That, of course, was another joke.
I expected Ogi to follow up with a line like that, but she didn’t. Honestly, one wrong step there and it would’ve been a disaster, she said instead, as if to frighten me.
She seemed to be having fun.
“You didn’t get caught up in this land of mirrors, Araragi-senpai, you got it caught up with you.”
“…”
“Of course, this town is the only thing being affected, in spite of all the talk of worlds and lands─but please do be careful going forward. I’m not sure how much you realize this, but you’ve subdued a legendary vampire, built amicable relationships with gods, and are one and the same as me, someone with all kinds of elements from all kinds of aberrations. You suggested earlier that anything goes with me, but I’d say you’re pretty anything-goes yourself.”
Then the culprit wasn’t Ogi.
It was me─okay, it was Koyomi Araragi either way. But it didn’t change the fact that I was playing solitaire. It didn’t, but…
“Isn’t this already a disaster? You could put me on the same level as Shinobu when she destroyed the world in another timeline. Messing up an entire town─”
“Oh, no. This is still just a counterfeit. I said you pulled this land together, but it’s not like you did that physically. It’s only a question of how you feel about it. If that side is a counterfeit, then so is this one─just like Miss Shinobu said. All you did was bring a sense of maybe it’s all my imagination to the entire town. It’s not as if anything you did stopped being history, right? You only modestly rescued the light that was lost, the light that had gone out of sight─you only gave everyone a tiny little reminder of the forgotten ones, those feelings that had been left behind.”
Though you did put us in a dangerous spot, she said consolingly─well, no, I was sure it was just mean-spirited nagging.
“It won’t be a problem if you act appropriately from here. Yes, to put it as you might, it’ll just seem like you had a wonderful little dream.”
“Appropriately…” I sat down, all the strength instantly draining from my body. “It seems to me like there’s a lot you’re going to have to tell me if I want to do that.”
“Yes, and that’s why I’m here─we couldn’t bother any experts over something like this. I was impressed by Yotsugi Ononoki’s emergency response, but this story of aberrations is compact enough that we can handle it between you and me… Do be careful going forward, though. Don’t forget that we’re marked by those experts for observation.”
“…”
True. A chilling thought.
If Miss Gaen got word of this─fine, she knew everything, so maybe she already did. I could imagine how pissed she was at me for stirring up trouble all over again, after we’d pacified the town by settling that whole series of incidents… In fact, she might more than just scold me.
“No,” disagreed Ogi, “while she might know about this affair, she hasn’t the right to blow her top. She was the one who left behind Toé Gaen’s existence, after all, here in this town─and while it turned out for the best, I doubt it had been on purpose. It sure would’ve taken you longer to arrive at this classroom, though, without Ms. Toé.”
“I don’t get it… If you want to hurry me up so badly, why not come meet me at my house instead of sitting cooped up in this classroom?”
“Like I said, I was locked in─because this classroom was established as where I belong. This is my own lingering regret─or mistake, or stroke of bad luck… I failed to secure a good place for myself. That’s why messing with you in a roundabout way was the best I could do─anything may go when it comes to me, but I’m not omnipotent.”
“…”
“Miss Gaen must have left Ms. Toé behind due to some bitter memories, but I bet it was a simple case of lingering regret for Miss Hanekawa. Saying goodbye to everyone must’ve been very difficult. Almost like a six-year-old child, don’t you think? Then again, that might be why we could work in tandem…”
And yet she left with a big smile on her face. That big-breasted girl is as foolish as they come, Ogi laughed─apparently disliking Hanekawa as always.
Still, she’d allied herself with the class president among class presidents when this wasn’t even the land of mirrors. Did that mean there’d been a change in her nevertheless?
Just as I’d changed─perhaps Ogi could, too?
“Hanekawa…felt that way when she left? She’s my friend, but I didn’t do anything to show her I understood that at all.”
“That large-chested senior of mine would only hate it if someone saw straight through her, friend or not. She’s the kind of person who hides many things and has lots of secrets─you don’t believe Miss Oikura wanted you to know that she hoped to be better friends with you when she left this town, do you?”
“…”
“Then there’s Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade when she was a human, and those vestiges of the living Yotsugi Ononoki─and Karen Araragi’s complex about not being girly. Mayoi Hachikuji, who could never become an adult─and the savagery lurking in Nadeko Sengoku and Suruga Kanbaru. These were all forgotten, or were things they wish they could forget. You took all those things that were left behind and brought them to this side. That’s how you created─the so-called land of mirrors.”
It’s like some sort of light-based magic trick, Ogi quipped─and also that if she used black magic, I must use white magic.
That made sense. If she belonged to the element of darkness, my element was light, in contrast to her─though it sounds like bragging to assign yourself light as an element. I was buying myself shoes I could never fill.
“The mirror was nothing more than a catalyst─or maybe a detonator, but in any case, it only provided the chance. Of course, a mirror being the cue for all this did cause everything in the world to be flipped around.”
“If I didn’t get caught up in the land of mirrors but got it caught up with me─then I guess this was far from a lukewarm setup. Hm? In that case, did Ononoki and Oikura feel that something about the world was off not because of the negative effects that I had on it as an outsider, but rather because of its shortcomings?”
“I’d call them excesses, not shortcomings. You dragged another twenty percent from the land of mirrors, giving this place a hundred and twenty percent─it’s going to run over, beyond capacity like that. Either way, it doesn’t have much to do with them interacting with you. So if you feel like it, you’re welcome to fool around with Miss Oikura.”
Just as with Ms. Toé and Black Hanekawa, she’s not the real thing, though─Ogi said. That was a relief, or rather, I needed to straighten out the situation before the real Oikura came back to this town by some mistake.
“I need to figure something out…or wait…can we return things back to the way they were? Can we make this inconsistent world into a consistent one again?”
“I wouldn’t call it going back to the way things were. It might be more like moving forward─with an extra twenty percent in tow. Everyone regained what they’d lost, if only temporarily, so there will of course be some effect. That would be the influence you exert, if anything─for example, I imagine Miss Kanbaru is going to dream about Ms. Toé for a little while. Nothing more serious than that.”
“Can I really think of this as not having done anything serious?”
I couldn’t tell if Ogi was trying to be considerate, or if she was trying to bully me… Still, it was a load off my chest to know that despite inconveniencing everyone, I hadn’t done them any harm.
How would I ever forgive myself if Shinobu, who’d even taken the form of a little girl, could no longer be certified as harmless?
“Ha haa. You know, I think this turned out to be a good test case.”
“A test case? Of what?”
“You foolishly saved me when I should’ve been sucked up by the Darkness. My uncle may have supported your intentions there, but it’s not as if all those experts wholeheartedly approve of what you did. I think it’s clear as day that no small number of ungenerous characters would have rather seen a dangerous element like myself disappear.”
I count myself among them by the way, said a self-flagellating Ogi─while she often said these kinds of things to feign humility, I could tell she really meant it now.
“Yet this time, I acted as your safety valve─letting me live had some meaning. Forget being certified as harmless, I think this confirms it as fact. The surveillance level on you could rise a bit, though.”
“…”