Monogatari Series - Volume 9 - Chapter 1.06

006

I have to confess, when I actually stepped into that black wall─when I actually enacted that delusional nonsense about time travel, I only half believed in the daydream that I was enacting.

What am I saying? I didn’t believe in it at all.

Not even a tiny bit.

I’m truly sorry if that ruins the mood.

But it’s not like my disbelief was groundless. Nothing worth spinning into a tale, but Shinobu had spouted reckless claims any number of times, and knowing them to be reckless, I’d gone along half in fun, in what you might call the spirit of play.

Like, I created perpetual motion.

Or, I violated the Theory of Relativity.

Or, Let’s go through the looking-glass.

That kind of play, make-believe.

So I can’t deny that I downplayed this little adventure as another one of those. The unvarnished truth is that I underestimated Shinobu.

They say you can get used to anything.

But nothing is as dangerous as getting used to something.

Shinobu Oshino. I should’ve kept it in mind, but I completely forgot─that she was an aberration and the aberration slayer, a vampire, the iron-blooded, hot-blooded, yet cold-blooded Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade.

Even if she’d lost her power.

Even if she’d assumed the form of a little girl.

I should have remembered what she was.

In other words, wanting to run away from the reality that summer break was already over and I had yet to touch my homework, I’d accepted Shinobu’s proposal much as I might feel, in the face of impending exams, the urge to clean my room or take a trip─my mental state was already in the neighborhood of damn-the-torpedoes.

You could just call it desperation.

You could even say I’d given in to despair.

So.

So I didn’t for a second trust in some overblown occult nonsense like time travel.

While I was passing under that torii, rather than believing something as convenient as “returning to yesterday,” I was thinking once more about─Shinobu would likely tell me again that I was stuck in perpetual puberty─Hachikuji.

Today─yesterday now?─she’d made an exception and left “the streets” to come hang out in my room, but the streets were basically her home; she was always there.

And she was always the same.

Whether or not she, always the same, was happy─I have no idea.

What did happiness mean for her?

What was a “good thing” for her?

I had absolutely no idea.

I also had no idea what her hopes and dreams were─in fact, few people speak as little about their true feelings as she does.

Few aberrations.

She’d been telling nothing but lies from the start─she hadn’t told me a thing about herself.

She kept it all inside.

Shut away inside her shell.

Like─a snail.

…But who am I to talk.

I’d been the same way.

Before Hanekawa helped me see the light over spring break, I’d been shut away in my shell─I can’t even imagine what kind of person I would be, what my personality would be like now, if I hadn’t met her.

I don’t even want to try and imagine.

Of course, I wasn’t contemplating anything so outrageous as becoming to Hachikuji what Hanekawa was to me─I’d never be so presumptuous.

That would be the height of conceit.

However─I couldn’t keep myself from wondering if there wasn’t something I could do for her.

It had been three months since May.

When I thought about the solace I found in that adorable young lady─I just wanted to reciprocate a little bit.

Now that─is an unwanted favor.

Maybe I was being presumptuous.

But.

“Oi, rouse thyself! Ye must not faint at such a trifling shock.”

“…”

My body was being shaken─and I opened my eyes.

I came to.

“…Ah,” I said, “so it was all a dream.”

“Nope.”

Shinobu kicked me.

She was a harsh little girl when it came to half-hearted jokes.

She didn’t spare the rod.

“What the hell?” I complained. “I unveil my novel, unprecedented ‘it was all a dream’ idea, and of all things, you kick me in the head with your mules?”

“I wish I was wearing heels. Thou canst not tout such a famous ending as thine own creation.”

“Mm… Hang on.”

I was staring up at the sky─it seemed as though I had toppled over and was lying face up.

The sky was pure blue─in other words, like it was daytime.

Daytime?

Did you say daytime?

“Um… What time is it?”

“’Tis twelve. Noon,” Shinobu answered while looking at my watch, which she was wearing now, since I didn’t know when. It was wrapped firmly around her right wrist─was she making fun of me, or something? “There seems to be a certain amount of deviation in time travel, after all. Perhaps ’tis impossible to go back precisely twenty-four hours.”

“…”

When I surveyed my surroundings─well, at that moment, laid out upside down on my back like I’d been stranded in the mountains, I was in no position to survey my surroundings. Odd. I was sure I’d been on the grounds of the Kita-Shirahebi Shrine…

Why did it feel like I was lying on stairs?

“Leaping through the torii with such vigor, ’twas inevitable that ye should tumble down the steps. Kakak, I thought maybe we had switched bodies.”

“When did you even watch that movie?”

The scene was more famous than famous, so I knew it, but I hadn’t actually experienced the film myself.

Did Oshino tell her about it?

No way they had a Blu-ray player in those ruins…

But she was right.

I’d dashed with considerable vigor to leap through the black wall, and I guess that amounted to hurling my body down some stairs.

Suicidal!

“To attempt the triple jump on such steep steps… I was surprised, I admit. I must inform thee, however, that I am a victim also. I went rolling down along with thee.”

Look, Shinobu said, pulling up the hem of her dress.

Her kneecaps were scraped.

Yikes, they’d scabbed over…

“That looks painful… If it was my fault, then frankly I have no choice but to apologize.”

“’Tis nothing for which ye need apologize.”

What a lenient little girl.

Though she could stop hiking up her dress already.

“But can’t you heal up a little wound like that in no time?” I asked. “Even if you’ve lost your power, you’re still an aberration.”

“I can heal it if I so choose, but I figured it might make for a good fetish.”

“It’s your pitch?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“If that’s what you were thinking, then there was no point in apologizing.”

“Which is why I told thee ’twas nothing for which ye need apologize.”

With that, Shinobu let down the hem of her dress.

This hid her kneecaps─and now that they were hidden, I realized how much I’d enjoyed them.

Geez, finding a little girl’s scabs so endearing felt wrong, inhuman.

When I looked myself over, I was scraped up a bit as well─my vampire nature was weak at present (it has its own biorhythm), so it wouldn’t heal quickly.

Well, normally, that’s how things went. It hurt and everything, but I could take it.

“Where are we…part way up the mountain?” The steps were like a vague game trail, with no landings (it might be more accurate to call it a bumpy ascending path), so it wasn’t immediately clear, but that seemed to be more or less the case. I’d really made a go of tumbling my way down. “Did we really succeed at traveling through time? Here in the middle of the mountains, it’s impossible to tell if there’s been any change.” The scenery wouldn’t be all that different between yesterday and today─or to be honest, it appeared completely identical.

“Naturally we succeeded.” My doubts drew a disdainful scowl from Shinobu. “Since the day of my birth, never have I met failure.”

“You’re one hell of a braggart.”

Where on earth did she get that kind of confidence?

It’s because you’ve failed over and over again that you’re in your current state─I mean, you’re sealed in the shadow of a completely average high school student in a remote eastern island nation. That, all by itself, seems like a massive, irredeemable failure for a legendary vampire.

“Nay, it is absolutely impossible that I have failed. I guarantee it.”

“She guarantees it…”

“If indeed I have, then I shall have no qualms about letting thee call me Shinobu the Blunderer from now on.”

“Don’t go making any rash promises…” You’d think someone who’s been alive so long would be mindful of the consequences of her actions. Or maybe if you’ve been alive so long, you weren’t? “Anyway…I wonder. Now that you mention it, I feel like yesterday─or I guess now the day before yesterday?─the day before yesterday, August nineteenth, the weather was clear like it is now… Are you sure I wasn’t just unconscious for twelve hours because I fell down the stairs?”

In that case, I was in real trouble. It meant not only having skipped my homework, but totally blowing off the opening ceremony for the new term.

Hanekawa would kill me…

Tremble.

“I am at a loss. Why art thou so hesitant to trust me?”

“Yeah, I wonder.”

“Verily, I have done things to thee, but never yet have I hurt thee by design. When I have done evil, it was ever with thy good in mind.”

“Let’s start with the ‘done evil’ part.”

“Rather, why dost thou speak to me as though we are equals? I am thine elder, and thou shouldst speak to me respectfully. Respectfully, I say.”

“Now you’re saying this?”

Granted, you’re 600 and I’m eighteen.

But what a time to teach me to respect my elders…

“Under the circumstances, ’tis already deplorable that thou art disposed to doubt me from the start. Before considering whether I have succeeded or failed, first thou shouldst give proper thanks for my good intentions.”

“Huh…”

“‘Thank you very much, Ms. Shinobu.’ Go on, try it.”

“Your character has been all over the place right from the beginning of the series…”

I don’t think it’s as simple as just saying that she’s an aberration who’s easily influenced by others or by her environment… Hachikuji is an aberration too, and she maintains her character unswervingly.

Why the difference?

“The difference is whether or not the aberration in question is paired with thee.”

“Don’t act like it’s my fault.”

“But it is emphatically thy fault.”

“No, no, no. Even if it is, I’m telling you not to act like it is.”

“What a way to avoid responsibility.”

Such lily-livered diplomacy, denounced Shinobu.

What a horrible thing to say.

Didn’t she learn when she was little that some things are better left unspoken?

“But you’re absolutely right. I can at least trust that you did this with the best intentions.”

The truth is, there’s nothing in this world as precarious as a deed carried out with the best intentions, and no words so overbearing as I did it for your sake, but there was no time to waste on such childish arguments at the moment.

Senjogahara told me that whether or not you can abide overbearing good will is a mark of adulthood─and if Senjogahara can say that, then she’s growing up.

As her boyfriend, nothing could be more pleasing.

So I was going to do some growing up, too.

Even though I didn’t feel grateful for anything, I’d thank Shinobu.

“Thank you very much, Ms. Shinobu.”

“Thy smile is most suspect…”

True.

I didn’t need a mirror to know that it couldn’t be more saccharine.

“So what? Saccharine is sweet, and you love sweets!” I retorted. “Who doesn’t love a sweet smile? Love, sweet, smile─not a suspect word among them.”

“The more thou carryest on, the more thy words smack of deceit. Love, sweet, smile, one is enough.”

“If I have to pick one, then…love.”

I hugged Shinobu.

Ardently.

No holding back.

“Hahahah,” she laughed merrily. “You adorable little thing. Oui oui. All right, I’ll let thee off the hook, and forgive thee for thy previous insolent speech.”

She didn’t mind it.

Moreover, she forgave me.

She was a little too lenient.

“C’mon, you’ve got to fight back, like Hachikuji. If you don’t stop me, I won’t stop, will I? If you don’t protect your chastity, who will?”

“Never have I protected my chastity.”

“…”

She really came from a different age.

I just couldn’t get down with her ethics and mores.

Oshino, if you have the time to instill her with aberration lore (or to show her I Are You, You Am Me for that matter), how ’bout starting there instead.

Seriously.

“I accept all comers! Such a woman am I.”

“Even without any statutes, you’re gonna be censored.”

But then again, when Shinobu was Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, she only ever created one thrall besides myself, so I guess her conduct was pretty upright after all.

In which case, was she just trying to play the fool with pronouncements like that? Or was it like middle-school posing?

“Come then! Embrace me at any time, just as ye please!”

“No way, if I did, you might suck my blood at any moment.”

Moving away from Shinobu, I finally got off my knees─and glanced up the stairs, that is, in the direction of the torii.

I realized again just how far I had fallen…

It wouldn’t have been surprising if I’d died.

It would likely be written off as a typical mountain climbing accident, but on one of the piddling hills in our town? How embarrassing for the bereaved family.

“Hey, Shinobu.”

“What is it?”

“Can we also get back through that torii?”

“Mm? Aye. Well, something like that.”

“Why so vague?!”

“Well, now that ye ask, I had not considered the return journey…”

Was Shinobu’s terrifying response.

Just a minute.

Come to think of it, Shinobu didn’t use her own power to pry open the time warp gate or whatever (feels like the fishy words just keep on coming, but I’m not going to worry about it anymore); she said she exploited the power of the location, of Kita-Shirahebi Shrine, a hangout for aberrations…

“If you already consumed that power, then I suppose you won’t be able to reopen that gate or whatever it is.”

“Hah,” Shinobu snorted at my concern. That was heartening, even if it was also unpleasant. “Now let me see…” she trailed off.

Totally undependable.

She’d just put on airs by reflex.

“Hey, wait a second, Shinobu… Don’t tell me we’re stuck in yesterday’s world and can’t get home to our own.”

“No, ’tis fine, ’tis fine. Have no fear, my master.” It sure sounded like she was bluffing, but she took my arm with total self-assurance. “Consider for a moment. This is yesterday, is it not? From this perspective, ’tis on the morrow that I shall open a time tunnel using the aberrational essences gathered at the shrine. Therefore, at present that spiritual energy hath yet to be exploited, and I may open such a gate.”

“I don’t even want to give a rejoinder to a word like ‘time tunnel,’ I’ll just pass that one on to the reader.”

I delegate the responsibility entirely to you.

The narrator has left the building.

“But wait, doesn’t that create a time paradox? If we use up all that energy now, then our tomorrow selves won’t be able to come back to today.”

“…”

Ah.

She falls silent.

She goes and falls silent.

“Hmm, well, indeed,” Shinobu muttered, and since there was nothing I could do but watch and wait, I went quiet too, for about five minutes, until she finally began to explain her take on the situation. “Aye, I recall now. ’Tis easier to return to the future than to return to the past, for it doth not require the extra energy necessary to go against the flow of time. In principle ’tis as with salmon. Therefore, we need not consume so much energy for the return journey, and plenty shall remain for our use on the morrow.”

“Hmph… Well, that’s a tenuous explanation, but if you say so.”

No point in arguing.

It was good enough for the moment.

But─it already crossed my mind.

The somewhat risky possibility of a time paradox.

“Thyme pair o’ docks? Thou hast said it before, but I knew not of what ye spoke.”

“No, no, no. Forget about ‘paradox’ for a second, why are you spelling ‘time’ that way?”

What an airhead.

Didn’t she just use the term “time tunnel”?

“Ho ho. Yet I was certain thou wert speaking of the herb.”

“No, you weren’t. The other word is incomparably more common.”

“Well, aren’t we particular. Ha!” Shinobu virtually spat out that last syllable, her sadistic look enough to make any enthusiast drool. “All right, thyme out, thyme out. Let me think.”

“No, no more thinking.” It was exhausting responding to all her little jokes, so I decided to just explain it to her. “A time paradox is a contradiction that ensues from time travel.”

“What’s a contradiction?”

“Come on, words more difficult than ‘contradiction’ have definitely come up in our conversations.”

“I simply let pass the non-standard vocabulary that ye sometimes employ.”

“Okay, okay.”

I even think you’ve used the word yourself, but if I start in on that, an actual paradox could ensue, so let me give you the standard explanation of the word.

“Long ago, in a distant land─”

“When is long ago? What distant land?”

“…”

What was she, a cheeky brat?

I had to ignore her.

Plus I had no idea.

“A merchant had for sale both a spear so powerful it could pierce any shield, and a shield so powerful it could block any spear. A passing child called out, ‘My lord merchant, what should happen were such a powerful spear to meet such a powerful shield?’”

“So the child spoke like a classic master detective?”

“‘Hey, old man. What happens if you poke that shield with that spear?’”

“Ye need not do an impression of Conan Edogawa.”

“How are you so well informed?!”

I was shocked.

I thought maybe she only watched old movies, but I had to admit, she knew her stuff.

“Look, either way, the kid says this, thrusting his finger at the merchant: ‘If the spear penetrates the shield, then the shield is not as powerful as you claim, and if it doesn’t, then the spear is not. So, old man, what you’re saying is a logical contradiction!’”

“Is it not odd to use the very word in a story that purports to explain what it means?”

“Yep. And that, my friend, is a time paradox.”

That wrapped up surprisingly well.

I hadn’t planned it that way.

“Actually,” I continued, “I think the phenomenon of a paradox was hypothesized before the word ‘contradiction’ existed… Are you familiar with Zeno’s Paradoxes?”

“Zeno? Ne’er heard of him.”

“Well, it’s not something you absolutely have to know about or anything, but still.”

“I am familiar with Zenon’s Paradoxes.”

“…”

A really cheeky brat…

If she wasn’t a vampire, I’d smack her.

“Well, thou hast illuminated paradoxes and contradictions for me. But what is thy point?”

“Look, just think about it realistically. Let’s say I go home right now and do my homework. But if I finish all my summer homework before the end of summer break, then our motivation for time warping disappears, and I won’t time warp back to now, August nineteenth. In which case I don’t do my homework… See, isn’t that a contradiction?”

“?”

“You don’t get it!”

She’d cocked her head adorably.

It wasn’t even that complicated.

Not at all.

“Why quibble? There is nary a Doraemon episode where they fret over such things.”

“Oh, I think there is.”

“Mmmm. I may have skipped the difficult portions.”

“Sounds like you’re not a true fan after all.” Not by a long shot. As I was saying this, I glanced down towards the foot of the mountain. “So what type of time warp is this?”

“Type? What dost thou mean?”

“Well, there are two major categories. The type where the person in question is there, and the type where they aren’t.”

“What, like thine own situation in thy high-school class?”

“I’m always there!”

My presence isn’t that faint!

Gimme a break.

I’m not talking about anything so sad.

“What I’m asking is, if I go home, will ‘yesterday me’ be there, or is this me right here already ‘yesterday me’?”

“Snore.”

“Don’t fall asleep!”

“ZZZZZZZZZZZ”

“Don’t fall deeper asleep!”

“Hmm. I know not,” Shinobu gave up pretending to be asleep and said this as though she were utterly fed up.

You’re so nitpicky, even though you’re a boy. You’ll never get married, her eyes insinuated.

Mind your own business.

“Thou shalt have to look and find out for thyself. Hie thee home and peer into thy room, and thy presence or absence will render the type abundantly clear.”

“I guess you’re right…”

Thinking it over was futile.

There was no guarantee that the time warp had been successful in the first place. There was still a very good possibility that I was having the world’s most ludicrous discussion with a little girl.

“Oh,” I said, “but right now, it’s noon on the nineteenth? I’m probably not home.”

“Is that so? One no longer stores such trivial memories at my age.”

“I think I remember going to the bookstore to buy some study guides.”

“’Tis simply thine imagination. Ye went to buy dirty books.”

“Not storing memories, huh?”

“Well, I do admire thee… Getting up the nerve to buy such bizarre smut at the same bookstore frequented by that ex-class president lass and Miss Bangs, as though it were nothing… I must inform thee, of course, that thou hast been spotted any number of times.”

“Maybe warn me about it when it happens!”

And don’t call it bizarre. It was pretty normal.

“Perhaps, excepting the calligraphy pens.”

“Stop it. Don’t bring up the calligraphy pens,” I cut the conversation short. This was neither the time nor the place to expose my sexual proclivities. “I see… Then maybe I’ll check the bookstore first.”

Worst-case scenario, we’d get a bit of shocking surrealist theater in which none other than myself witnesses me buying dirty books, but, well, what could you do.

“If we don’t hurry, he’ll be gone─always in a rush, that one,” I remarked as I started down the mountain.

I didn’t know exactly where on it we were, but I didn’t expect it to take too long.

Shinobu followed after me.

That is to say, she moved in sync with my shadow.

Almost as though she were on a leash, as horrible as that sounds.

“Wait, what? Shinobu, how do you know what time it is?”

“Hm?”

“I mean, that watch you’re wearing came from the future, so why would it be showing the correct time for when we are now?”

“Fear not, I adjusted it earlier. I hazarded the hour by the position of the sun. ’Twould be trouble if we knew it not, which is why I had thee remove thy watch and give it to me.”

“Huh…”

In that case, we couldn’t rely on it.

Since you messed with its crown.

“Oh, wait, I can just check the time on my cell phone.”

“Mm? Can ye? Is not the time on thy cell phone set to the future?”

“Let’s see.”

I took my phone out of my pocket.

In fact, I’d just exchanged it for a new model the other day─so Senjogahara and I could have matching ones. She also made me join some mysterious lovers’ discount service. The truth is I was a little turned off by her acting so lovey-dovey, but I was too scared to say anything.

At any rate, when I looked at the clock on the display, it read: “August 21 (Mon) 00:15 a.m.”─huh?

Wait, so if this was the time in the future─that meant only ten minutes had passed since we leapt through the torii─let’s see.

One look at the sky showed that there was no way it was currently midnight─

“Hm, if nothing else,” asserted Shinobu, “this proves the time warp was a success.”

“No, there’s still the possibility that you tampered with the clock on my phone while I was unconscious for half a day. In fact, call it a strong possibility.”

“Thou hast no trust in me at all. Why thinkest thou that I must needs pull a candid-camera stunt like that? Anyway, ’tis not so easy to tamper with the clock feature on a cell phone.”

“Maybe you used the World Clock feature to set it to Brazilian time.”

“Thy degree of doubt exceeds simply not trusting me, or deeming my words untrue or hard to believe─put simply, thou canst not stand me, can thee?”

Shinobu really did look hurt.

Who knew she could look like that.

I was kind of into it…

“Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Oh? Truly?”

She stared up at me with tears in her eyes.

It stirred my deepest sympathies.

“Really, really. For sure.”

“Then say that thou lovest me?”

“You’re totally out of character again!”

A haughty vampire!

A potential suicide!

A taciturn girl!

Stick with any of them, even the tiniest bit!

“But must ye be so cold to me? Is it not simply my role to remain more than a friend but less than a lover?”

“I don’t mean to be cold to you, but I think you’re way off base.”

“Then what am I to thee?”

“Don’t ask such deep questions. We’ll get to that in about four more installments.”

“Oh what a time-paradoxical statement.”

“Don’t go throwing around terms you just learned. Anyway, to address that earlier doubt, clock feature aside, we should be able to connect to 1seg when we get down the mountain. Television programs and terrestrial digital broadcasting won’t be wrong about the time.”

“Thy faith in terrestrial digital broadcasting knows no bounds,” Shinobu said, wiping away her tears. “Poor subterranean analog broadcasting.”

“That sounds spooky, but there’s no such thing.”

“Whereas a celestial béchamel bread crust thing sounds delicious.”

“It does, but there’s no such thing!”

“Equestrian dental broadcasting?”

“A dentist on horseback?”

A conversation without substance.

Which took us all the way to the bottom of the mountain.

I felt like an ascetic practitioner finally returning to civilization from his mountain austerities, but there wasn’t an ounce of truth to that; all we’d done was go up and come down the shabby neighborhood hill.

Then─

Something shook me to the core.

“What?! What the hell! My granny bike is gone! It’s been stolen! Or impounded! On my honor as a bicyclist, this is a grave insult!”

“Calm thyself. Thou art overreacting. Right now ’tis yesterday, so that granny bike we rode over here with thee on the seat and me stuck in the front basket hath yet to arrive. Thou shalt not park that machine here until late tomorrow night.”

“Oh, ohh… Really?”

“Kakak, this proves that my time warp was a success. There, now how about a little apology? Come then, no need to be shy. I shall always forgive thy little follies.”

“Suuuure.”

No way.

It seemed much more likely that my bike had been stolen, or impounded…but if it had been impounded, or worse yet, stolen, it meant that I’d lost every single one of my bicycles, so by all means I hoped that Shinobu’s time warp had in fact been a success.

And so I extended the antenna of my cell phone and connected to the internet.

If a TV show─the weather report, the news─said that today was August nineteenth, I’d have no choice but to believe Shinobu.

Then I’d prostrate myself before her.

With that manly, yet somewhat servile, determination, I worked my cell phone and─huh?

Huuuuuh?

No reception?

?

“Shinobu. Did you break my cell phone while you were messing around with it?”

“Waaaaaaaahh!” li’l Shinobu wailed at the top of her lungs at long last. “I cannot bear it! I hate thee! Do what thou wilt, I care not!”

“You really sulk like a child.”

“Dash!”

Shinobu made her own sound effect as she started to run off but stumbled and fell flat on her face at the edge of my shadow. In the heat of the moment, she seemed to have forgotten that she couldn’t move outside its borders.

“Okay, I’m sorry, I’m really, really sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

Concerned about my favorability rating, I apologized sincerely to Shinobu as she lay face down on the asphalt, then put my arms around her little girl’s waist to pick her up off the ground.

When she looked at me, I saw that she was crying for real.

It wasn’t like with Hachikuji or Tsukihi’s feigned tears─and that was actually kind of off-putting.

“Listen,” I said, “it’s true that the internet isn’t coming through─maybe my phone broke when I fell down the stairs?”

Which really bummed me out.

After I’d gotten matching phones with Senjogahara and everything─and when I thought about how the new Senjogahara, that is to say the reformed Hitagi Senjogahara, wouldn’t get mad, or fly off the handle, or lash me with her acid tongue but just be sad like a regular person, it bummed me out even more.

It pained me to be the kind of male character who made girls cry all the time.

“It still accepts inputs, though… Hm?”

What?

When I checked the screen again, it said out of range.

Still out of range, even though we’d come down off the mountain?

“Weird. I figured I’d have full bars down here.”

“Do people even say ‘full bars’ anymore?”

“I’m sure some still do.” Rebutting Shinobu’s dig, I kept on working my phone…but it really did seem to be out of range, which meant that most of the functions were dead. “What’s going on? Did the base station get blown up or something?”

“Thou hast a robust imagination.”

“Well, seems like there’s nothing for it… Let’s head to the bookstore. Even without the bike, it’s not so far.”

“Then c’mon, c’mon, c’mon, shoulder-ride!”

“Just how far are you going to take this little girl thing?”

It made it difficult to fathom our relationship.

Kagenui laughed her ass off at me when I was giving one of my little sisters a ride on my shoulders─wait a sec, was I giving a ride or being given one that time?

It wasn’t exactly something I wanted to remember, so my memory was hazy.

But having just been cried at (or rather whined at), it was hard to refuse, so I relented (not that I even put up a fight) and let Shinobu get up onto my shoulders.

So light!

Was she completely hollow or what?

“How much do you weigh?”

“I can freely control my weight. See?”

“So heavy!”

Incredible!

Like the Crab of Weight!

No, freely controlling your weight reminded me of some other yokai… Stone-something… If you bore the burden all the way home, it would transform into treasure…

“Hm? Perhaps ’tis merely my imagination, but when I increased my weight, thy gait seemed to become somehow steadier…”

“It’s just your imagination. I’m not so greedy that the thought of treasure improves my physical conditioning.”

As we walked and talked, a gaggle of middle school girls appeared directly ahead of us. I tensed up, worrying that they might report me, but upon reflection I was just walking along with a kid on my shoulders, so we were probably fine (if it were that time with my little sister, though, they’d definitely report us).

Then again, we must’ve seemed suspicious after all, because those girls were really giving me the eye─

“Omigod, so cute!”

“Like a little doll!”

“Her hair’s so fluffy!”

……

Shinobu was a hit.

These middle school girls weren’t at all bashful, in the face of a legendary vampire.

From the dress-like uniforms, I guessed that they were students from my alma mater…in other words, Sengoku’s classmates?

“Wait, this is perfect.”

It struck me.

Before going to the bookstore and determining if this was a type A time warp (the person in question is there) or a type B time warp (the person in question isn’t there), I could begin by verifying with these girls what I’d been unable to on my cell phone: whether the time travel had been successful in the first place.

“Hey, girls. Could you tell me if today is Monday, August twenty-first?” I just asked point-blank of none of them in particular, though it felt somewhat abrupt.

To which they answered─

“What, you’re waaay off!”

Though I couldn’t see her, I could sense that up above me Shinobu was jubilant─as if she wanted to say, Now hurry up and apologize to me, you brat.

But hold on, I was more preoccupied with another aspect of the girl’s response.

Off is one thing.

But way off?

Waaay?

“…Then what’s today’s date?”

I asked them.

Fearing the answer.

“What’s the deal, mister, you sound like a person from the future or something.” Having really hit the nail on the head, the girl replied, “It’s May thirteenth.”

Just like that.

Shinobu’s haughty mood up above my head shifted slightly─but only slightly, as if to say: My, not at all the date I intended. Well, ’tis no big deal.

Sure, no big deal.

No way.

Having accomplished a historic feat by traveling into the past─whether this was a day or three months ago seemed to her like no big deal, no big difference.

Honestly, I’d anticipated this from the moment the girls appeared ahead of us─if it was summer break, then a gaggle of girls in their uniforms on their way home was an odd sight any way you sliced it.

So I’d surmised that we might have gone back to a time before summer break─my intuition is actually pretty good.

But that good intuition was telling me something else as well.

An alarm was going off.

And─my cell phone’s lack of internet access and out-of-range message uppermost in my thoughts─I asked another question.

“What year is it?”

“Um─”

The middle school girl informed me.

That from now, or rather from the future, we’d gone back eleven years.