Monogatari Series - Volume 19 - Chapter 7.09

009

Tsukihi Araragi is an aberration.

The youngest daughter of the Araragis, she’ll soon be entering her third year of middle school. The strategist of the Fire Sisters, a girl who often changes her hairstyle─and a phoenix.

To classify her with more specificity, to give an exact classification based not in zoology but cryptozoology, a lesser cuckoo, the Shidenotori.

Said to travel between the land of the living and the land of the dead, the cuckoo could be called a symbol of immortality─in fact, Tsukihi Araragi is more of an immortal aberration than even a vampire.

More immortal than a vampire, more resurrected than a zombie, more eternal than a ghost─she can’t succumb to sickness, poison, or accident.

Also utterly free of special abilities that come with aberrationhood, she’d live a human life, its course running without her ever noticing a thing, before being reborn into her next life like it’s nothing.

Reincarnated.

They say that phoenixes resurrect from within flames, but in that sense, she’s as plain an aberration as one could be, having nothing to do with such spectacles. Yet Tsukihi is, undeniably, an aberration, which is why an expert onmyoji, a native Japanese sorcerer, visited our town in August, to eliminate her.

Yozuru Kagenui.

Yotsugi Ononoki.

I still don’t know how exactly that pair specializing in immortal aberrations intended to “eliminate” my sister, an aberration that just won’t die─but to skip to the conclusion, they decided to overlook her.

Though that’s another bit she doesn’t know of.

She lives on as an aberration.

As a human too.

As a member of our family, because they let her get away─let her go on being Koyomi Araragi’s little sister.

They recognized her.

And being recognized─is the duty of any aberration.

And there we have her, as she is now.

It is why Tsukihi Araragi is here on March fourteenth.

“See ya later!” she said, leaving home first thing in the afternoon, but the last to leave that day, which was a kind of first: her parents, both employed, gone to work like always; her brother, done with his exams, out on his last date as a high schooler with his girlfriend since shortly after breakfast; and her older sister, too, off in high spirits to face a hundred opponents in a kumite. Both of her siblings had left without her knowledge, but Tsukihi Araragi’s uninhibited nature didn’t pay close attention to every little thing they did.

If anything, the Araragi sibling whose activities were the most puzzling, that posed the greatest cause for concern, was the youngest of the three─notoriously dangerous, you never knew what she might do left to her own devices.

On this day too, already enjoying spring break, the girl had informed her family that her plans were to visit her convalescing friend, but in truth, it wasn’t an accurate description of her plans.

She was lying.

Deceiving her family, without feeling particularly guilty about it.

That said, the broad strokes didn’t contradict reality, since she headed to the Sengoku residence just as she’d told her brother─the home of Nadeko Sengoku, her friend from elementary school.

Although they’d gone their separate ways in middle school, they were once close enough to call each other by nicknames─and now, by way of Tsukihi’s brother, their relationship had been restored.

She’d worried about her friend, who’d been spirited away for a few months at the end of the previous year, and even after the hospital discharged her, visited her often─ostensibly (Tsukihi of course didn’t know that Nadeko hadn’t just gotten spirited away but in fact had become a holy spirit herself). But there was no need to check up on a girl who had made a full recovery, at least not three times a week.

Going to meet Nadeko wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t to care for her─Tsukihi visited the Sengoku residence on White Day to help her friend at a certain activity.

And this activity?

“Thank you, Tsukihi. Thanks to you I think I’ll be able to finish by my deadline,” Nadeko Sengoku told her, to which she replied, “Oh, it’s nothing at all,” there in Nadeko’s room on the second floor of her home.

Facing a reading desk, Tsukihi filled in a manga manuscript’s blacks with ink. Her temperament was so touchy she tended to snap when spoken to while busy, but she remained serene now.

Perhaps not because being thanked put her in a good mood, but simply happy to see the change in her friend─not too long ago, Nadeko’s line in this situation would surely have been I’m sorry, not Thank you.

That feeble attitude had irritated Tsukihi.

Enough to want to throw a punch had they not been friends, or even more so since they were, but after getting spirited back, something about her childhood pal seemed a little different.

What could have happened?

Tsukihi Araragi did not ask this.

She did nothing so commonplace.

She focused only on the work before her─helping Nadeko Sengoku enter a manga manuscript for a newcomer’s prize before its end-of-the-month deadline. In other words, acting as her assistant.

In the hospital room where Nadeko had stayed after getting spirited back, when Tsukihi was still checking on her health in earnest, she learned that her friend seemed to be interested in drawing manga.

She got mad at her friend for keeping it secret for so long─furious, in fact─but didn’t mind at all when she was asked to go buy some supplies and help draw something.

One thing led to another, bringing us to this moment.

Nadeko Sengoku never expected Tsukihi Araragi, the strategist of the famed Fire Sisters who should have been quite busy in that capacity, to assist in manga-making so strenuously over such an extended period, and in that sense, might have felt like she’d gotten more than she bargained for.

Meanwhile, from Tsukihi’s perspective, it was refreshing and fun to submit to the creative initiatives of Nadeko, who’d only cared for a lukewarm and cookie-cutter friendship until then.

Tsukihi had fun assisting Nadeko.

It wasn’t as if checking up on her friend wasn’t part of it, since Nadeko hadn’t recovered to the point of returning to school (naturally, Tsukihi, head honcho of the area middle schoolers, knew of the troubles at her friend’s Public MS 701). If the manga manuscript they now inked were any indication, however, she didn’t need to worry.

Nadeko must have gotten over so much.

That was Tsukihi’s impression.

Her friend’s new hairstyle being one sign─before, which is to say ever since their time in elementary, Nadeko had tried to hide her face with grown-out bangs. More than just shy, or bashful, or even introverted, she’d seemed scared of people, but now she wore her hair extra-short.

She’d gone straight to a hairdresser after her hospital stay─the old her probably wouldn’t have been able to at all. Nadeko Sengoku, who save for a lone instance had only ever gotten haircuts from her parents, stunned Tsukihi by asking for a rec.

Tsukihi had no reason to say no, in fact would get a referral bonus─but upon hearing the request (as she sat one seat over) for an extra-short haircut, even she worried that her friend had gone insane.

Well, Nadeko could make just about anything look good, so while her impression changed, it was hardly a disaster. Incomparably cuter, at least, than the time Tsukihi violently took to her bangs (said lone instance)─but then cuteness didn’t seem to be what she was going for. She’d done it for the most logical of reasons: long hair got in the way of drawing manga.

Looking at her today, as she worked in her school track jacket that she didn’t mind getting dirty with ink, she wasn’t lying about the reason. Still, Tsukihi, picky about hairstyles, couldn’t help but think that her friend’s severed hair also spoke of a broken heart.

She only thought it, of course. She’d never say it, not even in her sleep. While Tsukihi’s life philosophy was to come out and say anything and everything, she wasn’t so insensitive.

“I don’t really get this manga stuff.”

This statement was just that, however.

“Nadeko, just how confident are you? Doesn’t the winner get money or something?”

“Hmm, I don’t know,” her friend turned around and answered with a troubled smile─even this would’ve been obscured by her hair in the past. “I stopped thinking about things like confidence.”

“Huh.”

“Someone told me I might have the talent─but these things don’t always go well even if you’re talented.”

“You’ll never become a first-rate creator if you don’t believe in your own talent. Because you won’t have anything to fall back on to support you, when you run out of effort.”

People who only work hard break down when they can’t work hard anymore, Tsukihi rambled on. This surely would’ve made Nadeko retreat in the past, but she was different now.

“You say believe, but it’s more like being tricked,” she caught the ball tossed her way. “Becoming a manga artist is like winning the lottery, to borrow your expression.”

“I said that? Still, why not. There wouldn’t be any money to pay out to the winner if no one played.” It was dubious whether this addressed what was being said─probably not─but Nadeko smiled nonetheless.

“I’m just doing what I want to do. Even if I look uncool or embarrassing. Aren’t you the same way?”

Nadeko turned the question around on Tsukihi, who was the one at a loss for words─because surprisingly enough, she wasn’t doing what she wanted to do as much as others thought.

Once again, she was candid.

“I don’t really have things I want to do, goals and that sort of stuff. Maybe that’s why I like rooting for other people like this. Even the Fire Sisters were more a support group for middle schoolers than defenders of justice at first.”

“Really?” Nadeko seemed to find this strange. A facet of her friend that she hadn’t really seen halted her pen for a moment. “From my point of view, I don’t know anyone whose stance on life is as clear-cut as yours.”

“Haha. I’m honored. Is it my birthday or something? Where are my candles, did they just melt away?” joked Tsukihi.

She used to refer to herself as Nadeko, she thought nostalgically. She vaguely remembered pointing this out to her friend, but when exactly had she made the leap to me?

“But I’m a little more nihilistic, or maybe self-destructive. I tend to let myself get dragged along by people who want to do something.”

“Are you talking about Miss Karen…and Mister Koyomi?”

Nadeko had pronounced Mister Koyomi a little funny.

Funny. In an awkward manner.

But Tsukihi let it go.

Deciding that it was too soon to tease her.

“Yeah, I guess. And helping out with your job like this, I feel like I’m being dragged along by your motivation.”

“Job…” Nadeko Sengoku blushed.

But of course she did. She was no machine, so even if she’d gotten over things, she hadn’t ridden herself of all her bashfulness.

“It’s not a job yet, though. Not even close,” she said.

“Does someone like me have a future?” A weighty question, depending on the tone, here posed casually as Tsukihi’s personality dictated. “I can do most things, but I almost don’t want to do anything I can do. Doing something you can do is so boring! Since you can’t leave it at that, I end up letting other people decide for me.”

“But it’s not like you don’t want to do anything?” asked Nadeko, seeming to reference her past self─and once again going deeper than she would have before.

“No. I want to do something. I want to be active, and proactive. That’s why I do something if it interests me in the slightest. But I also get bored of everything right away─it all gets tedious. I don’t really understand what kind of person I am. I don’t know, it might be fine while I’m a young thing, but once I’m an adult I’m going to get snagged by some loser guy who talks about his boring dreams and end up in an awful place.”

“What a realistic example…”

“I need to start thinking about my plans for the future, so that kind of thing won’t happen. Karen’s going to become a high schooler, and big brother’s going to start college. I feel like now, when I’m being left behind for the second time in two years, the last time being back in sixth grade, is when I should decide what to do and who to become.”

Like you, Nadeko, she added.

Just hearing you say that makes all my hard work feel worthwhile, Nadeko said and broke into a smile before going back to inking.

“I guess good things happen to people even if they can’t find happiness─just as long as they’re still alive.”

“Hm. Yeah, you might be right.”

Was she being consoled?

In the end, chatting thus, Tsukihi Araragi kept filling in blacks and even had dinner at her friend’s home. It was fully night by the time she decided on her next workday (having promised to help until the manuscript was finished) and left the Sengoku residence.

“A-ha, could it be Araragi-senpai’s little sister?”

Right after she left─as if to prey on her momentary uncertainty as to whether she should go straight home or take a detour, as if to blend into the dark of the night, and to slip through a crack in her mind, came this address.

From someone.

She looked over to find a high school-aged girl wearing the uniform of her brother’s school and straddling a bicycle─eyes so glossily black you wondered for a moment if every streetlight in the vicinity had lost power.

A suspect smile plastered on her face.

A high school girl too young to be called bewitching but whose looks were anything but innocent, whose entire body seemed to exude an uncanny air.

In spite of her stylish bike, no one would ever term her healthy.

“We met yesterday, too. Hello.”

“…Hello.”

Had they?

Tsukihi wondered as she bobbed her head anyway. Her snap judgment was that she shouldn’t be rude to an acquaintance of her brother’s─and seeing this.

“My name’s Ogi Oshino,” the other girl introduced herself. “I hear about you all the time from your big brother─he says he’s very proud of you. Gosh, I’m so jealous that you have a big bro like him.”

“Uh huh…”

How were you to respond to such a greeting?

Also, her brother probably didn’t say he was proud of her─Tsukihi Araragi was convinced that he wouldn’t, even at gunpoint.

“It’s late, I’ll give you a ride. Hop on back,” Ogi Oshino invited, pointing to the rear of her bike. Tsukihi was a bit surprised that anyone affable enough to casually offer to ride tandem with a stranger (or had they also met yesterday?) was friends with her brother.

The Sengoku and Araragi residences weren’t so far away that a ride was warranted, but nor was refusing such a gesture, once made─so thought Tsukihi, ready to accept it gratefully, until she noticed that the rear area Ogi pointed to had no seat.

BMX bikes seat only one.

“Don’t worry, I have pegs that let two people ride this,” assured Ogi. She got off for a moment and swiftly rigged her bike so that it seated two─swiftly, skillfully. “Okay, all ready. C’mon, hop on. Put your hands on my shoulders to get some balance.”

“I can balance myself without doing that.”

“Ha haa. Don’t be silly, how could you possibly─”

She could, though.

And she did.

Often overshadowed by the world-class core muscles of Karen, her sister a year older than her, Tsukihi’s physical condition was nothing to scoff at. Standing on the pegs attached to the rear wheel and stretching her arms out to the side (her too-long hair wrapped around them so it wouldn’t get caught in the wheels), she looked ready to guard Ogi’s six.

Okay, more like just stand there.

It was very much like her to take an already risky situation, riding two to a bicycle, and make it even more dangerous for no good reason─but if the pilot was worried by the circus stunt taking place behind her, she didn’t betray her alarm.

Tsukihi, herself, naturally enjoyed performing the trick, a believer in savoring fun to the fullest.

“My brother would love this bike!”

“Ah, right, he likes bicycles, now that you mention it─though it seems he lost both of his for certain reasons. Yes, you might say that’s why I’m riding one.”

“Hm? What do you mean?”

“No real meaning, more of a metaphor. Pay the right amount of attention to it, and maybe you’ll be rewarded.”

“Huh…”

“Was Sengoku doing well?” asked Ogi, apparently acquainted with not just her brother but Nadeko. Was she in the area to see how Nadeko was doing? Had Tsukihi cut in line somehow?

It was very much like her not to feel any kind of way about this.

Her moral code did include not cutting in line or skipping people’s turns on purpose, but feeling bad over doing so by accident required a self-critical bent that she didn’t possess.

“Maybe that’s where you’re different from your older brother.”

“Hm? What?”

“Nothing. It’s nothing. Anyway, Sengoku’s condition. How did her bill of health look? Clean? Or was it a death certificate?”

“…I guess she’s doing well.”

She’s doing great!

Tsukihi had nearly blurted that out, but her friend had yet to go back to school and needed an alibi.

A thoughtful girl, in that sense. Not just wise, but sly.

“She’s not dead. Actually, she was deader before.”

“Perhaps. Well, yes, no one’s ever just cute─the way I see it, girls like her are cuter when they’re not being cute,” Ogi remarked, not making much sense. This bit of banter must have seemed perfectly logical to her because she continued without going into detail. “Good, good,” she came to some understanding that was all her own. “So, for her, being a pretty girl was only ever self-harming─sad, no?”

“Sad? Aren’t you lucky if you’re cute?” questioned Tsukihi, innocently─maybe insensitively.

“Take how you don’t get to choose what family you’re born into. You might envy people born into class or wealth, but from their perspective, it’s also a heavy burden to carry since day one─for instance, they might not be allowed to become manga artists, even if that’s what they want. You’d call that unlucky, wouldn’t you?” explained Ogi, but Tsukihi─or rather, a fourteen-year-old girl didn’t seem to get it, and the older girl must have noticed. “It’s not what you can do that decides your future, but what you can’t do─because you won’t know where to focus if there’s too much you can do,” she shifted the topic a little. “Thanks to a lifetime’s worth of shame and other avenues getting cut off, Sengoku can now chase after her dream like mad─that’s what I’m saying.”

“…”

“Cuteness must have been a chain holding her down, but it was also too precious a talent to cut loose─so drastic measures were needed.”

“Drastic measures? What do you mean?”

“Who knows. Beats me.”

Ogi held out her hands. In other words, took them off the steering.

Both riders of a bike seating two had both of their hands free─they were reaching for the freedom to cause a traffic accident.

“I don’t know anything─it’s Araragi-senpai who knows.”

“…”

“But maybe it wasn’t about any drastic measure but learning from a bad example. Still, I feel bad for that conman…I didn’t mean for it to go that far. Your brother might not forgive me, even if I showed remorse.”

Ogi then put her hands back on the handlebars.

“It seems Sengoku wants to become a manga artist.”

She began pedaling faster.

“Tsukihi Araragi. How do you want to become?”

“How?” Recalling her conversion with Nadeko about this, Tsukihi replied, “I don’t have anything like that.” Her friend was keeping her manga-drawing pretty secret, but she must’ve told this person? “If I’m having fun, then I’m fine. Maybe that’ll keep going and be my future?”

“You might not know everything, but you can do everything. Omnipotent but not omniscient, you have too many choices, and your goals are scattered all over the place. That’s why you’re always content with the number-two spot. It’s easiest for you to be pulled forward by someone else─but when it comes to your future…” Ogi said, like she knew all about her─how much had her brother told her? “It’s just too grand and remote,” she divulged with a smirk.

“…? Are you saying I’m depending too much on other people?” She let slide the comment about her future since it was just confusing─but the stuff about being number two and whatnot piqued her interest, and she wanted to dig deeper. Maybe it was just a continuation of the conversation back in Nadeko’s room.

“I wonder. Considering how cuckoos lay their eggs in other birds’ nests, I’d say parasitism more than dependence… Despite that nature, your personality is also kind of unique. Could it be your big brother’s influence?”

“Cuckoos.”

“Tsukihi. It’s true that you’re living your life thanks to other people’s support─that they’re giving you life. You could’ve died during summer break if not for your siblings’ concern.”

“…? Summer break?”

What could she mean?

Another metaphor?

“So, people can’t live all on their own,” Tsukihi interpreted it in her own way and reworded it as a cliché, but─

“People do live all on their own,” Ogi quickly contradicted her. “The ones who can’t─are monsters.”

You and me for instance, Ogi Oshino appended─it made no sense to Tsukihi Araragi.

At first, she’d found it unusual that her brother had a friend like this girl, but now that they’d talked, she was the type, her mysteriousness would click with him.

“Wait, huh? Hold on, Miss Oshino─”

“Miss Ogi is fine.”

“Miss Ogi, we’re going in the wrong direction.”

Her odd position as she rode tandem on the bike had made the scenery look different─or maybe not, maybe she’d just carelessly failed to notice until now, but at some point, they’d strayed far from the route between the Sengoku and Araragi residences.

It wasn’t so far that their conversation could last this long─where were they now?

“Oops. Sorry, looks like I got lost─why don’t I stop for a moment and look at a map on my phone.”

Ogi hardly sounded embarrassed as she looked for a good place to park─and soon settled on a building and used her feet to brake in front of it.

The spot didn’t seem remotely ideal to Tsukihi─the area was abandoned and untended, or maybe rundown was the better word. You only needed to glance at the building to tell that it was no longer in use. If her companion wasn’t a girl, Tsukihi might have worried that she’d been abducted by a wicked scoundrel claiming to be her brother’s friend (it’d be the scoundrel walking away the worse for wear in that case), but she felt no such danger as the girl fiddled with her smartphone. Instead, she looked up at the abandoned building with curiosity.

It wasn’t worth more than a glance. Nor was it a place you’d ever come to, unless you were lost─her curiosity sedimented as soon as she had the thought, proving just how much this girl lived in the moment.

“Hm? Hold on.”

But then she remembered something.

For some reason, she remembered seeing the abandoned building─even though it had to be her first time here, and her first time seeing it.

“Oh, right… Isn’t this the building that burned down back in─was it August?”

She’d seen it in the news.

As a member of the Fire Sisters who tasked herself with maintaining law and order in her town, she naturally came by such info─the case stuck out in her memory despite the many small fires breaking out at that time because it had been big enough to burn down an entire building.

Before it burned to the ground, and after it burned to the ground.

She had looked at both pictures.

When she learned the facts of the case, it seemed like nothing more than a spontaneous fire, nothing as dangerous as arson or the like─still, the damage must have been massive. Not even a single pillar could have been left behind.

So then, why was a building that had burned down standing there majestically? Had it been rebuilt? No, why bother recreating an abandoned building?

“I figured out the way, Tsukihi. Don’t worry, I won’t get it wrong this time. Or maybe you’d like to try driving? This BMX bike is pretty exciting, it can even go backwards─hm? Hmmm? What seems to be the matter? Why are you looking up at such a plain, commonplace building?”

“Oh… It’s just─”

Tsukihi explained. Ogi had only happened to get lost in the area and wouldn’t have any answers as to why a building that should have burned down still existed. Tsukihi wanted to share her feelings nonetheless.

“Huh, how strange,” commented Ogi. “I wonder if you could call this the ghost of a building. Why don’t we try going inside?”

She was already chaining her bike to─and leaning it against (with no stand, the only option)─a nearby tree, and lost no time entering onto the grounds. She was so quick to act.

This girl was intrepid, unlike Tsukihi’s brother, who overthought everything. Tsukihi wasn’t the type to hesitate either, and rather than watch the girl walk off, followed right behind.

“Are you one of those abandoned building nerds, Miss Ogi?” she asked, inferring the possibility from the girl’s light steps.

“No, ruins don’t do much for me on their own. They scare me like they would any girl. But it’s like my job to investigate suggestive places like these.”

“Your job─you say.” Echoing the word, Tsukihi recalled how it had made Nadeko self-conscious. Ogi couldn’t be implying that it was some part-time gig, though.

“Yep.”

With that, they stepped into the abandoned building. Technically speaking, this was trespassing, but the place was in such awful shape that it couldn’t possibly have an owner or superintendent.

The footing couldn’t be any worse, and no light could be expected given the time of day. They needed to be careful not to trip and fall, or else they could be seriously hurt.

“Looks like it used to be a school…er, a cram school,” Tsukihi concluded, after carefully observing its interior─and climbing the stairs, as the elevator was of course broken.

“Hm, you’re right. Bummer, by charging in head-first, we unveiled its true identity─and now that we know, it isn’t the least bit scary.” Ogi had never looked afraid but said this anyway as she turned the landing. Apparently, she wanted to begin her investigation with the top floor─the inverse of the theory that the most efficient way to look through drawers is to start with the bottom one. “That’s how it is, you know? Whatever you’re dealing with, the unidentified or unfamiliar is what’s scary. People get anxious when they think about their future because they can’t imagine their future selves. With a clear vision, you aren’t afraid of growth.”

“…”

“It’s like Schrödinger’s box. Open it, and it’s just a plain box─of course you can’t know if the cat in it is dead or alive when it’s closed. The same goes for mystery fiction. You bite your nails and your heart pounds because you don’t know who the culprit is. Once a mystery stops being a mystery and the list of suspects gets narrowed down to one─to be blunt, the book stops being interesting. Reveal scenes only need to be a line long, if you ask me.”

Once their true identity is exposed, both the fear and the interest vanish─that’s how it is, she summed up as she climbed, higher and higher.

Words of wisdom─her brother knew so many smart people. Despite this rare moment of honest respect, it was also Tsukihi Araragi’s karma to begin nitpicking whenever she felt respectful.

“Is that really true?”

“Hm…what now, a rebuttal? I’d like to hear it. For my sake, and for yours.”

“I wouldn’t say a rebuttal…but while it might be true for detective novels, in real life doesn’t it get scarier after the culprit is caught? Once they are, you know for sure that the person you found so frightening actually exists.”

“Hm.”

“Learning their identity kicks off its own story… I mean, doesn’t the process after catching a criminal take longer than catching them? There’s the trial, then there’s imprisonment…”

She’d gotten a bit off track, but Ogi seemed to find this opinion novel, as the garrulous girl held her tongue for a moment.

Tsukihi continued, “And even if you call it a true identity, there’s no guarantee that it’s really true. Who knows, another twist could be waiting for you, to put it in detective-fiction terms.”

“You might be right about that. I see, so there are true identities─and plain identities, which are only what they are. You got me there, I see you take after your brother.”

I suppose that opinion was for your sake, and not mine, she remarked as she arrived at the top floor.

Having climbed four floors’ worth of stairs, her breathing remained as calm as ever. The girl seemed to have good legs, but the same could be said of Tsukihi, who followed right behind.

She had health to spare─vitality, too.

Such was Tsukihi Araragi.

“People might accept your true identity, Tsukihi─or feel amused, but in my case I doubt it. My true identity is─ugly.”

“…?”

“Consider how we write that character: saké and demon. Not that the gods aren’t just as fond of drowning in booze.”

“The three strokes for ‘water’ in saké get left over when you combine the characters to form ugly, though.”

“As they should. Signifying water─or a lake. Or maybe a sea snake.”

This explanation only made things more confusing, and Tsukihi had to conclude that the girl had no interest in clarifying anything.

“Tsukihi,” Ogi called to her, heading for the leftmost of the floor’s three classrooms. “I’m afraid you have nothing you can call a future─forget not knowing what’ll happen, you don’t have any at all. No matter how many moments you cobble together in the present, they’ll never add up to your future. All you have is an eternal present. Can you still─keep living in the now, not worrying about what’s to come, never minding the future?”

“Yeah, probably,” Tsukihi answered in a most casual manner, quite unsure of what the question meant. “I’m pretty good at living, so yeah.”

“…It’s wonderful you can say that. I envy you.”

I envy you.

How was she supposed to respond to that, anyway? Ogi then put her hand on the door.

Turning its knob with grace.

She opened it with a smile.

“You’re late, Ogi.”

And─I spoke. Inside the now-open classroom, I stood from the chair where I’d been sitting and imitated the man she’d called her uncle.

“I’ve been waiting for you.”