Monogatari Series - Volume 18 - Chapter 1.10

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I’d actually gotten a call through, only for her to hang up on me─I considered calling back, but there didn’t seem to be much point in that. I doubted she’d go so far as to ignore me, but she’d probably give me the same answer─and she surely wouldn’t give us any details about this job that I’d apparently shined a beam of hope or whatever on.

I mean, of course I’d have preferred to discuss it face-to-face too… Anyway, I shut my phone and turned to Kanbaru.

Her stretching, or possibly her warming up, had turned into some yoga-like pose during the time I’d turned away from her. It left me speechless. I never knew the human body could stretch to those kinds of angles.

“Oh, finish your call?”

It seemed she hadn’t listened to our conversation, out of politeness─though it could also have been a lack of interest. When something didn’t interest Kanbaru, she really wasn’t interested.

“That expression, too. I can tell you have a task for your slave.”

“I don’t own any slaves…”

“Then there’s no need for my opinion? How encouraging.”

“Wait, there is─”

Miss Gaen hadn’t given me any advice.

However, if you interpreted her words favorably, Kanbaru held the key to escaping this crisis (or at least, this mysterious situation where we were lost). Even if I couldn’t stop us from going in circles, Kanbaru could─well, true.

To repeat myself, it isn’t as if Miss Gaen wanted me to introduce Kanbaru to her because she had a particular interest in meeting her niece after their many years apart. She’d gotten Kanbaru mixed up in exchange for helping us because her niece’s arm was required to complete a job.

When Miss Gaen mentioned Kanbaru’s arm, I’d taken her words at face value. In other words, she needed Kanbaru’s left arm, or her monster’s paw─but if you took it less literally, as a helping hand from Kanbaru, then relying on her to deal with an aberrational phenomenon made sense.

After all, she hadn’t even hesitated to stand up against the phenomenon that was the armored warrior─the question was whether that showed her recklessness or her caliber.

Whatever the case, there was no longer any point in me keeping up appearances as her senior. I needed to look at Kanbaru as neither my junior nor my slave but as my partner and work with her to move forward.

“─I do need it. If you have any opinions, Kanbaru, I’d like them.”

“Ohh? Is that all you’d like from me? Opinions?” Kanbaru smirked. “I wouldn’t mind showing you my boobs if you so desire.”

“I don’t desire so. Why are you saying that with a smirk on your face? I know it’s late at night, but could you stop it with this after-dark mood?”

“That’s not it. I had a feeling tonight would be a late one from the moment I got that invitation from you. I made sure to get a lot of sleep at school today.”

“So you aren’t running on fumes, this is you on a full tank?”

That would be tough on me in its own way… But in any case.

I changed the subject and asked Kanbaru if she had any good ideas for beating this situation.

“You do hear it said that the best thing to do when you get lost is to stop moving,” Kanbaru said, exiting her yoga pose to walk behind me. I thought the effect she was going for was a detective walking in circles, but she stopped once she got behind me─and tried to jump onto my back.

I dodged her.

“Huh? Why’d you move?”

“Why are you acting like piggyback is the new normal?”

“Well, it looked like you finished your call.”

“Carrying on my back someone who’s capable of leaping onto it? Even if I hypothetically did agree, can we at least figure out what we’re doing first? You don’t have a reserved seat on my back, okay?”

“Right. It’s coach class.” Kanbaru gave up on my back with those possibly fighting words─before continuing, “The rule about staying put doesn’t necessarily hold if you have a destination… I’m going to ask this just to make sure there aren’t any misunderstandings here, but is it okay for me to assume that this is similar to the experience you had of being lost before? You aren’t just lost, right? This is some kind of aberrational phenomenon.”

“Yeah…that’s what I think.” I didn’t have proof yet, but it seemed like we could say that given Miss Gaen’s reaction. “That said, I don’t think it’s the exact same as my past experience… I guess you could say the details are different?”

“Hmm. Out of curiosity, how did you handle the situation in May?”

“Umm…”

For someone preparing to take college entrance exams, I had very little confidence in my memory. The answer didn’t come to me on the spot, but eventually I remembered how. The only problem was that we couldn’t use the method this time around.

For a number of reasons, but the biggest being: having to be on Senjogahara’s level at the very least when it comes to making use of a cell phone (a map app). Both Kanbaru and I were hopeless when it came to digital devices─unlike me, Kanbaru did now have a smartphone (she likes new things), but that didn’t matter unless she was proficient in its use.

I explained to Kanbaru the way I dealt with the Lost Cow, thinking it might come in handy.

She heard me out, a grave expression on her face.

“Hmm,” she looked to the side.

Could she have thought of something? No, that would be far too much to expect from her this early. Miss Gaen may have built her up in my mind, but at the end of the day, Kanbaru was a basketball player, not an expert on aberrations.

Regardless of who her mother or relatives were…

Regardless of her left arm.

Just as I decided that I, with my greater experience regarding aberrational phenomena, needed to take the lead in coming up with a solution and opened my mouth─

“My senior Araragi,” she said. “Have you heard this story before?”

Still looking to the side.

“You know those bicycles that the police ride? It’s about those.”

“Umm…no, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t heard any interesting stories about police bicycles.”

“They don’t have locks on them.”

“What? Really? Not on either of the wheels?”

“Not one or the other. They’re kept unlocked so that they can go on the move as soon as something happens─and it’s possible because there’s no need to lock them. No one would dare steal a police bicycle.”

“Huh…”

I didn’t know.

But now that she mentioned it, it made perfect sense.

What a neat story─but a moment after I found myself convinced…

“Of course, that’s just a lie,” Kanbaru continued.

“A lie?! So it really is just a neat story?!”

“Of course it’s a lie. Think of how bad it’d be if someone stole a police bicycle and used it for something bad. Those bikes need to be protected more than anything.”

“…”

I was the one who’d been conned, so why did it feel like I was being scolded? What a fine lie, though. If it were about police cars or motorcycles, no one would believe it.

“Okay, but why bring that up now? You’re not going to suggest that we find a police station and ask for directions, are you?”

“Oh, no. Something completely unrelated just popped into my mind. I thought I wouldn’t forget it if I went ahead and told you about it.”

“Don’t use me as your personal scratchpad!”

Nor be thinking of completely unrelated things─we were just lost, but it was also an emergency!

“Sorry, sorry,” Kanbaru casually apologized, her smile betraying no signs of guilt whatsoever. “I was bored because I came up with an easy way to claw our way out of this fix.”

“Bored or not─wait, what? A way to claw our way out?”

“Yeah,” she nodded.

Then Kanbaru moved─to an electric pole.

One nearby, the kind you found anywhere in town─then she reached a hand out to it. No, not just a hand─all four of her limbs.

Truly looking like a monkey as she made use of her arms and legs to glide up the pole.

“You know, this isn’t an electric pole. It’s a telephone pole.”

“It doesn’t matter!”

“It does. I could get electrocuted if it was an electric pole.”

Kanbaru climbed all the way to the top of the electric, sorry, telephone pole like it was something you might find in a playground, all while talking (which is to say with ease)─then climbed down just as quickly after looking around.

It all happened in the blink of an eye.

Once complete, the purpose of these actions was clear as day─she must have gotten a look at the lay of the land from her high vantage point up at the top of the pole. That, or perhaps she’d even seen the park we were trying to get to─in either case, a full-grown high schooler climbing a telephone pole was bizarre enough of an act to have the police called on you. It was dangerous whether or not there was any risk of being electrocuted.

You only look cool climbing high and scowling down on the landscape below if it’s an anime.

“Okay, I got it. This way.”

Having landed, Kanbaru pointed in the direction she seemed to have just confirmed.

“I don’t know where the park is, but if it’s near where Senjogahara-senpai’s home used to be, my nose should be able to point me most of the way there─let’s go.”

“Not your eyes but your nose… And can we really?”

While I hadn’t gotten the idea to climb a telephone pole, confirming the direction we needed to travel in was no different from using road signs and residential maps─which hadn’t kept us from getting lost. No matter how accurate maps or GPS might be, we’d never reach our destination if our basic sense of direction was off─but.

Just as I thought to inform Kanbaru of this fact that went without saying, she was already doing something else─there was no need to scramble up anything this time around.

All she needed was a small running start and a leap to jump onto the concrete block wall behind the pole─and once there, she turned to offer me her hand.

“Here, senpai.”

“Wh-What are you, a ninja?”

How could anyone be so agile?

Okay, I knew quite well just how agile Kanbaru could be─the question was why she’d jumped on top of a wall.

And why she was offering me a hand.

Did she want me to climb up there, or what?

“Hm? Well, you said this Lost Cow aberration leads people on the street astray, right?”

Kanbaru spoke as though she was giving me a simple, unshakable answer, and the look on her face also said that it was obvious.

“All we have to do in that case is not walk on the street.”