Monogatari Series - Volume 9 - Chapter 1.23

023

Now that our two protagonists have become the prime suspects for unprecedented worldwide ruination, a two-man cell unlike any before or since, it can’t be helped if our readers abandon us in disgust. But even though to shut up now might be the least I, as the perpetrator, could do as a show of good faith, please allow me to relate the subsequent developments, presumptuous though that might seem. I feel a certain duty to do so.

A horde of zombies overflowing all over town.

No safe place for us to land.

I didn’t know if they had any real will of their own, but recalling the circumstances back at Kita-Shirahebi Shrine, it was clear that they would be all over us the second we touched down.

What they would do to us then was less clear.

But when I thought of their fangs, the only sharp things standing out amidst the dripping flesh─yes, when I thought of their vampire-like fangs, their vampire fangs, I started to get an inkling.

Naturally Shinobu and I were hardened veterans. Especially since we had enhanced one another’s vampiric levels, we could probably “plow through” an infinite number of zombies like we were playing a shooting game at an arcade.

But if they were former humans─to say nothing of them being the town’s former residents, then we couldn’t do anything of the sort, just as Shinobu said.

On the other hand, if we alighted once more within the precincts of Kita-Shirahebi Shrine, it was unlikely that we could maintain a safe equilibrium. It would be preferable to avoid being jostled by a huge number of zombies with that talisman at our backs, again just as Shinobu said.

So what did we do, you might ask─carelessly having leapt into the air without realizing that anywhere we would try to land would be a playground for zombies, what did we do? I’m sorry to say the answer is kind of a letdown, which is that we didn’t land at all.

We didn’t land.

In other words, we kept on floating at an altitude of over a thousand feet.

For those of you who are thinking, How long can they really continue a conversation in midair?

I would ask you to recall that Shinobu Oshino can fly.

By sprouting bat-like wings from her shoulders.

Incidentally, I learned later that she’s able to sprout the wings themselves (decorative wings?) even when she’s in her less-than-full-power Easy Mode.

Which is a skill totally beyond my grade.

To actually fly, she has to be in proper Vampire Mode─she can’t do so in her little girl form─but though I say her wings were bat-like, she neither rode the winds nor made use of any kind of buoyancy; the fact is that she remained aloft through sheer strength.

Flapping her wings madly, like a bee.

I didn’t think she would appreciate being compared to an insect, though, so to her I said, Like a hummingbird.

Either way.

Maintaining our altitude at above one thousand feet, we waited out the night.

As protagonists, we were an embarrassment of a two-man cell (The original cover text was a lie. Strongest two-man cell in narrative history, my ass), but in light of the physical and mental fortitude it required for us to remain floating at an altitude of a thousand feet for almost ten hours, maybe we can recover just a little bit of our dignity.

That said, there’s no art to just bobbing there like an idiot (the lack was mine, not Shinobu’s), so over the course of those ten hours we flew around observing the situation on the ground.

Every city, town, and village we spotted was the same. Pondering whether or not to continue on past the borders of the prefecture, we realized that our current patrol could only end in the same despair as our daytime search, so we returned to our starting point.

I thought about telling Shinobu, Fujiko fan that she was, This is kind of like a Perman patrol, but she was so despondent that I decided against it.

Maybe I should have said it precisely because she was so despondent, but─at the very least, it seemed best not to joke around until I figured out what she really meant about it all being her fault…

I think it was the right call.

Occasionally, even I make one─and then dawn came.

As the sun rose in the eastern sky, the zombie horde on the ground simply disappeared. And I mean literally disappeared… I don’t remember taking my eyes off the ground for even a second, but before I knew, they were all gone.

It was almost like someone had set a timer to wipe them out with the coming of dawn. Had they sunk into the ground, or secreted themselves in the shadows? But it seemed unlikely that they would suddenly become so agile upon daybreak.

Whatever the case, Shinobu’s (and my) power dwindled as the sun rose, and we suddenly couldn’t maintain our altitude, putting us in a pickle of a precipitous beeline descent that would have ended with a deadly crash-landing for anyone else. So we were grateful for their disappearance.

I say disappearance.

But they probably hadn’t actually vanished.

They weren’t actually─gone.

They were there─they were everywhere.

We returned to the Araragi residence─walking through an abandoned town where not an iota of evidence remained that, up until a few minutes ago, a horde of zombies had been strutting about the place, we returned to the Araragi residence, and I talked with Shinobu in the living room.

To be precise, I listened to what she had to say.

All in all, the sky hadn’t really been the place for that kind of conversation.

“So─what do you mean it’s your fault, Shinobu? Tell me,” I jumped in without any small talk, still unable to offer anything in the way of refreshments. As you might expect, given the circumstances, I wasn’t holding her in my arms. This was a conversation to be had face to face. “You don’t just mean because you perpetrated a time slip, do you? Because then I’d be complicit─and I was the one who suggested it in the first place, so I’d be the guiltier party. But you made it sound like this was a solo crime─what’s going on?”

“’Tis my fault,” Shinobu said. She sounded exhausted. She’d been flying all night long─but that wasn’t why. “To be precise, ’tis the fault of my counterpart in this timeline.”

“…? By this timeline, you mean─”

In other words.

The Shinobu Oshino from this altered─from this timeline that we altered?

“Aye. Two months previously, the me of this world, a me other than myself, turned the entire human race into vampires─that is what I am telling thee.”

“I still don’t get it, Shinobu. How are those things vampires? Sure, if you define vampire broadly, I guess that could include walking corpses, but─oh, I see. Vampires are also called nightwalkers, right? And those things definitely spent the whole night walking around─though it really seemed like they were just out for a lazy stroll, not doing anything significant. Is that what you mean?”

“Hmm. I fear that both of us are equally confused, so perhaps ’tis best if I start at the beginning. In this case─ah, but ’tis difficult indeed to explain.”

“Equally? Sorry, but I think I’m way more confused. During the day it’s a ghost town, and at night it’s zombie town. All the humans have become zombies, and you keep on insisting that all of it is your fault. I’m confident that right now I’m the most confused person in the entire world─though you and I are the only candidates left, I guess.”

“…”

“Hey, so don’t get all gloomy on me.”

“I shall become gloomy if I wish. Because if I tell thee what I have done, thou shalt likely become truly enraged─of course I realize that cannot be helped, but nonetheless─”

“Quit talking like that,” I said to an irresolute Shinobu, unintentionally interrupting her explanation as she sat awkwardly averting her eyes from me─to a Shinobu who’d never looked that way before. “Don’t hold anything back. Listen, Shinobu. If we’re going to start at the beginning, then I’ve got something to say first. Whether it’s the you from this timeline, or the you sitting in front of me right now…”

I put out my hands and took hold of Shinobu’s shoulders.

Standing up from the sofa, I crouched in front of her so that my face was level with hers.

Staring straight into her golden pupils.

“You and I are one, in body and soul,” I said. “What I have done, you have done, and what you do, I do too. If you did cause this somehow, it’s true, I might get angry, but I will never, ever turn my back on you. I love Senjogahara best, and I respect Hanekawa more than anyone else. Hachikuji is the most fun to talk to. But if I had to choose someone to die with, I would choose you.”

“…My lord.”

“If something is burdening you, don’t take it all on yourself. Share the load with me. In fact, it hurts me to think of you keeping anything from me.”

Shinobu writhed in seeming pain─perhaps I was squeezing her little girl’s shoulders a little too hard. Realizing this, I released my grip─but she no longer kept her eyes awkwardly averted from mine.

And.

“I too,” she said. “I too would have thee by my side, when my time comes.”

“…Yeah. That’s self-evident, you don’t even need to say it.”

If Shinobu were to die tomorrow, then my life could end tomorrow as well.

That vow was already written in stone.

Engraved in my heart.

Deeply, so deeply.

All the way down.

It had become flesh and blood─inscribed in my very bones.

“Hmm… Then indeed, I shall relate it in its proper order. Though, ’tis not as though I did not have some idea all along─’tis not as though a likely explanation did not come to mind. And ’tis not as though the newspaper did not prick my memory.”

“Yeah… Now that you mention it, you did say something, didn’t you? What was it, something about your memory being fuzzy or something?”

“June fourteenth.”

“Hm.”

“At last I recalled what day that was─though I can only think the recollection hath come too late to make any difference…or no, perhaps it would have been too late no matter what.”

“‘What day that was’?”

“I expect thou dost recall it too. It was a most memorable day. Nothing springs to mind?”

“Well, it was the day the world fell apart, right? So of course it was memorable. The night of June fourteenth, or June fifteenth─”

“Nay, nay, ’tis not that of which I speak. I speak of the night of June fourteenth in the real─in the original timeline.”

“I’m still not getting anything─and there was no article in that newspaper that rang any bells.”

“’Tis nothing to do with any article. ’Tis only the date that is important.”

“June fourteenth…the fourteenth, the fourteenth… Let’s see, it was a Wednesday, so that means─the fifteenth was a Thursday, and…” I brought the month up on the calendar in my cell phone, but still nothing struck me.

“…It seems it shall not come to thee,” Shinobu muttered, sounding somehow disappointed.

My total inability to figure it out was definitely disappointing─but no.

Judging from what she said next, Shinobu wasn’t just disappointed that I couldn’t figure it out. How can I put this?

She seemed disappointed─

By what an inherently disappointing person I was.

“If I were to tell thee that June the fifteenth was the day before thy ‘culture festival,’ might that jog thy memory?”

“…Ah.”

So that was it.

Once she said it─once I made her say it, I finally caught on.

Caught on to just how obtuse I was being.

June fourteenth─the day before the eve of the culture festival.

Once reminded of that fact, I didn’t have to try and recall what had happened.

By which I mean, there was no way I could forget.

That day, the day after my very first date ever, with Senjogahara─after our trip to the observatory, and also the day of Tsubasa Hanekawa’s second transformation into Black Hanekawa─and.

The day Shinobu ran away from her home at the abandoned cram school where she lived with Mèmè Oshino─the day I ran all over town searching for her.

And finally, it was the day Mèmè Oshino left our town.

“It seems thou hast remembered.”

“Y-Yeah…”

“Thou art the lowest of the low. Hast forgotten it all, the date of thy first date with thy sweetheart, the date on which that former class president, who thou dost perpetually call thy benefactor, underwent such a grievous experience, forgotten the date I ran away and on which the Aloha brat departed.”

“…”

What could I say.

I’m sure you readers already figured it out and were laughing at me.

Well, maybe you felt too disgusted and just stopped reading.

Yup, I’m glad this came to light in a scene no one is reading.

“Come on, though,” I pleaded, “everyone always says I’m not manly, but I can’t remember important dates the way girls can. I don’t keep a diary or anything─”

“And yet, with so many events occurring in rapid succession, I should think ’twould be one date ye might recall.”

“The culture festival the next day was so fun that I forgot,” I offered in the way of an excuse, but I do sincerely regret it.

That said.

“That said, even now that you’ve reminded me what day it was, I still don’t get it. It’s true that a lot of things happened, but the entire world falling apart wasn’t one of them.”

From my date with Senjogahara to Black Hanekawa, to Shinobu, or Oshino─I couldn’t believe any of it was connected to the destruction of the world. Even if history got altered a bit…

“If anything, I guess Black Hanekawa’s rampage was linked to an aberration… Still, Black Hanekawa was much less out of control than during Golden Week… Then again, she did try to kill me, didn’t she?”

“Aye, and Black Hanekawa is not unrelated, but the important thing is my absconsion.”

“Your─absconsion? But that, if anything, we resolved without incident─”

Wait.

No.

That was only in the timeline that we knew, the one that we experienced─which is to say that in this timeline.

Maybe something happened.

Maybe we didn’t resolve it at all.

“Ultimately, I have told thee little of the details of my absconsion, and thou hast never presumed to ask me. I am grateful for that consideration, and I do not intend even now to give thee a full accounting, but there is one fact that I can no longer keep hidden, which I will now disclose.”

“All right. But don’t act so self-important about it.”

“On that day, I intended to destroy the world if thou didst not find me.”

“It was that big of a deal?!”

No way!

I knew she ran away with some intensely grim resolve, but─I’d never imagined it went that far!

The whole world!

“You think on a massive scale!”

“Well, I was a globe-trotting vampire, after all…”

“A little too globe-trotting. Wh-Why?”

“I was driven to desperation─’twas a fit of pique. If anything,” Shinobu said confoundingly. “Nevertheless, I had lost my power at that time, so could not have accomplished it in any case. ’Twas nothing more than words, thoughts, but…it appears that in this world, things went differently.”

“…”

She’d told me something like that before.

That during the five hundred (actually six hundred) years of her life, she’d wanted to destroy humanity any number of times… June fourteenth had been one of them.

I would never have guessed.

“…? Then, in this world… Hang on, this is confusing, but what you’re saying is that the Koyomi Araragi in this timeline wasn’t able to find you on June fourteenth?”

“So I believe. But, think on it a moment. The first to notice my disappearance on that day was the lost lass, was it not?”

“Now that you mention it…” Apologies as always for my vague recollection of the peripheral details, but now that you have. “Didn’t that day begin with Hachikuji spotting you in front of Mister Donut?”

I don’t remember it too clearly, but I remember bragging to Hachikuji about my date at the observatory with Senjogahara when I ran into her on the way to school that morning.

And that’s when─she told me.

About Shinobu running away from home.

“Because I never heard about it from Hachikuji, I wasn’t able to find you─”

Wait.

Wait, that didn’t mean I wouldn’t have been able to find Shinobu.

Hachikuji did help in the subsequent hunt, but─and this is a terrible thing to say about someone who helped you─in the end, she didn’t actually contribute all that much to finding Shinobu.

And her escapade would’ve come to light sooner rather than later, even if Hachikuji hadn’t told me about it…

So this is my conjecture.

It wasn’t just about that day.

If Hachikuji─if Hachikuji-the-aberration didn’t exist, then never mind June fourteenth, I wouldn’t have met her on that Mother’s Day in the first place─in other words, the Koyomi Araragi of this world was a Koyomi Araragi who’d never met Mayoi Hachikuji.

Which must have had some influence on his (and yes, I will venture to refer to him in the third person) actions, his character─even if only to the slightest degree.

Not just Mother’s Day.

From May fifteenth to June fourteenth.

The me of this timeline missed out on that month of hanging out with Mayoi Hachikuji─and because that’s the kind of me he was, he wasn’t able to find Shinobu Oshino.

And so, at that moment.

At that pivotal moment in the tale.

I must not have been able to look to Shinobu to help me.

“…I see. In that case I probably─got killed by Black Hanekawa.”

This timeline.

Had to be that kind of timeline.

“Shinobu. If you don’t want to answer this question, you don’t have to, so just take it with a grain of salt… Honestly, I don’t even really want to think about the thing I’m asking, but I want to know what you think. We’ve been bound to each other like this ever since spring break, but as such, whether it’s you or me, if one of us were to lose our life in some unforeseen accident, what would happen to the other one?”

Since we were bound to each other, would the remaining one be dragged along on the road to hell?

Then again─

“’Tis the ‘then again,’” Shinobu replied promptly.

While I say promptly, there was no way she didn’t not want to answer─from her expression, it was clearly just the reverse, but nevertheless.

She replied promptly.

“Methinks the Kitty Cat definitely did not understand, lacking in wit as she is, but…that Aloha brat must have understood. Thou too must have heard it. That thou couldst regain thy humanity at any time, if didst but forsake me.”

“…The flipside of which is that if I were to die…if I were to be killed, you’d regain all your power and blossom once more into a legendary vampire─the iron-blooded, hot-blooded, yet cold-blooded vampire, mightiest of all.”

In other words, in this timeline.

Shinobu Oshino─magnificently, auspiciously blossomed once more into Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade.

Like a flower blossoming out of season.

“I didn’t see my granny bike anywhere… Hahaha…”

At that fact─at that reality.

I laughed, in spite of myself.

I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Now I see. The whole if I was going to die with someone, it’d be you vow was on point from that perspective as well.”

Won’t you share this coffin with me?

It was one hell of a proposal.

“Aye. And in this world, thou wert sadly unable to carry out thy vow to that effect─and I.”

Really did bring the world to ruin, Shinobu said.

With a truly grievous expression on her face.

“And by that interpretation, ’twas Black Hanekawa─namely, that former class president─who was my first target.”

Shinobu’s voice was so small as to be inaudible, as though it was the hardest thing she could ever have shared with me.

But─of course.

I couldn’t blame her.

I ought to have been able to prevent it─with a minuscule bit of effort, I could have easily prevented it.

I muttered, “Seems like there’s another way of putting it: this world is the Bad Ending world.”

1. Asking for help.

2. Not asking for help.

I-me chose number one. The me from this timeline chose number two─or, he ran out of time before he could make the choice.

A bad end.

A dead end for Koyomi Araragi.

“’Twas a bad end from the moment thou didst meet me. Directly after she slew thee, I must have attacked the former class president, and then I─I, who had regained the full majesty of my power, brought the world to ruin. Specifically─”

The people of this town.

The people of Japan.

The people of the world.

I made them all into vampires, Shinobu stated vigorously, quite unlike the way she’d delivered her earlier line.

“Made everyone─into vampires.”

“Realistically ’twas only the first few whose blood I myself drank, I should think. But as thou dost know─as thou dost know better than anyone, the creation of a thrall is the creation of a slave. ’Tis the creation of a servant. Because I was on the brink of death when I drank thy blood, I gave thee a certain amount of freedom, but essentially a thrall is an offshoot of myself.”

“Offshoot?”

“In other words, those few whose blood I myself drank became vampires who would bring the world to ruin along with me and continued to drink the blood of the surrounding populace. As zombiism spreads─so spreads vampirism. The vampires so created are also my thralls, and so on down the line. They too become vampires bent on the downfall of the world. And thus they breed like rabbits, proliferating in a geometric progression─and in a heartbeat, the world, or rather humanity, lies in ruins.”

“…”

“Because it began here, this town and the surrounding areas were neatly taken care of, like as not. But in the neighboring prefectures and beyond, ’tis probable that unfettered panic swept the land. If this be a ghost town, ’twould not be surprising if larger cities like Tokyo and Osaka have been reduced to ashen wastes.”

“Well…”

If there was panic on that scale, the Self-Defense Force would definitely be mobilized─not to mention what would happen overseas.

Wouldn’t be surprising if it got as far as a nuclear war.

But.

“But they couldn’t stand up to you─to you and your thralls, could they… Those folks from the church that Guillotine Cutter and Dramaturgy belonged to probably went into action too, but…”

Even if they did.

No matter what action that crew of specialists might have taken─there was no way they could stop Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade at the head of an army.

If anything could stop that legendary vampire, it was the fact that she was─the type of vampire who absolutely refused to create thralls.

Who didn’t propagate.

Only a lack of numbers could contain her threat.

If that vampire, who over the course of her life had only made exceptions for me and one other, were to get serious about creating companions─no, about creating a community.

Something unimaginably terrifying would occur─no.

In this timeline.

It did occur.

“One night to subjugate this region. One day to take total control of Japan. Ten days, perhaps, to dominate the world─”

“Hmm…”

Just like that, huh?

So I guess the entire world hadn’t gone down in a single night─but it had still happened extremely quickly.

Well, rabbits do breed at an incredibly rapid rate… If it began with a few people, let’s say five, those five would lead to twenty-five, those twenty-five would lead to a hundred and twenty-five, those hundred and twenty-five would lead to six hundred and twenty-five, six hundred and twenty-five becomes three thousand one hundred and twenty-five, three thousand one hundred and twenty-five becomes─I can’t calculate past there in my head.

It would reach six-and-a-half billion in a heartbeat.

“And you’re saying that the very first one would have been Hanekawa─so, not Black Hanekawa, but Blood Hanekawa.” Man, I’d have loved to see that, though I probably shouldn’t admit it. “Knowing her, she was probably pretty industrious in turning people into vampires─she might even have taken command.”

“In which case, the world may have fallen in a mere five days,” Shinobu said and sank into silence.

Nope, she couldn’t do that just yet─we weren’t done talking.

If this was all true, then we definitely knew how the world had fallen─and how all of humanity had been transformed into aberrations, a veritable pandemonium unfolding in the night, but─

“Why do those aberrations look like zombies instead of vampires? Considering that they became thralls the same as I did, how did they end up as a completely different kind of vampire? My flesh never dissolved like that. On the other hand, if they’re true thralls, then shouldn’t they be able to fly like you? And while we’re at it, that means that I’m dead, but you’re not, right? What’s the you of this timeline doing right now, and where? The post-destroying-the-world you, that is. Let’s see, you’re here, so─”

“I can answer both thy questions at once.” Shinobu seemed to have her reply prepared in advance, as though she’d anticipated my (naïve, true) questions. “’Tis likely that the me of this timeline is already dead.”

“─Dead?”

What?

Whoa there, hold on.

That overturned the whole premise.

If this whole situation existed because she brought the world to ruin, then for her to be dead─

“Nay, hearken to my words─I died after bringing the world to ruin.”

“…? So you weren’t killed by chemical weapons loosed by the human resistance or something? You’re saying that someone killed you.”

“That goes without saying. There is only one who could slay me at the apogee of my might─none other than I.” Shinobu pointed at herself. “In other words, suicide.”

“…”

I couldn’t tell her, Don’t be ridiculous.

Because from the start, Shinobu─Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade had come to this town in Japan to kill herself.

A suicidal vampire.

But because she encountered me over spring break─because I ended up saving her, she failed in her suicide attempt.

So.

So that was why.

After I died─and after her rage had been spent, there was no reason for her to go on living.

No reason─for her to go on living.

As a literal bloodsucking demon.

“And because I died, all of the vampires in my thrall became zombies.”

“Huh, really? Wait, didn’t you say before that if you died your thralls would become human again?”

“In thy case, bound to each other as we are, aye, ’tis so. For we are evenly matched in the balance between master and servant. Each of us is master, and each of us is slave─but thralls are different. True thralls are different. They are mere slaves, who cannot live without their master, though nor can they die.”

“Six-and-a-half billion slaves…”

The scale was mind-blowing.

What an absolute monarchy.

But if that monarch committed suicide─inevitably, the entire country, the entire world would descend into chaos.

Into mayhem, everybody running riot.

Or─vampiric bloodlust running wild.

“A vampire could become human again by killing you with their own hand… But if you’re dead, there’s no way back. No choice but to let their blood run wild and take its course.”

And the result─was zombies?

The erasure of will.

The healing factor run amok.

Leaving behind only the goal─of destroying humankind.

Which is why they had surrounded me and Shinobu.

Both of us were half vampire, but we were also something like half human─so they’d come to drink that half of our blood.

To turn us both into vampires.

“If so, that’s completely idiotic. Never mind me, but you’re their master.”

“There remains an ontological difference between this me and the me at the apex of my power, so─it cannot be helped. They are the servants of Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, not of Shinobu Oshino.”

“So─even if they drank your blood, they wouldn’t necessarily go back to normal.”

“If they would, I would allow it gladly.”

I had just kind of said it, but it seemed as though Shinobu took it seriously─her voice was full of sorrow.

I couldn’t believe it.

To Shinobu, humans were─some other species, a mere source of drinking water, but in spite of that.

In spite of that.

“I’m sorry,” she uttered that terribly uncharacteristic─ill-fitting line.

To me.

“I never intended anything like this─I only wished to be found by thee. To think that I brought thy precious world to ruin for such a peevish, childlike reason─”

“Enough. Don’t apologize.” Unable to bear seeing Shinobu like that, I interrupted her for a second time. “Don’t blame yourself. The you in this timeline might have brought it to ruin, but that was a different you.”

“A-Aye, ’tis true, but─I am no different from her,” remarked Shinobu, despondent.

Geez...she really was weak in the spirit department.

The fact that this timeline’s Shinobu seemed to have committed suicide only bolstered that impression.

True, even if this timeline was composed differently, I guess it’d be even weirder to actually keep your cool when you literally, without exaggeration, destroyed the world.

I was shocked too.

Not by the fact that Shinobu destroyed the world, but at the existence of a me who let it happen.

That day.

It was very hard for me to accept that a version of Koyomi Araragi hadn’t been able to find Shinobu after she ran away that day, on June fourteenth.

The notion hurt─far more deeply than the fact that the me in this timeline, in this chronology, was dead, seemingly killed, what’s more, by Black Hanekawa─or when you get right down to it, by Tsubasa Hanekawa.

So we were in the same boat─after all.

The guilt was ours to share.

“Just the fact that you feel that way makes me glad, Shinobu.”

“Even so, I cannot rest easy unless I offer thee at least a single rib from my body!”

“Too freaky.”

My fetish didn’t extend that far.

I’d rather the bones stay inside the body, wrapped in skin and flesh…but anyway.

Let’s talk about that some other time.

There was no time for that now.

“…Actually, there’s no such thing as ‘no time for that now’ anymore. In this ruined world, we’ve got nothing but time.”

That’s what I realized.

No reason to hurry.

Literally─not a single one.

“At any rate, Shinobu, no need to apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong, at least not the you who’s in front of me. From now on, we’re going to have to live just the two of us, in this ruined world, this terrifying world devoid of people, this horrifying world of millions of swaggering zombies. Even more than before, we’ve got to look out for each other.”

“My lord─”

“You haven’t done anything wrong, Shinobu.”

It was true.

If anyone did─then it was none other than the Koyomi Araragi from the now-vanished history, who didn’t finish his summer homework, the one who was here now.

In other words, me.