#and it's almost like. that's exactly what araragi would do. and what araragi did do

[sinkableruby]

do you even get how profoundly unsustainable ougi's situation was. do you even get how badly it must have been hurting her. how unhappy it must have been. do you even get how she was doing the exact same thing araragi was, and it was just as sad and just as lonely? do you even get that "becoming herself" was supposed to mean she wouldn't have to be araragi's opposite anymore? was supposed to mean she wouldn't have to be stagnant and in that dark lonely place while he got to move forward, because she was supposed to represent his past? ougi will smile through the most fucked up shit. ougi will grin and bear literal actual death. can you fault me for not thinking she's okay when she's still doing the same shit that almost got her to kill herself? when's the last time you watched tsukimonogatari episode 4. when's the last time you watched ougi dark. when's the last time you really thought about it. tell me. tell me.

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Owarimonogatari Season 2 [Ougi Dark]

Yet again, this took longer than expected, lol. For some reason I’ve been a bit intimidated by how long this might take to watch and write about, even though it’s only three episodes long. But I’m still genuinely excited to see how it goes.

It’ll probably be another few weeks or so before I have time to get back into rewatching the earlier parts of the franchise, but I’ll try and get back into that sooner rather than later.

Thoughts under the cut

PART ONE:

Ooh boy that was a whole lot of talking. Not that that’s anything rare for this series, but it’s almost draining to get through a lot of plot-important exposition all at once. I’m not entirely sure I got all of it, but I think I did.

Starting from the beginning, I thought there was meant to be a recap of sorts called Araragi’s Story, but I guess whoever subbed this didn’t bother with it and cut it out? That sucks. But it probably wasn’t anything super important.

The beginning narration scene by Araragi was really nice, and helped set the mood for this being the final part of the story. Well, final part of the main story, at least. After this we still have Zoku-Owari, Off Season, and Monster Season to adapt, not to mention anything that comes out after that. But you get what I mean.

The OP was nice, but not quite as good as I was hoping for. I think I prefer the Ougi Formula OP over it. I might like it more once the arc’s done, though, since there’s a whole lot of symbolism that’d probably feel more effective with the full context of this arc. Also, it’s still kinda interesting to me how Ougi’s VA’s singing voice sounds really different to her Ougi voice. I’d be hard-pressed to realize that it was the same VA if I didn’t know it was.

I knew that this arc would start with a whole lot of talking as everyone basically recaps the current situation and their motives and plans, but damn that was still a whole lot of talking in not a long period of time. Wow.

A lot of people seem to dislike Gaen, probably because she tends to exist for the sake of giving lengthy exposition like this, but I like her. Something about her whole character just appeals to me, and I like listening to her talk. Her whole casual punk outfit and her smartphone obsession and whatnot are a really interesting contrast with what sort of a character she is, and what purpose she serves in the story. I also love how half the time when she talks, the sky turns rainbow-coloured. In general I love her rainbow theme.

It’s really cool seeing Shinobu in her complete form. You don’t exactly see it often. I kinda forgot that she’s actually really tall. Her playing around with Yotsugi to ‘get back at her’ for all the insults was surprisingly cute.

I should have figured that we’d get more talks about the shrine and the lake and whatnot since that’s been built up for the last two arcs pretty heavily. And, well, a large part of the entire story, really. It’s nice to get one big recap about the main points on it, even if it was kinda hard to keep track of. But I get it. I’m pretty sure it had already been said before, but I kinda forgot that it was Shinobu who destroyed the shrine at the lake originally, so that actually helps make things click more in my head.

It makes sense that they’re deciding to enshrine Hachikuji as the new shrine god to keep her around in the real world, and to help restore balance more. I probably should have seen that as a possibility. Although I can’t exactly blame myself for not getting all of the stuff to do with slugs and snails. That came a bit out of left field.

I knew that Ougi wasn’t exactly the Darkness, but it’s interesting to hear that she’s still trying to ‘perform the same role as the Darkness’. Well, that’s exactly what she’s been doing this whole time, but still.

I’m PRETTY sure I’ve been told what her true identity is, but I won’t bring it up until it’s explicitly stated. Though with the ‘reveal’ at the end of this part, of Ougi being an apparition, I feel like it’s pretty obvious. But even from before this arc it was fairly obvious. I mean, it was always clear that she wasn’t human. She was always too immediately alien, too inhuman, too strange to not be an apparition of some kind. And the fact that she clearly has some ability to mess with people’s thoughts and memories. And that one time in Ougi Formula where she, like, slithered through the air around Araragi’s head. You get what I mean. And at that point it’s not TOO difficult to guess at her ‘origin’. But the whole Darkness thing does kinda throw things off and make it more unclear. At least before it gets shot down.

The weird thing about this arc is that we know in advance that Ougi’s not going to die. Since she shows up in Hana, which obviously takes place after this arc. So that kinda spoils the fact that things aren’t going to go Gaen’s way. But obviously if Nisioisin allowed us to know that in advance, then it’s not going to be much of a big deal in the end. It does make me pretty curious to see how this arc will actually end, though.

PART TWO:

And so the truth comes out! As I suspected. Or, well, as I was spoiled. But even without being spoiled on it, the truth is pretty to guess.

Before I get into talking about all that, I first want to say that I’m so, so happy we got a section with Nadeko. Seeing her again like this is so great. I’m so proud of her. I love that she’s pursuing what she wants to do. She’s obviously grown a lot as a person, which is immediately visible through the fact that she cut her fringe short, since that was always the shield she used to avoid confrontation. I also kinda like how ‘not cute’ she looks in her outfit there. It feels like she’s accepted that she doesn’t have to stick rigidly to ‘being cute’ at all times, and can just be herself. 

The whole section with Ougi and Tsukihi was pretty interesting, and kinda melancholic. I wasn’t really expecting Ougi to be thrown off by Tsukihi’s attitude that much. I’m still not fully sure what to make of Tsukihi as a character. She and Karen just sorta feel  . . . not super fleshed out. Maybe it’s just been too long since I watched Nise. But I still liked their conversation. And it also makes more sense when you get to the end of this episode and get told that she was seeking out Tsukihi because of Araragi’s feelings of guilt and uncertainty about if it’s right for Tsukihi to keep living the way she is.

Getting back more to the start of the episode, I liked the whole explanation about how since Ougi’s entire existence is ‘a lie’, since she’s specifically an ‘impersonation’ of the Darkness, then she herself would become a target of the Darkness once her true identity is revealed, and her identity as ‘a lie’ is upturned. It fits the internal logic of the series. I also really liked the visuals and direction of that specific scene. Especially the part that looked a little like that part in Shinobu Time where it has the side-scrolling painting.

Also I kinda had to laugh at the goddamn ‘fan’ pun. Wow. That was kinda . . . on the nose. I forget if it had actually been established that Ougi was introduced to Araragi as a fan of Kanbaru’s, but it makes a lot of sense now that we know her existence is heavily tied with the Rainy Devil and that whole scenario. So I guess this also helps contextualize the fact that we saw Ougi talk with Kanbaru in Hana.

The fact that Ougi was an apparition created by Araragi was something I knew in advance, maybe since before I even saw Owari S1, but I didn’t know the exact specifics of it, so the fact that she’s literally the representation of how harsh Araragi is on himself was a bit of a surprise. It makes sense, though. I kinda want to get the timeline straight on this one, to remember when exactly Ougi entered the scene. I know that we more or less first saw her in Nadeko Medusa, but we know now that the entire first half of Owari S1 happened directly before that, and I think that’s when Ougi was first introduced, chronologically. I’m not sure, though.

I really like this reveal. At least since it really ties the whole story together, and contextualizes the place Araragi himself has in the story, on both a practical and thematic level. Considering how big of a narrative point his self-loathing and indecision has been, it works really well that Ougi is literally the living representation of that. And the fact that she exists for that purpose helps explain her motives for doing what she does. That is, since Araragi deep down thinks that he’s continually doing the wrong thing, that he’s over-stepping his bounds, that he’s upsetting the natural order of things. I wonder if this also implies that he knew subconsciously that the help he tried to provide for Nadeko in the Snake arc wasn’t really fully beneficial in the end, and that he never really understood her to begin with, and was leaving some serious issues unchecked. Considering how Nadeko Medusa as a story arc is basically one giant consequence for Araragi’s poor handling of Nadeko as a person and her issues, it’d be really neat if that arc only existed because of his subconscious doubts about how he acted. It really puts a spin on how self-defeating he is, if something like that literally only happened because he was afraid that he hadn’t truly helped her. For the record, the thing with Hachikuji was related to the actual, real Darkness, right? Even though the story pointed out how he had his own doubts about her general existence.

The fact that the ‘battle’ between Ougi and Araragi is now framed as an act of suicide is pretty morbid, but as I said, this wasn’t going to be a conventional battle. Seeing Ougi openly begging for her life was pretty depressing. It makes sense that she wouldn’t want to simply be killed, especially not by her own creator. Though, as said, we still know that she doesn’t die, so . . . yeah. This also makes Gaen seem even more creepy, with how casually she’s talking about Araragi needing to kill someone that’s for all intents and purposes a part of himself.

This also puts a kinda morbid spin on the fact that this is ‘the end of Araragi’s adolescence’. One way or another, he has to confront this part of him that represents his adolescence, which is also how he described Ougi at the start of the arc. It’s also worth noting how this ties into the ideas this entire season has been setting up. Like how a fair bit of Mayoi Hell was about Araragi having a walk down memory lane and being able to confidently say ‘yes, I would do all of those things again if I had the chance, even if they might have been mistakes’. As time’s gone on, he’s become more and more able to accept his choices and his decisions, and come to terms with himself as an individual. So in a way, he’s already begun moving past the point in his life that Ougi represents. Which is, I think, part of why she’s become more pitiful lately, more vulnerable. I’ll still wait and see how it actually plays out, but I imagine that, since she doesn’t die, Araragi is going to simply end up accepting Ougi as a part of himself that he doesn’t need to kill. I’m not exactly sure how that’d work, and how she’ll be kept safe from the Darkness, but we’ll see.

The way that this whole scenario is being framed as the end of Araragi’s adolescence reminds me a lot of Utena, and how the movie version of that is called The Adolescence of Utena. Though the thing that reminds me more of Utena was that scene of everyone at the park, completely silhouetted as they lean against pillars while talking. That whole scene was 100% Pure Utena, and I loved it.

Also, I forgot to mention it, so I’ll just say here that even though we knew in advance via Hana that Araragi and Shinobu ended up in their pact together, it was still kinda . . . emotional, almost, to see him spell out that he plans to go back to how they were. And of course, Shinobu herself also said that she wants to go back to being a young girl again. There’s something kinda tragic about the way that they got given the perfect chance to end their already tragic relationship, but they both decided to go back to it in the end. In general, the entire dynamic between Araragi and Shinobu is kinda fascinating. It makes me excited to finally watch the Kizu films.

I’m also intrigued by the implication that if Ougi dies, Araragi will easily find Kagenui and Oshino [I think] again, since she was the one tied to their disappearances. I wonder if we’ll see them again by the end of this arc.

Either way, I still kinda feel like the resolution to this arc has been spelled out in advance by Hana, but that’s OK. This might be the end of Araragi’s adolescence, but it’s not the end of the entire story.

I still also kinda wish they could have aired this as a proper TV anime and stuck Zoku-Owari on the end, but in the end I enjoyed being able to binge watch each arc of this, and it would have been slightly weird to get to a big emotional climax and then have 4-5 episodes of what I think is meant to be a silly epilogue story. But still. I hope it doesn’t take Shaft too long to get it out, even though they’ll have their hands full soon.

PART THREE:

OK I gotta admit that even if this ending played out pretty much exactly as I expected, it still hit me really hard and now I’m kinda tearing up. Ugh. This series really knows how to push my buttons at times.

I figured that the ‘battle’ between Ougi and Araragi would end with him accepting her, but I really liked how it played out. The whole scenario of it, with them talking to each other while the Darkness appears as a black hole behind Ougi was pretty intense and emotional. For some reason, something about the focus on the idea of right vs wrong in this entire season sorta confused me on some level, but it kinda clicked at some point as I realized the pretty obvious point that Araragi’s entire deal is that he hates himself, and constantly feels that what he does is wrong, and tries to figure out what’s right. So it makes sense that this is the culmination of this entire arc of his. That he accepts that he, as a person, is right, and that Ougi, as a person, is also right. What he said about how he wasn’t simply ‘saving Ougi’ by pushing her away from the Darkness, but ‘saving himself’, kinda got to me. As he said, this whole time he’s simply spent his time being saved by others, but this was his time to save himself, and in that way he was able to make an ending for his adolescence.

And then Oshino showed up and I kinda had to fanboy for a moment because seriously I’ve been waiting YEARS for this to happen, I’m so happy about it. Seeing him finally say he respects Araragi, and seeing him say that he won’t criticize him because he’s simply saving himself, was pretty fucking great. And of course we got that little moment to show off that Hanekawa is a complete badass who traveled to the fucking South Pole to drag this dude back just in time. It’s still hilarious seeing her get completely surprise Ougi like this.

I really was not expecting this to end with Oshino acknowledging Ougi as being his niece, but it explains why she’s still around. On one level you could call it kinda cheap, but it makes sense that the solution to the problem of ‘the identity Ougi made for herself is a lie’ is to make it so that ‘the identity Ougi made for herself is the truth’. And since the lie was thus cleared up, the Darkness went away. I really like that her own, individual identity as Ougi Oshino was acknowledged in the end. She deserved it.

I also really liked the narration part where Araragi talked about how he had thought that loving others meant not taking care of himself. It pretty much sums up most of how he’s acted in the story thus far, but it also shows how he’s grown, and realized that he has to be able to love himself as a person.

Not gonna lie, I got kinda teary at the scene between him and Shinobu as they talk about how they feel about each other, and their choice to remain together, even if it means going back to that situation of Shinobu being the dregs of a vampire trapped in a shadow, and Araragi not being human and not being vampire. Something about their entire relationship makes me kinda emotional. The way it ended with Shinobu covering them with her bat wings while she presumably bit his neck was really nice, and kinda bittersweet.

I’m kinda surprised we got half of the last episode devoted to the epilogue, but I liked it. It was a nice way to come down from the pretty intense emotions of the first half.

I’m not really gonna comment much on the scene with Karen because uuuuuugh why, but it was nice seeing him tell her that, even though her idea of what’s right is ‘helping others’, she should also figure out how to help herself.

So I guess we now know what the deal with Kagenui is. I’m glad she’s not dead. So it looks like Hanekawa’s going to look for her now. She really has become an adult. Which, in itself, is a really nice thing to see. She hasn’t been a huge part of Owari in general, but I’ve loved seeing Hanekawa grow up and become a confident, independent adult who can accept all of her imperfections.

I liked seeing Hachikuji being the new shrine god. That was a cute scene. Though it kinda ended in an unexpectedly emotional way, with the point about how the shrine is her new home, which I hadn’t really considered, but it’s a really nice way to end her story, since for the entire story thus far she’s basically been homeless.

The part where Hanekawa realizes that Araragi and Senjougahara are on first-name basis, and teases the two about it, was really great. Seeing Senjougahara get flustered about it was cute. As I’ve said, it’s always nice to see her being an awkward, regular person who’s bad at expressing her feelings and gets flustered fairly easily. And then of course they all got on first-name basis with each other, which was really nice.

It was also nice to get that little cameo from Kanbaru delivering flowers. That was nice. I presume it was more or less a reference to the whole meaning of ‘Hana’. Either way, it was heart-warming to see her get a genuine graduation present for him.

I really, really like the fact that the main story ends with Araragi seeing a random girl who’s presumably about to fall down some stairs, and running off to save her, with Senjougahara and Hanekawa happily waving him off. It’s a really nice book-end to the story, and it helps reiterate the point that Araragi would save anyone, and that he doesn’t regret having saved Senjougahara when he did. And now he has people he’s close to who understand and love him for who he is, and know that this is simply the sort of person he is. And of course we got to see Ougi at the end, which was nice. It was a pretty simple line, but I liked the point Araragi made, that he’s changed as a person, but he’ll always be himself. It’s a fitting way to end a story of someone’s adolescence.

And then we got the scene at the end with Shinobu giving a fairy-tale like description of Araragi’s story, saying that in the end they all lived happily ever after, with Araragi thinking to himself that he can hear her telling that story from inside his shadow, and he’s curious to see where the story goes next. That was just a really nice way to end things.

The ED wasn’t anything super special, but it was a nice image to ends things on. It’s kinda cheesy, but it’s always nice to have these sorts of stories end on the note of the characters graduating.

All in all, this was basically the best way the main story could have ended. It wrapped things up really nicely. Seeing Araragi’s whole character arc reach a conclusion like this as he learns to love himself is really great. As I’ve said before, I’ve technically been watching this series for over three years now, so seeing it come to a close, even if it’s just the end of this chapter, is really emotional. Seeing these characters all grow so much as people has been wonderful, even if there’s some really bittersweet elements like Araragi and Shinobu reentering their tragic, dependent relationship.

As much as this series has some serious faults, I still genuinely love it at the end of the day. I hope it doesn’t take me too long to get back into rewatching it, since I still want to slowly get through that.

[mirroredtranslations]

Karen Ogre - Chapter 6

Wazamonogatari – Nisioisin p. 148-157

[Previous Chapter]

I'm not good at cooking.

I never really did any at home—certainly never on the side of a mountain.

Just the practice cooking I did at school.

And in the Araragi household, we didn't have the type of family environment where we'd go camping during summer break—even less so after Nii-chan became a high schooler.

I'd never actually used the equipment I'd brought with me.

I'd thought that maybe I should bring rations that took less time and effort to prepare, but...

“That's no good! The atmosphere is important in mountain seclusion. Bringing the latest in cooking tools would ruin the mood!”

Tsukihi-chan had insisted.

“Don't worry, I'll give you a meticulous explanation of how to use a mess kit! Meticulous! The only thing I'll let you off not knowing is how to spell it!”(1)

Tsukihi-chan, like me, hadn't been camping before, but in many ways cooking was my unexpectedly survivalist little sister's specialty.

My sister might be lacking in intelligence, but I get the impression she'd be a strong contender in a survival struggle.

I'm sure Tsukihi-chan could procure food from even a mountainside without much fuss—as the Fire Sister in charge of planning, maybe she could set some marvelous traps.

Anyway, following my little sister's instructions, I used the mess kit, the water I'd drawn from the stream, and the portable gas burner to cook the rice—it's just shameful, having such a tough time over something as trivial as this.

It's pathetic. Am I really this incapable of a person?

I wonder if this is what Master meant by “face yourself.” Like, know the difficulty of living on your own... Or like, know what you are unable to do... But those seem like things I could learn without having to climb mountains and bathe in a waterfall.

I'd know if she'd have just told me verbally.

Well, I can't avoid mentioning how much rice I burned, and I honestly would rather not talk about a meal cooked with water that wasn't very tasty, so I'll spare you all of the details—but the smell produced when I cooked the rice was, somehow, not that bad.

I thought so myself.

As did the wild bears, it seemed.

“Wait. Beeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaars!?”

Even at a zoo, one of the things you simply must not do when you encounter a large predator is to panic and start yelling; though I'd known that beforehand, in the end having knowledge is different from putting it into practice, and actually seeing a bear before my very eyes, it was impossible for me not to scream.

I mean, they're goddamn massive.

Bears!

Nothing beats bears!

And these bears were in a group.

There were four of them.

No, wait, wait, this isn't a children's anime; are bears really herd animals? In any case I was ignorant on the subject (no situation would make you more ashamed of your ignorance than this), so I can't say for certain, but it doesn't really seem like they group up and form communities...

However, there is one exception.

Indeed—the case of parents and children.

From that point of view, the bear in the lead would be the mother, and the remaining three smaller (but still plenty big!) bears would be the children.

If they were humans, a mother accompanied by her three children would be a combination that'd give you a sense of security, a group that would make you feel warm and fluffy from seeing it, but because they're bears, things were utterly different.

A bear with her children.

Something one absolutely must not provoke.

That's a bit of miscellaneous common knowledge even an ignoramus like me would know.

And if they were lured here by the smell of my food, that means this family of bears was hungry.

It was the worst of the worst of the worst-case scenarios.

Even worse was the fact that there wasn't enough rice left in the mess kit for me to share with the bears—not even a single grain stuck to the side.

Do bears even eat rice in the first place? Were they just attracted by a nice smell as they went to catch fish?

...Well, whether or not bears ate rice was a secondary concern at the moment; the dangerous problem currently cornering me was whether or not bears ate humans.

Whether or not they preyed on humans.

The scene almost looked humorous, but it was a thoroughly serious one.

It couldn't be more serious.

In the martial arts world, not just in karate, you hear legends of so-called supernatural feats of victory in fights with large predators like bears and lions... but I couldn't even catch a squirrel. There's no way I'd stand a chance against four bears.

I probably wouldn't be able to take on bears at a zoo, and these are wild bears.

In their natural habitat.

When I looked into the eyes of the bears as they looked at me, my fighting spirit, willpower, desire for battle, and my pride as a human being quickly vanished—even I was surprised.

Completely disappeared.

Those eyes were looking at a meal.

At prey—at food.

“Ah,” I said, quietly understanding.

Decisively, I'd been taught the correct answer to the food issue that had been bothering me until now.

That is, an answer I still wasn't capable of thinking of, an unquestionable, obvious answer—in short, that humans are food too.

A natural result of “survival of the fittest”—of the food chain.

Linking and connecting.

A chain reaction of food with food.

“......”

I mean, it's not like I've achieved some kind of enlightenment and graciously want to fulfill my role as one part of the chain by getting eaten.

No way in hell.

I don't wanna die, and I don't wanna get eaten.

I haven't even crossed a single mountain yet, let alone bathe in a waterfall—Master is Master, but why didn't she let me know if there were going to be bears?

Or is it my fault for going off the path in search of water? Maybe it wasn't the bears who came after me, but me who trespassed in the bears' territory.

To think I'd encounter bears instead of demons...(2)

I'd rather meet a demon!

“Dammit! If that's how it is, I've just gotta fight!”

“Are ye a fool? Ye don't 'just gotta fight'.”

Steeling my stomach, I'd clenched my fists and was about to jump at the mother bear, when my feet rose into the air and I fell down.

It appeared I'd been suplexed by someone directly behind me—no, not suplexed.

If I got suplexed onto the ground of a scree slope covered in rocks, I'd die instantly.

That'd just make it easy for the bears to eat my smashed up, oozing brains. Why would someone deliberately make it easier for the bears to eat me?

“How annoying. They'd eat your steeled stomach too, you know. Anyway, at the very least, play dead.”

With that retort, whoever it was right behind me released me from the suplex that they'd stopped just short of finishing—speaking of which, who was right behind me?

Who?

Looking up, I saw she had blond hair in a bun.

An older girl, around 20, sporting trousers.

“H-huh? Before, at the foot of the mountain, I met a girl who looked like a relative of yours.”

“Ah. That's my cousin.”

She declared—so powerfully there was questioning the declaration.

Well, their faces are built similarly, so it's probably true. Although, Blond Bun-san was about the same height as me.

Even if the appearance of bears was more than I could handle, for me to not only enter their attack range, but to try to do some showy pro-wrestling was a huge mistake—but somehow.

Somehow, I was saved—it seemed.

Just like I'd been saved by her cousin.

...Needless to say, trying a desperate suicide attack against wild bears was not within the bounds of sanity, even for me. I could only think that I'd lost my composure.

“Good grief. Getting attacked by bears on day one, you’re just as much of a disaster magnet as your brother.”

“Hm? Onee-san, do you know my brother?”

Blond Bun-san was silent for a little, then replied in a torrent of words.

“Hey now, if ye be hearing auditory hallucinations like that, perhaps ye haven't yet regained your sanity. There's no way a mountain climber ye came across on the side of a mountain would happen to know your brother. And ‘tis even more ridiculous to think I've been ordered by your brother to lurk in your shadow and follow ye around.”

Oh dear, she's entirely correct—well, if there's a beautiful foreign lady, the kind people become fascinated with against their better judgment, as well as four bears close by, most people wouldn't be able to keep their composure.

I mean, this isn't the time for composure!

I'm eternally grateful for her stopping me from thoughtlessly and rashly trying to battle a mother bear, but that doesn't mean the situation has been resolved—this is still a critical situation.

Far from it; the situation has gotten worse.

It's gotten worse and worse.

In a broad sense, me being attacked by a mother bear and her party that I'd invited by my own carelessness (I'd carefully doused the fire, but that had backfired, since wild animals are afraid of fire—as a former Fire Sister, it was an unthinkable oversight) could be explained away as reaping what I sowed; but my goodness, I'd ended up dragging a tourist into this mess who'd come all the way to Japan and just happened to be passing by!

I was overcome with a sense of duty to protect this girl no matter what.

Spreading my arms wide, I stood between the bears and Blond Bun-san.

“Run! I'll hold them back here!”

In my whole life, I never thought I'd be blessed with a chance to actually say a line like “Leave this to me, you go on ahead”.

I even felt rewarded.

Well, in this case, the way in which I'd be “holding them back” was more like “getting eaten”, so that expression wasn't exactly accurate(3)... But, anyway, I'll buy as much time as I can.

This isn't a matter of winning or losing... Hm?

Did Master tell me something like that?

Eh, this is no time to be thinking about that. I'm about to take on four bears; there's no time for thinking!

“Bring it on!”

I yelled, still unable to regain my composure.

Feeling my blood boiling hot, I fired myself up for the fight—but...

As I glared at them as if I could whack them just with my eyes, the mother bear and her party turned their backs on me, and started shuffling away dejectedly.

Calling them “dejected” is a bit euphemistic; actually, they were running away at full speed deep into the forest—all that remained of the bears' backs in my field of vision slowly disappeared into the empty space.

“H-huh?”

“Ka ka! Hey, bears are cowardly animals at heart, ye know. If a human makes a big fuss, that can be enough to drive them away; 'twould seem your angry yelling scared them off. That's by no means just my expert opinion.”

Blond Bun-san laughed—an old-fashioned laugh.

R-right.

Now that you mention it, I may have heard somewhere that bears are cowards... But the idea that they won't approach humans when they're noisy and making a fuss, isn't that just before you get face to face with them?

If a bear is drawn to the smell of food and approaches you, then that doesn't apply anymore, or maybe, if you take use idea from the start, couldn't making a fuss actually end up backfiring? Hmm, but, they did run away when I yelled.

Might be individual differences.

Can't talk about all bears like they're the same, huh.

To think my angry shout would have such power... Maybe my recent hard training had born even more fruit than I'd imagined.

I did achieve total mastery.

Or possibly excommunication.

“Well, be as careful as ye can on your way from here on—mm, I'm on my way back, so I can't go with ye, but I can grant ye this.”

As if she was trying to wrap up the discussion about the bears running away as fast as possible, the older girl handed me a small object—what is this, a piece of candy?

I popped it into my mouth.

“Idiot!”

She slapped me.

Not only have I been suplexed by this strange person, but now slapped as well—huh? Does this mean I still haven't had nearly enough training? Or maybe this person does martial arts too?

She has a great figure, after all.

“Don't put anything and everything in your mouth! This is why ye get your teeth brushed by your brother!”

Hm? Did I tell her about that?

I must have told her earlier that I had a brother, so I suppose that's something that typically happens with brothers and sisters.

It certainly happens in the Araragi household.

It happens.

Anyway, because of the slap, I spat out the object in my mouth.

It wasn't candy.

It was a bell.

Not a handbell—a round bell.

“’Tis called a bear bell. Attach it to your bag. ‘Twill jingle every time ye take a step, so it should discourage the bears.”

Ah, I see.

There are some smart people in the world.

Whoever thought of this was a genius.

Since the motions of martial arts are drilled into the very marrow of my bones, naturally, I have a habit of moving not just without making the sound of footsteps, but without even the sound of rustling my clothes—but now I guess I have to do the opposite.

“And this as well. Even if ye attach the bell to your bag, bears might still come for ye—ye ought not be empty-handed.”

I'd put down my bag for a moment to furnish it with the bell, as she'd instructed, when the next thing Blond Bun-san held out to me was a long, rod-shaped object.

“Do not swallow this, okay?”

'Cause you're not me.

I accepted that condition (the second part was rather cryptic—“'cause you're not me”?), but even if I hadn't been told, there's no way even I could swallow something that big.

What is it, a ski pole?

Even if it's not a “must” item for mountain climbing, it's a tool used by lots of people—you often see footage of mountain climbers on TV with canes in both hands, like they're skiing.

She's lending me one of those?

Or so I thought, but I was wrong.

It wasn't a ski pole—it was a naked Japanese sword.

[Next Chapter]

Footnotes: (1) In the Japanese, Tsukihi says the only thing Karen doesn't have to know how to use is the character 爨 in the word 炊爨 (suisan), which means “cooking rice”. The “joke” is that the character is exceptionally rare and very hard to write. (2) As noted previously, the mountain she's currently on is called “Oniai”, which means “Demon Encounter”. (3) The Japanese uses an idiom for “holding back” that literally means something like “stop from eating”, and Karen says it's more like she's “stopping them by getting eaten”, and comments on the relevance of the idiom to the situation.

[polaristranslations]

Shinobu Mustard Episode 1

001

This spring, Harimaze Kie was a first year that had just enrolled in Naoetsu Private High School and a part of the girls' basketball club, and naturally, she was extremely regretting both of those decisions. She was regretting having enrolled in the university-focused Naoetsu High that had a high standard score, and she was regretting having joined the girls' basketball club that was too Spartan for a school that was supposed to be university-focused.

After all, the Naoetsu High girls' basketball club had previously had a super high-school level superstar, and the team had actually competed on a national level. But, as mentioned above, that senior had already retired, and what remained for the next generation to inherit was simply an intense training regimen.

A sports club with intense training, even though they weren't good.

That was the worst.

It was an ancient style of training that was influenced by images of a golden age—a bloated self-projection of, "we're both human beings, so I should be able to reach her level".

In the first place, this superstar senior had ultimately sustained an injury to her left arm and opted for an early retirement, so a Spartan training regimen was really meaningless, or rather, it could even prove to be backfiring on the team... So why was the club still forcing its members to do bunny hops?

Having said that, she wasn't exactly willing to quit the club of her own accord. If the coach or the captain were to give her the cruel verdict of, "You have no talent so you should just quit," then she'd happily resign with that as the reason. But unfortunately—and perhaps this was also a remnant of the era in which a superstar was a member—the Spartan girls' basketball club had a strong sense of solidarity.

And a strong sense of solidarity meant a heavy sense of collective responsibility.

If quitting of her own accord could end up influencing her teammates in some way, then it was hard to even bring up the subject... If she even said a word of "wanting to quit", then it would stop being just her problem alone.

Even though it was a tradition that couldn't be right, she didn't want to be the cause of putting it to an end... She wanted the evil tradition to come to its natural end, praying that it wasn't made out to be her fault. Stemming from the collective responsibility was a desire to shift the responsibility onto someone else. And probably, the other teammates were also continuing to endure the hard training with similar motives, their hands tied by similar ropes, all being foolish together.

And with that, it was today as well that Harimaze Kie had unwillingly participated in club activities right up until she was allowed to leave, dragging her two legs that ached with unending muscular pain down the dark evening path as she'd done for the past few months.

Her teammates all left in different directions, and obviously the time she left from school didn't coincide with her friends from class (in fact, her club activities had been so intense that she'd fallen out of contact with her friends from class), so she was returning home alone in a way that couldn't possibly be considered safe. She was even wondering if some bad guy wouldn't just come up and attack her already.

Even though she'd be able to triumphantly quit the club if she were to get badly hurt.

Even as she realized her thoughts had gone in too serious a direction, she could no longer control her thoughts anymore... She had become utterly exhausted from taking over the awful legacy that had meaninglessly remained, even as she knew it was backfiring.

Even her grades continued to decline.

It was true that practice was stopped before exams, but she'd found it hard to escape from the unspoken pressure of "training on your own" and "training in secret", and so her first midterm exams had resulted in awful scores that would been unthinkable for her in middle school. And at this rate, her rank for the final exams was sure to fall in the triple digits.

Well, not all of it could be blamed on club activities.

The students that had gathered at this private, university-focused school had simply had grades so excellent it made her embarrassed for having evaluated herself as a prodigy just a few months before... She'd gotten depressed, thinking things like, "Won't I end up becoming the first dropout since Naoetsu High was founded?"

Ah, that's why I want to be attacked.

Someone attack me. Beat me up.

Turn my life into chaos.

It could become an excuse for me to quit the club, and I might even get exempted from final exams... Then I can study while in the hospital and catch up on what I've fallen behind on. That's right, even if I wasn't a prodigy, I should be diligent enough to do that.

I can still redo everything.

Was this way of thinking just escapism?

(Escapism... Did that mean escaping from reality? Or did it mean managing to escape to reality?)

To throw away her hopes and dreams, and focus on reality.

In a sense, that was also a form of escapism... But in any case, there was no bad guy that conveniently appeared to strike her head in on Harimaze Kie's way home. No matter how many times, how many days she prayed.

Ah, then it's fine even if it isn't some bad guy.

It's fine if I get run over by a car at some corner, and it's fine if an airplane crashed onto my exact location... If it can make it easier for me, then anything's fine.

Even if it isn't reality... Even if it's a fantasy.

Like.

Yes, even something like a monstrous apparition—

"This is something I think every time I come to this country, but... There isn't a phrase that makes me less thankful than 'Thanks for the meal'... And saying 'It was delicious' is practically the opposite of delicious."

As she came near a three-way intersection, and as she walked—no, as she painfully dragged her legs while looking at her smartphone to make it even easier for a bad guy to attack her from behind, Harimaze Kie was, very openly, approached from the front.

And, as if a self-introduction was a form of etiquette that could never be forgotten—

"I'm the great Deathtopia Virtuoso Suicidemaster. The death-prepared, death-inevitable, death-certain vampire."

Her hope had been granted. Or perhaps, her despair had been granted.

Thinking that, Harimaze Kie raised her head.

002

It had been a while since I'd been to a hospital.

However, it wasn't that I, Araragi Koyomi, was particularly afraid of syringes, nor did I have a fear of lab coats—in fact, I actually loved them. This is just between you and me, but there'd been one time that I'd made my girlfriend wear a lab coat... We'd roleplayed using a mechanical pencil as a syringe.

Regardless (as much as it made me fall into some frustrations), the reason I'd stayed away from hospitals regardless of anything was that, during spring break when I was still a 17-year-old high schooler, I'd had my blood sucked by the gold-haired and gold-eyed, iron-blooded, hot-blooded, cold-blooded vampire, beautiful enough to send chills down my spine, and spent about 2 weeks as a vampire. And, because of the aftereffects, I had become completely free of injuries and diseases.

I was in such good health that I was almost tired of it.

Or rather, if I found myself getting examined at a hospital, then my aberrant regeneration abilities or superior eyesight could come to light, and I could end up being used as a sample for human experimentation... As a result, I'd even come up with an excuse to skip out on the physical examinations that occurred when entering college.

For the sake of my rose-colored campus life, there was no end to the caution I'd need to take... Regardless, the reason I came to the Naoetsu General Hospital this time was because I'd been personally called there by an adult that I owed more to than even my own parents.

By Gaen Izuko-san.

"So, what do you think, Koyomin? About this patient," said Gaen-san.

In a room on the fifth floor of the fourth ward, she spoke almost as if a doctor would—as if she were asking for my opinion. But I was in the science department and not the medical department, and if we were saying that, then not even Gaen-san was a doctor, either. Although, if it was her, it wouldn't be surprising if she had multiple doctor's licenses... Of course, while I had no intention of pretending to be a doctor at this point, after being prompted, I decided to give the bedridden "patient" a look.

Actually, because the single room wasn't all that big, that "patient" had already been in my field of vision since I'd entered, but it was just hard for me to look directly—I'd averted my eyes on reflex.

It felt like I'd seen something I wasn't supposed to.

The "patient" that was lying on the bed was,

"...A mummy."

While it had been made to wear a patient gown for hospital use, at the very least, it did not seem like a living being—or so it seemed.

"This is a mummy, isn't it? A human one, at that."

When I was a high schooler, there'd been a time that I witnessed something like a mummified monkey, but from the physique, and from the hair that was still left on the head, even if they'd gotten completely dried up, I could tell for certain that this mummy was a human.

Even if they weren't a living human.

They were certainly a dead human.

"No, no, this isn't even a dead human, Koyomin."

"...Um, Gaen-san. Isn't it about time for you to stop calling me 'Koyomin'? I'm already a college student now."

"A college freshman is practically the same as a newborn baby, you know. It was the same for me. I would say, goo goo ga ga."

She was totally unapproachable.

Well, it was a waste of breath. Considering this woman of unknown age, even once I became a fully-fledged adult, she would probably still affectionately call me "Koyomin"... But anyway, what did she mean by, "this isn't even a dead human"?

"It's alive. Still. Even in this state."

Gaen-san spoke without a moment's hesitation—it was a composed, not overly dramatic way of speaking very much like a specialist, or rather, very much like the administrator of specialists.

However, as someone who wasn't even close to being a specialist, it was a line I couldn't overlook.

This mummy was still alive? Really?

I would've guessed this was some kind of sokushinbutsu, some kind of mummified monk, that had been brought from some temple... Although, thinking about it, it would be in bad taste even for Gaen-san to lay someone like that to rest in the bed of a hospital.

"Its heart is still beating, and it's still breathing. Its bodily functions are almost disturbingly normal. Though there's certainly no consciousness, it's not dead yet... If you think it's a lie, you can check for yourself."

"Check for myself..."

Being told that, I nervously reached out a hand to feel the sleeping mummy's heartbeat—but just before I touched it, I was rebuked with a, "Hold on, Koyomin".

"That's a girl, you know. Touching her chest is off-limits. You could at least take the lady's arm to get a pulse like a gentleman."

A girl? Considering it had gotten all dried up, it was impossible to tell the gender of the mummy—however, regardless of whether or not she was a lady, I couldn't ignore the fact that she was a girl.

"...Then, if you'll excuse me."

I touched the left wrist of the mummy. Since she was a mummy, I was worried that she'd crumble into bits if I touched her, so I'd tried to be as gentle as possible, but that dried-up skin was still surprisingly resilient.

And I certainly felt a pulse. Thump, thump, thump.

"I'll just say this right now, but there's not actually any blood flowing—though her heart is still beating, there's no blood circulating."

It's just air circulating—said Gaen-san.

"Just air in a hollow body. Like it's completely empty."

"......"

As I listened to Gaen-san speak, unsure whether the line was supposed to be a joke or a fact, I pushed aside the mummy's hair to carefully check the girl's neck—and, as expected.

Two small holes had been pierced into her neck.

As if she'd been bitten by a snake.

Or, as if she'd been taken in by an oni.

"......"

"Harimaze Kie is the name of that mummy. A female student of the school you used to go to, Naoetsu High... But since she's a freshman that started this year, I don't think she's an acquaintance of yours."

"...Was she attacked by a vampire?"

Though I'd internally gotten flustered at the name of my alma mater suddenly showing up, I confirmed with Gaen-san something that didn't need to be said. It was so obvious that it definitely could've been left unsaid, but even so, I couldn't go without asking.

I gradually began to understand why I'd been called here.

"It seems so. On the way back from club activities, it seems she ran into one with a bang."

"Even though it'd been peaceful."

That was all I could say.

I had no intention of pretending that I understood anything.

However, everything started when I was attacked by a vampire during that spring break—the turmoil that ensued should have been brought to an end with my graduation ceremony, but to think that, just a few months later, a case like this would occur.

Well, it was possible that incidents like this occurred frequently across the world that I just didn't know about—if not for that, then Gaen-san, "the onee-san that knew everything", would be out of a job.

It was a terrible business opportunity.

It was a very niche livelihood—or rather, a niche death-lihood.

"So you're saying, this girl... Harimaze-chan? Did Harimaze-chan turn into a vampire?"

"Well, it seems that she failed to turn into a vampire."

Gaen-san shrugged.

"This is a fairly common occurrence. Successes like your case, Koyomin, are actually rarer. Although, with what happened, from the side of the vampire that sucked your blood, it was a huge failure for her."

Saying that, Gaen-san lowered her eyes to the linoleum that was characteristic of hospitals... That is, to my shadow on the floor.

Of course, there was no response from my shadow.

We were in broad daylight.

"Even though she's still alive, she's just barely not dead... Just a mummy with all its blood sucked out. Not on the verge of death, but still more dead than alive. Is that it..."

Even I could've become like this at that time... However, while a part of me was trembling, another part of me was relieved.

I had no intention of saying that it was fortunate that Harimaze-chan had her blood sucked by a vampire and turned into a mummy where it wasn't clear whether she was alive or not—but, as long as she was still alive, there was still hope.

And because of that, just like there had been for me, there must be a way to turn her back into a human—so the fact that her vampire transformation had failed was a blessing in disguise.

In my case, I had no choice but to do something about it by myself through my own efforts and self-education, but in this case, the omniscient specialist Gaen-san was presiding over it... I wasn't exactly optimistic, but there had to be a way to help this girl out.

"'Help her', huh? Didn't my very own Hawaiian-shirt guy say something about that?"

"...I've already completely forgotten what your Hawaiian-shirt guy has said, but Gaen-san, it's not something you say, isn't it? You don't say anything like, 'You can't help her. People can only help themselves.'"

"It seems like you remember it, though."

Gaen-san gave a sarcastic laugh.

"Of course, I'm here to help this girl, Harimaze-chan. However, Koyomin. If you simply think that a homebody like me being out here from the beginning is 'dependable', then that would be troublesome for me," she said.

What did she say?

"Huh? What does that mean? If you're saying you can't be depended on, Gaen-san, then who else is there that we can depend on?"

"That's a very nice thing to say, but before I explain, let's change locations."

"Change locations? To where?"

"We'll be making our rounds. Since it doesn't seem like you hate playing doctor, Koyomin, let me introduce you to the next patient."

003

It was a mystery how Gaen-san, who was neither a doctor nor a staff member of this hospital, was able to walk around as if she owned the place, but after seeing that a similar-looking mummy had been laid down in the bed of the next room over, I decided to come to the conclusion that the director of this hospital was the one who made the request to this specialist.

With these patients who had had all the fluids sucked out of their bodies and yet for some reason were still alive, if two were brought in in quick succession, it wasn't exactly something that modern medicine could do anything about... It had to be the work of the occult.

"This girl is called Honnou Aburi-chan. Another student of Naoetsu High—however, she's a second-year, so it's possible for even Koyomin to know her."

Unfortunately.

During my high school days, I wasn't exactly the sort that interacted much with my juniors.

Or rather, I hadn't even gotten accustomed to school enough to remember the names of students in other years... If she was currently a second-year, that meant that when I was a third-year, she was a first-year.

It was possible that I'd at least seen her face before, but because she was a mummy, and because she'd been made to wear a patient gown, I had no way of identifying her by her appearance... If I had to be completely honest, I couldn't even distinguish her from the mummy in the previous room.

"Harimaze-chan's mummy, that had been lying on the road, was discovered by a passerby the day before yesterday. Honnou-chan, who'd been found as a mummy at home in her own futon, was discovered last night by her mother."

"One person a day? That's quite a fast pace."

"It's not necessarily one person a day. There could be more that just simply haven't been discovered yet. Right now, it may just seem like only female students from Naoetsu High are being targeted, but there's a possibility this is only two out of a hundred victims."

Two out of a hundred. And that wasn't totally an exaggeration.

As for the vampire I personally knew, she boasted that she could stay alive even if she only drank the blood of a single person every few months, but on the other hand, she still had an appetite where she could suck the blood of all of humanity if she lost self-control.

However, in this case, I suppose I had to consider things based on Gaen-san's conjectures... There was some unidentified vampire targeting female students of Naoetsu High.

Unidentified... No.

The vampire I personally knew.

"Um, Gaen-san. Could it be possible that you're suspecting Shinobu? It's true that she'd been the subject of a rumor among the female students of Naoetsu High once before—"

"No, no, I've never once thought that to be the case. I only just realized when you asked me. It's not for that reason that I called you out, Koyomin, when you're enjoying your college life. I was just hoping to cooperate with you, as you know the lay of the land. So that we can prevent a 3rd victim, or perhaps a 101st victim."

Of course, you aren't a stranger to helping out a girl that you have absolutely no relation to—said Gaen-san, as if she were making fun of my personal history. Although I had nothing to say in response... It was because I got so desperate to help those I saw within range or within reach that I would end up troubling those who weren't within range and weren't within reach.

But, what should I do now?

After suddenly being shown not one, but two mummies in quick succession, and hearing that they were mummies of high school girls, I would inevitably be driven by a sense of moral obligation to help them, but fundamentally, a request made by Gaen-san wasn't something I could accept so readily.

For an adult that I couldn't know the true nature of, in a sense, she was scarier than a vampire.

Seeing that I stayed quiet instead of giving an immediate response, Gaen-san spoke.

"To be honest, the state of the board is such that I'd like to depend on Koyomin, too. A dependable Koyomin," she said. "It's a situation where someone like me, who likes working behind-the-scenes, had to be dispatched, you see. And if that's not enough, I can even say this... Right now, I'm taking measures to call that Yozuru back here."

"Eh... Kagenui-san?"

Perhaps I shouldn't be too surprised at that. However, I was still more than surprised—I was more surprised than I'd been after seeing two mummies in quick succession. At the very least, my reaction to Gaen-san's statement had to be more than what she'd anticipated.

To call that Yozuru back here.

Certainly, Kagenui-san, Kagenui Yozuru-san, was an onmyouji that specialized in immortal oddities, although it was hard to say that she was a respectable specialist. If anything, she was the specialist in this world that strayed furthest from the correct path—once, in my high school days, when I'd worked with together Gaen-san on a job, even in spite of the fact that an immortal oddity had been involved, Gaen-san had stubbornly refused to rely on Kagenui-san.

That meant that Gaen-san was predicting that this current situation was worse than that time.

In that case, was this something I couldn't ignore? It's not like I particularly had any love for my alma mater (in fact, when I'd still been attending school, I'd absolutely hated it), I'd feel guilty about pretending that I was unrelated to it.

Plus, though I had had almost no interaction with students of other years, it wasn't like there was absolutely no one I knew among my underclassmen... If I imagined one of them becoming the victim of a vampire and turning into a mummy, I couldn't exactly keep calm.

"...However, the practical issue is, if Kagenui-san is going to come, then I don't think that really gives me a chance to act. Or rather, I'd probably just become a hindrance to her. Maybe if I were still a high schooler with stronger aftereffects of my vampirism, but due to various reasons, I've gotten a lot more subdued after entering college."

"That's true. Though you were such an enthusiastic boy back then, it makes me feel lonely to see you all subdued like this."

Yeah, yeah.

"However, Yozuru isn't exactly nimble enough in her footwork to come as soon as she's called. As you're well aware, there are some special circumstances for her. No matter how much she hurries, it'll still take a few days until she arrives at this town... And those few days could very well be crucial to the number of victims."

I see.

If we went that far, then I was now a college student with more than enough time on his hands. If we were speaking of nimbleness in footwork, then I was even better than when I was in high school. Even today, I'd voluntarily skipped my algebra course to respond to Gaen-san's summons.

To tell the truth, there were a lot of circumstances with Kagenui-san that made me feel that it was simply difficult to face her right now, but in that case, it was possible that we could end this oddity phenomenon before she arrived at this town.

And, needless to say, doing that was preferable for Gaen-san, as well.

"Oh yeah. If Kagenui-san's coming here, then I'll have to let Ononoki-chan know, as well... Or rather, Gaen-san, aren't you going to inform Ononoki-chan about this?"

"Well, she herself is in the middle of work on a different case. But it's a secret from you, Koyomin."

"?"

I wonder what it is.

It seemed that Ononoki-chan had recently been hanging out with Sengoku a lot, but if that was the case, then it was hard for me to probe into it... Especially after being specifically told that it was a secret.

"It's important to not sweat the small stuff. If anything, this is just foreshadowing for the next installment. Nonetheless, I have no intention of pressuring you to work with me like I'd done before. If you can state in minute detail a legitimate reason as to why you'd like to flatly refuse getting involved with an incident that could possibly be traumatic, then I'll quickly drop the matter. If that happens, I'll call Kaiki."

"Leave it to me!"

No matter how I saw it, it didn't make sense for Gaen-san to think that that con man would make his entry for a phenomenon of this type, but if she brought out that name anyway, then I didn't really have a choice in the matter.

If it was to keep him as far from this town as possible, I'd do anything.

Con men were prohibited from entering this town.

"Well, con men are prohibited from most towns. Of course, I won't have you be working for free. In exchange for the considerable risk you're about to take, Koyomin, this friendly onee-san will be sure to offer the right amount of compensation."

A considerable risk, you say?

Well, it was quite likely that I would end up facing off against a vampire, and it wasn't like I could nonchalantly linger in safe zones... Not to mention, if I was going to get involved in a case estimated to be more dangerous than the revival of Shishirui Seishirou, I would need to be prepared for that much.

However, if you asked me whether or not I wanted compensation that corresponded to that level of risk, then honestly speaking, I didn't really want it... Frankly, receiving anything from Gaen-san was scary.

The deeper our relations or obligations get, the further into the depths I'd fall.

Being called out each and every time like this was almost like not being able to graduate from high school no matter how much time passed—but as I thought about it like that, Gaen-san spoke as if she'd accurately guessed the contents of my mind.

"If you decide to cooperate in the resolution of this oddity phenomenon, Koyomin... Until you graduate from college, that is, for the next four years or so, I won't appear in front of you again, and I won't even try to contact you. I swear it. You'll be able to go ahead with your bright and happy campus life, free from oddities and specialists," she said.

"For... For real?"

"Yes, for real. You'll never catch me in a lie or in twintails."

If it was Gaen-san in twintails, then I felt like I'd do anything to see that form, but this was a proposal that was even more attractive than that... Well, in another point of view it almost sounded like she was declaring that she'd cut ties with me, and if she swore that much it could even be a bit lonely (which sounded a bit selfish, even for me). But if it meant I could cleanly wash my hands of a life where I would be spoken to with an air of condescension whenever the chance arose, then there was no better compensation for me.

Well, it wasn't exactly clear how credible an oath made by the senior of that con man really was (it was even possible she'd done her hair up in twintails before), but, well, regardless of whether that promise was there, this certainly wasn't a situation that I could ignore.

All my reservations had been cleared up.

In the first place, for Gaen-san, I wasn't exactly a card that was easy to use. And it wasn't the same as with Kagenui-san. It was a problem of being too nimble in footwork. When it came to not moving within Gaen-san's predictions or directions, high school third-year Araragi Koyomi had been especially bad, if I do say so myself—now that I was remembering it, I had better repent for my behavior back then.

If an incident that forced Gaen-san's hand into using this worthless card was occurring in my hometown, then I absolutely couldn't just overlook this... That's right.

Sometimes, it was fine to help out people I didn't know.

"Understood. I'll do my best to work with you, to the extent that it doesn't interfere with my schoolwork—however, I don't want to cause trouble for my family, so I'd like for you be considerate in that respect."

"Ah. Of course, I can do something about that. I'd be well aware of the relationship between Yozuru and Tsukihi-chan even if I wasn't an onee-san that knew everything—oh!"

Just as Gaen-san managed to successfully gain my cooperation, her cell phone began playing a ringtone—well, considering we were inside a hospital, the thing that received a call could be her PHS, her Personal Handy-phone System, instead. She was an onee-san that carried a large number, with various kinds, of telecommunications equipment.

"Hello? Yeah. Yeah. ...Yeah."

As she spoke on the phone, Gaen-san's tone grew lower with every nod.

She was fundamentally an onee-san with a carefree style that didn't suit seriousness at all, but it seemed that the radio waves had managed to deliver information that could make this onee-san stop smiling.

"I have some unfortunate news, Koyomin," said Gaen-san after hanging up. "A third victim was discovered. Once again, a female student from Naoetsu High."

004

If you asked what would be the most striking difference, or perhaps transformation, between the Araragi Koyomi that attended Naoetsu Private High School and the Araragi Koyomi that attended Manase National University, then the most appropriate answer would be the method he took to go to school. Though I'd fundamentally spent my high school days going to school on a bicycle and otherwise on foot, when it came to college, my hands instead gripped the steering wheel of a car.

It was a Volkswagen New Beetle. It was after grueling hours of hard work at my part-time job that I managed to procure a used one in good condition, and I'd further restored it on my own—well, saying so would make a really good impression, but actually, it was a new car that was gifted to me by my parents to celebrate my high school graduation.

I was really being pampered.

Surprisingly enough, the fact that I so easily accepted that amount of pampering without resisting as part of my rebellious phase could actually be considered the biggest difference, or transformation... But putting that aside, after exiting the hospital, I had Gaen-san sit in the back seat of that New Beetle and headed towards the scene of the oddity phenomenon.

If you were wondering why I had her sit in the back seat, it was because a child seat had been affixed to the passenger seat—my passenger seat was reserved for a certain young girl.

"By appearance, isn't Shinobu-chan about 8 years old...? Though it's not even comparable to her in her complete mode, isn't she old enough to not need a child seat?"

"That feeling of having a slightly older kid fit tightly in a child seat is what I like."

"Mm... That's something you'd be better off not telling other people, Koyomin. Even me, an onee-san who knows everything, would have preferred not knowing that."

As we lightly exchanged such witty banter, we headed for our destination, which, as expected, was the school road to Naoetsu High—it wasn't a place that was too far off from the hospital, so we arrived fairly quickly.

Because it was immediately following the discovery of the mummy, I had thought there would be a crowd of onlookers that had formed or police officers that had rushed in, but the area was surprisingly unpopular... Even if it wasn't the time when people were going to school, could a normal road like this really be so deserted?

It had made me a bit suspicious, but it turned out that that was a result of Gaen-san's arrangements.

A way of keeping people out through some sort of barrier, the domain of specialists.

It should have been obvious from the beginning, but I wasn't the only person at Gaen-san's beck and call at this case—Gaen-san's forte was working in a team, and it could be seen as a good outcome that the search party had already managed to discover another victim that had been mummified in the same way as the two that had already been carried to the hospital.

Already. And yet, too late.

It couldn't really be said that finding the third victim was a good thing.

"I know you have some anxiety around strangers, Koyomin, so I had the search party leave the area, too. So you can perform your on-site inspection at a leisurely pace," said Gaen-san.

I was happy for that concern, but my stranger anxiety wasn't that extreme.

Well, from Gaen-san's perspective, she probably didn't want to introduce a temporary member like me to her subordinates, or her "real cooperators"—I could understand that.

Since my education wasn't very good.

"Even so, there's a limit to putting up a paranormal barrier in a residential area in the middle of the day, so let's move quickly. I expect this to have a strong visual impact, Koyomin, so make sure you prepare yourself mentally for that."

And Gaen-san exited from the back seat of the New Beetle... After being shown not one, but two mummified high school girls in quick succession, why was she telling me this now? That was what I'd been wondering as I followed her out, but immediately, I realized the importance of that advice.

Where the third victim had been discovered was, to be precise, inside some kind of shack that I didn't really understand, built on the other side of the guardrail alongside the school road.

Well, it had probably originally been some sort of wooden structure made for some purpose, but now, it could only be seen as some unidentifiable pile of wood... Though I'd said she was inside, it could at best be seen as some sort of awning, and with this many gaps in the woodwork, it likely would be able to keep out neither rain nor wind.

And, at the dried-up mummy inside it, I was rendered speechless.

Comparing the mummy that had been made to wear a patient gown and been laid down on a hospital bed, with the mummy that had been found in this mysterious incomprehensible shack wearing a high school uniform and collapsed on her side as if she had just dropped dead, the visual difference was striking.

Her shoes had fallen off, her clothes were a mess, and her bag had been thrown to the side.

Those details insistently nagged at me that this was the actual reality of things... Even if it was an oddity phenomenon, it was a reality that couldn't be passed off as fantasy.

There was no distinction between reality and delusion.

I was starting to regret having entered a domain that amateurs shouldn't lay a hand on—if it hadn't been Gaen-san that I'd made a promise with, I would probably turn tail and run.

However, it wasn't good to have my whole body tremble in fear.

In fact, it almost made me want to put on airs like a specialist... I tried to act as composed as possible and began to approach the mummy.

"This one also looks like a failure from a vampire transformation," I said, saying something I'd just learned as if I'd known it all along.

As I'd done earlier in the hospital, I took her wrist to feel for a pulse—and then.

"Koyomin, look out!"

It was unusual to hear Gaen-san shout, but it was no wonder she did.

When I'd squatted down near the mummy, she sprang up as if a spring had been installed in her back, and reached her arm out towards me—no, not her arm, but her finger.

And not her finger, but her nail.

The mummy tried to scratch me—tried to tear me to shreds.

"Wh-whoa! Ah..."

Being held down by a high school girl could be considered exciting and pleasurable depending on the circumstances, but if the conditions were that it had to take place inside an ominous shack and the high school girl had to be a mummy, then it definitely wasn't something I could feel happy about—though I'd carelessly approached the mummy to take her pulse, I'd ended up grabbing both of her arms for different reasons—for self-defense reasons.

I was able to somehow defend myself against the girl's ten unpainted nails, but I couldn't do anything about her fangs—by grabbing both her wrists, that also had the effect of sealing my own arms from being used.

And if the mummy, while holding me down, tried to come and bite into me, it wasn't like I could try and bite into her to defend myself.

Though I'd managed to perform all kinds of different kisses in my life, a mummified girl was way out of my strike zone—but ultimately, it was the work of a specialist that sealed the lips of the mummy that came onto me so passionately, and more importantly, the fangs that glinted within those lips.

Rather than sealing them, it was more like Gaen-san unleashed it—and what she unleashed was a cloth-like curtain that had covered the window of the shack.

And with that, the rays of the sun entered indoors, shining like a spotlight onto the mummy, and stopping her movements—like the opposite of a doll that moved using solar cells, as a result of bathing in the sun, the mummy ceased functioning.

As if her soul had been taken from her—if that was even possible—she collapsed onto me. That in itself was pretty frightening, but it seemed I'd just barely managed to escape from the predicament I'd carelessly stumbled into.

Although, considering that Gaen-san had cleaned up the predicament of this amateur college student with the most minimal of actions, perhaps it could hardly be considered a predicament... I see, even if the transformation had failed, the mummy was still a vampire, and was weak to sunlight.

Come to think of it, the hospital rooms where the mummies had been lying had also had the curtains open... And there were probably various other measures in place in that hospital room to seal the mummies' movements.

Even if they had no consciousness, even if the transformation had failed, a vampire was a vampire.

Even drawing near was dangerous.

"So... Sorry, Gaen-san. For acting on my own accord."

Rather than acting on my own accord, this was the result of me acting pretentious.

It was surprising how little I'd grown... Though I didn't know if getting my blood sucked by a mummy that had failed to become a vampire would turn me into a vampire, this had come dangerously close to eerily reproducing the events of that spring break when I was a 17-year-old.

Feeling ashamed of myself, I crawled out from underneath the mummy... But to that, Gaen-san said, "No, it's a great achievement, Koyomin," with some sort of consolation that I didn't understand.

An achievement?

"The name of this girl is Kuchimoto Kyoumi-chan. A first-year of Naoetsu High. Because of how tall she is, I'd thought she was a third-year, but it seems kids these days are growing very well."

Without showing any more concern for me, Gaen-san had taken the bag that had been off to the side and looked through her student handbook and wallet and other belongings to obtain the victim's personal information—the first mummy had been a first-year, the second mummy had been a second-year, so the third would be a third-year... But there was no such clever progression.

"Um... Gaen-san. What do you mean by it being an achievement?"

"When Kuchimoto-chan went after you to try and scratch you, Koyomin, she dropped the set of flash cards that were in her hand, you see—you're not a high schooler anymore, Koyomin, but you remember what vocabulary flash cards are, right? The pieces of paper that you use to memorize English words."

Without turning to face me, she promptly tossed me those flash cards—of course I remembered. They were a huge help when I'd been taking entrance exams.

I caught them—it seemed Kuchimoto-chan wasn't particularly studious, as the flash cards were almost brand new. Among those flash cards, only the first one had been used, and what had been handwritten on the surface in red pen wasn't even an English word.

"B777Q".

"...? What is this?"

"I wonder. By the way, there was a pen that seems like it could've written that among the writing materials right next to it—the cap of the pen wasn't even on. It was as if, when being attacked by a vampire, Kuchimoto-chan panicked and grabbed whatever she could to try and memorize that vocabulary word."

Gaen-san spoke carefreely as she fiddled with a smartphone with a strap on it, likely the high school girl's—unfortunately, it seemed a lock had been placed on it, which meant the contents of the phone could not be analyzed by even a specialist proficient with telecommunications equipment.

But anyway, the flash cards.

She tried to memorize vocabulary at that point... There's no way.

If anything...

"By the way, it seems Kuchimoto-san was an avid reader, which is admirable for this day and age. There was a work by Ellery Queen in her bag. You know, that Ellery Queen, famous for her 'Challenges to the Reader'."

And that Ellery Queen was famous for her dying messages as well—although, Kuchimoto-san had failed in a vampire transformation, so she was neither dead nor murdered, so the term dying message wasn't exactly accurate—but, "B777Q".

"It's a code that would elate that mystery maniac Ougi-chan. Although it would be impossible to go and depend on her now."

"Indeed. And she is still a student of Naoetsu High. She may even pull us further into the dark... At least during her stay of execution, I'd like to have her stay quiet."

During her stay of execution, huh? It had a nice ring to it.

Although it didn't particularly seem like she was going to stay quiet, there was no way I should further stimulate her curiosity—although, if more students of Naoetsu High were going to become victims, then that dark girl would very likely start acting on her own.

I was at a loss. If I were still in high school, I'd be able to depend on Hanekawa without hesitation, but... No, wait.

"Gaen-san. Will you please give Koyomin a chance to redeem himself?"

"Hm? What's that?"

"This dying message... Well, maybe we should be calling it a living message, but I think I have an idea about how to solve it. Please allow me to hold onto these flash cards for a bit."

"If you're going to say that much, then I don't mind. Living message, huh? How clever. It's common to make a joke that turns 'dying message' into 'dining message', but going for 'living' is fresh. And discovering that bit of evidence so early on is all thanks to Koyomin, after all—meanwhile, I'll be in charge of this."

Gaen-san had so disappointingly left the task to me that it felt less like she was giving me a chance to redeem myself and more like she'd discovered an even more important clue in her investigation—Gaen-san's line of sight was still resting on Kuchimoto-san's smartphone.

To be precise, what the specialist's keen eyes were looking at was not the locked smartphone itself.

It was the item that was literally connected to it, the strap.

"...Is there something wrong with the strap, Gaen-san?"

To an amateur like me, it looked like nothing but an ordinary strap. It had two accessories in the shape of the alphabet letter "K" dangling from it—without even needing to think about it, they were most likely the initials for the name "KYOUMI KUCHIMOTO".

Even if you locked your cell phone, if you left that personal information dangling out in the open, then it felt pretty meaningless...

"Of course, with just this, it would just be cute accessories that you could see anywhere. But if the second victim known as Honnou Aburi had a similar strap attached to her smartphone, wouldn't the story change?"

"Eh? ...A similar one?"

"Accessories with her initials. For Honnou Aburi-chan, it would be 'A H'... The lettering was the same. Of course, it could just be a coincidence. It could be a simple trend that this onee-san past her prime is unaware of."

The smartphone of the first victim, Harimaze-chan, wasn't decorated with any accessories at all, too—said Gaen-san, making a prudent excuse, before continuing with a "However".

"However, if the victims have something in common besides just being female students of Naoetsu High—there's a possibility that that missing link can tie back to the identity of that unidentifiable vampire as well."

005

Gaen-san called an ambulance to transport the third mummy, Kuchimoto Kyoumi-chan, to Naoetsu General Hospital, as the previous two mummies had been. And afterwards, I drove my New Beetle and headed for Manase University.

It wasn't anything like the admirable attitude of a college student to at least attend his afternoon lectures—it was to follow up on the idea I'd had with regards to solving the living message that had been left.

Conveniently, the 5th period course for today was the cryptography course I'd been thinking of—and undoubtedly, Meniko was sure to attend.

Hamukai Meniko.

She was a new friend I'd made in college. Considering she'd become a friend of mine, she was as usual a bit of an oddball, but what was important was that Hamukai Meniko was my first friend in a while to be completely unrelated to monstrous apparitions or evil spirits, urban legends or oddity stories—to be honest, just this made enrolling in university worthwhile.

I was glad I worked so hard to study.

Anyway, when I arrived at Manase University and entered the cryptography lecture hall in a bit of a late fashion, as usual, there was some good news and bad news.

The bad news: class had been canceled.

This was something that happened in college, after all.

However, the good news—there was a single person sitting in the lecture hall, neither reading a book nor playing with her smartphone nor draped over her desk asleep. And the one that was sitting while staring vacantly off into space was the student I was looking for.

"Yo, Meniko."

"Ah. Araragi-chan. Hola. Class is canceled, you know?"

"Hola. Seems like it, huh. But then, what are you even doing here?"

"Because I planned on spending my time here—I guess?"

As if she was wondering for the first time as to why she was sitting in a lecture hall for a canceled class, she responded as if she were playing dumb.

Thinking about it, it had been something like this when I first spoke to her, too—I'd come late to a class that had gotten canceled, and I'd ended up meeting Meniko, who was sitting in the classroom not doing anything.

In short, Meniko was decidedly bad at making changes to a schedule that she'd decided upon—even if a class was canceled, if she decided that she was going to spend that hour in that classroom, she'd move according to that schedule.

She was definitely an oddball. Although not as odd as I was.

But it was thanks to that that I could find her like this—because her personality was like this, it was pretty difficult to make plans over text as a result.

"There's something I want you to take a look at."

Finding it fortunate that the classroom had no one else in it, I took a seat next to Meniko and got straight to the point.

"All ri~ight. I'll look at anythi~ing. If it's a reque~est from Araragi-chan."

"It's about this flash card."

Since it was my first friend in a while with no involvement with oddities, I took special care not to get Meniko tangled up in my various oddity-related affairs, as I'd done with Oikura, while trying to maintain friendly relations with her, but in this case, it probably wouldn't be a problem—or rather, there were certainly many kinds of people in college, and among them, a female college student like this, with such a leisurely atmosphere, that it almost seemed like she was living in a different flow of time, and her hobby was deciphering codes, even when she wasn't a mystery maniac—she was quite an eccentric one.

She'd enrolled as a mathematics student as a result of her code maniac growing intense, and she was a promising ray of light among the first-years, valued highly by even the professor in charge of this cryptography course, although it had been canceled today.

And she was aiming to get a job in the police department's cyber security division or something... So, if I couldn't rely on Hanekawa or Ougi-chan, then I couldn't think of anyone else better than Meniko to ask for help—of course, I didn't reveal the fact that this was, not a dying message, but a living message left behind by a mummy that had failed to become a vampire.

I absolutely wouldn't introduce her to Gaen-san, either.

If I wanted to protect my precious friendships, I had to draw the line there.

"'B777Q'... Hmm?"

It seemed she'd been intrigued by it. It was hard to tell by her facial expression, but fundamentally, if there was something Meniko didn't find interesting, she'd ignore it as if she didn't even see it.

If you took in the fact that she'd so carelessly promised to "look at anything", then her words didn't match up with her actions at all, so it was good that I got her to look at it.

"Flash cards, hu~uh? How nosta~algic. Hm? There's something written on the back, too."

"Huh? The back?"

When I flipped through the cards back in that shack, I had judged that the rest of them had been completely blank, but right, since it they were flash cards, there was a space to write on the back, as well...

I definitely wasn't cut out for the role of a detective.

There were too many things I overlooked.

Nonetheless, when I inspected both sides of the flash cards dropped by Kuchimoto-san that I'd thought to be blank, both the fronts and the backs of almost all of them turned out to blank after all, without anything strange appearing—however, as Meniko had pointed out, on the other side of the very first card with "B777Q" written on it, the numbers "231" had been written in a manner even messier than on the front—"231"?

"B777Q" and "231"?

Absolutely nothing seemed to click for me—but what about the code maniac?

"Yeah. I have no idea."

"So you have no idea, either?"

"Yep. I have no idea. Why Araragi-chan, who's so much smarter than me, couldn't solve such an easy code like this—I have no idea."

So basically, did that mean she solved it?

006

I told Meniko that I could treat her to tea or something as thanks, but she politely declined, saying she had the next lecture to attend—well, that was the case for me as well, but unlike Meniko, I was flexible. The fact that I was not in the least reluctant to skip out on lectures was the same as in my high school days.

And, more simply, I had no time to waste.

Because it was an oddity phenomenon that involved a vampire, I needed to do as much as I could before the sun set—it's good to have a shelter against every storm.

After all, I'd even nearly been torn to shreds by mummies standing on the boundary line of life and death, unclear whether they were living or dead.

If I was going to have to confront the vampire itself—well, since I was under Gaen-san's management, it probably wouldn't develop into a battle, but it would still be better if I could resolve things before Kagenui-san arrived.

As such, I followed my navigation and traveled from Manase University to the Naoetsu General Hospital using the shortest paths possible. After arriving, I called the number of Gaen-san's PHS that I'd gotten from her when we'd parted ways, and had her tell me where Kuchimoto-chan's hospital room was—I'd foolishly wondered if, now that a third victim had appeared, it would be better to put them all in one large room for the sake of convenience, but it seemed Gaen-san wanted to keep them separate.

Well, if those related to the female students (mainly their families) ended up sharing strange information, it could cause a huge uproar—it was probably better to deal with each one of them as its own separate case, with "cause unknown", under the pretense of confidentiality, so as to keep this terrifying supernatural phenomenon behind closed doors and not cause a panic.

Of course, there had to be limits to that, but...

"Hey, Koyomin. You got back pretty quick, didn'tcha?"

Next to Kuchimoto-san, who'd been changed into a patient gown and laid on the bed like the two before her, Gaen-san, who was placing some sort of charm (vampire-sealing?), turned to look at me.

"Did you solve the code? I'd be happy if you said you did. Something a little inconvenient happened on my end, so I'd love to hear some good news."

"Huh. It's pretty unusual for something inconvenient to happen for you while I wasn't there."

"Totally."

Though she wouldn't offer any details, it seemed something truly inconvenient had indeed happened—although, unfortunately, I hadn't been able to return with good news that could make up for that.

Thanks to Meniko, the code I'd been assigned had indeed been solved, but that didn't change the fact that I had no idea what it meant—of course, this was just an amateur's judgment.

Perhaps, if I presented Meniko's solution (decryption) to Gaen-san, a specialist, it would be something immediately recognizable for her.

"My friend, who's planning on majoring in cryptography, solved it in 10 seconds. It was actually a bit too quick to be satisfying, but it was a code that a high schooler thought of, after all."

But it wasn't a code that couldn't be solved.

I put the flash cards on the shelf by the bed and tried to make my explanation brief.

"'B777Q'. If we take it apart, it's made up of a 'B' and a 'Q' with three sevens in between them, but what characteristics do the 'B' and 'Q' have in common?—although, I shouldn't need to start showing off like that in front of you, Gaen-san."

"No, it's fun. Keep going like that."

Even if you encouraged me...

Well, I was happy that she was going along with my self-redemption, now that I noticed it. It seemed she had some good points, when I actually could speak to her like this.

"Well, to sum it up, for the capital letters 'B' and 'Q' that look completely different when written in uppercase, they end up becoming the same shape, but rotated, when written in lowercase as 'b' and 'q'—and, if we think of them having the same shape, then there's a pair of Arabic numerals that also have the same shape."

"That's true. I'm well-aware of it from playing Uno."

"Um, it doesn't matter whether you know about it from playing Uno or not."

It was "6" and "9".

And, as you can see, "6" and "9" more or less had the same shape as "b" and "q"—in other words, after substituting them, we could come up with the equation that "B777Q" equals "67779".

"B777Q" = "67779".

"Oho. I see, I'm following you so far. But what does the number '67779' mean exactly? Do you have an interpretation for that?"

"Though she's aspiring to major in cryptography, that friend, like me, is a mathematics student, so when she sees a number lined up like this, she's the kind of person that thinks of prime factorization first, you see."

"What an annoying kind of person."

"Indeed. However, without even needing to do prime factorization, it should be clear as day that we can split '67779' into three prime numbers. That is, '67/7/79'."

"How is that even clear as day? Something like that is fainter than looking at a ghost."

Gaen-san shrugged her shoulders as if she was astounded.

Even an onee-san that knew everything couldn't know this as thoroughly as a code maniac and a prime number maniac could.

"So? How do you interpret '67/7/79' next?"

Of course, without even needing me to explain what prime numbers were, Gaen-san sought out the next step of the decryption—she was certainly good at using people.

"Well, we had a step where we converted the alphabet into Arabic numerals, right? So it's an orthodox method of doing the opposite now and turning the Arabic numerals back to letters of the alphabet."

"Hm... So is it 'S/D/V'?"

She was sharp.

Yes... "67" was the 19th prime number when you counted from "2". Similarly, "7" was the 4th prime number, and "79" was the 22nd prime number.

"67/7/79" = "S/D/V".

"If she managed to figure that out in 10 seconds, then I can't look down on college students these days, huh. Well, I don't have any complaints so far, but I still don't understand what 'S/D/V' is supposed to mean. You still have more, right?"

"Yes... I'm sure you probably realized this, Gaen-san, but for every piece of a flash card, there's always a backside... In the same handwriting as the front side, the numbers '231' were written."

"I hadn't realized it, though. Don't overestimate this onee-san too much, because I'd hate to disappoint you youngsters. '231'? Since it's obviously divisible by '3', it's naturally not a prime number. Although, among the titles of Maurice Leblanc's works, I think there was something like '313'."

"Since it had been specifically written on the back side, we should take this not as another code, but a sub-key to use as a hint... That is, it could be pointing out the order."

"The order? So, we should take the three letters pointed at by the code on the front side, and put them in the order of '2-3-1', like an anagram? So basically, 'S/D/V' becomes 'D/V/S'..."

"S/D/V" = "D/V/S".

It was likely that, in order to give off an air of perfection, the code had been rearranged to show the three sevens, "777", and this was an operation to put everything back.

Even I thought that "B777Q" looked better than "77QB7".

Putting it all together...

"B777Q" = "b777q" = "67779" = "67/7/79" = "S/D/V" = "D/V/S".

That was it—I was happy that I was being overestimated with her saying "Araragi-chan, who's so much smarter than me", but really, Meniko, arriving at something like this was impossible for me.

However, for a code maniac like Meniko, her decryption only went as far as this—just because "S/D/V" was "D/V/S", it still didn't change the fact that it was completely meaningless.

We could only decipher up to here for now.

However, if Gaen-san continued to say, "I still don't understand. You still have more, right?", then I'd have to throw my hands up—but the onee-san that knew everything stayed silent.

"......"

Without pressing further, and without even stating her own thoughts, she put a hand to her mouth, quietly behaving as if she were deep in thought.

Was there an interpretation that a specialist could make, as I had hoped? Could "D/V/S" be some sort of specialized term used by specialists... For example, something like "Dracula vampire soulless"...

But, as if chiding me for thinking something so stupid, Gaen-san said, "This is indeed an abbreviation, but these are initials, Koyomin. For example—the initials of a name like, 'Deathtopia Virtuoso Suicidemaster'."

"D/V/S" = "DEATHTOPIA VIRTUOSO SUICIDEMASTER".

007

It was an awfully specific name to use just as an example, but it seemed as Gaen-san had no intention of explaining any further, as she said, "Thanks, Koyomin. It seems like we might have something to go off of now," cutting short the conversation with her gratitude. "Give your friend my thanks, as well."

"Ah, yes..."

If the leader wrapped it up like this with that much force, I couldn't exactly go against it... Well, the fact that Gaen-san wasn't explaining it could mean that it was better off for me not to know. At least, for now...

In any case, for now we could put aside the deciphering of the living message that the third mummy, Kuchimoto Kyoumi-chan, left behind... As for me, I was more curious about Gaen-san's gloomy face that she'd shown when I entered the room.

Something inconvenient happened. That was what she'd said.

That's why she wanted some good news.

Even though she had said thanks, it didn't necessarily dispel the gloom from Gaen-san's expression, so I wondered if what I had brought was not good news but bad news. However, I couldn't just pretend to ignore whatever inconvenient thing happened while I'd been out.

"It might have been a bit of an exaggeration to call it inconvenient. Or rather, if it's like this, then I should say I'm glad I called you in in advance, Koyomin... In a way, this is fate. Well, because of the cell phone straps, I was wondering if there was another point in common between the victims aside from just them attending the same school, so I did a little invasion of the girls' privacy."

"When you put it like that, it makes it really hard to understand what exactly you're a specialist of, Gaen-san."

"As a result, I uncovered a completely unforeseen fact. All three of them were a part of the same club."

"The same club?"

Ah, then even if they were in different years, it would still make sense for them to be connected by having the same kind of strap... Although, I'd never been a part of a club, so I'd hardly associated with anyone who wasn't in my year.

Then, it wasn't just Kuchimoto-chan and Honnou-chan, but even the first mummy, Harimaze-chan, that were connected by a common missing link—but what was inconvenient about that?

Wasn't that a good thing?

It seemed much more concrete than the information I'd gone all the way to my college to bother a friend for, and it seemed like a much better clue that would take us a step closer to the resolution of the incident...

"And that club happens to be the girls' basketball club."

"Ah."

I understood. I understood very well.

Because, even though Gaen-san had almost nothing to be afraid of, specializing in all sorts of monstrous apparitions, she happened to have a single weakness, an organization that reminded her of her older sister... The Naoetsu High girls' basketball club.

Gaen Tooe.

That was the name of Gaen-san's sister, the onee-san's sister, and that onee-san's sister's daughter's name was Kanbaru Suruga—currently a third-year high school girl at Naoetsu High, and the former captain of the girls' basketball club.

She was one of the few juniors I'd interacted with—more precisely, she was the junior of my girlfriend, but, anyway, the keyword "mummy" was something that really had a bad affinity with Kanbaru.

And even if that weren't the case, the Naoetsu High girls' basketball club was rather unique... It was on quite a different level for a club that was in that uptight university-focused school.

Even if there were no oddities, it was still an odd organization.

If all three victims were members of the girls' basketball club, then it seemed impossible to just pass off as a coincidence... Although it was also dangerous to assume that that was the source of the incident.

Though I didn't remember when, a specialist had once said this.

Oddities have their own appropriate reasons—indeed.

Even the vampire that sucked out my blood during my spring break as a 17-year-old had inevitably had her own reason for doing so.

And if it happened that this case was also inevitable...

"We'd have to keep digging into it, right? Um, so basically... It would be better if I was the one to do that, right?"

"Right. I shouldn't get any more involved with Suruga, after all."

That was probably what she'd meant by when she said she was glad she'd called me in in advance... Once before, during an incident that wasn't just oddity-related, but also vampire-related, Gaen-san had needed to make use of Kanbaru's "left arm", and had operated under a fake name to do so.

She'd needed to do that much, because it was that taboo for her to step on her sister's shadow.

Though she was someone that was fuzzier than Oshino, she was strict about at least that much.

"Not to mention, Suruga has lost her 'left arm' now—or should we say she 'recovered' it? Really, Kaiki did something so unnecessary. Because of that, I lost another one of my successors."

"...Thinking about what happened before, I feel the same way in not wanting to get her involved. But, well."

I looked towards the bed... The third girl to be mummified, Kuchimoto Kyoumi.

After seeing her dried-up form once again, I knew I couldn't say that.

"In the first place, since it's been a while since Kanbaru retired from the basketball club, so it could be doubtful whether or not she has any useful information."

"Even so, I'd like you to do it. Since she's sociable like her mother, there's no way she wouldn't know even a single one of her juniors—if possible, I'd like to get a list of all the club's members."

"Understood."

And, though I accepted it, I couldn't reject the feelings of reluctance that followed. Because no matter how much caution I took, if I came to her with a weird approach, then Kanbaru would be sure to recklessly poke her nose into these affairs... At the very least, I didn't want a repeat of the events of the previous incident.

I checked the watch on my right wrist, confirming that it was currently in the middle of 6th period at the high school—at this rate, it should be possible to meet up with Kanbaru before the sun set.

Unlike Meniko, since Kanbaru was preparing for entrance exams, it was probably better to set things up over text beforehand... Or should I just handle everything by calling her? Although, considering the circumstances, I did want to meet up and talk to her directly...

"Also, I may as well let you know what I've ascertained after going through her belongings, Koyomin. From the on-site inspection, I had come to the conclusion that this girl had to have been attacked by the vampire this morning, but it turns out that she'd become a victim as early as dawn of yesterday."

"Yesterday? Um, then... She was the third person to be discovered, but Kuchimoto-san was actually the second victim?"

"Yep. That's how it is. She'd been missing for almost an entire day—that's what I learned after contacting her family. Putting it all together, Naoetsu High first-year Harimaze Kie-chan was attacked in the evening of the day before yesterday—and, before daybreak, the vampire attacked another Naoetsu High first-year, Kuchimoto Kyoumi-chan. It's still unclear whether the vampire sucked her blood in that shack or the vampire sucked her blood and then moved her to that shack, but regardless, it was done in the night—as a vampire does, it took a break during the day after the sun rose, and when night fell again, it bit into the neck of the Naoetsu High second-year, Honnou Aburi-chan, in her own home."

The permutation had changed, but, if anything, it broke down the hypothesis, high-paced as it was, that one victim was formed per day—by now, it wasn't exactly good news to hear.

This vampire was quite a glutton.

"Speaking of which, didn't vampires need permission to enter the houses or rooms of others? The second... that is, the third victim, Honnou-chan—wasn't she discovered in the futon of her own room?"

"There are variations to that idea, so I can only say that it depends on the circumstances. There are times when that's the case, and there are times when it isn't—however, if the culprit was some extremely handsome man with a well-proportioned body and an annual income of 500 million yen, like Shishirui Seishirou, then there's probably no high school girl that would not let someone like him enter their room."

Well, I wasn't sure about Shishirui Seishirou's annual income being 500 million yen, but, well, that was indeed a truth, or perhaps divine providence... It was also possible that, as was conjectured with Kuchimoto Kyoumi-chan's case, the unidentified vampire sucked the blood of the girl in an alleyway, turned her into a mummy, and then carried her into her room after that... Although I had no idea why it would do something like that.

"Of course, there might be even more victims, so I'll keep an eye out in this town for more dried-up mummies, not just limited to the female students of Naoetsu High—really, it feels more like searching for an ancient civilization, instead of just an oddity story. It's fortunate for now that the search range is just within this town, but depending on the situation, we may need to expand it even further."

"...Would it help if we asked Hachikuji for assistance?"

If we were talking about this town, then that lost child had become this town's god, so she'd probably be aware of troubles that were occurring in town... It was possible that she knew something.

"Hmm. I wonder about that. There's certainly a high possibility for that, but since she's become a god, that means by now that she's firmly on the side of the oddities."

"I see."

I wouldn't exactly be able to deal with depending on my old friend and putting her in a dilemma between humans and oddities.

Even gods had their own positions to keep in mind—if I appealed to her using my friendship and ended up toppling her from the seat of a god, that lost child could end up falling straight to hell without getting lost on the way.

After all, the road to the Kitashirahebi Shrine had become a throughway to hell.

And that was something that—well, it didn't really pain me to say it.

"Well, in any case, I'll set up plans to meet up with Kanbaru for now. And while I'm at it, I'll go and clean up her room really quick."

"That's a pretty incredible task to just do while you're at it. My niece is really causing trouble for you."

Although she wasn't as bad as you.

Well, I suppose it ran in the family.

"What will you do now, Gaen-san?"

"Though I feel bad because you and the search party are all working hard, I'm going to borrow an open bed in the hospital and take a nap—since I'm going to have to be active at night. No matter how young I dress myself up as, at this age, pulling an all-nighter is rough."

Well, that made sense.

As long as vampires were nocturnal, you'd have no choice but to adjust your biological clock to deal with their movements—even sleeping was part of the job.

Incidentally, a benefit of my aftereffects was that I didn't need to plan my sleep schedule like Gaen-san—it didn't put too much strain on me if I lost one or two nights of sleep. My vampire constitution had been modestly useful during my exam period.

"Oh yeah, by the way, Gaen-san. What should I tell Shinobu about this case? There's no doubt she'll wake up once night falls, after all."

Like with Kanbaru, during the case of Shishirui Seishirou, Oshino Shinobu had also been put to work, but I couldn't say that that weak-minded little girl had been totally useful.

If anything, she'd totally gotten in our way.

Well, I could sympathize with her situation, so I couldn't one-sidedly criticize her for her actions, and I had no intention of doing so, but if this was going to revive her feelings of remorse from that time, then perhaps we'd be better off excluding her from this case from the beginning.

After being sealed in my shadow, she had become not quite a half-vampire and more of a half-slave, but she wasn’t the kind of person that worked the way I wanted her to.

"After all, since they're both vampires, it could end up being someone she knows. That in itself would put her in a dilemma."

"For sure. It could be someone she knows. That would put her in a dilemma," repeated Gaen-san, nodding suggestively. "Well, we can think about that while she's sleeping. For now, focus on getting as much information as you can before tonight."

"Understood."

008

As I stepped on the accelerator on the way to Kanbaru's house, I pondered the possibility that the note that had been jotted down on that flash card was not actually a living message.

"B777Q" = "D/V/S".

It seemed Gaen-san had come up with some sort of hypothesis, and I believed Meniko's decryption had been right—however, for a code left behind just before the victim was transformed into a mummy, I felt that it was a little too elaborate.

Because, even if the cryptography was correct, this wasn't a mystery novel... Perhaps Ougi-chan would be convinced by it, but if you were being attacked by a vampire, or some other bad guy, would you really have the luxury of considering what the 22nd prime number was, or thinking that putting the three sevens together as "777" looked better?

No matter how much of a hard worker she was at school...

To be honest, even for me, who I could only recognize as having made it into college through his math skills alone, counting the prime numbers wasn't something I could easily do in my head, especially when I was driving like this... And if I were in a panic from being attacked, I was sure it would be close to impossible.

Well, it would be possible if it were Hanekawa, or even Meniko... Perhaps we could leave open the possibility that Kuchimoto Kyoumi-chan was one of those rarely seen child prodigies, but looking at those blank flash cards, it was hard to see her as anything but a studious honors student...

Especially if she was a member of the girls' basketball club known for its intense training... It was the same for Kanbaru, but that club had a system where you wouldn't be able to keep up if you didn't do your duties.

In that case, perhaps it wasn't a living message, or even a dying message—wasn't it more appropriate to deduce that this was actually the "signature" of the "culprit" vampire?

Signature, a declaration of crime, a proclamation of war, a self-expression.

It didn't matter what you called it, but it supported the theory of it being "initials" like Gaen-san mentioned briefly, or maybe even carelessly—it wasn't that the victim left behind the initials of the "culprit", but that the "culprit" left behind their own initials in the hands of the victim?

As if—making themselves known.

...If that was the case, the first (for now) victim, Harimaze Kie-chan, or the second (to be discovered) victim, Honnou Aburi-chan, could have something hidden among their personal belonging that involved such a self-inflated signature.

Should I let Gaen-san know about that? No, if it was a possibility on a level that I could come up with, then there was no way that Gaen-san didn't already hit upon it... And even if she hadn't, it wasn't a hypothesis worth waking her up, when she was trying to recharge herself for the coming night.

For now, I would focus on my own duty.

And as I pondered, the New Beetle arrived at the Japanese mansion where Kanbaru lived... I hadn't completely gotten free of the appeal of bicycles, but in the end, cars were on a completely different level in terms of mobility—I barely had the time to guess at deductions while I was traveling.

As if working as parking attendants, my junior stood outside the open gates, still in uniform on the way back from school—but, oh? It wasn't just one junior that was there.

Next to Kanbaru stood another female student, naturally wearing a Naoetsu High uniform as well—by the color of her necktie, she was a third-year, but who was she?

"Let me introduce you, Araragi-senpai. This is my friend from when I was in the basketball club, Higasa. After I retired, she took over as captain."

In a somewhat rushed greeting, Kanbaru introduced her classmate and friend to me when I left my car—her friend, who had been the captain of the girls' basketball club until very recently. I see, so when I let her know about the general idea of my business over the phone, she'd made some arrangements.

What a capable junior. I was unworthy of her.

"It's nice to meet you, Araragi-senpai. My name is Higasa Seiu. I've heard rumors about you for some time now."

"Haha. I'm sure they weren't any good rumors, right?"

"Ahahahahahahahahaha."

I was laughed at in an almost unnatural way. It seemed they weren't good rumors.

"Come inside, Araragi-senpai. No point in standing around here. Grandpa and Grandma are out on a trip, so they'll be away until the day after tomorrow, but even I can at least make tea for you."

"Eh. Um, but, your room..."

"It's fi~ine. I already know about it."

Though I'd been in a panic, Higasa-chan spoke up as if in total understanding—it seemed my capable junior had a capable friend. I felt a bit of relief at learning that Kanbaru had a friend among her peers that could tolerate such a chaotic room—but, anyway, I didn't want to overstay my welcome.

The problem in Kanbaru's left arm had been resolved, and it seemed she was lively and in high spirits, so let's quickly finish up my business here and take my leave—before she found out that I was playing around with her aunt.

"Here, have some tea, Araragi-senpai. I haven't put anything suspicious in it, so drink up without any worries."

"You don't need to add that remark!"

"Ahahahahahahahahaha."

Perhaps she was just someone who simply got drunk on laughter, but it seemed Higasa-chan didn't particularly mind sitting with and relaxing with a senior she'd just met, in this room whose mess seemed almost like a lie—as expected of Kanbaru's friend, she sure was easy-going.

"No, no, I'm actually very shy. Unlike Ruga, who's so boorish."

Although she certainly didn't seem like it.

Also, so Kanbaru was called "Ruga" by her friends...

For a moment, I'd been about to lean into the description of my cute junior as boorish, but in terms of our relationships, Higasa-chan was much closer to Kanbaru than I was, so it would be weird to condemn her evaluation.

"However, Araragi-senpai, you feel like someone I've known for a long time, so it doesn't really feel like we've just met for the first time."

"Really, what kind of rumors are floating around about me...?"

She was speaking as if I was someone like Lieutenant Columbo.

"You were the only delinquent among Naoetsu High's graduates, after all."

So that wasn't just Hanekawa's own misunderstanding?

Aw man.

"Although, just from hearing the rumors, it makes me quiver with fear. I'm so awestruck, so please forgive me if I end up being discourteous in any way out of my nervousness. Oh yeah, and I want to brag to all my friends, so could I please have your number?"

She didn't even hesitate.

Attached to the cell phone that was cheekily yet amiably presented to me was a strap with the letters "S H" as accessories... Hmm, it seemed that she had still left it on even after retiring.

What about Kanbaru?

Ah, that's right, her getting a cell phone was something that happened after she met me—it ended up being like that.

"So... About the girls' basketball club."

"Yes, yes. I have the data prepared right here."

From her school bag, Higasa-chan deftly pulled out a file that looked rather thick—it looked almost like a class's attendance record, but considering the context, it was most likely a register for the club.

"Since I joined the club, it's always been Higasa that kept records of all our activities, you see. If it were me, I wouldn't have even thought to make a list like that, and even if I did, I probably would have lost it somewhere," said Kanbaru.

Indeed, seeing the wretched state of this room that I had cleaned just the other day, I could see that she wasn't just being modest to praise her friend.

Though Higasa-chan had retired after she'd become a third-year, she'd still been present during the recruitment for the club in April, as she seemed to be completely aware of the affairs of the current second-years and the current first-years—however, when I reflexively reached out, she suddenly raised her hands in a banzai and kept the register out of my reach.

Like a basketball player trying to prevent a steal—or not.

"What is it? Nobody said, 'put your hands up!', Higasa-chan."

"Yeah. We-ell, Araragi-senpai. I shouldn't even need to say this, but this is the personal information of a hundred high school girls, after all," said Higasa-chan with a smile, holding the register in the air.

A hundred?

I turned to Kanbaru—and she nodded.

Wow, so the girls' basketball club had a hundred members.

A hundred members just from the first- and second-years... So were there at least fifty from each year? With a concrete number being defined, it put me at even more of a loss than when we had hypothesized an unspecified large number of victims.

Gaen-san had said something like "two out of a hundred", but that should have been just an example...

Well, for a sports club that competed on a national level, it could even be considered a fewer number of people than usual...

"To be exact, it's not fifty from each year. There are 76 second-years and 24 first-years, for a total of one hundred," said Higasa-chan. "So, even if this was something I made personally, if word got out that I leaked something like this, it wouldn't exactly end well for me."

"Right. Yeah, that's true."

I couldn't do anything but agree—I knew that, as someone who'd already graduated, and as someone who'd been part of the go-home club with absolutely no relation to the girls' basketball club, it was from the beginning a rather selfish request to ask for a hundred girls' worth of names, addresses, and contact information.

"Yes. If that happened, my blood will be spilled."

She was probably joking, but just today I'd laid eyes on three mummies with the blood sucked completely out of them, so I couldn't exactly go, "Ahahahahahahahahaha".

"Yes. It's not something to laugh about. It's not just their names and addresses and contact information—it even has their height and weight and three sizes and whether or not they have a partner."

"I'm sorry to take up more of your time, but Higasa-chan, would you mind blacking out those parts for me?"

"Even though it wouldn't end well for me, if I handed these records over to that Araragi-senpai infamous for being a hentai..."

"Infamous for being a hentai?"

"No. I said Araragi-hentai, infamous for being a senpai."

If that was what you said, that sounded even more cruel.

Should I go to Naoetsu High starting now to try and fix my bad reputation?

"Higasa. Being a hentai is my territory. And don't act all buddy-buddy and have fun with Araragi-senpai."

From off to the side, "Ruga" demonstrated the narrowness of her dignity.

Really, I couldn't feel any star power from her at all... And yet, they still called her the legendary ace of the basketball club.

However, if her intention was to protect the personal information of her members as an ex-captain, then Higasa-chan surely would not have even bothered to bring the register to this mansion on Kanbaru's request in the first place.

"I see. Understood, Higasa-chan. If I want to get that register, then you're saying I have to defeat you in a game of street basketball, right?"

"Um, no, that's not what I'm saying."

So it wasn't that? But I'd already taken off my jacket.

"Rather than that, the reason I'm risking becoming a bloody mess to lend you this top-secret register, Araragi-senpai, is in the hopes that maybe you'll be able to break down the current state of the Naoetsu High girls' basketball club."

"...? The current state of the club?"

"Higasa. If you ask that much from Araragi-hentai..."

While I was tilting my head at the rather unsettling wording, Kanbaru rebuked her friend—you're also calling me Araragi-hentai, aren't you.

You absolutely can't lend out the personal information of a hundred high school girls to someone like that!

"No, no. Even you feel some responsibility for it, though, don't you, Ruga? For the girlsbas right now. Perhaps even more than me."

"That's... Ah, Araragi-hentai. 'Girlsbas' is just a shortened form of 'girls' basketball club', and, most assuredly, does not mean the girls' bath."

"Could it actually be you that's spreading around my bad reputation, Kanbaru-kouhai?"

In any case, it seemed that, even between the two ex-captains, they didn't share the same opinion. And hearing that much, I wasn't the kind of Araragi-hentai that would back down so easily.

Not to mention, if there was some sort of trouble in the girls' basketball club right now, then, surprisingly enough, it could have some connection to the cause of the current serial mummification incident.

"Let me know what's going on. After all, I didn't come here to ask for help without doing anything in return. If there's something bothering you, I'll do my best to help."

"I'm very happy you feel that way, but it's enough to have you come over to clean my room every week or so, Araragi-senpai."

"Isn't that actually more than enough, Ruga...?" said Higasa-chan, scowling as if saying, don't say things that will make it harder for me to rely on Araragi-senpai. She then turned to me and said, "It's kinda in big trouble, the girlsbas after we retired," in an informal tone.

Really, what part of you was shy?

"It's not really a matter of there being any specific reason, but the atmosphere feels awful... When I visited the gym to try and be senpai-like and have them let off some exam stress, it almost felt like I put more stress on them instead."

Perhaps it was because of that that this girl was joking around in order to not make the atmosphere around here heavy as well—if so, she had a pretty good personality... Kanbaru had been acting as if she was embarrassed by her friend's behavior, but really, what you should be ashamed of is the state this room is in.

"Does it have to do with them getting weaker? Like, they fell out of the golden age that had the two of you in it."

I probably should have chosen my words better for that, but as someone with a small vocabulary, I couldn't think of another way to express it—they got weaker.

Although, well, that could just be inevitable, in a sense.

In a sense, Kanbaru was just too extraordinary.

To be even called a superstar, she was a student that was far more out-of-place than I was at Naoetsu High, a private school that was university-focused...

"That's true. Since I just worked really hard at my studies to chase after Senjougahara-senpai who I yearned for so much."

"Incidentally, I'm a sports-minded girl who can study without even needing to work hard at it."

Higasa-chan boastfully puffed out her chest, still keeping both her arms raised.

Well, there were those sorts of people, too.

"But I don't think it's because they got weaker. If anything, I'd say that would be even better for them... But, the atmosphere turned bad."

"The atmosphere—"

"The girls' basketball club stopped being a club that's bright and fun with a sense of solidarity," explained Kanbaru, almost unwillingly, in a way that was very much unlike her. "They lost their sense of solidarity—and all that was left was a sense of collective responsibility. And, to be specific..."

Kanbaru Suruga paused, then continued.

"Out of the hundred members listed in that register, five of them have gone missing."

009

According to Higasa-chan, saying that they'd "gone missing" was a bit of an exaggerated take from my rash junior, but to sum it up, among the first- and second-years, there were five members who couldn't be contacted.

Surprisingly enough, I was already familiar with three out of the five names they gave—although it wasn't that surprising.

Harimaze Kie. Honnou Aburi. Kuchimoto Kyoumi.

I could understand up to that point.

Thanks to Gaen-san's deft manipulation of information, and perhaps even an embargo of information, the various mummified girls were being treated as having a "strange disease", so their matters weren't publicized—as such, the three of them were seen from the outside as absent for some vague reason, the actual circumstances imperceptible.

"Gone missing".

Up to that point, it was a pre-established harmony, in a sense, so it wasn't worth getting shocked or taken aback—the problem would be the fact that two more names were included in the group of "missing" girls.

It was a fact that I didn't want to face.

It was a bit premature to assume that both of them had already fallen victim to a vampire, but even if that wasn't the case, five students going "missing" was more than enough to be a huge incident, wasn't it?-although, that was just what I thought as someone who'd already graduated, but, thinking back to when I'd still been enrolled, I had to conclude that that wasn't necessarily true.

I'd already mentioned that I'd skipped class in high school a lot, but it wouldn't exactly be right to say that, at this university-focused school where people "going missing" was rare, everyone but me was an honors student.

If you wondered what happened to the students that couldn't keep up in class, that weren't suited to the school tradition of having the top standard score, that ended up falling behind... Well, in short, you'd say they—"went away".

They'd transfer, or they'd drop out.

Or, like Oikura Sodachi, they'd shut themselves in their own home—they "went away".

What Higasa-chan had said was certainly right, and a "delinquent that graduated from Naoetsu High" like me was certainly rare.

It had to be an exaggeration to say that I was the "only" one, but most of them didn't make it to graduation.

They'd go away—they'd disappear.

As if they'd never been there in the first place—so, at Naoetsu High, becoming "unable to see" a student was not an especially unusual affair.

What the school was turning a blind eye to was not the students that fell behind themselves, but the idea that the school even had students that fell behind to begin with. That was the reality—the real problem.

Well, it wasn't just Naoetsu High. All private schools probably wanted to avoid scandals like that...

But, in terms of the trouble occurring in the girls' basketball club this time, what was different about it was that it wasn't trouble that stemmed from the intensity of class or exams, but trouble that stemmed from training and teamwork.

"Ruga herself will probably deny this, but to be perfectly clear, Naoetsu High's girlsbas was a club made around Kanbaru Suruga, because of Kanbaru Suruga, for Kanbaru Suruga, after all... Even from when I joined, I proactively worked to lead the club in direction, as well," said Higasa-chan. "I don't think doing that in itself was wrong, and it was because of that that we could make it to Nationals, after all. The problem was that, even after Ruga hurt her left arm and had to retire, that arrangement ended up being passed down as is... At least when I was captain, I did my best to fool the club to somehow keep things going, but after retiring in April, it fell apart all in one go."

A goal that was too far, training that was too hard, peer pressure that couldn't be escaped...

Not a sense of solidarity, but a sense of collective responsibility.

"Sports isn't something people should be suffering through, so if it's that harsh, then I feel like they'd be better off resigning, though."

Since the club was formed around her existence, it was hard to deny it completely, but Kanbaru, who was usually a straightforward person, spoke instead with a weak tone of voice.

"Even if they did want to resign, they probably don't want to be the first to do so."

"That's something I can't understand."

"Well, of course you can't, Ruga." And, as if exasperated, or maybe to sidestep the subject, Higasa-chan said, "There were kids that did resign, of course. Not that they sent in with an official notification of their resignation, since they resigned after getting hurt during practice."

Higasa-chan made it sound like they got hurt on purpose to resign... And I couldn't say that I didn't understand how they felt.

Although I couldn't say it was exactly the same, when I'd been studying for exams, I'd been tempted by the idea of hurting myself in order to avoid tackling a problem set for hours on end—of course, because of my vampire constitution, it didn't actually go well, but I could only say that there had been something wrong with me at the time.

In other words, there was something wrong here.

With the girls' basketball club right now.

Because they'd lost the support of the Kanbaru era—or rather, they'd lost the core.

"So, we knew we needed to do something about it, so we had a meeting of the OG third-years and debated over what to do, and, well, it's not like we didn't try to put some of our countermeasures in action, but it was like they backfired, since over the past few days, more and more members have stopped coming to school—and because it looks like there are no problems on the surface, it feels even worse than it should be. Even the ones that are having a hard time feel a sense of fulfillment or get filled with euphoria when they reach a stopping point, so they get stuck in place. And if someone carelessly complains about something, everyone else gets together and enjoys criticizing that person."

"It's hard for us to change that structure from where we are, Araragi-senpai. Or rather, it's because our generation is the one that made that structure in the first place, so what they're doing is almost exactly the same as what we're doing."

"Yeah. The difference is just how they feel about it. ...Um, it's possible that maybe we were wrong to set that up in the first place. Our advisor, who'd lived in an age of corporal punishment and a prevalent pecking order, had given us the opinion that 'it might not fit the current generation, but it was still good in its own way', and we didn't want to ignore that. Well, from the day I joined to the day I retired, I'm pretty sure I had fun every day, right?"

Well, who knows.

It was true that it was hard to deny a process before seeing the results, but the undeniable reality was that, even if they said and did the same things, if the people doing those things changed, then the impression would also change—however, in that case, I could understand how Kanbaru and Higasa-chan felt, about how it would be hard to guide their juniors that were just imitating them.

"The school itself is keeping us from saying anything, so we were basically at our wits' end when you approached us, Araragi-senpai. I almost thought this was a godsend."

They must have really been at their wits' end if they thought being approached by a pervert was a godsend, but anyway.

It was true that the timing was good.

Considering the current era, if it weren't for this timing, I doubted Higasa-chan would've even told me about the register's existence—however, I still couldn't say if this was inevitable or just a coincidence.

If the trouble in the girls' basketball club had a direct connection to the vampire turmoil occurring in this town—for Higasa-chan, she probably would never have guessed that I was already busy trying to resolve that trouble.

"...Hmm."

However, I still stopped to think.

I stopped to compare things with my experiences from last year... or not. What I was actually remembering were the words of my classmate, Hanekawa.

At the time, she had certainly been having some trouble, even though she didn't show it. And Hanekawa Tsubasa, whose worries had driven her up to the wall, had thought, during her spring break as a 17-year-old, that she "wanted to meet a vampire".

It was an earnest desire [setsubou].

It was despair [zetsubou].

To meet an incomprehensible monster that could burst through the immovable walls of reality, of real problems, in a single blow—even after graduating from high school, the Hanekawa that had spread her wings overseas was like that.

In that case, was it really so farfetched to infer that the students troubled over their club and worried about their school life thought, in the same way, that "it would be so much easier if a vampire came an attacked me"...?

And if that strong, earnest desire—or perhaps, that strong despair—was the missing link that connected the victims.

I couldn't afford to not determine the whereabouts of the remaining two names that had gone missing—especially if they hadn't been mummified yet, but no, even if they did already have their blood sucked.

"I got it, Higasa-chan. I don't really think a blockhead like me can do anything about the delicate problems that girls face—but if you can lend me that register, I promise I'll do my best to make sure that no more members go missing among your juniors, at the very least."

"Just you promising that is enough for me."

And though I knew that my words wouldn't give any peace of mind, Higasa-chan still said that and lowered her arms that had been raised all this time, handing over the register to me.

"By the way, Araragi-senpai, do you have a girlfriend?"

010

Nervously wondering about what would have happened if I had said that I didn't, and feeling embarrassed at myself for allowing myself to be teased by a high school girl that I'd met for the first time, I once again headed back to the Naoetsu General Hospital.

I'd ended up feeling a lot gloomier as a graduate of Naoetsu High, but just from the results, I'd managed to obtain the member list of the girls' basketball club fairly easily, so I assumed Gaen-san would still be in the middle of her nap in preparation for the night, and I started thinking about how I might be praised for my quick work, but when I arrived, the specialist was already awake.

Didn't she only sleep for about 30 minutes?

Even though she'd said that pulling an all-nighter was rough, was this woman also a short sleeper, like other eminent figures were...? In any case, I returned to the first hospital room I'd visited that day, containing the mummy of Harimaze Kie-chan, first-year of Naoetsu High and a member of the girls' basketball club, and relayed the information to Gaen-san in much the same way as a carrier pigeon would.

"I see. You're really living out your youth, huh?"

Those were her first words.

Well, for Gaen-san, who was from a completely different era, and had never even attended Naoetsu High, that may be how it seemed.

As someone who'd known firsthand of Kanbaru Suruga flourishing as a versatile superstar, it honestly pained me just hearing about the state of affairs in the current girls' basketball club, but it was useless to try and have those feelings be shared by an unrelated third party.

It was surely the same as how, for a fresh-faced college first-year like me, the concepts of employment or marriage were something I still couldn't understand.

"That's a little upsetting to hear. Even this onee-san had a period where she was in her youth, you know? A youth spent with Oshino and Kaiki and Kagenui... And a youth spent with my sister. Indeed, just as how youth is written with the kanji for 'blue' and 'spring', it was a springtime that turned me blue with shock."

"...I'm very sorry about that."

However, it was absolutely true that I couldn't picture Gaen-san and company in their teenage years... Especially not a teenage version of Kanbaru's mother, Gaen Tooe-san.

"From what you're saying, Koyomin, so far, there's no evidence to conclude that this has anything to do with the girls' mummification, but there is equally no evidence to dismiss it as irrelevant, either. So the members of the girls' basketball team were feeling depressed, wondering why they had to sacrifice their studies and devote themselves to grueling practices, when the seniors that would aim that high were already gone—and perhaps the vampire was attracted by the darkness in their hearts. That hypothesis does have a certain degree of plausibility."

"Oddities have a fitting reason to their existence—right?"

"Well, let this onee-san that knows everything tell you that the period of time that Suruga was a member of the team wasn't necessarily a healthy and beautiful adolescence, either. Putting aside the other girls, it wasn't as if that niece of mine got faster for a positive reason."

Indeed.

The superstar hadn't been a superstar from the moment she was born. Rather, circumstances made it so that she had to become a superstar.

Because she made a wish to a monkey.

"Even if she was freed from that monkey, it doesn't mean she's been freed from the worries of her adolescence. Well, it's the fate of upperclassmen to be bothered by their underclassmen. We'll just have to roll with it in order to uphold the cheap promise you made, Koyomin."

First off, why don't we focus on searching for the remaining two "missing" members of the club?—said Gaen-san, deciding on our plan of action after riffling through the register I gave her.

"Of course, we'll also be confirming the locations of the remaining members, too. Kanguu Misago-chan and Kiseki Souwa-chan—both second-years."

"Hypothetically, if those two have already had a run-in with the vampire, then out of the five victims, there would be three second-years and two first-years."

Not that I could draw any conclusions from that, and I might have been getting ahead of myself considering their mummies hadn't been discovered yet.

But I didn't want to turn away from unpleasant possibilities just because the pessimism would bum me out—I wanted to think of everything I could, so that I could deal with the worst-case scenario.

3:2... That was the ratio of the club members.

"Oh yeah. Gaen-san. I only thought of this afterwards, but do you think it's possible that the living message that Kuchimoto-chan left behind on that flash card was actually the vampire's signature?"

"I'd say it's very possible."

It seemed that it was a possibility that she'd already considered, as she responded to my question in an instant—the initials, huh?

"D/V/S".

"However, there was nothing of the sort in the belongings of either Harimaze Kie-chan here or Honnou Aburi-chan in the next room. Of course, there were no living messages either. But if the 'B777Q' on the flash card is actually a signature, it would make more sense if a similar code was left with every mummy."

That was true... But for her to have already verified that—did this person really take a nap while I was gone?

"In Kuchimoto-chan's case, instead of being on a public street or in a private house, she was in an abandoned shack. Maybe the vampire felt that they could work leisurely without worrying about being seen?"

As I said that, I couldn't help but feel uneasy.

Without worrying about being seen? Work leisurely?

A vampire worrying about being seen sounded like some sort of slapstick comedy... In that case, it would make more sense that they had left a code behind with the mummies of Harimaze-chan and Honnou-chan, a code that didn't seem like a code.

"There are a couple more things that don't make sense, Koyomin. If you explain this as a vampire leaving their signature in much the same way an artist signs their name on a work of art, it's pretty hair-raising and very appropriate for an oddity story—but in that case, don't you think they would have added it to a work that they'd be more proud of?"

At least, they wouldn't be doing it on a failure... —said Gaen-san, looking up from the register and towards the mummy on the bed.

I see.

As an ordinary person, my thoughts came to a standstill when I lay my eyes upon such a gruesome mummy, but in the end, a mummy like this was something that had "failed" to become a vampire—no matter how much they longed to be in the limelight, there was surely no artist that would sign their name on a failed work.

Then, should I simply assume that it was just a living message left behind by Kuchimoto-chan?

"I did do a handwriting analysis. I compared the writing in red pen on the flash card with the writing in her notebook that I found in her bag—however, I couldn't come to a definite conclusion. There didn't seem to be any matches in the handwriting, but if they were scribbling it down while being attacked by a vampire, it would make sense for it to be messy."

"That's true... Well, in the end, whether it's a living message or a signature, it doesn't really matter."

"Although, from our perspective as the pursuers, a vampire that longs to be in the limelight is much easier to find, so that would be helpful. But anyway, as the commander, I'd like to give you a command to follow, Koyomin."

"Ah. Yes. What is it?"

The sun was about to set. Time was running out.

We were entering the world of the night.

It seemed that, after the reconnaissance and discussion, it was finally time to come up with a practical response to this oddity phenomenon—thanks to talking with Kanbaru and Higasa-chan, my motivation to solve the case had increased as much as my mood had decreased, but now, what did I need to do?

"I was really unsure about whether or not I should ask this of you... But it seems I'll have to after all. Koyomin. This is only something you can do."

Gaen-san spoke with a serious expression.

"I'd like you to hold Shinobu-chan back for tonight."

[polaristranslations]

Shinobu Mustard Episode 5

036

In the end, Shinobu seemed to have given up on showing off, and thus Araragi Koyomi appeared to have lost the opportunity to show off his skills as an actor.

Once they actually met, such a contrived scheme would have been ridiculous—thinking about it, Suicidemaster was essentially sealed in the form of a little girl, too, so in terms of being a disgrace of a vampire, she was on the same level.

Incidentally, I was using vague wording like "seemed to" and "appeared to" because, along the way, the two little girls had put the humans (including the god that was formerly human) off to the side by beginning to speak in a foreign language—but what language was it, exactly?

Perhaps a language that had been used in one of the many countries that had been destroyed by "Princess Beauty"—regardless, we'd been completely left behind.

However, watching the two little girls act so cheerfully was such a pleasant sight that I couldn't get mad. It felt like the first time I was seeing Shinobu make such expressions, and from what I could tell, Suicidemaster seemed to be warmly greeting her old friend after such a long time. It was possible that some effect of the mummification remained, because she didn't seem to be able to pick herself up off of the rush mat, but her expressiveness made it clear that shew as truly glad to have reunited with Shinobu.

In a way, it was like our hard work had been rewarded—although, I suppose most of it was just me needlessly worrying.

Not to mention, you could say things had gone just as planned.

The interrogation. About the serial vampirism incident.

Assuming Shinobu hadn't forgotten about our original objective...

"They seem pretty happy, and the conversation seems to be going smoothly, so let's leave Hachikuji-chan to be the witness while we humans step away for a moment. Koyomin, come here."

"Huh? Um, no, but, Shinobu is tied to my shadow, so..."

"I set things up so that within the barrier, the two of you can act separately even while maintaining your pairing, so it's fine. Hachikuji-chan, I'll leave it to you."

"Yes, leave it to me!"

Hm? Putting aside the fact that Hachikuji had become a loyal subordinate to a person of power despite being a god, what did she mean?

We could act separately?

I wondered if I could do such a thing—wasn't it like the pairing between Shinobu and me was severed, even if it was in a limited area? And did that mean Gaen-san had anticipated from the beginning that their reunion would go well? To put up such a complex barrier—no, before that.

Regardless of whether it went well, had Gaen-san made plans for Shinobu and I to act separately from the beginning?

I didn't really understand her intentions—but, with Shinobu not introducing me to Suicidemaster as her slave, I couldn't exactly interrupt their conversation (the foreign language courses I chose were English and Spanish. Hola!), I guess I had no choice but to follow Gaen-san. Whatever Gaen-san was planning after recovering from the darkness, or mud, in the hearts of those high school girls, I had better hear about those plans—

"I would've liked it if she could have reunited with Shishirui Seishirou in the same way."

That was what Gaen-san murmured, with her words feeling more meaningful than just light conversation, as she led me through the house. And our destination ended up being Kanbaru's room—she sure knew her way around someone else's home. As expected of the onee-san who knew everything.

She was well aware of the location of her niece's room.

"If you know anything about architecture, you can pretty much tell the layout of the rooms from outside—but this is pretty awful. So, like my sister, Suruga's a messy girl, too."

However, it seemed she'd been surprised by the mess, giving her impressions in a shocked manner as she entered the room.

"I'm sorry. Normally I was supposed to have come and cleaned her room yesterday, but Higasa-chan was there, and if I went and started cleaning in front of her friend, Kanbaru would lose face."

"If that's true, then it's exceedingly mysterious why you would go out of your way to care for Suruga like that, Koyomin. Rather than just Suruga's senior, it's almost like you're her mom."

You're even more motherly than her actual mother, said Gaen-san.

I'd been described in many different ways before, but being described as motherly might be a first for me. But, being compared to the famous Gaen Tooe-san didn't exactly make me happy.

"So, what's the matter, Gaen-san? I know Hachikuji is watching over them, but Shinobu and Miss Suicidemaster—or should I say, Little Miss Suicidemaster? Well, it doesn't really matter, but I do feel a bit uneasy just leaving them on their own."

From the atmosphere around them, it didn't seem like it would suddenly turn into a scene of carnage with them saying "I came to eat you, Shinobu" and "I'll let you eat me" or anything, but I wasn't too optimistic—to get to the point, oddities were oddities because you couldn't predict what they might do in the next instant.

I wanted to return as soon as possible.

"I have two pieces of bad news," said Gaen-san.

With my life as it was, it wasn't too surprising to hear that there was no good news, but for there to be two pieces of bad news.

That was twice the sense of foreboding.

"I'll keep it short. The first is that the last missing member of the girls' basketball team, Kiseki Souwa-chan—her belongings were discovered."

"Her belongings... Just her belongings?"

"Yes. Not just her cell phone and school bag, but her school uniform, gym clothes, and basshoes. Ah, 'basshoes' means..."

"Basketball shoes. I've read 'Slam Dunk', too, so I know what it means. But... Finding only her belongings but not the girl herself...?"

I wasn't sure if it was a good or bad thing that her mummy hadn't been discovered yet, but the fact that only her belongings were found was certainly bad news—or, perhaps not bad, but ominous.

In the same way you can't start a particularly pleasant story with a school bag being abandoned by the road—I could only assume that something had happened to Kiseki-chan.

"Where were they discovered? In her room, or...?"

Remembering that the second mummy, Honnou Aburi-chan, had been discovered in her room, I brought up the location that would be least discomforting for her belongings to be discovered.

"That's a good line of thought," said Gaen-san. "Where they were discovered was in the gymnasium of Naoetsu High, in a locker in the girls' locker room."

"The girls' locker room...?"

"Don't react to the thought of the girls' locker room. No need to worry, I had a female investigator perform the search."

"It wasn't like I was wondering why you hadn't sent me to perform that task."

Regardless of whether they were male or female, Gaen-san had already crossed a line at the moment she sent an outsider into the school—she was always this sort of person, I suppose.

Alternatively, perhaps there was a student currently attending Naoetsu High that held a connection to Gaen-san, like me last year—it was certainly a possibility.

"More precisely, it's the girls' locker room exclusively used by the girls' basketball team. Each member is provided with their own locker."

The girls' basketball team sure was treated favorably.

If there was stuff like that, I guess it could be pretty hard to quit.

It was all thanks to Kanbaru's achievements, and I couldn't deny that the rest of the athletic department was a bit sloppy—but, in that case, though it wasn't as good as her own room, her locker wasn't all that discomforting to find her belongings in, right?

"In the first place, even if your subordinate managed to invade the girls' locker room, how did they manage to unlock her personal locker?"

"Koyomin, the fact that you think of invading the girls' locker room as completely natural is something I love about you. The personal lockers have combination locks, you see. From the register of names that you borrowed from the previous captain—a treasure trove of personal information—I was able to deduce the combination."

Even if she didn't use her date of birth, it wasn't as important as a bank account password or anything, so I figured she'd use a number associated with her personal information—said Gaen-san, as if it was something obvious to her.

Leaking personal information was pretty scary.

"Using that same approach, I tried to crack the passwords of the cell phones owned by the first three mummies, but unfortunately, that didn't go as well."

"Well, it would certainly be more secure than a locker. Not to mention, if you get it wrong too many times, it could erase all the data inside—but, putting that aside, how should we evaluate this discovery? Isn't it normal to find one's uniform or gym clothes in their locker?"

"If it's 'uniform or gym clothes', then yes."

That was what Gaen-san said.

"But if it's 'uniform and gym clothes', then that's very strange indeed. Was Kiseki-chan going home naked when she went missing? It would be a big deal, even if she wasn't mummified."

A big deal...

Even if she revered Kanbaru, she probably wouldn't do anything like go streaking (not even Kanbaru had done that. She was all talk, no action).

"It seems unlikely she had a spare uniform or gym clothes, either. It wasn't as messy as this room, but the belongings had been stuffed in the locker pretty sloppily—as if they were getting in the way and thus disposed of."

It was possible that Kiseki-chan was just bad at keeping things in order, but there was another interpretation—the person responsible for attacking her had roughly crammed Kiseki-chan's belongings into her locker in order to hide the evidence.

Not the person responsible.

But perhaps—the demon responsible.

"Thanks to your reconnaissance, Koyomin, it ended up occurring in the opposite order, but if Kiseki Souwa-chan's mummy had been found first, stripped of all her belongings, it would have been quite an ordeal to try and identify her... In other words, it would have been quite an ordeal to try and resolve this case."

"Is it like how, in mystery novels, the culprit destroys the victim's face and fingerprints?"

When the victims were mummified, you couldn't tell the difference.

As long as there was no blood relation like with Shinobu and Suicidemaster... As long as there was no bond, unbreakable even over six hundred years.

"But it's a little strange. Why is it that they did such a shoddy cover-up job for only Kiseki-chan?"

"It wasn't shoddy, it was malicious. Her cell phone had, of course, been turned off—for items that were shoved in so roughly, the culprit was very attentive to detail. And the fact that a vampire was able to enter the school makes it extremely dangerous for the girls' basketball team."

"......"

That was true—it was an alarming situation.

Although I wasn't sure if that was something that the specialist that had entered the school in the same way should say.

"However, to do such a cover-up job, they wouldn't just need to enter the school—they'd need to be able to open Kiseki-chan's personal locker, right? It may be possible for another member of the girls' basketball team that shares the locker room with her, but I don't think an outsider vampire would have been able to open the locker, wouldn't you say?"

The suspicion on the remaining members of the girls' basketball team had already been cleared—how had that "attentive" vampire unlocked that locker?

A combination lock. A password.

How could you open and close that without breaking it?

Gaen-san's response was clear.

"They spoke with the locker's owner. They had to have heard it from her."

They had to have heard it from her.

There was no other way.

"And then, if I were to presume the reason that the cover-up job was only done for Kiseki-chan, I would arrive at a rather unpleasant conclusion, Koyomin. Basically, it would mean that the fact that we were using the mummies' belongings to identify them has been leaked."

"Ah."

"There's a high chance that our information is being exposed to the vampire."

Rather than bad news.

It was the worst possible news.

037

Despite my apprehensions about leaking the girls' personal information, there ended up being a high probability that information regarding our investigation had been leaked, which came as a shock—but the worst news was yet to come.

Earlier, I had likened the culprit's actions to destroying the victim's face or fingerprints in a mystery novel—but could you even take the fingerprints of a mummy? That was what came to mind, so I asked Gaen-san.

The response was a simple "no".

"It's just like how we can't distinguish between their faces. They're just skin and bones, after all. If we could accurately get their fingerprints, then we could've used them for cell phones with fingerprint locks, though."

That's right, in this day and age, fingerprints were also a mass of personal information in that sense, as well—however, coincidentally or otherwise, my question happened to connect to the second piece of bad news that Gaen-san wanted to convey to me by temporarily severing the pairing between Shinobu and me.

"Speaking of a mass of personal information, there's DNA analysis."

That was what Gaen-san said.

"However, we certainly wouldn't be able to do that—if we tried to analyze genes that had undergone vampirification in a hospital, that in itself would be considered a strange disease. It would turn into a panic."

"Yes, of course. That's why I've avoided going to hospitals and getting physical examinations."

"On the other hand, it doesn't mean that the analysis of vampire genes in itself is impossible. We've managed to analyze the DNA of the four mummies discovered so far, rough as it was."

"Hm? Um... What does that mean, exactly?"

"Originally, it was done for the sake of identifying whether all four of them were done in by the same culprit. Considering all the possibilities, it's not necessarily the case that the same vampire attacked all four high school girls, right? You could even come up with the theory that there were four, or perhaps even five, vampires that had visited this town."

What an insane theory.

Especially in this town, which had become overrun with monsters during the absence of a god.

"So, um, what were the results? Don't tell me..."

"Ah, to start with the conclusion, all four mummies had their blood sucked by the same vampire—they're all, so to speak, thralls of the same vampire."

It must be like a DNA test done to determine parentage.

Perhaps, as a result of corporate efforts, the world of oddities has also advanced.

Like Hitagi, who kept going to the hospital because of her symptoms from the omoshi-gani, perhaps one day oddity phenomena will end up being simply a rare disease capable of being treated.

"Then, there's no reason to change our plan of action, right?"

"Rather than not changing, at this rate we're going back to the starting point."

Gaen-san said as she folded her arms.

"The problem is that those vampire genes were a pretty close match to Suicidemaster's genes, which I collected last night."

A DNA test to determine parentage.

Gathering evidence based on corporate efforts.

"......"

That—was bad. No, it wasn't that bad, but the reason Deathtopia Virtuoso Suicidemaster had been listed as the prime suspect was primarily because of circumstantial evidence and process of elimination—the cryptic message that had been left at the scene of the crime, and the fact that she had come to this town with such perfect timing.

However, DNA analysis was a completely different beast in terms of evidence. In the modern judicial system, it was like the king of evidence, brought out as a trump card.

"That's a dangerous way of thinking about it. There are plenty of examples of DNA analysis having failed, and it's a field with plenty of room for development. Not to mention, human error is something that's unavoidable—treating it as the king of evidence could mean it ends up a hotbed for false accusations."

That was true. It was too early to decide.

Even Gaen-san had been careful enough to word it "a pretty close match"—and, even if Miss Suicidemaster and the four mummies' genes were a match, logically, the vampire genes of Shinobu or me would also be "a pretty close match".

A parent-child relationship—from Suicidemaster's perspective, I was essentially her "grandchild"... Although, right now, Shinobu and I didn't exactly have any bloodsucking abilities...

"Right, so, it's a fact that the suspicion on Suicidemaster has gotten stronger, so the implication of tonight's interrogation has changed—no matter what that little girl says, we're going to have to secure her. That's why I set up this special barrier, although I'd also like to avoid it turning into a battle if possible. Putting aside me being a pacifist, even if it may be easy to exterminate the starved, weakened Suicidemaster, I don't know how the now-cooperative Shinobu might react to that chain of events—and not knowing how Shinobu might react means not knowing how you might react, Koyomin."

"Um, I probably wouldn't—"

But I didn't exactly know myself well enough to speak at that moment. And last night, I had lost quite a lot of trust, so that would make what I said even less convincing.

"...Even if Suicidemaster, that anorexic vampire, let hunger get the better of her and started laying hands on every high school girl in the area... If we manage to return all the mummified girls back to normal, would she end up not being judged for this incident?"

In the first place, oddities couldn't be judged based on human laws. Even if I couldn't expect her to be certified harmless, couldn't we be flexible enough to let her go in secret...? Although that still left a problem that couldn't be ignored...

"Once a bear has gotten a taste of humans, you have no choice but to kill it—it depends on how much you subscribe to that opinion. In a way, Suicidemaster has been on a diet for six hundred years. Ever since you became a vampire, Koyomin, you've probably never needed to diet, but once you break a fast, you end up on an incredible rebound—you end up eating mountains and drinking oceans."

"But—"

"There's no need to rush, Koyomin. I may have started with the conclusion, but I don't want you to jump to conclusions. There's still evidence to negate the theory that Suicidemaster was responsible for the crime—even if we put aside how much of Shinobu-chan's testimony to believe, there's still the strange idea that an ancient vampire that had lived for a thousand years snuck into the girls' locker room and messed with the lockers. How probable would you say that is?"

It was as she said—and, in the same vein, the attempt to delay the discovery of the fourth mummy, Kanguu-chan, by submerging her in the reservoir was also a weird trick unbecoming of a traditional oddity.

And, under that theory (strange idea?), there was still no explanation for why Suicidemaster herself had turned into a mummy.

There was no logic to her cryptobiosis.

Nothing fit together.

While the suspicion grew stronger, the credibility faded.

In the end, the air of tension had abruptly increased, and there was still no change in the fact that we had to hear from the vampire herself—and it was as I thought that...

"My master."

From behind the sliding door that I'd closed earlier, Shinobu's voice spoke.

"Suicidemaster wants to speak with you. Will you talk with her?"

038

"I'm the death-prepared, death-inevitable, death-certain vampire, Deathtopia Virtuoso Suicidemaster. You may approach."

It seemed she'd managed to get up, for she was now sitting down on a stone in the rock garden of the Japanese mansion. She greeted me with quite the ghastly smile, not caring about the white clothing that had fallen open when she'd broken the seals earlier. I'd thought this earlier when they were exchanging their roar of laughter, but it seemed the characteristic smile of Shinobu, or Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, was apparently something that was inherited from her progenitor who birthed and named her.

Or perhaps, since they were both golden-haired and golden-eyed, their impressions were similar... However, though they were both little girls, though they had the same expressions, it probably wasn't just my imagination that led me to feel that she didn't resemble Shinobu all that much.

Rather than not resembling Shinobu.

I suppose you could say she resembled Shinobu from the past.

That was how easygoing and worldly this vampire had become over the past year—and Suicidemaster must have felt it as well.

"N-nice to meet you. I am Araragi Koyomi. Erm..."

How was I supposed to introduce myself?

Even though I didn't have to pretend to be a slave, it didn't mean I should be honest and explain the situation as-is—it surely wasn't just putting on airs when Shinobu had feared that I might be blown to death if she learned of the situation in which Shinobu had been sealed in my shadow and turned into a slave.

How much of it had Shinobu explained in that foreign language of hers...? In the first place, did she understand it if I introduced myself in Japanese? Judging from her own introduction, she seemed pretty proficient at it...

"I didn't live such a long life for nothing. I've learned most languages by now."

Ooh.

That was something I wanted to tell Meniko about.

"Conversing with your food is one of the fundamentals of a good meal."

...I definitely couldn't tell her about that.

And please don't say something that made you even more suspicious—even though there was some distance, Gaen-san, the administrator of the specialists, was still over there, sitting on the porch of the mansion with Hachikuji.

The value system of food, huh?

Well, even though humans can live just fine on a vegetarian diet, they still go through the trouble of raising and eating meat not "to live" but "because it tastes good", so I couldn't exactly say anything haughtily.

Taking the wrong logic would probably lead us to the conclusion that plants, living on photosynthesis with sunlight and water, lead the most ethically noble lifestyle.

But, you know, something about her character seemed chic compared to her juvenile appearance. It was pretty dashing the way she wore her white clothing like a gown or a robe, and, well, at the age of six, she wasn't that different from a boy of the same age.

The genuine vampire, the ancient vampire.

What a dandy.

With that in mind, her open white clothing seemed more like a cape than a gown or robe—the little girl held a charisma that made me want to kneel, in a way different from how I felt with "Princess Acerola".

"No need to humble yourself. I won't bite you."

What a fancy figure of speech.

On top of that, the way she said "you [kisama]" was a nice touch. I wasn't offended at all—this little girl was like a cluster of dandyism. I'd thought of myself as an expert on little girls, but it seemed there was a type like this, too.

"I called you here to give you my thanks—well, not just that, but first, my thanks."

"Th-thanks...?"

"For several things. First off, for reviving me after I'd died—and, even before that, for reviving my former thrall, Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade."

I give you my thanks.

Said the little girl, bowing her head—even the way she lowered her head was cool. If she was like this in the form of a little girl, how much charisma could she have had in her heyday?

Or rather, if she so straightforwardly thanked me like this, then it felt like I was beaten to the punch—she'd splendidly gotten the drop on me.

Even though I'd approached this face-to-face meeting with suspicions in mind—and when I looked to Shinobu for help...

"Well, I've more or less told her everything."

That was her curt response.

No, rather than curt, Shinobu herself seemed to be a bit bewildered.

"However, it was a bit meaningless. I myself haven't exactly grasped the full extent of the situation. At this point, I figured it would be better to have you participate, my master, rather than just talking between us two."

At any rate, she's denied the suspicion of being the culprit behind the serial vampirism incidents, said Shinobu, as if tacking that on at the end—but was that something you should just tack on?

That's like the crux of the crux of things.

Despite my disorientation, Suicidemaster continued.

"Though she was a thrall, Princess Acerola—Kissshot—soon became manager of her own branch. She became independent from me. It's kind of uncool to come crashing in like this as if I were her guardian, but I couldn't stay in hiding when I heard a rumor that she had been exterminated in this country. I just wanted to make sure that she was okay—although she doesn't exactly look okay, but I'm glad she's still alive. In any case, I'm glad I could see her again."

"Uh-huh—"

After six hundred years of no communication, it seemed like a fitting reason for her to come see her at this timing—but with her answering my question before I could ask it, she'd beaten me to the punch again.

Two moves in a row.

That wasn't exactly fair, was it?

In any case, Suicidemaster said that she was worried about Shinobu's safety and came all the way to this country, beating her old bones, to see how she was doing.

It wasn't that she came to dine on Shinobu as gourmet food at all—

"Hmph. I'd thought you'd died, too."

Shinobu spoke bitterly, but she didn't seem all that mad about it.

If it was true that she became manager of her own branch (a phrase that surely sounded strange because she was forcing herself to use Japanese, although it probably wasn't a mistranslation), then it seemed likely that what existed between them wasn't a master-servant relationship, but a friendship.

Friends that could talk to each other and laugh together on equal terms.

Thanks to my relationship with Meniko, I can more or less understand how important that is—there's no room for doubt that I have friendships with Hanekawa, Hachikuji, and Kanbaru, but I couldn't help but feel that our friendships were tied down by love and hate, or by advantages and disadvantages, or out of the obligations of this transient world.

The best example of this would be my childhood friend, Oikura, but even if our friendship were to end, there would still be the sense that we were inextricably linked.

But the strange thing about human relations is that it's not really desirable to break off relations, like what happened with Sengoku.

"Well, that wasn't the only reason. Even though I'd learned Japanese, I had never actually been to Japan, see. So I wanted to get a look at Mount Fuji."

"What a blatant lie!"

Shinobu sounded as if she was amazed, but look—you told the same lie last year.

A parent-child relationship—a parent-child determination.

"......"

"So, I had a favor to ask of you, former thrall of the former Heartunderblade. I've already confirmed Kissshot's safety, and I'd like to go back to my hideout right about now, but I heard there's something fishy going on. So I was wondering, you think you can help me get out of this country?"

I wondered if she was thinking of the current situation as if she messed up the departure procedures for her destination. Well, that would be a pretty serious situation, too.

"'Specially since there seems to be this scary lady glaring at me," said Suicidemaster, glancing in Gaen-san's direction—but she wasn't a scary lady, but an onee-san that knew everything.

It made for quite the visualization of this interrogation.

"Oh yeah, speaking of scary ladies in this country—nah, that's not important right now. So, how about it? Former thrall of the former Heartunderblade?"

I wasn't sure about how she called me that.

I never thought that she would come ask me for help in fleeing the country... But if Gaen-san wasn't making any move to interrupt, did that mean we should continue with this clumsy conversation?

"I gotta say, I'm pretty happy. Since that 'Princess Beauty' ended up finding her ideal prince and getting her happy ending. But now that I'm here, I figured I'd take this chance to see what that prince can do—how about it? Won't you help me out for a bit?"

Won't you help me out?

Araragi-kun was weak to those words.

The tragedy of my high school years could be said to have all started with those words, and in the end, even Ougi-chan took advantage of them.

However, since then, I'd grown just a little bit (specifically, about a year)—I knew that there were things I could do and things I couldn't.

Even if my girlfriend called me a prince, I knew for sure that I wasn't one.

"Don't say something so embarrassing!"

Shinobu was acting bashful with an unusual level of excitement. What's with that casual language?

Where'd your usual character go off to?

"...A friend of Shinobu's is a friend of mine, so I'm willing to help—but before that, there's something I'd like to make clear. There's something that I absolutely need to make clear—"

She'd called it fishy, but she surely wasn't so uninvolved as to describe it like that—how should I ask this?

If she'd already denied the charges to Shinobu, then it would be pointless to ask her the same thing—should I change my approach, then?

She may have already talked to Shinobu about this, too...

"Suicidemaster. How did you end up turning into a mummy and getting buried in the dirt? An existence as great as yourself."

I didn't really know Suicidemaster well enough to describe her as a great existence (I'd only just heard of her yesterday), but as the progenitor who birthed and named the King of Oddities, it was enough to make me revere her.

Fundamentally...

"Ka ka. I can't say I know how I ended up in the dirt. I figure someone went and buried me on their own."

"Someone..."

"Turning into a mummy? That's a bit easier to explain. I haven't told Kissshot about that yet, either."

Was that so? I looked to Shinobu to confirm, and she responded, "Ah, yes, that's right." Maybe you'd gotten a bit too excited, but if you take such a lazy approach to this interrogation, which was the original goal, then that would be bothersome.

But, well, I guess it was to be expected.

As vampires, where death was a regular occurrence and life was of little importance, the question of "why were you dead" could possibly be too fundamental to be discussed.

Like her catchphrase, "Somehow or other, it seems I've died again"—or perhaps like the nickname, death-prepared, death-inevitable, death-certain vampire—for Suicidemaster, dying was not at all anything major.

That was how I understood it, but.

"Despite having lived for a thousand years, that may have been the first time I died like that, as far as I can remember."

I couldn't help but react to that comment—that was pretty major.

"Wh-what do you mean? What—what was the cause of death?"

Asking the victim directly about their cause of death was what you'd only see in spirit medium-like mysteries, but as I acted that out in real life, Suicidemaster responded pompously.

"Food poisoning."

"F—food poisoning?"

"Yeah. I ate something weird. Let's see, in Japanese..."

Said Suicidemaster.

"I guess you would call that type of food, a high school girl?"

039

"I guess it was like a week ago?

"The unit of time differs from region to region, and, as an ancient vampire, it's the same to me whether it's a week ago or a thousand years ago.

"So I dunno if it was a week ago or a thousand years ago—but anyway, a week ago.

"That was when I arrived at this town. The rumored Far East island country, Japan—huh, is 'Far East island country' not a compliment?

"Either way, I think it's a big deal when things are taken too far.

"I came to check on the safety of the legend I gave rise to, Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, so it was pretty hilarious that I couldn't ensure my own safety as soon as I arrived.

"Since I failed to land and shattered.

"Somehow or other, it seemed I'd died again.

"But for me, there was something that shocked me more than the fact that I died—according to the god that came out to welcome me, there'd been some kind of barrier that'd been put up.

"A barrier to protect the town.

"They say, 'Devils out! Fortune in!' as part of the traditions of this country, right? Ka ka, 'Devils out', huh—that's a pretty tough greeting for a vampire.

"But that barrier wasn't the reason I'd broken into pieces, y'know? My certain death, my thousandth, millionth, billionth, or trillionth death was self-destruction from a failed landing.

"Happens pretty often.

"I dunno if that barrier set up by that god was something that she took over from someone or whatever, but it's not anything with any offensive power—just an interfering barrier that makes you lost.

"In a sense, it's a pretty nasty barrier compared to the aggressive type of barrier which is easier to understand, but the problem is that that nastiness didn't work on me at all.

"The security.

"The metal detector at the entry gate, if you will.

"Didn't respond at all to this Deathtopia Virtuoso Suicidemaster—in other words, it didn't even take me as a threat.

"Yeah.

"It wasn't like I came into this country by breaking through a strong barrier with my tremendous power—it was because I didn't have that tremendous power that I managed to slip into this country.

"Never thought I would end up being this weak.

"Growing old sucks, huh?

"I didn't even notice it right away. Kind of a bother that I couldn't really feel the symptoms—like some old man who doesn't realize he's old. Especially when that causes problems for others.

"As I was undergoing an immigration check by that god over there, I belatedly realized what I looked like.

"I've heard rumors that Japanese people have baby faces even as they age, but the gods of this country were really this young, was what I thought, excited beyond my years to experience the exotic cultural differences. But there was something wrong.

"Compared to the young god.

"I was even younger—the tough and cool me was shorter, with a thinner torso, smaller hands, thinner arms, shorter eggs, and a lighter body.

"If there was anything that was long, it would be my hair.

"So that's what it was.

"You don't notice changes in yourself until you talk to someone else, until you use them as a mirror—and I've been living in hiding for a long time.

"Not that vampires show up in mirrors. So that wasn't good, either.

"While I was dying uncontrollably and running from vicious vampire hunters, it seemed that I was driven to the point where I couldn't maintain my perfect body, even in appearance.

"Somehow or other, it seemed I'd regressed into a younger form.

"Before worrying about Kissshot, I needed to worry about myself, first—wasn't it like I was the one on the verge of death, here?

"According to the god's meaningful navigation instructions, the legendary vampire whom I named Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade was indeed in this town, but if I were to see her in this state, I would only end up worrying her instead of renewing our old friendship."

"I had a trauma.

"A trauma of letting my once beloved thrall die after making them worry—not to mention I was also in a young form at the time.

"Ka ka.

"It's ironic that an old vampire, who has stubbornly refused to kill herself, should take on a younger form after living for so long—no matter how many thousand years I live to see history repeat itself, I don't think I want to repeat my mistakes.

"That's just me being cool, though.

"To describe it using the words of this language, it would be 'putting on airs'.

"I held pride in having lived for a thousand years—I held pride in being a progenitor that birthed and named my thrall. Saying I didn't want to worry her was just a figure of speech.

"Basically.

"I wanted to put on airs.

"I didn't want to disappoint my bud that I'd reunited with after six hundred years—I didn't want her to think, 'she's changed', but I didn't want her to think, 'she's the same as ever'.

"I just wanted her to think this.

"'That's my friend for you.'

"That was what I wanted.

"Now that we've met like this and the punch line was that we'd both taken on young forms, it's obvious how unnecessary trial and error such a thing was, but I was very serious at the time.

"Tough, cool, and serious.

"Of course, I'm making it sound like it was a crazy long time ago, but it was just a week ago—a week ago indistinguishable from a thousand years ago.

"At the very least I thought I'd come in full dress for the occasion, at least on the surface level—even if I couldn't show up in a complete form, I thought I would at least try to dress up.

"That's why.

"I made a move on the local food here.

"I bared my fangs—at a high school girl."

040

Wasn't this different from what she said earlier? Hadn't Suicidemaster denied that she was the culprit in the serial vampirism incident?

Plus, didn't she suffer from anorexia, unable to take in any other "food" after being entranced by the taste of the food known as "Princess Beauty" six hundred years ago?

Wasn't it that she turned from a mature woman into a little girl because of malnutrition, not because she got older? —Those were the question marks running through my mind.

However, I couldn't say anything.

I couldn't interject into Suicidemaster's narration—and Shinobu stayed silent as well.

What was she thinking. What was she deciding?

To stick with humans, or to stick with oddities.

Was she thinking about that?

Or perhaps, was she still believing in her friend's innocence, even after such a grand confession?

So innocently?

Though it was natural that Hachikuji, a neutral and mediating god, did not interfere here, it was a bit surprising that Gaen-san remained seated on the porch, not moving—with this confession, you would think that it would confirm Suicidemaster's guilt and allow for concrete measures to be taken immediately.

In the end, although we considered various things like if she knew about prime numbers or if she would be able to cover up a crime, but the bottom line was that it was Occam's razor and that ancient vampire was the culprit—was that just the uninteresting truth?

No matter how many question marks danced through my mind, were there any major points of doubt left before the current confession that deserved special mention? Was it right to take the results of the DNA test and the "B777Q" message as they were?

She bared her fangs at a high school girl.

For the sake of putting on airs.

Suicidemaster's nonchalant attitude as she told me that was something that was familiar to me—needless to the say, it was the same attitude that Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade had during that hellish spring break that I spent.

The fact that they were both trying to make themselves look good for the other party made it sound like a fairy tale with a moral lesson, and I could see how that might be an example of like attracts like, but when it came to the similarity in their lack of guilt, it wasn't as funny.

During that spring break, that King of Oddities had no qualms about feeding on humans—she even thought that humans were born to be eaten by vampires.

The top of the food chain.

The apex, far above us.

Insensitive to the point that she didn't even consider unabashedly speaking like that insensitive—but as far as Suicidemaster was concerned, it would be not only insensitive but also suicidal to make a speech in front of us here, in the name of confession.

A suicidal act.

A vampire with suicidal tendencies.

That was also familiar to me.

It was memory fresh in my mind—it would never fade.

Even if a year or a thousand years passed, it would never fade.

Without guilt, without shame, but rather with pride—Suicidemaster continued.

041

"I went down the mountain where that god lived, and I set my sights on a high school girl walking alone at night—to be honest, anyone would do.

"They were emergency rations.

"Yeah, yeah, of course I know. That way of thinking was opportunistic—really, growing old sucks. I understand why you're silent here, Kissshot—were you disappointed at my way of thinking?

"If you ask me if I really wanted to bend my policy as a gourmet just to make myself look good, I can only say that I really did at the time.

"That's why I incurred a punishment.

"If I was going to throw away my policy anyway, I should have thrown it away completely, but I stubbornly clung to my pride as a gourmet.

"Because I still thought in my head that they were just rations for the sake of emergency, I failed to carefully inspect my food.

"I figured I'd eat noncommittally, halfheartedly, without being choosy—if I chose, it would make it seem like that food was 'special' to me, y'know?

"I didn't want that.

"But even though I didn't want that, I also didn't want to eat something reluctantly—the ideal scenario would be the food jumping in when I opened my mouth, so that I had an excuse to eat food not in accordance with my will, not measuring up to my level, and not consistent with my beliefs.

"Yes, former thrall of the former Heartunderblade. Just as you treated me to the soup from the Blood Pond Hell—I heard that's how you 'reverted' me, isn't that right? You have a complex expression on your face.

"Well, once you've tasted nectar like from six hundred years ago, you can't hope for anything better—no matter what you eat, it's bound to be tasteless.

"Once you know the best of the best, there's nothing you can do but settle for less—I knew that, but I couldn't help but still obsess over it.

"So, even it was for the sake of dressing up, if I went about choosing my food, I would inevitably compare it to 'Princess Beauty'.

"I guess it was also putting on airs to try and minimize the angle at which I bent my policy? I wonder if it's like getting old and trying to straighten out your bent back?

"Well, whatever it was, in hindsight, I didn't exactly have much respect for my food.

"In this country, you have table manners where you say 'Thanks for the meal' and 'It was delicious', right? I just don't really get those, y'see.

"There isn't a phrase that makes me less thankful than 'Thanks for the meal'... And saying 'It was delicious' is practically the opposite of delicious.

"That was what I thought.

"Just didn't understand feeling gratitude towards my food—or the idea that it's great to eat with gratitude, that it's impolite to leave leftovers, or that we shouldn't kill living things for reasons other than eating them.

"Originally, at its best, eating is supposed to be an act of toying with life—it's entertainment.

"So that's why, for me.

"Eating wasn't living.

"Eating was loving.

"At that time, I should have said 'Thanks for the meal'. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. That was what I should have done.

"Nevertheless, in an unprincipled way.

"I sank my teeth into a high school girl as if I was sampling food, like a dieter saying, 'This doesn't really count as eating, okay?'—and so I incurred a punishment.

"The result was food poisoning.

"Thanks to the poison of that high school girl.

"Somehow or other, it seemed I'd died again."

042

...Huh? What the heck?

Her story had ended so quickly that my comprehension couldn't keep up—to that heavily thematic and therefore weary downer of a story, what had the punch line been again?

Food poisoning?

Was she saying that the blood of Japanese high school girls wasn't suited to her constitution? Just like how travel guidebooks always have it written down somewhere whether or not you can drink water at your destination—whether it's soft water or hard water, unboiled water or drinking water...

Of course, there was also the simple fact that if you suddenly eat something right after starving yourself, you can get sick from it. There have been cases where people have suddenly eaten meat right after dieting, causing an upset stomach—or, in the worst-case scenario, stomach rupture—

Or perhaps.

The high school girls' poison. Mud. Murky.

Even Gaen-san, hardened by years of experience, had been brought down a notch by the murky depths of the girls' basketball team of Naoetsu High, but could that murkiness have come through in their blood, yet another mass of personal information? That's exactly what the Japanese would call, "affected by toxicity"—that murkiness.

Was it in their blood, too?

All of this was just conjecture, and it was probably a complication caused by a multitude of reasons—the explanation that should not be forgotten is that, no matter what country, what shape, what type of non-toxic food, blood or flesh, Suicidemaster's body simply could not accept any other human besides "Princess Beauty".

Rejection. Anorexia.

That in itself was fine.

That in itself, along with ethics, could be put aside for now—in that case, it would end up that Suicidemaster desiccated immediately after biting into a high school girl.

Falling into cryptobiosis.

It would end up that she turned into a mummy.

Though there was some embellishment in her talking about herself, it didn't seem like she was lying... But wasn't there something weird about that?

There were four, perhaps even five victims.

But if she turned into a mummy the very first time, then the serial nature gets cut off—the serial nature?

Serial nature?

Shinobu had said that Suicidemaster had denied being the culprit of the 'serial vampirism incidents', if I remembered correctly—but that would mean?

"...Oops. Even this onee-san that knows everything has lost her edge."

Gaen-san's voice came like a downer from where she sat.

"In this state, I won't be able to look good to my juniors. I swear I'll never call myself 'Gaen THE Know-It-All Izuko' again."

Er, it's not like you've ever called yourself by that bizarre name before.

What's with that 'THE'?

"If I was going to use as a basis the idea of turning into a mummy after failing to become a vampire, I should have kept in mind the possibility of turning into a mummy after performing the act of vampirism—I'd known about it, but examples of such are pretty valuable."

Basis [kichou] and valuable [kichou].

To that usage of homophones, our visitor from abroad raised her golden eyebrows curiously, but I felt similarly—what did she mean?

It didn't really help if you figured it out first.

Even if the cause of her mummification was food poisoning, didn't that just add to the number of mysteries?... What was going on?

At least, I understood the circumstances that led to her mummification.

There are two reasons why you want to eat something. Because you like it, and because you hate it—and there are two reasons why you don't want to eat something—because you like it, and because you hate it.

Both were wise sayings from Hachikuji Mayoi, but for that reason, that's why Suicidemaster went for whatever she could lay her hands on, without being particular or fussy about what she chose.

She went for whatever she could lay her hands on, in a manner quite unbefitting of a gourmet—not to mention, not counting her consumption as a "meal", like the wisdom of a dieter.

Well, you could say the moral to this story was that such cunning wisdom comes at a price, just like in dieting—however, the mystery of who buried Suicidemaster in the mountain after she fell victim to food poisoning and became mummified via cryptobiosis was never fully resolved.

Though I'm sure Suicidemaster herself felt like she wanted to climb into a hole, who was it that literally put that vampire that failed to suck blood underground?

Who was it that buried her alive?

"The high school girls that became mummified after failing to become vampires—the vampire that became mummified after failing in her vampirism—if I were to add one more pattern to this."

It would be a high school girl that succeeded in becoming a vampire.

That was what the administrator of the specialists said as she stood up.

"I finally understood the reason the series of crimes didn't seem to fit together—it wasn't just one vampire master. Along the way, the vampire was replaced by another."

"R—replaced?"

In mysteries—and this wasn't just limited to Ellery Queen—there were tricks that were considered fair... But I thought having multiple crimes was considered unfair?

And it wasn't like vampires were coming to this town in droves, not to mention there was the results of the DNA test that I'd just heard about—ah.

Late as it was, I finally arrived at understanding.

Upon realizing what the conclusion was, I realized it could only be that—a replacement, a substitution.

Until just the day before yesterday, I hadn't really thought about what would have happened if I had failed to become a vampire, and for some reason at some point, I had assumed that all vampirism had failed in this specific, unusual case—but of course, there was a case where that wasn't for certain.

The case where they succeeded.

The case where, even if the vampire master became a mummy as a result—the thrall was still alive and well.

In other words, if you consider that the high school girl, who was arbitrarily bitten by Suicidemaster the moment that they met, continued on to bite the other high school girls afterwards, then that resolves the strangeness of the crimes not fitting together.

It's no wonder that the DNA test resulted in a "pretty close match"—if it's a parent-child relationship or a descendant relationship, then of course the vampire genes would match.

Whether it was heaven or paradise, as a person who tasted Princess Acerola's saliva in that place, I had to say that it was extremely unnatural how lacking in etiquette it seemed for a gourmet vampire who had experienced the same taste to go on to target only the youth of Japan. But if it was a high school girl targeting other high school girls, it made perfect sense—no.

It wasn't just a high school girl targeting other high school girls.

If it was a member of the girls' basketball team targeting other members of the girls' basketball team—it made even more sense.

I could think of any number of motives—their murkiness.

Spartan training. Peer pressure. Frustration. Envy. Rivalry. Punishment. Disharmony. Collective responsibility. Discord. Suspicion. Paranoia. Injuries. Stress. Unease. Academic decline—

"Eh? But, wait just a moment, Araragi-san. Hasn't the suspicion on the girlsbas been cleared up already? Have you already forgotten my distinguished contribution as intermediary for your phone call?"

"Hachiku-jin, it would be troublesome if you went that far to take responsibility for acting as intermediary for my phone call."

True. That was true.

Using the list as a reference, Gaen-san had already confirmed the safety and innocence of every member of the girls' basketball team—on top of safeguarding each of the hundred members, they were also supervising them.

However.

There must really be something wrong with me, to not have realized until now that there was one member of the girls' basketball team that was not being supervised—Kiseki Souwa.

I'd more or less assumed that the "missing person", as Kanbaru had described it, had also fallen victim to the vampire, but even if that had been the truth.

That didn't necessarily mean that she'd been mummified.

Perhaps, she had succeeded in becoming a vampire—and perhaps, in the darkness of the night, she may be seeking revenge on her former human friends.

043

The ups and downs of realizing that the girl I'd been worried about was actually the vicious assailant of her teammates made for a bumpy ride for my weak mind, but if I were to give up everything now, I wouldn't be able to say I'd grown since my spring break at seventeen or Golden Week at eighteen.

For now, let's pretend that I'm a tough guy that can handle a full revolution on a roller coaster, and sort this out.

Kiseki Souwa.

If I remembered correctly, she was a second-year—of course, even though her name was on the list, she had already gone missing, so unlike the other members of the club, there was no confirmation of her safety. If anything, they were still out there looking for her mummy.

But they wouldn't be able to find it.

If that mummy didn't exist.

How do you account for the uniform, gym clothes, cell phone, and school bag stuffed into the personal locker in the girls' locker room of the Naoetsu High gymnasium?

If she was the one who stuffed everything into the locker herself, then breaking into the school and into the girls' locker room would be a piece of cake—she would use her own route and unlock her own door with her own hands.

If the information on our side of the investigation had been leaked, and if she knew that Gaen-san's team was out looking for Kiseki-chan's mummy, then she could have tried to disrupt the investigation by shoving those personal items into her own locker—even though there was no way to find the mummy itself because it wasn't there, by shoving the uniform and gym clothes in at the same time, the search target pretended as if the damage had already been done.

By fabricating the assumption that she had already become a mummy, she would be able to move as she pleased—and in that case, that would apply to the two living messages, or signatures, that I had asked Meniko to decipher.

"D/V/S". "F/C".

Deathtopia Virtuoso Suicidemaster, and Fan Club—those interpretations of the code were probably right on the mark, but in the end, they were just fakes set up by Kiseki-chan.

When Kiseki-chan had her blood sucked by Suicidemaster, not like a moth to a flame but a high school girl to a vampire's mouth, Suicidemaster would naturally have given her name—as she did to me, she would have given her name as "Deathtopia Virtuoso Suicidemaster".

In other words, Kiseki-chan remembered the name of the vampire that attacked her—and, assuming she was the one to bury and hide Suicidemaster's mummy in the mountains.

Her scheme was to blame her own vampiric activities on Suicidemaster.

Like a human.

As Shinobu was now, it seemed that being vampirified by Suicidemaster would lead you to "inherit" golden hair and golden eyes, so I could imagine that her appearance and atmosphere would have changed greatly from her human days.

When I was vampirified by Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, I didn't gain golden hair and golden eyes, but my body had still become rather muscular even without any training.

We'd wondered whether or not the high school girl had left the school naked with both her uniform and gym clothes being stuffed into the locker, but if Kiseki-chan did in fact bury Suicidemaster's mummy in the mountain, then that could be explained without a hitch.

The naked little girl's mummy.

Hachikuji had said that the little girl's mummy hadn't been naked from the beginning.

When she was Suicidemaster, before becoming a mummy, she naturally had to have been wearing clothes—so where did those clothes go?

If they weren't buried with her, then someone might be wearing them right now, after an adjustment to the size—someone who had buried Suicidemaster.

Taking the name of the death-prepared, death-inevitable, death-certain vampire, pretending to be her, dressing up as her, and attacking her teammates—it was possible that Kuchimoto Kyoumi, who left that dying message on her flash cards, may have fallen for the fake and left the message "B777Q", not realizing that the vampire who attacked her had been her teammate.

Or perhaps the message itself was a fake left by Kiseki-chan for the criminal investigation squad—at the very least, "F/C" was certainly that.

I couldn't imagine how it happened, but when Kiseki-chan found out that suspicion was directed at the members of the girls' basketball team, she tried to make the investigators look in a different direction.

In other words, Kanbaru Suruga's fan club.

If she was a member of the girls' basketball team, which was strongly influenced by Kanbaru, then there was no way she didn't know about this organization—although it didn't seem like she knew that the group had been disbanded without a trace.

At any rate, she tried to hide herself, hide her crime, try to pin the blame on others, make up evidence, et cetera—

All of these things were things that vampires were not likely to do, and such unnaturalness, more novel than innovative, made sense if you considered that she had just become a vampire.

Destruction of evidence, creation of an alibi, fabrication, disturbance—it was a rather human-like crime, by a vampire filled with humanity.

With this, disregarding the mummification of Suicidemaster herself, the mummification of the high school girls may not even be a failure.

In fact, I couldn't help but think that it was Kiseki-chan's revenge to put them in a half-dead state, neither alive nor dead—she could have taken the texture of Suicidemaster's mummy as reference when she was burying it.

And if I wanted to, I could take it as a good sign that she didn't want to fully kill off her friends from when she was human...

"After unraveling all the confusing parts, the problem was just a matter of order. Just like how the second and third mummies were discovered were actually attacked by the vampire third and second, Kiseki Souwa, whom we'd assumed had become the fifth mummy, was actually the first victim—no, the zeroth victim."

In other words, like this.

The order in which the mummies were discovered was:

The first mummy——Harimaze Kie

The second mummy——Honnou Aburi

The third mummy——Kuchimoto Kyoumi

(The little girl's mummy——DVS)

The fourth mummy——Kanguu Misago

The fifth mummy (assumed)——Kiseki Souwa

However, the actual order of the victims was:

The zeroth victim——Kiseki Souwa (Culprit: DVS)

(The 0.5th victim——DVS (Food poisoning))

The first victim——Harimaze Kie (Culprit: Kiseki)

The second victim——Kuchimoto Kyoumi (Culprit: Kiseki)

The third victim——Honnou Aburi (Culprit: Kiseki)

The fourth victim——Kanguu Misago (Culprit: Kiseki)

That's how it was.

Since all of the mummies were vampire mummies, there wasn't anything like an estimated time of death, so it would be hard to ascertain the time of the mummification for Kanguu-chan, who'd been submerged in the reservoir... But this was the truth behind the serial vampirism incidents that had taken place from the night before last, to last night.

"Oho, is that so. You think of some pretty clever things, both you guys and that high school girl."

Suicidemaster spoke as if she was truly impressed—although it sounded, or at least seemed to sound, like she was making fun of me.

Well, to an ancient vampire who'd seen the fall of a country firsthand, was born in a castle called the "Castle of Corpses", and bore witness to numerous wars, a discussion about five members of a high school club may seem like manual labor on a tiny, millimeter scale to her...

Moreover, while Suicidemaster was not the culprit behind the serial vampirism, she did confess to having started it all—she was the one responsible for the first bloodsucking.

Once again, a progenitor of vampires.

Like a plea bargain, she'd asked for help with the process of exiting the country, but unfortunately, this was not enough for her to get off scot-free.

It wasn't enough—but what sort of verdict would be laid down in a case like this? I didn't have the slightest idea.

Kiseki-chan had been the victim in the beginning, but if she became the main culprit afterwards—a composition in which the victim becomes the perpetrator.

"It kind of resembles Sengoku-san's case, doesn't it?" said Hachikuji.

An unnecessary comment.

"The kanji for Sengoku [千石] and Kiseki [木石] are pretty similar, too."

That one was really unnecessary.

However, Sengoku's case was different.

It wasn't nearly as close as their kanji were.

A high school girl who unexpectedly acquires vampire superpowers makes full use of her power to relieve the anger of her "past life"—if anything, it was a more serious problem than the physiological phenomenon of vampire sucking blood, which was more similar to hunger.

If I had to say it, she was exerting the fury of a vampire while maintaining her human values... If she was careless, she could meet the conditions for the "Darkness".

"It ended up not being really clear whose fault it is, right?"

Hachikuji murmured as if troubled, but it was pretty vague to begin with—it wasn't something I could do anything about by taking on all the stigma myself, like I used to do in high school.

She was too much of a stranger for me to do that.

I wasn't a politician. I couldn't work that hard for someone I didn't know.

It's not easy to help a girl you've never met, never even brushed past—a girl you have no connection with.

"We can think about the rest later, but if there's anything you need to do now..."

And, as if the composition's polarity had been reversed, the one who brought up a plan of action to this deadlocked state was none other than Shinobu.

"Don't you need to stop that vampirified high school girl, a distant little sister in my eyes? Even if the composition has been turned over on its head, what you need to do hasn't changed much, I should say."

That was true—however, the way you searched for a dried-out mummy was quite different from the way you searched for a glorious vampire with golden hair and golden eyes.

"If the King of Oddities takes charge, I'll be put out of business. So, let's say that the personnel currently assigned to search for the mummy will be assigned to search for Kiseki-chan—who do you think she'll go after next, Koyomin?"

"Eh... Um, that's, well, one of the girls' basketball team members she had strife with... right? So, if we're trying to anticipate it—"

That wasn't it.

We'd already more or less anticipated everything—all of the members that were on the list were currently under protection.

There was no way that Kiseki-chan, who somehow got information about our investigation, didn't know about that—she wouldn't make the mistake of jumping into the web herself.

"What if she just gave up on the whole revenge thing and just went home to sleep? That's what I would do."

Suicidemaster made quite the crude statement with such a serious face—at this point, I had to wonder how I even suspected that this pompous little girl was actually a highly calculating criminal.

She was not highly calculating, just loud.

"Well, it's true that Kiseki-chan is trying to avoid us. The diversionary tactics and cover-ups are evidence of that—in that case, she probably wouldn't think of attacking a girls' basketball team member even through the surveillance. To begin with, it's pretty doubtful that there's enough resentment pent up in her that she'd want to make everyone a mummy—I'm sure she had some good friends like normal," said Gaen-san.

The four people that had been discovered as mummies were either the four people that she held the deepest resentment towards, or just the four people that were the easiest targets because they happened to be returning from school alone or had a lot of openings—was it possible she'd relieved all her frustration by attacking those four people?

But I couldn't be optimistic. Rather, as a member of the investigation team, I should assume that the crime would escalate—just as an unreasonable diet leads to rebound, a teenager forced to be stoic in her club suddenly obtained superpowers like in manga, so it should escalate like an escalator—

"! This is hella dangerous, Gaen-san!"

I used a tone of voice I'd never used before—but no matter. I continued.

"Tonight, Kanbaru is having a pajama party at Higasa-chan's house with her friends!"

I was making it sound as if Kanbaru's pajama party was unhealthy, immoral, and outright reprehensible, but that wasn't the point.

It was bad, however, that the retired third-year members of Naoetsu High's girls' basketball team, the OGs of the golden generation, were all in one place, as if they'd all been rounded up.

The golden generation that could even be called.

The mastermind behind the current state of club activities.

The most fitting prey—the main dish.

[polaristranslations]

Tsubasa Ranking

000

"Hanekawa, you always get rank 1 in our year for test scores, right? It's hard for a rank 9999 like me to even begin to guess, but what the hell does that feel like? What is it like to reign at the top, looking over the common folk?"

"There's no such thing as a rank 9999."

We don't even have 9999 third-years at Naoetsu High School—said the one reigning at the top with an amazed look.

"Well, it's not much—I just think, oh, I guess it was my turn to be rank 1 this time. In the end, if we're assigning ranks to people, then someone has to be rank 1, and that just happened to be me this time. There are times where I don't end up being rank 1, and it doesn't really bother me."

She was talking about test rankings as if they were some sort of circular notice.

If she won three hundred million yen in the lottery, she'd probably say the same thing—"Oh, I guess it was my turn to win three hundred million yen," or something.

"But was there really a time that you didn't end up rank 1? I've always imagined you as being rank 1, ever since our first year."

"My, it makes me happy to know that you know all about my grades, Araragi-kun."

Although it was Hanekawa that was more likely to know all about my grades—it wasn't like my test results were good enough to be posted out in the hallway, but it wouldn't be weird if she found out my true rankings through a different route.

"I don't know everything. I just know what I know."

After saying that, she calmly but firmly stated, "I haven't always been rank 1."

"When I think about getting rank 3, then I end up as rank 3, and when I think about getting rank 7, then I end up as rank 7. When I think about getting 1 point lower than Senjougahara-san, then I end up getting 1 point lower than Senjougahara-san."

"You're completely in control!"

Of her own capability.

It wasn't just happenstance—it was like she was deciding the ranking list.

She was exerting her influence over Naoetsu High School's top ranks.

"You know how the saying goes, there's more worth in getting 99 points than there is in getting 100? There was a time where I got caught up in getting whatever score I wanted—so my grades ended up deviating a bit."

"What in the world did you get caught up in?"

Also, ill-informed as I was, I'd never heard that saying before... Was it some sort of folklore passed around only among the top ranks?

"I mean, when you get right down to it, things like first place or a perfect score don't really mean much... It all depends on where you look, doesn't it? For example, I got the highest overall score in the exams the other day, but I made a blindingly careless mistake in the Japanese history exam, so I didn't get a perfect score in that subject. In other words, I'm not rank 1 in the Japanese history category."

Even so, I figured she was probably around rank 2... But I see, it was all where you looked.

Number one in album sales! But even if you said that, were you rank 1 daily, or rank 1 weekly, or even rank 1 monthly? Even if it was the same "rank 1", the reality was a bit different... And even if you say "perfect score", there was getting a perfect score on an elementary school test and there was getting a perfect score on a high school test. Even if it was the same "perfect score", the nuance was different.

"And getting a perfect score out of 100 and getting a perfect score out of 20 is completely different..."

"No, those are the same."

So they were the same.

On the other hand, if there really were more than 10,000 seniors in Naoetsu High School, I would be afraid of my ranking seriously being 9999, so it was true that, just looking at "first place" or "perfect score" numerically, there was no doubt that a change in units led to a tremendous change in values, or a change in the value system—even Hanekawa's "top of the year" status only meant that she was rank 1 among Naoetsu High School's third-years, not that she was rank 1 among students across the country.

Just as I might be ranked 100 millionth among all the high school third-years across the country, perhaps Hanekawa is merely one of the "top ranks" on the national level?

"That's it, that's exactly it, Araragi-kun. I definitely don't amount to much at a larger scale. I've only managed to get rank 1 once in the national mock exams."

So you did get rank 1 at least once...

For some reason, the nuance I felt from her words were something like, "Since I got rank 1 once, I don't need to anymore"—like an athlete that didn't just go for the gold medal, but thought, "I want to collect all of them" and aimed for the full set with silver and bronze medals, too. Though it was unclear whether or not that sort of athlete actually existed.

And even so, even that sort of rank 1 depended on what kind of national mock exams you were talking about—in terms of athletes, while I wasn't referring to Kanbaru Suruga, whose leg strength was put to good use in basketball instead of track, even if you picked a single sport, there would still be many different champions coming from many different countries.

In extreme cases, the rules might even be different...

"Thre's also the viewpoint that getting a perfect score under the curriculum guidelines of 30 years ago and getting a perfect score under the curriculum guidelines of today may end up being the same 'rank 1', but what's written in the answer columns could be totally different. Since there would be new discoveries and rediscoveries... The law itself might change."

Even the Center Test turned into the Common Test. With a wide variety of question formats.

Students preparing for exams sure had it hard.

"Araragi-kun, you're also preparing for exams."

"Oh yeah, that's right."

Though in my case, I was less a student preparing for exams [jukensei] and more living a life of suffering [junan no sei].

"Even in the field of mathematics, which is your specialty, Araragi-kun, things like Fermat's Last Theorem and the abc conjecture have ended up being solved."

"I wouldn't go so far as to say it's my specialty. Although, it's true that the one who solved those two complex problems was none other than me."

"Sounds like lying's your specialty."

Regardless, it was an argument that could invalidate the idea of rankings, relatively.

If we went that far, then it almost felt like a misguided sense of equality... Even the ones in the lowest ranks could technically be considered top rankers if you started from the bottom.

"Mathematically, statistics-based values like rankings, average, or standard deviation can be artificially adjusted, so it's not good to put too much faith into them—but even so, rank 1 is still rank 1, so it doesn't leave me fully satisfied."

"Then, Araragi-kun, you should just become rank 1 yourself."

Thus went Hanekawa, saying something only a genius would say.

In other words, the punchline was that anyone could become rank 1 in something—or so I thought, but she continued after that, making me wonder what was going through her mind.

"I'm sure you can do it. Becoming rank 1 in someone's heart."

How thrilling.

Though that seemed like the hardest possible thing to do.

[polaristranslations]

Yotsugi Buddy Episode 2

The long-awaited summer break has begun! Yay!

Now, what kind of fun should I have with everybody?

...Of course it wouldn't end up being like that. It wouldn't end with that sort of development, and it certainly wouldn't feel like it—as if I would let it. It was just a troublesome matter. "How did things turn out like this?" was practically my favorite phrase at this point, but I particularly thought so for this particular matter. I was sure I didn't make any mistakes up to this point—or perhaps, should I have not responded to the summons from the professor at all?

As if I could have known that that professor would disappear right after talking to me... How was I supposed to know that I would be the last person to see her? I hadn't had a bad feeling about it at all. Perhaps I hadn't introduced myself yet, but I was a former vampire, not a prophet. I couldn't, and didn't want to, say anything that would make it seem as if I'd seen into the future, like some middle-aged guy in a Hawaiian shirt who was off wandering about somewhere.

A university professor went missing right after exams. Naturally, the campus would be in an uproar, and it would be a big deal... As a matter of course, various places also came to ask me about the situation. Well, I pulled through it decently enough... A decent amount of deception was basically my specialty, and I wasn't so inconsiderate as to tell others about the state of the nursery in Room 333 without the owner's permission. First of all, how was I supposed to tell someone about something I didn't even understand?

It seemed the exams were graded by one of the office aides or the professor, so my exam paper was safely returned to me—apparently, the disappearance of one person was not enough to hold up the academic institutions of the present. In other words, there was no job that could only be done by one person in particular. Incidentally, I received a grade of C and the corresponding number of credits. Although that was the last thing on my mind at the moment.

If I wanted to interpret this situation realistically, without bringing in any oddity phenomena like spiriting away or the "replacement child", then... Associate Professor Iesumi, who sent me to check on her house, belatedly regretted her actions, which could only have been an expression of unsound mind... The most likely explanation would be that she feared that the abuse of "her own child" would become public and cause a fuss, and she thus made the decision to "flee".

It wasn't a crime to abuse a handmade doll, and it wasn't a crime to stab that doll in the back—so, even if I were to find out and spread that information out to the world, there was no need to run away out of desperation, but that was just in legal terms. And, as Ononoki-chan said, it was unclear to what extent Associate Professor Iesumi was self-aware.

Her symptoms and awareness could have varied depending on the day, as well—so perhaps I shouldn't be trying to force some sort of consistency, when both the request and the escape felt illogical.

This wasn't a mystery novel. Nor was it a game to find the culprit.

There were some absurd conspiracy theories being whispered around at the university that the professor had been abducted by a special agency because of her top-secret research that had been commissioned by the state, but if I had to guess normally, I would say that Associate Professor Iesumi had simply left all her memories behind and returned to her birthplace of Switzerland... She'd said that she'd come to Japan to escape from her parents, with whom she'd had a bad relationship, but even if she went back, there must be a way to avoid meeting them.

I could even force myself to imagine a happy ending where they let go of their differences and mended their relationship.

The power of one's imagination was limitless, for better or worse.

Especially for worse—even though there was no need for me to do so, when I imagined Associate Professor Iesumi running from one place to another, it wasn't exactly relieving for me... No, in the end, no matter how I interpreted it, when I thought that I could be the direct cause of her disappearance, well... It left me depressed.

It left me empty inside.

In theory, I knew. If I, a "specialist of child abuse", had refused her request, Associate Professor Iesumi would have simply reached out to another student who would have listened to her, and the situation would have converged towards something similar...In the end, everything, including her abusive behavior towards her "three-year-old daughter", was really just her one-woman show.

From beginning to end, the control of the story had been firmly within her grasp.

But that was just in theory. My emotions were different.

So, instead of a glorious start, my first summer break in college got off to a rather unpleasant start... I wouldn't go so far as to say that it was hellish, but the trip to Hokkaido with Hitagi, which I'd made plans to make plans for, had to be postponed once again.

We'd met briefly to discuss it, but as expected, she was very astute and didn't fail to miss my lack of excitement.

Well, in the first place... The promise was that we'd go in winter, when it was crab season.

With that, if I had been left alone, I could have spent the entire summer brooding over Associate Professor Iesumi, but my socializing ability had become better than it was before, so it was hard for me to be left alone.

How wonderful.

So, that morning, I received a message on my cell phone.

It was from a high school girl and my friend, Higasa-chan.

"Araragi☆senpai☆we☆are☆having☆a☆girlsbas☆senpai☆kouhai☆social☆at☆the☆Naoetsu☆High☆gym☆from☆one☆pm☆today☆and☆you'll☆be☆extremely☆popular☆if☆you☆came☆as☆a☆guest☆!☆First☆let's☆meet☆up☆at☆Ruga's☆house☆!☆GO☆GO☆right☆now☆!☆☆☆☆"

It was hard to read.

With her name meaning a rain of stars, perhaps she was trying to make a meteor shower occur in her messages, but in the first place, wasn't this pretty hard to type out?

I tried deciphering it... Hmm... A senpai-kouhai social...? It seemed that, within the span of a few months, the Naoetsu High girls' basketball team, which had been on the brink of collapse, had finally gotten back on its feet enough to do something like that.

Since I'd helped to the best of my limited ability, it was great news to hear, and I would be happy to visit my alma mater if my attendance at the meeting would bring the club any closer to what it was in its heyday.

No, I wasn't expecting anything about popularity, and to be honest, I didn't want to take one step inside my alma mater again...

But I guess it could be a change of pace.

It wasn't because I'd screwed up on a mission, but I still wanted to feel like I was being useful to someone—oh yeah, speaking of deciphering.

I wonder how that "thing" I gave to Meniko was going? I hadn't heard anything from her since then... Since it was her, it was possible she forgot about it.

Well, it didn't hurt to give it a shot.

If it didn't work out, then that was fine. I would almost prefer if it didn't work out.

The first thing to do was to meet at Kanbaru's house (did she even get approval for this? Higasa-chan did have the habit of using a friend's house without permission), so I got changed and went downstairs in order to leave the house.

And, at the entrance, I ran into Tsukihi.

My sister in a kimono, Araragi Tsukihi... My smaller little sister changed her hairstyle from time to time, and her current hairstyle such that all her hair, including her bangs, was tied up in one big ponytail.

Her forehead was cute, to the point that it made me irritated.

"My, my, if it isn't onii-chan. Just the right time. Have you seen my precious stuffed doll?"

"Stuffed doll—"

Ononoki-chan, huh.

That tween girl must have gotten fed up with being used as a dress-up doll again and evacuated from my sisters' room... If so, she might be rolling around in the back seat of my New Beetle again, but I didn't care how much Tsukihi was my beloved sister—I couldn't let her know that.

I'd caused a lot of trouble for Ononoki-chan, so I wanted to at least protect her from the clutches of my little sister... In the end, I didn't talk to her at all about the incident with Associate Professor Iesumi, but being a doll herself, Ononoki-chan may have had her own thoughts when she saw the doll stabbed in the back.

Well, it was just that we didn't discuss the case of Associate Professor Iesumi. We talked as usual about TV dramas or the new Häagen-Dazs ice cream, so there was a strong possibility that Ononoki-chan decided to leave the case as "settled".

At any rate, there was only one answer I could give.

"Sorry, I have no clue. I don't know everything, I just know what I know."

"Whose line was that, again? I feel like I've heard it before."

Even though you adored Hanekawa so much last summer, you've already forgotten about her... I was a little jealous of her refreshingly forgetful nature.

I wished I could split my low spirits with her.

"Oh, whatever. Forget that stuffed doll. It's about time to buy a new one, anyway."

"That's a little too refreshing!"

"So, onii-chan. Where are you headed, all dressed up like that?"

"Oh? This area’s famous fashion advisor, Tsukihi-chan, thinks that I'm dressed up?"

"Yep. It looks like you've dressed up to get high school girls to fawn over you."

How shrewd.

I'll take it as a compliment.

"I'm going to meet Higasa-chan."

"Ah. Her. Hasn't she been coming over, like, three times a week?"

It seemed they'd become acquainted.

Well, she was coming over three times a week.

"Incidentally, about her given name, you write it as 'rain of stars' [星雨], right? But how are you supposed to read it? Seiu? Hoshiame?"

"Either way is fine, she says. It's the same as how Abe no Seimei can also be read as Abe no Haruaki."

"Is, is that allowed...?"

"And where are you headed out to? That kimono is for outdoors, right? Patrolling with Karen-chan?"

"It's been a while since the Fire Sisters broke up, onii-chan. For me, that's just one of my past hits. Karen-chan's gone hiking with her high school friends, and I'm going hiking with my middle school friends."

Hiking?

Is that a trend with middle schoolers right now?

It was hard to catch up with the trends of youngsters these days.

In Karen-chan's case, I could bet that it was some severe mountain climbing again... But Tsukihi shouldn't have been the outdoors type?

"Right. Y'see, I heard a rumor that there was a dead body buried deep in the mountains of a neighboring town, so we all decided to go check it out. Like, pretending it's Stephen King's The Body."

"...The Body?"

"Yeah. I'm a fan of the original work."

How pretentious.

Well, maybe it was a little healthier than the Fire Sisters pretending to be heroes of justice... As an older brother who had just had an adventure that could have led to the discovery of not a dead body deep in the mountains, but the body of an abused child, it was somewhat difficult to rebuke her.

In my case, even my companion had been a corpse... But, seeing as how Tsukihi was also looking for Ononoki-chan, she might have been planning to go hiking with that stuffed doll in hand.

Perhaps that could also be her shrewdness.

It was like equipping yourself with jewelry to go on a treasure hunt.

In any case, after becoming a college student, I shouldn't meddle too much with my little sister's behavior... Being swept up in such inappropriate gossip was also a part of youth.

It was also a good thing that the two sisters, who had a very close relationship, were now taking a healthy distance from each other after being separated by middle school and high school.

"But if you actually find a corpse, then make sure you call the police, okay?"

"Of course. Who do you think I am?"

"Tsukihi-chan, of course."

Hm.

But with all three kids going out on their own, the Araragi household was at peace—at the very least, none of them were locked in cages.

"Tsukihi-chan. We're truly blessed, you know."

"Hmm? What are you saying, all of a sudden?"

"I mean, we didn't have to worry about what to wear, what to eat, or where to sleep. Maybe I should be more grateful to our parents."

"What's the matter? What happened to that onii-chan that would run off somewhere every Mother's Day?"

"I didn't run off anywhere this year! As promised."

"You weren't here for Father's Day. Neither hide nor hair."

"I didn't promise anything for Father's Day."

I haven't exactly become upfront about my feelings regarding my father yet.

Well, putting Mother's Day and Father's Day on the same day was something I'd already discussed with Ononoki-chan, so I wasn't going to repeat myself here.

"Well, there was a bunch of stuff like you jumping off rooftops and being kidnapped by a group of delinquents."

"There was, wasn't there."

"But I'm really thankful that our house is at peace."

I'd experienced things like a hell of a spring break and a nightmare of a Golden Week, but basically, all of those had happened outside my home.

It wasn't like my home became hell or my family became a nightmare... No matter how bad the parent-child or sibling relationship got, I never felt like my life was in danger.

I'd always had a seat at our dinner table.

The filial piety that Senjougahara Hitagi was forced to show her mother; the fact that Hanekawa Tsubasa slept and woke up in the hallway; those were things I still couldn't digest very well... No matter how close we cuddled, no matter how harshly I was yelled at, I would never truly be able to understand their suffering.

Even when I was confronted with an incident that put me close to death, it was still just a temporary accident—a limited-duration tragedy, so to speak.

It wasn't anything like an unforeseeable eternity where I wouldn't be protected by a guardian.

"That's true. If there were problems at home, then Karen-chan and I wouldn't have had to go out to look for evil, would we? The only problem that the Araragi family has is that the older brother looks at his younger sisters in a sexual way."

"That's too big of a problem. And I don't do that. I look at you with contempt."

"I should be grateful. Well, I'm sure parents remember the joys of parenthood, so I guess you could say it's mutual."

"That's not something you can say. You're on the children's side."

"I swear that when I'm reborn, I'll become a mother to Mom and Dad, and take good care of them!"

How complicated.

Well, when you in particular talked about rebirth, there was a fair amount of truth to that... Considering you were a cuckoo.

A shide-no-dori.

And—a phoenix.

"In that case, Tsukihi-chan. Shouldn't you be saying that when you're reborn, you want to be a daughter to Mom and Dad again?"

"For sure! I'm really glad I was born into the Araragi family! I'm so happy to be born the daughter of Mom and Dad and the sister of onii-chan and Karen-chan! I never asked to be born, though!"

"You said a little too much, there."

"If I’m going to be greedy, I'd like to be reborn as your older sister, onii-chan! I want you to be my little brother that I can pick on!"

"Again, a little too much."

I could do without being on the receiving end of your abuse.

010

I figured that I would go along with walking to my alma mater as the athletic types would, but, as a non-athletic type, I decided to drive to our first meeting place, Kanbaru's Japanese mansion (I may have wanted to show my juniors my driving skills). And to my surprise, there was no Ononoki-chan in the back seat.

So she wasn't taking refuge here...? Then, perhaps she had gone to play at Sengoku's place... She sure was active for a corpse.

Oh well, regardless, it wasn't like I could take a tween girl to a girlsbas social... So, if things proceeded according to schedule, I was supposed to meet up with two of my juniors from Naoetsu High, Kanbaru Suruga and Higasa Seiu, but...

"Well, well, it has been a while, Araragi-senpai—how have you been? It's me, Suruga-senpai's biggest fan, the second-year, Oshino Ougi."

The junior who greeted me at the huge gate of the Kanbaru residence was, astride a BMX, the high school boy version of Oshino Ougi—since the Kanbaru residence was Kanbaru Suruga's territory, it seemed he was in boy mode.

As usual, he showed up with that sort of self-introduction.

How tactful of him.

"...What about the two high school girls?"

"It seems that they were delayed in shopping for the party, so they left me to watch the house. With Suruga-senpai having so much faith in me, isn't it obvious that I was instructed to keep Araragi-senpai company?"

It was hard to believe Kanbaru would entrust Ougi-chan—er, Ougi-kun—with watching the house, but if it was obvious, then I guess nothing could be done.

It was obvious, after all.

"I also had some business to attend to with Suruga-senpai, so it was perfect timing. No need to worry, as I won't do anything like follow you to that social. How about it? While we wait for those two to return, why don't we form a duo and clean up Suruga-senpai's room?"

"Two boys shouldn't mess around in a girl's room while she's out..."

"Aah, Araragi-senpai, so you actually are conscious of Suruga-senpai as a girl? Have you been looking at my Suruga-senpai in that way?"

"......"

Boy mode Oshino Ougi was hard to deal with. No, I guess he was like this even when he was a girl? Either way, it felt pretty fresh for me, seeing as I never really had the chance to talk with other high school boys when I was in high school.

It was like, there was no need for Araragi Koyomi to stand firm against Oshino Ougi.

"Although, I'm secretly in the Higasa-senpai camp," said Ougi-kun. "So no fighting over her, okay?"

"Even though you keep going on about Suruga-senpai. That's way too secret. And fighting over her [toriaikko]..."

"Ha ha. Then, would you like to trade and make your fave a 'replacement child [torikaekko]'?"

"...Haha."

I couldn't let my guard down.

Even if "Ougi-kun" was the darkness in Kanbaru's heart, he was still the exact same as the "Ougi-chan" that was the darkness in my heart, so I should've expected him to see through me to this extent.

Since he was Oshino Meme's niece—Oshino Meme's nephew.

"No, no, I don't know anything. You're the one who knows, Araragi-senpai."

"I wish I did. I said this to Tsukihi-chan earlier, but I only know what I know."

"In that case, how would you like to complain to your devoted junior the circumstances that you know of? Just use that power dynamic to make me quietly listen without resistance."

"Do I look like the kind of senior that would perform such a power play?"

Especially since you weren't the type to listen quietly.

All you did was resist.

But, well, rather than wasting time in front of Kanbaru's house, I may as well bring up child abuse and the professor's disappearance as the topic of the conversation.

If I made the mistake of complaining to Kanbaru or Higasa-chan, it would do nothing but put a damper on the senpai-kouhai social... This wasn't the fable of "The King with Donkey Ears", but if I chattered away at Ougi-chan... er, Ougi-kun, then perhaps it could lift my spirits.

With that excuse in mind, I summed things up as concisely as possible and bared my emotions to Ougi-kun—something like this was like talking to myself to the extreme, but, well, it was a tradition of Araragi Koyomi to be loose-lipped when Oshino Ougi was his conversation partner.

"I see. A threefold locked room. That makes me really happy. These days, we don't hear much about locked-room tricks anymore, do we?"

"There's no need for you to act all innocently happy about that. There may have been locked rooms, but none of the doors had any tricks on them."

Ever since then, I'd been keeping the key to the professor's apartment in the pocket of my pants, and shrugged my shoulders with that in mind—she'd disappeared before I could return it, but that didn't mean I could throw it away, so I'd been carrying it around with me the whole time.

Maybe that was a bad thing.

"Not to mention, Ononoki-chan kicked down the second door."

"Indeed. To put it in a rather dull way, producing impossible crimes such as locked-room murders is probably not what intellectual criminals do. Although there is no occupation more intellectual than a university professor."

Said Ougi-kun with a smirk.

Even when he heard a story full of heavy words like "abuse" and "disappearance", he didn't waver a bit—regardless of his gender, he had to be like this, huh.

"So, what do you think? Ougi-kun."

"And what do you mean by what I think?"

"About the contradiction. Of the right and wrong behind the action of stabbing a cloth doll that looked like her own child, and then locking it in a cage."

"If it's a question of right or wrong, then it's most certainly wrong. And if it's a matter of the contradictory spear and shield, then I would say it's the shield."

"The shield?"

"It's self-protection. Defense. For reference, the spear would be aggression based on resentment and murderous intent."

"...Stabbing a defenseless doll in the back is self-protection?"

"Yes. A cowardly crime, to kill before you yourself are killed."

He'd said it wasn't something an intellectual criminal would do, but a cowardly crime... His criticism of Associate Professor Iesumi was pretty intense.

Was that coming from my inner psyche?

But Ougi-kun was different from Ougi-chan in that the origin of his existence was based on Kanbaru... But, in terms of what lay beneath Kanbaru's surface...

"Oh please, Araragi-senpai. I'm not criticizing Associate Professor Iesumi at all."

"Eh?"

"After all, there's no evidence—we can't assume that Associate Professor Iesumi is the one who stabbed the defenseless doll in the back."

Innocent until proven guilty—said Ougi-kun.

Of course, as a resident of a constitutional state, I was certainly aware of that rule... But, huh?

It was true that there was no evidence. Now that he mentioned it.

It wasn't as if forensics came in and checked the fingerprints on the fruit knife, and more importantly, they didn't perform any interview of the person in question... It was all something I'd just come up with on my own.

I was the one who knew—

"There was no criminal investigation performed. If I had to say it, then what was performed was simply media manipulation."

"......"

Hold on. I had to think about this properly.

It was a matter of civil rights... It wasn't the first time for Ougi-kun to jump on one of my carelessly-made comments, but if it became a hotbed for false accusations, then it needed to be examined seriously.

Right.

It was a contradiction.

I had felt very uncomfortable in the nursery because I'd felt that the act of stabbing in the back the abused doll that resembled one's child was inconsistent, but if I interpreted it in parts, the contradictory spear and shield would not clash.

As for the "truth" that she locked her "three-year-old daughter" in a cage at home, she'd confessed that in her own stammering words when she made the request to me... So when I saw the blade stuck in the doll in the cage, I didn't hesitate to accept that it was also the work of Associate Professor Iesumi.

"However, you just went and felt uncomfortable all on your own, didn't you? When people feel things like, 'This is weird,' or, 'How did this happen?' or, 'Why did things turn out like this...', it's usually because multiple people were rampantly involved from multiple directions. That's why it goes beyond your comprehensions."

Multiple people—multiple culprits.

No, that made it sound as if there was an accomplice, but in this case, if this was a complete division of labor by individual people with no communication...

A system where confidentiality is maintained by dividing the work into small segments and assigning them to large numbers of disparate people so that no one can see the big picture—a system where not only outsiders, but also the people themselves, didn't know what they were doing.

To put it simply.

I hadn't considered at all the possibility that the "culprit that had encaged" Iie-chan and the "culprit that had stabbed" Iie-chan were completely different people.

The act of abusing her, and the act of murdering her.

The pieces of the puzzle seemed to sit right next to each other, and yet they did not need to be joined together.

"......"

But... It raised some other questions.

First, if we adopted the idea that there was a child murderer in addition to a child abuser, then the question was, who and where were they?

And how did they manage to carry out the crime?—was another question. That was what good old-fashioned mysteries were about. Threefold secret rooms and impossible crimes.

Most of the logic that was based on the fact that the crime scene was Associate Professor Iesumi's home collapsed, and the killer's image, motive, and trick became inexplicable.

"Not quite."

"What do you mean, Ougi-kun?"

"That sort of typical assistant role doesn't suit you, Araragi-senpai. I don't know anything, so please use your brain cells to think about the main point. Your little grey cells, that is."

How shameless.

But I couldn't get used to relying on this kid—I'll stretch out the wings of my imagination as far as I can so that I can get to say the phrase that suits me: "It's elementary, my dear Ougi-kun."

Putting aside the motive for now. Not like I was the queen of motives. In the case of Associate Professor Iesumi, whether it was abuse or murder, "because she is my daughter" (which should be the reason to protect her) could paradoxically be connected to the motive... If there was another culprit, then there were infinite variations on why people would kill other people.

"I dunno about that. Most of the time, people kill for love, grudges, money, or war. If you include accidents, then there are only five patterns. You can count them on one hand."

It seemed that Ougi-kun took on the role of my assistant, but he was quite the nasty assistant... He was just making fun of me instead of supporting my detective role at all.

He should never take charge of the narration.

"When it comes to a reason to kill a three-year-old, perhaps we should include perverted sexual desire as a motive. Not to mention, it would be a doll."

What the heck.

Anyway, putting the motive aside... What about the locked-room trick?

The bolt lock on the cage wasn't a problem. It didn't even require lockpicking. However, the only one who could unlock the nursery door, as well as the front door, was the homeowner, Associate Professor Iesumi, herself—

"I wonder about that. After all, the first door was unlocked by you, Araragi-senpai, and the second door was magnificently broken through by Ononoki-chan, correct?"

With superficial politeness, my assistant's verbal jabs did not stop—but see, I could respond to that. After all, the second door was broken through, as if knocked down with a battering ram.

Rather than magnificent, it was destruction I would rather not look at.

Even I could only open the first door because the homeowner had entrusted me with the key, and without it, it would have been impossible to get into that locked room—or did the culprit have a spare key?

Perhaps they temporarily borrowed the house key from the professor's key ring... Or they stole the master key from the apartment's management...

"Huh? What if... they didn't have to go that far?"

What if it wasn't a spare key?

If it wasn't—then the locked-room nature of the second door, and the problem of the motive that I had set aside... Frighteningly enough, they could all be solved in one fell swoop.

"Wh, wh-wh, what do you m-m-m-mean? Th, th-th, that they didn't, didn't, didn't, have to go that f, f-f-f-far."

"Don't start pretending to be an assistant now."

That assistant was trembling way too much. He's so out of his mind he's acting like a DJ.

Why couldn't you do things properly?

No, the one who couldn't do things properly was me—this deduction was something I should've come up with when I was right there.

I opened my mouth.

If it wasn't a spare key, but a legitimate key that the owner had proper ownership of.

"It's not necessarily the case that the estranged husband left his keys behind when he left that apartment, right?"

011

Saying that it wasn't necessarily the case [kagiranai] that he left his keys [kagi] behind sounded like a bad pun, but please ignore it—sometimes I'm the one that's out of his mind.

Originally, I was selfish, had few friends, tended to be at odds with others, and was not very good at working with others, which was why I couldn't come up with such an obvious idea, but the fact that I had overlooked the possibility that the crime scene was a joint effort between the couple was an embarrassing blind spot.

I'd paired up as buddies with a vampire, a corpse doll, a god, and the darkness in my heart, though... However, although the term "collaboration" may sound appropriate, it was still a misnomer.

The mother who committed abuse. The father who committed murder.

Because the process was so disjointed, the scene of the crime looked so inexplicable—if the husband came home while Associate Professor Iesumi was away, and then stabbed his wife's handmade work in the back.

With the motive of "because she was his daughter".

Was his wife's behavior, which was also the cause of their separation, too unpleasant to watch—or did the husband also think it was "his child" and stab the doll for that reason?

The extreme possibility was that he felt sorry for her because she was locked in a cage, so took pity on her and put an end to her... Did he stab her in the back because he couldn't kill her while looking at that "henohenomoheji" face in the eyes?

There could be infinite variations on the motive.

No, no no, this was still just an assumption. The wings of my imagination were flapping too much. It wasn't right to be so insistently suspicious of the husband who I'd never met, the husband whose name I didn't even know. The freedom of my inner heart should be used for little girls, tween girls, and young girls, not for suspecting someone of trespassing or murder.

"Although, it would be his own home, so it wouldn't be trespassing. And it was a doll, so it wouldn't be murder,"

said Ougi-kun.

"But, even if you don't have proof, that doesn't mean you don't have a basis for that reasoning, right? When it comes to the uneven results of that doll, as you said yourself, Araragi-senpai. The difference between that balloon-art-like form and the roughly scribbled 'henohenomoheji' face... You could think of it as the professor being better at sewing than she was at drawing, but you could also see it as each task being assigned to a different person, right?"

"......"

Group work—division of labor.

Handmade.

"If so, then I wonder what the circumstances of that were. I don't mean to be presumptuous, but Araragi-senpai, shouldn’t you start the investigation all over again? With this, it might even change the nuance behind the professor's disappearance."

"......"

I didn't think it would change anything.

If there was something to think about divided into parts, then we should also split up her disappearance into parts... Ougi-kun seemed to be pushing me towards the idea that the husband was involved in the professor's disappearance, but even in the unlikely event that that was the case, that was a job for the police to investigate.

In the first place, I didn't even have any investigatory power.

If it was an oddity phenomenon—if the "replacement child" phenomenon was involved, then as someone who's had some experience with the matter, I would not be reluctant to interject a few words of caution, but if not, then playing detective without discretion would be an illegal act.

Just as Ononoki-chan had admonished me, I should remember to rely on the police.

Or so I said, but an hour later, I was parked in the parking lot of Associate Professor Iesumi's apartment building, not near Naoetsu High's gymnasium, the venue of the girlsbas senpai-kouhai social.

Without waiting for Kanbaru and Higasa-chan to return from their shopping trip, I left a message with Ougi-kun, turned the steering wheel as far as it could go, made a U-turn, and revisited the Iesumi residence.

It's because I nonchalantly act with such ingratitude that it's been hard to make friends even in university, but I'd have to wait until next time to get pampered by high school girls.

This was urgent.

No, I wasn't pretending to be a great detective who was caught up in intellectual curiosity and impulsively embarked on a guessing game... In fact, I was the exact opposite, the type of person who avoided murder scenes, even to the point of taking detours. I sounded like I was trying to be understanding, but I honestly didn't understand why Tsukihi would go hiking with her friends after hearing a rumor that a dead body was buried there.

What the hell was she doing?

Even if it wasn't a murder or a crime, the reason I dared to revisit the apartment—where not only the act of child abuse but also the feud between husband and wife had appeared—was not out of intellectual curiosity but, dare I say it, the shield, as Ougi-chan... Ougi-kun had said.

In other words, self-protection.

It was something I'd remembered as I was speaking with Ougi-kun about the threefold locked room. Or rather, it was something I realized. Not the lock to the cage, which could easily be opened, nor the lock to the front door, where the husband might own a key—but the lock to the nursery, the second door.

As for that lock, it would not be surprising if the husband (who used to live in the house) knew where the key was, which means it wasn't necessarily a locked room... When I thought as much, I realized something.

I'd magnificently broken through it—a battering ram.

Ononoki-chan had kicked down the door, but wasn't that kind of yikes?

It had to be yikes.

Since I was entrusted with the key, I'd been confident that I wasn't trespassing this time, unlike the case with Benikujaku-chan, even though we hadn't been told we could destroy the room—the sight of the doll in the cage with its back stabbed must have confused me more than I thought, as I completely forgot to clean up the mess.

Neither the act of abusing a doll nor the act of murdering a doll was a crime, but the vandalism of the interior doors of another person's home certainly was.

Ononoki-chan...!

That girl had no hesitation in her destruction, or, being Yotsugi [余接], it was like she had no other ideas [余念]... With such a docile expression (or rather, no expression at all), she sure was good at destroying things without batting an eyelid... Speaking of which, in Benikujaku-chan's case, she'd also broken the window to the apartment without compunction.

She would probably answer proudly and without shame that she was a tool with that sort of function, but it always ended up being me that had to clean up afterwards.

It's like how, even though it's the heroes who defeat the demon king, it's the ordinary people who have to rebuild the world after it was destroyed in battle—no, this was not a story with that sort of lesson. This was simply a matter of a lack of discipline. After all, the original owner of that Ononoki-chan was that violent onmyouji... Not to mention, the current owner, Tsukihi, was not the type of person who lived for tidiness, to say the least.

Whatever it was, I hadn't thought about it enough.

It was quite the awful nursery, so the destroyed door fit right in, but even in a room that looked like the remnants of affection, that didn't mean that the door should also become remnants.

It may not be a problem or an incident at the moment, but if the disappearance of Associate Professor Iesumi continued for a long time, then someone, some party, would enter that room at some point—the management company, or even the police.

Although her whereabouts were unknown, it only meant that she did not show up at work and could not be contacted, not that she had been reported missing—the people that would likely file a missing person report, her family and parents, were probably all living in Switzerland. At the moment, the authorities did not seem to be taking any action, but even that had its limits.

If the rent wasn't paid on time, the apartment would have to be vacated at some point—and if that nursery was seen, that would cause a huge scandal. No doubt, it would be linked to her disappearance, and how would the destroyed door be seen then...?

Maybe, as a coward, I was being overly cautious—if the judiciary was going to arrest her for that level of destruction, Ononoki-chan would have been arrested a long time ago (she had once smashed the front door of the Araragi house to bits, as well as my sister).

I could assume that the person usually in charge of cleaning up after Ononoki-chan was the influential administrator of the specialists, Gaen Izuko-san—she was good at that sort of subterfuge, that "onee-san that knew everything".

Subterfuge against sabotage.

However, as my relations had currently been cut off with that onee-san, I couldn't rely on that possibility anymore... Now that I'd realized, I had to do something about it myself.

If I hadn't realized it, I could have just let it go... Even though I was supposed to be having a change of pace having fun with high school girls, switching to going and covering up a crime was quite the rollercoaster.

If the rent is withdrawn from her bank account, even if she's not there, then the payments wouldn't be delayed right away (though it depended on her bank balance), but it was better to take action as soon as I could—you could say it was fortunate that I kept the key in my pocket instead of getting rid of it... Although, if I had just thrown it away, I wouldn't have even been able to consider performing a cover-up, and may have just given up. Actual crimes were probably exposed as a result of such unimportant lapses of memory...

Life just didn't go smoothly, did it.

But I was glad that I realized at the point that Ononoki-chan was away... A former vampire under surveillance, acting arbitrarily of my own accord, could get me killed yet again. Even though I was trying to clean up after Ononoki-chan's behavior, I wouldn't accept if Ononoki-chan were to clean me up, instead.

And so, after going to a home center and picking up carpentry tools meant for repairs along the way, I revisited the Iesumi residence.

012

If I fixed the broken door quickly enough, perhaps I would make it in time for at least the afterparty of the girlsbas social—at least, that was the sweet-sounding plan I tried to devise, but that plan went awry.

Of course, I was making it sound like I was dying to attend that social, but I wasn't exactly a sociable person in the first place, so no matter what the purpose was, I wasn't exactly good with parties... When it came to the Fire Sisters' disbanding party, that troublesome guy who attended only reluctantly? That was me.

That was a party of middle school girls, huh... Well, I could do something about my social skills while I was still in college, but it seemed that I'd have to give up on attending the social altogether.

Because the door to the nursery was damaged beyond repair, so much so that I couldn't do anything about it—no, that wasn't the reason.

If that had been the case, then ultimately, I could've used my secret trick. I could have relied on the former legendary vampire Oshino Shinobu's—the former Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade's—"matter creation ability" to perfectly reconstruct the door from nothing... Although one condition was that I would have to wait until nightfall, but if so then I could simply have gone to the social while it was still daytime (maybe I did want to go after all?) and then come back to this room at night.

I would also have to pay compensation (in donuts)... However, that carefully thought-out plan ended up being useless. The state of that second door was such that it perfectly suited my independent spirit in wanting to resolve things on my own if at all possible... It was probably a good thing that Ononoki-chan kicked the door with her bare foot. If she had been wearing her usual boots, or if she had gone and used her "Unlimited Rulebook", then a hole could have been formed in the door itself. But the only damage that had been incurred was a faint footprint on the door and a few broken screws—even the hinges were mostly intact.

This was a level of DIY that I could manage with my skills—but then, why was it that I couldn't go and gleefully get pampered by high school girls?

The situation wasn’t that complicated, but it was very important, so allow me to explain it step by step—about this development that was less of a situation [jijou] and more of an anomaly [ijou].

Even though I'd been given a key, that didn't mean that I had nothing to hide, so I snuck in through the back door of the building as if I was trying to avoid the security cameras (which made me even more suspicious), and took the stairs instead of the elevator to the third floor, room 333—after all, with the homeowner missing, I didn't want anyone to think the kidnapper had come back to destroy evidence. I could say that I hadn't kidnapped anyone, but the facts were extremely close to that scenario, and that closeness could be a problem... My behavior was becoming more and more suspicious.

Well, it's impossible to avoid the cameras completely unless you become a complete vampire (then you won't be reflected in mirrors, so you'd be safe except for mirrorless cameras. Mirrorless was probably fine, too), so at some point I just had to take a "so-what" attitude... And apart from that, there were other precautions I needed to take.

Now that I'd arrived at the possibility that the separated husband was the "child murderer", I most certainly needed to be cautious that Room 333 might not necessarily be empty when I came... You might say that something like that was going a bit overboard, but I had to say that it was entirely possible for me to bump into the husband that had returned in the nursery.

It would be a terrible scene to be found in.

Even though I'd never gone through such a sad state of affairs with my actual girlfriend, why should I have to suffer like some married woman's secret lover?... However, since I, the breaker of the door (rather, an accomplice), had made my triumphant return here, it wouldn't be unusual if the husband were to return for the second time.

Not to mention the possibility of it being a situation like that Russian movie, The Return... The idea that the husband was the "child murderer" was, at present, simply my (and Ougi-kun's) own conjecture, so even if he weren't, it's conceivable that he might return home out of worry for his missing wife. In that case, we would not be of equal status. I would one-sidedly be guilty of breaking and entering.

It'd been tense when I'd opened the front door imagining a locked-up abused child, but it was also quite thrilling to open the door imagining that the father might be there.

So, after much deliberation, I decided to ring the intercom... And there was no answer. No reaction. Could I feel relief from that?

Nope, I should take precautions over relief.

Because there was one more development that I needed to take into consideration. That was the possibility that the heart of the problem, "the missing Associate Professor Iesumi herself", was simply holed up in her house—instead of disappearing or returning to Switzerland, what if she was just not contacting her work or friends, not leaving her apartment, and not using her answering machine?

It seemed like a classic trick that was often overlooked, but it was actually a stay-at-home policy that was possible because of modern society. Any necessities of life could be delivered through online shopping... Well, there would eventually be a limit to it, but even so, a person could easily spend their life like this for a week or so.

This was assuming she had the strength of mind to remain stubbornly silent even when university officials and friends were visiting her incessantly... Meanwhile, I was feeling so guilty after canceling on the social last-minute.

Oh yeah, once upon a time, I'd locked myself in the gymnasium storehouse with the intention of disappearing (please don't ask me for details), but a single message from Hanekawa was enough to shake me... So, if Associate Professor Iesumi was responsible for her own disappearance for whatever reason, I had to think that the possibility that she was hiding in her home was rather thin.

Even the possibility of exchanging greetings with the husband was clearly higher—but if I didn't properly simulate the pattern of reuniting with Associate Professor Iesumi after a few days, I figured I'd get flustered... Could I say something like, "I've come to return the key"?

Or should I just pretend to be a great detective and say something cool, like, "I knew you were here all along..."?

All the while, making an expression of understanding.

In any case, there was no answer when I pressed the intercom—from here on, my role was not to be a visitor, but to be a repairman.

Though it wasn't necessarily the home of a person I knew well, it was still my second visit to the house, so I wasn't going to get lost just from walking down the hallway of this apartment—no need to invoke the god of lost children—and I soon arrived at the nursery.

I should add that there was no sign of anyone from the living room or the first door in the hallway (most likely Associate Professor Iesumi's bedroom)—thus, the theory of the university professor having become a shut-in had all but disappeared. Rather, I should reflect upon my apparent carelessness in having left the door to that bedroom open the other day.

The second door was more than simply left open... but the extent of the destruction was such that it could be restored to its original state by hand, as I'd already mentioned.

Let's just rejoice in that.

However, the thought of rejoicing didn't pass through my mind at all, because it wasn't just the door to the nursery that had been broken.

"...Huh?"

The big problem was—the door to the cage in the corner of the nursery was broken. The other day, when I viewed this room with its blackout curtains drawn, the door of the cage had been properly bolted—but now, it was broken in a way that was almost irreparable.

It was as if it had been a cage to confine some sort of monster, and that monster forcibly pried open the iron fence from the inside... It had been warped like candy. Rather than saying the door had been broken, it was more like the door had been melted—but, needless to say, there were no monsters inside that cage.

And.

The abused doll that had been stabbed in the back with a fruit knife had also disappeared from the cage. Like her maker, she had gone missing—

013

Hm? Hmm? Hmmm?

What was going on here?

I decided to temporarily set my toolbox down on the nursery's floor... This might have been a mistake, as any sensible person would have turned on his heel immediately.

But, being a considerable fool, I couldn't help but inspect the cage. Without thinking, I chose to think—well, well, let's at least calm down.

I figured that someday I would fix my bad habit of staying in place when surprised... If I were to assess the scene objectively, it might look as if the doll escaped from the cage of its own volition, but I couldn't take that as fact just yet.

No need to panic.

I only got such a first impression because I happened to know an extreme example of an autonomously moving doll, a corpse doll... But as long as we followed common sense, dolls did not break out of prison.

Just as everyone knows well.

So, if there was someone that destroyed this cage in the past few days, it should be easily assumed that it was not the work of the trapped doll, but of someone who visited the room during that time.

It may look like it had been pried open from the inside, but maybe that was just how it looked, you know?

It appeared that Associate Professor Iesumi was not at home, and so I could make any number of hypotheses that she could have returned home temporarily after her disappearance—and when she did, perhaps she took that handmade doll with a profound level of emotional attachment with her. A similar hypothesis could easily be made in the case of the husband.

Maybe he regretted stabbing the doll that his wife "adored"... Um, maybe he took it to be repaired?

It could even be surmised that he took the doll to destroy evidence after his wife's disappearance, just as I had visited the Iesumi residence to do so.

...But, was that really the case?

Even if it wasn't the Iesumi couple, assuming a human being took that creepy doll... Who in the world would go so far as bending an iron cage to do that?

Even the shikigami and god of destruction who kicked in the second door, Ononoki-chan, would probably unbolt the cage when opening it... It was a simple mechanism that could be opened by even a kindergartener who had never seen something so ancient as a bolt lock in their life.

Yes, unless you were a three-year-old that hadn't yet entered kindergarten...

First off, it was a cage meant for animals. It wasn't some run-of-the-mill toy. What kind of force, and at what angle, would cause an iron rod to twist in such a ridiculous way?

At least with my arm strength, it would be impossible. Of course, in my vampire days, neither iron nor diamond would be anything special, but with my current arm strength...

But really, what about it?

No matter how innocent I pretended to be, I'd traveled through time, and I'd both destroyed and saved a parallel world... It made no sense to be so distraught over the escape of a doll.

But... even the "precedent", the corpse doll Ononoki-chan, needed to be used for a hundred years in order to become a tsukumogami, right? And for her to move so freely and openly, Kagenui Yozuru and Teori Tadatsuru had been burdened with the incomprehensible curse of "not being able to walk on the ground"—Ononoki-chan was a corpse doll with that much time and compensation needed.

For a stuffed doll, which had only been a stuffed doll last week, to escape from prison by force on my next visit... Was it really so simple?

"...No."

It wasn't just a stuffed doll.

It was handmade, made in place of one's child.

It had been hurt.

And it had been stabbed in the back—even though it hadn't been long, the passion put into it was certainly not superficial. It was a level of passion that would make you think, "If that much wasn't enough, then how much passion would you even need?"

I would even venture to say that there was the possibility that my visit to the nursery was a trigger... It was entirely possible that I, with my wealth of experience in strange things, had some influence over it. In the same way that the Kitashirahebi Shrine, which used to be a gathering place for "bad things", played such a role with the jagirinawa—perhaps I had become a walking attraction for those "bad things".

A magnificent self-made problem.

In order to prevent this from happening, Gaen-san should have completely sealed away the influence of the former Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, but I suppose even the most skilled of experts could make mistakes.

If that was the case, then I couldn't help but feel responsible... If I was not only the trigger for the disappearance of Associate Professor Iesumi, but also the trigger for the jailbreak of the abused doll, then—no joke—I couldn't complain if I was blasted to death by Ononoki-chan.

That girl was always no joke [joudan].

She was always a ghost story [kaidan].

However, even so, this situation was no longer something that I could cover up... I had no choice but to report to Ononoki-chan, even if it meant preparing myself to get killed. Unlike the second door, the only way to fix this warped, twisted cage back to normal would be to call in Shinobu, but if there really was a leak in the influence of that loli slave, then we couldn't easily rely on vampire powers.

I was at a loss...

In any case, whether it was my fault or not, I couldn't afford not to search for the stuffed doll that escaped from the cage, and if it came to that, then the help of a professional like Ononoki-chan was essential—as I thought that, I approached the cage and looked inside from above, just as I'd done the other day.

No matter what direction I looked in from, there was no space to hide in an empty cage... Even the fruit knife was gone.

Could it have escaped while stabbed?

If that was the case, that fugitive would be dealing with a serious injury... Could I think of it like that? Or was I empathizing too much with a lump of cloth?

But it's because of the emotional investment that that doll—let's call it the Iie-chan doll—was able to escape from the cage, wasn't it?

"Um... But, if it escaped, then where did it go?"

I voiced the question that naturally came to mind.

Of course, I would go look for it together with Ononoki-chan—well, I highly doubt it ran to the children's welfare center—but what I was referring to came before that.

I had come in through the front door. Using the key, I'd unlocked the door.

In other words, the door had been locked—if the Iie-chan doll had left from the front, from that doorway, then wasn't it strange that the door was locked?

Unlike the husband, it was hard to believe the stuffed doll possessed a key... Not many parents would entrust their keys to a three-year-old, even if the child was alive and not abused.

To examine the problem from all angles, even assuming that the Iie-chan doll still had the key... If "she" couldn't figure out how to open a bolt lock, how could she possibly know how to close a dimple lock?

In other words, roughly speaking, the Iie-chan doll didn't go out the front door... Then, could it have escaped by breaking the glass of a window somewhere? But when I entered the room, the air felt the same as when I'd been here the other day, and it didn't seem like it had been ventilated in any way...

"...It may have escaped from the cage, but."

Perhaps, the Iie-chan doll.

Was still in this apartment?

014

Surprisingly enough, I hadn't been able to quickly deduce from the warped frame of the cage the possibility that the Iie-chan doll's escape had just taken place—I hadn't imagined that the Iie-chan doll could still be at home, or even that she could still be hiding in this very nursery.

While there was certainly no place to hide in the empty cage, when the playing field consisted of the entire house, there would be plenty of hiding places for a stuffed doll the size of a three-year-old.

I was suddenly very nervous.

It happened at quite the accelerated rate, especially taking into account the fact that the fruit knife was also missing—a doll capable of irreversibly destroying a cage, while also wielding a knife? That was more than enough of a threat.

It was threatening [kyoui], and it was terrifying [kyoufu].

To think that it was not Associate Professor Iesumi but the Iie-chan doll that was holed up inside this apartment... Even though it was able to escape from the cage, did it stay in here because it couldn't figure out how to get past the front door? At the size of a three-year-old, it wouldn't be able to reach the thumbturn, either... If it had the strength to bend bars of iron, then it would be strong enough to break a window, but the question was whether or not a three-year-old understood what the substance of glass was.

For example, adult dogs were said to have the intelligence of three-year-olds, but supposedly they often ran headfirst into windowpanes... It was bit different from the concept of the mirror self-recognition test, but it wouldn't be a surprise if the Iie-chan doll couldn't conceive of breaking that transparent glass. In the same way you can't break air, which is transparent and not visible... Damn, this was making me glance around for no reason.

To think that after just barely registering the fact that a doll had escaped, I would be devising plans for my own escape... However, if I wasn't being too cowardly and the Iie-chan doll really was still inside this apartment, then you could say that there was a successful lockdown in place.

In specialist terms, a barrier.

If I were to open the front door to escape, it would result in the barrier being lifted... Of course, if I closed the door immediately and locked it tightly, then I could probably get away with it, but that couldn't be guaranteed... It was even possible that the escapee was waiting to take advantage of when I would make my escape.

So here I was, feeling a sense of responsibility and trying to figure out a way to settle the matter of this barrier... Although, if the doll had already escaped ages ago, this would just be tilting at windmills.

It wouldn't exactly be a reprehensible double standard if a stuffed doll that could pry open an iron cage with its monstrous strength could also pass through walls.

Even though I knew that very well, I still had to do whatever I could... Because if I let the Iie-chan doll leave the house right now, I had no idea where it would go off to—well, no, I did have an idea.

My idea was that the abused "three-year-old daughter" would go looking for the missing "mother" or perhaps the estranged "father"—with unexpected superpowers, that is.

That's why I had to stop it.

If it was still in here, I couldn't let it escape.

If only I had the skill to detect oddities like a radar... If it were Shinobu, she could probably do it... However, as far as I could tell from my glancing around, it seemed it wasn't still in the nursery. I also astutely made sure to look at the ceiling, but there weren't any mobiles hanging from it.

It wasn't as if I looked that carefully at the living room or the associate professor's bedroom when I arrived, but thinking about it, the most suspicious room had to be that third room, right? It seemed that the time had finally come for me to muster up the courage to enter into the estranged husband's room—a room I had not yet seen. I took one last glance at the crib to see if the doll would actually turn out to have been sleeping peacefully there, but of course, it was empty, just like the cage.

No, strictly speaking, it wasn't "just like" the cage.

Without exaggerating, the cage was completely empty, but the crib was a bed, so naturally there was a blanket inside—a blanket?

"!! Urk—!"

By the time I thought of it, it was already too late.

The blanket that flew out from the crib wrapped around my neck—with an intense power that could even bend iron.

015

I'd been calling it a lump of cloth—in other words, looking down on the fact that it was supposed to be a doll—and it was as if I was receiving retribution for it. Even though it didn't even need a change in thinking to see that the Iie-chan doll, which had been formed like a balloon animal, had untied itself and hid itself in the crib.

I promised to write a letter of reflection, about the length of this book, for my lack of consideration and inadequacy at a later date, but right now, considering the situation he was currently experiencing, what Araragi Koyomi should be writing was a letter of warning.

I wasn't saying this out of spite towards being strangled by a blanket... But if it had the ability to arbitrarily return from the shape of a three-year-old to the shape of a flat blanket, then why even bother bending the cage to escape from it?

It could just slip through the gap between the bars.

By untying itself and thinning out.

It was plausible to assume that it didn't do so because it couldn't do so at the time... It was only after escaping that it acquired the ability to "blanket-ify", if you will.

Should I say that it learned—or should I say that it grew up, like a three-year-old would?

Its growth rate, its growth potential.

As an oddity, its danger level was way too high—even though I was "former" in more ways than one, the fact that it could entrap the thrall of the King of Oddities in such a skillful way was all the more impressive.

It was probably reading too much into it to say that the doll was waiting all this time for a guy to arrive, who could teach it how to open the door—I thought I'd been plenty nervous, but it seemed I didn't have enough of a sense of urgency.

So it would not have been a surprise if I'd broken my neck here, and that would have been extremely appropriate as retribution—but it was only by sheer luck that I was here now, speaking the words of a disgraced loser.

And, if you could believe it, I was now chewing on that good fortune inside a cage—yes, the very cage that the Iie-chan doll had been confined in.

At present, I was being confined.

I'd been grabbed by the neck by an old-looking magic blanket and thrown into the cage—and, whether or not that was also something it had learned, it freed me just before I was about to faint, wrapped itself around the pried-open part of the cage, and pulled it back into its original shape.

Perhaps by coincidence or perhaps on purpose, it also twisted the bar of the bolt lock so that it was all warped and twisted—thus, I was rendered unable to escape from the cage.

I'd been locked up.

The blanket, having successfully neutralized its prey, fluttered out of the nursery without giving me so much as another glance.

After that, judging from the sounds coming from down the hallway, the blanket seemed to have opened the front door and left... The situation I had feared had easily become a reality.

If it could become a flying blanket, then the problem of its height was easily resolved, and the barrier turned out to be one that could simply be unlocked... If it had been locked in the room because it couldn't figure out how to turn the thumbturn, then I had broken that seal when I arrived to destroy evidence.

Oops.

When I came in, I really should have locked the door properly, and even set the chain lock...

At any rate... The escape of an abused doll, huh.

It was like I could kind of understand how it felt. Of course you'd want to run away after being a locked in a cage this small, right?

The sheer number of things I'd have to think about after this made me feel fed up, but first things first, I had to figure out a way out of this cage... The bolt lock had been twisted and tied to be immobile, and pulling off a stunt like warping the iron bars was impossible for (the current) me... Which meant that, good grief, I would have to come up with my own locked room trick.

How thrilling.

It had been a year since I was last confined.

Last summer, I had once been trapped in an abandoned building by Senjougahara Hitagi, who I had just started dating—at that time, she had prepared food and drinks for me, but I couldn't exactly expect anything like that now.

The blanket had escaped, and the homeowner was missing.

I could carelessly act as if I'd managed to survive, but at this rate, I was going to die of hunger in three days.

It was easy to say that people who have never been abused would never know what it felt like to be abused, but I never thought I would experience the same thing as the Iie-chan doll...

Was that also on purpose? Was it revenge?

If so, then all I could say was that it was taking revenge on the wrong person. But that didn't mean I could allow it to take revenge on the right person, either.

I had to become an escape artist.

Fortunately, I had two rough plans in mind.

Plan number one... Wake Shinobu up. The day was still long, but Shinobu wasn't exactly a vampire but the remnants of a vampire, so daytime activities were still possible with some negotiation.

Plan number two... Call Kanbaru or Ougi-kun over LINE. Fortunately, the modern convenience that was my cell phone had neither been stolen nor destroyed—Ougi-kun already knew about this apartment, and if I asked for help from those two that were familiar with oddity phenomena (especially since they appeared to be working together on some suspicious activity), they could not only help me break out of this cage, but also with the subsequent search for the Iie-chan doll.

Neither plan was that bad, but the common disadvantage that both plan one and plan two had was that they were both "super uncool"... If any of them saw me locked up in an animal cage like this, I would never be respected again, as a master or as an upperclassman.

I'd be looked down upon for the rest of my life.

Or even just abandoned.

You'd probably say something like, "I couldn't care less about your trivial sense of pride," but without that trivial sense of pride, my sense of duty towards capturing the Iie-chan doll that I'd let escape would also vanish.

If I had to resort to calling someone out from their precious daytime nap or from a big senpai-kouhai social, I had to at least escape from the cage by myself.

Seriously, I wanted to cry.

I'd experienced hell and I'd experienced nightmares, I'd traveled through time, I'd destroyed and saved a parallel world, and now I was struggling to figure out how to get out of an animal cage... But, well, in the end, it was just a cage for wildlife. Powerless before the wisdom of humanity—well, I wasn't exactly wildlife, but one of those wise humans that had ended up being confined by a blanket, but there was no need to be vain about it in this unwinnable scenario. In fact, Shinobu had seen many more shameful things in my life...

Sure enough, thanks to some sort of divine providence, there was currently a toolbox full of do-it-yourself tools in this nursery. Some idiot must have brought it in order to repair the door in order to hide evidence.

But what that idiot was about to do now was the exact opposite—using the tools to break down a door. You could compare this situation to the reality that technology developed to enrich people's lives could be used as weapons of war in the future, but putting that aside.

I reached for the toolbox through the gap in the iron bars, but alas, it was too far—and my legs fit only up to my knees. Well, thighs are called thighs [futomomo] because they are thick [futoi]. So I decided to use my head a bit and take off my trousers.

Not because I thought it would make my thighs slimmer, but because I was going to use my trousers as a lasso—first, I would take my pants out of the cage, hold the left and right cuffs with my hands through the gaps in the iron bars, and flap the trousers in the direction of the toolbox.

It was on the third try that the toolbox was successfully caught in the crotch area—all I had to do was pull it in.

If I stopped to think about what I was doing in someone else's house with my pants down, it would be a defeat for me... But it was still too early to think that I was done.

This was where the real work began.

Now, in the toolbox, which was on sale for 2,980 yen, there was... Yes, a coping saw! Just what I needed! That was what I cheered to myself, but unfortunately, it was not exactly what I needed—I only realized after I started, but it would probably take me around five years to cut the iron fence with a coping saw.

And it wasn't like I could just cut a single bar and escape. That would be the way of a true escape artist.

Then, could I use a screwdriver to dismantle the cage...? That didn't sound so easy without the assembly instructions, either... And then, it hit me.

At the bottom of the toolbox was a hammer.

DIY.

Destroy It Yourself.

Five minutes later, I succeeded in performing my trick to escape from the locked room—a quicker escape than waking Shinobu up during the day or calling Kanbaru or Ougi-kun on the phone, as it turned out.

According to my calculations, I hadn't even been trapped here for half an hour, but still, there was a real sense of liberation.

I almost wanted to express my joy through song.

With that, I wondered what the Iie-chan doll was feeling now... Right, I couldn't waste time basking in my sense of liberation.

I had to go after the blanket that had escaped.

It couldn't have gone very far yet—clinging to those thoughts, I ran out the front door, but I couldn't find the blanket or the doll anywhere.

Then, could it have figured out how to use the elevator? Or perhaps, the fire escape—no, it was a flying blanket, so I suppose I could skip those formalities. The corridor in front of the entrance faced the sky, so once it was out, the Iie-chan doll was free to go.

I tried to lean over the railing to get a better look, but I didn't see any blanket dancing in the wind... It didn't seem there was any chance of bringing out the punny phrase, "The futon flew away! [futon ga futtonda]", that I had prepared for when I found it.

Still, I had to keep going without losing to my despair—urged on by my frustration, I ran down the stairs. It was not for the sake of being cautious towards the security cameras, like I had done on my way up, but the result of impatience that prevented me from waiting for the elevator. I could at least say that I was rational enough not to dive from the third floor into the parking lot.

And then, with no particular destination in mind, I jumped into my New Beetle and drove off—or so I planned, but...

"Whoa!"

I yelled.

Despite the despair I was facing, what leaked out was not an expression of grief, but an exclamation of astonishment—the four tires of my beloved car had all gone flat.

Or I should say, they had been forced to go flat... It looked like the thick rubber had been torn apart with brute force, leaving the wheel's rim almost bare.

I'd been trying to go anywhere while chasing after the flying blanket, but this meant I could go nowhere—how clever of you, Iie-chan doll.

Fifteen minutes ago, it had carelessly confined me without taking away my cell phone, but now, it had obtained the judgment to precisely take away my means of transportation—I had no idea how it was able to determine that the New Beetle was my car, but that three-year-old sure was growing up fast.

I was excited for this one's future prospects.

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Owarimonogatari Season 2 [Hitagi Rendezvous]

OK I meant to watch this like a week ago but that didn’t happen for a variety of reasons. Oh well. Hopefully I can get Ougi Dark done tomorrow to finish this off completely.

Anyway, thoughts under the cut.

PART ONE:

First of all, A+ for that Araragi shower scene at the start. Just gonna lay that one out there. 

His whole internal monologue at the start was really good. It’s nice to see him growing as a person and being able to do some self-reflection. I can really relate to the whole point about fearing love because you don’t want to change or be changed, and because falling in love makes you vulnerable in general. That’s basically how I currently feel on the subject.

I was incredibly excited to see Senjougahara again, and she didn’t disappoint. I get why she stopped showing up as much after she and Araragi hooked up, but it’s still nice to see her. I still love the way they interact. Considering how I’ve technically been following the series for 3+ years now, their relationship feels weirdly . . . nostalgic to me, to seeing them just be cute together gives me a whole lot of warm fuzzies. And seeing them both grow up as people and head into their adult lives has an almost bittersweet but still heartwarming feeling to it, when you’ve been watching them from their first meeting. But even though they’ve grown as people, they’re still the sort of couple to have a lengthy back-and-forth about the concept of having wanting to go on a date, so I guess some things will never change. Which I’m happy for.

I honestly almost forgot that Yotsugi is living with Araragi and his family now. That must be an awkward arrangement in general, especially since she has to pretend to be a doll whenever any of Araragi’s family members see her. I guess he’s just gonna have to live with the fact that she’s going to be hanging out with him for the rest of his life, lol. I’m also pretty happy to see Yotsugi again. She’s always been a favourite of mine. I know why other people dislike her, but something about her just appeals to me. I love her design and personality, and how much she does not at all fit with most of the cast. She’s just this bizarre little character that sticks out like a sore thumb and it works really well.

I’m glad that Yotsugi spelled out that Kiss-Shot has indeed fully revived now that Araragi has lost his vampire powers, since I wasn’t clear on that. I think a lot of my confusion stemmed from how when we saw her at the end of Mayoi Hell, the light flickering effect made me think it was meant to seem like an unstable hologram effect, which made it seem like she wasn’t fully back to her old form. But after reading some of the comments about the last arc, it clicked in my head that the flickering was probably meant to look like camera flashes at a modeling event, which makes sense given how she was definitely meant to look like a runway model in that scene. Anyway, I’m kinda curious to see what the heck a meeting between her and Gaen would even play out like. It’s hard to imagine.

Also I’m still unsure what’s going on with Kagenui and if that’s ever going to be explained or followed up on. I THINK she’s just literally dead, but I’m not sure.

Whenever either of Araragi’s sisters enters a scene I kinda reflexively brace myself, because let’s face it there’s not a whole lot to their characters outside of incest jokes, and the incest jokes are like the worst part of the entire series outside of the whole issue of how the series treats young girls in general which I’m not gonna touch right now. But thankfully the scene was totally fine. It was actually really nice to see Tsukihi just being a cute, supportive little sister.

I’m pretty sure I’d heard about this part of the scene in advance, but it was really nice getting an update on Nadeko’s situation. I’m happy that she’s out of the hospital and about to get back to her usual life. Hopefully she can stay far away from Araragi and just do her own thing. She’s still one of my favourite characters in the series and I just want her to be happy. To be honest like half the reason I want Shaft to adapt Off Season sooner rather than later is because I want to finally see what happens in Nademonogatari. A whole book about Nadeko post-Koi sounds like exactly my sort of thing.

Araragi getting incredibly surprised by Senjougahara being able to drive now was pretty hilarious to see. And I also wasn’t really expecting the detail that before he lost his vampire powers he wouldn’t have been able to get a driver’s license himself since he can’t appear in photos. I know that that’s come up before in the story, but I kinda forgot about it. I wonder how he’s managed to avoid getting found out, since things like that are pretty major indications that there’s something weird and supernatural going on with you.

Getting an update on Hanekawa was also good. I hope we see her again in Ougi Dark. I kinda miss her. I’m curious to learn about her adventures in trying to track down Oshino, which is also why I’m really happy that that’s apparently what an entire arc in Wazamonogatari is about.

This whole date between Araragi and Senjougahara is definitely reminiscent of their date in episode 12 of Bake, which makes me really wish I had have gotten around to rewatching that before this. It’s the next thing I have slated for my rewatch. Oh well. I at least remember how it goes so that’s what matters. I like the bookending feel that it has, to make their date here be about stars as well.

I wasn’t really expecting Senjougahara to be working toward studying space in college, but I guess it makes sense. It was really nice seeing her talk about something that she’s passionate about studying and pursuing as a career. It’s a side of her we don’t see much.

That was a pretty ominous little stinger there at the end, with Senjougahara saying that star maps look more like ougis than squares. Not sure if that’ll mean anything for the remainder of this arc, though.

PART TWO:

Welp, we immediately went into a whole dream sequence with Ougi so I guess the stinger was kinda immediately relevant. Welp.

I often forget to comment on the visual elements of the series, which is kinda weird since the visuals are one of my favourite aspects of the series, so I just wanna say here that the visuals in this whole scene were great. I love the space aesthetic, the harsh lighting across part of Araragi’s face while the rest of him is pitch black, and of course Ougi is her own visual presence in every scene she’s in. Watching her in action is always great, even though I tend to have trouble following what she talks about.

I’m not sure if the discussion about constellations will be very relevant, but it was interesting. It was kinda funny seeing them talk about the Southern hemisphere as a foreign place, considering that that’s where I live :V

I was definitely a bit lost during the entire conversation about what it means to be ‘right’ and how some people pursue a righteous identity by not doing the right thing. But it obviously was meant to tie into Ougi’s whole deal about returning things to zero, and punishing people who step outside of their bounds. I hadn’t really thought about it, but it makes sense that Gaen would face some sort of punishment for what she did. Even I, at the time, thought it all seemed too perfect.

I’m excited to finally learn what Ougi’s deal is, in the next arc. I think I already know the answer though, due to some spoilers I’ve read. It’s not a big deal, though. If I’m right about it, then it’s something I already figured was probably the case. 

The whole date between Araragi and Senjougahara was amazing and adorable. I just love seeing these two together. It’s great. I love how we got to see Senjougahara’s more petty side when she kept losing at random games to Araragi. In general I like the little moments that show off how she’s just a regular person who isn’t perfect at everything, and can get kinda over-dramatic about stuff. I also liked the little detail that they were singing different OP songs from the series at the karaoke bar. I kinda wish we got to actually hear them sing. Oh well.

Their little chat at the cafe about Gaen was pretty interesting, and kinda reaffirmed why I don’t really trust Gaen at all. She seems like exactly the sort of person who will be opposed to Araragi either now or in the future. It’s making me a little worried about how the next arc will go.

I loved their whole scene in the car together by the sea. For one thing, the whole seaside twilight setting was incredibly beautiful in it’s own right, and the music was really nice. It was another one of the scenes that really shows how Senjougahara is kinda insecure and sorta needy as a person, and her whole sort of sadistic obsession with making Araragi be obedient to her is mostly a reflection of her loneliness and her desire to be loved. She doesn’t really know how to express her feelings in a straight-forward way 99% of the time, but that’s part of her charm. It was really sweet that her first request of him after he said that he’s swear absolute obedience to her for the rest of his life was to have him call her by her first name. Though, like always, the whole first name basis thing in Japanese culture is still sorta strange to me. The fact that even after being a couple for so long they’ve only been calling each other by their last names to this point is weird to consider. But I’m happy that they achieved this little milestone.

To be honest I can’t really explain why I like their relationship so much. Or, more accurately, I can’t really explain why I like their relationship in particular when there’s so many similar relationships out there in media that I really dislike. I just like these two a lot. Part of it’s almost definitely the vague sense of nostalgia that I mentioned before. I’ve been following these two characters for ages now, so I can’t help but be attached to them.

Now I really want to continue my rewatch of Bake so I can watch the starry night scene again, but I probably won’t have the time for that for a while.

The ED was nice. I’m a little sad that there effectively wasn’t much of any new footage in it, but I quite like the trip down memory lane, of seeing all the previous EDs. For some reason I always forget about them, even though I really like all of them. I love how consistently they stick to using Hajime Ueda’s style in them. I’d say that it makes them memorable, but I guess that’d be a bit hypocritical to say.

Well that sure was an ominous as hell end to the arc. Ougi really knows how to be threatening. It’s still hard to tell exactly what the extent of her goals in all this are. I’m happy that Araragi isn’t willing to forsake Shinobu and Hachikuji, though.

It really feels like we’re setting up for a final battle here, but knowing how this series goes, I doubt it’ll be a conventional battle.

I’ll try and watch Ougi Dark tomorrow, but no promises there.

[mirroredtranslations]

Tsubasa Sleeping - Chapter 11 (Final)

Wazamonogatari – Nisioisin p. 251-252

[Previous Chapter]

“...That's about how it went. There wasn't any particular punch line, but how did you like it?”

I thanked Oshino-san for listening quietly, and he replied, “It was fascinating”—it seemed less like he thought it fascinating and more like he was amused by it, but the fact that it pleased him was the more important thing.

“Unlike Araragi-kun's emotion-filled stories, yours was rich in implications, Miss Class Rep. Not implication so much as sarcasm, perhaps. As a specialist, there were new things for me to learn.”

“I hardly think so... I was made aware of my own ignorance throughout.”

But it was no time to feel ashamed.

“S-so, Oshino-san. The story is over, and we can go back to Japan together now—”

“But, Miss Class Rep, your story doesn't end there, does it?” he said.

Oshino-san produced a cigarette from his breast pocket, put it in his mouth without lighting it, and continued.

“You say the Heart-Under-Blade lying dormant inside you woke up temporarily, like an acute reaction due to stimulation from the briar thorn; but right now, I can't sense that element sleeping inside you at all. You're completely you.”

“......”

“Before you got here, before you found me, you somehow used it all up—those idle assets of yours, or rather, that idle blood of yours.(1) So you must have had lots of experiences after that one, right?”

I'd love to hear about those things.

As long as time permits.

Urged on in that cynical manner, I reluctantly decided to continue the story.

“Hm, so... As promised, Dramaturgie-san inquired at his organization, and based on that information the next country I visited was—”

Our conversation went on and on; the story went on and on.

My journey dedicated to Araragi-kun seemed far from over.

Footnotes: (1) “Idle asset” is a financial term meaning an asset not being put to productive use. The word for “idle” in “idle asset” in Japanese is the same as the word for “sleeping”.

Afterword

Although Queen Marie Antoinette is purported to have said, “If they do not have bread, let them eat cake,” it seems she did not actually say that. This kind of thing is fairly common—Oda Nobunaga didn't say, “If you do not sing for me, little bird, I will kill you”; Thomas Edison did say, “Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety nine percent perspiration,” but he meant something else; Emperor Napoleon didn't say, “The word 'impossible' is not in my dictionary,” but rather, “French has no such word as 'impossible'”, and so on; these aren't just a few famous exceptions, but rather, history's famous sayings are generally repeated through the impressions they make, and if the person who spoke them heard them now, it would probably not be what they intended. Setting aside sayings that leave a good impression like Mr. Edison's, I expect Mr. Oda would be rather upset. Perhaps he would react, “Really? People think I'm the kind of guy who says stuff like that?” Incidentally, this kind of thing can be a big nuisance when it comes to novelists; if you admire a wise saying left behind by an old literary master, sometimes you do some research and find that it's a line in their work, and you become confused about how to interpret it. You feel like they've told you, “Authors are not their work. Please enjoy this purely as fiction”—that's not a real quote either. By the way, misgivings like, “They might have said it, but it just wasn't recorded,” are quite possible since there's no way to prove something wasn't said; however, given that Queen Marie Antoinette was almost certainly a stylish person, it's hard to believe she really mixed up bread and cake, which have different amounts of calories.

With that said, this was the second installment of the Monogatari Series Off Season. Like the previous book Orokamonogatari, it is a collection of zeroth episodes: “Episode Zero: Acerola Bon Appétit”, “Episode Zero: Karen Ogre”, and “Episode Zero: Tsubasa Sleeping”. Like, thereafter begins a new story. The fairy tale of “Princess Beauty” included at the beginning, previously published in an anime fanbook, is a prequel both to Shinobu Oshino's story and Kizumonogatari, which ought to be called the starting point of the Monogatari series; as such, I believe the past, present, and future are all connected in this novel. I hope you enjoyed reading in four dimensions, disregarding the concept of time and reading multiple timelines at once. This has been a book I wrote purely out of my own interest, the second installment of the Monogatari Series Off Season, Wazamonogatari. Bon appétit!

On the front cover is Mr. VOFAN's illustration of Shinobu in early childhood form (about ten years old) from Karen Ogre. Thank you very much! Speaking of which, every time the one who named her, Deathtopia Virtuoso Suicide-Master, died in the story, her body grew more and more childlike. It was a bit of narrative trickery. She didn't mention it herself, so you wouldn't realize, but Tropicalesque must have thought, “How pitiful!” Off Season will continue for another two volumes; thank you for reading.

Nishio Ishin

Translator’s Afterword

It’s now been a little over a year since I started this blog, and almost a year exactly since the first chapter of Sodachi Fiasco. I’ve received so much support and gratitude I sometimes just blush like an anime character, surprised that people actually find it worth their time to read my stuff. No, really. Translating Nisioisin is not an easy task, and I can only hope I’ve done his words a small measure of justice. Thank you so much for reading!

Next up is... actually, the continuation of Karen Ogre! I’m still debating whether to translate more from Musubimonogatari. I’m excited beyond words for the upcoming book Shinobumonogatari, so please look forward to that later this year.

ご愛読ありがとうございました！

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Owarimonogatari Season 2 [Mayoi Hell]

I was hoping at first that I’d get done with my rewatch of the whole series up to this point before this came out, but I guess that sure didn’t happen, lol. I’ll get back to it eventually, once I have the free time for it. But for now I’m just gonna watch this now that it’s out. I’m already kinda late for this as it is.

I’m going to try and do this in a semi-liveblog-y way where I’ll binge-watch each part while giving my thoughts after each individual episode and then post this once I’m done, but if that ends up being annoying I might switch to only writing up my thoughts after I’ve completed each arc. Which also applies to the main rewatch. Doing it like an actual liveblog where I keep pausing it to write about it got really annoying really fast, so yeah.

It’s good to be back with this series after waiting nearly a year and a half, after Koyomimonogatari came out. I feel like I’m not really as into it as I used to be, which is why the idea of doing an entire rewatch is sorta daunting and might potentially fall apart if I lose interest, but it’s still nice to finally get to see the conclusion of the main story.

Anyway, spoiler-y thoughts under the cut. [And for the record, I’ll try and make posts for Hitagi Rendezvous and Ougi Dark over the next two days or so]

PART ONE:

I’m glad I have a good memory for stuff I’m into, since even with the fairly intense recapping going on it’s still kinda vague and there’s still so much going on in the series as a whole that this is building upon. There’s probably stuff I’m forgetting, but I think I’m good. I’m at least aware that the whole premise here is that Araragi got murdered by Gaen in an attempt to restore the spiritual balance of the town, and now he’s stuck in Hell and has to get back out.

Seeing Hachikuji again is as wonderful as I expected, even if it immediately reminded me that the fanservice with her character is one of the many things I kinda have to glaze over and look past in order to enjoy this show. There’s no point denying that. This is definitely a guilty pleasure sort of show that I’d be hard-pressed to recommend to most people. But even so, Hachikuji is great. I’m clearly less enthusiastic about her character than other people are, but I still like her as a character.

It makes sense, but I wasn’t expecting to get a literal walk down memory lane. Huh. It’s a nice way to make the story feel all full circle in time for the final arc, I guess. It at least helps remind us all that Araragi is the sort of person who would have kept doing the things he chose to do even if he could go back and re-do them. For better or worse. I’m glad that Araragi acknowledged that he fucked up pretty bad with Nadeko in general. He really, really did.

I’ve been kinda thinking about this for a while, but this whole arc is making me remember that I’ve always kinda struggled to get an exact grasp on Araragi as a person. I’m not sure why. Maybe rewatching the series would help, but something about his personality and world-view, or at least how he articulates it, feels weirdly difficult to get. But there’s still parts to his character that are pretty incredibly obvious, like his incredibly low self-esteem and his self-destructive heroism. I feel like I probably understand him more than I don’t, there’s just this weird feeling of distance involved, especially when he monologues about justice and stuff.

Of all characters, I wasn’t really expecting Tadatsuru to come up again, given how short-lived his screen-time was. Huh. I’m intrigued by the idea that it’s part of Gaen’s whole plan to have Araragi return from Hell, and that him dying somehow erased his vampirism. Is that, like . . . a legit, permanent thing now? Is he just not a vampire anymore? I feel like he still was when we saw him again in Hana, but I forget.

I guess we’ll get to her properly later, but I’m glad that we’re finally going to address the topic of Ougi. She’s been such a huge part of the story for a while now, so finally getting an explanation of what she is will be nice. I think I’ve already been spoiled on it a bit, so I won’t get into it until the show does.

The art in this arc already is kinda off the charts. This definitely seems like one of the more exceptionally dialogue-heavy arcs, so I guess they had room to just go completely nuts and do what they want, especially since it’s literally set in Hell so they have an excuse to use some surreal visuals. I’m glad we got a whole section with Hajime Ueda’s character design style. It always looks really good. I also just love how incredibly different pretty much every scene looks. Though in an almost opposite direction, I really like how the scene with Kiss-Shot was done to intentionally look like the beginning of Bake when we get the flashback to Kizu. That was kinda trippy, in a cool way.

It’s at least immediately confirming what I’ve been thinking, that Zaregoto just feels way more lifeless than the Monogatari series in terms of artistic direction, but that’s a rant for another day.

Before I move onto the second half of the arc, I should also say that it’s nice to get another Mayoi OP, even though hers have always been low on the list of favourite Monogatari OPs. The visuals were really nice, though. I hope we get an OP for Hitagi Rendezvous, but I heard that we won’t, so that sucks. Unless we get one in the BD release. Thankfully we’ll at least get an Ougi OP for the last arc of this. I’m still hoping that we get an actual Araragi OP when Shaft eventually adapts Zoku.

Oh yeah, on that note, the fact that this is seven episodes long in all REALLY makes me sad that they couldn’t have just added a Zoku adaptation onto the end and aired this as a regular one-cour anime. That would have been so much more convenient in every way. OH WELL. Hopefully it won’t take them too long to adapt Zoku, even if it probably won’t happen until next year. And then we’ll have Off Season and Monster Season to worry about. I wonder how long they’ll keep the series going before they cut their losses.

PART TWO:

I was, uh, not expecting basically everything in this part. Wow. So we finally got proper backstory for Tadatsuru, and learned what the heck was going on in Tsuki. I didn’t think Nisioisin would bother ‘explaining’ Tsuki, I figured it’d just be left as a kinda weird and out of the blue part of the story. But now it makes sense. So the whole time Tadatsuru was operating under orders from Ougi to kill Araragi, while also operating under orders from Oshino and Gaen to get killed so he can go down to Hell in order to help revive Araragi once he gets murdered later on. Huh. I also wasn’t expecting the entire deal with Tadatsuru being some kinda puppet master who had already died and was living through his dolls. All the focus on doll imagery in that part was kinda disturbing.

I wonder if we’ll ever see Oshino in the flesh again, in the present day. It’d be great to see him again. I’ve kinda missed him.

Also in terms of mysteries I didn’t think would get solved, I didn’t expect that the park name would be resolved and turn out to be so important. Wow. I feel like they’re setting up a plot point there, or at least furthering an existing plot point, but it’s hard to tell. It’s probably just a cultural difference, but it’s kinda difficult sometimes to understand the importance and relevance of shrines in this series, and what happens when they get relocated/destroyed/renamed/etc.

For some reason I kinda didn’t remember that Tadatsuru always saw Araragi as an enemy because he works with an apparition, so I guess it was a good thing we got reminded of that. We spend so much time with apparitions that I kinda forget that the specialists are literally trained to kill them, pretty much.

It was nice to see Hachikuji try and give Araragi a motivational speech about how he deserves to be resurrected. Her line about how he ‘loved being alive’ kinda got to me for some reason. But then of course that scene also got unexpectedly weird and funny.

And of course the major twist was that Hachikuji got taken out of Hell as well, which I did not see coming at all. Huh. I’m also kinda surprised that nothing bad seems to have happened, and that it actually benefits Gaen’s entire plan of action. I kinda expected it to be something that’d have an obvious downside, but maybe that’ll come up later.

I’m not entirely sure what the deal is with Kiss-Shot being there at the end in some weird hologram-y way, but I guess it had to do with the Yume-Watari sword. Although there’s also the fact that it really does seem like Araragi’s vampire aspect literally got erased, so maybe that changed things with Shinobu. I forget exactly how their link works, though, so I’m not entirely sure if him losing his vampire nature would help or hurt her. I guess we’ll see how it goes.

I wasn’t exactly expecting this entire arc to end on the note it did, but I guess it makes sense. I kinda feel bad for Araragi, though, getting killed, literally sent to Hell, and revived along with a friend he thought was dead, all in like an hour or so. And now he has to immediately take entrance exams and worry about how he’s going to have to help Gaen in her whole war with Ougi that’s being set up. He deserves a break.

Which is probably why Hitagi Rendezvous is, apparently, about him and Senjougahara going on a date. That’ll be cute. People have been complaining that they haven’t gotten enough screen-time as a couple yet, and I kinda feel that way too, so this will be nice.

Also on the note of Senjougahara, it sounds like whatever subs I was using decided to adopt the Vertical translation and call her ‘Senjyogahara’ which still just looks so fucking weird to me. I really dislike that was of romanizing her name. It’s not a big deal or anything, but still.

[murasaki-murasame]

Monogatari Series Rewatch Part 2: Bakemonogatari [Mayoi Snail]

Today in Bakemonogatari, we get an even better image of what this series is really about: people talking to each other a whole lot, Araragi getting owned by every other character in the story, and then things get depressing, and also really heartfelt. This series is pretty great, you guys.

More ramblings under the cut

-I still really like how they keep showing off increasingly frantic cut-ins of the LN text to increasingly frantic music at the start of each episode. It’s a really neat style that pretty immediately gets you engaged.

-The OP for this arc is probably one of my least favourites, to be blunt. It’s fun and cute, but it’s a little grating to actually listen to, especially when you’re like me and you’re binge-watching the whole arc at once. But I still appreciate it.

-I keep forgetting that Mother’s Day is a really important aspect of the story this time around. It was just Mother’s Day a few days ago, so that’s a neat coincidence. I can definitely relate to the discussions of familial/parental relationships in this arc, which I’ll talk about a bit more in a bit. But, for now, I totally feel for Araragi on the topic of feeling a little bit alienated and uncomfortable on that sort of a day, and then getting introspective and moody about the topic of his growth as a person and his future prospects and whatnot, and then getting annoyed at himself for being so petty and ‘small’ in the first place. I think everyone knows what that’s like, to some degree or another.

-I love that this entire arc, especially the first episode of it, really is mostly just about people talking to each other about stuff in a fun, back and forth sorta way. It really gets me back into the mood for watching this series. It’s like, ‘ah yes, this is it, the True Monogatari Experience[tm]’. It’s great.

-The different ways I’ve seen different subbers and translators try and translate the whole ‘moe/tore’ conversation are really interesting. It’s the sort of thing that’s gonna be kinda weird to an English-speaking audience no matter what. I think my favourite variation of it is the one that translates ‘tore’ as ‘fascination’. I don’t know if it’s the most accurate translation, but I’ve always liked it. I dunno why, exactly. Maybe just because it’s the first one I saw. Though I can at least say that Vertical’s whole ‘melting/smelting’ translation was kinda . . . strained. Severely. Mostly because nobody uses the word ‘melting’ in that way in the first place, so the entire conversation falls apart, since it’s meant to be about taking a common slang word and twisting it. It feels like they came up with ‘smelting’ first and then had to awkwardly go back and make up a translation of ‘moe’ that fit that, but the translation they went for missed the point. It just feels a little clumsy and backwards. But I don’t dislike it as much as some other people do. I’ve seen worse. And honestly I kinda like the ‘smelting’ translation, it’s just that the entire thing doesn’t work.

-I still have a huge soft spot for Senjougahara’s tsundere attitude. It’s pretty wonderful. “It’s not that I wanted to show you my new clothes. I wanted you to be the first to see them. The nuance is different”. Aww <3 I love how obvious it is that she’s mostly just a really awkward person who doesn’t have much experience with actually having solid relationships with people.

-In general this arc helps highlight some of her vulnerabilities in a really nice way. It’s really interesting to rewatch this arc while knowing that she can’t actually see Hachikuji, and that she’s just going along with the whole thing because she thinks that she’s the weird one for being out of  the loop. Which is pretty sad, but also kinda relatable. In my own separate way, I have my own experience with “not seeing things that other people can see”, and “seeing things that other people can’t see”, and choosing to keep quiet about it, and go along with how other people act, while telling myself that I’m the one that’s wrong. I suppose I’m getting ahead of myself since I’m trying to make these notes in a vaguely chronological sense, but this is also why I like the whole speech Senjougahara has [relayed from Oshino] about differing viewpoints, and how while you can’t simply dismiss another person as being wrong, it’s also wrong to dismiss yourself as being wrong. And, of course, the whole part near the very end where Araragi tells Senjougahara that she can be open with him, and that she doesn’t need to dismiss anything she thinks and feels as being wrong.

-Now onto the actual heroine of this arc, finally. I really like Hachikuji. She’s pretty great. It kinda saddens me how many scenes with her get kinda bogged down with some uncomfortable jokes that I’m not really gonna try and fully defend, but I still really like her. In general, she has a really neat dynamic with Araragi, though it’s the sorta thing that really grows and develops as time goes on. Things are slightly different between them in this arc, since they’ve just met. Also, after the infamous scene from Shinobu Time, it made me kinda sad to see the first iteration of her ‘Sorry, I stuttered’ line. Who would have thought that a silly running gag line would turn around and stab me right in my feelings about 40 episodes later.

-In general there’s all sorts of parts of this arc that make me flash back to later arcs in the series. It’s a weird experience, to see the seeds being sown for so many character arcs and so on. I didn’t really expect, the first time around, how much these characters would grow, and how much the story in general would expand. But then it did. The part I least expected to get reminded of was how I found myself remembering the Sodachi arc when Araragi gave a really vague summary of his younger years. It’s not really directly related, but it made me remember the whole point of ‘oh yeah he really doesn’t remember her, does he?��. There’s a bit of dramatic irony involved, knowing about it in advance. Araragi doesn’t know what’s about to hit him [in like . . . 60 episodes, hah]. Man, I can’t wait to rewatch the first half of Owari S1. That’s seriously one of my favourite parts of the entire franchise and I can’t wait to get a chance to talk about it and my undying love for Sodachi as a character. It makes me wonder if Nisioisin actually had that whole deal planned out in advance, since it really isn’t directly foreshadowed before Owari itself [I think], and the entire ‘oh yeah there’s this girl that Araragi forgot about because he’s a doof’ thing does feel like the perfect scenario for it being a retcon of sorts. Not like I mind any way.

-The other major thing that I got reminded of and got kinda sad about during this arc was the whole Hanekawa scene. It really hurts to see the topic of her family situation touched upon so lightly, after having seen it in more detail later in the story. Even the thing with her wearing her school uniform on a Sunday is depressing, and isn’t even really acknowledged [at least not directly in the anime]. On that vague note, it’s kinda interesting to see how Araragi is at least vaguely aware of Hanekawa’s whole situation, but doesn’t really know how to approach it, or how to help her. It’s pretty fitting for his character, and makes him seem more flawed and imperfect, in an everyday way. [This just reminds me, ironically enough, about how I just cannot, ever, for the life of me, remember what the hell happened in Neko:Kuro. I can never remember if anything I remember about the Hanekawa/Black Hanekawa/Cat Oddity storyline happened in that arc, or at the end of Bake, or even in Neko:Shiro. I don’t know why this is such a weird mental roadblock of mine, but it is]

-Also on the note of Hanekawa’s whole deal, the part where her glasses go all shiny and she says ‘if you’re going to spank a child, you should at least tell them why what they did was wrong’ while Araragi is just like ‘um . . . ok’ was also pretty uncomfortable to watch.

-I do love how comedic this arc is, even if it has a surprising amount of not so funny parts, especially in hindsight. I kinda suck at giving any sort of a comment on comedy, though. So if I don’t really talk about it much, it can be assumed that I really like the comedy in this show, because I really do. I can listen to these weirdos poke fun at each other and talk about random stuff for DAYS. I’ll at least probably talk about it if I don’t like certain parts of the comedy.

-It’s still pretty interesting to me how one of the major characters in the show is literally one of the oddities. I mean, I guess Shinobu is as well [and Yotsugi??? Sort of????], but you get what I mean. It makes for an interesting dynamic, and I’m really happy about how much Nisioisin does with the concept later in the story. I like how even if it’s mostly portrayed in a fairly light-hearted way early on, it has actual genuine consequences later on. So to say.

-I still always get kinda emotional over Hachikuji’s whole backstory. I admit it. I am the basic lame-o who gets sad over basically anything sad in media, especially when it’s to do with sad children, and dead children, and sad children who are also dead and have been dead for ten years. Sometimes I almost feel manipulated. Almost.

-I do genuinely relate to Hachikuji’s backstory, though. Even though it plays out differently to my own personal history, and we have different feelings toward our parents. Maybe it’s easier to say that I can just . . . see myself in parts of her story? I’m still trying to work out if it’s accurate to say that you can relate to someone who’s been through a similar situation as you even if they respond to it differently, or if you can relate to someone who goes through different situations than you, but responds to them in a way that’s similar to how you respond to certain parts of your life. I like to think that that still counts as ‘relating’. I don’t want to get into it too deeply here, but my own parents broke up shortly after I was born, before I can remember. It was my mother who retained custody of me, though, and not my father. And my feelings toward both of them aren’t the same as how Hachikuji feels toward her own parents. And I’m not a little Japanese girl who got hit by a car and has been sticking around as a ghost-cow-snail-thing for ten years. [OR AM I??? oooo spooky]

-I touched upon it before, but I really like the little moment between Senjougahara and Araragi at the end. It’s so sweet and earnest. I love how it’s all about the idea of emotional honesty and vulnerability, and how important those things are. I love how Senjougahara understands that maybe the most accurate thing she can say is that she just likes talking to Araragi, and that she wants to keep talking to him more and more. I love Araragi’s little line about ‘Senjougahara fascination’. Again, aww <3. I mean I can also totally understand how things end up really rocky between them in the long run, but still.

-Next time on Monogatari: Lesbians! Or should I say, lesbian, in singular form. It’s only when we get to Hanamonogatari that I can truly, justifiably, say ‘Lesbians!’ in plural form. Just you wait.

[murasaki-murasame]

Monogatari Series Rewatch Part 1: Bakemonogatari [Hitagi Crab]

I was planning to keep up with the rewatch going on over at the anime subreddit, in preparation for Owari S2 coming out, but I got sidetracked and now it’s been going on for like a month and a half. Hoo boy. Let’s try and get this done before the next season starts. This whole thing is just gonna me my vague unplanned ramblings as I rewatch each arc. I’m caught up on the anime, outside of the Kizu films, so I’m not really gonna avoid spoiling later stuff. Keep that in mind.

More under the cut. [This got a bit longer than expected. Huh]

So here we are. Owari S2 is finally approaching and so now I’m finally getting around to rewatching the entire series. Woo. Truth be told, I haven’t actually rewatched this series at all since I first saw it around 2013 or so, outside of stuff like the OPs/EDs and a few random good scenes I could find on youtube. So it’s been a while since I first watched this arc, to put it lightly.

Probably the most surreal part of this was just how much I actually remember quite vividly. But that’s largely due to having seen like a thousand screenshots and reaction images from the show over the last few years. I’m almost more used to seeing this show in static image form rather than in motion, so this took some getting used to. It made it feel pretty nostalgic, at least.

I’d definitely forgotten the extent of how bizarre and sort of creepy and tense the early parts of the show were. It definitely gets toned down a little in later seasons. It makes a lot of sense in hindsight that the director of this season worked on Kizu after this and someone else took up work on the rest of the series. I kinda wish that some of the artistic decisions from this point were used more/at all later in the series. Like that really Sayonaya Zetsubou Sensei-esque part of Araragi having his head ripped off and spaghetti flying everywhere. I completely forgot that happened, so that threw me off a bit. I kinda loved it, though.

On the topic of artistic elements, it’s interesting to me how ambitious and dense this still feels even though you can tell how Shaft was probably falling apart at the seams as a company behind the scenes. It still feels remarkably similar to later parts of the series, just less polished. It probably helps that the version I’m watching seems to be the BD version. Not sure how that’ll hold up for future seasons. Anyway, I love the attention to detail with how all the characters move and pose and talk. This show really knows how to sell you on it’s characters immediately. The whole first-person POV scene of Araragi talking to Hanekawaw and fidgeting with his pen, with it almost always covering her eyes, was a pretty fantastic scene in general, with setting up the dynamic they have, and his personality. I kinda wish there were more scenes like that, but even in Bake I don’t remember there being any others. It’s fitting that it’s one of the first proper scenes we get of Araragi, though, since it helps to immediately set up the idea of us seeing things through his eyes, both literally and metaphorically. The way that this show plays with concepts of unreliable narration in a visual way really is amazing, even if most people, including me, tend to not notice it before we start getting arcs from the POV of other characters. But I’ll get into that when the time comes. Which won’t be until the SS arcs, really.

I read this arc in LN form a few months ago when it came out, and seeing this arc again in anime form, it just makes me more and more surprised at how much Shaft added to the experience. Logically I knew that the LN wasn’t exactly gonna have art or music or voice acting, but it surprised me how relatively . . . barren it felt, and how much slower the pacing seemed. But I’ll talk about that more if/when I do a big review post of the three Bake LNs.

The relative plainness of the LN’s tone made it even more surreal and interesting to be reminded just how dark and creepy and sinister and fast-paced this arc in particular feels in the anime. I really love it. Especially the weird little Kizu recap at the start [which was kinda odd to watch when we now have the Kizu films to compare it with]. And the rapid text flashes and such. It’s a great example of how much artistic direction can affect the atmosphere of something like this.

It feels weird to talk about the actual story of this arc, at least since I don’t want to literally recap the entire thing or anything. And I don’t want to get ahead of myself and talk about how this plays into other arcs, especially Kizu. I guess I’ll work it out as I go along. Anyway, one thing I definitely want to talk about is that I’d somehow forgotten, at least before I read the LN version of this arc, that Senjougahara was a victim of sexual assault. Since it’s basically never mentioned again after this arc. I really appreciate how this series can touch upon some surprisingly serious, real-life stuff in realistic and nuanced ways, while still having such a bombastic, comedic atmosphere most of the time. It’s neat. It makes me appreciate that she’s depicted almost always as being completely in control of herself and her body, and that she’s the one who tends to be romantically forward with Araragi. Obviously this is part of the unreliable narration and everyone else sees her as being way more ‘normal’, so to say, but still. Sometimes the fanservice in this series is a bit . . . iffy, but as a whole the story avoids handling Senjougahara in too gross of a manner, in the context of what happened to her in the past.

Which reminds me, it still surprises me how much I like their relationship, considering how much I tend to be turned off by perverted male MCs and tsundere female love interests. I honestly can’t really fully explain WHY I like them so much, but I do. It’s actually one of the few m/f ships I genuinely really like, instead of feeling sorta ambivalent toward [or outright disliking]. Who would have thought?

I don’t have a lot to say about Araragi at this very moment, at least since the more interesting parts of his character play out in later arcs. But I do really, really like Senjougahara, and I wish she appeared more in later arcs. She’s just immediately compelling as a character. I love how weighty and overwhelming and sharp her presence in so many scenes feel, as Araragi tries to keep up with her. And I quite like her softer side, which we see at the end of the arc.

I also still really love basically every OP and ED in this entire series, even though I feel like I never quite liked this arc’s OP and Bake’s ED as much as most people do. I feel like a lot of the later OPs feel more interesting and memorable, and I tend to find all the EDs in this series to be a bit forgettable for some reason. Oh well. I still love the art in the ED though, and I appreciate that they kept that style intact for the later ones.

I feel like this post in particular might end up being longer than later ones since there’s a lot to get off my chest right at the start. Hah. My other ramble posts will probably be shorter. Dunno about the review posts I might do for each entire season, though.

P.S: If there’s anything I’d like to get across in this entire rewatch, it’s that, even if there’s some iffy elements that I sorta ignore, there’s still a whole list of elements to this series that I adore, which have nothing to do with fanservice. As a gay man, it sometimes bugs me when people act like this series is nothing but cute girls, as if there’d be no room to like the series at all if cute girls aren’t your thing. So I want to let myself ramble about all the other parts of the show and how much I love them. [Though, ironically enough, there’s actually some elements to the fanservice that I genuinely appreciate, which I’ll probably mention as they appear. Which I already sorta did a bit in this post. Sometimes people go a little overboard about acting like the fanservice in this show is pure art and that all of it has purpose and meaning outside of, ya know, fanservice. There’s definitely parts of it worth discussing and praising, but lol let’s not kid ourselves, this series is definitely aimed largely at people who like cute girls, and that’s fine.]