Monogatari Series - Volume 14 - Chapter 1.03

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Whether out of kindness or out of habit, or maybe a desire to harass and feel superior to their older brother, or for no reason at all, my two wretched little sisters Karen and Tsukihi Araragi, known to the world as the Tsuganoki Second Middle Fire Sisters, wake me up every morning. They wake me up in the morning like I walk the night. They wake me up regardless of whether it’s a weekday or a Sunday or a holiday, almost like it’s their occupation, like their life depends on it.

Sure, there have been times when I lashed out at them in annoyance (mostly when I was a freshman, I think), but on this one point they remained undaunted. Whatever horrid miseries I might treat them to, whatever silent treatment, still they woke me up. It bordered on obsession.

Lately, though, by which I mean for a while now, I’d been studying for my college entrance exams, which sometimes kept me up late into the night, and on such occasions I was grateful for their morning “wake-up call”─honestly I’m grateful even now. In fact, when I think back, I should always have been grateful.

And now I’m even grown up enough to admit it.

It’s just that as a high school senior in my last term, I didn’t really need to show up at school anymore, which meant that there was no need for me to wake up so early… A consistent amount of sleep was necessary to maintain both my performance and my health, but no need to be so hung up on waking up early per se. Considering that I’d been receiving their constant blessing for the past six months or so, however, I couldn’t really tell them to get lost. I mean, even if I did tell them to get lost they definitely wouldn’t, and it’s not just about exam prep. Since it was the Fire Sisters whom I have to thank for rescuing me from the peril of potentially not graduating due to the number of absences, tardies, and early departures I racked up during the second half of my first year and the beginning of my second, I really couldn’t tell them to get lost. Leaving aside justice and all that, their unswerving dedication to waking me up constituted a meritorious service I could not ignore.

Without question, I owe Tsubasa Hanekawa and Hitagi Senjogahara for my scholastic improvement on the road to entrance exams, but equally indisputably, Karen and Tsukihi Araragi are to thank for supporting me on the road to graduation─and it’s only human nature to want to repay that debt in some small way.

Only human.

Just to be clear, it has nothing to do with me being into my little sisters.

That kind of thing only exists in manga (how many times now have I said that?).

In fact it’s what they call “the reciprocity principle” in psychology─that’s definitely what it is. Apparently, human beings have this “quirk” of wanting to repay a person from whom they’ve received some kind of favor.

Take this fact in isolation, and you might get the impression that human beings are a fair species, that they possess a spirit of fairness, but reality isn’t so pretty. Basically, people just “feel shitty when they owe somebody something.”

People want that free and clear feeling of paying back a debt, or of feeling superior by paying it back and then some─that seems to be the gist of it.

Which is exactly why I felt it was about time I repaid my debt to Karen and Tsukihi after six months─no, six years of being woken up by them.

As an older brother.

Out of consideration for their futures─

“Karen’s got her strength and her looks, though, so even if I don’t give it too much attention, she’ll make something of herself… I can leave her alone and she’ll be somebody, but…” I grumbled as I went downstairs.

The walls have ears, the doors have eyes, and the shadows have vampires in them.

I couldn’t be sure no one was eavesdropping on me so I didn’t finish my thought, but yeah, I was worried about Tsukihi.

Tsukihi Araragi.

I’m genuinely worried about her future.

I have to care.

I have to be careful.

I can’t even imagine what she’ll be up to this time next year… The wheels are always turning in that head of hers, but she’s always turning them for the wrong reasons.

Just spinning her wheels.

It was only thanks to managing the unmanageable mayhem of the Fire Sisters’ brawn, that is, the over-engineered weapon of mass destruction known as Karen Araragi, that Tsukihi Araragi paradoxically, or passably, functioned as the Fire Sisters’ brains… But with the impending increase in her level of independence, I couldn’t imagine what kind of schemes she’d concoct─or rather I didn’t want to think about it.

Sure, how she lives her life is her own business, but it’s also human nature for me to want to avoid any kind of situation where I would end up mobbed by reporters.

Yes.

Taking all of these things into consideration, my first priority as I faced the prospect of graduation was, it goes without saying, completing my exam prep, but the second was rehabilitating my little sisters, particularly Tsukihi.

I hadn’t discussed it yet with my parents, but if I got into college I’d probably be leaving home─and if I did, I couldn’t bear to leave behind two little sisters like them.

It’d be irresponsible of their big brother, wouldn’t it?

Maybe of any human being.

To repeat, I could care less what happens to those two. They can go ahead and live whatever kind of life they please, but I’m going to do what I need to do to avoid any sort of blame down the line.

So, for the time being, I began that day by running a morning bath for Karen, who would inevitably return home drenched in sweat.

I felt triumphant at the prospect of being able to say: No way, I’m not irresponsible, I never shirked my responsibilities, I mean look, I drew a bath for her and everything.

Keheheh.

A hot bath, just the way she likes it, how about that.

But my pseudo-villainous attempt at kindness backfired because the scalding temperature Karen prefers is how I like it too. As I cleaned the room and prepared all the amenities, I got the urge to take a bath myself.

Some of you might wonder what’s up with a guy who takes a bath in the morning even when he hasn’t gone for a run, but they say a person releases a full cup of sweat during the night. Jogger or not, there’s nothing wrong with taking a bath in the morning. And it wasn’t just that particular day; while I was studying for exams I often took a shower in the morning to clear my head after I woke (was woken) up.

“…”

Consider this.

The warlords of the Warring States period employed cadres of poison tasters. As a result, the food was all cold by the time it reached the warlord’s mouth, but this serves to illustrate how precious his life was. Our anecdote might be apt to elicit laughter at the expense of the poor warlords, whose overabundance of caution meant they never had tasty meals, but that’s totally wrongheaded, that’s merely the condescending attitude of a peaceful age. Some poison tasters must have made the ultimate sacrifice, which goes to show just how many more lives were riding on the shoulders of the soldiers’ commander, on his wellbeing.

Upon reflection, didn’t this mean that if I really wanted to look out for Karen, if I really cared about her welfare and her future, I shouldn’t let her take a bath without getting in first and ensuring that there was no danger?

From what I’ve heard, the bathroom is where the most fatal accidents occur in the supposed safety of our homes, so before letting my sister enter that danger zone when she was back from her run, I needed to confirm its security. I had to taste the bath for poison, so to speak. I had no choice.

And so I decided to get into the bath.

I decided to take a nice, hot bath.

Damn, it’s hard being a big brother, forced to take baths against my will for my little sister’s sake─but as I quickly began to shed my clothes in the changing room.

“Oh.”

Tsukihi appeared.

And she was only half-dressed. In other words, she was half-naked. She must have shed her yukata in the hall before coming into the changing room. Which she did all the time. Just disrobed wherever she pleased. The easy-on-easy-off aspect of traditional Japanese clothing was to blame. And naturally, she never picked up after herself (I did, mostly).

Fixing me with her severest glare, the half-naked Tsukihi accused, “You’re the first! I mean, the worst! You said you were getting a bath ready for Karen but want to get in ahead of her! You’re the worst, the worst, the worst, the worst!”

“Um, given your state of undress, I can only surmise that you had exactly the same intention…”

In fact, since she was hoping to hijack a bath that she hadn’t even prepared, that I had prepared for Karen, who was the real villain here? Trying to scold me about it on top of that─I was seriously concerned about her future.

How had she made it through fourteen years unscathed with her sorry excuse for a personality?

In any case, Tsukihi had a strong metabolism, which meant she sweated easily. She took a bath every chance she got, kind of like Shizuka, to put it in Doraemon terms.

She wasn’t about to let this opportunity pass her by.

How shrewd of her.

How shrewd and rude.

“Just stand aside, big brother. I’m getting into that bath, and no one’s going to get in my way, brother or not.”

“What a line. You’re willing to fracture our family over who takes the first bath, and a morning bath at that…”

Frightening.

My sister lived entirely in the moment, didn’t she?

“But I’ve already gotten completely into the bath-time mindset,” she said. “My body may be out here, but my spirit is already in there.”

“Oh, shut up. The tub’s still only half full.”

“Don’t forget to add my volume to it.”

“Like that’s something to brag about.”

Yet I, myself, was too deep into the bath-time mindset at that point to yield my turn. Well, my heart may not have been in the tub like Tsukihi’s, my body and spirit were still there in that changing room, but surrendering the bath without a fight just because my little sister told me to would be a stain upon the honor of big brothers everywhere.

Shoving her out of the way so I could be first might in fact be appropriate, but the alternative was unacceptable. It could only be described as a dereliction of my duty as a big brother.

So I puffed out my chest (I was shirtless by then, incidentally. It was a half-naked sibling standoff) and gave Tsukihi an ultimatum.

“Little sister, if you’re determined to get into that bathroom, you’ll have to take me down firwatchit!”

I barely managed to dodge the shampoo bottle that she unhesitatingly hurled at me. The cheeky little middle schooler apparently brought her own shampoo. She was at least classier than Karen, who’d happily wash her hair with a bar of soap, but a truly classy person doesn’t throw (with a spin, no less) shampoo bottles at other people’s faces.

“Tsk.”

And classy people don’t click their tongues.

But man, was she a frightening little sister.

What was she thinking? Or was she not thinking at all?

“What the hell?! Someone could get hurt!”

“You told me to take you down.”

“No, no, I meant mentally. Physically, you don’t take me down, you respect me and kneel before me.”

“You’re a pain in the ass,” Tsukihi said, closing the door behind her. She didn’t actually lock it, but her meaning was clear: I’m not budging from this spot no matter what. And she started forward to reclaim her personal bottle of shampoo, which had landed behind me.

And what’s more, that motion flowed naturally into a nonchalant attempt to slip past me into the bathroom, so I rushed to block her.

Putting my body on the line, like a real man. Protecting the door to the bathroom as if it hid a gaggle of wounded children.

“You shall not palookout!”

This time she went for the eye-gouge.

An attack the old Senjogahara would have gone for (and did).

At least in Senjogahara’s case she was so stubbornly combative because of all the issues she was dealing with. Tsukihi just wanted to get into the bathroom.

“Enough already, big brother, don’t get heated. Heating up the bath was enough, your work here is done.”

“That’s an unspeakable line.”

“Move.”

“No.”

There was no point in being so stubborn, but what kept me standing there was my pride as an older brother, my not wanting to bow before or fall behind my little sister.

Or you could say I was frozen with terror.

I mean, Tsukihi was glaring at me for real.

She wasn’t a yandere, but still over yonder in the psycho ward.

When you take away the sweet dere part, all you’re left with is the pathology.

“I’m the one who heated up this water, so the first bath is mine by right.”

“I allowed you to heat it up for me, and you should be satisfied with your lot.”

Our arguments ran perfectly parallel, never intersecting.

Which is to say it didn’t even constitute an argument.

We weren’t engaging with each other at all; if anything, the first engagement was yet to come, as in a battle.

Somewhere along the line, the premise that I’d prepared the bath for Karen had gotten lost.

In fact, the very existence of Karen, off happily running along somewhere, had vanished from our minds.

While she was enjoying the refreshing morning breeze, an internecine family struggle was unfolding, a sordid sibling rivalry that perhaps rendered her the real winner among the three Araragi children.

Sooner or later, that very Karen would come home from her run and appear in that changing room, ready to cleanse the sweat from her body─she would waltz in there drenched in sweat, dripping with perspiration.

And in that three-way contest, the winner would undoubtedly be her. Circumstantially speaking, she would obviously arrive plenty sweaty enough to warrant a bath by anyone’s standards, and if it came to blows, Tsukihi and I combined couldn’t beat her even if she had one hand tied behind her back.

Indeed, Tsukihi and I were at this impasse because our combat levels were more or less evenly matched. Naturally, I was a boy and had a boy’s strength, but Tsukihi had a crazy streak that I lacked. The craziness to unhesitatingly go for the vitals.

In other words, it was a stalemate.

I couldn’t but envision a future where Karen came in and snatched the prize out from under us while we maintained that equilibrium─and I’m sure Tsukihi saw it too.

My little sister wasn’t so oblivious to her actions’ consequences that she’d overlook that eventuality─okay, she was oblivious, but her wheels turned quickly. I bet she arrived at that conclusion well before I did. It’s just that her emotional brakes were shot, by virtue of which she was only able to deal with the situation on a par with me, who had only just realized the danger.

“All right then, big brother. We’ll meet in the middle.”

“Meet in the middle?”

A compromise?

Ah ha.

A proposal worthy of a strategist.

They say war is customarily conducted with a middle ground in mind.

But in this case, what middle ground─what point of compromise could exist between us? The right to take the first bath was a one-of-a-kind item, so to speak, and the competition for it a zero-sum game. One person wins, the other loses. So I didn’t see any room for compromise, anything to compromise on.

But I underestimated Tsukihi.

Not for nothing had she managed to become the idol of every middle schooler in town despite her boundlessly irritating personality. The Fire Sisters’ brains proposed a plan that no ordinary strategist could have conceived of.

“Let’s meet in the middle and go in together.”