Monogatari Series - Volume 2 - Chapter 3.6

006

I’m sure there’s no need to give a synopsis of “The Monkey’s Paw” by William Wymark Jacobs─but not having known about the story before, I thought why, yes, what a well-made ghost or horror story. A textbook tale of dread, tried and true─indeed, once I heard it, I felt as if I’d heard it somewhere before.

It was a classic, in other words.

According to Kanbaru, the monkey’s paw was a pretty well-known item, though it didn’t compare to vampires, and was reused in lots of different media in lots of different ways. Spun off into a bunch of different patterns, splitting from one new version to the next like an evolutionary tree, but with one shared, underlying factor common to them all, the biggest factor that makes the monkey’s paw the Monkey’s Paw─

The Monkey’s Paw grants its owner’s wishes, the story goes.

But not in the way its owner intends, the story goes─

Those two elements.

It was the kind of item you described by appending “the story goes.”

Say that you wished for riches. You might wake up the next day to find that your family has died and that you’ll be receiving their life insurance. Say that you wished for a promotion at work. You might wake up the next day to find that the company has taken a turn for the worse, that the upper management has been fired, and that you’re being promoted at a failing company.

That kind of thing.

It seems the Monkey’s Paw was an item created in India by an old mystic to teach people that they should live according to their fate and that terrible disasters await those who defy it. A reputation that it can grant three wishes for three people, for instance, accompanies its entry into the story.

The first thing I think of when I hear about three wishes being granted is the magic lamp in the Arabian Nights, but how did that story go and end? Similar tales can be found all over the world. Considering how subject humans are to endless, insatiable desires, narratives where some sort of being capable of granting any wish presents itself to people might be a fundamental form of storytelling. The best known of its kind among ghost stories seems to be “The Monkey’s Paw”─

“So─what’s his name again, Mèmè Oshino? Did I hear that right?”

“Yes, but he’s not cute like his name makes him out to be. I already told you this, but he’s some older dude who likes wearing Hawaiian shirts. I don’t want you getting your hopes up or anything. He doesn’t look the part to say the least, so I want you to be prepared for that.”

“No…that’s not what I meant. His name is just so striking, or maybe symbolic… It doesn’t matter, though. Still, ‘Mèmè’ would be hard to turn into a nickname…”

“Huh, yeah… I wonder what people called him when he was a kid. I have to admit, I’m curious… Actually, I can’t even begin to imagine what he was like as a kid.”

Oshino dwelled in an abandoned four-story cram school a little ways away from any residential areas─to put it simply, these were ruins. Ones that children wouldn’t dare each other to enter, that people living in the vicinity might not even register as a building─these ruins existed as scenery. They were so aged that a large earthquake would probably raze the whole thing─well, I say aged, but the cram school went out of business only a few years ago when one of the large chains opened up a branch right in front of the station. The site was like a cadaver meant to teach us what a horrible state buildings ended up in after only a few years of disuse. So while I say Oshino dwelled there, it wasn’t official in any way, and you could call it a grand case of squatting. He’d been living there for the two months since spring break, surrounded by signs that read “Private Property, No Trespassing.” The desks left behind serving as his bed, he roamed around town all day.

Roamed.

Yes, that’s right. It wasn’t as if he stayed put.

So I could come to see him, as I was doing then─but actually finding him there was a matter of chance. He didn’t have a cell phone, or even a PHS, and to be honest, there was a lot of luck involved in meeting him.

It took a little more than an hour to get there on bicycle from Kanbaru’s Japanese estate.

It also took a little more than an hour to dash over, if you were Kanbaru, of course.

The two of us looked up at the abandoned cram school.

“By the way,” she asked me, “you said you were attacked by a vampire, but─was that your first time with an aberration…or whatever you call them?”

“Yeah, probably.”

Maybe I just hadn’t noticed earlier instances.

It was the first case that I was aware of.

“Spring break for you, and then her, and now me… It seems suggestive of something, doesn’t it? Nothing before, and now three in quick succession.”

“Yep.” It was actually five if you counted Hanekawa and Hachikuji, but I decided to be somewhat vague and hide that fact out of respect for their personal privacy. “Once you experience it, you’re more likely to experience it again─apparently. So maybe it’s always going to be like this for me now.”

“That sounds tough.”

“Not really… It’s not all tough. Experiencing an aberration means having an experience that’s out of the norm, and you probably come away from it having noticed and gained new things.”

Although I said that, it sounded like I was papering over it or covering my tracks to avoid telling her how I felt. Just thinking back to my spring break experience told me that I was beating around the bush by saying that it wasn’t all tough. Partly because I felt awkward, my eyes wandered over to Kanbaru’s left hand─and the rewound white bandage. I couldn’t see what it concealed, but once you knew, you could tell nonetheless that there was something slightly off about the length and shape. Even if she did her best to make it hard to notice by wrapping some areas multiple times…

“My senior Araragi, she and you have been in the same class for three years in a row even though our school shuffles homerooms every year. I assumed that you two were at least a little close from before─but from what I’ve heard, you only spoke to her for the first time three weeks ago.”

“I don’t know if I could say it was the absolute first time, but…I wouldn’t have noticed her secret if she hadn’t gone and slipped, and we probably wouldn’t have started dating. And─if I hadn’t known Oshino, I doubt I could have helped her out… So in that sense, it was luck. I guess it was convenient…or that I was inconvenienced? You knew about the Monkey’s Paw, Kanbaru, and I knew a vampire. That’s all.”

Upon learning Senjogahara’s secret a year ago─Kanbaru was able to believe it so readily, I presumed, thanks to knowing the monkey, just as I’d experienced the demon and the cat by that point. Which meant the only difference between us was that I knew Oshino, a way to fight back.

That’s why I couldn’t help but think.

What if Kanbaru had known Oshino─no, not necessarily him, but some sort of spiritual technocrat who could aid Senjogahara─and solved her secret a year ago? Wouldn’t Kanbaru be in my position then─rather than me? Putting aside differences in age and gender for the time being─

Sheer luck.

You could call it a fated meeting─but it was chance.

“I appreciate how considerate you’re being,” Kanbaru thanked me, “but I wish you wouldn’t say that. She isn’t that kind of person. She wouldn’t confuse gratitude for love. That was just what got the ball rolling.” Kanbaru’s words were tinted with a pale desolation. “And that’s exactly why it’s so frustrating. When she rebuffed me, I stepped away. Meanwhile, you chased after her. If anything made a difference, it wasn’t vampires versus monkeys, nor knowing this Oshino, it was that.”

“……”

I’m sure of it, she muttered.

Talking to her like this made me realize how surprisingly introspective she was…the complete opposite of what you’d expect from her image of an athletic girl full of vim and vigor. But if she was remorseful, I felt like I was, too.

What was it?

This emotion akin to remorse as I chatted with Kanbaru, as if there were pins being pricked into my heart─I knew there was no need but found myself constantly trying to paper over things.

And that made me feel even more remorseful.

“Yes…but,” Kanbaru said, “I am honestly glad that her problem was already gone. It might be strange for me to be thanking you, but that’s what I’d like to do, from the bottom of my heart.”

“Well, like I told you, it wasn’t me, the credit should go to Oshino─actually, no, it wasn’t him either. Senjoghara got saved thanks to Senjogahara. She simply went and saved herself all on our own.”

That’s how it was.

Oshino and I had barely done a thing.

There were no two ways about it, that was it─

“Ah…maybe you’re right. But can I ask you one more thing?”

“What is it?”

“I get why she fell for you. It puts my jealousy and disappointment to shame… Yes, I think I get it. But what is it about her that made you fall for her? You said she was just another classmate for over two years, a classmate you’d never even spoken to.”

“Well…”

It was hard to answer when she put it so bluntly. Part of me was embarrassed, but the bigger issue was being asked for a specific reason… It was just that in that park on that day, on Mother’s Day─

Oh, of course.

It made sense.

That was the source of my remorse.

“…Why do you ask, Kanbaru?”

“Well. What I’m trying to say is that if it’s just her body you’re after, I think I could take her place.”

“………”

An incredible proposal.

With her right hand and her bandaged left, Kanbaru grabbed her own breasts and squished them together and up. She was still wearing her school uniform, and enhanced by the immodest mismatch, her enticing pose exuded an almost unnatural allure.

“I think I’m pretty cute.”

If she did say so herself.

“I think I’d look a little more feminine if I grew my hair out, and I’m not indifferent to skin care. Plus, thanks to having always played sports, my body is nice and toned, with just the right kind of waistline. I’ve been told I have the kind of figure that men savor.”

“Bring over whoever told you that, so I can kill him.”

“It was the basketball team advisor.”

“This world is done for!”

“You can’t kill him. We’d get suspended from matches.”

So what do you think, Kanbaru asked for a second time.

She didn’t seem to be joking or half-joking or jocular, but absolutely serious, and she bore down on me to give her one of two answers: yes or no.

“I’m ready to do this, you know. All you have to do is ask, any time and any place, and I’ll be the bottom for your top.”

“Bottom?! Top?! Why would I ask for that?!”

“Hm? Oh, I see. You don’t have any grounding in BL. That’s surprising.”

“I don’t want to talk about BL with a younger girl!”

“Hm? BL just stands for ‘Boys’ Love.’”

“I know that! It’s not like I got that wrong!”

Yes, I’d noticed.

When I cleaned her room, there’d been so many books scattered around with those kinds of covers!

I’d gone out of my way to avoid the subject!

I’d pretended I hadn’t seen anything!

“Oh, so you weren’t confused. I was sure you were, judging by your reaction. Then what exactly are you so mad about? I didn’t mean to offend you with anything I said. Could it mean you’re a bottom?”

“Not another word about this!”

“I’m more of a sub, so I don’t think I can top.”

“Wha… Um, you lost me.”

A sub-what?

Were we entering forbidden territory here?

I felt like our conversation was treading on thin ice.

“And anyway, Kanbaru, why would a boy and a girl have to do BL anything? There’s zero need for that.”

“But you see, I want to preserve my maidenhood for her─”

“I don’t need to hear it!”

The thin ice had cracked. This conversation was underwater!

Hitagi Senjogahara and Suruga Kanbaru, are the two of you conspiring to smash into dust every illusion I have about women?! I’m sure of it now, the crisis management part of my brain is telling me outright, it’s unmistakable, you’re old acquaintances, the Valhalla Duo!

Tiptoeing and sneaking off, or running away on fleet feet, my chances at happiness were abandoning me in droves. I could feel it with my whole body and heaved a sigh.

Ahh… They were grinding away at my sanity with all this risqué talk about “going after her body” and “supple, carefree limbs, the kind of figure that men savor”… Though precocious in her own way, talking with Hachikuji the day before was fun because she never sounded weirdly jaded─or so I thought back fondly to my conversation with a grade school kid.

I was a terminal case.

“I’m sorry, but if you’ll allow me to be intrusive,” warned Kanbaru, “I don’t think you’ll be able to make it very far in the adult world if you can’t talk smut with girls younger than you. Be smart and jettison your precious notions about femininity as soon as you can.”

“If there’s anything I don’t want to be scolded about by a girl younger than me, that would be it.”

And her choice of words, “talk smut”…

Not that putting it another way would have made it fine.

“Still,” she insisted, “I don’t want to belabor the point, but expecting me to be chaste thanks to these flimsy illusions of yours presents actual problems that start with saying hello. Don’t blame me, girls are interested in dirty talk, too.”

“Uh huh…”

This whole episode was liable to foment its own set of illusions about women, though… Was I wrong to think that with Senjogahara or her, the context was different?

“All right,” Kanbaru said, “then let’s get back to if you’re a briefs guy or a boxers guy.”

“I don’t think that’s what we were talking about?!”

“Huh? Was it whether or not I wear panties under my bike shorts?”

“Excuse me, but you don’t, Miss Kanbaru?!” I was so shaken I found myself speaking politely. “Th-Then those bike shorts peeking out under your skirt are…!”

“Even if that’s the case, why be shocked? Bike shorts were originally designed as a form of underwear.”

“All the more so then! You mean you’re walking around with your underwear out for the world to see!”

Moreover…that skirt of hers got blown in every direction but down when she ran and jumped!

“Hmph. Yes, I suppose you could say that, but just think of it as the chic dispensation of a sporty girl.”

“No! It’s the perverted behavior of an exhibitionist!”

“Oh, now I remember, that’s not what we were talking about, either. It was whether I could serve as a replacement for─”

“Hold on, don’t rewind the conversation and leave such a question hanging! Tell me right now if you’re wearing anything underneath!”

“Can we gloss over such vulgar matters, please? It’s a triviality.”

“It isn’t a triviality, it’s a watershed moment─is my junior a sporty girl or an exhibitionist?!”

Smuttiness aside, we were going on and on about nothing in particular.

“Okay, then,” conceded Kanbaru, “why don’t you look at it this way. I’m both a sporty girl and an exhibitionist. For those who see me as a sporty girl, I am that; for those who see me as an exhibitionist, I am that too.”

“Stop with these word games! That kind of line stops being cool once you get out of middle school! What are you, my little sister?!”

Our conversation about nothing in particular reached a peak.

It could only be about something now.

“…But listen, Kanbaru. Seriously, no matter how hard you try, you’re not going to take Senjogahara’s place.”

“……”

She wasn’t going to take her place.

I was talking about more than what she’d said.

“You’re not Senjogahara, after all. No one can take someone else’s place, and no one can become someone else, either. Senjogahara is Hitagi Senjogahara, and you are Suruga Kanbaru. No matter how much you love her, no matter how much you idolize her, no matter how much more you do.”

“…You’re right.” Kanbaru nodded after a brief pause. “You’re exactly right.”

“Yeah. So let’s stop wasting time chatting, and get going. And also, can you knock it off with that pose already? You’ve turned me into someone who has an extended conversation with a high school girl who’s groping her own breasts. That’s too surreal a picture for me.”

“Guh. I didn’t notice.”

“Notice.” It went for other stuff, too. “The sun will go down if we don’t hurry─it’s bad news if it gets dark, right? For your left hand.”

“Yes. It also means everything’s fine as long as it’s bright out. I’m completely okay for another few hours at least.”

“Oh… Being active only at night somehow can’t help but remind me of vampires…”

Kanbaru and I walked alongside the chain-link fence that surrounded the building until we found a large hole. Three weeks earlier, Senjogahara had gone through it with me─this time I was with her junior, Kanbaru.

I’d never thought I’d have anything to do with her.

The webs we weave.

Ties that bind.

“Watch your feet.”

“Yes. Thank you kindly.”

I pushed forward through the wall of unkempt grass, trying to make a path for Kanbaru as she followed behind me. Wondering how it was going to be in summertime if it was this way now, I entered the crumbling, or you might say already-crumbled, cram school.

It was still a mess.

The concrete fragments, empty cans, signs, shards of glass, and who knew what else were still a mess, a royal mess. The building was already dim in the late afternoon as it had no power, making it seem even more decayed than otherwise. I thought Oshino could at least tidy up the building if he had so much free time on his hands. Didn’t living in such a place depress him?

I guess it was a little better than Kanbaru’s room…

Senjogahara had scowled at the building’s wretched state and Oshino’s insouciance, but I wouldn’t have to worry with Kanbaru…

“It’s filthy,” she said. “I can’t believe it. If this Oshino person lives here, he ought to clean up.”

“……”

I guess she was tough on others about certain things?

Or maybe it was that she wasn’t self-conscious… I thought her brazen attitude came from her confidence, but perhaps there was another side to it.

That was one way she and Senjogahara were different.

Senjogahara was abnormally self-conscious.

Oshino primarily roosted on the fourth floor.

I walked─in the dim light.

The farther we got from the entrance, the deeper the darkness grew─what an oversight on my part. I’d been to the building so many times, I could have at least brought a flashlight. I’d brought the envelope containing a hundred thousand yen that Senjogahara had entrusted to me─in other words, I’d planned on coming here regardless of how my conversation with Kanbaru panned out. I could have spared the idea some thought.

But, well.

It depended on the time and the place, but for the most part, I was fine with darkness…which is why I found myself forgetting such obvious things.

Mementos from my time as a vampire.

“……”

I turned around when we reached the stairs to notice that Kanbaru’s steps were incredibly timid and wobbly. She must not like the dark, I thought. When you considered that she was normally a fearless sportswoman, her gait appeared all the more precarious and uncertain. In her state, walking up stairs would be an ordeal. Whatever was up with her left arm, it’d be a big problem if she hurt her legs, too… I remembered how I’d led Senjogahara by the hand when we came here together…

That was the first time I had held her hand.

Hmm…what to do? Kanbaru must have declined to ride behind me out of such considerations, and come to think of it, I’d learned only yesterday just how strict Senjogahara could be about cheating…

“Hey, my junior Kanbaru.”

“What is it, my senior Araragi?”

“Hold out your right hand.”

“Like this?”

“All right. It’s docking time.”

I pulled her hand toward me by the tip and had her grip the belt that I wore on my school-issued slacks.

“We’re about to climb up some stairs, so don’t trip. I’ll be sure to walk up slowly, so be careful.”

“……”

No matter how strict Senjogahara’s guidelines were, this degree of physical contact couldn’t possibly count as cheating. It was a brilliant idea. It seemed like sophistry, I admit, but I would at least have a proper excuse prepared for Senjogahara.

“Aren’t you kind,” Kanbaru said, tugging on my belt as though she were testing its strength. “You must get told that often. That you’re a good, kind person.”

“Who wants to get told, and often, the kind of thing you tell someone who doesn’t have a personality?”

“Even when it comes to guiding me through the dark, you’re minding both her and me, and I’m grateful from the bottom of my heart. I’m pained by your consideration. I’m envious of your discretion.”

“…Was my thinking that transparent?”

She was a sharp one.

You usually wouldn’t catch on to that.

But since she did, why go and spell it out? I felt so awkward. The jokey way I’d gone about it made it so much worse.

“My senior, there’s something I want to ask you.”

“What is it? Ask whatever you want, as long as it’s not about tops and bottoms.”

“Oh, then I’ll put that bit off until later.”

“It’s on your list of questions?!”

“As are panties and exhibitionism.”

“We already played it out!”

“To be frank, only dirty talk interests me.”

“I won’t have such a character! Just hurry up with your question!”

“Judging by everything you’ve said…it seems like you haven’t talked to her about me at all.”

“Hunh? No, I have. That’s how I learned you two were the Valhalla Duo.”

To be exact, I’d heard that from Hanekawa, but I hadn’t understood their relationship until I checked with Senjogahara. I might have guessed, but guesses were all they were going to be. I wouldn’t have thought to ask Hanekawa.

“That’s not what I meant,” Kanbaru said. “About my left hand. About my left hand attacking you…”

“Oh, that. Yeah, I haven’t had the opportunity… I was in no state to last night, and I didn’t know the truth of the matter anyway, or that your left hand was like that. I wasn’t even close to sure you were behind the attack in the first place. It was just speculation. As far as she knows, I ran into a telephone pole on my bicycle.”

“Will that do, with all the collateral damage?”

“Well, I can’t get the police or a hospital involved thanks to my formerly vampiric body. If things go public, it’ll be just as annoying for me. I don’t plan on keeping what happened with you a secret from Senjogahara forever, of course, but…I just thought it was something you should tell her, not me.”

“I should?”

“See, I’m not a kind person or a good person. It’s just that I have my motives─”

My underhanded calculations.

My scheming persistence.

Something I, myself, could never do─

“…Hm? Whoa there.”

Shinobu was there on the landing between the third and fourth floors.

Shinobu Oshino.

A blond girl who looked to be about eight years old, her skin so white it seemed translucent, wearing a helmet and a pair of goggles─she was there on the landing sitting directly on the floor, legs folded, arms around her knees. You might have mistaken her for the spirit of a dead child from Japanese folklore if not for her golden hair.

I yelled in surprise despite myself.

Shinobu glared intensely at me and Kanbaru as we came climbing up the stairs. It was a loaded gaze full of hate and gravity, of unspoken words and unfulfilled desires.

“……”

I ignored her.

I ignored her, averting my eyes, and walked around her, refusing to pay her notice, to proceed to the fourth floor… But why was she sitting on the landing, of all places? Could she have gotten in a fight with Oshino?

“H-Hey, what was with that girl?” asked Kanbaru in a mildly agitated, flighty voice once we were on the fourth floor. Then again, it would have been weirder for her to pay no mind to a girl like Shinobu mysteriously sitting on the floor of some ruins… Well, part of Kanbaru’s body had turned into an aberration. Could she have sensed something from Shinobu?

“She was super freaking cute!”

“You said that with the biggest smile you’ve shown all day!”

“I want to hold her in my arms… No, I want her to hold me in her arms!”

“You fall for anyone, don’t you?!” I’d thought there was only one girl for her. Plus, this was a child she was talking about. “Just keep that stuff to yourself…”

“I don’t want to keep any secrets from you, though.”

“You still don’t need to put out the naked truth.”

“Naked?”

“Don’t react to just that word! Do I have to watch every single phrase I use now? I’ve never met someone who’s harder to talk to!”

She was a real horn dog, or rather, she wasn’t Sapphic only for Senjogahara… Every one of my illusions, and not just ones about women, was being blown to pieces like it was a carpet bombing. Swearing to myself that I’d never allow her to meet Hachikuji, I gloomily conveyed a warning.

“…Well, you should stay away from─that.”

A vampire.

─husk of.

A vampire.

─dregs of.

That was what Shinobu Oshino, the blond girl, was.

When the devil is away─the mice.

“Hm. I see… Too bad,” Kanbaru lamented.

“And now that you’ve said so with the saddest face you’ve shown all day, here we are. Time to find out whether Oshino’s in or not… We can’t just put this off until tomorrow if he isn’t, though. My life’s in real danger.”

“…Sorry.”

“I’m not trying to be mean or anything. Don’t feel bad about it.”

“Well, I don’t feel good about it, either. I think I need to make it up to you somehow. Ah, right, what’s your favorite color?”

“Huh? My favorite color? Are you giving me a present? I don’t know if I have one, but if I had to say, I guess aqua blue?”

“Okay, got it.” Kanbaru nodded. “Then I promise from now on, whenever I meet you, I’ll do my best to be wearing aqua blue underwear.”

“Don’t drag me in to your dirty talk or make it seem like I’m the reason! It’s all on you and your sexual frustration!”

There were three classrooms on the fourth floor. The doors to all of them were broken. If Oshino was in the building, he would be in one of the three, but─

The first room was a miss.

We checked in the second room─and there he was.

“You’re late, Araragi. I’ve been waiting so long that I nearly fell asleep.”

Mèmè Oshino─lay there on a linoleum floor so cracked and ripped you wouldn’t just trip but get deep cuts if you walked across it with bare feet, a piece of cardboard box so discolored it must have been rotting as his only bedding. And without getting up, he greeted us off the bat with those words in his usual all-knowing tone, despite not knowing the first detail about our situation.

His crumpled, psychedelic Hawaiian shirt, his shaggy hair, and his generally filthy appearance. Words like “clean” or “refreshing” existed on a separate plane from the man. You could say it was an appropriate look for the ruins he lived in, but what he could have ever looked like before coming to them was by now beyond my imagination.

Oshino scratched his head like even that was a bother.

Then, and only then─did he notice Kanbaru, who, out of anxiety or alarmed by the very questionable Oshino, was trying to hide behind me and holding tight to my belt with her right hand though we were already here.

“Oh. So you’re brought yet another girl with you today, Araragi. You’re with a new one every time we meet─why, I’m quite glad for you.”

“Shut up. Don’t keep spouting the same lines.”

“You say that, but what am I supposed to do when it’s the same situation? My repertoire is limited. Hm? And another girl with straight bangs, at that. Judging by her uniform, are you two classmates? Does your high school regulate hairstyles? Interesting, that’s a very antiquated system they’ve kept around.”

“No, we don’t have such rules.”

It was just coincidence.

Or rather, though Kanbaru wore hers short, it was probably because she was imitating Senjogahara that they had similar hairstyles. I wasn’t aware of any reason behind Senjogahara’s, but as for Hanekawa, well, as a symbol of seriousness? That had to be it more or less.

“So it’s what you’re into, after all,” asserted Oshino. “Hmph. In that case, I’ll cut little Shinobu’s hair, too, for your next visit. She just lets it grow out, and it’s about time she had a haircut. In exchange, do you think you could bring a girl with a one-length haircut next time? I might be wasting my breath, but I’m putting the request out there.”

“…I saw Shinobu on our way up. What’s she doing there?”

“Oh, she’s sulking because I ate one more than I should of her snack-time Mister Donuts. She’s been like that since yesterday.”

“……”

What kind of a vampire was she?

And what kind of a dude was he?

“I tearfully handed over the Pon de Ring, so she’s one narrow-minded little girl. I think I need to teach her the phrase, ‘quality over quantity.’”

“I don’t care… I couldn’t care any less. Also, Oshino, one correction. She’s not my classmate. Take a close look, her scarf isn’t the same color as Senjogahara’s or Hanekawa’s, right? She’s a year younger than me, and her name is Suruga Kanbaru. Kanbaru as in ‘god’ and ‘plains.’ And Suruga as in…umm.”

Oops.

I knew how to write it, but it was hard to explain…

The barely literate Koyomi Araragi was showing his colors.

“Suruga as in ‘Suruga-toi,’” Kanbaru chimed in helpfully.

Thank goodness…but wait, what exactly was that?

I’d never heard the term before. Was it toi in the sense of “question”? Like some famous quiz? A riddle like with the Sphinx?

“Ah, ‘Suruga-toi.’ Of course, of course.” Oshino nodded in clear comprehension.

Ugh, if he hadn’t known, I would’ve gotten an explanation without having to speak up… I clicked my tongue, but I hated having to wonder, so I asked Kanbaru, “What’s ‘Suruga-toi’?”

“It’s a famous method of torture from the Edo period. They’d hogtie your hands and legs behind you, hang you from the ceiling, put a heavy rock on your back, and spin you around.”

“Don’t use a torture method to explain your name!”

“It’s something that I’d love to undergo sometime in my life.”

“………!”

So she was a sapphist, a BL fan, a sub, a bottom, a pedo, and a masochist?!

How could all of that apply to any one person…

The star of our school didn’t need to spread conflicting rumors about herself. She already had a personality disorder.

I was at a loss for words.

“Anyway, I’m Suruga Kanbaru.”

The exchange seemed to have relaxed her, and finally letting go of my belt, Suruga came out of half-hiding─and in her usual proud, confident, and unhesitating way, stated her name, her right hand in front of her chest.

“I’m Araragi’s junior. Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you, missy. I’m Mèmè Oshino.”

While Suruga was smiling─

Oshino was smirking.

Written out, “smile” and “smirk” look similar, a difference of only two letters, but seeing their expressions up close, I received very dissimilar impressions that were pretty much diametrically opposed. It proved to a painful degree that looking happy wasn’t enough. Yes, Oshino’s was lighthearted too, but so much so that it felt unpleasant. The man was just sculpted to seem fake.

“…Hmph. If you’re his junior, that makes you missy tsundere’s junior as well.”

As he said this, Oshino’s eyes were unfocused and distant as if he were looking at Kanbaru’s back─and me and Senjogahara both being third-years and Kanbaru therefore being Senjogahara’s junior as well didn’t seem to be his entire point.

But maybe I was reading too much into it.

“Oshino─anyway, I should start by giving this to you. It’s from the very same missy tsundere, Senjogahara.”

“Hm? An envelope? Oh, money. Money, money. Perfect, I was just starting to feel squeezed. This should last me until the rainy season. Once it starts, I won’t die of thirst, but I thought I’d be keeping a stiff upper lip in the meantime.”

“What a thing to say to sensitive adolescents.”

It was amid such dire straits that they’d fought over their Mister Donuts… No wonder Shinobu was sulking. Vampire or not, she did come from a noble bloodline. Cohabitating in these ruins with a filthy older guy was like plunging to the lowest depths… Since I was partly to blame, I didn’t know what to think…

Oshino checked the contents of the envelope.

“Yep, exactly a hundred thousand yen. This clears out any balance between me and missy tsundere. You know, she’s made a good impression on me, giving this to you instead of coming to hand it to me herself. She seems versed in the way of the world.”

“Huh? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? It feels like giving it to you in person would be a show of good faith, or good grace─”

“It’s all the same whether you make gestures like that or not. But I don’t intend on having that argument with you, Araragi, it’d be a pointless one at best. So─what’s up with this missy?” Oshino asked casually, jabbing his chin in Kanbaru’s direction as he crammed the envelope (those fresh bills, all for naught) into the pocket of his Hawaiian shirt. “I’m sure you didn’t bring her here just so you could introduce a cute junior to me. Or did you actually do it just to show her off? If that’s the case, I underestimated the kind of man you are, Araragi… Ha hah, but that couldn’t possibly be it. Which means─hm, could it be that bandage? Ah…”

“Mister Oshino. I’m─” Kanbaru began to say something.

He slowly waved his hand as if to cut her off. “Let’s start from the beginning. It doesn’t seem like a very happy story. Stories about arms never are, in my experience. Especially if it’s your left hand.”