Monogatari Series - Volume 15 - Chapter 6.03

003

Allow me to rewind the story a little further.

There I was in my bedroom, studying for exams─it was the end of September, the final stretch, and I must say that my feverish zeal was a fearsome thing indeed.

I was so intensely devoted to the pursuit of knowledge that no one could even get near me, but Karen just waltzed up and plunked her breasts down on top of my head.

“Heyyy, big brotherrr. It’s your beloved boobies, big brotherrr.”

“…”

The big brother comes off looking bad, and the little sister comes off looking stupid.

It wasn’t like this back in April or May.

How did it come to this…when did we start coming off like this? I’d always endeavored to be an exemplary brother to my little sisters.

“What is it. What do you need, Karen?”

“A fine question. But not the pertinent one.”

What an irritating attitude. She’s as flighty as a feather.

“The correct question would be, ‘When should we go?’”

“You make it sound like I’ve agreed to go somewhere with you. To begin with, it’d be so wrong if we could communicate like that, like we were psychics. Now get your enormous boobs off my head and answer my question already. What do you need?”

“Let’s see, what do I need? The truth is, I think you already know what I need, big brother.”

“Okay. Don’t tell me what you need. Just remove your enormous boobs, that’s plenty. The boobs, if you please.”

“Fine. I’ll back off this time.”

She backed off.

Well, I say enormous, but they weren’t Hanekawa-caliber, and if you factored in height relative to size, the comparison wasn’t even worth making.

“Okay. Now that you’ve had your fill of touching your little sister’s boobies, big brother, will you listen to what I have to say? Since I laid my boobies by your ear, won’t you lend it to me in return?”

“I don’t know what Tsukihi’s been telling you, but this time I’m utterly not to blame, okay? You unilaterally laid those balloons on me, okay?”

“Unilaterally? I’m shocked to hear you say that. Just as some people’s hearts accept God’s grace, your head accepted Karen’s boobies.”

“I’ve had enough of your made-up sayings.”

Apparently I was going to have to call a halt to my exam prep─what can you do? I don’t know what she wanted my ear for, but it looked like I had no choice but to lend it.

I mean, since the incident with the swindler back in July, she’d stopped bottling things up (let alone going on the rampage) and learned how to ask her older brother for advice like a proper little sister, that was an improvement, right?

“So. Let’s hear it.”

“You want to hear it? Guess I’ve got no-o-o choice then,” Karen said smugly.

Not the kind of attitude you’d expect from someone who was asking for advice, but since she could beat me up, I decided to overlook that.

“The fact is, I need your help. Save me, big brother.”

Not quite what I was expecting from someone who was acting so big, but she was so physically large that even if she acted small, it wouldn’t make much of a difference.

“Save you? Heheh. Would you look at that. Listen, Karen, people can’t save other people. People just go and get saved on their own.”

“Quit talking that nonsense or I’ll pound you.”

She brushed me off…

That is, I had a brush with death.

Well, not like it wasn’t my own fault for espousing a philosophy that wasn’t even mine, but why’s my little sister have to crack down on me like that?

“I’m telling you to cut the shit and give me some advice, dumbass. You cruising for a bruising?”

She started cracking the knuckles on both fists.

This was more than a crackdown, she was going to stamp me out.

I was about to be shut up. Permanently.

In a last-ditch effort to demonstrate my dignity as a big brother, I said, “Understood, I’ll give it. I’ll give it, so hurry up and talk. Chop chop.”

“Ehehe, whoopee, score!”

She got all childlike and innocent all of a sudden. It was like riding a rollercoaster.

“Thanks, big brother, that makes me so happy! I’ll give you a peek at my boobies while we talk to say thank you! Peek! Peek!”

“…”

Looks like we’ve got a feral little sister in the house.

With a sister like her, I’ll probably fail my exams no matter how hard I study. They say it’s always those closest to you who trip you up in the end…

“Hey, big brother! You can stroke these legs while you listen! Aren’t they shapely!”

“Sure, if toothpick is a shape. And there will be no stroking. Now if you don’t want to turn me into the silent type, hurry up and tell me what it is you want my advice about.”

“It’s a tree,” she said abruptly.

A total non-sequitur.

That is, she didn’t telegraph the topic at all─which I’m sure is a fearsome skill to wield in combat, but in conversation it just makes you a bad conversationalist.

It made me keenly aware of the difference between the art of war and the art of conversation.

But if I didn’t get the conversation back on track, I could end up with a different kind of keen sensation, so I nodded soberly. “Ah, a tree, you say? I see, I see.”

I was appeasing my little sister.

I’m the kind of guy who can make the tough decisions…like not hesitating to be obsequious towards my little sister in the service of my goal─however I dress it up, though, in this case my goal was I don’t want my little sister to hit me.

The A of Araragi also stands for Appease!

“But of course, makes perfect sense. Who else would you talk to about a tree but me.”

“Thunderbolt Punch!”

I got hit anyway.

She may be an idiot, but I guess she still picked up on the fact that I was making an idiot out of her.

“The Thunderbolt Punch, a strike employing the power of static electricity!”

“That clearly employed the power of your muscles!”

“A tree was discovered at the dojo, and everyone’s treating it like it’s in the way. So I want to save it. But I don’t have the power to, so please big brother, do something. I know you’ll be able to do something. I believe in you. Now show me that you can live up to my expectations. Show me.”

“…?”

As I recall, “speak like water running down a board” was an idiom originally used for describing the fluid speech of silent film narrators, but the way Karen embodied it felt more like a cold shower.

Transmit failure, I’m not getting any of this…

“Come on. Don’t you get it? Man, you’re slow on the uptake, big brother. If you can’t get motivated without seeing some titties, just say so already.”

“What do you take your own brother for, the Turtle Hermit?”

“Ahaha. If only my big brother was Master Roshi, that would be amazing. Though I guess Master Roshi minus his strength would be kind of like you.”

“If you took away the Turtle Hermit’s strength, what would that leave?”

“A turtle?”

“I’ll take the hermit!”

Still, a big brother who can’t understand what his little sister’s talking about would be pitiful, so I decided to make an effort to make sense of her story.

“A tree was discovered at the dojo… You mean like some timber, to use for breaking?”

“No. What a horrible thing to say. Want me to rearrange your face for you?”

“Who’s being horrible here? As if I’d let you rearrange it.”

“Let’s see, so there’s the dojo, right? Like so.”

Karen started explaining with motions and gesticulations. But it’s hard to imagine how gesticulations could help in explaining the existence of a dojo, and indeed, I didn’t understand her explanation at all.

Fine.

Forget the details, for now let’s focus on the big picture.

I don’t know about the “like so” part, but basically there’s a dojo? And that dojo is the practical combat dojo you attend?

With you so far.

“The dojo’s been around for fifty years. It’s a big, beautiful /an-tee-duh-loo-vee-un/ dojo.”

“Seemed like ‘antediluvian’ wasn’t spelled out just now. You don’t know how, do you? Well, whatever. So, what’s wrong with the dojo?”

“Nothing’s wrong with the dojo.”

“I’m sorry?”

What the heck? I was quickly starting to suspect that asking my advice was merely a pretext for disrupting my exam prep…

“It’s ’round back of the dojo.”

“’Round back?”

“’Round back, not a roundhouse.”

“I wasn’t confused. I don’t exactly have roundhouses on my mind all the time.”

“Back in the day I used to think the Round House must be an awesome school of martial arts or something. A warrior clan like the Tairas or Minamotos. I was so disappointed to find out it was just a single move…but watch out, big brother, watch out, don’t derail the conversation. We’re talking ’round back here, not a roundhouse.”

“You’re the only one who’s mixed up.”

She’s the worst explainer.

I started to wish she would draw me a picture instead.

“By back I mean backyard. There’s a courtyard behind the dojo. And that’s where the tree was discovered.”

“Yeah, but this ‘discovered’ part is the part I really don’t get… Are you basically saying some lumber was lying on the ground in the courtyard behind the dojo?”

“You don’t understand a thing, do you, big brother? That’s not what I’m saying at all. All you ever think about is boobies, so that’s how you start to see the world. That’s how you see your own little sister.”

“No, I don’t, and never mind what goes on in there the rest of the time, right now I’m just worried about you.”

“Yeah? Thanks for worrying about me, big brother!”

She turned cute all of a sudden.

She only hears the good parts.

“It’s not lumber. It’s not for breaking. It’s a living tree. Roots in the ground and everything.”

“Hunh?”

“No good? You still don’t get it?”

“No. I think I get it, but…”

By getting it, I no longer got it.

Or it got harder to get.

I’d gotten the vague impression she was telling me that one day some mysterious lumber had been on the ground in the backyard of the dojo─had been put there, or brought there─but a living tree? With roots in the ground?

“Let me get this straight, Karen.”

“Ha, no need.”

“Indulge me. So you’re saying that there’s a tree growing in the backyard of the dojo you go to…but you never noticed it before now?”

“It wasn’t just me. It’s not like someone else would ever notice something I didn’t, right?”

“Wrong, but that’s some serious self-confidence you’ve got there.”

“It was everyone. Including my sensei, who owns the place. We only just now noticed that there’s a tree there─and we don’t only practice inside the dojo, you know, we train outside too.”

“Uh huh… Sure, outdoor karate practice seems reasonable.”

But if they were training out in the courtyard─the story was getting stranger and stranger.

This courtyard had been getting plenty of use all along─and yet no one had ever noticed this tree growing there?

“And then recently, I found it. ‘What’s this? Have you always been here, o honored tree?’ I said.”

“Huh? You can talk formally?”

“Don’t act so surprised, of course I can. With those who deserve it. Seems pretty basic.”

“But you’ve never once with me.”

“Didn’t I just say, who deserve it?”

She doesn’t beat around the bush, my little sister.

Does she think her big brother’s feelings can’t get hurt?

“Karen, you don’t have to be formal with me, but try talking that way to your big brother to see how it feels.”

“Even though I won’t mean it? Um, ‘O honored brother, would you care to look upon my humble boobies?’”

“I would not. Fine. Continue the story.”

“‘What’s this? Have you always been here, o honored boobies?’ I said.”

“You’re getting mixed up again. If there were heretofore unnoticed boobies in the courtyard, that would be a big deal.”

“A tree was a big deal too. I mean, no one’d ever noticed. It was higgledy-piggledy, everyone was like, Huh? What’s this doing here? Did someone plant this here in the middle of the night?”

“…”

“‘Higgledy-piggledy’ sounds like the name of a sausage-maker, doesn’t it? Hilda the Pig Lady.”

“Just because I’m not talking doesn’t mean I’m bored, no need to force yourself to say something funny.”

“Seems like their sausages would be the best. Or not the wurst, anyway.”

“Maybe it’s your turn to try not talking! Um, so, what was it actually like? Was there anything left?”

“Huh? Oh, no, big brother, I haven’t actually eaten there. No leftovers, sorry.”

“I’m not asking about the sausages. I’m asking if there was any trace left of someone coming into the courtyard in the middle of the night and planting that tree. That’s a big operation, examining the dirt around it ought to tell you something.”

“Yup. I’m sure it would even tell you something, big brother.”

“Are you asking me for help, or mocking me? Which is it?”

“I’m mocking you while asking you for help.”

“Don’t try to be clever.”

“There was no trace of anything like that. It was firmly rooted. No evidence of any digging or planting. Of course neither the sensei nor any of the pupils are experts on soil or trees, so I can’t be perfectly, a hundred-percent certain, but as far as anyone can tell, the tree seems to have been there for ages. It’s an /an-tee-duh-loo-vee-un/ tree, seems like it’s been growing there for decades and decades.”

“Hmmm…”

Not only does she not know how to spell “antediluvian,” she seems to think it’s just a synonym for “old.”

How can she possibly get such good grades?

She must’ve figured out how to game the system.

“But that’s…kind of scary. A tree no one ever noticed, growing in a courtyard that everyone uses all the time for training and whatever else─”

“That’s the thing, big brother!”

Karen slapped the floor.

With a smack.

What’s she trying to do to my floorboards?

“That’s what everybody says! What, are you on their side too, big brother?!”

“No, no, I’m on your side, of course?” I instantly tried to appease my little sister. I seemed to be making a habit of it; this big brother really doesn’t have any dignity, does he… “And? What exactly are they saying, Karen?”

“Everybody, they keep saying that the tree is scary. Scary, or freaky. Of course our sensei isn’t saying anything like that, but all my insufficiently disciplined senpai and kohai are, they’re spooked.”

“…”

Lumping her senpai in with her kohai. Even supposing she spoke formally towards anyone besides her sensei, it’s gotta be a pretty exclusive group…

“Freaky, huh? Even if that’s going too far, it’s not like I can’t understand where they’re coming from.”

I’m not sure this is a fitting analogy, but wouldn’t it be like cleaning your room and finding a book on your bookshelf that you didn’t remember ever seeing before?

A book you didn’t remember buying, didn’t remember reading.

Sitting on the shelf as if it had been there all along─even if it wasn’t freaky, it’d be a little unsettling.

“I see. So you’re on their side, after all. You’re one of them.”

“One of them? You keep talking about them, but I’ve never even met a single one of these people…”

“How can you side with people you’ve never even met! I’m the one you should believe! Are you really going to listen to a perfect stranger over me?”

She was getting really worked up.

A scary little sister. And even stupider than she is scary.

What could be worse than a scary, stupid little sister?

Maybe this is asking too much, but how about you try being just a tiny bit moé.

“At least hear me out! Can’t you treat us evenly, even?”

“Okay, okay. I’ll even be even. So, you’re saying you don’t feel that way?”

“Huh? About what?” Karen looked blank. “Um, what were we talking about again?”

“Don’t get sidetracked. You’re losing the thread of your own story. You didn’t feel like it was freaky that there was a tree you’d never noticed before growing in the courtyard?”

“Nope. Sure, I was shocked, but I wasn’t spooked. I always order gizzard when I have yakitori, so I have a lot of grit.”

“That’s not how it works, and I think courage is associated with the heart.”

“That’s fine. I usually order that too.”

Now that you mention it, the girl does go for the innards.

“In fact, when I first noticed it I felt ashamed to call myself a martial artist. So ashamed I considered suicide.”

“Sounds like you don’t have the mental fortitude to be a martial artist…”

“I hoped everyone else would feel the same about it, but apparently they didn’t.”

Completely ignoring my dig, Karen continued with an uncharacteristically forlorn look in her eye. No, not just uncharacteristic. She’s not the kind of person who ever has that look in her eye. Which meant─this must’ve been a greater shock to her than I’d thought.

“And because they’re scared─they’re talking about cutting it down.”