Monogatari Series - Volume 2 - Chapter 3.5

005

Suruga Kanbaru’s home was about thirty minutes away by bike from the front gates of our school. It was also about thirty minutes away on foot if you dashed the whole way. At first I tried telling Kanbaru to get on the back of my bike so we could ride together, but she demurred. It’s dangerous for two people to ride on one bicycle, and it’s against the law to begin with, she said. Well, I couldn’t argue with that, and perhaps she was reluctant because getting on the back meant holding on to me the whole way. In that case, I thought, I could push my bike and walk alongside her or leave it at school, but Kanbaru told me not to worry about her and to ride. Then what’s she gonna do, I wondered, until she told me, like it was the most natural thing, “Okay, let me show you the way,” and dashed off on her two feet. This was just as true now as when she stalked me, but for Suruga Kanbaru, “dashing” seemed to be a mode of transportation just like “by foot, bike, car, or train.” This seemed unusual to me, even for jocks. Tup, tup, tup, tup, tup, tup, Kanbaru’s sharp and lively rhythm went as she guided my bike─with the white bandage on her left hand. When we arrived at our destination, her breathing completely unperturbed, she had somehow only worked up a small sweat.

It was an impressive Japanese home.

I could practically feel the history coming from it.

I knew that it must have been her home from the nameplate reading “Kanbaru” on the gate, but the premises had an air of solemnity about them that gave me pause nevertheless.

Still, I was going to go inside.

I intruded on the premises with the same indescribable feeling that overcame me when I visited a shrine or a temple on a school field trip, and after we walked down a hallway that faced a traditional courtyard, bamboo-pipe fountain and all, I was shown into Kanbaru’s room beyond a sliding paper-screen door.

…As I looked around, I wondered how she could have allowed in a senior whom she didn’t even know that well.

Her futon hadn’t been folded up; her clothes were strewn across the floor (including her underwear); many books, be it textbooks, novels, or manga, lay open face-down on the floor; a mountain of cardboard boxes that belonged in a warehouse stood in one corner; and worst of all, her trash didn’t sit inside a waste basket but was left carelessly all over the tatami mats, packed into plastic bags from her neighborhood supermarket or just as-is. In fact, the room seemed to lack any container burdened with the quaint notion of holding trash.

It should have felt spacious, at over two hundred square feet.

But there was nowhere to take even a first step.

“I apologize for the mess.”

Suruga Kanbaru said this briskly with an innocent smile on her face, her right hand on her chest. Maybe the words were fitting for the occasion, but I’d always thought of them as a modest disclaimer you uttered upon inviting someone into a room that was at least somewhat tidy.

What’s flooded on top and in blazes on the bottom?

Well said, actually.

Oh god…

There were even some hygiene products…

I reflexively looked down at my feet.

If I didn’t, I might find plenty of things that would be even worse to see. Self-confidence is a good thing, but being shameless is something else, Suruga Kanbaru…

Oh.

That applied to Senjogahara too, didn’t it…

True, there wasn’t a speck of dust to be found in Senjogahara’s room… Still, she’d had a major influence on Kanbaru back in middle school not limited to her personality, and it just seemed to have ruined Kanbaru’s character, if anything.

“There’s no need to be modest,” my hostess urged. “You’re hesitating to enter the room of a girl you don’t know well, which speaks to your delicacy, which I find rather charming, but I don’t think this is the time for that.”

“…Kanbaru.”

“Yes?”

“I’m very aware of the fact that this isn’t the time for it, but…please, I have a request for you.”

“Sure thing. Whatever you want. I’m in no place to turn down any from you.”

“I just want an hour, no, thirty minutes… Just give me some time to clean this room up. Also, give me a big garbage bag.”

I didn’t see myself as a clean freak…and it wasn’t like my room was particularly tidy, either, but this was just awful…cruel, even. Kanbaru seemed confused, as if she didn’t have a clue as to what I was talking about, but that must have also meant that she had no real reason to refuse. With an “Okay, then,” she went to get me a garbage bag.

Fast forward.

Well, actually.

The disaster that was Kanbaru’s room wasn’t, of course, something that could be rectified in thirty short minutes, not to mention that at the end of the day, this was the room of a girl I didn’t know that well, which meant that while I could grab some things, there were others that I couldn’t touch for ethical and moral reasons. So pretty much all I did was gather up the scattered trash and tidy up her books and magazines (or so I say, but with no bookshelves in Kanbaru’s room, I simply stacked them up according to size). It was a halfhearted attempt, like sweeping a circle in her square room, but even so, once I folded up her futon and stored it in her closet and folded up her clothes and put them in a corner (she didn’t have hangers, let alone a dresser), the sight became bearable, or at least, there was enough space for Kanbaru and I to sit facing each other and talk.

“Incredible, my senior Araragi. So that’s the color of my floor mats. I wonder how many years it’s been since I last glimpsed them.”

“You’re counting in years…”

“I’m grateful.”

“…Once this is settled, let’s take a full day…no, I’ll even stay over to spend multiple days cleaning up this room. Next time I’ll bring a full set of serious cleaning supplies, like liquid cleaner and spot remover, okay?”

“Sorry for making you fuss over me. Basketball is about the only thing I’m good at, and cleaning up or tidying up or finishing up or whatever it’s called isn’t my forte.”

“……”

She was wearing such a broad, self-assured smile that I didn’t know what to say… During those thirty minutes, she’d stood idle and absentminded in the hallway and shown no signs of helping out. I didn’t think she was lazy or slovenly, only really that inept at tidying up her room, but still, though it was none of my business, the sight had been one to hide, at all costs, to be withheld, absolutely, from the eyes of students at our school who considered her a star. She hadn’t invited any of her classmates here, had she? Friends were one thing, but if she invited one of her club juniors, she ran the risk of traumatizing them. Among the many things I’d stuffed into the garbage bag were crushed soda cans, candy wrappers, and empty instant noodle cups… What was an athlete on the national level doing eating and drinking that stuff?

I knew that a quirk or two could actually cause a celebrity to be more likable, but this was going too far no matter how you looked at it. Try as you might, you wouldn’t find such a character adorable…

“Okay, then─”

It was tomorrow.

The day after Friday, in other words.

Saturday.

While most of society has long taken the two-day weekend for granted, Naoetsu High, the private prep school of note that we attend, regularly holds classes even on Saturdays. Even after tomorrow turned to today, not having arrived at any kind of conclusion, I used the break between first and second periods to head to the building for second-years. I was going to be talking to a famous star, so there was no need for me to look up her class. Class 2-2. While the other kids were abuzz that a third-year had visited them (a familiar yet fresh feeling for someone like me who no longer had senior schoolmates), Kanbaru─being Suruga Kanbaru─walked up to me with a majestic gait as I waited in the hallway.

“Hello there, my senior Araragi.”

“Hey, Kanbaru. There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

“I see. In that case,” Kanbaru replied, no questions asked, as if everything had been worked out in advance, “please come with me to my home after school.”

And─

There I was at her home, the Japanese mansion.

There was no need to go all the way there if all we were going to do was talk. We could have done so in an empty classroom, on the roof, on the athletic grounds, or even at a nearby fast food restaurant if we had to do it off campus, and I’d told her as much, but Kanbaru seemed to want to do it at her home for a reason.

If she had a reason, I’d oblige.

I wasn’t going to ask.

“So,” she said, “where should we begin? Of course, as you can tell, I’m not much of a conversationalist so I’m not sure how this is supposed to go, but first things first.” Kanbaru re-crossed her legs and bowed her head. “I’d like to apologize for what happened last night.”

“Yeah…” I’d recovered in a day’s time─though I might have felt some lingering pain in my stomach, which I rubbed for a moment before nodding. “So that was you, after all.”

The raincoat.

Rubber gloves, rubber boots.

They had been─among the clothes that I’d just finished putting away.

Needless to say.

“‘After all,’ huh,” Kanbaru echoed me. “I don’t know how to feel sometimes when I hear you speak. You’re so humble. You saw straight through it, didn’t you? You wouldn’t have come to me otherwise.”

“Not really…I was just guessing. Based on your build, your outline, your silhouette, that kind of thing. I added filters, like people who were aware that I was paying Senjogahara a visit for a study session, and ran a search, so to speak… And if I went to you and I was wrong, I’d just be wrong. It’s not like there would be an issue.”

“Hmm, I see. How astute of you.” Kanbaru sounded genuinely impressed. “I’ve heard that some boys can identify a girl by the shape of her hips. Was that it?”

“Not even close!” How could I when she was wearing a raincoat?!

“I apologize. I hadn’t meant to do that.”

Kanbaru bowed her head again.

To me─she seemed sincere.

But if she hadn’t meant to…then what had she been up to? It was clearly an attempt on my… Or was that not the case, either?

“Well,” I said, “apologies are great, but what I wanted to hear was your reason. Actually─we can put aside the reason.”

Her reason.

It wasn’t that I had no clue.

I wasn’t going out of my way to say it now, but it was the very bit, the hint that pointed to Raincoat being none other than Kanbaru.

But─

“In any case, that power, that abnormal power─”

Abnormal power.

Aberration.

It crumpled my bike like paper.

It demolished a concrete-block wall with a single strike.

It took a human and─

“That’s what I want to ask about,” I continued. “What, exactly, did you…”

“Hrmm. I was wondering where to begin, but that would be where, I suppose. Fine… But first, I’d like to ask if you’re the type of person who can accept the absurd.”

“The absurd?”

That must have meant─oh, right. Of course.

Kanbaru didn’t know about my body. About my once-immortal body─while she had dealt me significant damage the night before, I didn’t heal so quickly you could see it taking place, so of course she didn’t know. Thus her preface─but wait, no.

Even if Kanbaru didn’t know about me, she knew about Senjogahara, having learned her absurd secret before me. And─as her boyfriend, I had to know the absurd secret, in Kanbaru’s mind─in other words, maybe she was sounding me out at that very moment.

“Did that not make sense?” she asked me. “My question is whether or not you’re able to believe what you see with your own eyes.”

“I only believe what I see with my own eyes. Which is why I’ve believed everything I’ve seen. Naturally, that goes for Senjogahara, too.”

“…Oh, so you even figured that out.” Without a hint of guilt or shame at my remark, however, Kanbaru continued, “But. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. It’s not like I’ve been following you around recently because I want to learn more about her.”

“Huh? You weren’t?”

I’d been─completely convinced of that.

She was trying to confirm the rumor that Koyomi Araragi and Hitagi Senjogahara were going out─wasn’t she? And then, when she heard that I was going to Senjogahara’s home for a one-on-one study session, she felt certain─didn’t she?

Well, I was probably right about that.

My read wasn’t mistaken, but─was there a separate reason for the stalking?

“You and Senjogahara were called the Valhalla Duo as the basketball star and the track star, I’ve come to understand.”

“Yes, exactly. I’m impressed you know that much, I underestimated you. I thought I’d praised you as much as I could, but it looks like I still fell short. I could never measure your greatness with my own piddling values. The more I get to know you, the further away you feel.”

“…Someone told me, that’s all.”

Despite all her flowery praise, she wasn’t coming across as a sycophant or brownnoser to me, which in a way made her a work of art.

“How it was derived, too,” I added. “It’s a really well thought-out moniker.”

“Isn’t it? I came up with it myself.”

Kanbaru puffed her chest out with pride.

…She’d thought of it herself.

I hadn’t felt so heartsick in a while…

“I thought about it for the longest time before coming up with that one. By the way, I also came up with a personal nickname for myself, ‘Li’l Suruga Can-do,’ but that one didn’t stick, unfortunately.”

“I’m feeling very disappointed, too.”

“Oh, so you sympathize?”

Yes. On account of your poor sensibility.

“You’re such a compassionate senior. Of course, now that I say it out loud, it was a little long to use as a nickname. I can see why it never caught on.”

“If we’re gonna postgame it, that was the least of your errors.”

Kanbaru seemed to have been surrounded by wonderful people in middle school.

Including Senjogahara back in those days…

“Anyway, yes,” she said. “Putting aside the Valhalla Duo, perhaps I’ll only annoy you by spelling things out considering how perceptive you are, but in middle school Senjogahara and I were─no, before I go into that, there’s something I want to show you. That’s why I asked you to spare some of your valuable time to trek all the way here.”

“You want to show me something? Oh, I get it. That something was at home, and that’s why we couldn’t talk at school or just anywhere.”

“No, that’s not it. It’d stand out at school, or maybe you could say I was afraid of people seeing it… I’d prefer it if no one else did.”

Saying so─Kanbaru began to unwind the white bandage on her left hand. She undid the clasp holding it wrapped around her arm, and methodically, starting with her fingers─

It came back to me.

The night before.

It had destroyed my bike, smashed through the concrete-block wall, and ruptured my organs─

It had been the doing of a left hand balled into a fist.

“To be honest, I don’t really want people seeing this. After all, I’m a girl.”

She unwound the entire bandage─and rolled up the sleeve of her uniform. What I saw there was Kanbaru’s girlish, slender, soft-looking upper arm, and connected to it from the elbow down─a bony left hand covered in thick, black hair you’d expect to see on a wild beast.

It had peeked through the holes worn through the rubber glove.

The scent─of a beast.

“Well, this is how it is.”

“………”

Could it have been an odd-looking glove or hand puppet─no, clearly not. It was far too long and thin─and anyway, apart from how it looked, I had witnessed something similar though not quite the same for certain over Golden Week─so I knew.

That it was nothing but an aberration.

An aberration.

I called it a wild beast─but I’d be hard-pressed to say what kind. It felt like it could be any animal, but also like no animal in existence. While it looked like everything, it seemed to belong to nothing. But if I had to say, given the five reasonably long fingers and the shape of the nails extending past them, only if I had to say─

Although I don’t think it’s a very appropriate way to describe a girl’s body part.

“A monkey’s paw.”

Those were my words.

“It looks like─a monkey’s paw.”

An ape─as in the general term to describe any non-human primate.

“Huh.”

For some reason─Kanbaru was looking at me with admiration.

Then, she smacked her knee and said, “I knew it. It is impossible, after all, to measure just how discerning those eyes of yours are. I’m stunned, it’s like they work in a completely different way. You were able to figure out what this is at a single glance. I’m simply amazed. There’s no comparing the knowledge you possess to the resources of a plebeian mind like mine─that must mean there’s no need for me to explain anything else.”

“H-Hey, don’t feel convinced all on your own!”

No way I could let her stop explaining now.

She might as well have hung me out to dry.

I told her, “I just said the first thing that came to mind. I haven’t discerned a thing.”

“Really? That’s the title of a short story by William Wymark Jacobs─‘The Monkey’s Paw.’ The theme of the monkey’s paw has been used so many times in all kinds of media that it’s been spun off into different patterns─”

“Never heard of it,” I confessed.

Oh, Kanbaru said. “That you would utter the truth without knowing makes me wonder if you enjoy some celestial being’s blessing. Intuiting the essence, no logic required!”

“…Well, my intuition does enjoy a little bit of a reputation.”

“I knew it. And now I’m proud of myself. I’m nowhere on your level, of course, but to the extent that I laid store in you, my intuition was spot-on.”

“Oh, really…”

If you asked me, her sights were misaligned.

Um, I said, looking at Kanbaru’s left hand again. A beast’s hand─a monkey’s paw. “C-Can I touch it?”

“Yup. It’s fine for now.”

“O-Oh…”

With her permission, I brought my hand close to her wrist─and touched it gently.

Timidly, fearfully.

The texture, the flesh…the heat, the pulse.

It was alive.

So this aberration─was a living aberration after all.

…So even Suruga Kanbaru, who had no issue with me seeing her room in that state, did mind showing people this left arm of hers… What she’d said about spraining it while doing solo workouts was nothing more than talk. The bandage wasn’t to protect her injury but a way to hide her arm… And yes, I’d found it a little strange that she didn’t disfavor the left side of her body despite the sprain…but I guess it’s not very convincing of me to say that after the fact.

Then again.

It made sense she wasn’t able to play basketball with that left hand.

Without thinking.

Squeeze─I tightened my hand around her wrist.

“Mm, ahh, no,” she moaned.

“Stop with that weird voice!”

Without thinking, I let go.

“But you were touching me in a weird way,” she objected.

“I wasn’t touching you in any weird way.”

“I’m ticklish.”

“Okay, but that’s no reason for you to moan in a way that contradicts your character so far…”

When I thought about it, Senjogahara had pulled the same trick a few times. It had to be in a diametrically opposite way from her current self, but if Kanbaru had it down too, then Senjogahara’s repertoire included it since middle school…

“Kanbaru, just in case you’ve forgotten, this is your home and your room, okay? What do you think is going to happen to me if your parents heard you moaning like that?”

“Oh, that’s okay,” she replied jovially. “You don’t need to worry about them, at all.”

“…Fine, then.”

Huh?

Why was she saying that like she didn’t want me to bring up the topic, like she was openly refusing to pursue it any further? While her tone was as upbeat as ever, it really did seem out of character.

So anyway, Kanbaru rushed to get us back on track, opening and closing her left hand. “As you can see, it moves like I want it to right now─but there are also times when it won’t. No, I guess you might say there are times it moves like I don’t want it to─”

“Like you don’t want it to?”

“Want, or hope─hmm, what’s the right word. It’s hard to say. I guess it would be when I’m trying to explain something that I don’t understand very well myself… However. It was me who attacked you last night, it was definitely me─yet I barely remember a thing. It was like a waking dream, or maybe a reverie─it’s not like I don’t remember anything at all, but it felt like I was watching something on television, like I couldn’t step in─”

“A trance,” I interrupted her explanation. “You were in a trance─that’s what it’s called. I know all about it… Aberrations that possess humans come in and have their way with your mind and body.”

That wasn’t the case with me─but it was in Hanekawa’s, the occurrence with Tsubasa Hanekawa’s cat. That’s why she remembered practically nothing about what happened over Golden Week, when she came into contact with an aberration. As a case, this one seemed close─there’d been a similar type of phenomenon where Hanekawa’s body transformed, too─

“You know a lot,” Kanbaru admired. “So that’s what this is called, an aberration─”

“I’m not particularly well-informed, though. It’s just that I’ve had a lot of experiences with them lately for whatever reason, and there’s someone who is well-informed about them─”

Oshino.

This─was right up his alley.

It was Oshino’s domain.

“─that I met.”

“Okay. Well, I’m fortunate you’re so broadminded. We wouldn’t be able to talk if you ran away the moment I showed you this arm. And I would feel hurt. More than a little.”

“Luckily, you see, I’ve gotten used to dealing with the absurd, so don’t worry. The absurd…meaning Senjogahara, too─of course.”

At this rate, I should tell her later about how I got involved with an aberration myself and temporarily turned into a vampire… From an accountability standpoint, maybe I needed to tell her now, but there were still too many unknowns about the aberration that was Kanbaru’s left hand for that.

“Still, I was a little surprised,” I shared. “You made me hiccup, as my fifth-grade friend would say. But since you’ve started with the most surprising part, I’m confident that nothing else you tell me will shock me.”

“Ah. Of course, that’s why I had you look at my arm first. We’ve cleared the biggest hurdle from the get-go. All right, to business, then.”

With a smile Kanbaru went on.

“I’m a lesbian.”

“……”

I fell over in shock.

Like in a Fujiko Fujio comic.

“Oh, I see,” Kanbaru mumbled at my reaction. “Maybe I was a little too blunt, given that you’re a man. Umm…” She cocked her head. “Allow me to correct myself. I’m a sapphist.”

“It’s the same thing!”

I had yelled, in an attempt to keep myself grounded.

Huh? What? So, what did that mean?

Is that why she and Senjogahara were the Valhalla Duo back in middle school? A year apart, were they? Senjogahara calling her “that kid”? Hunh? Is that what she meant the day before when she said she’d never broken up with a boy?

“Oh, it’s not like that. I only had a crush on her, there was nothing the other way around. To me, she was purely perfect, a senior I could look up to. I was content just to bask in her presence.”

“Content just to bask in her presence…”

That sounded nice.

That really did sound nice. But.

An unrequited crush, she’d gone ahead and told me…

Hachikuji, I thought, the woman in you led you in a completely wrong direction… No, I needed to calm down. I couldn’t reject stuff out of prejudice… Right… Maybe this is how girls were these days. Maybe my worldview was dated. Maybe I needed to be less serious and more liberal.

“I see, a sapphist… All right, then.”

“Yes, a sapphist.”

Kanbaru looked happy for whatever reason.

Be that as it may…

Whether it was vampires, cats, crabs, or snails, class presidents, always-ill girls, or grade schoolers, cat ears or tsunderes or lost children, or even sapphists, the world was, how should I put it, full of new challenges, or maybe insatiable.

It was a free-for-all.

Did Senjogahara know that about her? Probably not, given the way Kanbaru had said it. But whether she did or not, I doubted it concerned a middle-school Senjogahara very much.

The star of the track team and the star of the basketball team.

The Valhalla Duo.

“She was popular with everyone,” Kanbaru related, “but I’m pretty sure my feelings for her went beyond that. I’m certain of it, in fact. I was even ready to die for her sake. Yes, you could say I wanted her, dead or in love.”

“……”

Uh…what?

I wasn’t sure if that was clever or not.

“Mm,” she hummed. “That came off better than I expected. Pretty inspired of me to play on ‘alive’ and ‘in love,’ if I do say so myself. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Uh huh. I wasn’t sure at first, but now that you’ve explained it to me, I’ve made up my mind.”

It was a bad pun.

Anyway.

I told Kanbaru to go on.

“Go on? I don’t know, it’s not like we’re discussing the past. To speak of continuing, it’s of a piece with the present. I chose Naoetsu High in the first place to chase after her.”

“Yeah… That’s what I assumed after hearing your story. If anything, it all makes better sense.”

I ran the risk of insulting Kanbaru’s teammates all over again depending on how she took it so I kept the words to myself, but a basketball star in middle school should have been able to play in a better environment via an athletic recommendation or something. Yet, for whatever reason, Kanbaru had decided on Naoetsu High, a school that put as good as zero focus on extracurriculars, basketball included. Why? What could have been her motivation?

Her devotion.

Well, even then, it was all too straightforward.

“I was so taken with her that I would’ve licked a candy that came out of her mouth.”

“……”

Was that an image she ought to be putting into words in front of other people?

“My third year,” she lamented, “the whole year after she graduated, was colored gray.”

“Gray, you say.”

“Yes. A gray Sapphic existence.”

“……”

She really liked that term.

Sure, if that’s what she wanted.

“My gray matter’s gray Sapphic existence,” she said.

“That’s not even remotely clever.”

She was trying too hard to insert jokes into our conversation.

This could stay a tad more serious.

“How strict of you,” she complained. “You’re setting too high a bar for me with your tough standards. It’s strange, though. Knowing that you’re doing it for my own good eases me into accepting them.”

“Uhh… What happened to your gray Sapphic existence next?”

“Yes. That year drove home just how important she’d been for me. That year we were apart may have weighed more on me than the two years we were together. That’s why my plan was to tell her how I felt if I got into Naoetsu High and could meet her again. With that goal, I spent all of my time studying for entrance exams.”

So said Kanbaru.

She was as full of confidence as ever, but it seemed like her cheeks were flushed. She must have been embarrassed, plain and simple. Uh oh…it was kind of cute. I was busy being confused and bewildered when she was stalking me, but now for the first time I was starting to feel fond of Suruga Kanbaru, my junior. Gosh, a whole new Sapphic-moé territory was opening up inside of me…

I found myself barely caring about Kanbaru’s beastly left hand…but no, I knew that was where the meat of this story lay…

“Forget about candy. Gum,” she averred. “I was so taken with her that I would have chewed a piece of gum that came from her mouth.”

“Your standards are a mystery to me…”

There had to be a nicer image.

“But,” Kanbaru said, her tone sagging exaggeratedly, “she had changed from the senior I knew.”

“Ah…”

“She had changed completely.”

A crab.

Hitagi Senjogahara had encountered─a crab. She’d lost much, thrown away much, and rid herself of much─and she rejected everything. It must have seemed like Hitagi Senjogahara had transformed into a different person altogether for those who’d known her in middle school, like Hanekawa. And for Kanbaru, who had worshiped Senjogahara─the transformation must have been too thorough to take.

So thorough it made her doubt what she saw with her own eyes.

“I had heard that she became seriously ill after entering high school─and that she had quit running because of how protracted it was. I knew that much coming in. But I never imagined she could have changed─that much. I thought it was all a bunch of nasty rumors.”

Seriously ill, eh…

Well, she wasn’t wrong to look at it that way… Ultimately, Senjogahara had a chronic condition that still dogged her.

“But─I was wrong. Those rumors were so off the mark that they didn’t even scratch the surface. Something far worse had happened to her body. I noticed─and I thought I had to do something. I had to save my senior. How could I not? She was really good to me when I was in middle school, and I’ve never forgotten it. We may have been in different years and on different teams, but she was extremely generous.”

“That generosity…”

That generosity─what had it meant to Senjogahara? But this wasn’t the time to speak or inquire about it, was it?

“And that’s why I tried to save her─I wanted to. But I couldn’t even begin to approach her. She refused.”

“Ah…”

It seemed like too much to expect her to tell me exactly how. She was probably covering for Senjogahara… Kanbaru would never speak a single bad word about her, no matter what.

Yes, it wasn’t hard to guess that she’d had something just as bad, if not worse, done to her… Frankly speaking, I didn’t care to know.

For my sake, and for Kanbaru’s.

For Senjogahara’s sake, too.

Stapler.

“I thought I could do something.” Despite an air of chagrin, of regretting it from the bottom of her heart─Kanbaru was forcing herself to sound calm and collected. “I thought I could do something about whatever she was burdened with. Even if I couldn’t get rid of the cause, even if I couldn’t relieve her symptoms, I could be by her side─and heal her heart.”

“……”

“What a joke that was. I was such a foolish girl. Looking back on it, it’s nothing short of comical.”

Because Senjogahara didn’t want anything like that at all─

So said Kanbaru, with downcast eyes.

“She told me, ‘I don’t think of you as a friend or even as my junior─not now, nor did I ever.’ To my face.”

“Well…”

That did seem like something she would say back then. If there was any weapon she carried deadlier than her stationery, then it was her acid tongue and bitter abuse.

“At first I thought that meant she thought of me as her lover, but it wasn’t the case.”

“That was quite positive of you.”

“Yes. So she was even more blunt the next time. Being friends with a talented junior like me would boost her own reputation, and that was the only reason she was nice to me, the only reason she acted like a caring senior─she said that.”

“…That’s awful.”

Senjogahara’s goal was to hurt her─

Her goal was to make her go away, so─

Yet, only yesterday, Senjogahara had called Kanbaru “that kid” and her junior in middle school, and confirmed that while it was no longer true, they were friends back then. Perhaps I was interpreting her words to hear only what I wanted to hear─but still.

“I was happy that she called me a talented junior, though.”

That was positive of her.

Through and through.

“But─that’s when I learned how powerless I was. I was so conceited to think that I could heal her with my presence. If anything─she didn’t want anyone at all near her.”

There are some people in the world─who aren’t lonely when they’re alone.

It wasn’t hard to pin Senjogahara down as one of them─at the very least, she probably hadn’t ever appreciated herding for its own sake. Even as her middle-school sociable self, she must have thought so quietly─but.

Not being lonely when you’re alone.

That’s different from wanting to be alone.

Just as not liking to deal with people and not liking people aren’t the same.

“That’s why I never accosted Senjogahara after that day. It was the only thing she wanted from me, after all. Of course, I could never forget her─but if stepping away and not doing a thing, if not being by her side could save her─I could agree to that.”

“…Kanbaru.”

I didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t simply her gallant attitude that moved me, but her choice of words: the decision wasn’t helpless or inevitable, but one she could agree to. According to Senjogahara, Kanbaru never came back─but that wasn’t it. Kanbaru had stepped away of her own will.

She was so─serious.

About Senjogahara.

From middle school until a year ago, Kanbaru’s feelings for her only grew stronger─and.

Even now.

“I was careful not to run into her. I made sure that my field of activity wouldn’t overlap with hers, whether that meant meeting her by accident in a hallway, catching a glimpse of her at morning assemblies, or crossing paths with her at the cafeteria. I made arrangements, not just so that I wouldn’t have to worry, but so that she wouldn’t have to worry about me, either. Of course, I couldn’t help people talking about me when I did well in basketball games, so I manipulated the rumors myself to make sure they were a mix of fact and fiction.”

“…Which is why the gossip about you is so all over the place, you seem to have a personality disorder.”

I got it now.

But to go so far… Might I say, not stalking but…reverse-stalking?

“I managed to do that for one year. It wasn’t a gray Sapphic existence, it was a black one. Hard to say whether all of that getting directed into even more enthusiasm for basketball was a good thing or a bad thing… But then, after a year─I learned about you.”

“……”

Considering how much she cared about Senjogahara, you’d think she’d have found out sooner, but maybe it wasn’t simply because we were in different years─wasn’t it because Kanbaru went out of her way to avoid hearing about Senjogahara?

And yet.

She ended up learning about Koyomi Araragi.

“I couldn’t hold back any longer─for the first time in a year, I consciously…visited her. Or tried to. Of course, there’d been a few careless mistakes in the span of a year, but this was my first time intentionally seeing her. And she─was in a classroom that morning, chatting and cooing away with you. There was a happy smile on her face, too, of the kind she never showed me even back in middle school.”

“……”

Which particular pile of abuse was Senjogahara heaping on me then? That’s about the only time a smile comes across her otherwise expressionless face.

“Do you understand?” Kanbaru looked at me straight. “Something I wanted so very much, that I wanted so very much but had to give up on, you did like it was the most natural thing in the world.”

“Kanbaru… No, that─”

“At first, I was jealous,” Kanbaru said, punctuating every word. “I tried not to be,” she went on, her voice holding back a torrent of emotions. “To the end, I was jealous,” she concluded.

“……”

“I wondered why it couldn’t have been me. I was jealous of you, and I was disappointed in her. I wondered if she would have accepted me if I were a man. I wondered if the problem was that I was a woman. She didn’t need friends or juniors but didn’t mind having a lover? In that case…”

In that case─Kanbaru glared at me with an accusatory gaze for the first time.

“In that case, why couldn’t it be me?”

I knew she was my junior, a girl who was younger than me, and that she wasn’t the type to begin putting her hands on me in a frenzy─but her eyes were so irate I was scared she might.

“I was jealous of you and disappointed in her. And─I was appalled at myself. I was going to heal her heart? I was going to step away? It was a lie, all of it. It was all my ego. It meant I didn’t care as long as I was happy. Was I hoping she’d praise me, or what? Ridiculous. You couldn’t be any more hypocritical. But even then─I wanted things to be like before. I wanted her to be kind to me. Even if it was selfish, I wanted to be by her side─which is why.”

Then.

With her right hand─she touched her left.

Touched the beastly left hand.

“Which is why I wished upon this hand.”