Monogatari Series - Volume 13 - Chapter 1.03

003

There’s a saying that “only the idler works on holidays,” but while I don’t think of myself as an idler, and in fact fancy myself to be quite industrious, I have no objection to working during New Year’s. It’s my personal belief that the swindler always has to put his nose to the grindstone.

Because swindling is a purely, indefensibly criminal act in any constitutional state, the cost performance index is typically poor─hounded, hated, it pretty much sucks. On occasion I’m gripped by the thought that I might do better in an honest line of work, but if I were doing honest work I honestly wouldn’t work as hard as I do.

How can anyone work hard when they’re guaranteed job security within some big organization? That said, it’s not like I was so hard up for work that I would blithely accept a job from someone with a private number calling on New Year’s Day, like a car sideswiping me out of nowhere.

It’s not like I was about to starve to death.

In fact, at the time I had five or six other cons going simultaneously─five or six might be inflating my numbers a little bit, but only a little. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a lie, exactly. And who doesn’t fudge the numbers a little bit when it comes to work?

So I shot back, “Come again?”

Come again?

In other words, I was pretending not to have caught what the person on the other end of the line had asked of me. No, rewind, I was pretending not to have heard her confirm my identity, before she even got to the rest of it.

“Don’t play dumb. This is Kaiki, right?”

In response to a high schooler’s hounding, I replied, “My name is Suzuki. Suzuki, written with the characters for ‘bell’ and ‘tree.’ As in, doesn’t ring a ‘bell’ and you’re barking up the wrong ‘tree.’ I’m terribly sorry, but I think you may have the wrong number. Senjogahara? I’m afraid I don’t recognize the name.”

I stubbornly continued to play dumb, but she was having none of it, and just said, “Sure, Suzuki then, whatever.” She just fucking played along. “And I won’t be Senjogahara, you can call me Senshogahara.”

Senshogahara.

Who the hell is that? Or rather, where the hell is that?

Up north in Tohoku, if I recall correctly─I went there once when I was working a tourism scam. Nice place. Or no, maybe I didn’t go there. Maybe I didn’t work a scam.

Either way, her rejoinder worked its magic on me.

I let down my guard, and now I had to listen to what she had to say.

Well, if I really hated working on holidays, then I could turn off my cell phone, smash it, destroy the SIM card, and toss them both away to be trampled by the bustling crowds─or I could just not answer the damn thing. But I did, so maybe I intended to take the job all along.

Regardless of who the client might have been.

I had answered the phone based on some kind of premonition─or that’s what I told myself, anyway, acting for all the world like I had been waiting for a call from her all along.

“Suzuki,” she said.

“She” being this unknown Senshogahara woman─though age-wise, she seemed like more of a girl than a woman. Not that I knew anything about her, of course.

“There’s a person I want you to deceive. I’d prefer to talk about it face to face, so where can we do that? Where are you right now?”

“Okinawa,” I replied immediately.

I’m not sure why.

“In a coffee shop in Naha, having a continental breakfast.”

Earlier I said something about it not mattering where in the world you thought I was, but let’s say that was a lie─the truth is that I was in Okinawa.

Okinawa, the pride of Japan’s tourist industry.

Not a chance, sorry. Okinawa was the one place in the world I was definitely not.

It was a spur-of-the-moment lie.

Maybe I haven’t mentioned this, but I lie with astonishing frequency.

An occupational hazard, or maybe I should call it an occupational vice. I lie in response to questions at least fifty percent of the time.

That’d be an excellent average for a batter, but maybe a little too hot for a swindler.

But let’s say that this time it wasn’t because of that hazard or vice, let’s say it was a strategic lie.

A little show I put on for this Senshogahara person.

If I said “Okinawa,” even a scary woman on the other end of the line might give up, what with a new sweetheart and a new leaf she might have turned over.

Surprisingly, what breaks a person’s spirit most of the time is simply the sense that something is going to be a hassle.

Break, come on, break!

This time, however, my calculations were sadly incorrect, and Senjogahara, I mean Senshogahara, unhesitatingly replied, “Got it. Okinawa. I’ll leave right away. I’ve already got my shoes on. Call you when I land.”

She was apparently prepared to go to Okinawa as if it were just a local park down the street. I wondered if maybe she was in the vicinity of Naha anyway on a family outing to celebrate the holidays, but knowing the present state of her family’s finances, I didn’t think they had the means─and yet.

And yet she didn’t hesitate for a moment in agreeing to go to Okinawa, which paradoxically demonstrated to me how desperate her situation was.

Not that I had any idea who or where she was, of course.

The daughter of that household I had fleeced way back when certainly had no money, but sure, maybe this Senshogahara was some nouveau riche kid with a pied-à-terre in Okinawa.

“Make sure you keep your phone on. If I can’t get through, even if it’s because you don’t have service, I’ll murder you.”

With those hostile parting words, she hung up.

I can but express my gratitude that her call miraculously managed to reach my cell phone amidst the teeming hordes, tens-of-thousands strong, who were crowded into the grounds of that shrine for the New Year’s celebration.

This world is built on miracles.

Inconsequential miracles, for the most part.

Strictly speaking, I’m pretty sure Senshogahara said something else before she hung up, before her parting threat.

Something.

If I heard her correctly, that mumbled something might have been, “Thanks, I owe you one.”

I owe you one.

I.

Owe you one.

For that young lady to utter those words to me, the person she probably hated most in the world… It was hard to believe. Well, leaving aside what kind of a young lady that young lady might be, her back was clearly against the wall.

Anyway.

Because of my own stupid lie, I ended up having to rush off to Okinawa.