Monogatari Series - Volume 7 - Chapter 1.08

008

There was no meaningful, or even meaningless rebuttal I could mount against Oshino’s curt and brutally honest dismissal, so I left the abandoned building behind, dejected.

Of course that’s how it was.

I’d only become a vampire for two weeks, regardless of what kind of hell those two weeks felt like for me─and all I had now were some lingering physical aftereffects from that time. There wasn’t going to be anything I could do.

I truly had nothing to say in my own defense.

I was no expert, nor any kind of professional─everything from here on out was Mèmè Oshino’s exclusive domain.

I was just a friend.

What was there─that I could do?

…No, that was more rationalization.

Excuses.

I was just trying to act cool.

Shamefully enough, I was just trying to act cool.

The reality of it was much more simple─what was important was Tsubasa Hanekawa, herself, and she didn’t want the help of someone like me.

It wasn’t Oshino.

Oshino hadn’t dismissed me─Hanekawa had.

That’s what she’d done then─refused my support.

Stay out of this.

Don’t act like you know.

She’d rejected me─stubbornly and sternly.

She’d left me no room for discussion or compromise.

So, like Oshino said, if there was something I could do─it was to stay out of his way.

Whether it was in terms of ability, spirit, or principle─I should be doing nothing now.

I needed to get out of there.

Even so, while my brain understood, despite feeling that I’d convinced myself, there was something vague still prickling my heart. Although I did leave the abandoned building, I found myself unable to head homeward.

I couldn’t set myself on that route─was in no mood to return to where my little sisters would be eagerly awaiting my arrival. In fact, I turned my handlebars in the exact opposite direction.

Without a moment’s delay─I started toward the spot where I’d encountered the Afflicting Cat.

To do what?

It wasn’t like I had anything in mind.

It’s not like I thought that if I went there, I’d meet the Afflicting Cat─Hanekawa─again.

I wasn’t planning for another encounter.

This wasn’t me crying over spilt milk─I just thought I’d finish playing the half-fulfilled role I’d been assigned.

In other words, I was going to find Hanekawa’s home.

Even I realized that it was pointless to do so now, but I still had to do it for whatever reason.

Maybe I was still confused.

Maybe I’d lost my composure after everything that had happened, from Hanekawa becoming the victim of an aberration to me seeing her in her underwear with cat ears.

At the very least, I wasn’t so thoughtful that I was worrying if the door to Hanekawa’s house was locked since it was probably empty after she’d disappeared into the dark night and her parents had been taken to the hospital.

I arrived in the residential area in no time at all, and once I began searching single-mindedly, I found her house much sooner than I expected.

A nameplate that read Hanekawa.

There were two given names under it, probably her parents, and a bit removed from those─a bit removed was “Tsubasa,” making it exceedingly unlikely this was another family with the same surname.

A completely average ready-built home.

That’s how it appeared.

At least, there wasn’t anything you could call a sign─of domestic violence having been committed in this two-story home, of child neglect having taken place. But the fact that “Tsubasa” was written in phonetic characters as if they referred to a little girl oozed a faint sense of something being off.

How long had it been?

When was the last time this nameplate had been changed?

Hadn’t they remade it as their daughter grew up?

Was it too annoying to take off?

It made me think.

It made me think unnecessary thoughts.

It made me think irritating thoughts.

Even though there was no point in me thinking.

Even though there was nothing I could do.

I opened the gate door and headed toward the entrance like something was guiding me─but the front door was actually locked when I pulled the doorknob.

“……?”

I wondered.

That Afflicting Cat who called Hanekawa her master─if I may, she didn’t seem very smart.

In fact, she didn’t seem to come with a shred of intelligence.

Even a beast might be cleverer. You could say it didn’t possess the slightest fragment of wisdom.

So I was doubtful she could operate a cultural element unique to humanity like the lock─but she needn’t have exited through the front door.

If anything, it was more natural for a cat to go in and out through a window.

I backed away from the entrance and circled around looking for an open window. Every one of them, however, was shut tight─even the shutters were closed.

What’s going on, I tilted my head─when I noticed the secondfloor windows.

Right, that jumping ability of hers, so powerful it seemed like she could reach the moon.

Nothing said she had to exit from the first floor. With that in mind, I did another lap around the house, and I’d guessed right this time. I found an open window.

Hmm.

Hmmmm.

I couldn’t back down now. The ship had already sailed.

Fortunately, my physical abilities were currently somewhat enhanced─while making it to the second floor with a single feline leap might be impossible, I could at least climb up the wall.

Once I made up my mind, I didn’t hesitate─checking my surroundings, I started to climb.

I reached the window and─

“……?”

─And tilted my head.

I put my hand on the sill, brushed the curtain aside as it fluttered in the night breeze, looked inside, and tilted my head.

No.

I’d assumed the open window belonged to Hanekawa’s room─by process of elimination, the Afflicting Cat must have jumped out of it after grabbing Hanekawa’s parents by the nape. It was a reasonable conjecture. Not even recognizing that it was a conjecture, I just thought so.

But I was wrong.

If I had to describe the room, it looked like a study or something.

Was it Hanekawa’s father’s room?

I wasn’t sure.

I hadn’t even heard what kind of work her father did in the first place.

But whatever the case, it looked like it couldn’t be anything but a workspace. It couldn’t be a high-school girl’s room, at least.

“Hmm.”

Still stuck on the wall like Spiderman, I dexterously (if I do say so myself) took my shoes off and invaded Hanekawa’s home.

This was trespassing by any definition, but I already looked quite suspicious stuck to the wall. My ship had sailed─though I was just a stowaway.

But.

There was a possibility that I should have considered─the vessel I’d boarded could be a slave ship.

To put it another way: for no good reason, just going with the flow, I’d broken the law by trespassing─and what awaited me was divine punishment of the highest order.

Or of the lowest kind.

I, Koyomi Araragi, entered the Hanekawas’─the empty Hanekawa residence, and with my shoes in one hand, did a quick lap through the house─then a second lap, a third lap, a fourth lap─

“───nkk!”

I took off running.

I could have exited out of the front door, but even that thought didn’t occur to me. I dashed to the open window in the study-like room and, as if I could rewind time by doing what I’d just done in reverse, dove out of it.

I fell, of course.

Directly onto the asphalt, with no attempt to break my fall─I worried that my left arm might pop off again after all that work to reattach it, but I didn’t care about the pain in spite of my hard landing.

Fear had all but entirely consumed my mind. I ran without a moment’s delay on all fours to my mountain bike and left the scene so fast I wondered if I was going to wear out its chain.

I left Hanekawa’s house.

Like there was something revolting.

Like there was something evil about it─no.

I was just disgusted─I nearly wanted to vomit.

I couldn’t but regret my needless visit.

I don’t know what path I took, nor how many roundabout detours, but I was home before I knew it─and coming home hadn’t even been my plan.

All I wanted to do.

Was run away.

I’d come home─as if by instinct.

“Oh. Koyomi. Wel─”

Whatever she’d been up to, Tsukihi was standing right there when I opened the door─given her bare outfit, nothing but a thin T-shirt over her underwear, she must have gotten out of the bath or something─and while she noticed me, I walked into the hallway with my shoes still on before she could say ‘─come home’ and hugged her tight.

Tight, tight, tight.

“Whoa! Where’d this passionate hug come from? What’s your problem, you creep of a brother?!”

“……nkk.”

Tsukihi was visibly appalled and shocked by her brother’s eccentric behavior, but I couldn’t help myself.

And I wasn’t doing it because it was Tsukihi.

It could have been Karen, it could have been anyone─I think I just needed to hug the first person I saw.

I had to─cling onto someone.

I had to─embrace someone.

I felt like I was going to crumble if I didn’t.

My mind falling to pieces.

I was the proverbial drowning man grasping at straws.

Indeed, Tsukihi must have felt firsthand the helpless way my body trembled and shook.

I was afraid.

Call me chicken, call me whatever you want.

What was wrong with being afraid in the face of terror?

What was wrong─with shaking and freezing?

Such─was the intense impact of that home.

A single house.

In terms of size, it might have been bigger than the one I lived in.

There’d been six rooms.

And yet─that house.

The Hanekawa residence had no room for Tsubasa Hanekawa─

“Urrrrrrrrr.”

Scary. Scary. Scary.

I couldn’t even begin to compare spring break to this─my hellish memories were going to be rewritten as something pastoral, those two weeks painted over as nothing worth mentioning─that’s how scared I was.

There was no room for her.

And─there was no trace of her.

While she may have been passed around as a baby, she’d lived in that house for almost fifteen years─but I couldn’t find any signs of her no matter how much I prowled through it.

Every house has its own smell.

The longer it’s lived in, the stronger─but there was no scent of Hanekawa there─Tsubasa Hanekawa was so severed from the place that I had to wonder if it was the right house.

No.

Of course─given the school uniform hanging on the dining-room wall, the textbooks and study guides lining one library-like room, the underwear in the bathroom drawers, the futon folded in the hallway, the cell-phone charger plugged into the outlet by the stairs, the school bag placed to the side of the entrance─Hanekawa had to be living in that house.

No, really.

But─it almost seemed like she was living out of a hotel.

Not even a freeloader.

I hadn’t taken things seriously enough─even so I’d been optimistic.

She’d shown me her face after her father’s beating, and yet some part of me still believed: Hanekawa’s okay, this is Hanekawa we’re talking about, she’ll be okay, of course Hanekawa’s okay, how could she not be okay?

Even after she’d been possessed by the Afflicting Cat.

She was okay? How stupid could I be?

“Urrrrrrrr.”

It was too late now.

It was too late for Hanekawa.

That?

You couldn’t come back from that─it was irreparable.

To describe it in a word, it was insane.

It was crazed, it was mad.

If I left the matter in Oshino’s hands, Hanekawa would end up in his care soon enough, and the Afflicting Cat would be exorcised by that jerk in a Hawaiian shirt without incident─but there was no happy ending waiting for us where she reconciled with her distant parents and put all those years of discord behind them.

How could it ever end?

How could it become even more finished than that?

That house.

That family.

That home.

It was so over for them─that things couldn’t be any more over.

“Urrrrrrr─aaaagh!”

“…Oh, Koyomi. I don’t know what to do with you sometimes. Was it so scary? You’re okay now.”

My shaking only got worse as I let out what was nearly a shriek, but Tsukihi, my little sister by four years, caressed my head to calm me down, a gentle smile on her face that showed she really meant what she said.

Then closing her eyes and softly puckering her lips, she offered, “Go ahead. I don’t mind.”

“GROSS!”

I shoved away my little sister.

Violently.

“Yeek! Is this how you repay your little sister’s devotion to you?!”

“That was educational guidance! Can’t you two ever live outside of the moment?!”

“What do you expect? I have you for a big brother!”

“Guh!”

That was hard to argue with. No one was more focused on the moment and the moment alone than me.

I did feel like I used my brain a little more than her, though─she didn’t just live like she was guided entirely by spinal reflexes, she was like a spineless single-celled organism. That wasn’t me.

I didn’t think it was, at least.

In any case, my sister’s creepy act of devotion made my body stop shaking for the time being.

That’s what family is for─I guess you could say?

Family.

Family, huh?

The word naturally brought to mind Hanekawa’s father and mother, who must have been in a hospital at that moment. It made me feel somehow melancholic. There was really no reason at all for me to sympathize with them, but I still thought─

What does it mean to live in that house for almost fifteen years?

It can’t have been a happy home for them to be in, either…

“But you know, you made me worry,” Tsukihi said. She must have meant to wear the yukata under her arm once she’d gotten to the second floor, but instead, she’d thrown it on right there. “We waited and waited, but you wouldn’t come home.”

“Hm?”

I finally shut the wide-open door. I took off my shoes, too.

“Okay, I admit I shouldn’t have spent the night out without telling anyone, but why worry about me at this late date?”

“True─considering that journey of self-discovery you went on during spring break.”

“……”

Right. As far as the Araragi household knew, that’s what happened over spring break.

That wasn’t getting corrected.

My little sisters still referred to me as “the self-discoverer” every once in a while, but I just had to take it in stride.

“Still, Karen and I were worried that you might’ve run into a ghost or something.”

“A ghost?” My heart skipped a beat when I heard her nail exactly what had happened─but I calmed myself and brushed off her remark. “A ghost… You gotta be kidding me. You two are in middle school and you still believe in that kind of stuff?”

“Mmm.”

I tried to sound like I was making fun of her, but Tsukihi’s reaction didn’t give me the most confidence. She looked pensive as she put a finger to her petite chin.

“Not a ghost, exactly, but a Changing Cat,” she said. “A Bakeneko.”

“A Changing─Cat?” I repeated her words.

All I could do was repeat after her like an idiot.

A Changing Cat?

“Yup,” she confirmed.

She didn’t look like she was joking─in fact, she looked downright serious.

She looked righteous.

It was the face of the brains of the Fire Sisters, who purported to be justice itself.

“It’s only a rumor for now, so I can’t say anything for sure─but we’re hearing there’s a cat ghost in human form that’s going around town attacking people.”

“……nkk.”

A cat ghost in human form.

How could so vague a phrase also be precise and even technical?

It was so ambiguous.

And it was so accurate.

“What do you mean─attacking people?”

“Yeah. So we don’t know for sure─but it sounds like if it touches you, you get really tired or weak all of a sudden─and actually faint.”

It felt like a fuzzy, roundabout explanation─but to someone who already knew the answer, it was obvious.

Energy drain.

“So─when did this start?” I asked.

“Hm?”

“You know─when did people first start getting attacked by this Changing Cat?”

“No clue. We haven’t heard any details yet─we’re still investigating the case, but I first heard about the rumors this afternoon. That’s why we started worrying about you, and that’s why I started calling you like crazy.”

“……”

My little sister had some good intuition.

Of course, she was also off the mark and far too late─already attacked by the Changing Cat by then, I’d been passed out as passed out could be.

But─oh.

So that’s what happened.

After the Afflicting Cat had given me Hanekawa’s parents last night─she started attacking people in town.

Hanekawa’s parents and I─weren’t its only victims.

Now it made sense.

Oshino had seemed oddly proactive─as a balancer and a neutral party, he wouldn’t have been so assertive about this job if Hanekawa were the only victim.

It was because there were others, too.

No.

It was because Hanekawa, possessed by the Afflicting Cat, had become a perp─that the specialist made his move.

But I didn’t understand.

Why would the Afflicting Cat─attack people?

Something strange was afoot given that a nocturnal aberration was prowling in the middle of the day─but didn’t Oshino say the Afflicting Cat didn’t actively harm humans?

…No.

The Afflicting Cat might not think of its behavior as attacking─in most cases, aberrations didn’t care one way or another about humans.

Vampires, who saw humans as sources of nutrition, as tanks full of blood, were actually on the better side of things as far as that went. Most aberrations didn’t see any value in human existence.

Just as it didn’t matter for humans whether aberrations were there or not─in almost every case.

So if the Afflicting Cat was unwittingly draining people’s energy and not biting them or tearing off their limbs as it had done to me─calling that “attacking” was nothing more than a self-centered human interpretation.

In addition, perhaps some misguided scamp or whoever else on the street had seen a girl with cat ears in her underwear and gotten in her way when they shouldn’t have.

The victims may have just been targets of a counterattack.

I, for one, wouldn’t leave such a catchy character alone─but I digress.

Actually.

This was becoming a full-fledged incident, wasn’t it?

Tsukihi continued, “I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw you weren’t harmed, but the Fire Sisters, the avatars of justice, can’t allow this to go unanswered! Karen’s getting ready to go hunt this Changing Cat, too!”

“…No.”

What could I say?

Was ghostbusting in the Fire Sisters’ job description? Is that what defenders of justice did?

What kind of underworld detectives were they?

Most of the time, I let the Fire Sisters off with a mild rebuke─but this was getting a little dangerous.

This wasn’t some kind of middle school summer camp dare.

If they only ended up getting their energy drained, that was one thing, but if they were openly hostile to the Afflicting Cat─who knows, they could even get their arms torn off like me.

And that would mean instant death for Tsukihi or Karen, who weren’t immortal like me.

Karen packed a decent punch, but we wouldn’t be having this trouble if karate could defeat an aberration.

What was she, Nyanko-sensei? Or was that judo?

Then again, my sisters weren’t the type to let anyone stop them─they were so reckless that the harder you tried to, the faster they’d charge in.

It only took a spark to set them ablaze.

The Fire Sisters.

“Hm? What’s the matter, Koyomi? What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“I was thinking oh no, I don’t know what to do.”

Tsukihi was looking at me dubiously, so I took a deep sigh in my mind and began my unwilling, reluctant speech. My tone was as flat as could be.

“You saw how scared I was just biking back home at night. But now that you told me that scary ghost story about the Changing Cat, I’m completely shaken. How’s a chicken like me supposed to go to bed on his own now? I was hoping you and Karen could sleep by my side for a while tonight, but I guess I’ll just have to give up if you need to go out there and fight for justice. You two were my only hope, though.”

“What? We’re your only hope?”

She bit.

My stupid little sister bit.

“I guess we don’t have a choice, then! Oh, my poor little scaredy-cat of a big brother! I’ll go talk to Karen, and we can let the police take care of the Changing Cat!”

“…Thank you.”

My littlest sister was powerless against her brother relying on her.

Well.

As you can see.

If there was anything I could do for Hanekawa, it was to stay out of Oshino’s way and to sleep in the same bed as my little sisters.