Monogatari Series - Volume 10 - Chapter 1.09

009

Why was that abandoned cram school (where Mèmè Oshino, the authority on all things monstrous, had headquartered himself while he was in town) so full of memories for me? Well, I did engage my dear senior in a no-holds-barred battle in one of the rooms and thereafter stayed up through any number of nights there on aberration-related business─not to mention, I had a front-row seat when the building burned to the ground─but that isn’t why.

Well, that’s part of it, of course, and to say those things contributed wouldn’t be a lie, but there was another, more fundamental reason.

I didn’t tell Araragi-senpai this.

Or rather, I couldn’t tell him.

And I still haven’t.

But there was a time─before the cram school was abandoned, when it still functioned as a cram school─that I was a student there.

Specifically it was during my second and third years in middle school─I had found out that my other dear senior was going on to Naoetsu High, and knowing that it was highly doubtful I could get in with my grades, I begged my grandparents to let me take extra classes. And (what have I got to hide now?) it was that selfsame Eikow Cram School that I attended.

Of course, it was while I was a pupil there that the school fell on hard times and had to close. You wouldn’t have known it then, given the healthy number of elementary and middle school students studying there, but I heard later that the salaries of the instructors they hired to try and combat the big-name competition by the station were just too high, and they couldn’t turn a profit─I found it really hard to come to terms with the fact that my beloved teachers, with whose help I improved my grades enough to get into Naoetsu High, were responsible for the financial distress that ultimately resulted in the school’s collapse.

In any case, one of the desks Mister Oshino or Araragi-senpai or Shinobu used as a bed may well have been the one I’d used as a student there.

Which means, exactly nothing at all.

Sure, it’s a memory, but it isn’t important to me─and the reason I haven’t told Araragi-senpai or anyone else is that it simply hasn’t come up, it was never the right time.

If the last vestiges of the cram school that somehow survived the fire were to disappear completely from this world─I wouldn’t feel sad, wouldn’t feel even a twinge of heartbreak.

How can I put this─well, it’ll sound cold but I’ll just come out and say it, but when I became a high school student, the memories that connected me to that place “expired.”

Even while I was a student there, and though it had been my idea in the first place (I couldn’t feel sorrier about this towards my grandma and grandpa who ponied up the fees), I resented having to attend a cram school─because I was frantic about it conflicting with my schedule for basketball practice.

Therefore.

And so.

When the cram school did fall on hard times and closed─I feared, needless to say, that it was because I’d made a wish.

…Which might be why I couldn’t tell anyone.

In hindsight, at least, it seems like that may have been what was going on, but─either way I suppose I was bound to the place in some fashion or another.

Bound to it more tightly than Mister Oshino, who used it as his headquarters, more tightly than Araragi-senpai, who bedded down there from time to time─I say this because I ended up there again even after it had burned down, ended up at that place that was finished for everyone.

“Go ahead and kid yourself that the path you’re on now leads to your dreams for the future─the reality is that most of the time, it’s simply a one-way street running right into the past, and people are just going the wrong way. What’s more, the traffic enforcement on that one-way street is so strict that if you accidentally look back over your shoulder, they’ll take your soul.”

My mother once told me that, but you know, it’s pretty much impossible to walk without ever looking behind you.

So I ended my phone conversation with Karen and B-dashed straight over to the burnt field where the former abandoned cram school ruins (oh, come on) stood─and there.

There.

I came face to face with Lord Devil.

I call it a burnt field, but it had been about six months since the building had burned down, and the municipal government hadn’t been idle. They’d cleared the site with bulldozers, so it’d be more accurate to call it a plain old vacant lot with not a blade of grass to be seen, but─in the center of that vacant lot.

There was a girl with a crutch.

A girl around my own age.

Around high-school age─just as Ogi said, I suppose. It felt inevitable and still rubbed me the wrong way somehow.

She was wearing a jersey─which reminded me of Karen and her year-round attire, partly because I’d just spoken to her, but if Karen looked sporty in a jersey, this girl looked sloppy.

Her jersey was baggy.

So big it looked like pajamas─just sloppy.

Her rumpled hair appeared to have been neither combed nor untangled and was lightened to a tea-colored brown, which added to the impression─or rather, it was the first time I’d actually seen anyone with hair dyed that color.

From what I gather it’s not that uncommon in this day and age, but this is a rural town, after all, so the most I ever see is the swim team’s hair looking faded from too much immersion in chlorinated water (and of course Shinobu’s blond hair), so naturally it made me feel timid.

In a certain sense, dyed-brown hair was more frightening to me than a devil.

Which is why─which is precisely why I turned defiant instead.

No.

That wasn’t the only reason.

There was another.

“…Even though I offer three options, almost every kid sticks to the first one.”

She spoke first while I was waffling about how to break the ice, unsure how to address her.

And that’s when I realized she was looking at me.

The fake-brunette devil was looking at me.

“Seven out of ten people are glad to have their appeal to Lord Devil take the form of a letter─and two out of the remaining three opt for a phone call.”

“And the last one comes to meet you face to face…like this?”

“No, the last one gives up. When faced with the third option. The kid who comes to meet Lord Devil is number eleven out of ten.”

Her manner of speaking was even more boyish than mine.

Her voice was low, and calm─and the pace of her speech was bizarrely languid. Not in a charming laid-back-dude kind of way, though, just sluggish─or (and I’d prefer to avoid using this word, given the strong negative nuance) maybe “slow” just about perfectly captures it.

I got impatient waiting for her next word.

That’s the pace we’re talking about here.

Like a slowed-down version of a recording you’re used to hearing played at a certain speed.

“And those kids are usually dealing with genuinely serious problems, so I refer them to the police or a lawyer, or to Child Protective Services. Only two eleven-out-of-tens have ever come to see Lord Devil, and I dealt with both of them that way─but,” she said with a lazy stare, “that’s not why you’re here, is it, Suruga Kanbaru?”

Hearing my name out of the blue, my heart leapt into my mouth.

Not because I was surprised that a stranger knew my name─nor was it how she knew my name without being told thanks to some great and mysterious power, being Lord Devil and all.

“You’re right, Roka Numachi,” I said.

Said her name.

And when I did, she─Numachi grinned for the first time and returned, “I’m pleased you remember me.”

Yup.

I didn’t recognize her at first on account of the dyed hair, but Lord Devil was an old acquaintance of mine.

I didn’t strictly speaking remember her face, though─it was the crutch she was holding on her left side that tipped me off.

Roka Numachi.

We had crossed swords in middle school, when she was playing basketball for another school in the district.

She’d been more than a rival─“archenemy” was more like it, really─and we’d confronted each other countless times.

I don’t have any clear memories of losing against her, but I don’t distinctly remember beating her, either.

If I was an offensive player specializing in the fast break, Numachi’s specialty was a loitering defense. There were rumors that she’d once completely shut out an opposing team, but who knows if that’s true…

Her clothes and her “slow” speech made a little more sense as elements of her personality when I recalled her playing style.

She’d been an opponent, though, so while I knew her by sight in middle school, I’d never conversed with her like this…

“Heheh, Kanbaru─that left arm of yours.” Numachi pointed at my bandaged arm with her right hand, the one not holding the crutch. “I guess the rumors that you hurt yourself were true. So we’re peas in a pod. Seriously, star players don’t handle injuries very well. Or is it arrogant of me to refer to my past self as a star? No, you wouldn’t think so, Kanbaru─”

“…”

I looked at Numachi’s left leg without making a reply.

It was hard to tell at a glance since her oversized jersey was so baggy, but if you looked carefully, her left and right legs weren’t the same width. I only noticed the difference because I knew what to look for, but─her left leg.

She had a plaster cast─on her left leg.

Solid.

Firm.

Protected from any impact.

Protected from the world.

Because of which, she wasn’t wearing a shoe on her left foot─her bare toes were touching the ground.

An injury─to her left leg.

Uh huh.

Hence the crutch.

During the final tournament of our junior high years─right before her school was about to face ours, Numachi broke her left leg in a collision during the game, and as a result she was forced to retire; or rather, the injury hadn’t completely healed yet, as far as I could tell─and if it hadn’t three years later, it must have been the kind that haunts you for the rest of your life.

It was a hard subject to broach, and now wasn’t the time.

“Did your injury come from an on-court collision too?” she just went ahead and broached the unbroachable.

She may very well have been commiserating with me for having to retire due to an injury, but if that was it, all I could do was hang my head.

I didn’t deserve a medal for what happened to my arm─it was a mistake I made in the past, nothing more. Even putting our injuries in the same ballpark was disrespectful.

“Yeah, well,” I nodded vaguely, unable to tell her the truth.

“That’s Naoetsu High’s uniform, right? So you made it to the nationals with that prep school… Amazing. Plus, you were smart.”

“No, not really…” I corrected, looking at Numachi’s jersey.

It was flashy, a bright red.

A brand name was stitched into the chest, but at that distance I couldn’t make it out─if it were famous I’d recognize it even from far away, so it had to be some minor one.

Even if it wasn’t, it didn’t look like a school training outfit, to say the least.

“Oh? Me? I’m not going to school. Rehab made a hash of exams for me. Now I’m just living it up as a part-timing freelancer.”

Though with this leg, I can’t seem to get hired anywhere. So when I say freelance, I actually mean unemployed, Numachi elaborated, thrusting her right hand into the pocket of her jersey.

Not going to school.

In that sense, then, Ogi was wrong to call her a high school girl. I felt somewhat relieved by that, which goes to show my personality isn’t as cut and dry as everyone thinks.

“Which is why I’m able to be Lord Devil.”

“…”

“Making the most of my free time, you know?”

Saying this, she pulled a cell phone out of her pocket─and pressed a few buttons and put it back.

Checking her messages, it seemed.

Had there been a call for Lord Devil from somewhere─from someone? No, in that case, she would have answered the phone, so maybe it was simply a performance for my benefit.

In middle school, she’d do the same kind of thing on the court─she excelled at messing with the heads of the players she was up against.

“So because you couldn’t get a job after you injured your leg─you became Lord Devil in place of a part-time gig?”

“Huh?”

Numachi’s face registered surprise at this.

This time it didn’t appear to be a performance, she seemed properly stunned by the conclusion I’d come to─but who knows, maybe it was all part of her act.

Let me repeat that I never knew her well enough to learn to read her expressions.

“No, no, no─you’ve got it all wrong, Kanbaru. I don’t know what you’ve heard, or from whom, but you’ve got it all wrong.”

“What have I got wrong?”

As far as the what and from whom went─the answer was Lord Devil and from Ogi, but…

“I’m Lord Devil, sure, but I don’t make any money from it.”

It’s a free counseling service, Numachi footnoted.

Her reply caught me off guard─but then, neither Ogi nor Higasa, nor Karen for that matter, had mentioned anything about Lord Devil seeking recompense for solving people’s problems.

In fact, the implication was that the clients incurred no risk whatsoever─

“…”

If that was true, I felt like I’d been out of line─I couldn’t help but conflate Lord Devil’s activities with the image of Mister Oshino demanding five million yen in compensation from my dear senior, or of Deishu Kaiki swindling middle school girls out of their pocket money, and I’d jumped to the conclusion that cash was changing hands here as well.

A free counseling service, a free counselor.

That was just like…

“Like Araragi-senpai.”

“Hm? Did you say something, Kanbaru?”

“No, I didn’t say anything, Numachi─”

I shook my head.

“I definitely had the wrong idea. Sorry about that,” I apologized. “I get it now. In other words, you’re an equal-opportunity ‘do-gooder’ out to help the struggling people of the world as best you can.”

“Heheh. It’s kind of embarrassing to hear it put so plainly─”

“So why call yourself Lord Devil?” My words hadn’t been meant as a compliment, so I felt icky seeing her blush. Which is why I cut in and asked these questions without waiting for her to finish her sentence. “Isn’t it impossible to avoid a certain amount of prejudice being directed your way when you use that name?”

“This is the age of impact. Impact and buzz. First off, if you can’t shake up your clients, no one will notice you. Entertainment, culture, politics, these days unpredictability is priority number one. And however godawfully godless I may be, I’m not so shameless as to call myself Lord God or The Archangel.”

“…”

“More than anything, troubled people are basically caught up in a complex. In that kind of psychological state, rather than looking to exalted beings like angels or even God for help, it’s much easier for them to look to the lowest of the low─to the Devil.”

“…There’s a certain twisted logic to that.”

“You think so? That’s a surprise, coming from someone like you, who stays on the sunny side of the street─or has that injury to your arm warped your humanity a teensy bit?”

“That’s…not how it is.”

Sure, it was something of a symbol of my warped humanity, but my left arm was the effect, not the cause─still, her ability to see through to the heart of things hadn’t changed a bit since her days as an active player.

In fact, now that she quit basketball, perhaps her powers of insight were even more honed─and formed the cornerstone of her free counseling service?

…Nope.

It’s true that we barely spoke a word while we faced each other on the court back in middle school─but precisely because I had faced her as a player, I think I had some sense of her “character.”

Roka Numachi the basketball player.

Is─was─not the kind of person who’d lend an ear to you.

Not the kind of girl to place her powers of insight at other people’s service.

Did she change during the past three years?

Change─growth.

And yet…

“I vacillated between Lord Devil and The Fallen Angel at first─The Fallen Angel was hard to pass up, but I was afraid that guys would be put off because it sounded a little too cool. Now I can’t imagine having chosen anything other than Lord Devil.”

“Why.” I couldn’t figure it out for myself so I just asked her flat out. “If you’re not doing it for money, then why are you doing it?”

“Do I have to explain it to you?” she answered my question with a question of her own.

Realizing that it absolutely wasn’t her duty to spell it out for me, I was momentarily at a loss but declared, “You have to.”

As firmly as I could.

She opened her eyes wide, taken aback by my demand, before shrugging her shoulders like it was all a joke─every one of her movements was so drawn out that they seemed staged─and smiling.

“Oh well. When someone like you comes looking for Lord Devil just for the hell of it, it’s time to close up shop.”

Too bad, I was really into the name I picked this time around, Numachi added with seeming regret.

“This time? You mean you’ve done this before?”

“Yeah, well─ever since I quit basketball three years ago, one way or another, under one name or another─I’ve been lending an ear to all kinds of people.”

Really.

With Deishu Kaiki in mind yet again, I’d assumed that at most, she’d only begun doing this last year─but it was much more deeply rooted than that.

“I retreat as soon as it seems like I’m going to be exposed. Then I start again. That’s the trick.”

“The trick to what?”

“Longevity?” answered Numachi, cocking her head.

Then she repeated herself.

Slowly.

“When someone like you comes looking for me just for the hell of it, it’s time to close up shop and hit ‘continue’─that’s the path to longevity and perpetual youth. Though it’s more a process of trial and error than a ‘continue.’ They’ve more or less died out, but apparently there used to be tons of video games like that thirty years ago─”

“I didn’t come here just for the hell of it…”

“What else do you call it when someone who doesn’t need counseling visits a counseling service? You came just for the hell of it, and here you are face to face with a devil.”

“…”

When I had no reply, Numachi appeared satisfied and said, “What was your question again? You want to know why I’m doing this? If not for money, then why─was that it?”

“Yeah, that’s what I asked you.”

“For the sake of humanity─is not why, of course. Your question is based on the deeply biased assumption that I’d never do such philanthropic work, right? Well, let me tell you upfront that you’re absolutely correct. You seem to think highly of my powers of insight, but yours aren’t too shabby, either.”

“Okay, so why?”

“I do it for myself. For the wholesome benefit of yours truly, Roka Numachi. Though you might also say for this left leg,” she divulged, unapologetically─but without conceit, and if anything, somewhat coolly. “Listening to people’s stories, their troubles and worries, I assure myself, ‘Thank goodness, there are plenty of people out there at least as unhappy as I am’─that’s the only reason I’ve taken on the mantle of Lord Devil.”

“…”

“Oops, now you think less of me, in no time flat. My, my, so serious. You always were a straight shooter, if you’ll pardon the pun, and that was your appeal as a player. But to your foes on the court, myself included, it was nothing but a weakness to be exploited.”

Having seen me frown at her previous declaration, Numachi didn’t bother to hide her conceit this time and cracked a smile.

“…You’re kidding, right?”

“About what? Yes, everyone did go after your weak point. Are you trying to tell me you never noticed? Or are you going to condemn it as a low thing to do? The statute of limitations is up on that one, so I’d say crying foul and harping on your own fairness at this late date is what runs counter to the spirit of sportsmanship.”

Maybe she meant to draw out my feelings with this provocation─but that’s putting a positive spin on things, and it seems truer to say she was just having a ball teasing me.

Of course, what seems truer isn’t always true.

I took a deep breath, little by little so she wouldn’t notice, and exhaled, “That’s not what I meant. I was asking if you were kidding about preying on people’s misery.”

“Preying on people’s misery─not quite. I don’t recall saying that. All I want is to be able to use their unhappiness as a baseline to tell myself, At least I’m doing better than them. That’s all. I’ll never run again for the rest of my life─but there are lots of other people in this world who’re struggling. Knowing that, I’m just barely able to maintain my psychological balance.”

“Balance─”

That word.

Mister Oshino had used it often.

He, who always adhered to the principle of neutrality.

“In that sense, Kanbaru. Seeing your left arm puts my heart at ease. A top player like you reduced to the same state as me─no, maybe it doesn’t ease my heart. Because, unlike me, you don’t seem to be too upset about your arm.”

“That’s not…”

True, I said.

I don’t know if my denial really got through to her, though, since I’d come to terms with my arm’s condition─as something I’d simply brought on myself─while she didn’t seem to be there yet.

So it was no surprise if, from her standpoint, I seemed carefree.

“Heheh.” Numachi smiled. “The letters that I─Lord Devil receives from high school kids, and the recordings I make of their phone calls, are my prized collection. There are unhappy people in this world, there are so many unhappy people in this world─that fact has been my saving grace. Real stories, straight from the horse’s mouth. I get so much more into them than I do reading some canned tearjerker of a novel. I’ve been collecting other people’s unhappiness for three years now, hanging out different shingles. It’s not about preying on them, Kanbaru, it’s about appraising them.”

“…Not a particularly laudable hobby, is it?” I probably should have told Numachi how that really made me feel─maybe it was exactly what she wanted, too─yet the words I finally managed to get out had passed through a series of filters, been strained and sugarcoated. “Those people who come to you for help are actually suffering, aren’t they?”

“Which is what gives the collection its value─does that sound villainous enough? Heheh, don’t get so serious, Kanbaru. You look like you’re going to hit me. Don’t come any closer, I’m frightened of your intimidating presence.”

“You were never this far away when you set a screen.”

“I wonder. It’s been so long, I’ve forgotten. After all, I’m not a basketball player anymore. I’m a counselor.”

I hit her.

It surprised me, I didn’t see myself as the kind of person who could just up and hit someone─but before I knew it, I had definitely slapped her in the face with my right hand.

Though I suppose I must have retained some of my composure, since I didn’t slap her with the monstrous strength of my left hand.

Even as her cheek was reddening from the slap, Numachi’s face wore a scornful smile that clearly said─

You lose.

“I told you not to get so serious, Kanbaru. I mean, like, check it out,” she invited in a suddenly overfamiliar tone, dropping her hand on my shoulder like we were the best of friends. Casually, cheerfully, she said, “You really think people who come to me for help are actually suffering? People who are wouldn’t turn to any Lord Devil. We’re talking ordinary, everyday unhappiness. Miniscule unhappiness. When someone does occasionally show up with a legitimate problem, I refer them to an appropriate organization─which I already told you, didn’t I?”

“…”

“And it’s not like I stir up their unhappiness, I just listen earnestly to their stories. Earnest, like you were back in your playing days. Who’s hurt by that? I only snicker on the inside, while my expression remains the picture of gravity. When I read their letters, same as when I answer the phone. I regard that as the courtesy due to them for kindly providing me with a supply of unhappiness.”

“The moment you snicker on the inside, you’re being faithless…though I suppose it’s not going to do any good to tell you that.”

“No good at all.”

“So what you’re saying, Numachi─is that, apart from those who are clearly beyond your help, you’re actually solving people’s problems, so they have nothing to complain about.”

Your problems solved, without fail.

That was the word on Lord Devil.

And─Numachi was faithfully doing just that for the people who came to her for advice. Whatever she was feeling on the inside, she was taking care of their unhappiness for them and claiming it for herself.

Her role as a counselor aside, she was faithful in her role as a collector.

That was going to be her assertion.

“Nope,” she said.

Yet it wasn’t so. She was faithless as a collector, too.

“I don’t do anything. I just listen.”

“…Huh?”

“I listen to their stories, and that’s all. For Mode 1, I get their letters, and then do nothing. For Mode 2, I say, ‘Duly noted,’ and that’s the end of it. For the Mode 3 people, I listen to the general outline, and then without waiting to hear the particulars─that is, without actually doing anything─I send them down the conveyor belt to an appropriate organization.”

Because I don’t want to hear any truly unhappy stories. I really don’t, confessed Numachi─sliding her hand down off my shoulder and grabbing my right breast.

It was a rough motion, perfectly described by the word “grab,” with nothing of the loving caress, nothing seductive about it at all.

Quietly and distinctly painful.

In retaliation for the slap, perhaps─which made it hard to brush away her hand.

“Lord Devil just listens. That’s all.”

“Why─”

“What d’you mean, ‘why’? Because sticking your nose into other people’s unhappiness only makes things more complicated. If you really want to help them, you need the backbone to shoulder the full burden of their unhappiness or you’ll get nowhere. Thanks, but I’ll pass.”

“No, that’s not what I meant by ‘why’─I already know it’s no use telling you anything. It’s just, if what you say is true, then why is there a rumor that Lord Devil will solve your problems without fail? You don’t actually do anything.”

“Oh, come on, everybody knows that time heals all wounds.”

Numachi said this with the easy-going air of someone revealing the answer to a trick question for grade school kids.

She still didn’t remove her right hand from my breast.

“It’s quite literally a matter of time. The truth is that our worries are basically anxiety about the future. The foreboding feeling that things might get even worse is enough to disrupt anyone’s psychological balance─so people who come to me just need to hear me say ‘I’ll take care of it,’ not for their problems to be solved.”

“…So that’s the truth behind your hundred-percent success rate?”

Which essentially meant that Numachi was just “stalling” the people who came to her. Saying, “I’ll solve your problem, so just wait awhile”─and thereby liberating her clients from the psychological state called anxiety.

She offered not resolution, but release.

Meanwhile, the underlying problem would fade with time─or become irrelevant to the client, was that it?

“They say simply talking is enough to ease your worries, and─they’re absolutely right,” she confirmed. “That’s the truth, that’s the answer. Even though I do nothing, everybody eventually feels better.”

“But isn’t that just avoiding the issue? Running away? Aren’t you just averting your eyes from your clients, and their problems?”

“What’s wrong with running away? You can solve almost any problem in the world by running away from it. While you’re running and kicking it down the line, the problem stops being a problem─it’s only because people want their problems solved ‘right away’ that they’re suffering.”

“…”

I was starting to feel like I was being hornswoggled─no, I’m pretty sure I was.

……

No.

Putting it that way still dumped the responsibility onto Numachi─and that was low.

She’d managed to convince me.

Readily.

Yes.

Back then─back when I made a deal with a real devil, if I hadn’t faced the problem, if I’d just persevered and hadn’t been so desperate to solve it─

I wouldn’t have injured anyone.

And leaving aside what she said, and how she said it, it did seem to be true that, as Lord Devil, Roka Numachi had been listening to numerous high school students’ complaints and easing their minds.

Which is why the Fire Sisters─the former Fire Sisters, that is, were so hesitant to act.

Those sisters who styled themselves the defenders, the avatars of justice, were fairly powerless in the face of a foe that was “right” in some way.

“…Take your hand off me.”

“Hm?”

“I told you to take your hand off my chest.”

“Hmph.”

I’d expected a little more resistance, but Numachi quickly complied with my demand─she removed her hand from my chest, then clenched and unclenched her fingers so I could see.

A lazy gesture accompanied by a lazy smile.

“So, what now, Kanbaru?”

“I’m going home.”

Oh? Numachi raised her eyebrows.

She seemed genuinely surprised.

“I thought I’d get at least one more smack from you, but you’re a surprisingly sensible woman. Though I can tell you right now that I’m going to keep on building my collection under another name. This habit of mine seems to have become something of an addiction─and I’m hooked on the hard stuff.”

“I apologize for hitting you earlier. Sorry.”

“Well aren’t you gracious.”

“I don’t approve of what you’re doing, it’s predicated on predilections that I simply can’t wrap my mind around, but it also doesn’t seem like you’re contributing to anyone’s misery. Superficially it almost seems like you’re doing a good deed.”

“I’m glad you get it.”

“I don’t,” I said, putting some distance between us.

And she didn’t try to close it─probably because she had no reason to.

“See you around, Kanbaru. It’s too bad our long-awaited reunion had to be like this. I was really hoping to be reunited on the court, but─I guess that’s an impossible dream now, for the both of us. Life’s a bitch.”

“Time takes care of that as well, though, doesn’t it.”

“Of course,” she agreed straightaway.

Without reiterating my farewell, I turned my back on her and walked away at a brisk pace, leaving her alone in the burnt field where the ruins of the cram school had once stood.

The truth is I wanted to run, but for some reason I couldn’t─and it wasn’t out of consideration for Numachi and her injured leg.

At any rate, I felt better.

I’d discovered the identity of Lord Devil, and it wasn’t me─just having confirmed that was enough.

…I’d probably go on repeating these pointless errands for the rest of my life. Forever gripped by paranoia that I might have perpetrated every single incident in the world.

I’d doubt myself and feel remorseful ad nauseum.

That would be my way of taking responsibility for my past mistakes─my manifest punishment.

This time the culprit hadn’t been me, but in a surprising turn, an old acquaintance─and though I couldn’t comprehend her mindset, I nevertheless thought that the person waiting for me in that burnt field could just as well have been me.

Every morning when I read the paper and saw the names of the perpetrators apprehended the previous day─I identified with them, even though I didn’t know them at all.

And I’d keep doing that.

For the rest of my life.

Forever.

…Or could time take care of that for me, too? Might the day finally come where I skim the newspaper like a normal person, and hear a rumor without pricking up my ears?

And at night.

Would the time come for me─to sleep without binding my left arm with duct tape?

Probably not.

In that sense, Numachi, who’d been keeping up her Lord Devil act, or something like it, for almost three years running, was no different. Her leg injury ending her athletic career had been a shock, and she boasted about collecting tales of others’ misfortunes to ease that shock, but by her own logic, wouldn’t time take care of her “worries” as well?

Even if she didn’t gather such tales─

Or would that take more than just three years?

Would her worries go on forever as well, recurring throughout her life?

“…Well, whatever.”

The fact that my old archrival was up to her elbows in some pretty weird stuff left me with some complicated feelings that I couldn’t really put into words, but at the same time, there was nothing I could do about it.

Archrival she may have been, but if circumstances hadn’t brought us together in such a manner, I could easily have passed her by on the street without noticing.

Even so.

Even so, wouldn’t Araragi-senpai stick his nose into what she was up to?

Maybe not.

It suddenly occurred to me that I should text him. If I explained everything in detail, he might stick his whole head in, not just his nose, so of course I withheld key points and was curt:

An old acquaintance of mine (female) fondled my boob.

Ordinarily, he didn’t respond to texts all that promptly, but just this once I got a reply right away:

Count me in!

“…”

Smiling, I turned off my phone.