“I should let you know in advance…not to get your hopes up too high. I’ve barely figured any of this out myself, and I’m far from being able to say I understand it all,” Ononoki warned as we plodded along the streets at night. Wherever it was we were heading, the Unlimited Rulebook could have gotten us there in no time with a single hop, but I wasn’t up to it in my current form.
A method of transportation that violent would kill any flesh-and-blood human.
So I was on foot, and not on the BMX, either─Ononoki could probably keep up with me even if I biked at full speed, but I didn’t feel like trying. Though not as bad as the Unlimited Rulebook, riding that altered bike in the middle of the night was far too dangerous.
“Ononoki.”
“What is it, monstieur?”
“Er, well…”
She’d replied in a flat tone, at her own leisure, not so much as looking in my direction─indeed the Ononoki I knew.
After assaulting me in my sleep…or just rousing me from it, she’d led me out of my home, careful not to wake Oikura or my sisters, and made me walk for quite some distance now. Yet I hadn’t gotten used to her.
Okay, in terms of what I am and am not used to, this was the Ononoki I was used to and felt comfortable around─but why had she “flipped around” to being this way all of a sudden?
I had no idea what had caused the inside-out her to turn inside out again─not explaining a thing was also very much like her. I hesitated to ask her any direct questions and was tamely following her through town.
That makes me sound so passive, but I just couldn’t ignore the name she’d spoken─Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade.
A vampire, who shouldn’t exist in this mirrored land─no, wait. If this was more than a world “inside a mirror,” then maybe it wasn’t too strange for a vampire to exist here?
That seemed like a stretch─but if Ononoki really was going to take me to Shinobu (excuse the cautious wording, but the Ononoki I knew wouldn’t think twice about telling that malicious of a lie), we’d move toward a solution in no time at all, wouldn’t we? It’d save us the trouble of having to contact Shinobu on the other side.
If this side’s Shinobu opened up a gate on this side, I’d be able to return to my original world─an immediate simplification of the plan.
The thought was exciting enough that being roused in the middle of the night felt fair. Sadly, I also realized that at no time in my whole career had a twist been so convenient.
My natural reaction was to brace myself.
It was like watching a movie and knowing, given how long it’d gone so far, that a certain twist could only be the middle act and not the climax─not that I should let my guard down, since my story could get lopped off, cut short before its finale.
In any case, I couldn’t stay silent forever. The change in Ononoki intimidated me, and I was losing my motivation after all these dizzying twists and turns, but better to be the boy who cried wolf than the one who jumped at his own shadow.
I made my move.
“That outfit looks good on you.”
Made my move, starting from a distance.
Hey, even the most talented boxer starts off with a few jabs.
“Thank you,” Ononoki said, surprising me by taking the compliment─she wasn’t the type, so her words, even if they were flat, stunned me. “Though this does feel wrong in its own way─I feel like I was wearing cuter clothes. Not that there’s any point in complaining about such a trivial matter… In any case, they’re not to my taste. No, maybe this is my taste… My taste, as well as my bad taste.”
“…”
“Oh, you want me to explain, don’t you? All right, I get it. I know what you’re like, kind monster sir, from the way you like little girls to the way you like tween girls.”
“Know me less narrowly, please. And that’s not what I’m like, that’s what I like… Not that those are my likes!”
“I am a professional, you know,” Ononoki objected. “When you saw me and spoke to me this morning, you seemed sure that there was something off about this world… And the way you were acting, I started to feel like something was off too.”
When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you, Ononoki pulled out an awfully pretentious quote.
Put simply, she’d been surprised to see me surprised. I’d thought I’d managed to get out of that situation, even if I hadn’t kept a cool head through it all. Her keen professional eyes drove home that I was just an amateur.
“What? Monstieur leaving without even trying to pull down my pants? Impossible, I thought. That doubt is where it all started.”
“Please don’t use that as a starting point. And when you say that, do you mean just take off your pants, or your underwear too?”
“Well, peer into your own bosom for the answer… Speaking of chests, it was also suspicious that the man who always used my chest, didn’t.”
“What do you even mean by that? How am I a man who’s always using your chest?”
“It’s my curse to be unable to let any grounds for concern go, you see. Once you left, I performed a self-check─what about my condition surprised you? I wondered what had us make out.”
“Make out? I’m pretty sure we didn’t.”
“Sorry. I meant to say, what had you creeped out.”
“Those are nothing like each other. How do you make a mistake like that?”
Of course, anyone would feel creeped out if we really did make out…
“My maintenance couldn’t pinpoint why you felt creeped out, but at least I realized that I was not currently in a state to perform at full capacity. I was defective as a monster, as a shikigami who serves Big Sis─and so.”
I rebuilt my personality, she said─Yotsugi Ononoki did.
If ever she’d spoken in a monotone, it was as she said this line. The casual way she passed it off made it easier for me to digest. Oh, of course, yes, no, hold on, what did she just say? She rebuilt her personality?
“In other words, I scrubbed my character─polished it up. I’m not sure if I did a good job of it, but it seems to have gone well for the most part, judging by your reaction.”
“…”
This was a bombshell…but she was right.
Now that she mentioned it, she was right.
As an artificial aberration, Yotsugi Ononoki didn’t have a consistent character. She was always influenced by her surroundings, ever shifting─indeed like a mirror, always influenced by those around her, always reflecting them.
It seemed more like a flaw than a characteristic, but to think it’d end up working this way…
While her ever-changing, kaleidoscopic personality had thrown me for multiple, painful loops, putting up with it had paid off. A smug expression and tone did hamper Ononoki’s ability to do her job, so it made sense for her self-check to catch them.
It did…but having experienced for myself just how big of an ask it was for something to “make sense” in this world, I couldn’t help but be impressed by Ononoki, who’d done it all on her own.
“Oh, it’s hardly commendable. I couldn’t have done it without your help. That’s why I thanked you. Thank you, monstieur, for not taking off my pants.”
“C’mon, it was nothing. I just didn’t do what comes naturally to me.”
Nope─just don’t.
Let that come naturally.
But thinking too hard about it brought up a new set of questions─because if the Koyomi Araragi who existed in this world was Ogi Oshino, I couldn’t see her ever doing such a thing.
I wouldn’t, but she was even less likely to─Ogi stripping a doll naked and playing with it every morning betrayed who she was as a character more than anything I’d seen.
Too painful a sight.
All of this hinted at unexplained mysteries…but in any case, I felt encouraged that Ononoki had returned to being the character I knew.
“Of course, only someone like you who changes personalities like a dress-up doll changes clothes could do that.”
She was the polar opposite of Tsukihi, who was herself because she only had one side to her. Ononoki’s duality was so excessive that she could change even her inside-out self.
To use Oikura’s mirror reflectivity analogy, her outlines were fuzzy from the beginning, so her image never got set in place.
“Like I said, it’s not like I understand what’s going on either─in fact, I’m really pushing it here. Changing who I am as a character to this degree is deviating pretty far from what’s allowed of an aberration… I wouldn’t be surprised if the Darkness showed up.”
“!”
The word sent a shiver down my spine─a visceral reaction.
Oh. So that concept existed in this world too.
The very embodiment of darkness seemed even less tenable than vampires in a mirrored land consisting of reflections of light, but I guess it didn’t matter because it was non-existent from the outset.
It traumatized me even more than that snake god, but Ononoki remained serene─because she’d remade her personality to be that way, but still…
“And so, monstieur, there’s only so much I can do. It’ll threaten my existence if I go too wild,” she said. “I can’t vanish before fulfilling my promise to you, that we’d go and see the ocean together one day.”
“…”
I’d made that cool-sounding of a promise?
While also pulling down her pants every morning?
Whatever the case, I now understood why Ononoki had turned back into the character I knew. It was news to me that she was best able to perform, in peak condition, when she was stone-faced and flat-toned, but maybe it was called being unaffected.
Even in martial arts, they do say that the ultimate stance is having no stance at all─being a doll with no personality meant she could play any role she wanted.
I’d learned once again that in spite of her freewheeling ways, Ononoki was surprisingly professional at all times.