Monogatari Series - Volume 9 - Chapter 1.11

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And yet, this might be an appropriate time to say, “God works in mysterious ways” (although honestly I don’t care for that saying) because thanks to that police box we learned the locations of both Mrs. Tsunade’s house and the Hachikuji place.

There wasn’t much to it. I asked the officer on duty, “Excuse me, I was wondering if you could give me directions.”

No tricks, just a request for assistance. Rather than a desperate, high-stakes gamble, it felt more like there was nothing to lose, like my approach was more a gag than anything, but the policewoman quickly responded, “Mrs. Tsunade’s place? Let me see…”

I thought, For real? but realized that this was a time when people were terribly free with personal information, at least in comparison with now (the present).

“Things are really tough for poor Mrs. Tsunade, aren’t they? After the divorce, she seemed to age overnight. She puts on a brave act, but you can see the weariness in her face. No surprise there, that woman really loves her only daughter. Now what was her name? Give me a second, I’ll remember. I’ve got a great memory, comes with the territory. Mayoi, that’s it. Cute kid, but it seems like she never comes to visit. Well, I’m a neutral party, and I don’t want to criticize the father, but…”

I listened as she went on and on like that.

For almost an hour.

In the course of which I became an expert in the internal affairs of the Hachikuji (that is, the Tsunade) family.

No matter how lax protections were for personal info during these years, the policewoman’s lips were a little too loose.

She’d be liable to be sued in the present.

“By the way, what’s your relationship to the Tsunades?” she asked at the very end, finally minding her duties.

And my response?

“I’m a friend,” I said. “A friend of Mayoi’s.”

…I tried to play it cool, but sensing the policewoman narrowing her eyes at the suspicious profile of a high school student claiming to be friends with a very young girl, I beat it as fast as I could.

The pell-mell retreat of a half-vampire boy.

Not the sort of thing you see every day.

“All right, that policewoman drew me a map of the neighborhood! With this I’m invincible. Like Mario after he gets a star in Super Mario Brothers!”

“Is thine analogy so vivid that thou must utter it so forcefully?”

The pell-mell flight came to an end─at that park.

The park with the name I couldn’t read.

We sat down on a bench and opened up the (really excellent) hand-drawn map, and while we were perusing it, Shinobu asked, “Which came first, Super Nintendo or Super Mario?”

“Mm?”

No, hang on.

I got confused for a second, but it’s obviously Super Mario.

In fact, it might even be that Super Nintendo was Super Nintendo because of Super Mario.

“At any rate,” Shinobu said, “one cannot but admire the sensibilities of those who refer to the Super Nintendo as the SNES… I ever wished that mine own former name might be abbreviated in some similarly ingenious fashion…”

“You mean that one?” I’d sworn never to call her by that name again, so I ended up just using a vague demonstrative.

“Heh, a vampire who hath forgotten her true name…”

“Don’t try to make it sound cool.”

She just had a bad memory.

We were checking the map as we exchanged this idle banter.

Mrs. Tsunade’s house.

And Hachikuji’s house.

“They’re not as far apart as I thought… It might be kind of tough on the legs of an elementary school kid, but you wouldn’t even need a bicycle to cover this distance.”

At least I was liberated from worrying what to do if she’d taken public transportation.

Forced to consider every contingency, I might not know what to do if she’d ridden in a taxi like a celebrity, but if she had, saving her was beyond me.

You’ve gotta be kidding me.

Is what I would think.

“Okay─so all we have to do is find the shortest distance between the Hachikuji and Tsunade residences and keep an eye on the crosswalk between them.”

“Well, I wonder, my lord…”

Just as I was feeling like I had settled the matter for the moment─feeling, to put it simply, like we were over the hump─Shinobu offered me this bitter pill.

Incidentally, she wasn’t sitting next to me on the bench but in my lap.

Her shoulder blade pressed against my chest.

“What?” Would she be surprised if I licked the nape of her neck, I thought aimlessly. “There some problem with my idea? I was also thinking we need to find somewhere to sleep and get ready for tomorrow. Like maybe that abandoned cram school.”

“Listen…” Shinobu suddenly raised her head so she was looking up at me and said, “However short the shortest Tsunade residence-Hachikuji residence route might be, there is bound to be more than one pedestrian crossing betwixt them.”

Up close, I realized afresh how enchanting the little girl’s lips were, and I wondered seriously whether imagining immoral things about them amounted to a crime. Then─

“Oh.” I got her point. “Right, and if we include pedestrian crossroads, the number increases even further.”

“There be no such designation.”

“But a pedestrian scramble is basically a pedestrian crossroads. And if anyone stops to chat in the crosswalk, that’s pedestrian crosstalk.”

“‘Pedestrian crosstalk’… Sounds doubly dull.”

“How about ‘pedestrian crossfire’? Not dull at all.”

“’Tis reminiscent of The Matrix.”

“So you’ve watched that too…”

“And what is more, footbridges are properly termed pedestrian bridges and so form another type of crossing. Beyond which there are also underground crosswalks. Considered together, the candidates for our vigilance reach voluminous proportions.”

“Well… It’s extraordinarily difficult to have a traffic accident on a footbridge or in an underground walkway, and if there’d been an accident of that magnitude in my town, even I would remember it…”

After all, at this time I was a wunderkind.

A wonder child.

“But Shinobu. Why are you so well informed about street traffic?”

“’Twas instilled in me by that Aloha brat.”

“Natch.”

In that case, the question was why Oshino bothered to be well informed about street traffic…but then I should never be surprised that Oshino knew something.

He didn’t know everything, he just knew unnecessary stuff.

“By the by,” Shinobu enlightened me, “according to a 2004 study the number of pedestrian crossings in Japan is 1,725,015. If we limit it to crossings with traffic signals, the number is 987,326. It may overtop a million by the present day.”

“Wow! No way!”

“In truth, I picked the numbers out of a hat.”

“Why lie at this juncture?!”

Just let me be impressed!

Now the rest of her credibility was gone too─not that it made sense to describe aberrations, or vampires, as credible.

“Credibility and Tempur-Pedic sound vaguely alike,” Shinobu said, resting the back of her blond head against me.

“Hmmm.” Girls really smell this good without even wearing perfume, I thought worthlessly, folding my arms in front of my chest. Given the little blond leaning against me, it’d be more accurate to say that I folded my arms in front of Shinobu’s chest. A neutral party would no doubt assume that I was hugging a little girl. “Still, we have to select one of the pedestrian crossings in advance. I only have one body, after all.”

“If ye insist, I shall sunder thy body into pieces.”

“Why would I insist on that?!”

“I wonder if thou wouldst regenerate like a planarian. Should I smash thee to smithereens, we might end up with a hundred of thee.”

“I feel like Hachikuji once said something similar. Hang on, when I really think about it…” It wasn’t because I closed the map, nothing in particular prompted it, but I realized there was another possibility we needed to consider. “When I think about it, she didn’t necessarily take the shortest route from one place to the other. Taking later developments into account, she got totally lost, didn’t she?”

“Ahh, indeed,” Shinobu agreed. “In light of her transformation into an aberration, ’tis more likely that she failed to take the shortest route.”

“But if she went every which way, there’s no way for us to keep a lookout…”

We had to keep watch over every crosswalk in Japan, to exaggerate.

I glanced over at the sign with the residential map in the corner of the park.

On that day, that Mother’s Day, eleven years from now─

Hachikuji was looking at that map.

Alone.

All─alone.

“What do we do? And after we finally pinned down the locations of the Tsunade and Hachikuji homes thanks to Hanekawa.”

“Not thanks to the former class president’s loli-version, ’twas thine own doing. Thou shouldst hold thy head up high.”

“Yeah?”

“Aye. At the very least, ’twas certainly not with that intention that the girl pointed us in the direction of that police box…” Hm, Shinobu hummed with a satisfied and not particularly gruesome smile. “I have hit upon a scheme.”

“Scheme.”

“Aye. I am Secret Schemer Shinobu. A dream collaboration.”

“Since the eras actually overlap in your case, it’s more like plagiarism than a collaboration.”

I mean, first do something about the harsh reality that, thanks to your secret stratagem, we’re stuck eleven years in the past.

Please, please, no more secrets.

Keep it open source, I’m begging you.

Of course, thanks to the stratagem we might be able to save Hachikuji, so I guess I couldn’t fault her there.

“Hearken to my words. We need not tarry at some pedestrian crossing. We have learned the location of the Hachikuji residence, so let us away there to lie in wait, whence we may tail the girl when she makes for the Tsunade residence.”

“Where’s the joke?!”

Her unexpectedly proper stratagem forced an absurd quip out of me. Because I had my arms folded, the accompanying gesture took the unconventional form of grinding my chin into the crown of Shinobu’s head.

“W-We need but tail her and, at every pe-pedestrian crossing gird our loins for action. Thus may we prevent her from falling victim…” It seemed as though Shinobu liked what was happening to her head and she made no move to stop me, going all limp as she continued her explanation. “’Tis a matter of course that tailing a girl of such tender years will appear most suspect to outside eyes, but…here, eleven years in the past, such eccentricities are still somewhat tolerated.”

“Hmm…”

Eccentricities indeed.

Well, eccentric as it may be─it was an excellent plan.

“If thou wishest to ensure that lost lass’s safety with more certainty, we might also set upon her with all our might as she exits the home, and in some way or other instill in her a fear so great that she shuts herself inside, there to remain for the entire day.”

“What do you mean, ‘some way or other’?”

Set upon her?

Trapping an elementary school girl in her home was a level of eccentricity that got you arrested, even eleven years ago.

Probably by that policewoman from earlier.

“But if it comes down to it, that plan isn’t off the table, Shinobu.”

“Not off the table?”

“Well, if it comes down to it. If it does, I’m prepared to be branded a criminal. But that’s going too far, or rather, it’s fundamentally pointless. We’re not just trying to prevent a traffic accident─I want to get Hachikuji to the Tsunade place alive so she can see her mother.”

She wanted to see her mother.

That was Hachikuji’s wish.

The reason she wandered lost for over ten years.

“I don’t know how long that policewoman has been stationed there,” I continued, “but at least as far as she could tell me, Mrs. Tsunade’s only daughter doesn’t seem to have been in an accident in the past couple of years─so this Mother’s Day, eleven years ago, must be the day Hachikuji dies. So after all, that is why I’ve come to this time. If Hachikuji can just see her mother tomorrow, then, with no regrets─even if the traffic accident happens later on, she’d meet her fate with no regrets, and without becoming lost.”

On the other hand, preventing the accident in a way where she doesn’t get to see her mother─probably would mean Hachikuji still getting lost upon dying.

Death itself couldn’t be averted.

If that fate was unshakeable, if it was history─then there was nothing to do but accept it.

However.

What I wanted to avert was the subsequent decade.

“Aye, if we can do this, her transformation into an aberration may at the very least be avoided. So there is nothing for it but to enact Operation Stalker.”

“Change the operation’s name right now.”

“Operation Sneakers, then.”

“Sneakers? Why the hell?”

“Because the etymology of ‘sneaker’ is one with that of ‘sneaking.’ I have heard it said that they were dubbed ‘sneakers’ because one might walk in them without making a sound.”

“I didn’t realize the word was so dodgy…”

I looked down at my feet.

I was definitely wearing sneakers.

No good, I couldn’t look directly at them anymore now that they seemed like shoes from a criminal specialty store.

They didn’t suit me at all!

“All right,” I suggested, “let’s get to sleep early tonight, and tomorrow we’ll wait in front of the Hachikuji place starting in the morning. I wonder if there are any telephone poles or anything that we can hide behind.”

“Aye, there will likely be a telephone pole or some such. Though there be no base station.” But hearken, said Shinobu─her tone of voice didn’t really change, but even without the contradictory conjunction, I’d have guessed that she was about to say something negative. She just had that air about her. “Dost thou understand, my lord?”

“Hm? Understand what? If you’re talking about the repose I derive from embracing you, then yes, I understand it perfectly well. And for that I’m grateful.”

“For that, ye need not be grateful.”

Not every single time, chastized Shinobu.

“Rather, what it will mean if thou savest that lost lass.”

“Huh? What it will mean? Haven’t we already beaten that discussion to death? Enough already. You said a time paradox won’t occur─”

“I speak not of time paradoxes and the like─”

If Mayoi Hachikuji doesn’t become an aberration.

If she doesn’t become a Lost Cow. If she doesn’t lose her way.

“Eleven years from now, thou shalt not meet the lass, true?”

“…”

“Thou shalt not meet her on that Mother’s Day, and thy enjoyable chats, all the idle banter, it shall all be gone. Dost thou─properly understand that?”

Of course.

That much─I understood.