Monogatari Series - Volume 10 - Chapter 1.14

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But after that, the pace at which the story unfolded slowed to a crawl, very much in keeping with the way Roka Numachi moved and spoke.

My hope, or rather my overly optimistic evaluation, was that I might be able to learn her whereabouts right off the bat by asking Higasa, who, like Numachi and me, had made a name for herself playing middle school basketball. But when I asked her first thing after I got to school (managing to slip in just under the gun), Higasa said, “Nope, no idea,” and shook her head. “Numachi, right? Famous for bogging players down with her Quagmire Defense and nicknamed the Poison Swamp─Roka Numachi?”

“People called her that…”

“They called you Godspeed Angel, by the way.”

“…”

Even the one I’d come up with, Li’l Suruga Can-do, was cooler.

Woof, now that’s embarrassing.

“By the way again, I was Sunshine Umbrella.”

“Why was only your name in English?”

“Hey, I was just the captain of a minor team. You two were in a different class. Or maybe even a different phylum.”

“Minor? You’re being more sarcastic than modest. A dark horse, that’s what you were.”

“Anyway, I have no idea─from what I hear, she transferred out of that powerhouse middle school soon after she quit basketball.”

“Really?”

“Yup. I remember because it made a big impression on me. It seems she’d been getting a tuition waver thanks to her sports scholarship─which she lost when she got injured, so she couldn’t afford to go there anymore.”

“…She wasn’t just forced to retire, she had to change schools too?”

What could I say─it was a hopelessly pitiful tale.

I recalled her crutch.

Then, her injury had taken away everything she had.

“Actually, it seems that even with her injury, there was still hope that she could stay on. It’s a legit school, after all. I’m sure she could’ve avoided transferring if she’d gone about it right, but I guess her pride wouldn’t allow it.”

“Her pride… She didn’t really seem the type, though.”

“Who doesn’t have any pride?” Higasa said, rather emphatically.That was very much like her─no, it was more that even though I wasn’t Ogi, my words had come out wrong.

If anything, my statement was lacking in pride.

“I heard that she and her family moved away when she transferred, so yeah, I don’t think she’s still around,” Higasa told me.

“Not around─”

That wasn’t true.

In fact I’d seen her the day before─it was probably true that Numachi had moved, but she must have moved to this town from wherever she’d been living.

She’d been right under my nose─yet I wouldn’t have recognized her as that Numachi even if we’d passed each other on the street.

With her dyed-brown hair, and that baggy jersey no athlete would wear.

Having undergone such a total transformation─even Higasa, who was telling me all this stuff about Numachi, wouldn’t have known it was her.

Not that I’m one to talk.

If she hadn’t called my name first─I doubt I would have been sure that she was that Numachi─that she was the Poison Swamp.

What a strange relationship we had.

Even as we crossed swords on a narrow court, even as our rivalry played out as something very like a life-or-death struggle─we knew essentially nothing about each other.

If we hadn’t ended up on the same team in high school, it would have been the same with Higasa. I never would have known which girls’ comics she liked, nor that she thought of herself as shy, and ultimately I would have forgotten about her as well.

“Ties that bind,” I sighed.

“Hm?”

“Nothing─so in other words, Numachi’s current whereabouts are unknown.”

“Yeah. Though putting it that way sounds a little overblown. If you absolutely need to know, I can contact an old acquaintance of mine who might be able to put me in touch with a former teammate of Numachi’s, but… Their school is a combined junior and senior high athletic prep school, so a student who retired due to injury is sort of a taboo subject. I wonder if they’ll tell me…”

“That’s okay, thanks anyway. You don’t need to go that far. It’s no big deal, I was just reading a novel yesterday and there was a character with the same surname, so all of a sudden she popped into my head.”

“Huh. Sub? Dom?”

“Don’t go assuming it’s a boys’ love novel.”

Anyway, it’s really nothing, I said, and Higasa seemed satisfied─since it was only idle gossip to her.

But the same wasn’t true for me.

Not wanting to get my friend caught up in something that involved an aberration, I ended the conversation, but this made things tricky.

I didn’t know what to do─or no, I knew exactly what to do. It’d be best if I gave it up.

I’d made an effort to see Numachi again, but it hadn’t happened, end of story.

Nice try, good hustle.

I could let it go at that─no one was in dire straits because I couldn’t find her.

Let me repeat that I had no idea whether or not seeing Numachi and the restoration of my arm bore any causal relationship. It was a wild guess. If your mother were to break her back, it might have nothing to do with the crack you stepped on earlier in the day─maybe it was just pure coincidence that I’d run into my old nemesis the day before my arm returned to normal.

Forget “maybe,” the chances were extremely good.

That kind of coincidence is perfectly plausible.

And so─I could let it go at that.

I could say “and they all lived happily ever after” and end the story.

The lingering reservations, the feeling that things were still somehow up in the air─surely time would take care of all that.

“…Ugh.”

But I couldn’t do it.

Even though I’d retired a long time ago, as someone who’d given her life to basketball, it was beaten into the very marrow of my bones that you can’t win if you don’t play.

So I couldn’t give up.

There was no excuse for giving up.

I had to see Roka Numachi.

A week went by.