Monogatari Series - Volume 19 - Chapter 6.04

004

And so, the next day.

March fourteenth.

White Day, or Einstein Day.

The day of my last date as a high schooler.

Allow me to take this opportunity to make a note of something, since there just might be people who don’t know this, or have forgotten. I was terribly anxious about Senjogahara’s date plan because our first date, also planned by her, back in June, included the shocking element that was Daddy Senjogahara-as-chaperone.

Her excuse, or reason, was that Daddy could drive us promptly to that date’s distant location, but I don’t think I need to bother describing just how oppressive the enclosed space of an automobile felt as I sat there with my girlfriend and her father, who I was meeting for the first time. The three of us, all alone…

No, not just the three of us. At one point, I was left alone with just Daddy─chills still run down my spine when I think back to that.

Of course, that first date had good moments, and it was a positive memory overall. Still, I can’t deny that it traumatized me in some way.

Senjogahara wouldn’t recycle that plan, though. Even if she did spring the same surprise on me, I’d already met her father a number of times since then, going so far as to speak to him. I felt confident I’d be able to handle myself better.

Yes. I’d grown.

I hadn’t been asleep in bed for the six months I’d been prohibited from going on dates─even if Daddy were to chaperone us again, even if Grandma and Grandpa came along to make it a family affair, I’d stay cool as a cucumber.

You’re no match for me, Hitagi Senjogahara.

With that spirit in my heart, I arrived at the Tamikura Apartments, her residence, at nine in the morning on March fourteenth─I walked there, since both of my bikes had been totaled, and had left with a good bit of time to spare, but being on the lookout for Ononoki tailing me had slowed my journey.

The main event is only starting, so I’m skipping over everything that happened before my departure, but Karen left even earlier to get to her hundred-man kumite, while Tsukihi planned on visiting Sengoku in the afternoon.

The Araragi siblings were keeping busy today─in any case, I arrived at the Tamikura Apartments prepared, which is why I wasn’t too shaken to see a car parked outside that I didn’t recall seeing before.

Judging by its license plate, it was a rental.

“…”

I wasn’t shaken, but it silenced me.

Sheesh, looks like another unusual date in store for me today, I thought as I braced anew. I’d accept it all, show my broadmindedness, and recaptivate my girlfriend after having showed her nothing but my lame side for a while.

Naturally, this was assuming that I’d ever captivated her in the first place, but I was gonna go ahead and make that assumption whatever lay in store for me. That said, I still couldn’t begin to fathom why she’d asked for us to start seeing each other that day in that park…

Having passed by the 4WD without paying it any mind, which is to say pretending not to see it, I knocked on the second-floor door to Room 201, where the Senjogaharas lived.

“Welcome to a wonderful day.”

Appearing with a mysterious and pretentious line, Senjogahara looked fairly dressed up─a fully coordinated outfit based around the color white. Though she’d taken the opportunity during summer break to change her hairstyle from long to short, a good amount of time had passed. It was the first time in a while I’d seen her wearing her hair braided.

A French braid, at that.

How fresh!

“I did this with Miss Hanekawa’s old look in mind.”

“Again, the way you express your friendship is a lot to handle…”

“I thought you might appreciate it, too, if I started looking more and more like her.”

“As is your statement just now…”

I didn’t want to think too much about it.

Her view of the world was too involved for me.

“I’d like to cut loose and enjoy today,” she explained. “I want my remarks to create a sense of freedom, of there being no future.”

“I’m fine with freedom, but the no future part? The future is exactly where we’re trying to head next.”

“Only if you’re accepted, right? If not, there’s a chance we’ll be heading into the past.”

“…”

Coming from someone who sailed right into college on a recommendation, her digs had a rich savor.

“What’s the big deal?” she said. “We can only enjoy lighthearted gags about college exams for another few days, until the acceptance results are out.”

“It’ll be no laughing matter if I really got rejected. Forget about gags, I’d feel like puking.”

“All right, time to go. I need to be back by seven tonight, I can’t keep my dad waiting. We need to wrap this up, every second counts.”

“Um, could you not treat your dinner with your dad as today’s main event? Or you can, but just don’t mention it.”

“Hmph. Then why don’t you shut me up with a kiss?”

“…”

Maybe I did need to shut her up.

Or so I thought, but reading into her words, I found a slight discrepancy with my current take on the situation─she needed to be back? He’d be waiting?

A ride in the car parked in front with Daddy Senjogahara─wasn’t in store for us?

I’d even imagined a worst-case scenario: the three of us would go out during the day, and I’d have to leave on my own once it was time for dinner…but no?

Did the car parked outside have nothing to do with us? Did it belong to someone else living in these apartments? That did seem reasonable─but I was dealing with Hitagi Senjogahara here.

Though reformed, an unpredictable girl.

She shot past my worst-case scenario─coming out of her unit with car keys twirling around her fingertips.

Were we traveling in that 4WD after all? Who was going to sit behind the wheel, with those keys?

“Come on, ride shotgun,” Senjogahara said, getting into the driver’s seat.

The driver’s seat.

Then she buckled up.

Ah, a fine demonstration of a driver respecting traffic rules─and well, since she had the keys, it was only natural for her to get in on the driver’s side. No mystery there.

But! Even so!

“What? Whaat? Whaaat?! Hold-on-Gahara, wait wait wait wait. This is just a guess, but could it maybe, possibly, somehow be that you’re going to be driving us today?! You’ll be behind the wheel?! Hitagi Driver-Gahara?!”

“Yes,” she simply nodded.

She clearly had no interest in prolonging this exchange, but I wouldn’t have overreacted in the first place if that was enough to make me retreat with an is that so, then please drive safe today.

This was, in a way, more shocking than going to hell.

Her? Driving? I felt more prepared to accept her dad driving us than this!

“Why are you acting so agitated? I’m buckled in as you can see.”

“Buckled in or bucking it out?”

I was so shaken that I was talking strange.

I could feel all my mental prep vanishing into thin air─no one else was in the car so we’d be the only ones for the date, but I found myself sincerely wishing that a third party would appear, which is to say a different driver.

“This is buck-crazy, your date plan is going on a drive without a license? You’re joking, right? You’re only trying to surprise me with this, and we’re about to get out of the car, right?! It’s just some sort of show of hospitality, a refreshing drink you’ve prepared for a guest? We’re going to do as proper high school students do and get on the bus, yes?!”

“You know better than anyone how much I hate jokes, Araragi.”

Um, no? I knew better than anyone how much she loved jokes─nasty ones in bad taste at that…

“And how very unpleasant of you to assume that I’ll be driving without a license.”

“What?”

“Ta-daaa.”

And with that─she took a card out of her pocket.

Providing her own sound effects.

An object one would call a driver’s license.

Hitagi Senjogahara.

Her name printed on it, alongside a photo of her face─and not an automatic transmission-only license, but a full one. A card signifying that its owner may drive on public streets in accordance with Japan’s Road Traffic Act.

“Heh, surprised? While you were hard at work studying for your entrance exams, I was hard at work studying for the license test.”

“…”

Was I surprised? Yes, yes indeed─it blew away every word I knew and every fact I’d stuffed into my brain over the course of my exam prep.

She’d been going for a driver’s license?! And hiding it from me?!

“I passed on my first try,” she boasted with a smug smile.

Praise me! Praise me, every inch of her body seemed to say─and as her boyfriend, I of course wanted to laud my girlfriend’s achievements. Nor had I fought my battle against my exams alone. I wanted us to share our trials and tribulations, but unfortunately common sense came first.

Hold on, hold on, hold on! Not having a license was better in that case!

“D-D-Do you even know the school rules?” I asked her.

“Of course I do, I aced the written portion. Traffic is restricted around schools, namely school zones, during the mornings and afternoons.”

“I’m not trying to test you on the Road Traffic Act!”

Those were the road rules.

Naoetsu High’s school rules─or most prep schools, as far as I knew─strictly prohibited obtaining a driver’s license.

As a high school senior born on July seventh, Senjogahara might already be eighteen, old enough to be granted a driver’s license, but…that didn’t mean she should do something as dangerous and nonsensical as getting one as a student.

Her recommendation-based university acceptance could be rescinded. In fact, an atrocity of this level jeopardized her graduation─I couldn’t believe it. People out there really tried that? And one of those people was my girlfriend?

How do I put this? I know I’ve gone on about how she was reformed─but how do I put this, what can I say? She was a legit delinquent against whom I paled in comparison.

“Wow,” I breathed. “You weren’t kidding about the no future part… I might end up going to college all by myself now. I’ve gone all the way around and done a backflip to come to the point where I’m impressed by what you’ve done, but why would you ever do this?”

“We didn’t have to go to school during third term, and I was just so bored that I didn’t know what else to do?” replied Senjogahara, her head tilted.

My girlfriend was living proof that idle hands are the devil’s workshop.

“And I thought I’d go ahead and get a license because you wouldn’t be able to─though it seems that was an unnecessary concern.”

“?”

I didn’t quite understand what she was saying. I wouldn’t be able to? How rude─I thought, but soon saw her point.

Not showing up in photographs, until just the other day, had been one symptom of my growing vampirism. Thus, I would never be issued a driver’s license─and Senjogahara must have fretted over that fact in her own unique way.

In that sense, I couldn’t scold her about her antics─wait, no, scratch that.

Emotional reasons didn’t cut it.

Even when the emotion was love.

Getting a license as a high school student was still rash…putting a car before her courses, if it kept her from graduating.

“Don’t worry,” she said, “in that case I’ll just break up with you and hang out with Kanbaru.”

“Don’t talk so casually about breaking up with me. And Kanbaru would be flabbergasted if that happened. You and her in the same year?”

“I think she’d simply be happy,” Senjogahara said without a hint of remorse─she just wasn’t going to feel any over this matter.

I needed to be the one to back down.

One more day until graduation… I just had to pray that our school didn’t find out─and while I wasn’t sure if it’d be possible after this start, I decided to focus on enjoying today.

That’s also called not thinking, but there’s a lot of thinking in this world that you’d rather not do.

“Don’t forget to buckle up after all that talk about the rules, Araragi.”

“Yeah, I know… I’m not brave enough to sit in a new driver’s car without a seatbelt. I might be known as a raging bull, but even I feel like the China shop owner right now. In fact, I’d sit in a child seat if I could…”

A fresh concern crossed my mind.

“By the way, you’re going to tell me where we’re going in advance this time, right? It’s not that I don’t trust you, but if you want us to go somewhere far like that observatory again, I’m doing everything I can to stop you. I’m destroying that steering wheel.”

“It’d be a problem if you did, since this is a rental car. Relax, I don’t plan on going anywhere that far─and there’d be no point in going to an observatory during the day. Dude, you’re dead.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said use your head.”

“…”

Her sense-of-freedom remarks could be pretty scary… It felt more like reckless abandon.

“So, where are we going? What’s our destino?”

“A planetarium,” Senjogahara told me flat out, when I thought she’d toy with me─well, I guess she couldn’t hide it anymore because she was entering our destination into the car GPS.

“A planetarium?”

“Right. One of the world’s many planetaria,” she used a plural form that I never imagined I’d hear as she stepped on the gas.

And with that.

Our terrifying date drive began.