When I tied things together by explaining that Tadatsuru walked around like normal at the shrine because we were in hell, and that was fine because what happens in the world after death is no longer the rest of your life, Ononoki said, “ ” Her look remained dashing, and her appearance had changed too.
She’d always been made to wear a draped skirt that didn’t suit her, but today she modeled a pair of pants that reminded me of her master (or “Big Sis” as Ononoki called her), and they fit her surprisingly well. While you could chalk this up to Tsukihi, a good dresser herself, forcing Ononoki to change clothes, the dress-up-doll explanation didn’t address her tone or expression.
Don’t tell me her head could be swapped out like some kind of action figure.
She wasn’t getting off her high horse and continued to nitpick, “ ”
I walked outside, leaving her behind. Maybe I needed to be questioning her instead, since she had as many nits to be picked as Karen, but her dashing look was kind of unbelievably irritating, and to be honest, I left home to avoid getting into a fight.
I thought an expressionless character showing an expressive expression for the first time might be charming, but real life didn’t follow such dramaturgical rules.
It wasn’t like my conversation with Karen had gone well either. Asking someone experiencing an irregularity to account for her situation wasn’t going to yield a desirable answer─whether or not she was an expert on aberrations like Ononoki.
I went outside instead of back to my room because my shadow would be more distinct there at this hour. Shinobu didn’t wake up earlier when I called for her in the bathroom, and I was glad about it then.
I had no choice but to rely on her powers now, though─on the knowledge of the aberration-slaying vampire who resided in my shadow.
More precisely, a husk of a vampire. The dregs of an iron-blooded, hot-blooded, yet cold-blooded vampire─the former Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, whose current name, Shinobu Oshino, I called again, and loudly.
It did feel pretty contradictory to walk out under the sun to summon a vampire (another nit Ononoki would pick at viciously, I’m sure), but in any case, I called out to my shadow.
Yet no reply came─no response.
It seemed she’d fallen into a very deep sleep, though I couldn’t blame her.
I’d asked the little girl for way too much the day before when I skipped graduation, and I’d constantly been relying on her until just a day before that as well─there weren’t many events in my life I didn’t rely on her for. I’d caused her a lot of trouble, so of course she’d be slumbering deep enough to require more than a poke to wake up since things had finally come to a stopping point, or maybe a breather today.
I had no choice but to rely on her but could only yell at my own shadow right outside my house for so long, considering how it looked… I did also want to let her, my precious partner, rest.
At the same time, when there was no guarantee that she hadn’t been affected by this sudden change besetting my home, how could I wait until she woke up?
Was Shinobu not responding because something weird happened to her, just like with Karen and Ononoki? If that was why, how could I take it easy and wait until the cows came home? I’m no cattle rancher. Good things might come to those who wait, but that’s not what I needed at the moment. Sure, maybe I was worrying too much, given that Tsukihi hadn’t been affected at all.
In light of all this, I thought, Then what about me? As far as I could tell from the way I felt and what I saw in the mirror, there seemed to be nothing wrong with me, but what could be less reliable in a situation like this than a self-administered check?
Karen and Ononoki didn’t seem to find their changes odd─zero reported symptoms. If anything, they all but told me they’d always been this short, that their dashing look always had pissed me off this much.
Maybe something about me changed overnight, and I just hadn’t noticed. My suspicions threatened to be boundless once I got going.
Had I lost not just the title of high school student but something more important without ever noticing? Should I be taller, for instance, or more muscular or broad-shouldered, or smarter? Possible.
Quite possible.
I might even have been Tsubasa Hanekawa until yesterday… Okay, if I were her yesterday, I wouldn’t have committed a huge blunder like turning into Koyomi Araragi today. I could rule that one out, at least.
There’s of course Gregor Samsa, who woke up to discover he wasn’t just someone else, but a bug… By the way, speaking of Franz Kafka, the author of The Metamorphosis, according to his bio he asked his best friend to dispose of his novels posthumously. The friend went against his wishes and released them, thanks to which the author is famous today.
Could you really call someone like that your best friend? After learning about Kafka’s apparently difficult personality, though, I began thinking that “please dispose of my novels” might have also meant “but, well, you know.” If this friend understood the subtext, then he was a true friend indeed.
A regular Pythias.
In any case, while there’s an argument to be had about The Metamorphosis thematizing how wonderful and adorable little sisters are (please don’t have it), this wasn’t language arts class─wait, does foreign literature even go under language arts?
No good, I couldn’t focus my thoughts.
Proof of my confusion─maybe I needed to go back inside and ask Ononoki, an expert, for her opinion despite everything. Between that enraging dashing look and her arrogant tone, though, I wasn’t confident that me and my lack of maturity could stand her for too long.
Graduating high school hadn’t made me that much of an adult.
Somehow, her expressionless face and flat tone had done a good job of neutralizing her character and let her settle into the position of quirky girl. Once she stepped up to operate on the same level as everyone else, the girl just had a nasty personality…
And anyway, I probably couldn’t expect a satisfying answer from Ononoki when it was clear as day that something about her was off─physician, heal thyself.
That said, Oshino and Miss Gaen were no longer in town, and as for Miss Kagenui, she was at the North Pole─I couldn’t rely on any experts.
Strictly speaking, I suspected the phone number Miss Gaen had given me still worked, but if the lady who “knew everything” hadn’t called me, it probably meant I needed to do something about this on my own─not to mention, once you rashly asked her for help, she had a track record of demanding compensation so ridiculous you had to wonder out loud if she was being serious.
Leaning on a certain friend of mine who may not know everything but did know what she knew seemed like an option, but the thought of calling her when she was overseas gave me pause.
Not in the sense that it’d run up my phone bill. I didn’t even know if whatever country Hanekawa was in right now had cell service.
In which case, I had no choice but to wait until night when Shinobu would be active again. Yup, I needed to wait for the aberration-slaying girl, to whom Oshino had imparted some amount of expert knowledge through special tutoring sessions, unless I was going to turn to the gods.
“Hm? Oh, right,” I realized at this late stage. She was no expert, nor did I expect her to have any expert knowledge, but there was a god in this town now, wasn’t there?
Yes, the grand deity known as Mayoi Hachikuji─okay, maybe not a grand deity, but the young ghost girl who’d been newly deified at Kita-Shirahebi Shrine to quell the strange happenings in town. She must’ve received some schooling from Miss Gaen before being placed atop that mountain to watch over us all.