the same school. They live in the same house and have the same mother and father. But if you ask them if they’re twins, they answer no. If the two girls aren’t lying, then what is their relationship?”

Saying that they are “triplets” wasn’t the only possible answer. If the older girl was born in April and the younger girl was born in March, they could be sisters. Logically speaking, there are in fact sisters born in consecutive years who’re the same age for a period of time, like Karen and Tsukihi.

They were often mistaken for twins─and cases like theirs were indeed rare.

Like nonexistent aberrations.

A rare case─unnatural, yet natural.

“To wit, the aberration is deathless, but it is nary ageless─though now that ye know all of this, are there not many points that make better sense? Has it not occurred to thee that there has always been something off about thy kinswoman?”

When she put it that way─yes. I didn’t know about always, but─hadn’t I noticed something just today?

The scars on her body─had vanished.

Her injuries─had mended.

From the scar on her body that the doctor said would last her lifetime, to the more recent nicks and bruises─they had all disappeared, without a trace.

Even if wounds did heal─they shouldn’t have been cured.

It wasn’t possible. Or if it was─something wasn’t normal.

“The immortality does not seem to be hard-fast and continuous, as thou and I once were─that would not pass as human. The brat did not delve so far, but I have my own travails in immortality so I would know. From what I could note, the shide no tori’s immortal properties increase exponentially in response to stimuli. As thou saw even now, in response to a life-threatening injury such as having her trunk razed and blasted from her body, she regenerated in mere moments much like a vampire─for a minor gall that does not threaten her life, the immortality seems to execute by degrees. A prudence that allows it to live in the human world─an example, if ye will, of an aberration adapting to its environment.”

Aberrations were easily influenced by their surroundings. I guess this was just another case in point.

In order to avoid detection, as a fake rather than a human, it concealed excessive immortal traits that would impede its ability to live as a human being─barring emergencies.

I had to admit─it made sense. Whether I liked it or not.

Truck canopy or not, jumping off the roof of a school would usually kill a person─rightfully speaking, it should have been unthinkable to carry out an acrobatic stunt like that and not pay the price for it. Getting off with just “battles scars” seemed a little ridiculous.

It wasn’t some kung-fu movie─yet, on top of that, she’d been cured of her wounds.

Plus, the Fire Sisters business.

Playing at defenders of justice─it was one thing for Karen with her crazy martial arts skills, but it was pretty bizarre that Tsukihi managed to stay able-bodied while engaging in such perilous behavior.

Kidnappings, ambushes…

I doubt she could have been so lucky. While she may have been the strategist, it was actually Tsukihi, and not Karen, who had the more aggressive personality.

And─once I started, there was no end to all the strangeness, but there was also something more commonplace to consider.

Her hair.

Her hair grew much too fast.

Even though she didn’t wear wigs, she was able to change her hairstyle constantly, every few months. Now that I thought about it, that explained it─just recently, her hair had been in a bob, but now it was already longer than mine, in a single-length cut with the tips reaching all the way to her shoulders. There was no way her bangs could grow all the way down to her shoulders in just a month or so, was there?

Kanbaru once said that her hair grew so fast because of all her sexy hormones─but this was on a different level and no joke when I thought back to it.

Ha… No laughing matter.

The abnormal speed at which it grew qualified as regeneration.

Of course there was no danger of dying from cutting your hair, which is why the regen from cutting her hair wasn’t very dramatic─but with such an increased metabolic rate, Tsukihi’s nails probably grew pretty fast, too.

Her metabolism─was too good.

Right, just today she was taking a shower in the middle of the day, and it did seem like she cut her nails frequently─of course, this was a “now that you mention it” kind of deal. It was too trivial to bring up in its own right.

Now, a torrent of things came to mind─almost too many realizations.

In the end, however─perhaps I had simply turned a blind eye because we were family.

After all, things were only strange when you took the time to notice.

A fake can’t be told apart from the real thing─that’s how it qualifies as a fake.

Being like the real thing was the fake’s only proof of existence.

This example isn’t as modern as the urban legend of the Rolls Royce, so I guess you could call it half-knowledge─but tales of children being abducted by spirits have been passed down for ages.

One day, a child suddenly vanishes─only to return several days later as if nothing happened. And though there is nothing different, to put your finger on, between the child that comes back and the child before it disappeared─despite nothing seeming off…

It’s a different child without anything seeming off.

Unlike Senjogahara’s rehabilitation making me wonder if she’d been replaced while I wasn’t looking, this wasn’t a matter of change or growth─but a simple substitution.

In other countries, apparently, it was sometimes said that “Pretty children are replaced by fairies.” Those stories probably have similar origins, and the shide no tori was a similar tale.

Only, the child was replaced before it was even born.

The Game of Life.

I used to play that board game back in the day with Sengoku and Tsukihi, but the bird aberration that currently went by the name Tsukihi Araragi was playing an eternal game of life, constantly proceeding to the goal and then returning to the start of the board─with neither beginning nor end, spinning forever.

An infinite loop, a transparent, colorless life.

The final nail in the coffin was how susceptible Tsukihi was to external stimuli.

Her sense of justice owed to Karen’s overbearing influence─all birds learn to cry by mimicking their mother, but the way that Tsukihi followed after Karen was almost desperate. Her own self didn’t seem to figure.

She wasn’t there─no one was there.

No human…

Not human…

“I’m repeating myself,” Shinobu said, “but the shide no tori is a harmless aberration─its only reason for existence is its immortality. It aims only to survive and to exist─living as humans, breathing as humans, eating as humans, speaking as humans and─dying as humans.”

And yet.

Despite all that─it was still an aberration, wasn’t it?

Wasn’t it fully and thoroughly an aberration?

However minutely it modeled itself after humanity, however closely it imitated us, wasn’t it unmistakably─an aberration?

Shinobu must have heard my rebuttal, but she ignored me. “’Tis no surprise that thou did not notice.”

Even I failed to see it, she added. Coming from a vampire as haughty and imperious as herself, it almost sounded like an excuse.

On second thought, however, she may have meant it as an apology.

She had no reason to apologize to me, though.

In fact, if anything, I felt guilty─for making her attempt such an apology.

As the king of aberrations, it wasn’t just fellow aberrations that Shinobu didn’t care to sort out. Humans were the same for her─no, let alone one human from another, perhaps she didn’t even distinguish between humans and aberrations.

That was what it meant to be royalty.

The title of king─it meant standing at the pinnacle.

In the end, perhaps the only human that Shinobu Oshino really recognized was me─truth be told, she lumped even Karen Araragi and Tsukihi Araragi together in her mind.

If they were standing in front of her, she might discern some differences, but once they went away and a few minutes passed, she almost entirely forgot about them.

It was impossible to be cognizant of something that didn’t interest you.

Or rather, even if she was interested─it was like a Japanese person who didn’t understand English browsing an English newspaper. Once you folded it shut again, you wouldn’t even remember how to spell words you’d just seen.

So even if she hadn’t tried to explain herself, I wouldn’t have thought that Shinobu had registered Tsukihi, realized what was up, and kept it a secret from me.

Just as Shinobu was no ally to humans, she was no ally to aberrations.

And despite all the abuse she hurtled at me, I knew that Shinobu was indeed my ally.

In fact…

If Shinobu hadn’t been with me back there, the whole situation would have gone belly up. Suddenly thrust into the deep end like that, without knowing my left from my right, I fell completely to pieces─and even if I hadn’t, folded up by Kagenui as I was, there was nothing I could have done.

By the time I lost my cool and went flying at Ononoki, I had already made a serious mistake─not that I wanted to become the kind of person who could remain calm after his little sister’s torso was blown clean from her body.

Still.

I’d meant to negotiate and talk things out…

I bet Mèmè Oshino would have snorted if he’d seen me.

Actually, he would have laughed in my face.

The one who actually carried out the negotiations afterwards─was the vampire who inherited Oshino’s wealth of aberration-related knowledge. Yes, Shinobu Oshino.

“Hold─traveler. I will brook no more violence. I imagine ye wish, also, to avoid causing further trouble here.”

Shinobu must have judged that the one more likely to come to the table was not her fellow aberration Ononoki, whom she ignored, but Kagenui, who was still standing on my back. It was to the onmyoji that the words were addressed.

“Hmm? But I don’t wish to avoid trouble. I’m not so well-behaved that I’d choose a time and a place,” Kagenui shooed. “You won’t brook it? What can you do to stop me now, vampire─former vampire? You’ve lost your powers. You’re no threat to me.”

“Perhaps.”

Perhaps? Shinobu was almost completely powerless these days. Thanks to being sealed in my shadow, she could invoke a few skills while she was there─but even that didn’t go beyond creating a DS. She could hardly take on an expert.

And to make matters worse, Kagenui was an onmyoji who specialized in immortal aberrations─Shinobu at the height of her powers might be a different story, but she was no match at the moment.

But that was the art of negotiation─what they called chutzpah.

“That may be fine for thee, but what about the little maiden?” continued Shinobu, not letting on to the truth. “As aberrations go, she does not look strong enough to withstand my energy drain. And once I drained her perfect, I would be more than hale enough to go toe to toe with thee.”

It was a bluff.

Ononoki had just obliterated the entire front door along with Tsukihi’s torso. There was no way Shinobu could cope with such monstrous power─she’d only get herself blasted to smithereens like Tsukihi. Actually, Tsukihi only had her top half blown off, but Shinobu would get every inch of her pulverized.

It would be a miracle if a single blond hair remained.

However, Shinobu’s brazen attitude, arms crossed and chin thrust out, betrayed no hint of uneasiness. She just stood there quietly, acting the part─a vampire of inscrutable measures.

She might get angry with me for putting it this way…but she hadn’t lived for five hundred years for nothing. Considering how oblivious Shinobu was to the ways of the world, though, maybe it was less those five centuries than the three months spent with Oshino that were proving useful.

Three months with a man who could negotiate aberrations and humans alike under the table on the strength of nothing but a bluff─three months with Mèmè Oshino, who never resorted to violence even under the most extreme circumstances.

“I shan’t interfere with thy business─I bespeak only a temporary withdrawal. Thou can surely agree to something so trifling. I doubt that time is such a pressing commodity for thee.”

But still, that bluff… Maybe it would fool me, and maybe it fooled Ononoki… But would it actually fool Yozuru Kagenui, an expert operating in the same field as Oshino?

I was a little worried on that score. Actually, massively worried. But in the end…

“Hmph.” Kagenui withdrew her hand from my head without protest. “Fine, then─I will withdraw a spell, as you say. While I might give two hoots for time and place, even I am not keen on eliminating the child in front of her own brother─although, haw-haw, it’s not his sister, now, is it?”

“……”

She wasn’t really my sister.

A fake─sister.

“This fiendish young man might want to put his affairs in order as well─as a show of respect to a legendary vampire, I will give you that time. I’ll let myself be taken in by that admirable bluff, so go, get your thoughts in order, rest your body, and whatnot. Hm, I reckon this was our mistake. The truth is I had planned to settle this affair before the foster parents and family found out─ah, noise.”

With that, Kagenui─jumped from my back onto Ononoki’s shoulders.

After all this, she still hadn’t stepped on the ground.

It seemed less like a childish game and more like a religious vow of some sort at this point.

But the bigger surprise was Ononoki, who didn’t so much as bat an eye even when Kagenui, who looked about twice as large, landed.

This wasn’t simply carrying someone on her shoulders.

I was reminded, once more, that this girl was indeed an aberration, the Unlimited Rulebook.

“I will come again tomorrow. Finish your preparations by then─and it’s no use running. I’m no pushover like Oshino, I’ll tell you that now─I never let my prey escape. And if you fix to get in my way, your certification as harmless be damned, I will eliminate you as well.”

Until then, promised Kagenui.

Ononoki pivoted with the onmyoji still on her shoulders and began plodding away at a brisk pace─it was as if all the destruction and regeneration had never even taken place.

“Why,” I entreated their backs, just barely croaked─I was in a turmoil of shock and pain. “Why go after…Tsukihi?”

Prey, she’d said.

But surely─there was no reason to go after my little sister.

This wasn’t like Shinobu getting marked for death by expert vampire hunters.

“You’ve got no reason…to come after Tsukihi.”

“There is. She’s an aberration, a monster,” Kagenui charged without turning around, from her perch above the ground, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “However dotingly raised, she is still a lesser cuckoo─a monstrous fake what lives by deceiving folk, mingling with a family and pretending to be human─we two fix to call that evil.”

“……”

“We defenders of justice─don’t bide by such. We don’t pardon fraud.”

With those words, Yozuru Kagenui and Yotsugi Ononoki, the aberration and the human, the two-man onmyoji cell, left our house in their wake.