Monogatari Series - Volume 13 - Chapter 1.12

012

Check in to the hotel, take a hot shower, drink a little saké, go to bed, and in the morning any desire to do this job will have completely evaporated─that’s what I expected, but that’s not how it went. Apparently my engine was already revving, independent of my own will, or of Senjogahara’s or anyone else’s for that matter. Once it gets going, not even I can stop it.

That’s a lie.

I know I can stop anytime I choose, which allows me to tackle work with a certain level of motivation. Although I wanted to meet Toé Gaen’s legacy at some point during the job if I could, well, that might be impossible this time around.

Maybe not impossible, but best let it go.

I had to work behind the scenes, so I should avoid unnecessary interactions─and contacts. I’d wait patiently for the day when Suruga Kanbaru left the confines of that town.

It was January second.

Hence most stores wouldn’t be open─is an outdated notion. The shopping district where my hotel was located was in the middle of its New Year sale.

I wanted to take advantage of this to procure a number of items.

Honestly, mingling with the crowds of customers clamoring for a lucky-dip was a pain in the ass (I don’t mind crowds per se. I like places with lots of people, I just hate becoming part of the crowd myself), but reminding myself that it was all part of the job made it bearable. Swindling is no walk in the park; the crooked path to making money is longer than the straight and narrow one. The requisite qualities, in other words, are patience and endurance.

When you get right down to it, giving it my all just to hoodwink a single middle school girl was nuts, but I would think of it as an investment. I wasn’t sure what kind, or towards what, but I can stand just about anything if I think of it as an investment.

A little after ten I hung the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the knob of my hotel room door and sallied forth into town.

I always slick my hair back, but that day I didn’t. Not because it was a hassle, though, I had a reason not to.

While I shopped, I mulled things over.

Fundamentally, I prefer to work alone no matter what the job, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enlist the help of other people. You might say that’s the same thing, but it’s completely different. My preferred business model, in short, is to accept helping hands but never lend a hand.

Especially with a big (if you ignore the fact that, all told, I was conning a single middle school girl) job like this, I couldn’t help but think that it might be a good idea to enlist some help.

I had finished reaching out, the previous day, to a necessary minimum of people who served as sources and informants, but I wanted to rope in a local or two if possible. Having to keep my identity secret meant I couldn’t operate openly.

Enlisting their help is quite a modest way to put it for a swindler, because it’s more like using them─but I try to stay away from mock-evil manners of speech. I’m not some kind of slave driver, and I intended to pay them a generous stipend of around 10,000 yen each.

Locals…

Naturally, the first person that came to mind was Suruga Kanbaru, but I’d already decided to let that go this time around. In which case, who would be good?

I cast my mind over the likenesses I had drawn in my notebook the day before.

And I thought, What about the Fire Sisters? Koyomi Araragi’s little sisters, Karen and Tsukihi. I didn’t know what Tsukihi looked like, but…all the middle school girls in town wanted to be like them. When I was there laying the groundwork for my last con, I was on guard─yet somehow they slipped through the cordon.

As with Kanbaru, though for a different reason, I’d been thinking the day before that I absolutely needed to avoid encountering the pair (particularly Karen, the elder sister), but I quickly changed my tune.

Forming a plan didn’t mean that I had to follow it─I simply enjoy making them. Who knows, I might even head straight to Kanbaru’s house when I was done shopping.

My personality aside, the fact of the matter was that above and beyond my desire for a thrill, things were bound to proceed much more quickly if I enlisted their aid. They had been my enemies last time and I had only been fearful of them, but in taking on a middle school girl, nothing would be more heartening than getting the sisters on my side.

I decided to sleep on it.

If I could just make sure they wouldn’t tell Araragi, it might not be such a bad idea─but at this point it was no more than a pipe dream.

My preparations complete, I finally headed to the town─but not until I did something else first: change. Not just because I needed to keep warm. I had to disguise myself if I was going to set foot in that town, which is why I hadn’t slicked back my hair. In fact, my usual “funeral suit,” as Senjogahara called it, was close to a disguise.

Hawaiian-shirt me is not the real me, of course, but please don’t think that the black suit is actually a part of me or something─or rather do, because that notion could be turned to my advantage in certain cases.

Clad in a brightly colored suit I had bought in the shopping district, I put on a necktie, like a normal office worker so to speak, and then, finally, got on the train and headed to that town.

A peaceful town, said to be under the sway of a serpent god at the moment.