Monogatari Series - Volume 18 - Chapter 1.31

031

“Estimating based on your height, I’d say that your stride length is about seventy-two centimeters. In other words, ten steps would be seven meters and twenty centimeters. Just as you’d use one set of strategies to run a marathon and another to run a hundred-meter dash, you can use yet another set of strategies to run a seven-meter sprint─but in this case, the real issue might be how to ensure you have enough stamina left over.”

Kanbaru explained this (using the metric system) as she touched and squished my legs─it felt more like a massage than some sort of warmup, but she was the expert here.

“What do you mean, the real issue?”

“It’s not all over once you finish the race─you still have to grab the bamboo sword and get a strike in, don’t you?”

“Oh. Right.”

Even if I won our footrace and was the first to grab the hilt, that wouldn’t matter if I then collapsed in exhaustion─similarly, if I focused only on speed and carried too much momentum, there was the strong possibility that I’d overshoot the sword sticking out of the ground. Then what would I do? It’d be like putting the cart before the horse, or rather, I’d just be making an ass of myself.

“So I’ll have to accelerate and decelerate correctly in the space of just seven meters… Maybe I should practice?”

“No, I don’t think you should.”

“Because we’d be revealing our hand to the opponent?”

I glanced over at the first Aberration Slayer─he wasn’t doing much of anything in particular. He just sat there on the stand for morning announcements where the bamboo sword had been until moments earlier, his arms crossed like a warrior preparing for battle. If you stood a flag and flew a banner behind him, it’d be a scene straight out of the Warring States period.

“It doesn’t look to me like he’s paying much attention to us,” I said.

“It’s not about our hand or anything. You wouldn’t be able to do an all-out sprint when the time came if you also did some for practice.”

“Oh, right.”

“I know I just said your stride was seventy-two centimeters, but that’s when you’re walking. It’d probably go up to eighty running─which means you’d arrive at the seventy-two-centimeter mark in exactly nine steps. If you count your steps as you run, that should serve as a rough guide─though it’d only be a rough one.”

“Okay. So I need to count.”

“1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13.”

“Why the Fibonacci Sequence again?”

“6, 0, 8, 6, 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 0, 2, 3, 8, 3, 7, 8, 9, 8, 9, 6, 7, 0, 3, 7, 1, 7, 3, 4, 2, 4, 3, 1, 6, 9, 6, 2, 2, 6, 5, 7, 8, 3, 0, 7, 7, 3, 3, 5, 1, 8, 8, 9, 7, 0, 5, 2, 8, 3, 2, 4, 8, 6, 0, 5, 1, 2, 7, 9, 1, 6, 9, 1, 2, 6, 4.”

“Why a sublime number?”

“How did you know that?”

“If anything, how did you say that?”

“I guessed about half of them. Did I get it right?”

“Yeah. Amazing.”

Talk about luck.

Too much luck, in fact.

Forget any numbers, she was the sublime one here.

In any case, nine steps. I couldn’t remember where I’d heard it, but nine steps was, coincidentally enough, the amount of space kendo practitioners opened between one another.

“So one rough standard could be to accelerate during the first three, go at full speed during the middle three, and slow down during the final three.”

“Okay… By the way, he’s not going to be 7.2 meters away, right? It’s hard to tell because of the armor, but how far away do you think someone his size will be?”

Kanbaru must have estimated my stride based on my height─and while the first Aberration Slayer looked shorter than me when I saw him as a boy this morning, that of course was irrelevant now.

You’d think that the average height four centuries ago was lower, but he seemed pretty big to me given the size of his armor. That boy couldn’t possibly be inside that armor as-is─though from the looks of it, the suit was easily seven feet tall…

Maybe about the size of Dramaturgy?

Now that I thought about it, I fought that vampire hunter on this field too…

“Umm.” Kanbaru faced the stand and eyeballed him. “It’s kinda hard to guess since he’s sitting, but…I’d say about a one-meter stride, 1.1 meters running?”

“A one-meter stride─so ten meters in ten steps?”

Giving me a three-meter advantage. It sounded like a negligible distance but was pretty significant in an ultra-short sprint─not to mention my opponent’s full suit of armor.

“Of course, that’s not set in stone. He could waddle along with tiny little steps.”

“Little steps… I think he has a little more dignity than that.”

Then again, there was no real reason to go out of our way and take extra-long strides…

I guess our pride guaranteed our good behavior here.

“Oh, and another thing. Be careful not to twist your feet around when you turn after the ten steps. The trick is to turn around with your non-dominant foot as the axis, not your torso. Like this,” Kanbaru said, demonstrating with a twirl.

This was a basketball move, not anything to do with running, but seeing it up close was indeed helpful─of course, the armored warrior by the stand got to see this move as well, but you couldn’t pull off anything so light-footed while wearing heavy armor.

“Okay. That’s about all I can teach you on the spot, but I think what’s really important here is the swordplay after you grab that blade. Even if you get it, all your hard work will be for nothing if he dodges your attack and takes it from you, then uses it to smack you.”

“You’re right─but as far as that goes, what will be, will be. I’d be asking for too much from you otherwise.”

“Oh? I’d even switch in for you if I could.”

“You really are loyal, you know that?”

True, our chances of victory seemed like they’d be far higher if I let Kanbaru fight this duel for me─but of course I couldn’t do that. I was happy to hear her say it, but…

I wanted a switch to flip inside of me.

“In that case, why don’t I lend you my shoes? We wear the same size, right?”

“Oh, thanks…”

“It’s normally risky to wear shoes you’re not used to, but these have got to be better than those weird things you’re wearing right now.”

“Don’t call them weird.”

“Those shoes of yours that have to be tied in a unique way.”

“I’m the only one to blame for how my shoes are tied.”

“Here,” she said, already handing me her shoes─well, whether or not my shoes were strange, hers did seem a lot easier to run in. I decided to take her up on her kind offer.

I was wearing Kanbaru’s track jacket, and I was wearing her shoes. I must have seemed like a real Kanbaru freak right about now. Maybe I needed to ask Karen how to join the fan club.

“Ack, they’re all warm on the inside…”

“I kept them warm for you.”

“Who are you, Hideyoshi Toyotomi?”

“Ooh, Araragi-senpai’s weird shoes…”

“Stop highlighting the fact they’re weird.” Especially if she was also highlighting that they were mine.

“My fatigue just melts away when I wear these. I feel so elevated that I might just level up.”

“I’m pretty sure that my shoes aren’t a Dragon Quest item… And hold on, do you actually wear a bigger shoe size than me?”

With this, I’d received my running instruction as well as a pair of shoes, and I’d had a good bit of fun on top. The time was now 7:55 p.m.─just five minutes until the duel.

It was at this moment that my cell phone rang─not because of an incoming call, but because a message had arrived.

“Really? What awful manners. You need to turn your phone off during a duel, you know,” Episode grumbled from afar─I’d never heard anything about dueling manners, but I couldn’t say anything back to him, either.

I was almost glad my phone rang now, because I’d have lost the duel for sure if it had gone off as I ran my ten paces. I went to check what it said before switching off the power, assuming either Karen or Tsukihi was warning me about the punishment awaiting me once I got back home.

Of all the people, it had been sent by Tsubasa Hanekawa.