Monogatari Series - Volume 9 - Chapter 1.08

008

So that’s more or less the sequence of events by which Shinobu and I ended up eleven years in the past, but once our way back was reasonably secure I was able to relax a little, and I can’t deny that I even started to feel like I might as well enjoy myself a bit. Still, when it came time to get away from the Araragi residence and actually make the most of existing in the past, I bumped up against the stark reality that there was surprisingly little to do.

Even in the past, reality was the enemy.

I realized that, for the same reason I couldn’t buy stock, I couldn’t purchase any books.

I couldn’t muster up the motivation to go to the next town just to browse in the bookstore─and even if I wanted to watch some of the older, more aggressive TV shows, we weren’t so far in the past that there were still street televisions.

Now this runs directly counter to what I said before, but while it was definitely the townscape of eleven years ago, the level of difference only served to make me uneasy. It wasn’t different enough to make me nostalgic, to make me relish a beloved past.

This might sound churlish, but if we were going to blow it anyway, I wished we could have gone all the way back to the prewar period.

“If we did, anyone as suspicious as thee would be apprehended by the military authorities in the span of a moment and be subjected to torture without any regard for human rights.”

“Think so? That bad, huh?”

“Given half the chance, thy words become dangerous, my master, become risky. A more moderately lenient age suits thee better, methinks. Now then, hath Mister Donut come into being yet?”

“They were just celebrating their fortieth anniversary, so there’s no doubt about it─what’s more, I bet there are donuts that you can only find during this period.”

“Oh ho!”

“Sorry to say this after you’ve sunk your teeth into the idea, but we don’t have any money.”

“After I’ve sunk my teeth into it, my mouth stays empty?”

“Yup.”

There was actually a ten-thousand-yen note in my wallet, but it was a new one, so we couldn’t use it.

It would definitely be treated as counterfeit since they had Yukichi Fukuzawa on it both in the past and in the present unlike the new bills with Hideyo Noguchi or Ichiyo Higuchi.

I might not get tortured, but I could well envision the military arresting a mysterious high school student with highly advanced counterfeiting skills.

I figured that even if paper money was no good, we might be able to use coins, though they did have the year engraved on them.

I held on to a sliver of hope as I examined the coins I was carrying one by one, but they all had dates from the future.

Such sophisticated counterfeit coins.

“Hmph,” snorted Shinobu, walking ahead of me as though she were leading the way.

If pressed, I’d say that there were fewer seams in the asphalt than in the present. Not that it mattered in the slightest.

“’Twas an enjoyable lark at the outset, but hath this trip not rapidly descended into tedium? If so it must be, why could I not, if a hug be out of the question, adore thee from afar in thy shota form for a while longer?”

“Just because. Don’t say such creepy things,” I replied, following along behind Shinobu, since I didn’t have anywhere in particular to go. “I mean, it’s just one more facet of the time paradox. I have absolutely no memory of meeting my future self or a little blond girl when I was six or seven, so it would be an issue if he noticed us, even from afar. It would contradict the future.”

“What? ’Tis not as though thou canst recall everything from thy childhood. Hardly can I recall the events of yesteryear.”

“And that’s all right with you? Not even ten or twenty years ago, but…last year?”

“To tell it true, after about the age of thirty I ceased to recall things in terms of years.”

“Thirty! What are you talking about, that’s not even that different from a human!”

“About a third of the time, the name Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade slips my mind. Honestly, ’twas a relief to shorten it to Shinobu Oshino.”

“I hate to remind you, but it was because of that name that your existence became sealed and bound to my shadow.” The girl just kept on getting dumber. “The young Araragi of this time was a pretty smart kid, if I do say so myself. Smarter than I am now, I’ll bet. Forget about remembering or not remembering, if we’re not careful he’ll see right through us.”

“A child so discerning? Art thou not simply viewing the past through rose-colored glasses?”

“Nope. In fish terms, he’s a Napoleon fish.”

“And is that impressive? Speaking in such terms doth not make him seem clever at all… I do not think there is a single fish with the reputation for cleverness.”

“Well, the same Araragi is now total whitebait.”

“Thou reversed time on thy own.”

“Actually…” I stopped walking and looked back─that is, cast my gaze back toward the distant Araragi residence, even though it was already out of sight. Shinobu may have been leading the way, but she was still bound to my shadow, so when I stopped walking she was forced to as well. In reality she wasn’t leading the way at all, it was just that because of the position of the sun she had to be in front of me. “Putting aside whether or not I’d remember, I’ve heard a theory that if you time warp and meet yourself, you’ll both be completely vaporized. It’s a vague recollection… Something like matter and anti-matter, or maybe like a doppelgänger, but either way, you’re supposed to avoid encountering your past self.”

“Hunh? Is that not merely an SF convention? Not enough people have actually time warped for any theory to be developed about it.”

“Sure, that’s true… I can’t deny that I’m just quoting stuff straight from sci-fi novels, but just to be on the safe side…”

I didn’t want to be vaporized in the past.

There was also the possibility that only he would be, but if my past self vanished, wouldn’t my current self still get vaporized? Yikes, I was lost…

This time-travel theory stuff was so convoluted.

It was full up with complications and far-fetched nonsense.

I wondered if the idea that time travel to the future is possible, while time travel to the past isn’t, simply owes to laziness on the part of sci-fi authors who can’t resolve the tangled paradox.

“Don’t blame them, my lord… Always passing the buck.”

“Yeah, well, this situation makes me want to pass the buck!”

“Calm thyself. There is likely no cause for thee to be concerned.” It couldn’t have been out of worry that fast realizing that there was nothing to do, I was feeling uneasy once again─but Shinobu said, “I admit to thee at this late date that, up until now, I did not understand what ye meant by time paradox.”

“Huh?” I was taken aback─by her confession. “Um, but I explained it properly, and didn’t we have a whole conversation about it?”

“I feigned understanding, nodded my head in all the right places, and just played along while thine every word went in one ear and out the other.”

“Hey!”

My anime character intro had all kinds of bizarro captions, like that I was the only designated quipper in the series and so on, but I’d been reduced to the plainest possible comeback.

Hey.

“Shinobu, in a novel that’s mostly talk, in what you might even call a conversation drama, there’s no room for a character who just nods along. You said that at last you can admit it to me, but sorry, the statute of limitations isn’t up on that one yet.”

That was just a few hours ago.

What, was the statute of limitations a few seconds?

“And yet, those few hours are what counts,” Shinobu insisted. “Behold, the sun is sinking, and the twilight hour is nigh.”

“Don’t talk as though it’s the end of the world.”

“What I mean is that while I may have lost my power, ’tis the time when I, as an aberration, am revitalized. At long last my eyes are open, at long last my head is clear. The strange and perplexing matter thou hast spoken of makes sense to me now.”

“Sorry, so very sorry, but what I’ve been saying isn’t all that complicated.”

“Let me get straight to the point,” Shinobu said, folding her arms, raising her face, and looking down on me, in that tricky way of hers, even as she looked up at me. “Fret not, for there is no danger of a time paradox.”

“There isn’t?”

“None at all.”

“None.”

“’Tis like fretting over whether or not the sky will fall on thy head. Thou art more than a little chicken, thou art Chicken Little.”

“I mean, between the two, sure, I guess I’d be Chicken Little, but…”

Wait, we were getting off track.

And it was pretty weird she’d know Chicken Little but not the “contradiction” fable─not that they meant the same thing, but they were both classic.

“Be that as it may, the danger is nil, Chicken Little. There is naught to be concerned about.”

The middle of the street is no place for this conversation, Shinobu prompted and enticed, having gotten straight to the point and skipped the rest. Upon reflection, she was right that as we stood there talking in the road, there was no telling when a car might come or who might pass by. I followed after her as prompted.

Speaking of which, this road of eleven years ago was kind of dangerous… I wasn’t totally sure, but I could have sworn there was a proper guardrail along here in the future.

We reached a sidewalk, and perfectly situating ourselves in the fading sunlight, started walking side by side. It was much easier to have a conversation this way, though in our case I didn’t feel there was any real point to my standing closer to the road…

“Ahh, at any rate, ’tis mighty fine.”

“What is?”

“To strut about like this, out in the open. I literally live in the shadows, after all. But as we are unknown to the people of this time, I am able to act freely. I can hardly contain myself.”

“Huh…”

So that was it.

I thought she’d been acting funny, but it seemed like this bit of free time, born of our massive time jump, accidental though it may have been, had her in high spirits.

So that was it: because she stood out as a little blond girl, and because she was sealed in my shadow, Shinobu had no traffic with daylight─

“Hang on,” I said. “It’s normal for a vampire to live in the shadows.”

“Hm? Ah, I suppose so.”

“If you’re feeling that way because Hachikuji was able to come to my room, I guess it kind of makes sense, but you’re fundamentally a denizen of the dark side, aren’t you? A nightwalker shouldn’t be delighting in daylight. The sun is your enemy.”

“Hmm. I suppose I’m still half asleep.” Shinobu scratched her blond head. Coming from her, the reaction seemed crass, too human. “Perhaps the remainder of my explanation should wait until I am back to my proper self. Until the sun has gone down completely, that is.”

“Well, to be honest, I’d like to hear it as soon as possible. When it comes to time paradoxes.”

“Indeed? Fine, the details may be incorrect, but I shall offer then a rough exposition for the time being. There is a general outline to the flow of fate, and this cannot be altered.”

“What?”

“That which happened will surely happen, and that which did not can never. That which happens must happen, and so doth, and that which doth not must not, and so doth not. I do not mean to say that fate is immutable─merely that the outline doth not change. In other words, the universe shall correct itself for any deviation caused by what we do here in the past, within a certain margin of error. Provided we swear off anything dire.”

“Anything dire, like?” Did something on the level of me meeting myself fall short?

“Mm. On the subject of thine original goal, thy summer homework, let us say for the sake of argument that we traveled one day into the past, and ye stealthily completed it unbeknownst to thy counterpart from that time. However, if ’tis an amount that thou couldst complete in one day, then with a little tenacity ye might have stayed up all night and completed it without returning to the past. And if not, thou wouldst not be scolded so badly.”

“…Huh?”

What was she saying?

I mean, all sorts of occult sources held that the outline of fate is fixed─the world principle, the cosmic will, the Akashic Records, this and that great prophecy─but it also applied to time travel?

Really?

“Hold on a sec, if that’s true, then there was never any point in coming to the past to do my homework. If I return to the past and am able to get it done, then there was no need to return to the past; if I return to the past and can’t get it done, then there was still no point in returning to the past…”

“Yup. No point, sorry,” Shinobu─little Miss Shinobu─abandoned all her old-timey phraseology and agreed like a kid.

Was she playing dumb, or was she actually dumb? How adorable.

“Ye implored me to take thee back in time, and I simply granted thy wish out of a desire for donuts.”

“The truth comes out!”

Her motivation was just that simple.

Sure. Why would she ever be worried about my homework? Come to think of it, when she first pointed it out, more than anything else she was just trying to annoy me.

Even if she didn’t mean any harm, I’m pretty sure she didn’t mean well.

“I also had a notion to attempt time travel, which had heretofore existed for me only on paper. I had always hoped to assay it at least once in my life.”

“Don’t get me involved in your bucket list!”

“Thou art the one who brought it up.”

“What are you, a nefarious venture capitalist taking advantage of people’s innocent daydreams?” It was a roundabout way of denouncing her as a swindler. “To turn it around, you’re saying that even if I finish my homework in the past, my future self would return to the past for some other reason and end up doing the homework anyway?”

“Indeed, little import was accorded to the ability to time-travel in Ghost Sweeper Mikami.”

“Stop explaining everything through manga.”

Although for my part, I did keep relying on sci-fi novels.

This goddamn conversation was all fluff.

“Putting it in the most pessimistic and defeatist way possible,” intoned Shinobu, “my point is that worrying over the details will avail thee naught. ’Tis all the same, past or present: thou canst not do what thou canst not do, and thou canst do naught but what thou canst.”

“All the same…”

When she put it like that─well.

It wasn’t as if I didn’t get it.

The struggle against an opponent as unfathomable as fate is never going to go your way, in a past reached via time travel or anywhere else.

Reality is─the enemy, even in the past.

The battle with reality is always─a losing battle.

“I understand now, Shinobu. You’re saying that we couldn’t pull off a barbaric feat like altering history, or the future, even if we wanted to, embedded within fate as we are.”

“More or less.”

Hm.

So to return to our earlier example, if there is a rule that, should now me encounter seven-year-old me, one or both of us would be completely vaporized, present me and past me would never be able to meet in the first place.

And even if, for the sake of argument, I did have some money from this time, some kind of impediment would surely crop up and prevent me from buying stock in an IT company. And by the same token, I wouldn’t be able to get my hands on any valuable titles at the bookstore.

“So I can assume there won’t be any butterfly effect-type thing.”

“What is this butter-something of which thou speakest?”

“You don’t know?”

“Glazing something with butter and frying it in oil?”

“Appetizing, if erroneous.”

It would probably taste like fried cheese.

No, the butter would just melt, wouldn’t it?

“It’s the theory that one minute difference in initial conditions can yield a massive change later on, and…”

I’d only heard about it from Hanekawa, so I didn’t understand it all that well, which made it hard to explain. Something like a single butterfly flapping its wings in China causing a whirlwind in Brazil─but if you pressed me as to how, honestly I’d just have to throw up my hands.

I thought about calling Hanekawa and asking, but my device was out of range, and the Hanekawa of this time didn’t have a cell phone anyway.

She was probably about six years old, too.

……

I wanted to meet her.

Since doing so now wouldn’t change fate or make it so that I couldn’t meet her in the future, I dearly wished for a glimpse of Loli Hanekawa.

If we weren’t supposed to meet, then we just wouldn’t anyway.

Loli Hanekawa.

It had such an alluring ring to it.

“Oi, why art thou grinning? Give me a proper explanation of this swallowtail effect or whatever ye call it.”

“I don’t even know how to come back to such highfalutin’ jokes,” I said, but proceeded nonetheless. “Let me put it this way. A curveball appears to change direction right in front of the batter, but in reality, the change began the moment the ball left the pitcher’s hand.”

“Now I see.”

“You do?!”

From that feather-light explanation?!

Incidentally, a curveball is created by the rotation of the ball and the concomitant air resistance, so apparently the technique is quite different with a softball versus a hardball.

“Hm. Then ’tis no cause for concern. No such monarch effect shall occur. If this world be changed by the beat of a butterfly’s wings, then ’twill change even if they fail to beat. So it is.”

“Is it? I don’t really get it… But a difference in initial value leading to a great calamity is persuasive on a theoretical level, at least. It’s like the steering wheel of a car.”

“Allow me to give an easily understood analogy then, in emulation of thine own,” Shinobu prefaced. “A child who causeth trouble under the influence of manga or video games will still cause trouble, even without the influence of manga or video games.”

“…”

That’s a dangerous analogy!

Easily understood though it may be!

“Well…I think I get it. Let’s just say for now that I do. Maybe that’s how it is. Influence exists per se, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it alters the outcome.”

Actually, didn’t Senjogahara say something similar once?

In the end I contributed to resolving the issues that she was harboring, but maybe it wasn’t really me─I just happened to be there, and even if I hadn’t been, the story might have turned out the same.

She was nice enough to tell me that for that very reason, she was glad it was me─but if you turned it around.

That meant the only thing your will can affect is your own life, not anything so grandiose as fate or the world.

Hmm.

That might make everything seem futile, but it also affords some peace─as if the stability of the vehicle we’re riding in has been fully guaranteed.

“I see. If that’s the case, then I’m a little relieved. In a nutshell, nothing catastrophic could happen due to your or my individual actions.”

“Were it not so, then I, prudent as I am, embodiment of circumspection that I am, would not have treated us to this trip through time at thy request merely because I desired Mister Donut.”

“Yup. Whatever anyone says, there’s no one as prudent and circumspect as you.”

“Though that Aloha brat did absolutely forbid me.”

“Whaaaaat?!”

I was so shaken that, once again, my comeback was a mess.

But I think we can overlook that, given just how shocking Shinobu’s declaration was.

“Wha? Wha? Wha? You did something Oshino absolutely told you not to?! Like it was nothing?!”

“I did, but so what-nyon?”

“No cutesiness! What character are you, even?”

Don’t be flippant, not in a scene where things seem like they’re about to get really serious.

We can conduct this conversation with just a touch more urgency.

“Aye, the Aloha brat forbade it, and so I refrained from it. But now the Aloha brat is gone, so ’tis fine.”

“You think like an insect, you know.”

Are you more mosquito than vampire?

You’re so poorly wired you lack the capacity for thought altogether.

Even slime molds think things over more than you do.

I helplessly and pointlessly gazed at our surroundings.

At the world of the past.

At this world about which I now knew the terrifying truth, that Oshino had absolutely forbidden our coming here.

“Are you for real? When that guy said don’t do something, he tended to be right. You’ve got that innocent smile on your face like you don’t think for a second that you did anything wrong, but let me ask you, just to be sure. Do you understand what you’ve done?”

“I do not.”

“Right! You do not! Thank you very much. But I do. I do, okay? And I don’t blame you. I do not blame you.”

She couldn’t help it, being an idiot.

After almost half a year together since spring break, it finally sank in. Very sorry it took me so long to comprehend something so painfully self-evident.

You’re a complete idiot.

Since long before you became a little girl.

Not because I influenced you or anything.

“Um, did Oshino say anything else? About why you absolutely mustn’t try?”

“I am not certain. Like as not he did, but if he did, I no longer recall it. Hence I surmise ’tis that history might be irrevocably altered if something dire doth happen.”

“…”

“Rest easy. ’Twas because of people like thee that they concocted the tale of Chicken Little, ye fool. Thou hast said it thyself, dost thou truly think that something dire could come of our paltry individual actions?”

“I guess not… But for my reference, when you say dire, what does that actually mean? Give me an example.”

“Something irrevocable… Dropping a nuclear bomb on this nation’s center of governance, for instance… Though perhaps from a global perspective, ’tis perfectly revocable.”

“Not likely. One whole state, gone.”

“Countries disappear from this planet often enough.”

“…Whenever you drift into satire, the conversation turns heavy real fast.”

“I have seen so many disappear with mine own eyes. But, aye, if something on the level of the destruction of a star were to occur, then history might be greatly altered. If we extinguished the sun, for instance.”

“…Okay.”

Good enough, let’s leave it at that.

If history wouldn’t change unless we did something of that magnitude, we were solidly in no-need-to-worry territory.

A high school student who couldn’t do his summer homework satisfactorily and a little blond girl who loves Mister Donut─we’d never disturb anything on a stellar scale.

Even if we did, it still might not affect history. Our galaxy itself is small potatoes from the perspective of the ever-expanding universe.

Thus our apprehensions were dispelled─fools that we were.

In the end, we’d forgotten.

That Shinobu Oshino was a singular, legendary vampire with the power to distort reality─that I was a singular thrall who had under my belt a “miraculous” victory over that vampire.

That we were a fearsome two-man cell who could very well change the world.

History. The universe. Fate itself.

It’s not the sort of thing you say about yourself, but if I do say so myself─silly me, I’d completely forgotten.