Monogatari Series - Volume 18 - Chapter 1.02

002

“What up, senpai! Long time no see!”

I feel I should clarify here that my junior Suruga Kanbaru is extremely well-mannered─at least, she’s one of the few people younger than me who treats me, someone as unworthy as me, with respect. Perhaps I ought to say the only one─and while she never resorts to openly humble or formal language with me, she always maintains a certain level of politeness when we interact, even though I outrank her only in age. Maybe it’s her straightforward personality, maybe it’s her upbringing in a basically well-off family.

To put it in simpler terms, though she sometimes speaks to me as if we’re in the same year, she isn’t the type to make her appearance with an offhanded greeting like “What up!”

I’d like you to understand that it was an exception, and well, I could understand her excitement. It was completely natural for her to be so hyped up that day, or more specifically, that night─the night of August twenty-third, as she arrived in the second-floor classroom of the now-familiar abandoned cram school, which wasn’t exactly a symbol, but at least a kind of landmark among us.

The reason being─it may not come off sounding great, but there weren’t many situations where I’d ask Kanbaru to meet me. A girl who described herself as “someone who finds meaning in life simply by being of use to you, my honorable senior Araragi,” “a part to be used by my honorable senior Araragi,” and “a disposable tool to be used by my honorable senior Araragi,” I could even understand why she leapt into the classroom after kicking down its door, giddy with joy─never mind, forget about it. Not when she refers to herself in those incomprehensible ways.

My life’s to-do list never included having my girlfriend’s junior get so attached to me…

That said, for the first thing coming out of her mouth to be that energetic and rather unsophisticated “Long time no see!” was, in the end, not wholly inappropriate.

If you were to ask me why, I’d give you the following answer: because a knee belonging to Kanbaru, confident in her ability to run, made contact with my cheek, located about five feet above the floor, since I was just standing and not sitting in a chair or anything.

It made contact.

By made contact, I mean that less in the “touched” sense and more in the “tackled” kind of way. In a soccer match, the flying knee, bearing all of her weight and speed, would have surely earned her an immediate red card. Since she’s a basketball player, maybe I should compare it to a flagrant foul resulting in instant ejection─but you don’t normally see many flying knees in basketball.

In any case, what I’m trying to say is that her greeting would’ve been appropriate if, instead of long time no see, it was long time no knee.

“Ghaah!”

Of course she injured my cheek, but that only covers the superficial issue of where she made contact, as the damage made its way to my cheekbone, inner cheek, oral cavity, cranium, and even my gray matter─it felt like the shockwave penetrating my head could even destroy the classroom wall behind me.

True, what actually cracked the classroom wall behind me was my own body, thrown into the air like a scrap of paper by the force of her flying knee.

“Ghuurk!”

I let out a second moan as my back hit the wall. I wish I could’ve let out something a little more stylish─sounding like a frog being run over by a car isn’t a very cool act.

“Not that I could hope to look cool in any situation involving me getting kneed by my junior as soon as we meet.”

“Wow, my dear senior. You really are at the top of your game. Setting up to get kneed during this time of need? You showed me up there.”

Having made a beautiful landing, her mid-air balance undisturbed by her strike, Kanbaru nodded, looking at me as if I’d moved her to her core. A look of respect─it made me want to ask her what she saw in this crushed frog, and also, I hadn’t set myself up to get kneed in a time of need.

What would that do for me?

“Well,” Kanbaru said, “if I may speak for myself here, I’d prefer to describe it as you getting punked by my patella. The thought of my knees acting like handsome young ruffians brings me just a little bit of joy.”

“Could you please not use words like ‘joy’ in this sort of context? And how are you sure these punks are handsome?”

“Actually, I see them more as impressionable little boys. Doesn’t the world seem like a bit of a better place if little boys were living on our knees?”

“Don’t describe anything as being a ‘better place’ in this context, either. There are no little boys living on my knees.”

I stood.

As I did, I held a hand against my kicked cheek─my brain actually seemed fine, but dammit, the inside of my mouth had suffered cuts, making every retort difficult. I was tasting my blood like mad and it was like eating iron. But how could I not partake when Kanbaru was providing such a stand-up act?

“And wait,” I objected, “if I should be going after you about anything, it’s the fact that you kneed me, your senior, and haven’t spoken an apologetic word about it.”

“Apologize? Haha! What’re you talking about? Am I, your faithful junior Suruga Kanbaru, not now like a part of your body?” Putting her hands in front of her chest, she continued, “You wouldn’t apologize to yourself for kneeing your own cheek, would you?”

“What eloquently awful logic!”

“Come on, you don’t need to keep acting so exasperated. Listen, I understand the way my senior feels better than anyone. You’re just pretending like you’re worried about the damage to your cheek when what you’re really concerned about is whether or not I, an athlete, hurt my knee.”

“Sounds like a great senior, but whoever that is, he sure ain’t me!”

It was impossible to get an apology out of her…

Was it okay to have a junior like this one?

“Sorry to let you down, Kanbaru, but the only thing I’m worried about right now is my own body.”

“So in other words, my body?”

“You’re making it sound more and more like I’m the disposable tool here.”

“If I’m being honest, part of me thinks that I don’t have to apologize for a near-miss as minor as that given how good your body is at healing itself.”

“I hope you don’t think that honesty can get you out of any situation!”

A frightening girl.

Had I put myself in a fairly dangerous situation by being alone in these ruins, in the middle of the night, with someone this terrifying?

Still, she’d responded to my sudden request for her presence─and come running, giddy with joy. I should’ve been thanking her.

Especially when I considered what was to come.

What I was about to request of her.

“Yikes, you even chipped my teeth a little.”

I’d felt something like pebbles inside my mouth and spat them out, only to find fragments of my own tooth.

“Even if I’m only a mockery of one, shattering a vampire’s fang with a knee? What exactly is up with you?”

“It’s only because you’re not getting enough calcium in your daily diet.”

Kanbaru was not going to apologize.

I needed some calcium asap. Not because of anything to do with my teeth, just to hold back my anger.

“You should learn from me. I’ve never once gotten a cavity, and I can open most bottles with my teeth.”

“Don’t open bottles with your teeth.”

“But that shampoo I had to deal with the other day was a formidable foe.”

“I don’t even want to think about a situation that requires you to open a bottle of shampoo with your mouth.”

Naked in the bath and chomping on a bottle of shampoo─what kind of a cavewoman did I have for a junior?

True, a chipped tooth wasn’t an issue, it’d heal soon enough─but while I had a vampire’s powers of regeneration, a mockery is only a mockery at the end of the day.

What’s more.

As I was now─I’d been stripped of even that mockery of an ability. It did seem better to wait to introduce this fact to Kanbaru. I didn’t want to worry her by bringing it up out of nowhere, and it was a somewhat complicated story…

I looked at her again.

She wore her grown-out hair in two tufts that reached her shoulders over her track jacket. She looked like she was in the middle of a jog, but there wasn’t a drop of sweat on her, nor was her breathing belabored. She must’ve run all the way (with all the extra momentum leading to that knee strike), but that’s a former star of the basketball team for you. It took more than a full sprint to make her tired, though you’ve got to wonder what it would take to tire out someone who doesn’t get tired from a full sprint.

With her hair grown out, she looked a little less boyish than when I first met her, but the bandage wrapped around her left arm was still an odd note. As was the true nature of her hidden arm, ostensibly injured in an accident during practice─

“Hm? What’s the matter, my dear senior? Why’re you suddenly leering at my proportions?”

“I’m not.”

“Huh? If you aren’t, what of mine are you looking at? What do I have worth a look other than my proportions?”

“I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean, but stop being so modest. You’re Naoetsu High’s star athlete.”

“I’ve retired.”

“As someone whose life is threatened day and night by the members of your fan club, I find that hard to accept.”

The posse included my own little sister (bigger one). Your own flesh and blood being after your life is a truly gloomy thing.

“Heheh. No need to leer at me. Don’t you worry when it comes to me.”

“? Worry? ? Who said I was worried about you?”

“Oh, stop playing stupid. Minding the details like always. But have a little more faith in your juniors,” Kanbaru chided me. “It’s okay, I made sure to take off my bra.”

“Goddammit, I am worried about you!”

It really hurt to make this retort since my shattered tooth, sharp despite my temporarily broken link with Shinobu, cut up the inside of my mouth and made me spit blood.

The fact that she was wearing a track jacket, though, gave me quiet relief. At least she hadn’t mistaken this for some kind of tryst…

“It might be hard to see because it’s made of regrettably thick material, but I, Suruga Kanbaru, cannot lie to her senior. From my waist up, my bare skin is currently in contact with my jacket.”

“What about your waist down? You’re making me worry.”

“In that case, I wouldn’t mind unzipping right now. I, Suruga Kanbaru, have nothing to hide.”

“You keep on saying ‘I, Suruga Kanbaru’ like you’re so proud of yourself today, but personally, I think you ought to stay anonymous until you learn what it means to have discretion.”

“I know what it means to have discretion. Who do you take me for?”

“I wonder if you even know what it means to have a sense of shame.”

“What’s the matter? You seem so dissatisfied. Oh, wait. Are you in the camp of people who like to undo a girl’s bra themselves?”

“Camp? This isn’t some kind of ideological war.”

“Oh, so that’s what it is. How ironic. By taking off my bra, I took myself off your list of potential romantic partners.”

“I’d say you’ve taken yourself off the path of all that is right.”

A line that might sound pretty cool on its own.

But I was just scolding my bra-less junior.

“What? But why else would you want to meet me at a place like this, at this hour?”

“‘Why else’? What kind of why are you thinking about?”

“You finally feel ready to accept my chastity, right?”

“Right no!”

My calcium deficiency was starting to affect my ability to form sentences.

And that’s why she got so excited that she kneed me in my cheek?

“I know this is your first appearance in a while, Kanbaru, but aren’t you acting a little too excited?”

“Maybe I am. I never imagined I’d have to go this long without taking the stage. I was starting to worry that I’d done something wrong.”

“Well, it’d be hard to say that you haven’t…”

Not when her every word was so dangerous.

In a way, she was a far more dangerous character than Shinobu.

“The rules of basketball kept on changing while I was waiting my turn. Not just the rules, in fact, they changed the entire court. Even I was shocked by that one.”

“And what about me? We’ve been wasting so much time that the entire college admissions process is gonna change before I graduate…”

Oops. A little too meta?

Let’s get back on track.

“Anyway, I don’t intend on taking your chastity.”

“Aw, that sucks.”

“Is that really going to be your reaction? Do you really have to put it that way?”

“Even so. You invited a young lady, which is to say a girl, here. An abandoned location. In the middle of the night. All on her own. With a suggestive text message. At that moment, I think, you forfeited the right to act surprised, about being taken that way.”

“Agh…”

What could I possibly say to that?

All of those commas and short sentences?

Whether or not my message was suggestive, as someone with a girlfriend to whom I’ve promised my future, I guess I should’ve done everything I could to avoid such a misunderstanding. In fact, making biweekly visits to the garbage dump known as Kanbaru’s to clean it up was also kind of an issue.

Even if this meeting was mandated by a promise─

“Also, I was going so fast just now that I ended up in a classroom on the third floor and not the second, and there was a bed up there made out of desks. Isn’t that something that you put together?”

“What? I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about… A bed?”

What was going on?

Had someone decided to live here unbeknownst to me?

“Look at you, playing stupid yet again.”

“‘Yet again’? I’m not really the type to play stupid, you know…”

“I think you could say that we’re common-law married at this point? It’d be fine for you to go ahead and take my chastity, right?”

“Right no… Sheesh.”

Common-law married?

Nothing about this girl was common or lawful.

“But listen, Kanbaru. If I’m being serious, the bond that’s our friendship goes beyond the walls of junior and senior, or of man and woman.” Some people may laugh at the thought of a friendship between a man and a woman, but I did feel this way.

“Hm. I’m most honored and grateful to hear that. And, my senior, I completely agree with just about all of it.”

“Just about?”

“I think what I’m feeling, for my part, is lust.”

“Then we’re talking about two entirely different things!”

“A lust that goes beyond the walls of man and woman. In other words, I’d be just as filled as lust for you even if I was a boy. There’s not a day that goes by when I don’t think that it’s fate.”

“Could you please chill out? For just one day out of the year?”

Good thing she’s a girl, in that case.

Seriously.

“All right,” Kanbaru said, “it’s been a while since I’ve gotten all riled up with you. I’m starting to feel hot, would it be okay if I took off my jacket?”

“Sure, just hang it somewhere around th─wait, no, it’s not! You’re not wearing anything underneath that jacket, right?!”

“Tch. You figured it out.”

“Did you just click your tongue at me? Your senior?!”

“No, but I did use it to lick my lips.”

“That’s even scarier.”

“Or maybe I smacked my lips.”

“Are you thinking about eating me or something? Anyway, keep your jacket on. Um…so let’s get to the reason I asked you to come here,” I got to the point at last.

It almost felt a little too late. I’d have loved to go on joking around with Kanbaru all night─but no, that wouldn’t do.

“Hm. There’s something you wanted to ask me?”

“Yup, there is.”

“I’d convinced myself that it had to do with my chastity, but it seems I jumped to conclusions.”

“That conclusion is so far removed from reality that even you couldn’t get there with a jump. There’s never going to be a day when I’d ask you that.”

For the record, the message I sent Kanbaru that morning read as follows:

“come to second floor classroom tonight at 9 alone i need to ask you something”─I’d like to think of its somewhat poor composition as part of its charm.

You have to consider the situation I was in when I sent it, too.

“What I wanted to ask you…was basically to help me out with something, if you’re willing,” I said, switching to a more serious demeanor. “But if I’m being upfront with you, I’d like you to turn me down─”

“I’d never say no to you!” exclaimed Kanbaru.

I’d thought she might. Anyone could predict her reply.

“How could I, Suruga Kanbaru, ever refuse to meet the demands of my senior Araragi? You could ask me to move heaven and earth, and I’d do it!”

“Okay…” She was looking at me with a glare that could move heaven and earth all on its own, and I was flustered. “Well, it’s not exactly my demand, I’m just an intermediary─what’s more, I can’t really give you many details about this thing I want you to help with…”

“You don’t know the details?”

“Yeah. I don’t know anything.”

My ignorance was probably by design─if I knew more, I might veto it before the request traveled any further, but I didn’t know and couldn’t dismiss it out of hand on Kanbaru’s behalf.

I had to leave it up to her.

I had to, given the nature of the request, too.

“So,” I continued, “if you say no, that’s all there is to it, which is why that’s preferable─but if you insist on helping, I’ll do everything I can to make sure no harm comes to you.”

“Hah! Harm coming to me? There’s no need for you to worry. If you just have to worry, then go ahead and focus on one part of my body, namely my chest area.”

“I’m not going ahead.”

The world doesn’t need a guy who thinks only about the boobs of his juniors. And how would he, anyway? Like, hmm, she’s not wearing a bra today…or something? Not that I knew if the no bra thing was a joke─we’d moved on to the matter at hand before I could ever find out.

Eight or nine out of ten, it was a joke, but Kanbaru just might do something like that, which is why I was so worried, and also why I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.

No, I’m not saying that I couldn’t take my eyes off her boobs.

“If anything, I, Suruga Kanbaru, would feel sad to see you worrying yourself over me. To be specific, about as sad as you’d feel when your favorite musician’s best-of album doesn’t include your favorite song of theirs.”

“That really is specific.”

“Where you end up thinking, ‘Oh, so this artist doesn’t consider that song as one of their best…’”

Kanbaru’s shoulders slumped.

It sounded like a recent real-life occurrence, given her reaction.

But Suruga Kanbaru, with her brisk temperament, soon seemed to get over it. She looked back up and said, “Well, I guess I should just think of it as me noticing the greatness in them that they didn’t notice themselves.”

What a positive person. Positively reckless.

“And so, I’m happy that you’re willing to rely on me, given how reserved you can be with me. Don’t hold yourself back…sorry, don’t hold anything back from me.”

“You at least corrected yourself, but I dunno…”

That said, she just might have figured out what I was going to say.

Hanekawa and Senjogahara were one thing, but I wouldn’t have asked Kanbaru like this unless it was serious. Even she knew that.

Right. Just like the time we visited that rundown shrine.

“If that’s what you wanted to know, I think you already have the answer: I came running here in spite of everything.”

“Yeah─well, I guess so.”

“I just can’t stop wanting to serve you. I came all the way here even though I had a book I wanted to read tonight.”

“…”

Suddenly she was just trying to guilt-trip me.

For all her good manners, she really was rude.

A book she wanted to read?

That was my competition, as her senior? Some book?

“You say that, but books embody human knowledge. No matter how great you are, it’s awfully presumptuous of you to think that you’re a match for human history.”

“No, Kanbaru, I’m not that presumptuous, but can’t your book wait? You don’t have to read it tonight, do you?”

“I could come running to you any time I want, too. Didn’t have to be tonight.”

You’re playing by the same rules, she said.

For someone who wanted to serve me, she was coming off as awfully self-serving.

“And anyway, I bet this book you want to read is one of your boys’ love novels, right?”

“What’s this now? I don’t get to see this every day. One of your predictions missing its mark? Of all the times for your read to be off, it was about a book?”

“Stop trying so hard to sound clever. So, you read other kinds of books?”

“Of course. A wide variety of them.”

Really? Honestly, this surprised me. BL was all I ever dug up when I cleaned her room─but then, she did count Senjogahara as her senior and mentor. Maybe, having learned from that indiscriminate reader, it wasn’t so surprising that Kanbaru read widely.

“That’s how it is now that I’ve retired from the basketball team. I’m working hard every single day and night to broaden my horizons as a person.”

“Wow, Kanbaru. I underestimated you.”

“That’s why I’ve been growing out my hair, too. Think of it as my effort to broaden my options for kinky stuff. Brings a tear to your eye, doesn’t it?”

“It certainly does.”

As her senior, it was enough to make me want to cry.

Still, I absolutely needed to know what kind of books she consumed. I decided to ask her more about her reading habits.

“In that case, Kanbaru. What exactly were you planning on reading tonight?”

“What else? A little something by the great Shugoro Yamamoto.”

What else? I could have come up with a lot of things, but not that. A literary eminence from the last century? Even I, someone who doesn’t read many books, knew the name. I had to admit, I’d underestimated Kanbaru. The likes of me couldn’t hope to compete with the works of Shugoro Yamamoto.

But I didn’t feel particularly frustrated or powerless. If anything, I was glad that she was reading regular and proper books. It looked like I could play the part of a pretty respectable senior.

“Out of curiosity, what by Shugoro Yamamoto? If you think something’s worth reading, I’d like to check it out too.”

“Huh? Well, I have plenty of BL novels I could recommend, in that case.”

“Could we please start off with some Yamamoto?”

“I see. Then,” Kanbaru told me the title of the book, “it’s called Beautiful Girls Take the Lead.”

“Liar!” I screamed. “The great Shugoro Yamamoto writing a book with a title like that?!”

“Hm? He really did, so what am I supposed to say… Though it’s out of print and unavailable in stores lately.”

“…”

Apparently, it wasn’t a lie. My straight-man instincts had gotten the better of me…

Now that I thought about it, didn’t Yamamoto turn down a prestigious prize for a book called Lives of Great Japanese Women or something? Was Beautiful Girls a variation on that?

“It’s a collection of short stories that ran in Shojo Club. Y’hear me? Shojo Club.”

“You’re almost making it sound like an underground work that ran in an underground magazine, but I bet it’s just YA? Something you’d call a light novel these days?”

“Well, light novels these days are a lot like erotica!”

“Please don’t say erotica.”

I didn’t know what else by Yamamoto she’d read, but she must’ve chosen Beautiful Girls Take the Lead because of its title.

In fact, she must’ve bought it by accident.

“By the way, I only feel comfortable saying this now that it’s established,” prefaced Kanbaru, “but something about abbreviating light novels as LN’s feels wrong to me. The same way people from San Francisco don’t like it when you call it San Fran.”

“Say something before it’s established, not afterwards.”

“I don’t want to cause any kind of controversy.”

“You don’t? But yeah, I see what you mean… How should we abbreviate them, then? Novels? That’d be confusing…” Speaking of novels, it seems that some fans of literary fiction don’t like having it called lit-fic─and of course, some people don’t even like the term light novel to begin with.

“A certain nationally beloved anime series might not have become as popular if it had been called San-Fran!”

“Sakuragaoka High School isn’t even in San Francisco, that’d be why. But going back to these girls who take the lead, is it in the sense of, say, leading an army into battle on horseback?”

“Probably. But according to Sigmund Freud, horses are a sexual motif.”

“Most things are, according to Freud.”

I retract my earlier statement.

Kanbaru needed to give me back that gladness I felt for her.

“Apologize. To Shugoro Yamamoto, for reading his work for impure reasons.”

“I know I show you a lot of respect, but I don’t want you bossing me around when it comes to how I read. A work belongs to its readers as soon as it’s released. Shouldn’t we respect individual readers’ freedom to have whatever feelings and intentions they want toward a novel?”

“Oh, now you’re going to take the moral high ground?”

“If anything, introducing the work in a fun and familiar way might encourage younger readers like you, who probably think of Shugoro Yamamoto as a hard-to-approach writer of dry novels, an author that a literary award has been named after, to try picking him up for a change. That’s right, Shugoro Yamamoto’s Beautiful Girls Take the Lead.”

“You’re not wrong, I suppose…”

As someone who’s read none of the man’s work, I’m far from qualified to tell you whether you ought to start with Beautiful Girls Take the Lead, but readers are free to make that choice as well. Some people must even find joy in starting a series with its final volume─though reading a detective novel from its solution first does strike me as a little too free.

“It might cause his sales to spike,” Kanbaru argued. “It might result in a new appreciation for Beautiful Girls Take the Lead.”

“Aren’t little-known books little known for a reason? Isn’t that why it’s out of print and unavailable in stores?”

“Hah. Now that more books are being digitized, we’re entering an era where ‘out of print’ won’t mean much. We’ll prize precisely those books that go out of print. That’s right, I’m Naoetsu High’s very own Biblia Antique Books.”

“I imagine that minors wouldn’t be allowed in.” And any book that features her as the protagonist should have the blurb, Unread by the greats! Never discussed in other works of fiction!

“Hmph. If we’re going down that path, I could come up with plenty of variations. Like, Ignored by the Japan Bookstore Awards! A volume that even a bookseller could never recommend!”

“Actually, I’d like to read that one…”

“How about The gentle horror novel that never sent a single chill down a spine is here at last! or The bizarre work that no one ever discussed online! or The controversial tear-jerker that brought none of its readers to tears, now in paperback!”

“There are a lot of ways to spin negatives…but people aren’t going to overlook all your flaws just because you call yourself controversial. Why do a paperback of a controversial tear-jerker that brought none of its readers to tears? Where’s the demand?”

“You know how it is. You want to hold on to the co-op deal you got for the New In Paperback table…”

“Stop carrying water for publishers.”

“Still. Kanbaru Biblia Antique Books, or Cambrian Antique Books for short, has an impressive selection of products. It’s full of titles that might run afoul of future laws.”

“Then minors aren’t allowed in, after all. The Book Burners are going to torch your place.”

“You never know, I might get to be in a roundtable with Miss Shioriko and Miss Yomiko.”

“A bookseller and a booklover with book puns as names. Why would you be alongside them?”

“For everything else. Who’s going to take care of the remainders?”

“I think I get it now, but…please, don’t say those kinds of things around me.”

“Fine, then why don’t you start your own bookstore? Koyomi Academy’s very own Biblia Antique Books.”

“Hey, I’m just as much of a Naoetsu High student as you! Why do I need to transfer schools to open a used bookstore?! I have to go that far to avoid any competition?!”

Wait, where was that from, though? Koyomi Academy? It felt like I’d heard it before.

“Oh, right. The school from Happy Lesson.”

“Bullseye. I’m impressed you were so quick to remember. There’s my dear senior.”

“Don’t test your seniors. Why am I taking an anime and manga pop quiz? What kind of Magic Academy have I found myself enrolled in? Also, we already made a reference to Happy Lesson once.”

“We can talk about it as many times as we want. I lost my mother, right? No wonder I’m attracted to a story about five teachers barging into a student’s home to become his moms.”

“Kanbaru…” Catching a bittersweet expression on the face of my ever-bold junior, I felt a brief tug at my heartstrings─hold on, no. You can’t bring up something as emotional as your mother’s demise in the middle of inane banter.

“By the way, of his five moms, my favorite is Miss Uzuki Shitenno. What do you think, senpai?”

“You’d move this conversation forward? Miss Shitenno looks the least motherly of them all.”

“Don’t I get to have some input about what seems motherly to me?”

“As if you ever consider anyone else’s.”

“Hm? What’s the matter, don’t tell me you’re a fan of Miss Fumitsuki Nanakorobi.”

“She’s not one of the mommy-teachers.”

Setting traps, eh?

“Anyway, this is how you do it,” my junior declared. “Keep up this kind of grassroots activism, and we’ll get to see a Blu-ray box set go on sale one day. Heheheh, Kanbaru Biblia Antique Books is going to have that one right on its new video releases shelf.”

“Just to make sure, you know we don’t have that kind of influence?”

Uh, what were we discussing again? We’d been chatting about beautiful young fictional men and women for long enough…

Oh, right.

Kanbaru had refused to turn down my request, as I’d feared─fine, then. I’d just have to prepare myself for what was to come.

And anyway.

When I thought about it, I had no right to put a stop on this─and even less of an ability to do so. Were I to avoid Kanbaru, I knew what she would do.

She would undoubtedly contact my junior through some other route─in which case, I felt better about that contact happening in a place where I could see it.

What I might or might not be able to do was a different question altogether. Just because you can see something happening doesn’t mean you can reach out and get involved in it…

“Okay, Kanbaru. So about this request─sorry to be this abrupt about it, but could you follow me?”

“Hm? Oh, there’s nothing for us to do here?”

“Yeah, I only used it as a meeting place.”

“Huh… Then why not just meet at one of our homes?”

Her vague doubt, now that she mentioned it, was on the mark. Wait, why did I choose this abandoned cram school as our meeting place again?

I wanted to say there was something…

“Well, it doesn’t matter,” Kanbaru said. “I won’t sweat the details─I’ll go anywhere. Don’t worry, I composed my will and testament.”

“That’s a little scary?!”

Yikes, her grandparents might find what surely read like a suicide note!

“A will and testament written up by a minor?”

“It starts, By the time you read this letter, I doubt I am still of this world.”

“Very romantic, but…”

How uncool she’d look when they found out she was still of this world.

“Kanbaru, there’s no need for you to act that way. We’re just going to another meeting spot. A rendezvous, I guess─there’s someone I want you to meet.”

“Really, now. I can’t believe you sometimes. So, how’d you talk me up to get her interested? My grades? My connections? How popular I am?”

“Rendezvous as in meet, not as in date. She said she wanted an introduction to you, so…”

“Hmm. Fine. If that’s what you say, it’s as good as gold.”

“I wish you’d trust me only half as much as you do…but it’ll be okay.” I was trying to soothe her nerves with empty words. “At least, this isn’t me playing matchmaker or middleman for some boy or girl who’s interested in confessing to you.”

“I wouldn’t mind an introduction like that, though. I’d just turn them down.”

“…”

She took after her esteemed senior Senjogahara when it came to how unconcerned she was about that sort of thing.

How she didn’t treat everyone the way she treated me put me against the wall in its own way.

I’d have almost preferred to introduce Kanbaru to some boy or girl over having to introduce her to someone like her. I could use some empty words myself.

“Of course,” Kanbaru said, “it’d be different if the punch line ends up being: And the person I want to introduce you to…is me!”

“Stop trying to sneak your way into a romantic relationship with me. Just how much of a man-eater are you?”

“Oh, I don’t want a romantic relationship. Just a physical one. As a man-eater, I merely seek prey.”

“You’re sending a shiver down my spine.”

“I don’t believe in emotional connections.”

“Who hurt you… Geez, what even goes through your mind as you live life?”

“I think you ought to go to a hospital to get yourself checked out if you think that anything goes through my mind,” Kanbaru answered with a smile.

A stylish line, but little more. Doesn’t work unless the right person says it…

“Let’s get back on track,” she urged.

I was glad she realized we’d gotten off of it.

“Okie dokie, my senior Araragi. I get what’s going on now. So let’s get going, it’s time for me to meet this person I don’t know in a location I don’t know!”

“You really are incredible, you know that?”

Just so bold. So bold that maybe she could stand toe-to-toe with her, a person I was only ever overwhelmed by.

“And away we go!”

Then─

Right as Kanbaru used her bandaged left arm to pump her fist, it happened.