Monogatari Series - Volume 19 - Chapter 6.08

008

Despite the unbecoming blunder of sleeping in the planetarium, I made no major mistakes after that, and so we─or at least I was able to have a good time.

As far as the science museum goes, I honestly found it more interesting than I expected. It helped that my expected entertainment value was close to zero. The purpose of these facilities demanded that they feature more content for elementary and middle school students (or for families) than for high school students, which had made me nervous. Eighteen year olds like Senjogahara and me were at the most awkward age possible to enjoy it. However, and perhaps I ought to give credit to Hanekawa’s advice contributing to our date schedule, the museum was pretty satisfying.

This made my nap in the planetarium all the more frustrating─but as far as that goes, it did allow me to see the rare and valuable sight that is Senjogahara’s sleeping face. I decided to tell myself I’d seen a sight greater than any starry sky.

I wasn’t off having a great time all on my own, of course. Senjogahara frolicked about as well─okay, maybe you can say she conducted herself just like the science nerd she was, but given how she never used to be open about herself, given how she’d never frolic in the presence of others or in public (or even with her boyfriend), the mere sight of her acting that way provided me with great joy.

“How about one more lap,” she suggested quite seriously, her attitude nothing like it was in the planetarium, but I had to tell her no. Not treating her own date plan with due respect seemed like the inevitable drawback or natural flip side of a girl whose calling card was lightning-quick assessments and decisions.

Having fun in the moment and going with the flow was all well and good, but healthy young high schoolers spending the entire day in a science museum until it closed was just too wholesome for me, and I somehow managed to convince her out of that one.

She backed down when I used the day’s now oft-repeated, or rather, all-powerful line: We’ll be able to do this as many more times as we want.

Then, lunch.

She’d called it a light snack, so I kept the hurdles of my expectations low. That must have been her plan all along, though, as she took me to a place with a pretty nice atmosphere.

She said we wouldn’t be getting fast food, and the only thing I could point out and jokingly complain about was that it was more of a cafe for women (their customers aside from me being all young ladies). The food tasted good, and it was even very reasonably priced.

If you’re curious about any payments that took place during the date, we split them all right down the middle─and while part of me wondered if I should be paying for everything as a man, not just that day but in general (especially when I took her domestic situation into account), Senjogahara was the type of person with a strong aversion to receiving charity, no matter who it came from.

My guess is that this personality trait of hers had to do with a certain conman─perhaps she’d been influenced more deeply by that (mockery of an) expert than Hanekawa was by Oshino.

Though it’d have to be a case of learning from a good example of what not to do.

In any case, we split the payments, if not down to the last yen─well, she might have spent more in the end considering the costs for the rental car and gasoline.

The thought of this being an omen of sponging off of her someday does make me realize that I need to resolve to stay on my toes.

Nothing about Senjogahara seemed sucked dry yet, of course─in any case, while she seemed not to care about cafes and such, she was very much a connoisseur.

Then afternoon came.

The part revolving around fun.

The first half, bowling time─while I’d been terrified to learn that a bet was in place, to cut to the chase, I ended up winning.

“Damn you, Araragi… I can’t believe you’d lie to me… You’re no beginner at all,” Senjogahara hurled complaints my way.

Even the resentment in her eyes was a heartwarming reminder, in its own way, of how rich her facial expressions had become (I was also reminded of Ononoki’s remark that nothing excited her more than seeing someone mad), but for the most part it just brought back scary memories.

It’s not like I lied, though. I was a beginner─me being a bowling amateur was the honest truth, I just happened to win anyway. I mean, I’d have preferred to lose if she was going to glare at me like that.

I didn’t need something like the right to boss her around.

In fact, Senjogahara only had herself to blame for the loss─it seems her memories had grown rose-tinted.

Artistic scores?

To put it in a somewhat harsher way, she’d only remembered the good parts.

Well, she did show some impressive skills from the first frame to the fifth. Pitching so perfect, I found it surprising that she hadn’t brought her own ball.

I don’t know exactly what the terms are, something about strikes or turkeys, but in any case, she kept on knocking down all ten pins at once, again and again, until about halfway through the game.

Wow, you’re actually serious about this, I joked─and felt indulgent, ready to listen to an order or two in return for getting to see her beautiful form. As for me, I stayed in her shadow racking up a score neither good nor bad, neither impressive nor amusing, just a very average score.

Yet once the sixth frame started, something changed about the way she played─everything changed.

To put it simply, Hitagi Senjogahara’s score from the sixth frame onward consisted of nothing but gutter balls.

Her throws were so tired that by the end I wondered if they’d make it to the end of the lane─yes.

In short, Senjogahara got tired.

Apparently her arm went numb.

A lack of endurance and stamina because of her background as a sprinter─must have been part of it, but the real problem must have been a lack of muscle.

Though she tried to put a clever spin on the situation by bowling with her left arm partway through, it wasn’t a spin that helped the balls find their target.

And so, as the match progressed, my slowly but steadily growing score caught up, then ultimately overtook hers.

I guess you could say that I made a miracle happen.

Or that baseball doesn’t have an exclusive patent on unscripted drama.

“Fine. I’ll admit I lost.”

Though Senjogahara displayed an unyielding competitiveness that made it clear she was once Kanbaru’s direct senior, as a soon-to-be university student (so long as our school didn’t find out about her license), she accepted defeat in the end.

“Give me whatever order you want. Come on, what kind of erotic demand are you going to make? My anticipation only grows.”

She was being ridiculous. Out of curiosity, I asked her what kind of demand she had planned on making.

“Some kind of erotic demand, what else?!” she barked, seeming upset for whatever reason.

I had to point out that she was expecting the same outcome whoever won─and vaguely recalling that I’d been in a similar situation before, I decided my play would be to say we should walk to tea with our arms intertwined.

Ever after leaving the science museum, the word of the day seemed to be wholesome.

Tea time.

Or as they might say in Britain, afternoon tea.

I hate to describe it by price before anything, but it cost more than our lunch─maybe that’s just how it goes, and that fact is why Senjogahara seemed to see it as the true main event.

As we elegantly sipped our tea and enjoyed fancy sweets, I took the opportunity to go over the previous day’s events. I confessed to Senjogahara why my progressing vampiric transformation had come to a halt, why what should have been an irreversible forward march had become reversible.

There were of course parts I couldn’t tell her, so I didn’t disclose everything. Still, I shared with her whatever I could.

“Huh…I don’t know whether to say it’s surprising or typical Araragi behavior that you embarked on an adventure like that on the very morning of your exam…or maybe I should just ask what the hell you’re doing.”

As I feared, I’d mildly angered her.

Of course, no home tutor would be pleased to hear that her pupil had walked into a college exam with that carefree an attitude, but perhaps she had second thoughts about saying anything too harsh to someone who’d been sent to hell of all places just the day before.

“I’m sure that was very difficult for you,” she said, keeping herself at that.

Not that I knew how to react to sympathy, either.

Also, I needed to tell her that it was too early to be using the past tense. It wasn’t like everything had come to an end─while I didn’t know the details of Miss Gaen’s plan, I knew I’d have to play some sort of role.

“Yes, given your blond Lolita-slave and Hachikuji, that’s probably true. Hachikuji in particular, since it sounds like she’s Miss Gaen’s de facto hostage.”

I wasn’t sure hostage was fair (not to mention blond Lolita-slave), but she was absolutely right.

It made total sense.

“And Araragi, if you looked at the situation as a balance sheet, you’d find yourself in the red. I suppose you do have to repay your debts… Just as I paid Mister Oshino his fee, however much I hated doing so.”

Just how much did she hate him?

That had to be too much hate.

In fact, she seemed to hate him more than ever─had Hanekawa going on her location hunt left Senjogahara that lonely?

In which case, she formed a duo with Hanekawa at this point, not Kanbaru─what would you call that combination?

“But putting aside the issue of what you owe…there are some things I don’t understand. What does this Miss Gaen want to do, anyway? What’s the goal of her actions─is she doing this as part of a job?”

Pondering those questions left me at a loss for answers─it’s not that I didn’t have any, of course. I’d heard time and time again from both Miss Gaen and her associates about her goals, or rather, her sense of purpose.

It’s just that it was so lofty.

Too lofty for people at my level to understand─to simplify, she must have plotted to subdue this aberration-filled town, but that almost made her sound like some champion of justice.

Justice.

Rightness.

And then you had what came from that rightness─mistakes.

Sacrifices.

Why did it seem like I’d talked about this recently? Super recently, at that…

“To speak from my experience of approaching every day from a risk-management perspective…there’s nothing scarier in the world than someone whose goals you don’t know,” Senjogahara said. “As long as you have a clear view of someone’s desires and ambitions, no matter how evil or powerful the person, you can start to come up with a plan.”

Though maybe it just means she’s an adult with a perspective that’s different from little kids like us, she added, concerned.

She still worried about me.

The fact pained me.

Making her heart ache made mine ache as well. That said, I’d promised that I’d keep as few secrets as possible when it came to aberrations, so it wasn’t as if I could hide anything from her.

I was causing her so much trouble all because she was going out with a guy like me─but putting it that way was so self-flagellating that it circled around to sounding like a persecution complex.

“I’m not sure what Miss Gaen is fighting against…but it might just be that she’s fighting you, Araragi.”

Hm? What could that mean?

“No, I’m not trying to tell you anything in particular. It’s more like a hunch… I feel like your stance of only seeing what’s in front of you can’t avoid contradicting Miss Gaen’s God’s-eye view─or to use a somewhat harsher word, the two conflict.”

I couldn’t deny it when she worded it that way… Or rather, it had already played out in reality. I took up arms against Miss Gaen’s plan to install Shinobu as the deity of the godless Kita-Shirahebi Shrine─causing Sengoku, an unrelated middle schooler, to get wrapped up in the situation. Were you to see this as a conflict between me and Miss Gaen, it’d be scored as a total loss for Koyomi Araragi. One where I ended up with my tail between my legs…

That said, if Miss Gaen was planning something like that again─if she was plotting to install the now-complete Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade in that shrine, I’d surely take up arms against her again.

It seemed very possible.

Kita-Shirahebi Shrine’s predecessor had been located in that park, in an area then known as Shirohebi─in which case, the name meant water snake. And if sea snake meant the Hydra, all of this wasn’t just suggestive or a coincidence, but history itself…

Which would mean.

Hm? Wait, when did I learn that sea snakes meant the Hydra? Weren’t they totally different creatures? What was I talking about?

“Well, there’s not much I can say on the subject since I’m on your side, Araragi. But to put it in an encouraging way, while most people tend to support an all-encompassing perspective like Miss Gaen’s bird’s-eye view, I believe humans need a short-term view of a situation just about as much─forgoing a meal today and wondering how to ring in next New Year’s Day is nothing short of delusional, right?”

Her words were more consoling than encouraging, but hearing them did make me feel as though I could head into my confrontation with a confident, positive attitude─not that I had any idea who I’d be facing in this still-vague confrontation of mine.

“Now that we’ve savored our tea, why don’t we move on to karaoke? Just to let you know in advance, I don’t want you ordering any food. It’d detract from my date with my dad.”

Her nighttime plans with her father had at last turned into a date─what kind of a double date was that? Actually, it felt more like a double booking at this point.

“I personally see it as a doubleheader.”

Notwithstanding Senjogahara’s baseball metaphor, unusual for a girl, we were headed not to the batting cages but a karaoke room.

I guess I’d yet to lose my innocent naïveté─I felt a little flustered being alone with Senjogahara in a small, dimly lit room, but shoving that feeling aside, I focused on her abilities as a vocalist. Incidentally, Hanekawa, a.k.a. the chairman of the world, was a ridiculously good singer.

She made me think I was listening to a CD.

Not only could she tackle her studies perfectly─she’d mastered recreation. I couldn’t even go have fun with her if I didn’t know what I was doing.

I didn’t expect that level of singing from a regular date, though, and was sure that Senjogahara had been to karaoke with Hanekawa in the past. My girlfriend couldn’t be thinking about competing with her…

Or so I carelessly thought, but it was of course Senjogahara who demanded concentration and preparation before anything involving fun. Operating the remote control with obvious inexperience, she set the karaoke machine to Score Mode.

Why corner herself like that?!

She wanted to get an objective number out of this!

The machine scores of people’s singing and your impression of their skills were pretty disconnected, so I couldn’t say for sure, but─I was still going to have a hard time covering for her if her results were poor.

As I thought this…

“We’ll have a two-hour face-off. Whoever gets the lower overall score has to show absolute submission to the winner,” she said, adding that condition into the mix again.

I see, it was you that I was confronting the whole time…

Did she always love competing this much? Or more importantly, had this girl not learned her lesson after our bowling match?

Though I could learn something from the way she threw caution to the wind, I also didn’t know if you could call this a date when she was throwing down so many gauntlets.

I had the creeping suspicion that I was being used as a practice partner for her evening date with her dad… Still, I had to meet her attempt to avenge her earlier loss.

I really am weak when I feel obliged to someone. Or rather, where I have a weakness.

Maybe it was just the weakness of a fool in love.

“I’ll bat first. You just sit there and listen,” Senjogahara said as she took the mic.

Something about the way she looked reminded me of a person in the grips of desperation.

“What are you talking about, Araragi? I appreciate how you bravely accepted my challenge, but you’re going to regret this. Just how many times do you think I’ve sung the anime’s theme song?”

That only went for the anime version.

Unfortunately, it didn’t count in print.

And it’s not like they’re going to animate all the way up to this volume.

As for her song selection, it told me she was serious─I won’t give the name because it might cause problems, but in spite of all her bragging, it was easy to sing and presented no hurdles in terms of either key or tempo.

Just how much did she want me to show absolute obedience to her?

It even felt like she was channeling her frustration over losing at bowling─and the result of all this…

“82 points.”

Was average.

Well, I’d never used the scoring mode at karaoke before, so I couldn’t tell if 82 was an average score, a good score, or a bad score.

For the singer in question, though, apparently it was a hopeless result that left her astonished.

“No way…an 82? That’s a failing grade. This is the first score I’ve gotten in the low eighties in my entire life.”

Talk about a model student…

What kind of test could you fail with an 82?

“Is this how you felt through most of high school? This is how it feels to score in the low eighties… I can’t believe it. I’d never understood you. I needed to be kinder to you. What horrible things I must have said to you.”

She was saying horrible things to me now. Maybe the most horrible thing yet…

I’d rarely managed to score even in the low eighties for the majority of my time in high school. I’d gotten nothing but actual failing grades.

As you might expect, no aspect of her singing was worth needling her over in particular, the karaoke machine’s mechanical scoring aside─her ability to neatly complete any task showed that she was a match for Hanekawa.

And I voiced precisely that observation.

“I didn’t ask for your condolement,” I got in return─an unexpected rejection.

Getting rejected with a word I didn’t even know… Did it mean what I think it did?

She really was competitive─my turn came next, but I think we can skip over the details. Nothing is more pathetic than a guy talking about his singing chops, so I’ll just present you with my score, the way the machine did.

82.

82 points.

There is a kind of richness to be found in getting a tied score as a young couple on a date, and perhaps some kind of heartwarming message… But when I tried to say something about that, Senjogahara’s intense expression and grinding teeth kept any words from leaving my mouth.

She was way too competitive… Or maybe this wasn’t about competition, and the simple fact that she’d gotten the same score as me, her pupil, irritated her.

Whatever the case, according to the machine we were evenly matched singing talents.

Not just during the first round, either. Though we didn’t score clean ties in the second round and onward, we continued to get just about the same score again and again.

A hard-fought, competitive match if this was some kind of sport, but it was just a karaoke battle, only leaving you with─the despondent feeling of having won by a margin of error.

And so, as a result of margins of error.

I won yet again.

By a difference of three points─how close could you get?

“Impossible… How could I lose to you not once, but twice in one day?”

My girlfriend seemed to look down on me quite a bit─but that was to be expected when I’d always been showing her my pathetic side.

I offered to just call it a draw, but Senjogahara, competition personified, would not surrender her defeat.

“All right, give me whatever order you want,” she said.

What integrity.

Well, she needed to know that nothing more than a fine line separated her integrity from reckless abandon…

“This must be my comeuppance for plotting something as underhanded as choosing to go first in the hopes that we’d run out of time during a round before you had a chance to sing,” she casually revealed her dirty ruse.

Maybe that was really it.

The gods were watching─that was a shabby ruse for them to watch.

But if we’re going to say that, there was no god in our town at the moment─in any case.

The time had come for our date to end. Our last date as high schoolers.

We’d competed twice in the afternoon, and I’d ended up with a two-win streak. There did seem to be a little bit of hostility in the air now, but it felt like we’d made progress in the sense that everything had gone according to plan. There was even a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.

“Hold on a second, Araragi. Why are you acting like this is over? Don’t wrap it all up. You haven’t given me an order yet, have you? Make me show my absolute obedience.”

…

Well, a promise was a promise. It’d be ridiculous to drag it out, anyway.

That said, the idea of searching my vocabulary to find a demand even more wholesome than walking arm in arm did seem pretty tough.

“What about a bridal carry until we get to the parking lot?” suggested the girlfriend needing to show her absolute obedience.

I had to wonder if this was another case of her getting the same thing whether she won or lost, but maybe it was an acceptable compromise.

“Just to make sure, you know I mean you holding me in a bridal carry, not me carrying you like some sort of princess, right?”

The other way around would make it a groomal carry or something. What a punishment that’d be─though a bridal carry was already punishment enough. However, I’d go along with it because I felt it’d do more damage to Senjogahara than to me.

“Just know that I’m going to kill you if you say I’m heavy.”

It’d been so long since I last heard Senjogahara say the words I’m going to kill you…but it didn’t make them any more romantic.

Her weight aside, I was a bit worried about my arm strength now that I’d lost all traces of my vampirism. It’d be a real problem if I dropped her, so I told her to put her arms around my neck. Then we traveled a few hundred yards to the parking lot in a bridal carry.

“Impressive, Araragi. I can tell you’re used to picking up little girls.”

That phrasing was going to give people the wrong idea.

Please stop.

“But if Shinobu is all big and busty now, it won’t be easy for you to carry her on your back, in your arms, or atop your shoulders. You’re going to need to train.”

I really didn’t see myself carrying around a fully recovered Shinobu… The mental image was a lot.

Chatting, subject to curious glances, the two of us arrived at the parking space where we’d parked our rental car for the afternoon─I at least got her to let me pay for parking.

“Phew. That was embarrassing,” Senjogahara said as soon as she was in the driver’s seat.

That was her impression of my bridal carry?

Not that I could do much but agree…

“I caught a glimpse of hell there.”

She was going that far?

But I guess hell hadn’t been as hellish.

There was nothing left to do but head back now─seeing Senjogahara drive made me feel like maybe I should get a license too, and not just because she’d told me to.

Of course, the joy she seemed to be feeling might not have come from driving, but from thoughts of her upcoming date with Daddy…

Well, even if you do have a license, you need a car before you can go out whenever you feel like it… I didn’t know about going through the trouble of renting a car, either.

We just had to head back now─or so I say, but just in time, I remembered I had something I needed to tell her.

At first, I thought I needed to tell her at the start of the day, and it was in fact something I needed to tell her at the start of the day, but regrettably I’d lost my chance, overwhelmed by her acquisition of a driver’s license.

She hadn’t said anything, so the wicked notion that I might get away with not saying it did pass through my mind for a moment, but I of course couldn’t do that.

“Senjogahara,” I began abruptly, “there’s something important I have to tell you.”

“If you’re going to ask me to marry you, my answer is sure.”

“No, not that important. And that was way too ready of you. Actually, it’s about reciprocating for those chocolates you gave me during Valentine’s Day… I couldn’t get anything for you.” I’d run over different ways of putting it, but in the end, I just had to give her the honest truth. “I’m sorry, I didn’t have time to get anything. I kept thinking about it until I realized I’d overthought it… I might have been able to get you some off-the-shelf marshmallows in time if I really tried, but I didn’t know about that, either… And I kept overthinking things until I’d over-overthought them, and I was paralyzed…”

Finding an opening today and buying them seemed like an option, but no such luck─I shouldn’t have expected any gaps when I was dealing with Senjogahara. The planetarium had offered an opportunity…but I was sleeping just like her then.

“So could you wait for another two or three days? I’ll be sure to add interest.”

“Oh, you were worrying yourself over something like that? Forget it. Interest? I know just how much you hate special days, Araragi.” In contrast to my own tenseness, Senjogahara’s response was muted. “It’d sound bad if I said I wasn’t expecting anything, but it’s not like I thought you had something for me. Spending a whole day on this date with me is enough. If you feel like giving me something, then give me something. It’s not like I made you chocolates expecting anything in return.”

Though I had trouble accepting this from someone as fussy about her debts as Senjogahara, maybe gifts weren’t a part of that from the start.

“In fact, I was only able to build this relationship with you because you hate special days─remember? We started dating on Mother’s Day.”

“Oh, now that you mention it…”

I did remember. I also recalled that I’d gotten in a fight with my little sisters over whether or not I’d celebrate Mother’s Day. I’d bolted out of our house.

I saw now how childish I’d been…but I happened to encounter Senjogahara in that park eventually.

And after that, she told me she liked me.

Oh.

It really was my dislike of Mother’s Day that led to me dating Senjogahara─and I couldn’t help but feel that relationships are such an odd thing.

To think that a fight with my little sisters would come to hold that much importance… Considering that I got along somewhat well with them now, I did sometimes look back in regret and wish that I’d started acting friendlier with them sooner. If I had, though, I wouldn’t have run into Senjogahara, or even Hachikuji, that day…

How profoundly odd.

If mistakes were inevitable on an unyielding path of righteousness, were they also capable of leading to what’s right?

…Had I also heard this line of thinking somewhere before?

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to become the kind of annoying girl who demands that her boyfriend celebrate every special day… I’m the only one who needs to remember anniversaries, anyway. Like how you caught me on May eighth, and how I told you how I feel and started dating you on May fourteenth, and how we went on our first date and had our first kiss on June thirteenth, and how we had our first French kiss on…”

“I’d say you’re being plenty annoying!”

Or just scary.

Of course, it may have had to do with her excellent memory instead.

“Sadly, even though we’ve been in the same class since our first year of high school, I don’t remember my first impression of you… I do remember that you always got in fights with Miss Oikura. Do you know of any good way to alter my memories to say that I’d always had a crush on you? Maybe I should falsify my diary.”

“I remember you during first year well… You were like a cloistered princess.”

“What? Are you going to say you always had a crush on me?”

“I won’t go that far…”

There’s no way to change the past, so we’d have to rely that much more on our hopes for the future─but in any case, while I could deal with complaints or anger over not having a present ready for Senjogahara, I was just relieved that she didn’t feel hurt.

“It’s okay. I’m getting a White Day gift from my dad.”

Those words gave me pause, but even so, I was glad we didn’t seem to have a problem.

She said I could give her something if I felt like it, and of course I was going to feel like it. I appreciated this grace period─in fact, I’d also received chocolates from Hanekawa, as a friend, so I needed to think of what to get her as well. (Did you need to give friends three times as much back too?) If she’d be back by graduation, I needed to have Senjogahara’s ready by then too. I’d called it a grace period, but it was just a day or two long at most.

“Mmh.”

And then, the moment I relaxed.

Something seemed to come to Senjogahara─and she immediately stepped on the brakes and stopped the car on the side of the road. From the passenger’s seat, though, I didn’t know what it was, and gulped at the abrupt, surging twist.

“Araragi,” Senjogahara said─her tone changed.

Deeper, deeper, deeper, deep.

I could sense none of the tolerance she’d been showing.

“I don’t think I can forgive this.”

“Huh?”

“To think you have nothing at all for your girlfriend on White Day, of all days, one of the three great lovers’ days. I can’t help but doubt your love.”

“Huh? Whaa?”

“I’ve heard of men who stop caring about girls the moment they start dating, but I never imagined you were one of them. I’m so disappointed. I couldn’t hide my dejection even if I wanted to. I’d been waiting all day to see just what kind of surprise you had for me, my heart pounding, fluttering, and trembling all at once, yet you hadn’t prepared anything at all. It’d be generous to describe this as you giving me the slip. I’d convinced myself you’d at least give me a cabin cruiser.”

“W-Wouldn’t you say your expectations were a bit too mega-sized?”

“Ahh. Maybe I’ll kill myself.”

Senjogahara jokingly leaned against the steering wheel─she’d added so much flair to her performance that it just looked like a skit to me now…

I wanted to tell her to learn from Tadatsuru’s example. He’d shown me what a true farce is.

What could have come to her to launch this one-woman sideshow? I wondered, but I certainly couldn’t ignore it.

“S-Sorry, but that’s why I’m apologizing,” I had to respond. “Please don’t kill yourself. O-Okay, then what’ll it take for you to forgive me? I can’t get you a pleasure boat, but if it’s anything I can do…”

I of course couldn’t help but find it strange that she’d flipped around on something she’d already forgiven, but when it came down to it, I was the one in the wrong here without a doubt. I had to take my lumps like a training dummy.

“Did you just say you’d do anything?” Senjogahara pounced.

Seizing on my words─as if I’d played right into her hand.

Why did she look the happiest I’d seen her all day… If this made her happier than anything, what exactly had we been doing today?

“Did you just say absolute submission?”

“N-No, I didn’t say that?”

“…”

“I did. I did say it. Those were the exact words out of my mouth, absolute submission.”

By the way, when Senjogahara was “…”-ing, she looked like she was going to cry. Her face was becoming so expressive, she’d be able to find work as a quick-change artist.

But now I understood, this was how desperate she was to force me into absolute submission─she’d used this opportunity to try whatever she’d been attempting during bowling and karaoke.

Maybe not the intertwined arms, but the bridal carry did seem like she’d gotten what she wanted, though… Did she really want to demand something from me so much that she was willing to go back on her forgiveness? What terrible tenacity.

Did she want to make some kind of erotic demand? No, looking back on it now, that must have been a spur-of-the-moment joke…

“I see. Yes, that’s the kind of generous man I fell in love with. You’ve won my heart all over again.”

“…”

It seemed that I’d managed to accomplish my goal of recaptivating my girlfriend’s heart at the last possible moment. But I couldn’t be mindlessly happy when these could be, well, my last moments…

“You don’t even know what I’m going to request, and you still said you’d swear absolute obedience to it for the rest of your life.”

“The rest of my life?!”

Didn’t life-long absolute obedience go beyond the definition of a request? I’d call that signing myself into slavery, or maybe giving her carte blanche over my life, or whatever else you’d call giving Hitagi Senjogahara an unthinkable amount of control.

N-No. I was going to believe in her.

I would believe in Hitagi Senjogahara, my girlfriend.

Who wasn’t the problematic person she once was.

She wouldn’t ask for anything absurd! Though it was already pretty absurd if she wanted me to follow it for the rest of my life.

“Y-Yeah. The rest of my life. Okay. What do I need to do?”

“Call me by my name.”

For the rest of your life, Senjogahara said─her expression changed.

She simply blushed.

“I want you to use my name.”

“What? I already do. I call you Senjogahara, don’t I?”

“No, I mean my first name. Just my first name.”

“…”

Her request.

It must’ve been something she couldn’t make happen during our first date─and that she wanted to make happen while we were still high school students.

As boyfriend and girlfriend.

So that’s why she set up punishments during bowling and karaoke. This was what she wanted.

Yes, it would become a high school regret.

Yes, it was embarrassing after all this time.

Something she could only say given the opportunity─absolute obedience for the rest of my life.

I’d keep calling her by her first name for the rest of my life.

I─I wanted to, just as much.

I wished for it just as much.

“Hitagi.”

Thank you, Koyomi.

I didn’t need to say another word for Hitagi to understand how I felt─and so she did the same for me.