R-Returned? To this town?
Yeah. Back when I was in college,
I thought of using a spell of resurrection and a corpse that had been in use for 100 years
to create the immortal shikigami apparition named Yotsugi Ononoki.
That was exactly 15 years ago.
And the phoenix found its next host around then as well...
That's why he, the ashes that make up the first one, gathered to this town right around then.
That's what Big Sister here thinks happened.
FIFTEEN YEARS AGO
Speaking of 15 years ago, there's one more thing I can associate it with.
Tsubasa Hanekawa became "Tsubasa Hanekawa" sometime around when she was three years old.
Which means, that'd be about 15 years ago, right?
Tsukumo-gami.
Phoenix.
Cat...
No, if I start saying that, there's no need to focus soley on 15 years ago.
If that's the story, then you can think of the time between 15 years ago and now
not as a specific moment, but as a span.
As of 11 years ago, lost on its way was... a snail.
Seven years ago, a wish was granted by... a monkey.
Three years ago, what took away some weight was... a crab.
Even the snake just two months ago would fall under this category as well.
It can't be...
All of the numerous stories of apparitions that have been told in this town
ASH
are because that ash or whatever came drifting along with the wind?
Of course not.
Yoduru and company making Yotsugi wasn't something that happened in this town.
ASH COW CAT BEE SNAKE MONKEY
It's merely a distant cause. I guess you can call it a suggestive code.
Basically, all the apparitions you've encountered are all your fault.
You can't evade responsibility.
However, during spring break,
the fact that Kiss-shot Acerola-orion Heart-under-blade visited this town...
...definitely had something to do with that ash.
OWARIMONOGATARI
SHINOBU MAIL, PART FOUR
You're speaking nonsense.
And you call yourself the younger sister of that Hawaiian shirt boy?
I MEAN, THAT'S NOT REALLY THE CASE
The reason I visited this country back then was because I wanted to see Mount Fuji.
But this mountain isn't Mount Fuji.
This prefecture isn't Shizuoka or Yamanashi.
Did you get lost on your way?
Or was it because three vampire hunters were chasing you?
That's not it. You didn't get lost.
You were guided here... to this town.
Guided...
What can I say. All of the things that have tossed me around were...
...well, converging on this one man.
That manner in which Gaen spoke was disgusting.
No. It's simply unpleasant.
What's with this feeling? It's as if... I'm feeling jealous.
Impossible.
Such a thing is impossible.
He died. He's dead.
He wasn't persuaded by my words, and threw away his own life.
He's a huge idiot.
What you're saying is nothing more than a farfetched interpretation.
Don't make fun of my lack of a sense of direction.
You seem to be asserting yourself pretty strongly there, Shinobu.
It's as if you'd be troubled if the man who was the first one was still alive, you know?
If your beloved slave was still alive, and if he was about to be resurrected,
that would be cause for congratulations.
CONGRATULATIONS
If anything, I can arrange a party or something, you know?
Don't overstep your bounds, specialist. Don't cross into a delicate area for me.
What do you claim to know about the events 400 years ago?
I know everything...
There's nothing I don't know.
Changing the rendezvous point from the park to the shrine has its appropriate reason as well.
CHANGE —> NORTH SHIRAHEBI SHRINE
Can I ask one question, Ms. Izuko?
Sure, Ms. Suruga Kanbaru.
Well, when this guy drifted into this town 15 years ago, he was already basically just ashes, right?
Then, how, and with what catalyst, did that cycle end,
with him revealing himself to Araragi-senpai as an armor-clad samurai like that?
What do you think is the reason, Ms. Suruga Kanbaru?
I have no idea.
But that reason has something to do with why you changed the rendezvous point, right?
You're sharp.
You truly have talent that's a shame to keep out in the wild.
I might only be thinking that because I'm often consulted as a senpai.
I do wish, Ms. Suruga Kanbaru, that you'd support this upperclassman right here.
TIMELINE
Fifteen years ago was when he - the first one - came back to this town.
He ended his wanderings, and drifted ashore onto this town that was his homeland.
He reached the goal of the tour of hell that he felt was eternal.
Homeland?
And every speck of ash that drifted in gathered at the location that was the town's air spot,
right here, at the North Shirahebi Shrine.
FIVE
FOUR
THREE
TWO
ONE
As you can see, this shrine has fallen into ruin.
But of course, it wasn't always like this.
Fifteen years ago, this shrine was still properly maintained.
I heard it was a small, coherent, good shrine.
In this case "small" and "coherent" aren't used as an insult, but rather as a compliment.
They had to keep it small and coherent.
After all, this place is an air spot.
An air spot for apparitions.
Where they're likely to show up. Where they're likely to gather.
A location where "bad things" that aren't full apparitions yet gather (shuuketsu).
And the location where apparitions are terminated (shuuketsu).
If you sieze point after point like that, and control each key location...
You can prevent accidents from happening. You can avoid them.
Big Brother Meme's job is to collect stories of apparitions that have already happened.
But the job of someone like me is originally more along these lines.
In other words, prevention, so that things are stopped before they happen.
On the other hand, if those scattered spots,
the key locations, can't be controlled, we can't prevent accidents.
Because this was such a location...
"AIR SPOT FOR APPARITIONS"
...in the past, a famed onmyouji I can't even begin to compare myself to created the shrine,
enshrined the god, and went forth to maintain things.
That had mostly gone well.
The defense system was properly working.
The "bad things" gathered here,
that become ingredients for apparitions, were dispersed in moderation.
There must've been a good god here.
But everything has its limits.
Let's see... Koyomin, I hear you're prepping for college right now.
If so, do you carry any talismans or anything?
Talismans.
Do you know those things can expire?
When the guardian note inside the bag rips, the talisman expires.
It just means that even the most miraculous of items doesn't have an infinite effect.
This shrine, and the god enshrined in it, reached their limits 15 years ago.
But in that case, it's too harsh to blame the shrine's caretaker, or even the enshrined god.
It was completely beyond expectation.
For the ashes of the first minion of the legendary vampire to gather...
It reached its breaking point.
Its limit.
As a result, 15 years ago, this North Shirahebi Shrine collapsed.
Both in the occult sense, and in the physical sense.
To crush a shrine as ash... Shinobu, your minion really is something.
The fact that he was originally a specialist probably has something to do with it.
What's wrong, Koyomin?
From the look on your face, it seems like you understand.
The other day, when you time-slipped to the past,
you saw that North Shirahebi Shrine 11 years ago was in far worse condition than it is now,
and I guess this inadvertently explained why?
That's right, that was his doing, the first one.
The shrine that was supposed to hold down the fort...
Couldn't hold down the minion of the vampire.
Just for reference, let me say that there wasn't just one,
but two and three attempts to renew this shrine.
But an empty shrine with no god
has no constructive meaning, even if it's all patched up.
Each time they attempted a renewal, it collapsed, broke, and fell into ruin.
The nuisance was that Shinobu, or rather, Kiss-shot Acerola-orion Heart-under-blade
and her minion, the first one,
have a power that draws apparitions to them just by existing, like moths to a fire.
That's what happened 11 years ago.
When you two visited this shrine back then, "bad things" filled these ruined grounds, correct?
I'm sure you were wondering why they had gathered to such a density, but that's nothing special.
It was what he, the first one - or rather, his ashes - had gathered as the ingredients for an apparition.
As ingredients... and as food.
If I explain this much,
even without specialized knowledge, you should have a good idea of what happened.
Why the ashes of he, the first one, escaped from the cycle of reincarnation.
That's right.
If this shrine was a "place that gathers easily,"
and the first one was "an apparition that can gather easily"...
In other words, all the conditions for an accident to happen converged here.
Accidents overlapped.
The first one, within the grounds of this shrine, within the godless grounds of this shrine...
This whole time, he kept eating in order to regain his stamina.
The cycle of repeating ash and void now ended.
And what began would span the next 15 years...
A tragic tale of him finding revival.
A tale of revival...
Perhaps this may have been a tale of seeking revenge instead.
Looks like this is a good time. I finished up with most of the explanations.
Koyomin, Shinobu, Ms. Suruga Kanbaru, is there anything else you don't understand?
W-Well, there are so many more things that I don't understand at all...
I-In the first place, what should we do now?
What do you want us to do to try to help your work—
I want you to take responsibility.
Therefore...
I'll let you take it. I'll let you inherit the responsibility.
You, Koyomin, and Shinobu.
You said that, at first, you planned for Ononoki to do this job alone.
That this situation exceeded your expectations.
Then can you tell us what the original plan was?
That's fine, but it's impossible to act out, so it's kinda pointless to tell you.
Do you remember why Big Brother Meme came to this town?
It was because Shinobu came here, right?
I believe it was the same for Kaiki, too.
As for Kagenui, I think she came here because she heard the story from Kaiki.
Right. Various specialists, all quirky and distinctive, came to this town for similar reasons.
But the reports of their investigations came to me.
EVEN STILL, I'M AMAZING.
As a result of that, as the result of the close review of the information submitted by each of them,
I came to understand that there was a strange chain of events,
a certain situation, happening in this town as of 15 years ago.
And so, I sent Yotsugi to this town once again.
Her job was to clean up the ashes. Simply put, cleaning up the shrine.
On the last day of summer break, when she bumped into me in town,
she didn't seem to know what her mission was.
But after that, she was given a mission that resembled the story of Cinderella?
But in the end, this means all of that failed, right?
Would Ononoki even fail a mission?
She's the one that saved both my and Shinobu lives in one evening.
She's a diligent worker, you know?
But Ononoki does have a super-airheaded side to her as well.
Maybe there are times when she screws up.
You're talking as if it has nothing to do with you, Koyomin.
Yotsugi's failure was you guys' fault.
O-Our fault?
Can it be...
...that it has something to do with the fact that Shinobu and I used the "bad things" pooled up in this air spot,
which had been sealed away by Oshino, and was merely awaiting to be dispersed, as a source of energy?
IS THERE SOMETHING THAT COMES TO MIND?
Shinobu didn't do anything.
She didn't do anything... She didn't have to do anything.
It was enough that she came to this shrine.
Honestly, I don't know just how much of the situation Big Brother Meme grasped.
He doesn't speak much and only reports the bare minimum.
The only thing that's certain is that he used talismans he had on hand to do some first aid on this shrine.
Thanks to that band-aid treatment,
you could say we set it up so that we cut off the first one's supply.
But in such a situation of hunger, he...
Being cornered into an extreme case once again, in such a mental state, he found out.
He saw Kiss-shot Acerola-orion Heart-under-blade.
He witnessed her for the first time in 400 years.
It was a one-sided observation.
Shinobu, that was the first time you came to North Shirahebi Shrine, right?
In other words... He found power by seeing Shinobu for the first time in 400 years.
That inspired the first one to rise up, despite his body being nothing but ashes.
And, even though he was in a state of severe hunger, he revived himself?
Who said the situation was so romantic?
Simply put, an existence similar in nature to another existence...
LIKE IT'S SOME TEEN ROMANTIC COMEDY
...showed up in a nearby location.
The first one was affected by that, and his apparition's nature swiftly became excited.
That's why, when Yotsugi came here after receiving the mission,
the North Shirahebi Shrine was completely empty.
After saying this much...
This time for sure, you know what the job I want to ask you to do is, right?
It's to look for the first one.
The first and the second one are both slaves, so they should be drawn to one another.
If anything, the person to summon first and foremost would be Kagenui, right?
Ononoki's master, the violent onmyouji that specializes in immortal apparitions.
I can't control her.
I'd like her to lament for her entire life that she has no opportunities to use her power.
It's amazing that she'd make Gaen say something of this nature.
HINIKU NO TAN
But, well, I guess Ononoki is enough for combat personnel, then...
Negative.
At the point when I heard the status report from Yotsugi,
in other words, at the point when I heard the report that Koyomin had come in contact with the first one,
I called for one more assistant.
I have to go pick him up pretty soon, too.
B-But, an assistant? Isn't Ononoki enough for this?
She's not.
Big Sister here wants to settle the score once and for all today.
Now that he has a will, has a conscience, and can arbitrarily use energy drains...
The longer we leave him be, the stronger he gets.
The game keeps doubling up.
If you take it easy, he'll be completely revived.
And if that happens, he'll be impossible to control.
That will be the point when we have no choice but to call for Yoduru.
BIG MONSTER
She speaks of Kagenui like some inhumane weapon or something...
No matter what,
I'd like to kill him... before he eats a human.
Now, Big Sister will step out for a bit.
5000 YEN
If you get hungry, you can use this to go buy some breakfast, Koyomin.
What are we going to do, Shinobu?
There's no ifs, ands, or buts.
There was an irregularity, but from here on, everything will go according to that specialist's plans.
No matter what we do, he'll be exterminated before the night is over.
That's all there is to it.
It's not something we should do anything about at this point.
There's the possibility he'll power up if we get close to him.
So unlike you, I probably won't see his face at all.
This will all be dealt with without me.
I'll tell you this. My master, you shouldn't think of anything unnecessary.
That woman may have said things to rile you up for fun...
But for me, there is no "first" or "second" in terms of my minions.
I've lived for over 500 years... The order doesn't matter at all.
The other day, when I told the story of the past, did I not preface the story with instructions?
P-Preface?
Don't show worthless envy.
Leave it at a cute level of jealousy.
Don't be distressed.
Right now, you're the only one for me.
Given that I can't go home quite yet, I can't afford to fast all the way till evening...
With the pairing with Shinobu severed right now, I can't say I'm very resistant to hunger.
I can't let my underclassman starve, either.
I request donuts.
Should I go run over and get some?
No, I've hardly done anything up till now, so I'd like to at least go do the shopping.
All right. Then I'll watch over Shinobu.
I'll take care of Shinobu for you.
Is it all right to leave Shinobu and Kanbaru alone? They've only just met.
But I can't go shopping toting Shinobu around in this current situation.
Though it's safe because it's daytime, I should have Shinobu stay put for now.
Then, Araragi-senpai.
Since you're going shopping... I apologize for being rude,
but can I ask you to get something for me?
What is it? You can ask anything.
I'd like you to buy a book. It's a new book that's coming out today.
Coming out today? I see, that's fine. Then, I'll go buy it for you.
It's a light-novel, so are you okay with that?
Come on now, that bothers me, Kanbaru.
Do you think I'm one of those people that treats light-novels like degenerate art or something?
I'm a high school boy that buys super-girly shoujo manga with the cover facing up!
I wouldn't think that buying books would be embarrassing!
Hearing that reassures me.
So, what's the title?
"Brutal Garçon Huff-Huffs a Half-Blood Boy!"
BRUTAL GARÇON HUFF-HUFFS A HALF-BLOOD BOY!
That's one of those light-novels that aren't exactly light-hearted!
What kind of book are you asking your upperclassman to buy you?
In the end, you're reading BL stuff... And what's with that title?
BRUTAL GARÇON HUFF-HUFFS A HALF-BLOOD BOY!!
The title isn't everything for a novel.
Lately, the world of literature has been putting emphasis on the title as well.
But past masterpieces often have a title that makes you think it's nothing more than a vague idea.
BRUTAL GARÇON HUFF-HUFFS A HALF-BLOOD BOY!! 21ST BOOK
Well, it's true that a novel is about its contents.
But can the contents of that book be something to look forward to?
Yes, it can. This one, the 21st book in the series, is especially highly anticipated by the experts.
923: NAMELESS EXPERT NEW TITLE IS HERE BRUTAL ASSAULT IS MY FAVORITE! SO LOOKING FORWARD TO THE RELEASE DATE.
The series has gone on way too long! And who are "the experts"?
In the newest installment, the biggest mystery of the series since volume 1...
BIGGEST MYSTERY "GRANDCHILD OF A 'GAL'?"
Whether or not the Brutal Garçon is really "the grandchild of a 'gal'" will be revealed.
He probably is the grandchild of a "gal"!
The author really dragged out a mystery like that for 20 books?
Actually, the line I said to you yesterday, Araragi-senpai...
"Eat up!"
KEYWORD "EAT UP"
That line was something I borrowed from the main character of that series.
To think it was a line from a boys-love series...
I THOUGHT IT WAS CUTE!
You're not going to buy it for me? Then I guess I'll just go home.
I'll buy it! You'll be satisfied if I buy it, right?
Oh, that's right... Araragi-senpai, if you could, can you buy me a brassiere?
I can't do that, so I can't buy that for you.
It's fine. I know you can do it, Araragi-senpai.
Kanbaru, for some reason, you expect too much from Araragi-senpai.
I don't care about the design.
You can use your aesthetic sense to pick one, Araragi-senpai.
Don't ask me about my aesthetic sense for picking out a brassiere.
I mean, there are all sorts of designs for brassieres,
but in the end, it's what goes in it that counts.
Don't make it sound like a good line.
I'm at my limit of being braless. I really do want to cherish its contents.
You say "for some reason," but right now, I just want to put a brassiere on.
Let's draw the line here.
Here it is...
"Brutal Garçon Huff-Huffs a Half-Blood Boy!"
It's an amazing cover that lives up to its title.
BRUTAL GARÇON HUFF-HUFFS A HALF-BLOOD BOY! (SECOND HALF)
It is a bit embarrassing to buy just these two books...
21ST BOOK PUBLISHED!! THE MYSTERY OF WHETHER GARÇON IS A GRANDCHILD OF A "GAL"! "EAT UP" GARÇON SERIES 1-20 ON SALE!!
I don't think it's manly to buy other books as camouflage when buying certain books.
BRUTAL GARÇON HUFF-HUFFS A HALF-BLOOD BOY! (FIRST HALF)
But in this case, I think it might be better to hide the manliness instead.
Come to think, it's been a long time since I was paired with Shinobu.
But because it was severed by the "darkness,"
for the first time in a while, I was acting alone in the true meaning of the phrase.
Taking my own course.
Freedom.
If so, can I take this momentary freedom, without worrying about people's or apparitions' eyes,
this gap of lost time, and make the most of it?
IDOL - ACTRESS PHOTO COLLECTION CORNER
GRAVURE IDOL! SLIGHTLY PERVERTED OLDER SISTER SUPER-HOT PHOTO COLLECTION
It seems that lately, because I've often been having fun with Shinobu, Ononoki, and Hachikuji,
the suspicion that I have a Lolita complex is growing day by day.
The times are the times, the situation is the situation.
In order to clear me of any suspicion, I need to employ the opposite strategy right now.
HOUSEWIFE PHOTO STUDIO FULLY RIPE BODY, SPORTY MATURE LADY PHOTO COLLECTION
In other words... Mature ladies!
THE EMPLOYEES LAUGH
Hey, second one.
Were you able to relay my message to Kiss-shot?