Monogatari Series - Volume 8 - Chapter 1.04

004

Meet an aberration and you’ll be drawn by aberrations─they say.

Apparently.

Whether they mean drawn in, drawn together, drawn out, or even drawn and quartered, the possibilities seem closely related if you really think about it, making it all a chaotic mess─but according to Mister Oshino, people who have “encountered” an aberration, even once, are more likely to meet one again for the rest of their lives.

He said there was no rhyme or reason to it, but I think you can assign one. A realistic reason, nothing mysterious or inexplicable.

It could of course just be my tricky, bad habit of ascribing a reason to everything.

Basically, though, it’s a matter of memory and cognition.

Everyone has experienced learning a new word or phrase and suddenly running into it everywhere.

For example, when I learned about “jellied meats,” I was inundated with them whether I was reading a newspaper or novel or watching television or a film.

It’s not just words. The same phenomenon occurs with music and names, too.

If you know it, you know it.

You know it more the more you know it.

Knowledge equals cognition, memory.

It’s just what you know.

In other words, a circuit for recognizing “it” has formed in your head, and from out of the torrent of information flowing into you each day, you’re able to scoop up what you used to ignore.

Aberrations are everywhere.

Aberrations are only there.

It’s merely a question of whether or not you notice them.

That’s why the first time is so important.

Your very first is your most important one.

For Araragi, it was a demon.

For Miss Senjogahara, it was a crab.

For Mayoi, it was a snail.

For Sengoku, it was a snake.

For Miss Kanbaru, it was a monkey.

For Karen, it was a bee.

And for me─it was a cat.

Now, if you’re wondering why I’ve started to talk about this all of a sudden, it’s because there was one in front of me at that moment.

One what?

An─aberration.

“Ack…”

Normally, in encountering an aberration, people must think: Ghosts aren’t supposed to exist in this world, yokai aren’t supposed to exist in this world, what I’m looking at can’t be an aberration.

They must.

But at that moment, I was thinking nothing but the absolute opposite.

I was wishing with all my heart that “it” was an aberration in front of me.

After all─a tiger?

It was a tiger.

A tiger, prowling right in front of me.

Yellow and black stripes.

The very picture of a tiger.

It happened soon after I saw Mayoi off─I turned the corner and there was the tiger. No, even phrasing it that way imparts no sense of reality, no taste of an actual occurrence.

Since it doesn’t, it had to be unreal.

It had to be an aberration.

Actually, it was going to be an issue if it wasn’t an aberration, whatever the facts of the matter─I stood less than fifteen feet from it. I could almost reach out and touch its stripes. If the tiger were real and not an aberration, say one that had escaped from a zoo, my life was surely over.

I was so close that I couldn’t even run.

I’d be eaten.

Humbly accepted into its stomach.

I’d be passing the baton along in the race of life.

By the way, they say that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, but any excessive aberration is indistinguishable from reality, too.

Its uniquely feral scent, its even majestic presence, it was all so intense that lacking in reality, it yet seemed like realness itself; but I was okay, the dearly beloved television anchor hadn’t said a word about a tiger escaping from its zoo.

<…nn>

The tiger─growled.

It didn’t care to let loose an affected <Roar!> the way predators do in manga.

Then, coming to a halt, the tiger glared at me.

Oh no.

Our eyes had met.

Whether the tiger was real or an aberration─meeting eyes was a bad idea.

With a real tiger, of course, that was reason enough to get attacked─and if it was an aberration, it recognizing me was bad news, almost as bad, no, even worse than me recognizing it.

I instantly averted my gaze.

I put the tiger outside of my visual field.

Though this didn’t provoke the tiger into moving, again, at the same time, I couldn’t move from my spot, either─whether it was animal or aberration, my reaction to it ended up being lukewarm.

If I wanted to run, I should have run─why wasn’t I running away?

I’d be safe if I just ran.

Why not do it?

I.

“……”

How long did I stand there like that?

People often describe these situations as seeming to take hours, or the opposite, as happening in a flash, but to be honest with you, I didn’t have the space to think about it at all.

I have a surprisingly narrow mind.

Able neither to be here nor not here, which makes me sound like an aberration myself─and then, at last.

<Hm. White.>

Thus─spoke the tiger.

Aberration confirmed.

<White─and how transparently so,> it said (not appending a <Groar!> or anything, of course)─before starting to swing its four stopped legs forward without further ado and loping, lumbering past me.

As someone who’d never seen the creature we call a tiger up close before, I had no sense of perspective for this subject that had been fifteen feet ahead, but as soon as it passed by my side, it was impressed upon me that the position its torso occupied was higher than my head, that it was too huge, once again, to be real.

I probably shouldn’t have turned around.

If it was passing by me, I ought to have let it pass─it had decided to take its eyes off of me, so why follow it with my own?

But I.

White.

White─and how transparently so.

Ensnared by the words the tiger had spoken to me, I thoughtlessly, carelessly─

Turned around.

How completely foolish.

I’d hardly learned my lessons from first term, including Golden Week. How was I going to take Araragi to task about anything now?

No, when it comes to me.

I’m far worse than Araragi.

“…Oh.”

But, fortunately.

Or maybe not? It’s difficult to say.

Well, of course, it clearly wasn’t. But.

There was nothing there when I turned around─forget tigers, there wasn’t even a cat.

Just a plain street.

The same path to school as always.

“Oh, jeez.”

I said that not because the tiger had disappeared but having glanced at the watch on my left wrist.

Eight thirty.

It seemed like I was going to be tardy for the first time in my life.