Chapter Text
“What is the spider’s greatest tool?”
I was recently asked such a question.
It’s the sort of thing you ask only in a rhetorical sense — a humble plea for the listener’s consent to continue.
This sort of question is typically followed by a lecture.
At my age, in my position, the number of situations in which I find myself the recipient of such a speech rather than the lecturer themselves has been steadily on the decline. And for good reason: the question itself is rather like a snare to slow you down; a web, to waste your time.
“Do you know what it is?”
Once again I was asked.
I don’t like having my time wasted, you know.
But anyway, the question itself is too presumptive. In the first place you ought to begin by asking, “What is a spider?” Of course this is the sort of thing where, even if you ask a child, the response back will be perfectly serviceable:
A spider is an eight-legged little arthropod with venomous fangs, a chitinous exoskeleton and, most characteristically, the ability to spin entrapping webs from their abdomens. They are separate from yet often confused for insects, which are their most typical source of nutrition. The archetypal image of the spider is one of an ensnared insect, struggling for its life as numerous, glossy, bone-like appendages reach out for the latest meal.
It’s a childish question. Of course you know what a spider is.
You’ve probably seen plenty throughout your life.
Odds are, you’ve probably been terrified by a spider in your life.
For the most part, however, spiders have no interest in humans; it might be more appropriate to say they want nothing to do with us. And most people want nothing to do with spiders; their glossy little bodies with their long, narrow limbs are simultaneously alien and also distressingly familiar to us — like dead fingers outstretched to grasp at our very lives.
Is this fear innate in our mammalian psychology, or is it trained? I wonder. After all, whereas the total species of spider in the world numbers in the tens of thousands, the number of spiders which actually pose a threat to humans can probably be counted on two hands… probably. It’s not as if we are under threat of a spider invasion, either: for their part, spiders avoid people as much if not more than people avoid spiders. One will be attacked for trespassing in the territory of a wolf or a bear; but you can count on less than a single hand the number of spiders which will do anything besides cower or hide or even outright abandon their nests should a human come trampling through. Getting a spider to bite you takes an exquisite amount of either ignorance or malice. Interactions between humans and spiders are accidental; they do not seek us out, yet they unwittingly enter our dwellings out of convenience or necessity. When the nights turn cold, one naturally seeks warm shelter. It only just so happens that shelter is often already occupied.
All of this is to say that we fail to understand spiders.
Yes, I admire them.
I also sympathize with them.
Nobody really understands me.
But I like it that way.
I think they like it that way, too. I imagine that spiders also benefit in some ways from this misunderstanding. I know I certainly do. If your presence puts people in a state of unease they will naturally avoid you.
But it seems that there are those who are fascinated with that which convention tells them they should avoid; people who admire the macabre for reasons wholly different from my pragmatism. There exist people who like spiders for what they are: carnivorous builders who often cleverly trap their prey with ingenious contraptions.
Good for them, I think. Good for the spiders, also.
The lesson for you here is that there’s always someone out there who will accept you, not just in spite of your idiosyncrasies but because of them.
I, however, am not one such person.
In case you need reminding, I am not the kind of guy who can see past someone’s failings, the weak points of their personality, and find something worth admiring. My admiration for spiders is only skin-deep; I like that they are treated with apprehension, because I myself wish to be avoided and ignored; nothing more, nothing less.
You shouldn’t expect much more from me than that.
I am, after all, a fraud.
Yet, frustratingly, it seems there are people who are eager to seek out a fraud such as me. In a way, it’s rather like the bird which makes a delicacy out of snatching up spiders.
I am being preyed upon by the affection of others.
Anyway, the question —
The rhetorical question.
The question which begs you relinquish the right to answer back to the speaker.
And what is that answer?…
“It’s time.”
Time.
Time, explained Saitomi Shiori, is the spider’s most powerful tool.
In a world where the average lifespan is measured in months, weeks, or even hours, where every other living thing is in a perpetual scramble to escape the relentless pursuit of entropy, the spider patiently spins its web. It is the spider which plants itself in a dusty corner and waits for a meal to come its way.
It does not matter how fast you are; how clever you are; how strong you are —
— Time shall inevitably outpace you.
Eventually you’ll be caught in the web.
In this way, spiders exhibit a greater patience than we human beings; humans, who possess some of the more impressive lifespans in the animal kingdom. There are spiders in the world which can live for decades, but their limits are paltry besides the average ability of a human to stick it out. Yet, for all the time we live, we urge one-another into a state of panic. The life of a spider is too slow for the human; better to scurry about like the gnats, desperate for scraps by which to sate our needs.
We fear death.
But the spider,
The spider just goes on spinning its webs.
They’ll go on spinning those webs until the end.
Truly, I admire spiders.
Having said this, let me spin a new web for you — a web of lies and truths and half-truths.
Allow me to tell you the story of a spider.
That is, a story of how a spider came to be.
It’s a story about time.
And it’s the story of how I cursed Saitomi Shiori with a spider’s fate.
Step any further and you risk being trapped in my web.
I think it bears repeating that this is not an appropriate, official story.
It hardly even qualifies as an apt substitute, all things considered.
But as certainly as my name is Kaiki Deishū, I can tell you that nobody deserved the outcome they received in this story.
This is a story that hurts to retell.
But that too might just be a lie.