Monogatari Series - Volume 7 - Chapter 1.09

009

I can’t deny that I still had my concerns, though. The Afflicting Cat’s energy drain didn’t seem like a lethal skill, but it wasn’t hard to imagine the ability putting someone’s life at risk if she overdid it─and there was also that sheer power, capable of ripping off a human arm with a simple bite.

Her speed and jumping prowess were far beyond anything known to man, too.

In other words─there could be casualties if the situation wasn’t resolved soon.

We’d have victims, and we’d have fatalities.

Someone could die.

There was a chance that Hanekawa might kill.

I’d managed to keep my little sisters in check by nobly offering up my body but couldn’t stop the police or citizens who might decide to “help out”─what high schooler had that kind of power? The risk would only grow as more people tried to exorcize or hunt or even just catch a glimpse of the Changing Cat.

I’m not saying just feeling weak or passing out was okay.

But death─that we couldn’t have.

Because if you took away the supernatural phenomenon, the aberration─

Tsubasa Hanekawa would end up a murderer.

A regular─murderer.

…No, thank you.

How could such a thing come to pass?

What kind of bad joke was that?

Tsukihi may have been more tuned-in to rumors than the average person due to her being the brains of her operation, but a single day was all it took for her to learn of the existence of the Afflicting Cat─it was hard to imagine these being covert attacks.

Actually, the aberration probably wasn’t thinking at all.

Given how she was walking around in her underwear─I doubted she had in mind Hanekawa’s everyday life after this.

After this.

After this?

Hold on, after what?

After what action? After what situation?

The Afflicting Cat may have been draining energy from everything in sight─but I didn’t know her goal.

Maybe I’d have had a better idea if I’d asked Oshino in detail about the kind of aberration an Afflicting Cat was─but no, there was no need for me to know, was there.

I couldn’t annoy Oshino over something like that.

I shouldn’t get in his way.

It would be okay. As frivolous, flippant, and superficial as he was─he was also a pro.

He’d solve this in no time.

No time at all─before Hanekawa accidentally killed someone.

If I wanted to know the details, I could just ask after everything was over.

Either Oshino─or Hanekawa.

I could just ask.

But could I, really?

Did I have any right to know?

And wait, did I even want to know?

The same person who trespassed into Hanekawa’s house and learned about what was really happening there─and who lost all self-control?

Would I be able to step inside Hanekawa’s mind, inside her heart─barge into her private life and leave muddy tracks behind─and continue to be her friend?

I didn’t know.

Maybe there really were things in the world that you’re better off not knowing.

I’m not sure if the comparison is an apt one for my situation, but I think a lot of people have admired some great person─some revered historical figure you love so much that you start digging through biographies to learn more─only to be confronted with equally great scandals and disgraces and feeling betrayed in some way. But isn’t it pretty selfish to feel let down after all that?

You selfishly decided to love them and selfishly decided to hate them.

You selfishly put store in them and were selfishly disappointed by them.

You selfishly felt enchanted and selfishly felt disillusioned.

If that’s the case.

Maybe you didn’t need to know─from the start.

Earlier.

Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten so involved in Hanekawa’s business─after all.

I could have brushed off the gauze on her face─but still.

That was like cherry-picking the good parts.

I’d only wanted to love her, put store in her, and be enchanted by her, nothing more.

She’d done so much to save me over spring break─and yet I didn’t know what to think. All I could do was agonize.

My mind was just going in circles. If there was anything I knew for sure, it was that I had spent a month-plus with Tsubasa Hanekawa since spring break without learning the first thing about her.

And I’d talked about being in love with her? Ridiculous.

I could only laugh.

I could only be laughed at.

My conversation with Tsukihi felt all the more embarrassing now.

What I’d said wasn’t off the mark, it was out of the question.

But even then─whenever I thought about Hanekawa, I felt like my heart might burst.

All these thoughts ran through my head as I lay next to my sisters like a kid, like a doll.

I really must have been tired. I’d slept all afternoon, but it took no time at all for me to fall asleep that same night.

And so April thirtieth came to an end and May first began─though it was Golden Week, May Day wasn’t a holiday at my private high school.

May first and second were weekdays.

Monday and Tuesday.

I had to go to school.

It seemed to take less time and effort than usual for Karen and Tsukihi to quickly rouse me since they were sleeping in my bed too─and I got on the granny bike I took to school and headed off.

When I arrived at my classroom just before the start of school, Hanekawa really wasn’t there, as obvious as it was.

She was absent.

The perfect attendance record held by Tsubasa Hanekawa, the model student with zero tardies, absences, or early dismissals, had come to an unceremonious end.

Even if that weren’t the case, when a student as high-profile as her was absent without notice (Who was going to give notice when her parents were unconscious and hospitalized?), it wasn’t like when a washout like me decided to play hooky on a whim. Our teacher looked concerned and asked during homeroom if anyone knew what might have happened to her. Of course, no one offered any information. All the question did was stir up chatter.

Naturally, I didn’t say anything, either─some of my classmates may have been curious enough, which is to say sharp-eyed or keen-eared enough, to have known the rumors about the Changing Cat, but tying them directly to Hanekawa was a tall order.

If you saw that Afflicting Cat.

You wouldn’t think it was Hanekawa─unless you were me.

No, maybe even I wouldn’t, at that point.

Because I was practically wishing that my eyes had played a trick on me, or that something else had.

By the way, there was something striking about this girl in the corner of our now-noisy classroom called Senjogahara who just sat there and listened to our homeroom teacher’s appeals with an oddly bored look on her face.

Perhaps there was a better word than “bored”─it was an expressionless look that seemed to say, “Yep, I knew it. That’s the kind of girl she is,” as if Senjogahara were seeing through the disguise of another of her ilk─but anyway.

Hanekawa didn’t come to school on May first or second.

Around the time classes on the second were about to end, the rumors of the Changing Cat had started to spread through school─including stories from a number of eyewitnesses─making it clear just how busy the Afflicting Cat had been.

It had only taken three days.

Unfortunately for our peaceful, uneventful town in the middle of nowhere, this Changing Cat scare was now more than a rumor spreading among schoolgirls, unlike the vampire brouhaha over spring break─looking at how things were going, there really was the risk of a Changing Cat hunt starting up.

I couldn’t hold even the Fire Sisters back forever─and if those two made a move, it was as good as every middle schooler in town making a move. I wanted to keep them under control for as long as I could, but I only had so much authority over them. Well, I say authority, but there was also the issue of how much more I could take emotionally in the humiliating position of being treated like a little boy by my little sisters.

In any case.

I decided to visit the abandoned building Oshino lived in one more time before the next day, May third, when our long break would resume─it’s not like I felt some stubborn need to help or had some kind of question to ask, though.

I didn’t even want a status update.

It was something else entirely─I was going to feed the girl vampire, as always.

Last time I’d done this was April twenty-ninth. I could have waited longer, but I needed to keep an even closer eye on my little sisters starting the next day when the long weekend began; my plan was to keep the girl vampire nourished ahead of schedule. I also had the amateurish thought that she might be hungry after “charging” me back up the other day.

I chose to go in the evening, somewhere in between day and night, again in order to stay out of Oshino’s way as he worked─my aim was to show up at a time when he’d be out looking for the Afflicting Cat.

Not quite the witching hour.

But they speak of twilight in the same way.

However, during Golden Week my intuition continued to be awful.

My intuition sucked, and so did my luck.

I tried looking for the girl in the same fourth-floor classroom she’d been in the other day─but she wasn’t there.

And Mèmè Oshino was.

And he wasn’t just there.

He was there looking like a tattered, worn-out dishrag.

“O-Oshino!”

“Hm? Why, if it isn’t you, Araragi─you kept me waiting long enough.”

While I ran in a panic to Oshino’s side, he was cool and collected, treating me the same as ever. As though he’d only been lying down to stretch out as part of a calisthenics routine, he scratched his head and slowly, lazily began to rise from the floor.

And indeed, it was only his clothes, including his Hawaiian shirt, that were in tatters when I took a closer look. The same wasn’t true for his body. All I could see were a few scratches.

That didn’t mean I’d jumped to the wrong conclusion, though.

Mèmè Oshino.

Was clearly─and completely exhausted.

It was my first time seeing him so weakened since I’d met him during spring break, at least.

“I thought you might be coming soon─and I’d wanted to recover by then. But I’d used those precious miracle bandages on you the other day…”

“Oshino… What happened?” I asked, still confused after running to his side.

“What happened? Nothing special─I just lost, that’s all,” he replied in his usual aloof manner.

It didn’t sound like he was bluffing or trying to act tough.

He was acting like he was just stating the facts.

“Y-You lost? To what?”

“What else? The Afflicting Cat.”

Nearly three days had passed since the night of the thirtieth.

And in that period of time, they’d fought a full twenty times─and he’d lost a full twenty times.

So said Oshino, grinning.

Uh.

It wasn’t anything to say grinning.

If he was trying to act tough, it wasn’t working.

If anything, it was feeble.

“But that means─you lost every time.”

“Every time. What a miserable record. Ha haa.”

Oshino wobbled to his feet.

His legs were shaky as could be, and he looked ready to keel over.

“What’s a guy like me supposed to do faced with a high school girl in her underwear? I was so distracted that you could barely say we fought.”

“……”

I knew the line was self-deprecating and another sterling example of Oshino’s frivolity─but I still couldn’t believe it. In fact, it seemed more credible that he really was too charmed by a high school girl’s underwear to fight.

I mean─Oshino, lose?

Oshino, who practically ate an iron-blooded, hot-blooded, cold-blooded vampire for breakfast? And twenty losses in a row─that was like a bad joke.

Like a bad dream.

Could he have gone easy on Hanekawa because he knew her─or been hesitant?

……

Neither sounded very Oshino.

He wasn’t that soft of a man.

If anything, he struck me as the type to be all the more merciless to someone he knew. Speaking from personal experience.

“Sheesh,” he griped, “she really sucked a lot out of me our twentieth time just now. It’s a real pain when a regular scratch can turn fatal─I can’t believe she’d wring out a withered, tired middle-aged guy like me.”

“Th-That’s the kind of aberration the Afflicting Cat is?” I timidly asked Oshino, my body trembling. “Tough enough to overpower even a specialist like─”

“No, it’s not,” he replied at once with a shake of his head as if my comments were way off the mark. “Like I mentioned the other day. It doesn’t even approach the level of the vampire who attacked you─really, it’s such a low-level aberration that just comparing the two seems disrespectful.”

“Huh?”

Low-level?

What did he mean…low-level?

For a moment, I wondered if Oshino was saying that to ease my anxiety─but he wasn’t the kind of man who tried to console you.

And yet.

A low-level aberration?

Really?

“Hold on─you did say there was a clear difference between vampires and Afflicting Cats, but you never said anything about them being low-level aberrations.”

“I simply chose not to. I didn’t explain that part because I thought you might offer to help if I did─as an expert, I consider Afflicting Cats a class of aberrations I could exorcise in my sleep. Actually¸ they’re down there with aberrations that even amateurs could take care of if they really put their heads together. No need for a specialist.”

“What? But─”

That wasn’t what he’d said.

It wasn’t anything like what he’d said earlier.

In that case, I began before Oshino stopped me with an Of course.

“That isn’t to say I went easy on her. I honestly tried─while it did get canceled out, I feel like I owe missy class president on account of spring break. I didn’t have any weird reservations about fighting her.”

But I lost, Oshino said.

It almost seemed like he wasn’t frustrated at all.

There was no air of failure about him.

But.

He must have felt frustrated─and probably thought he’d failed.

It wasn’t like we were close, we’d only known each other for a short time─but that much came across.

Mèmè Oshino.

A man who had pride─in his work.

“Afflicting Cats are small fry.”

Once again.

Oshino spoke as if to reaffirm his words.

“The Afflicting Cat is an aberration that was originally thought up to serve as the Manekineko’s antithesis─it’s almost a fun piece of folklore created by a play on words. As opposed to the Lucky Cat, which invites luck, you have the Afflicting Cat, which invites affliction─it plays dead on the road and haunts humans who take pity on it. The type of ghost that switches places with its victim. An aberration that hijacks your body. And then, like the god of poverty, it drags the owner of that body, its host, to the depths of misfortune. That’s the kind of ghost it is─you could even say it follows a template.”

“……”

An aberration that took advantage of a person’s conscience and compassion.

True, that was a common theme in ghost stories, a trite one─and also.

It was a phenomenon I’d experienced myself.

So it didn’t seem particularly new.

But.

“Yup─we’re talking about missy class prez.”

I thought I’d taken that into account, Oshino said.

“The impossibly unusual twist here is that it’s missy class president who was possessed this time around. Afflicting Cats are supposed to be small fry, but this one is just about the strongest of all aberrations─she might have even pulled it up beyond the level of a vampire, if we’re unlucky.”

“……”

“The problem isn’t that they share the same body, it’s that they share the same knowledge. The old, traditional aberration measures I use, my methods, my moves, they all bounce right off her and back at me. She somehow has the expertise that only an expert should have. That girl─knows everything.”

“……”

“Who’s ever heard of an aberration that attacks people using strategies and tactics?” lamented Oshino, like he was at wit’s end. “I knew it going in, but she really is something special. Everything, even her M.O. in assaulting people─it’s not something the aberration would do.”

“Hold on a second. What do you mean, her M.O. in assaulting people? You’re making it sound like Hanekawa’s going out of her way to attack them.”

“Well─I guess she is. The Afflicting Cat isn’t supposed to be that kind of aberration─but, Araragi. It might not actually be such a bad thing that I’m struggling this much.”

“Huh?”

“Well, to put it another way, this turn of events is proof that missy class prez is still in the Afflicting Cat. That’s what I think. At the very least, this wouldn’t be happening if she weren’t there anymore because the Afflicting Cat already took over her entire mind and body. There’s probably quite a lot of her consciousness left inside─which is why this cat is so tough. That info is the worst possible thing we could hear, but it should also give us hope.”

“Why? What kind of hope is there in that?” I’d never even considered having to fight Hanekawa. What an unimaginable threat─where was the hope in that?

“Well, we’re done for if she gets completely taken over. We’d just have to kill her then.”

Just like that.

We’d just have to kill her─he said.

“We’re going to need to salvage missy class prez’s consciousness while it’s still there─if we don’t defeat the Changing Cat, then Tsubasa Hanekawa, your dear friend, is going to be lost to this world forever.”