ZOKU OWARIMONOGATARI

BAKEMONOGATARI Part 1 — LNCrawler · All chapters

005

I think this goes without saying.

But the Mayoi I knew was a ten-year-old little girl, not a twenty-one-year-old pervert─excuse me, lady.

Yet the young woman standing in front of me was Mayoi Hachikuji─and I knew this to be true.

She’d lost her life in a traffic accident nearly a dozen years ago, but if she’d avoided that accident─she’d have turned out like this lady.

I’d seen her thriving and surviving even in a world that had fallen into ruin─though her airs then seemed a little different (or rather, her personality had undergone a total change). But if we were to go by simple appearances, this was exactly how she looked.

“ ”

“First off, please stop calling me Awawagi.”

Umm.

I put my mind to work─or at least put my hands to my head.

I’d started to get an idea of what was going on but was having trouble making sense of it all… The change to Karen’s body, the change in Ononoki’s personality, and now Hachikuji… In other words, this problem extended beyond the Araragi residence, to the entire world… But then what about Tsukihi?

Nothing had changed about her. Or maybe I just didn’t notice?

“” Hachikuji…no, Miss Hachikuji spoke my name, this time in a slightly different tone. “You seem kind of serious today. You know I’m always here to listen if anything’s worrying you.”

“…”

This made me certain I was dealing with Hachikuji─as soon as she treated me with kindness, I felt like relying on her.

But just as I couldn’t rely on Ononoki, I doubted I could get anything useful out of Hachikuji, given that she herself had changed…

At the same time, if a change had come upon the entire world, it didn’t matter who I talked to, it’d be true of everyone─maybe that even included Shinobu, once she woke up at night.

In that case, I needed to ratchet up my readiness another notch.

“There’s something I was hoping to check with you, if that’s all right,” I said. It did feel a little odd to be speaking politely to Hachikuji, but what choice did I have? I had to mind my tone with a twenty-one year old. “You’re a…god, yes? Miss Mayoi.”

“ ”

“…”

We were on the same page there. The details didn’t seem to have changed much, either.

Which meant that this Miss Hachikuji was an aberration, and not alive─come to think of it, the parallel world where she survived to twenty-one instead of dying at ten was in exchange for a world in ruins.

Judging from the scenery as I rode toward this mountain, my town was fine─I’d had the same fear facing the shortened Karen, but it seemed I could count out a scenario where I was back in that other timeline.

But even if she was divine, there was the precedent set by Sengoku. Miss Hachikuji could be a god incarnate, or a living god, and not necessarily dead.

Hmmm.

I couldn’t just ask her to her face if she was alive… She seemed to be, going by how her body felt as she held me (not to mention having bitten her earlobe), but even when she was a little ghost girl, I could touch her like normal, so that wasn’t a valid criterion.

“ ”

“No, that’s not it… Um…”

Then, after all my hesitation.

I ended up revealing everything to Miss Hachikuji, everything being all the abnormalities since the morning: Karen’s body, Ononoki’s expression and tone (also, I keep forgetting, but her clothes were a little different too)─and her own transformation from the Hachikuji I knew.

The fact that Shinobu didn’t wake up even when I called.

Though perhaps unrelated, I also threw in the weird sense I got from my reflection in the mirror when I washed my face─I thought it might help gauge my mental state.

…The whole situation seemed kind of serious to me, but when I talked about it out loud, it sounded so comical, or just all in my head.

If I were told such a frivolous story, at least, I might dismiss it as “the sort of thing that happens when you’re a teen”─what was it called again, jamais vu? The feeling that you’re learning about something for the first time when in fact you’ve long known it to be true. Maybe Karen was always that tall, and Ononoki always that kind of character.

Even with Hachikuji, was I just under the impression she was ten, when she was actually twenty-one? Well, that was true, in a sense.

What about Shinobu? Once, she didn’t come out of my shadow no matter how many times I called, but our link had been severed by the Darkness. Did it stay severed ever since or something?

That definitely made me too careless for my own good and also counted as its own kind of bad news. But even if it wasn’t déjà vu or jamais vu, there remained a logical explanation for my predicament.

A way to make sense of the nonsensical situation.

The hypothesis was no less hard for me to accept─or believe, but nonetheless.

“ ”

Nonetheless, having heard me out, Miss Hachikuji began speaking with a troubled expression (which made her look surprisingly intelligent).

“ ”

“Y-Yes… That’s it.”

“ ”

“Reversed… Um.”

Could we?

No─putting aside Shinobu (who could just be asleep), it wasn’t everyone when nothing had changed about Tsukihi, who wasn’t “reversed” or anything. That bit made the situation that much trickier…

“ ”

“Backwards? Oh.”

The left side of her yukata over the right.

That’s how it looked─and I let her know, because that’s how you dress the dead.

I’d sort of sneered, thinking that she didn’t know how to wear traditional clothes despite loving them so much, but if that was the change that overtook her…

It was the easiest to understand, in a way.

Reversed, or maybe inverted?

Inverted─as if I’d seen her in a mirror.

Not a delusion, but a reflection.

Left switched places with right. It also explained Shinobu’s stubborn silence─vampires aren’t reflected in mirrors, after all.

Something that I’d experienced myself recently─in other words.

“ ” Miss Hachikuji declared.