Monogatari Series - Volume 19 - Chapter 6.05

005

Though I said terrifying, fortunately Senjogahara was right to be proud of passing on her first try. There were no flaws in her technique─at least from my passenger-seat perspective.

No flaws.

Or maybe flawless─knowing Hanekawa messed up my judgment, not to mention my intense first impression of Senjogahara, but believe it or not, my girlfriend was a bit of a top-spec perfect superhuman herself.

Even the way she changed gears looked stylish.

Renting a car with a manual transmission felt like a sort of statement─and that seemed like the difference here between Hitagi Senjogahara and the humble and modest Hanekawa.

Speaking of skill and tact, I kept talking to her about the topic and learned that despite what she said, she’d at least prepared some countermeasures in case our school discovered her acquisition of a driver’s license─in particular, she’d shield herself with a good cause if need be and tell them it was to help her struggling family finances.

Her willingness to use her own complexes to her advantage was, to be honest, something I admired…but what was I doing, being the one recaptivated here?

I didn’t want to talk too much while she was driving, so I was quiet in the passenger’s seat. Senjogahara, though, seemed to have no difficulty (ever a model student) talking while driving, and in fact she was the one to start speaking to me.

“It helps me relax, so if anything, I’d appreciate it if you talked to me, my dear Watson.”

“Your dear Watson… I guess I’m sitting in your passenger seat, but I’d rather not be tasked with putting the tales of your adventures to paper. Nothing about you is Holmesian, anyway.”

“True. Miss Hanekawa is Holmes, not me─by the by, she called me last night.”

“What? Really?”

“Yes. Seems like she’ll be able to make it back by graduation.”

“Huh…”

Tsubasa Hanekawa.

A friend I shared in common with Senjogahara, currently roaming abroad─and though her mind was one of the best in the country, and in fact the world, she’d decided to go on a meandering trip after graduation rather than continue on to college with no set aim or purpose. Hence, she’d spent most of our third term, during which attendance wasn’t mandatory for seniors at our school, diligently hunting down locations for her journey. Actually, she’d been gone from about halfway into second term.

Hunting down locations…

Her shaky plan for the future seemed like something put together by someone too smart for her own good. Perhaps it indicated an even more anarchic streak than Senjogahara’s acquisition of a driver’s license.

How ironic that I, the one supposed to be the biggest anarchist, found myself hewing to the proper path toward higher education.

Not sure who was being ironic there about what.

Hanekawa’s trip was also of course a search for Mèmè Oshino, so in that sense she was traveling for my sake. This meant I, of all people, hadn’t the words to stop her.

Still, Sengoku’s case had somehow reached a solution, and so had my vampirism issue. You could say we didn’t need to look for Oshino anymore…

Yet according to Tadatsuru.

Oshino would continue to be the key…

“Feels like it’s been a while since I last saw Hanekawa,” I said. “I haven’t contacted her much since she’s overseas and I didn’t want to bother her, but she’s been calling you and not me?”

What a shock. If she was coming back for graduation, she could have told me… I’d more or less assumed she wouldn’t make it.

“You’re right. I wonder why Miss Hanekawa didn’t call you. Who knows, but I did assure her that I’d tell you.”

“What other reason would there be?”

“Maybe I specifically asked her not to call you.”

“You went that far? You were that specific about it? Why would you do that?”

“Don’t worry. I told her that your vampirism’s all better.”

“I’m not worried, but I do feel like lecturing you now… I wanted to be the one to tell her. I’d have thanked her for helping me get through my exams, too.”

“I didn’t go so far as to thank her on your behalf, so let her know when you see her at graduation. Oh, right… She has bestowed upon me a message.”

“Bestowed upon?”

Why so formal? Maybe Ononoki wasn’t the only one who didn’t know how and when to speak respectfully. Then again, you could credit Hanekawa with reforming Senjogahara’s life as well as my own. She deserved so much respect from us, we could never show enough.

In my case, she may have replaced every element of my overall constitution─a pretty scary woman, in that sense. What kind of adult was she going to become?

“And what’s this message?”

“She said she found Mister Oshino.”

“Oh, huh… What?!”

For a moment there, it went in one ear then out the other.

Fortunately, I wasn’t the one behind the wheel─I’m certain I would’ve caused a traffic accident had it been in my hands. Meanwhile, Senjogahara was nonchalant, still driving with only one hand on the steering─um, why hadn’t she bothered telling me something that important yesterday?

Reporting is all about speed, isn’t it?

“Seriously?” I said.

“Seriously. Well, to be exact, maybe she found the place where he’s hiding out? I don’t remember that well.”

“I’m begging you, please remember. Do everything you can to.”

And hiding out? Why was Senjogahara making him sound like a criminal… But in other words, Hanekawa hadn’t discovered him yet, she’d only found his location─though that was already impressive enough.

“She said it was a tough call whether she could bring him back with her by graduation… There’d be nothing in particular for him to do even if she brought him back now, so she might not force him,” Senjogahara relayed.

I’d yet to explain all of what happened the day before to Senjogahara─about my trip through hell, so maybe that was how she felt.

Perhaps I needed to explain at an early point during our date─though it did make me hesitate. How best to gently tell her that I was getting dragged into one of Miss Gaen’s jobs yet again…

Oshino, of course, would never put it in such a self-victimizing way─I wasn’t getting dragged into anything, I was at the center from the start.

But as Ononoki had pointed out, it was hard to tell whether Miss Gaen had planned on enlisting me from the start─and even she couldn’t have predicted Hanekawa finding Oshino.

I wouldn’t call it conflict, but there seemed to be a bit of tension in the air between Hanekawa and Miss Gaen─could this count as Hanekawa getting back at Miss Gaen?

That said, going by Senjogahara’s words, it’s not as if she’d seen Oshino─so it was still possible for her to be off the mark.

When I asked about this, Senjogahara answered, “You’re right. It’s not certain yet─but she said that after much reasoning, she narrowed down his location to two places.”

“Two?”

“Yes─I didn’t ask for details because I wasn’t interested, but I think that’s what she said.”

“…”

Please, be more interested.

Come to think of it, though, Senjogahara hated personalities like Oshino’s─maybe her apathetic stance was only natural, now that she thought he was no longer needed.

Two places… Where and where could they be?

If it was a tough call whether Hanekawa could bring him back by graduation, maybe it was because there were still two possible locations─and of course, both of them might be wrong.

“Much reasoning, huh? Yeah, she really is like some master detective.”

Who didn’t mind doing the legwork, either─a rarity these days.

“But she didn’t say where these two places were?”

“She didn’t. But don’t get the wrong idea, Araragi. It’s not because she was trying to act like some great detective. She tried to tell me like any normal person, but I said I wasn’t interested and asked her not to.”

“I can’t help but wonder how Hanekawa reacted to that.”

A master detective’s greatest pleasure, thwarted like that. You called the wrong person, Hanekawa.

My reaction would’ve been superb─or maybe not, I might have acted a lot like Senjogahara thanks to how exhausted I was from the exams (and dealing with Ononoki)…

Being outside of Japan, she couldn’t possibly know how they went, and maybe she’d decided not to call me out of consideration after Senjogahara asked her not to─which meant Hanekawa might mistakenly believe that I’d flunked them.

She was always surprisingly quick to jump to conclusions.

“What was it again?” Seeing just how down I was getting, my girlfriend used her notable memory to the fullest to recall Hanekawa’s words, though only a small portion. “She said it was the other way around.”

“The other way around?”

“Yes, her approach─she does like to leave so much implied and unspoken.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t because you weren’t listening properly? I wonder what she could mean by that…”

Did she mean a situation where the solution was right under her nose the whole time, like in a mystery novel? Had she gone overseas to find Oshino when he was actually still in Japan? And he was near this town or something?

No, I couldn’t imagine it being that simple.

I’d be mad if the man we’d searched so much for had been hiding out in our town─but in that case, Hanekawa would just need to come straight back. She wouldn’t be in a dilemma where she didn’t know if she’d make it in time for graduation.

“Miss Hanekawa also opined that…this was a paid man.”

“Opined… And wait, a paid man?”

What did that even mean?

Hmm. I had a lot I needed to think about, I was still concerned, but there didn’t seem to be anything I could do─I just had to trust in Hanekawa’s self-reliance.

It might be best to keep it a secret from Miss Gaen, though.

Tsubasa Hanekawa, who doesn’t know everything.

Izuko Gaen, who knows everything.

I might not know anything, but I at least knew those two. My decision for the time being was to minimize their contact as much as possible.

“As her friend, I guess I should be glad that the searching party didn’t get lost too,” I said. “I can’t imagine that happening to Hanekawa, but you do worry about a girl traveling alone, you know?”

“Yes… By the way, Araragi. Do you know the ironclad rule for when you’re a lost child?”

“When you’re a lost child? Not for when you’re looking for a lost child?” Though that wasn’t how I’d describe Oshino and Miss Kagenui.

“Yes. Yet another suggestive remark on Miss Hanekawa’s part…”

“You sure you aren’t the reason why it sounded suggestive, and not definitive? Isn’t the ironclad rule when you’re lost to not move? That’s how you keep your problems from cascading.”

“Yes. That’s what they say─but she mentioned that it’s not that simple in real life. That it’s actually faster to search for each other when you get split up.”

“Really? Seems inefficient to me.”

“It’d be horribly inefficient if you both searched at random─in reality, though, people don’t meander around. You think about where the other person might be, which is to say you conjecture. In other words, you’ll be shrinking the area of your search down to a small area, so it’s faster if both of you move─or something like that.”

It does assume that your reasoning about the other person’s location is on the mark─Senjogahara said.

True. You could even say people get lost because they’re incapable of doing just that─so was that what Hanekawa meant by a reverse approach?

Of course, this too was only conjecture.

Someone on my level could never catch up with Hanekawa’s thinking no matter how much reasoning I did─so should I sit still and wait for Hanekawa to return by around graduation?

“What else did you two talk about? Did Hanekawa talk about anything other than Oshino?”

“We didn’t get into too much detail because of the high phone bill─but I did discuss our date plan. I’ll come clean and admit that a planetarium was Miss Hanekawa’s idea.”

“It was?”

“Yes. My plan was to go visit a volcanic crater.”

“…”

It’s not that I don’t have any interest in volcanic craters, but I was grateful to Hanekawa… What kind of a ridiculous plan had this girl come up with?

“I didn’t tell her about me driving because I thought she’d try to stop me.”

“I wish you would’ve asked her about that one…”

“Miss Hanekawa told me about her favorite planetaria, so I chose one from the list. No need to worry, Araragi. Don’t look so concerned, there won’t be any big surprises waiting for you from here on out. I’ve been suitably censored by Miss Hanekawa.”

Censored…

Not a word you wanted to hear in the context of a date, but knowing that Hanekawa had reviewed the plan brought me some small amount of comfort.

“She got pretty mad at me, and pretty depressed too. The angrier she got, the harder it became for me to tell her about the driver’s license.”

“I understand how you must have felt, but I feel like being on the receiving end of her anger there would’ve been the right thing for your own future…”

“I often go to planetaria, of course, so this doesn’t feel too much like a special event to me. Still, going with you will be a nice twist.”

“Hm… You say that, but isn’t this still an uninteresting date for you, in that case?”

Kanbaru had mentioned enjoying planetariums. I wondered if the Valhalla Duo used to go have fun at them together…

“Well, when I go to a planetarium,” Senjogahara said, “it tends to be less for fun and more in order to study─so I’d like to gaze out into artificial stars without any purpose in mind for a change. I wouldn’t say I’m unenthused, so don’t worry.”

“In order to study? Oh, right. I guess you’d made the rather eccentric choice among students at our school to study planetary science as your science elective…”

I personally didn’t even know what planetary science entailed… But it seemed that Senjoghara, who treasured her childhood memories of visiting observatories as a family, had a special attachment to celestial bodies. It’s not as if I dislike talking about the stars, but I don’t look up into the starry sky with the same kind of devotion as her…

“Yes, which is why my original idea for our date was to visit a volcanic crater. I wanted to observe the outcrops.”

“What kind of an original idea is that? You just wanted to go study? I’d call that fieldwork. What kind of a date were you thinking of inviting me on fresh out of entrance exams?”

“It would be interesting, though. We may be on a proper and healthy date today thanks to Miss Hanekawa, but I can’t deny that my curiosity is going unsatisfied. Considering that you find the greatest gratification in being dragged around and run ragged by me, is today becoming less stimulating for you?”

“Could you at least not say gratification?”

“Vivification?”

“That doesn’t seem right either…”

“Capitulation?”

“You do sometimes make me feel like giving up…”

“But planetaria are often combined with science museums, including the one we’re heading to today. In that sense, we could see it as us going there to study─it might be bad for your heart if we went cold turkey on studying. You might want to gradually cool down by coming into contact with some cutting-edge science at least.”

“I never imagined it’d be bad for your heart to stop studying…”

This made Hanekawa’s imprint on our plans for the day clear.

A science museum, a combination of study and play─going to one called into question the very idea of acting like high schoolers, but maybe it was an appropriate choice for people who were bad at having fun like me and Senjogahara.

With Senjogahara’s unique twist added on top (driving a car), she didn’t need to worry about the day not being stimulating enough. Even if I trusted her driving skills, just being in a new car can make you nervous.

“I don’t normally go to science museums, so I’m looking forward to that part,” she said. “I wonder what kinds of flying cars they’ll have.”

“You have high expectations of science museums…” Though flying cars do seem to exist. I continued, “Even if they don’t fly, cars these days are pretty amazing. I don’t know about this car, but some brake when they sense danger, or have sensors on all sides, or even drive themselves.”

“Yes─they’re already quite futuristic.” Like the Underwater Buggy, she added utterly unnecessarily. The Castle of the Underwater Devil again… “The day might come when you just have to enter your destination into a navigation system for the car to take you there─and you only have to park and get started, just like planes that only require manual takeoff and landing.”

“Data skills and parking skills, huh? It’d be nice if I didn’t need to get a license. I’d like to step away from testing for a while…”

Not that I saw the law catching up to cars like that anytime soon.

Yes, that feeling of technological advancement surpassing human society.

Just like the way I don’t know how to use a smartphone, cars─integrated collections of the latest technology─might become alien to me.

“What are you talking about? I do hope that you get your license over spring break. Next time around, I’d like you to drive me. After all, you finally show up in pictures.”

“You want me to drive you when you can drive on your own, Miss Senjogahara?”

“As a girl, I can’t help but dream about riding in my boyfriend’s passenger seat,” she responded with a somewhat maidenly remark. “I dream about it almost as much as I dream about having a reverse harem.”

“That’s a very girly dream in its own way, but I’m not sure if you can equate the two…”

“Drive me up to observe some outcroppings by a volcanic crater someday.”

She may not have been joking, but at the same time, the way she sought my consent made it hard to reply, Yeah, I’d love to…

“I’m curious, Senjogahara. What do you learn in planetary science, anyway? It’s not heavenly bodies all day, right?”

“To be exact, it’s an earth science class. I guess you could say it’s primarily about Earth as a celestial object─though my interest always tends to point toward the universe as a whole. My dream is to draw a complete map of the universe and be known as the second Tadataka Ino. That’s what I’ll be doing in college.”

“Tadataka Ino… The first person to create a modern map of Japan.”

“Sadly, they say he created it without knowing much about Hokkaido, but I won’t cut any corners. I’ll observe outcroppings along every last inch of space and map them.”

“Observe outcroppings would be a gross understatement in that case.”

Doesn’t sound like any Tadataka I-know… Not that I thought Mr. Ino had cut any corners…

Still, I was hearing about this for the first time. My girlfriend wanted to become an astronaut? Did she mean it? It did sound like a throwaway quip.

“And wait, what is a map of the universe anyway? Do those exist? Are you talking about those diagrams you see of all the planets lined up around the sun?”

“No, those are just illustrations. I’m talking about a map that shows the entire universe… You wouldn’t be too familiar with them unless you took planetary science.”

“Yeah, I’ve never heard of one before.”

“Most of the universe is empty space. Scattered within it are galaxies and gatherings of stars─you might have the vague idea that due to probability, stars are equally spread out through space, but that’s not true. They clump up with one another and exist in unbalanced groupings. That’s what a map of the universe depicts─heh. I wonder if stars prefer company, just like humans do.”

“You can try to make it sound like there’s a moral, but it’s not going to make any sense to me when I haven’t seen these maps.”

“By the way, they aren’t rectangular like world maps or country maps.”

She explained that they’re shaped like Japanese folding fans─which is to say, like ogi.

She said this undramatically.

Ogi.

Nor did I react to─that word.