Monogatari Series - Volume 13 - Chapter 1.32

032

Now I can finally say the next few days passed in a humdrum routine of trips to Kita-Shirahebi Shrine, where dwelt the ophidian deity Nadeko Sengoku:

The next few days passed in a humdrum routine of trips to Kita-Shirahebi Shrine, where dwelt the ophidian deity Nadeko Sengoku.

I went there virtually every day, or literally every day, to play with her. “Play with” is terribly insolent of a worshipper, but that’s the most accurate description so what can you do.

I got pretty good at cat’s cradle, and we left the one-person stuff behind and moved on to two-person techniques. Nadeko Sengoku and I played endlessly.

I read, and memorized, many more books on the subject─we cat’s-cradled day in and day out, on and on and on, but even with all that practice Nadeko Sengoku couldn’t progress beyond a certain level (and, to be fair, neither could I).

Cat’s cradle is a deep, even profound pursuit.

We just couldn’t measure up to Nobita─even though we hit that wall, Nadeko Sengoku didn’t get sick of it like I did, she didn’t give up on it, she just happily kept on playing.

I brought her other toys (tops, blocks, basically anything you could play with for a long time that didn’t require electricity) to see if she was into them, and she was, but in the end we always returned to cat’s cradle.

Maybe it meant something to her, but no matter. Anything that helped me connect with her was okay in my book.

And, while I couldn’t do it every day, since Nadeko Sengoku seemed to have taken a shine to saké, I lugged a big bottle of it up to the shrine about twice a week.

I prefer Western liquor so I didn’t join her much, but she became a heroic quaffer of the Japanese stuff.

I hadn’t thought to bring her a cup or anything, though, thanks to which she drank straight from those enormous bottles. Outwardly (or at least size-wise, given that her head was covered in snake hair), she was a middle school girl─so her cradling a huge bottle in her little arms and chugging from it was, how can I put this, not something you see every day, a real sight for sore eyes. I’d gladly pay for the honor.

Nadeko Sengoku gave herself over to the most divine pursuit of guzzling booze like there was no tomorrow, but apparently being a god didn’t mean she couldn’t get drunk. When she was done with the saké, she was even cheerier than usual. This was naturally exhausting for me, and on such occasions I would depart early.

Every time, I’d tell myself never again, but I always ended up wanting another taste of her merriment. While I said about twice a week, I might have brought her saké pretty damn often.

And that was my life for a month.

Go up the mountain.

Pay 10,000 yen.

Have some fun with cat’s cradle, chat.

Imbibe on occasion.

There was no particular trouble, no one tried to get in my way─and a second letter never appeared in my hotel room.

Staying at the same place for over a month, just because no letter appeared, would have been suspicious, so I did move after the first week as planned─but nothing much changed at the new spot.

Every once in a while I sensed someone tailing me, but no big deal. Perhaps because I never tried to unmask them, they didn’t take it to the next level─and who knows, it could be my imagination after all. Under the circumstances, it was entirely possible that it was just a case of nerves.

Other than that, nothing worth mentioning.

I suppose there was this one thing.

I’d heard from Hanekawa that there was─or strictly speaking, “had been”─an abandoned cram school where Oshino had holed up during his stay, and I went to visit it on a whim sometime around the middle of January.

Just a stark white expanse.

The building was gone and snow was piled up high─the place had caught fire in August or September of last year and burned to the ground.

The incident involved Gaen-senpai and Episode, as well as Koyomi Araragi and Shinobu Oshino─and was also an underlying cause of the present fix.

Because on that occasion, Araragi received a certain important item from Gaen-senpai that ended up turning Nadeko Sengoku into a god; Gaen-senpai, however, had wanted him to use it on Shinobu Oshino.

I wasn’t there, so I don’t know if Araragi made the right decision─which is to say, I don’t care to know, or so much as think about it.

I’m not Araragi, nor am I Shinobu Oshino or Nadeko Sengoku, nor am I Gaen-senpai─in other words, that story has nothing to do with me. What Hanekawa had told me gave me some sense of Gaen-senpai’s motives, but again, I wasn’t interested at all in pondering whether they were good or evil, right or wrong.

While part of me hoped to find a clue to aid me in my current task, I basically went to the ruins, or the former site of those ruins, half out of curiosity and half just for the hell of it.

It wouldn’t hurt to see where Oshino had spent his time─the building itself was gone, though, so I can’t say I got much satisfaction on that account.

But there was an interesting coincidence.

The thing worth mentioning.

In that now-empty lot, I happened to run into a girl I know named Roka Numachi.

I’d met her elsewhere some years before─turns out, she was from this town. That seemed like a potentially useful piece of information. If I wanted to involve myself with Suruga Kanbaru somewhere down the line, for instance.

And so January came to a close.

They say that January jets, February flees, and March makes its getaway─and so thirty bills, I mean thirty days, were gone. Thirty-one if you include New Year’s Day, when I got the call about the job.

My plans and records, and to-do lists, had ballooned to ten notebooks─to be torn up and thrown away once the job was over, but looking over them at night in my hotel room before going to bed filled me with this sense that “I’d worked,” with satisfaction.

A swindler’s fulfillment.

I spoke to Senjogahara on the phone throughout the month, but the meeting at Mister Donut was the last time we met face to face─I probably wouldn’t be billing her for any further expenses, and if I could finish the job without us seeing each other again, that seemed for the best.

Hanekawa left the country on January fifth, the day after we met─though that might be untrue. Maybe she stayed in Japan or secretly returned right away, searching for Oshino or trying another approach. Whatever the case, I wasn’t going to pay her too much mind. I had a job to do, and she could keep on doing things her own way.

I didn’t get in touch with Mr. and Mrs. Sengoku again─and they didn’t contact me. However the job turned out, I wouldn’t have to deal with that law-abiding couple for the rest of my life.

Oh, also it came time for the national exams.

I never once ran into Araragi jumping the gun on visiting Nadeko Sengoku during the course of my “hundred-day pilgrimage,” so I guess he’d gotten real about prepping for them.

By the by, according to Senjogahara, he sat for them properly, and properly failed to obtain good marks.

Made sense, since his life was on the line─at least he had an excuse. If I pulled off my grand deception of Nadeko Sengoku (“helped her fall for it,” as Hanekawa put it), he’d have no excuse for his secondary exams. That provided me with some extra incentive to get it done. Assuming his low scores hadn’t already put him out of contention.

And so January came to a close.

February began.

And the appointed day arrived.