Monogatari Series - Volume 13 - Chapter 1.39

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I don’t know anything about any epilogue to this story, nor do I have a clue how things shook out. Why should I? Nothing to do with me.

I left Sengoku and Araragi behind and descended the mountain, then called Senjogahara. I told her straight out (with a few embellishments) that the job had gone off without a hitch, but that Araragi had found out about it.

The first part aside, she was pissed about the second part. It wasn’t a charming kind of pissed like “blowing her top,” she was so agitated that she went into hysterics.

I felt bad, but refreshed at the same time, like it served her right, so it was really very emotionally complicated for me.

But then again, this was the last time I would hear her voice, a parting auditory glimpse, so perhaps I felt more refreshed than anything.

“Well, I did the minimum to cover it up, now the rest is up to you. Old soldiers simply fade away, and the children inherit the Earth.”

“You screwed up royally, so spare me the meaningless posturing…”

I don’t know if there’s such a thing as hysteria fatigue, but having thoroughly exhausted herself through her wild ravings, “Thank you. You saved us,” Senjogahara finally said for the record. She’d become a lot less difficult even just over the last month. “So I guess this is it.”

“Guess so. Now we’re done with each other. The end.”

“Bye-bye.”

“Okay then.”

Neither of us spoke with any real feeling. There wasn’t even the awkwardness you feel when you pass an old acquaintance on the street. There was absolutely nothing between us.

Well, I say “us,” but maybe it wasn’t as true for Senjogahara as it was for me, because she wasn’t done.

“Hey, Kaiki. Can I ask you one thing?”

Well, well, no good at goodbyes. Still a child after all.

“No.”

“Back then, two years ago, do you really think I was in love with you?”

“…”

How the fuck should I know? I thought, and considered hanging up, but as always, my mouth had other ideas.

“I did, yeah.”

“I see,” came her rejoinder, “someone got duped. By me.”

“Right… What of it?”

“Nothing… That’s it. Just watch out for wicked women from now on.”

“I will. And you─don’t forget to sign your letters.”

I hung up, feeling like I’d gotten the last laugh. I was shocked at my own pettiness.

There was nothing to it. Figuring out that Hitagi Senjogahara was the one who’d put the letter in my hotel room was nothing to write home about─it would have been one thing if I’d realized immediately, but it had taken ages.

When I summoned her to the shopping district, it gave her an idea where I was staying. All that was left was for her to call and tell the concierge in an adorable, childish voice, “I have something for a guest of yours, a Mister Kaiki,” like it was the most natural thing in the world─there were any number of hotels in the area, including the one where Hanekawa was staying, and no harm done if I wasn’t there. I would never find out, at any rate.

And the show she put on of deducing how the letter had been slipped into the room must have been intended to eliminate her from the list of possible suspects.

No wonder she was pissed when I told her I’d torn up the letter; she’d written it.

So why did she give me the contradictory order to “withdraw,” when she had commissioned me for the job?

Because she knew me all too well.

Hitagi Senjogahara knew perfectly well that if someone told me to withdraw, I’d become more stubborn about finishing the job─in fact, if Ononoki had taken the opposite approach, if Gaen-senpai’s warning had been “not to withdraw,” I might have then and there.

Which is why Senjogahara contacted me to do something, and the opposite as well.

A stupid, childish ploy.

Not that I hadn’t gone along for the ride even as I’d known.

I turned off my cell phone, then immediately smashed it─okay, the phone itself was pretty pricey, so it was just the SIM card that I smashed.

And thus the cord tying me to Senjogahara was cut. She could probably find out my new number if she tried, of course, she’d done it before, but from here on out there’d be no reason for her to contact me. None at all.

I deleted Senjogahara’s number, and only hers, from the empty cell phone, then headed to the station. I had to retrieve the suitcase I’d left in a coin locker there.

That was evidence─not quite Sengoku’s closet, but it had to be properly disposed of.

“Be that as it may…”

As I trudged along the snowy February street, I wondered─forget Senjogahara, how much of this was actually premeditated by Gaen-senpai?

Because Senjogahara wasn’t the only one who knew me well enough to know that if I were told to withdraw, I would do the opposite. Was the three million yen actually just an attempt to fund my endeavor?

Had I been dancing to Gaen-senpai’s tune all along? Well, nothing to be gained by pondering such things. Dancing to her tune was a small price to pay to be free of my ties to her.

But had she really disowned me?

She might appear before me the very next day, as if nothing had happened… But I’d cross that bridge when I came to it. If she brought an offer of money to be made, I wouldn’t refuse to play my old role as her junior.

Nevertheless, I thought.

Gaen-senpai’s unsentimental and practical attitude was one thing─and Kagenui’s lack of involvement was only to be expected, but where the hell was Oshino in all this?

He was every inch the vagabond.

A rootless vagabond like me, though even more dissolute, which made getting a grasp on his whereabouts harder than grasping a cloud─and yet.

That chump who loved to look cool in front of kids─did he really skip out when so many of his former charges had their backs against the wall? Did he really leave them hanging like that?

With Araragi and Senjogahara and the former Kissshot and Hanekawa and─a bunch of other people in such dire straits, wouldn’t he come riding in on his white horse, like never before?

I’d gotten dragged into the mess because he hadn’t shown up─but by all rights, saving Sengoku, saving Araragi and the others, should have been Mèmè Oshino’s job, not mine.

Where was he now, and what the hell was he doing?

It bugged me.

Well, it didn’t, but looking into it might prove profitable─maybe I should search for my fellow vagabond. It had been a long time since we’d had a drink together, and it was an appealing prospect.

Just as I came to that decision, I saw stars.

I toppled forward onto the snowy road, clueless as to why. I was quivering like jelly. Did my body finally reach its physical limit after being crushed by the snakes? But the snow before my eyes was dyed crimson, and I gathered that I’d been struck hard on the back of the head.

I could hear ragged breathing coming from behind me. “Huff, huff, huff, huff─”

Forcing myself to turn my bloodstained head, I beheld a lone middle-school-age kid standing there holding an iron pipe. The pipe was also stained with blood, so apparently that’s what I’d been struck with. It was a terribly long pipe, and the centrifugal force must have been something.

“M-Miss Ogi was right. You really came back, you con man…” muttered the middle schooler, staring at me with eyes devoid of even a glimmer of sanity. “Th-Thanks to you, thanks to you, thanks to you─”

“…”

At first I didn’t recognize the kid, but as I gazed at that face and those bloodshot eyes, it came to me. I couldn’t recall a name, but… Right, it was one of the many middle schoolers I’d hoodwinked last time I was in town. One of the faces I’d drawn in my notebook on the plane ride from Okinawa.

And behind the kid there loomed a snake.

Not strictly behind, more like─around. A giant snake, coiled around, enwrapping, the kid’s body.

It wasn’t some vague phantom, but clearly visible.

What the hell?

Did the kid get counter-cursed or something?

Was this kid─the one who’d started everything by putting that “charm” on Sengoku?

And by the way… After solving the mystery of the letter, I’d lumped it in as Senjogahara’s doing─but the identity of my “tail” was, strictly speaking, still unknown.

If it wasn’t Senjogahara, then I assumed it was Gaen-senpai’s watchdog… Yet if everything was proceeding according to plan for her, why would she put me under surveillance?

So had this kid been the one tailing me?

No, I turned it over in my blood-soaked head and judged that it must’ve been someone else. This kid didn’t possess the requisite “sanity” to tail someone─

Wait, had I heard a name a second ago?

Ogi?

Who─is that?

The name rang a bell, like I’d heard it somewhere before, but that was as far as I got.

“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

The crazed middle schooler shrieked with rage and brandished the iron pipe at my prone figure. And with the next hatred-, spite-, and curse-filled blow, I slipped away into unconsciousness.

They say that even in hell, money talks. As someone with no savings to speak of, I thanked my lucky stars that I’d picked up some change there before the end.