Monogatari Series - Volume 13 - Chapter 1.06

006

I wandered around the airport─and it didn’t take long to locate the client. It wasn’t my first time in Okinawa and I had a pretty good sense of the coffee shops at Naha Airport, but the simplicity of the task stemmed more from the fact that my client Senshogahara’s “glasses” turned out to be an extraordinarily effective “sign” after all.

I can’t imagine a better one.

I knew it was her right away, even from outside the shop.

An immediate positive I.D.─because the “glasses” in question were in fact novelty nose glasses.

The kind with a moustache attached.

What could be more conspicuous than a high school girl wearing her school uniform and Groucho glasses at a café─forget conspicuous, it was outlandish. Even I was caught off guard.

That’s not the kind of thing they sell at airport shops, so she must have had them ready to go even before we brought up signs and so on… Yeah, no, I mean, dammit, what a fool!

But at the same time, touché…

I was overcome with a sense of defeat.

I felt like a whipped dog.

The rubric for judging this kind of contest is extremely delicate, and subtle, so it’s a little hard to explain, but to put it simply, the moment you think you’ve lost, you’ve lost.

Senjogahara or Senshogahara, now that I had found her, I didn’t feel like going into the café.

If I went in and sat down across from her feeling like I did, I would definitely have lost the initiative. The whole conversation would proceed at her pace─which is not how I preferred to do things.

Or more like hated to.

I eased away from the café and headed to the airport souvenir shop to purchase those reliable staples of Okinawan retail: sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt.

It’s a mystery to me why they sell Hawaiian shirts in Okinawa…but those iconic articles were supposedly based on Japanese kimono, so if you think of it as reverse importation, it seems less strange.

In a bathroom stall I removed my jacket and shirt and put on the Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses, then checked my look in the mirror. Some cheerful fellow was reflected there, like, who the hell is this guy? Perfect with a ukulele─but it’s never productive to pursue perfection. If you don’t leave a little wiggle room, a little play, you won’t be able to act when it really counts, like with the steering wheel of a car.

After ensuring that I hadn’t left anything in the pockets, I dropped my jacket, shirt, and necktie into a garbage can just outside the bathroom and headed once more to the café where my client waited.

Wearing a supremely composed expression to complement my new outfit, I strode straight up to the table and sat down across from her.

“Bwah!” the woman with the nose glasses spat out the orange juice she was drinking.

The fact that she was drinking orange juice and not coffee or tea as I had suggested might have been a token of defiance on her part.

Whatever the beverage, with that spit-take I had her in the palm of my hand.

Keheh.

I had won.

My brains had.

Inwardly I pumped my fist─though of course my expression didn’t waver for a second.

I calmly settled into my seat like everything was totally normal and said to the waitress who came over with a towel, “Hot coffee. And another glass of orange juice for the young lady.”

A man in a Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses must be a completely unremarkable sight in an Okinawa airport because the waitress just took my order and left. As she did so, however, she glanced somewhat suspiciously at the high school girl holding her sides in seeming pain across from me.

“Wh-Where’s,” having finally recovered enough to speak, the girl in the Groucho glasses said between shallow breaths, “that funeral suit you always wear… Does Okinawa make even a person like you, um, cheerful?”

“It’s not a funeral suit. Not all black suits are for funerals.”

Just as I suspected, my polite tone was gone the moment we were face to face.

Part of me wanted to keep playacting a little longer, but whenever I catch myself in that sort of mood, I consciously bring it to a close.

I’m a contrarian and a congenital liar.

I keep at it, fooling myself too.

“And I wear the occasional Hawaiian shirt, why not?”

“Yeah right, you’re still wearing your usual trousers…and leather shoes. Kinda ruins the effect. Cracks me up…”

Hmph. She was definitely laughing at me, not with me.

It pissed me off. Was I being small?

“And you, did you cut off that flowing mane of yours? Whatta surprise, you look good.”

Small as I am, I chose not to comment on the Groucho glasses. In other words I gave it the cold shoulder and instead steered the conversation to her hair, which she had cut audaciously short.

It hadn’t actually taken me by surprise, though, since over the summer Koyomi Araragi had shown me a picture of her with short hair. That being said, it was currently a little longer than it had been in the photo─maybe?

“…”

She used her napkin to wipe up the orange juice she had spewed all over the table, then turned to face me─and I finally found myself confronted by her trademark iron mask, which the party item seemed only to diminish.

I guess she missed her chance to remove it.

“Been a long time, Senshogahara.”

“Yes, Suzuki.”

Our six-month reunion─I’m pretty sure that’s how long it had been.

I could be wrong. I couldn’t care less.

It was a reunion with a woman I never thought I’d see again, who I thought would kill me on sight if I ever did─with the daughter of a family I had swindled in the past.

Hitagi Senjogahara.