#and sure i got into new age conspiracy theories but *i* didn

[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.