Monogatari Series - Volume 10 - Chapter 1.16

016

This may speak to how basic my personality is, but a part of me can’t help unconditionally respecting someone who’s a fast runner.

Clearly I place a lot of value on speed, but I also know that in reality that’s not how it works─being fast or slow has nothing whatever to do with your personality. Of course I know this, but I feel, I can’t help but feel, that anyone who’s “a fast runner” probably isn’t a bad person.

Let me be clear, I understand perfectly well that it’s no reason to put faith in anybody’s character. I’m not stupid. Well, I am, but I get it─it’s just that we never cast aside all of our childish pieties.

So while I resented Kaiki for overtaking me not once but twice, and wanted revenge─I also admit that his victory softened my stance enough that I was at least willing to hear what he had to say.

It did pain me a little─no, a lot─to think that I might be betraying my dear seniors…

The place Kaiki took me to was in fact a Korean barbecue joint, and not a coffee shop at all. It had such a high-class atmosphere, though, that the catchall “barbecue joint” fell short. There has to be a more appropriate term, and who knows, maybe “coffee shop” was meant to hint at that, but lacking the vocabulary, I can only call it a barbecue joint.

“I have a reservation under Kaiki,” the man announced upon passing through the curtains.

He had a reservation.

Since when?

This was all arranged a little too neatly for my taste.

We were reverently shown into a private room (private room?!) that had been prepared for us, and I was even put in the seat of honor. Hang on, when did Suruga Kanbaru become some kind of princess? I was thoroughly perplexed.

Araragi-senpai labeled me a rich kid, but all it meant was that I could buy whatever I wanted, and it was my grandma and grandpa who were the ones with the money; I never felt like anything but a regular high school student.

So being in this restaurant, with its unfamiliar atmosphere, made me antsy.

Dammit, offering me tea and treating me to meat, what’s more at some fancy barbecue place where the bibs are made of cloth instead of paper, this guy’s up to something, he’s a swindler just like I’ve heard─I tried to rile myself up like that but also knew I was being kind of unreasonable.

“Come on, eat up. Have some meat. No reason to order veggies at a barbecue place. If that’s what you want, get thee to a grocer. And leave the grilling to me.”

Even as he spoke, Kaiki wielded a pair of tongs to pick up, and ferry to the brazier, the slices of meat that had been served. Rather than actually grilling them, he just seared the outside a little, exposing them to heat for only the briefest moment.

I guess he liked it rare?

Well, at such a fancy place, the meat was of a quality where you could even have it raw…

True to his word, he ordered neither lettuce nor kimchi, and in fact the only thing he ordered other than meat was a medium rice.

He gave the not-particularly-winning impression of being a control freak, the Grill Master, but it actually wasn’t all that unpleasant.

No harm done.

In fact it could be seen as generous─he was an adult minding a minor who was flustered at being in an unfamiliar restaurant. I even thought: He’s sticking with oolong tea for my sake when he’d rather be having beer with his barbecue.

Shit.

How could I see him as a good guy?

“Eat meat while you’re young. Eating meat makes people happy, Gaen’s legacy. Old or young, the worries never cease, but eating delicious meat takes care of all worries.”

“…”

Quit it.

Stop being nice.

You’re my dear seniors’ archenemy─so stop saying things that make it hard for me to hate you.

But thinking so didn’t actually make a whole lot of sense. Sure, he sounded preachy, but really all he was doing was trying to get me to eat some meat. And his words seemed to gently caress the surface of what I’d been dealing with.

There was no reason to be spiteful; hell, I should thank him.

But it wouldn’t do for me to thank my savior’s bitter enemy, so I spat out, “Quit calling me weird names like ‘Gaen’s legacy’” with all the venom I could muster, in full faultfinding mode.

“Hmph, I see. You’re right. But calling you ‘Kanbaru’ really chaps my hide─that name has nothing to do with Gaen. But are you sure? Because I’d have to call you Suruga.”

“…It’s better than Gaen’s legacy.”

“Ah, how casual high school girls are these days. You’d let a man you’ve never met before call you by your first name. Well then, Suruga. Eat up, quickly now. There’s no victory in cold meat.”

Did a barbecue meal need winners and losers? When that thought got tangled up with the realization that I’d ended up requesting to be called by my first name like a little hussy, my feelings became even more preternaturally jumbled.

But I couldn’t just sit there and watch the meat Kaiki had put on my plate get cold.

The meat had done nothing wrong.

Hate the sin, love the dinner.

Itadakimasu, I said formally, and picking up the chopsticks with my right hand, began to eat. I thought in the back of my mind that I should text my grandma if I got the chance to tell her I wouldn’t be needing dinner.

“What’s this? You’re right-handed? Gaen was left-handed─no, is it because of your injury that you’re using your right hand?”

“…”

I couldn’t answer. I had no obligation to answer.

But he’d guessed correctly.

Or only half correctly─my left hand had turned into a monkey’s, and it was literally to cover that up that I’d wound the bandage around my arm, so I was only pretending to be injured─and as part of that deception, I was holding the chopsticks with my right hand even though I’m actually left-handed.

I’d gotten used to it in no time, but writing had taken longer. Only recently had I gotten good enough to write as smoothly with my off hand.

My handwriting’s always been terrible, though, so “smoothly” doesn’t amount to much.

There was no reason to keep using my right hand now that my left had returned to normal…but as long as I kept wearing the bandage, at least, I had no choice but to continue. And who knows, maybe it had been so long that I’d lost my left-handedness.

“How is it, good? It’s good, isn’t it.”

“…”

“Hey now, not much for courtesy, are you. You’re eating meat, don’t be so sullen.”

“…You won’t get any courtesy from me.”

“It’s not courtesy towards me. I mean towards the meat. Meat is life. Don’t forget that what you’re eating right now is life.”

“…It’s delicious.”

What else could I say when he held the cow hostage like that?

What a coward, excuse the pun─but then, from what I’d heard, he should have said: The money for that meat came from my wallet. My money, meaning my life. Right now you’re eating my life, so wipe that sulky look off your face.

Something along those lines?

But the real Kaiki sitting before me and eating meat, his own expression hardly joyous, didn’t utter a single word about money and instead asked me, “Is there some meat you’d like to order?”

He still didn’t seem inclined to treat me to anything other than animal flesh, but apart from that, he was acting like an “unsociable but kind uncle.”

Give me a break.

Say something reprehensible.

Trash boys’ love novels or something.

Proclaim your support for the metropolitan ordinance and censorship.

Otherwise I can’t come to terms with this.

My personality isn’t complicated enough to keep disliking someone who treats me kindly, and to a delicious meal, after beating me in a head-to-head contest in my field of expertise.

I’m a simple person.

When someone is nice to me, I want to thank them.

“So you’re a third-year in high school now─preparing for exams. And you left town to attend an open campus? I can still remember when I was preparing for exams. Not that I ever actually studied for them, of course. Even back then, all I was good at was gaming the system…so I don’t have any advice to give you about exam prep.”

You don’t seem to have much on the ball.

At least eat up so you can study hard.

Now he was really sounding avuncular, and I was the one who finally advanced the conversation. “What do you want?”

The trick to swindling the average patsy is to “make them ask questions,” so I was very likely dancing right along to Kaiki’s tune, but I simply couldn’t take being treated kindly by the man for another second.

“Wasn’t there something you wanted to discuss?”

“Ah…yes, well. Now that you mention, there was.” The swindler shrugged his shoulders as if he’d forgotten it until I pointed it out. “Though I rather think the matter has already been settled at this point.”

“Huh?”

“I imagine you’ve already figured this out, Suruga, but I knew your mother.”

“…”

“Let’s see, last August, was it? Didn’t you meet someone who was your aunt? Izuko Gaen─”

“No,” I shook my head in response. I was kind of glad to be able to answer Kaiki in the negative, and also felt some self-loathing for being a bit twisted. “That person gave me a different name. It was only after she’d left town that I knew she was a Gaen.”

“Really─how very like her.”

“I figured maybe she just had the same last name…”

Okay.

I see.

That person really was─my mother’s younger sister.

She didn’t resemble her all that much, nor had she hinted at the connection─still, I’d wondered.

“The Gaen clan is full of peculiar women. And among them, Toé Gaen and Izuko Gaen were always exceptionally so─and in such contrast with each other. Izuko and I never saw eye to eye, but…your mother looked out for me.”

“…”

“We stumbled across each other when I was even younger than you─and our relationship continued through my college days. I guess she was something like a tutor to me? She tried desperately to set me on the straight and narrow.”

……

Does that mean that Kaiki and I lived in the same town in Kyushu?

If so, then when I was little.

I might have met him─I fixed my gaze on Kaiki’s face for the first time.

But it didn’t trigger anything.

I’d never seen him before─I was sure of it.

“Gaen asked something of me back then. ‘If anything should happen to me, please watch out for my daughter.’”

“…My mother asked you to do that?”

It was a lie.

My intuition told me so.

She’d died along with my father in a car accident─unexpectedly, in other words. She couldn’t have foreseen her death like that.

And why would she ask Kaiki─I mean, even if he hadn’t become a swindler yet, to saddle a college student with something so huge─

No.

It didn’t matter if she was dealing with a swindler or a college student, she wasn’t the kind of person to get hung up on such details… Even me, her one and only daughter, she never saw as anything but an independent individual.

She evaluated everyone based solely on their “personality,” regardless of title or standing─which may have been a wonderful thing, but given that she had to live in human society, it was also a little pathological.

In practice, being raised by her was like being cursed─and this ominous swindler before me… Being saddled with that request when he was only a college student, dragged along by it even now, all the way to me.

It was like he was cursed too.

“I dropped out with my buddy in the middle of the term and left home, so I didn’t know what happened after that─Izuko-senpai being who she is, she never revealed her family background to me even though we belonged to the same club in college. It was only recently that I heard Gaen had died. And that her orphaned daughter had been taken in by her paternal grandparents─and when I heard it, I couldn’t believe my ears. She never seemed like a woman who would go and get herself killed… Or is that exactly why she did?”

“That’s why you came to town last year?”

If so─what did it mean?

He had come to town because of me─in order to check on me─but he pulled a scam on the local middle school girls just for good measure?

“Precisely the opposite. Looking in on you was the part that happened incidentally─Gaen hadn’t given me any money, after all, so I had no reason to do anything on her behalf. I just figured I’d check on you while I was there, that’s all.”

“…”

That was probably true.

But even if it was, it didn’t make me feel any better.

And furthermore, if it was true, then why─was he waiting for me at the station today, why was he treating me to this meal? “Incidentally” just didn’t─

“Were you by any chance sweet on my mother?”

“Hm? Hmph, so that’s what the kid thinks. Everything always has to be about love.” Kaiki didn’t sound all that offended by my frank question despite his reply. “You’re so simple it’s disgusting. If that’s how you think, you’re going to be easy prey for the swindlers of the world.”

“But you keep calling her Gaen. According to what you said, her last name should have been Kanbaru by the time you met her,” I bluffed with everything I had. In the hopes of landing a retaliatory blow. “Isn’t that because you don’t want to accept that she was married? Since Kanbaru was the name of your rival in love─”

“Cut the shit. But I suppose I must commend you on your powers of insight. At your level, though, your head is liable to end up crowded with superfluous nonsense, and you’ll be even easier to dupe─won’t you.”

“…”

“But you’re more or less on point. Yes, it was a lifetime ago, but I was head over heels for your mother.”

He admitted it readily, unambiguously.

A little too unambiguously and a little too readily─it didn’t feel like I’d struck much of a blow at all.

In fact, it felt like I’d missed the mark entirely.

“She was a good woman─unlike her younger sister. I had a lover of my own at the time, though, so nothing happened. You can rest easy. I didn’t come to see you because I’m your father or anything. It’s just plain old nostalgia.”

Memories, just memories, he said, memories that aren’t worth a plug nickel.

Now, that was definitely a lie. The part about them not being worth a plug nickel─the “memories” part had to be true.

Okay.

It was only natural, all too natural…but this man’s relationship with my mother had become nothing more than a memory long ago.

What about me?

Was my mother─nothing but a memory to me too?

“…Do I look like my mother?”

“Hmm, hard to say. It was over fifteen years ago that I knew Gaen. You’re her daughter, so I guess you look more like her than not, but I only vaguely recall her face.”

“You’ve forgotten the face of the woman you were in love with?”

“Yeah, I’m cold─but so are you, no?” Perhaps perceiving an accusatory nuance in my words, Kaiki threw them back in my face. “You keep calling Gaen ‘that woman,’ ‘that person’… Is that any way to refer to your mother? She died over ten years ago. You’ve started to forget her, haven’t you?”

“…”

That─isn’t the case at all.

In fact, my mother is rooted in my heart, etched there so deeply that I could never forget her. Inseparable from my being.

Inscribed in me.

So deeply that I see her in my dreams, and I hear her voice speaking to me.

It’s just─from the time I was little, heck, from the time I was a baby, I’ve always called Toé Gaen─

I’ve always called that person “that person.”

…Yet the monkey’s paw that I thought was inseparable separated from me so easily─would that person be cut off from my heart in the same way someday? I didn’t expect to find out Kaiki’s true relationship with my mother way back when─but just as he seemed to have processed it thoroughly.

“At the very least, your mother wasn’t the type to keep mulling things over. Earlier I said you’re simple, but Gaen was probably even simpler than a kid like you. Her way of thinking was so simple that everyone around her fell on their faces all on their own. Speaking of which, that woman once said, ‘Once you’ve thought, you’ve already thought wrong. Don’t waste even a moment of your life on thinking’─in that regard, at least, she was possessed of a philosophy mutually exclusive to my own.”

“…”

From those words, from the way he uttered those words that were so clearly hers, I knew that Kaiki still cared about her. And that the goodwill to treat me to this meal obviously sprung from that. It wasn’t “me (her daughter)” he was interacting with, it was “her daughter (me)”─and at the same time, I could see that his goodwill formed a closed circuit within himself.

He wasn’t trying to deceive me.

He’d come to check in on me “incidentally”─it seemed I could take that at face value as well.

He was just flipping the pages of a photo album.

Like a perfectly normal person.

…Would it come for me too someday?

The day when a person I had fancied, when unrealized desire, became nostalgic memory?

Unrealized goals, unrequited love.

Would the day come when I could look back on them and laugh?

“It will. The toys and stuffed animals you loved when you were a kid, you get sick of them someday, no? Or is ‘get sick of them’ too harsh? Maybe I should say you graduate from them.”

“Graduate…”

“Well, either way, Suruga, I’m glad that Gaen’s legacy is doing well. That left arm isn’t even injured, is it?”

…He threw it in so casually that it took me a few seconds to realize he’d seen through the secret I’d been keeping for almost an entire year, but in the course of those few seconds, before I could react, Kaiki produced a case from his suit jacket pocket. He opened the case and held out his business card.

As I went to take it, he said, “Oops,” and drew it back for a moment, taking a fountain pen from his breast pocket and running it across the card, then holding it out to me once more.

Like he was drying it over the brazier.

I saw that the title “Ghostbuster” had been crossed out.

Ghostbuster Deishu Kaiki

And there were two telephone numbers (mobile) and two email addresses (Gmail and his mobile again).

“What’s this…”

“I don’t envision it happening, but if you’re ever in trouble, get in touch. I kind of promised that woman I’d watch out for you.”

“Are you trying to trick me?” I asked reflexively, though I didn’t think for a second that he was. I had to ask, though. “…Like you did Senjogahara-senpai?”

“Nope, no tricks when it comes to you,” he replied bluntly.

Of course, that’s exactly what a swindler would say─but while it got on my nerves, there was really nothing I could add.

“You really respect your beloved senpai, don’t you, Suruga? You’d feel like you were being faithless to them if you didn’t steel yourself to keep on disliking me, to keep on feeling negatively towards me.”

“…”

Kaiki spoke like he’d seen directly into my heart.

“But it’s pointless. I’m not deceiving you, and I mean you no harm. So you can’t hate me.”

“…”

“In the same way that someone you like won’t necessarily like you back─someone you dislike won’t necessarily dislike you back. They might not even let you dislike them.”

“You…may be right.”

“I am right. If you think I’m just going to sit back and be someone you hate, you’re dead wrong. Let me put it this way. Let’s say there’s someone you respect. There’s got to be someone who hates that person so much that they want to kill them. Araragi and Senjogahara are probably heroes in your eyes, but nevertheless there has to be at least one person who hates them to an absurd degree.”

“…”

“We aren’t comic-book characters. There aren’t people you can completely hate, or people who are completely evil. No one’s nature is identical from every perspective, or at every point in time. Your forte is running, but you don’t always run, do you? Sometimes you walk, sometimes you lie down. It’s the same. I love money, but I also spend that money.”

Sometimes I’m even kind to people, even if I’m not particularly attached to them, Kaiki admitted with a grimace─the expression might have been a masochistic smile, but I couldn’t be sure.

In the end, I guess he was right.

In the same way that I unconditionally lionized people who could run fast, others tended to view great ability as an indicator of superior character.

But in reality it wasn’t that simple.

You hear all the time about supposedly “great men” abusing their children or engaging in sordid relationships─and the opposite was also possible.

People who’re abhorred as villains are sometimes excellent fathers, or sweet daughters─there are even misers who exhaust the limits of atrocity to make their money and then donate the bulk of it to local charities.

Evil deeds can in turn help people, and malice can serve people’s needs─but enough already. No need to unfold some grand theory of humanity.

All that needs to be said is this.

The people you hate also have friends.

The people you hate also have people who love them.

That is patently true, and if you don’t accept it, you won’t be able to function in society.

Yes.

This man who hurt my friends─wasn’t going to hurt me, no matter what.

No matter how far I went in my duty to them by hating this man─he’d continue being kind to me.

Kaiki would keep fulfilling his duty to my mother.

My friends’ bitter enemy─was a kindly uncle to me.

“If I’m ever in trouble, get in touch, huh?”

“Yes. I’ll hoodwink just about anyone for you.”

“…In that case, I don’t want to get in touch with you.”

If I’m ever in trouble.

That phrase made me think of Lord Devil─of Numachi, whereabouts currently unknown, the unaccounted-for woman. Roka Numachi, the collector of troubles, of worries─of misfortune.

“But I’ll accept your goodwill, anyway.”

So saying, I filched the business card from his hand and thrust it into my pocket in a deliberately brusque manner. That was the sole act of protest remaining to me.

I probably shouldn’t have accepted it. I should have put my duty to my friends first. I ought to have dropped the business card straight onto the wire mesh over the brazier and let it burn.

But what Kaiki offered wasn’t goodwill towards me, but my mother─so I had to accept it.

I was nothing but a middleman─for his goodwill, for his kindness, for everything.

“What’s wrong? Your meat-eating hand has stopped. Meat, meat, meat meat meat. Beef, beef, pork, chicken, beef, beef, offal, offal, eat it in that order. You’re a little on the skinny side. Pig out on some meat.”

“I don’t easily build muscle or put on weight. Exercise wasn’t always my forte. I was a scrawny kid. I used to be a slow runner…”

I said this with my loss to Kaiki running through my head.

Yes.

That’s why I had wished on the Devil’s Hand─and gotten stuck making the outrageous wish come true on my own.

So these legs of mine are my property.

And the proof of my transgression.

Out of failure, strength…or something like that?

“Hmph. You seem genuinely pissed that you lost to me. Well, I was on the track and field team in junior and senior high, if it makes you feel any better.”

“Track and field…”

You wouldn’t know it to look at him.

You can’t judge a book by its cover, and even less so someone’s past.

“Oh, want me to teach you the running style I came up with? It’s called the Kaiki Stride.”

“…I’m all set.”

Even if he was speaking from a place of kindness, it was simply too humiliating. And there was no way I could use a technique that bore his name.

“I don’t do track and field anyway, I’m on the basketball team. Or I was, before I retired.”

“Right, it was Senjogahara who did track and field.”

“…”

“Well, I say track and field, but my specialty was the shot-put.” Whether this was a joke or not I couldn’t tell, but following up on the evasive remark (at this rate the whole track and field thing was starting to feel like a lie), he said, “If you can get by without coming to me for help, so much the better, that’s for sure.” But also: “It’d be better to rely on me than on the Monkey’s Paw, though.”

“Uh…”

“She entrusted it to you, didn’t she? Your mother. That mummified Monkey’s Paw,” Kaiki clarified like it was nothing. “Just to be on the safe side, let me tell you now: absolutely do not use it. A junk man will probably show up before long, so just hand it over then.”

“Junk man?”

“Yes. What you might call─a collector.”

A collector, the man says.

“There’s someone trying to gather all the body parts of a devil. I expect they’ll try and steal the Monkey’s Paw from you─I’m saying this for your own good: just give it to them when they show up.”

“…Okay.”

Assenting, I glanced down at my left arm─which up until recently had been that selfsame Devil’s Arm.

It─had already been stolen.

“Got it. If and when this collector appears, I’ll just hand over the ‘hand’ that person entrusted to me.”

“You’re being oddly obliging. Does that mean you’ve already gotten rid of it? If so, that’s well and good. Now then, it seems like you can’t get on with your meal while you’re looking at my gloomy mug.” Removing his bib and standing up with that bit of self-awareness, Kaiki extracted a few bills out of his wallet and put them on the table. “I’m going to head home─you take your time. Order yourself another two or three plates. Meat. Eat meat. Meat, I say.”

So long, he bid curtly and made to leave the private room without a shred of reluctance─at which I unconsciously called out, “Hang on…”

Hm, Kaiki turned back to look at me.

Though I’d called to him, there wasn’t anything I wanted to ask, and God knows I didn’t want to feel even guiltier than I already did by continuing to dine with him.

Still, somehow.

I’d called to him.

“Um. I…”

“What is it? Have you fallen for me?”

“…”

“I’m joking. Boy, you really are a serious girl.”

“…Everyone keeps on saying that,” I grumbled in a small, petulant voice in response to Kaiki’s remark. “And I’m sick of it.”

“Oh? Isn’t ‘serious’ usually meant as a compliment?”

“I don’t deserve the overestimation. I’m stupid, foolish. And I’m a clown. The word ‘serious’ actually doesn’t suit me.”

“Are you─sure?”

“I am. Also, I’m a coward.”

A liar and a coward.

Who was I to criticize Kaiki, anyway─I’d lied to my teammates, people I should have trusted, about why I was quitting.

That was wrong, any way you slice it.

“The way I see it,” opined Kaiki, “seriousness and cowardice aren’t necessarily incompatible. But I don’t give a shit whether you’re serious or not. What is it? Why did you stop me?”

“Oh─yeah.” I wracked my brains and finally came up with something to ask him, narrowly managing to salvage the situation. “How did you know I would show up at the station today? How come you were able to ambush me there?”

“Because I heard you’d be there. From your friend.”

I’d only asked the question to weasel out of a fix, but upon consideration, it was the very first thing I should have done─hell-bent on reviling Kaiki, I’d completely forgotten my initial feeling that something was off.

For him, however, it seemed to be a “you only have to ask” kind of a thing.

“My friend… You mean, Higasa?”

“Higasa?”

As the one who invited me to the open campus, she was the only friend I could think of who could be his source. Still, it was hard to imagine someone who claimed to be shy counting Kaiki as an acquaintance, and he was reacting like he’d never heard her name before.

“That─wasn’t the kid’s name.”

“Then what was it?”

“Numachi,” he answered. “Roka Numachi. Yeah, I’m pretty sure that was it.”