“How? Well, we used this shrine’s torii as a gate…not that there was any deep meaning to it…”
Shinobu had used the spiritual energy gathered at the then-abandoned Kita-Shirahebi to open a gate─precipitating a major incident that would ensnare the whole town, but that had nothing to do with time travel.
“Hmm…” Miss Mayoi said, looking pensive.
Given my first impression, I couldn’t help but see her as a mischievous young woman. Sinking into thought like this for my sake, however, did quite a lot to affect me and win my trust─so there was a connection between her and the Hachikuji that I met in a ruined world.
“In that case, couldn’t you go home if you made another one of those gates? I’m not sure the same logic applies, of course.”
“Er, that’s not really…” I started to convey the obvious fact that Shinobu, not I, had summoned the gate, and that we were now in a mirror.
But did Shinobu Oshino, or the former Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, ever exist here in the first place? Even if I mentioned her to Miss Hachikuji, wouldn’t her reaction be, Who’re you talking about?
But then, she’d brought up Shinobu a moment ago: the former Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, though it was a little standoffish of Miss Hachikuji to call her that.
Hm─the more I thought about it, the more it threatened to turn into a wholesale rejection of the life I’d been living. This was hardly a lukewarm twist.
If Shinobu didn’t exist, though, would I have met Hachikuji at that park? How were those loose ends tied up?
“The loose ends,” Miss Hachikuji said as if she’d read my mind, “must not matter─in this case.”
“…”
“In this case─which is to say, this world. There are no paradoxes in a mirror world─or maybe I should say everything is a paradox here. That’s how logic works, right?”
The word logic coming from Hachikuji’s mouth felt like its own paradox, but she continued.
“Just as taking a true statement like ‘Araragi is a pedophile’ and flipping it around makes it false─‘pedophiles are Araragi,’ or ‘you aren’t a pedophile if you’re not Araragi’─paradoxes and contradictions can exist here. There must be some propositions that hold up even if you turn them on their head, so ‘everything is a paradox’ is an overstatement, but I’d imagine a great number of things here will feel ‘inconsistent’ to you since you came from a world that acts as the standard.”
For instance, I don’t realize it myself, but don’t you see me as a pretty contradictory presence to begin with? asked Miss Hachikuji.
And I had to agree.
If she’d grown to be twenty-one, she’d lived until that age, but the accident eleven years ago also seemed to have happened. Even if she was a living god, we shouldn’t have ever met, but she knew who I was.
The young woman was a walking mess of contradictions.
She was all loose ends.
And yet─her existence was undeniable.
Still, what kind of an example was that?
You aren’t a pedophile if you’re not Araragi─really?
“A world where loose ends are just fine,” she said. “Considering how you’ve solved many cases by making ends meet by hook or by crook… Sounds like a cruel world for you─far from lukewarm. Haha!”
“…”
Perhaps she meant to buck me up with that cheerful laugh, but her analysis was plenty cruel on its own.
Given how little information I still had, I didn’t know how meaningful it’d be to piece together a hypothesis, but if I were to: I looked at that mirror in the morning─and the “world” reflected at that point, when my movements didn’t match up, got reversed, but not all of history up until then?
“Maybe. After all, I know about Miss Shinobu Oshino, the former Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade. At the same time, I know that vampires don’t exist in this world. I don’t find it strange that I’m talking about her and seem to be familiar with the name of a non-existent aberration. I accept the contradiction without a second thought, like how I might claim that life should be treasured and still eat meat every day─neither is a lie.”
“…”
A world where contradictions were fine.
A dream scenario for a novelist. Not being needled with points like the ones Ononoki raised─but it also seemed tough.
What was it called again? The Ozma Problem?
How explaining the difference between left and right to an alien would be difficult, verbally, or something─but just as perfect spheres don’t exist, probably nothing has perfect bilateral symmetry, so the world I knew and the mirrored land I now inhabited would conflict at every turn…
“No, Araragi, I don’t think that’s necessarily true. It’s not that everything is upside down─though you could also say that makes the situation all the more troublesome.”
“What do you mean?”
“Take Karen. If everything about her was reversed, she wouldn’t be your little sister, she’d be your big sister or your little brother─she may have appeared from the bath when she shouldn’t have been there because that part of her had been reversed, but getting out of the bath and wiping your body dry with a towel is the most proper thing in the world. If we were to be strict about it and reverse even that, she’d need to soak herself in a towel before splashing herself with water.”
“I don’t know if she’d need to…”
That’d be beyond bizarre.
Even I wouldn’t have been able to keep my cool in that case─and would’ve questioned Karen’s sanity.
Not everything had been reversed. So then, what had been?
I couldn’t comprehend the standard when it came to things getting flipped around─considering the reversal of the bicycle’s structure, the placement of the faucet handles, and letters in this world, the scenery did all seem to be reversed. Its denizens, on the other hand…