Of course I didn’t.
Snakes being called kaka in old Japanese hadn’t been required knowledge for my entrance exams─as much as the idea resisted being put to rest, this too was proof that I wasn’t experiencing a dream.
Maybe the fact that Shinobu Oshino, someone previously compared to a sea serpent, laughed with a distinctive “Kakak!” sat deep in my mind, and theoretically you could connect the dots to arrive at a dream, but that was far too forced a payoff as far as foreshadowing goes─in any case, I hadn’t even considered hoping for an expert on mirrors, but her appearance now, whether goddess or middle school student, was appreciated.
“Aren’t you hungry, Araragi? It sounds like you haven’t eaten anything all day. Let’s eat and talk. C’mon, Miss Serpent, you too.”
Now that she mentioned it, the tea Oikura made me was just about the only thing I’d consumed─I hadn’t really noticed because the sight of her had filled me up on its own. Having lost all of my vampiric qualities, however, I needed proper nutrition if I didn’t want to collapse.
And so, I was invited inside Kita-Shirahebi’s main shrine for the first time and sat down to eat a meal prepared by Miss Hachikuji.
“Hold on, aren’t these offerings?”
“That’s right, they are.”
“…”
I should’ve been the only person paying visits, so maybe they were Miss Serpent’s offerings? And wait, was it okay to eat them?
As I sat there hesitating, Miss Hachikuji and Miss Serpent dug straight in. To avoid any awkwardness, I humbly joined them.
I doubt this bears repeating, but what a situation─I was sitting in a circle with two gods and having a meal.
Who exactly was I?
In the world I’d been living in until that morning, Mayoi Hachikuji was a god as a result of Nadeko Sengoku no longer being one─in other words, the two never reigned concurrently, but this was another point of incoherence, or maybe inconsistency in this world.
“Gulg glug glug glug.” “Glug glug glug glug.”
The two gods drank straight from sake bottles that also seemed to be offerings─Miss Mayoi, twenty-one years old, was one thing, but Miss Serpent, outwardly a middle school girl, was a sight to behold.
“Big Brother Koyomi─could you be thinking that mirrors show the world with left and right reversed?”
Miss Serpent got to no warning with the matter at hand─sorry, Miss Serpent got to the matter at hand with no warning.
So suddenly that I stumbled over my narration… How embarrassing for my tongue to slip in Hachikuji’s presence, though hers didn’t anymore.
“Ah, um, what? Could you repeat that?”
“Could you be thinking that mirrors show the world with left and right reversed─I’m asking you a question, hmmm?”
She spoke like she was trying to pick a fight with me. Was this some kind of stress interview? That wasn’t why, but I couldn’t make out her question’s meaning even if I understood it.
Mirrors show the world with left and right reversed─yes, that’s what I thought. The kind of common knowledge possessed even by an elementary schooler.
Why do you think mirrors show the world with left and right reversed? would have some kind of philosophical edge to it, so I wouldn’t have minded it. Her question, though, seemed less philosophy and more Zen koan─was she going to tell me that it’s in fact us who are reversed, that our mirrored forms are the truth?
No, wait.
Elementary schoolers probably didn’t know about this property of mirrors, but honors-roll students like Hitagi and Oikura would point out that it’s not left and right that are reversed, but front and back, strictly speaking… Is that what she meant? That was just semantics, though. The way we see it─the “mirror image”─remains the same.
“I’ve heard that if you take multiple mirrors, like on a vanity mirror,” I offered, “and put them at a right angle and look at where they meet, left and right are where they should be… Is that what you want to say?”
Wasn’t there some mirror that shows left and right correctly even as a flat surface, by making good use of reflections? I didn’t know about this world’s Rainy Devil, but Kanbaru did love new and unusual things, and I remembered seeing one as I cleaned her room.
“No, no─hsshh hsshh. That’s not what I mean, I’m asking if, just looking into a mirror, you think left and right are reversed.”
“Well…yeah, I do. When I raise my right hand, my reflection raises its left, and if I raise my left leg, my reflection raises its right, doesn’t it?”
“Huh. You do ballet stretches in front of the mirror? What a weirdo.”
“It’s just an example. Why would I?”
It’s Karen who does them, not me. Did she in this world too?
“In any case, my reflection moves in the opposite way as me.”
“Do you really think that?”
Relentlessly.
Miss Serpent closed in on me─my image of snakes was that they were persistent, and that’s exactly how this situation was playing out.
“Don’t you just think that because it’s what everyone says?”
“D-Don’t be ridiculous. Do I look like the type to be bound by common sense?”
True, mirrors reversing left and right─or front and back─was a piece of common knowledge, which is to say a preconception. If I were asked to explain a mirror as an object, that’d be how. I don’t remember who, but someone must’ve explained a mirror to me that way, and I must’ve understood it that way: Oh, so it’s a board that shows reality, but with left and right flipped around.
“Miss Serpent, are you saying that’s not the case? What do you think, Miss Hachikuji?”
“I’ll chime in with my opinion at the end. Keep going for now,” the young lady replied.
With dignity. She sounded so authoritative.
Since I knew her back when she was ten, it was hard to tell if she was being serious, silly, or just glossing over the fact that she didn’t have an opinion.
“You know the mirror test, don’t you? To see if an animal─for example, a snake─recognizes itself in a mirror,” Miss Serpent said. “But doesn’t the animal recognize the reflection as itself precisely because left and right are flipped, and the image is its counterpart? If left and right moved exactly the same in the mirror, the animal would think it’s moving in a different way, that it’s a different creature─maybe. Hsshh hsshh.”
“Well, the reflections do move with left and right reversed, so…”
“In any case, snakes don’t have limbs, so your phrasing isn’t convincing me─and anyway, mirrors don’t give off any light. They just reflect the light that enters them, and the viewer just assumes that it’s ‘showing’ an image. When you think of it that way, that’s not the function of a mirror at all, is it?”
“Miss Serpent…” It felt like I was being toyed with─or straight-up being teased, so I replied in a somewhat stern tone, even though I was speaking to a god. “If a mirror doesn’t show you the world with left and right reversed, then what exactly does it show?”
“The truth,” Miss Serpent declared. “And no, Big Brother Koyomi, I’m not saying that there’s a ‘true’ left and right. It’s how mirrors were treated in ancient times─they were holy items.”
“Oh… Yeah, magical mirrors and the like crop up all the time.”
“Like Cinderella’s mother’s,” Miss Hachikuji chimed in knowingly, when she’d confused Cinderella for Snow White. Still, it was a good example.
We have an unromantic explanation nowadays, but images in mirrors seemed quite wondrous in the past, so people naturally granted them some sort of meaning─hence all the aberrations revolving around mirrors.
They show the truth, huh?
“Shown the truth, Medusa turned to stone─but who wouldn’t be petrified by someone with snakes for hair? Hsshh hsshh!” laughed Miss Serpent. Maybe I didn’t get snake humor, but having witnessed a serpent-god Sengoku looking just that way, I didn’t find it funny at all… Did that version of her never exist in this world?
“They show the truth? Okay, I admit that’s suggestive, but so what? What kind of lesson am I supposed to take home here?”
Going on about lessons made me sound like that conman, but my only impression so far was that looking back on history could sure be edifying.