Monogatari Series - Volume 16 - Chapter 9.04

004

The epilogue, or maybe, the punch line of this story.

“Huh? You’re doing what, Araragi?”

“No, Hanekawa. The thing is…”

“Any way that anybody slices anything, this is no time for you to be doing that. How can you be playing around with Shinobu?”

“No, I mean, I totally agree, that’s exactly what I thought─”

“You know perfectly well that you need to be studying for your exams right now, Araragi.”

“…”

That’s what you meant?

I mean, sure, that too, I guess.

“Using leggings as a blindfold? Pervert.”

She let me have it, point blank.

Not gonna forget that one anytime soon.

“Let me explain, Hanekawa. It’s not like I wanted to be blindfolded with leggings. Blindfolding me with leggings, stuffing leggings in my mouth, it was all Shinobu.”

“In your mouth?”

“Slip of the tongue.”

Should’ve left them stuffed in my mouth.

No?

“H-Hanekawa. I’m sure there’s a whole heap of things you want to lecture me about, but international calls are expensive, aren’t they? You probably can’t─”

“Don’t worry. I can.”

“…? Oh, well, in that case there’s something I want to ask you. Where do you think Shinobu hid the donut?”

“That’s what you want to ask me? Not about my search for Mister Oshino?”

“We’ll get to that later.”

“Amazing. You’re quite a guy.”

“Ooh, appealing to my vanity, are we?”

“Your inability to recognize sarcasm is even more amazing.”

“I found three of the donuts she hid, but I couldn’t find the last one─we’re talking about just my room. There are only so many places she could’ve hidden it.”

“Hmmm.”

“So all I can think of is that she ate it… Though given everything she said, I have a hard time believing she would’ve broken that rule.”

“That does seem like the most likely possibility─but it sounds like you have faith that she wouldn’t cheat. In which case I guess she must’ve gone with the second most likely possibility.”

“The second most likely? You mean I overlooked something?”

“How come you have faith in Shinobu but not in yourself… If it’s me, I’d say the likelihood that you’ve overlooked something in your own room is pretty low, Araragi.”

“Wow. Your confidence in me is pretty high, Hanekawa!”

“A low likelihood isn’t the same thing as high confidence.”

“…”

Harsh.

Hanekawa is harsh on perverts… No, most people would be.

“Then what’s this second most likely possibility?”

“What happened to the three donuts you did find, Araragi?”

“I ate them. That was the deal. Which means that me and Shinobu shared the donuts in a 3:2 ratio.”

“Were they good?”

“Yeah, just like Shinobu said. Is that…important?”

“Nope, the flavor is irrelevant. I was just thinking how much I’d like to taste Senjogahara’s handiwork as a pastry chef─4:1.”

“Huh?”

“It’s 4:1, the donut ratio. The sharing ratio. You ate four of them, Araragi.”

“? No, I only ate three…”

“The fourth donut was hidden inside one of the other three─they say if you want to hide a tree, do it in the forest, but in this case, the tree was hidden inside another tree, so to speak.”

“…”

“You said the donuts were all different sizes, right? Then she must’ve taken the smallest of the four remaining ones and hidden it inside the biggest one.”

“Wha… But how? Hiding a tree inside another tree…”

“Hiding a tree inside another tree would be impossible without hollowing it out. But you could do it with a fried donut. Since the inside is soft, whatever the outside might be like. All it would take would be a good squeeze.”

“Squeeze… B-But.”

Sure, but.

“Even if the inside is soft, the outside is hard, okay? You’d know if someone tried that trick─”

“Not with a torus donut. Look, Araragi, after Shinobu ate the first one her face was covered in cream─isn’t that what you said? Which means Senjogahara used whipped cream in the donuts. But since they were torus donuts, it’s unlikely that the pastry was completely wrapped around the filling like with curry bread, you know? Either the outside was decorated with cream, or the torus was split horizontally like a bagel and the cream was put in between the two halves. Either scenario would jibe with your testimony about the way Shinobu was holding the donut. The former clashes with your stated testimony that the outside was sprinkled with sugar, however, leaving us with only the latter possibility─”

“…”

Information leaking out of every word I said to her.

You’re scary, Miss Hanekawa.

“And if it’s the latter, then the donuts were split from the start, so there was no need for Shinobu to deal with the hard exterior at all. The cream probably acted as an adhesive once it was put inside the donut, I imagine? Though all that being said…there’s no proof, is there. Since you ate the proof, Araragi.”

In a certain sense, you could even say that Shinobu hid the donut in your stomach─finished Hanekawa.

Hm…

Is that why Shinobu wouldn’t squeal about where she hid the last donut, no matter how much I grilled her? That would be hard to admit, wouldn’t it, both that she had resorted to that kind of trickery to conceal Senjogahara’s donut, and that she sat silently by and let me eat it as a means of destroying the evidence.

I unconsciously threw a look of reproach at my shadow, but I felt embarrassed. I’d gobbled up the double donut with gusto, not noticing any difference from the other two, never realizing the trick that had been played on me…

Maybe that was why Hanekawa asked me about the flavor─and not because she wanted to hear more about her friend Senjogahara’s skill as a pastry chef.

I dunno, I was struck by the feeling that I needed to refine my own palate before I could say anything about Senjogahara’s skill in the kitchen.

“Sorry, but…I think that’s bullshit.”

“Bullshit? How come, it’s not like she broke the rules. Shinobu didn’t eat the donut herself, after all.”

“No, it’s definitely bullshit─her goal was to eat the donuts, right? But if she set it up so that I would eat them, then everything’s topsy-turvy. She didn’t accomplish her goal at all─”

“That’s the point, Araragi.”

“Huh?”

“Abandoning your own interests, your own goals. Setting aside your personal judgment. In other words, being selfless, self-sacrificing. That’s the point. That’s what Shinobu was trying to teach you.”

“The point…of negotiations? Of secrecy?”

“Of love.”