Her tongue really didn’t slip, did it? Even when she was saying that whole name. “B-But like I’ve been trying to tell you, Shinobu’s not on this side of─”
“Even if she’s not on this side, she can open it from the other side,” the god suggested. “If she’s not here, it means she’s there. And if you’ve been separated, isn’t the legendary lady free from her bindings and back in peak form?”
“…”
A brilliant, unimpeachable plan─would be going too far.
There were details that needed filling in, but it was indeed a neat and clearheaded approach that I hadn’t thought of myself. She’d responded solidly to my plea.
Geez, look at her.
I didn’t have anything to worry about. She was doing just fine as a god.
“Ha ha ha, call it The Only Neat Thing to Do. One of science fiction’s three greatest cool titles.”
Not that I’ve read it, she added flippantly─in a faint echo of the eleven-year-younger Hachikuji.
“…Can I ask what the other two are?”
“The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Neither of which I’ve read.”
“You haven’t read any of them…”
Read them already.
Putting aside whether this setup was more science fiction or fantasy, there was now a ray of hope─I’d get Shinobu to open a gate from the other side.
Having been left behind, she’d figure out in no time that I’d gotten wrapped up in some sort of anomaly. Even if a vampire couldn’t enter this land of mirrors, she’d be able to open a gate if she’d returned to her peak condition.
I’d been causing her nothing but trouble lately, forcing her to become big, then small, then big all over again─but the question was how I might convey the plan when she inhabited a different world.
Maybe I needed to go home and start banging on that mirror? Did I just have to knock?
No, it had gone back to being a regular surface, and even if there were something to the mirror, Shinobu might not be standing in front of it… If she’d regained her full powers, she wouldn’t show in it and wouldn’t go out of her way to look in any─unless she’d heard my voice calling out to her right before I was sucked in.
Still, she was tired from all this getting bigger and smaller lately…so I might not have done enough to wake her up. If she’d woken up to find me missing all of a sudden, she’d simply be confused. She wouldn’t possibly imagine that I’d become Araragi Through the Looking-Glass (doesn’t roll off the tongue, does it).
Having been too powerful, she wasn’t the intellectual type, and living for centuries had worn down her mind. This state of affairs would only make her panic, and she might not be able to trace my steps─this was bad.
“If you wrote a letter and left it on your desk, wouldn’t it show up on the other side?”
“No, it doesn’t seem like acts in the other world and this one are linked. Just a single moment got sliced out…”
In that case─why did the Araragi residence’s bathroom mirror turn into a gate to another world at that moment? Was there some kind of reason?
There’s a reason for every aberration, the experts say, but it happened so abruptly that I couldn’t see the need. It seemed more like a random supernatural phenomenon─I’d been spirited away, if you would.
It did seem ironic that I was asking a god for help if they spirited me away… So, how to contact Shinobu. If only I could communicate with her telepathically as her thrall.
“Well, relax, Araragi, it’s not as if your life is in immediate danger. If your little sister looking a bit different is too hard on you, you’re welcome to stay the night here,” Miss Hachikuji offered considerately─while it wasn’t exactly hard on me to see small Karen (amusing, more like), I didn’t relish this turning into a drawn-out battle.
If I was getting accepted to college, I needed to go through the actual matriculation process… I had to return within the next few days at the latest.
“Oh, right… Yes, you did study hard. In that case, hmm, maybe forget about counting on Shinobu, and just wait stubbornly in the bathroom you came through, until the gate opens again?”
“…”
While the plan wasn’t neat, it would certainly do─assuming that what happened once would happen again.
But there was no guarantee it would in the next few days─it might just take another thousand years was the issue here, and that issue was a dealbreaker. Little wonder Miss Hachikuji had discounted it at first.
Also, realistically speaking, I couldn’t stand on guard forever in front of the sink. I mean, that space connected to the bath, which my parents and sisters used.
They’d chase me out of there every time they wanted to take a bath, like in the morning─I might somehow stand my ground against my little sisters, but I’d have to leave when it came to my parents. The gate could open during one of those intervals, which put that many holes in the plan.
Moreover, it’d be impossible to keep watch over my bathroom for twenty-four hours a day with dinner-plate eyes. Disconnected from Shinobu, I was nothing more than a regular human, and I needed to eat and sleep─how could I even live in a bathroom to begin with?
I’d be able to soak in the tub the moment I felt tired, of course, but really, what kind of benefit was─
“Oh!”
“Ahh!”
When I shouted as inspiration hit, Miss Hachikuji let out a super-cute scream of surprise─so cute I nearly lost my hold on the new idea (come to think of it, her scream during her young-girl days was “Graaah!”), but I just barely kept one pinky around its tail.
“Wh-What? Yelling like that all of a sudden.”
“Kanbaru’s home,” I began to explain without preamble, but with a lot of gusto. “I think their cypress bathtub─”