Monogatari Series - Volume 2 - Chapter 3.7

007

Mixed among the crushed soda cans, candy wrappers, and empty instant noodle cups I found while cleaning up Suruga Kanbaru’s room was a single item that gave me pause, a long and thin paulownia box. I could feel its age from the color of the thing, and though it was covered in scratches, probably due to how carelessly Kanbaru treated it, the box seemed thick and sturdy. I assumed that it held some sort of curio─maybe a vase. Its presence, or that it might contain some such object, didn’t seem odd given how impressive the Japanese home I stood in was.

But.

The box was empty.

That of course wasn’t enough for me to classify it as trash, so I placed it on top of some cardboard boxes for the time being, but around when we got down to business, Kanbaru made a show of reaching out, grabbing the box, and placing it between the two of us. Then she asked me what I thought had been inside the box. A vase or something, I replied candidly.

“So even you can be wrong sometimes… This might be rude of me, but I’m relieved. Saved. I feel like you’ve given me a glimpse of your humanity.”

“…And what was inside it?”

“A mummy,” she replied straightaway. “A mummified left hand─was in it.”

“………”

A mummified left hand, inside a paulownia box.

According to Kanbaru, she used it for the first time─in elementary school. Her mother had given it to her eight years ago when Kanbaru was still in third grade.

It was apparently the last time she ever saw her mother.

A few days after Kanbaru was given the box, both of her parents died in a traffic accident─the timing was so perfect it was as if her mother had known what was going to happen. Kanbaru said it happened while she was in math class at her elementary school. They’d died instantly in a multiple car pile-up on some far-off highway. Their car caught fire, and the remains were left in an awful state.

Kanbaru was taken in by her grandparents on her father’s side.

Taken in─to the Japanese home where we sat.

She said she’d lived with her parents in an apartment until then, just the three of them─because her mother and father had eloped. Their wedding had brought them no blessings or congratulations. Her father came from a traditional and storied family, while her mother’s world was far removed from any of that…or so Kanbaru told me. I had to wonder if those kinds of things still happened in this day and age, but she said they do all the time.

“My mom suffered because of that. My dad─rebelled against such customs, but it was no use. His family pretty much cut ties with him. In fact, I hadn’t met my grandparents until the day of my parents’ funeral. I didn’t even know their names─and they didn’t know mine, either. That was the first thing they asked me, what my name was.”

“Huh…”

Flooded on top and in blazes on the bottom.

You don’t need to worry about them, at all.

Those kinds of things─happened.

But despite whatever strife had intervened with her mother, Kanbaru was their son’s only daughter─their grandchild. Taking her in was the natural thing to do, and so Kanbaru left the town where she’d lived her entire life, of course transferring schools in the process.

She wasn’t able to fit in.

“The way I spoke was different. I might talk like this now, but when I was still with my parents, we were all the way out on the tip of Kyushu, probably to get as far away as possible from this home. They talk in a thick accent there, and well…I wouldn’t call it bullying, but I was made fun of, and I didn’t have any friends.”

“Um…so it wasn’t the same elementary school as Senjogahara’s?”

“Right. I met her in middle school.”

“Okay.”

It made sense, address-wise.

She probably wasn’t with Hanekawa back then, either.

“When I think back to it, I was throwing everything off balance in my new environment, and I wasn’t completely blameless. It’s obvious to me now, but my parents’ death had hit me hard, and I’d closed off my heart. You can’t expect people to treat you kindly when you’ve closed off your heart. But, and I can only say this because so much time has passed─back then, I was still deeply mired in my parents’ death. Not that I was able to sit back and reminisce about them. I couldn’t even drown myself in my memories of them. That was because my grandfather and grandmother threw away every last one of my father and mother’s possessions. It was like they wanted to raise me as someone who had nothing to do with my parents.”

But just so you know, Kanbaru said.

“My grandmother and grandfather are both people of character─I do respect them, and I’m truly grateful that they’ve looked after me all this time. It’s just that their relationship with my parents is beyond me.”

It made sense.

Too much time had elapsed for it to be mere past strife.

And that was why the only mementos she had left of her parents were whatever memories she retained, along with, yes, that paulownia box her mother had given her.

It may have been sealed tight.

But she hadn’t been told not to open it.

So she did.

The mummified left hand.

But back in those days─the mummified hand only went down to its wrist. There was also a letter from her mother inside the box. Well, it wasn’t so much a letter, given what was written on it─but a simple user’s manual for the left hand.

It stated that it was a tool for making wishes come true.

It would make any wish come true.

It would make three and only three wishes come true.

It was such an item.

She’d gone up a school year to become a fourth grader and was either nine or ten years old─whichever she was, whether you believed that kind of fantastic story was a tossup at that age. Just barely yes, or just barely no, one or the other. It’s probably an age group where the split between kids who believe in Santa Claus or not is about fifty-fifty. Or maybe that’s just an illusion that people of my generation and above hold… At least, I don’t think I believed in Santa Claus when I was in fourth grade, but maybe some of the special gadgets in cartoons were credible to me.

Kanbaru─was straddling that line.

In other words, she half-believed and half-doubted it would work, and just as she might try a charm printed in a girls’ magazine, with a casual attitude really, she made a wish upon the mummified hand.

It didn’t matter what the first one was.

It was like one of those charms.

She was just trying it out.

“Though I did know what my second wish would be if the first one worked,” Kanbaru said.

Of course she did.

I knew already─it had to be a wish about her parents, right?

Something about their being alive.

I want to be able to run faster.

Such was the wish the fourth grader Suruga Kanbaru made─to the mummified thing. She was apparently a notoriously slow runner back then…and that, just as much as her accent, contributed to her being teased. From a high schooler’s perspective, it seemed as ridiculous of a reason to make fun of someone as an accent, but being a slow runner is, in any case, a serious cause of distress for a grade school kid. It just so happened that field day was coming up soon at her school─and she’d made the wish thinking that everyone would look at her in a new way if she could just win the foot race.

“I was fatally unathletic at the time. I’m not talking about having slow reflexes or slow anything, but actually tripping over myself just walking around.”

“Huh… But now.”

Our basketball ace.

A star.

“…Wait, so does that mean─”

“If only it did,” Kanbaru said. But instead. “I had a dream that night. A dream of children being attacked─by a monster wearing a raincoat. A nightmare─where they were tucked into bed and the monster’s left hand attacked them mercilessly.”

“……”

“I’m sure someone with your intuition has already figured out how this story ends. When I woke up the next day and went to school─four students were absent. And all four of them were supposed to run in the same race as me at field day.”

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─

“I was terrified. I went to the library in a panic to find out what the mummified thing really was─and I came across Jacobs’ ‘The Monkey’s Paw’ in no time. My shoulders trembled with fear… If I’d made my second wish first, what would have happened, I wondered. As it was, those classmates of mine could easily have died… Fortunately, it wasn’t that serious, but it could have turned out that way.”

Kanbaru returned the thing to its box, sealed it even tighter than before, and stuffed it in the depths of her closet. There would be no second or third wish, of course not─she wanted to pretend none of it ever happened. She wanted to forget it all.

But.

She couldn’t.

No matter how much she tried to forget about it, she found that she couldn’t. Because there was still time until field day─and during practice the next day, they decided to place Kanbaru in another group.

There were five others this time.

She would be racing against─five other people.

“What do you think I did?”

“……”

“What do you think I should have done?”

Whatever I thought, if she sat and did nothing─well, the consequences were as clear as day. The same thing would happen…and repeat itself over and over again. Normally, the only way out of the situation would be to make another wish upon the paw─to ask it to cancel the first wish. But Kanbaru was afraid to. Now that she’d learned about the paw, she was afraid. It granted wishes, but not in the way its owner intended─and she had no idea how the revocation might come true.

Which is why Kanbaru ran.

She ran, and ran, and ran.

She was slow─

So she worked to become fast.

“My only option was to fulfill my wish on my own. Because if I did, there’d be no reason for the paw to attack my classmates. And fortunately, I started getting the hang of it as soon as I started─there wasn’t any physical issue that made me slow, like being heavy or having a bad leg, so while I didn’t become athletic overnight, I improved when it came to running. I managed to come in first at field day… Thanks to that, I started to make friends with my classmates. It of course took a good bit of time, though.”

Having made her own wish come true─she never stopped working, even after field day. To say that she must have been talented to begin with would perhaps be unkind. Her continued efforts only continued to flower, to the point that she began hearing from middle school track teams not long after entering sixth grade.

Tup, tup, tup, tup, tup, tup.

But Kanbaru couldn’t join a track team. She couldn’t put herself in a place where people might be faster than her─because she didn’t know the reach of her first wish. Maybe it expired the moment she took first place at field day─maybe it would last forever. There was no way to find out. Since there wasn’t, the latter possibility was a source of fear.

For Kanbaru.

She already knew she wasn’t made to be a distance runner─mini-marathons in grade school were one thing, but she couldn’t keep going in middle school and high school. If anyone were even a little bit faster than her, all her efforts would be for naught, end of story.

That was probably why she decided to join the basketball team in middle school─if her field only extended as far as those courts did, no one could catch up to her.

“Forgoing clubs and sports might have been an option, but not only did I need to stay in good shape, just in case, but also athletics were a more or less compulsive refuge for me by then. If I didn’t do something─I felt like I’d be crushed. People call me sporty, but I’m not sure if I’m the real deal. I was just motivated by fear.”

But.

Playing basketball ended up being fun.

She ended up liking it.

Her speed, which had been a compulsive refuge─she could now put to positive use. She’d thought of her legs merely as a means to run away from the paw, but she could apply them constructively─towards an actual goal.

Plus.

Becoming the star of the team─

She ended up getting to know Hitagi Senjogahara.

“She was the star of the track team…and she came to watch me since I had a reputation for being fast. She might have forgotten by now…and even if she does remember, she might not think anything of it, but she was the one who came to me first.”

“Huh…”

That was a bit of a surprise.

Even if it was the middle-school and not the current-day Senjogahara, it was still a surprise.

“She asked me to run a hundred-meter race with her, saying that it didn’t have to be official or anything. It killed me to have to turn her down. This was a charming person who was a year above me. It might not have been love at first sight, but I’d fallen for her by the third day of talking to her. I started wanting to be near her. Being with her was therapeutic.”

Therapeutic.

The word was as far removed from Senjogahara today as Pluto is from the Sun─but it really seemed that meeting her allowed Kanbaru to put out of her mind the mummy she’d received from her mother, the paulownia box stuffed in the closet.

It let her forget.

It let her forget─what she wanted to forget.

But.

“It was still there in the back of my mind, sitting in my subconscious, and more than once after that day, I was seized by a sudden impulse to use the paw. I’d be seized by an urge to rely on it. Like when we faced a really strong team in basketball. Like when I got in an awful fight with a friend. Like when I wanted to get into Naoetsu High where my senior Senjogahara was… Like when she rejected me.”

Each time─she held out.

Each time, she managed to make it happen on her own.

Or, each time, she gave up on it.

By then, she understood why her mother had given her the box─it was as a sort of wish that Kanbaru would become someone who handled any problem she came across by herself. Unlike the one in “The Monkey’s Paw,” which taught you to accept fate, her mother’s lesson must have been to alter your destiny with your own hands. It had been passed down again and again─her mother had gotten it from her mother, and her mother’s mother had gotten it from her mother, and her mother’s mother’s mother, and so on. The lesson passed down for generations had to be that you fulfilled your own wishes. So it was all thanks to herself that Kanbaru was fast and also smart.

She hadn’t been─born with it.

It was the result of work, of blood, sweat, and tears.

She always remained aware of that.

Hence.

She might have been able to solve Senjogahara’s secret, her problem, by wishing upon the paw, but didn’t even then.

Quietly.

She stepped away.

She gave up─on being by Senjogahara’s side.

She gave up─balling her fists, biting her lip.

She didn’t mind dying for Senjogahara’s sake.

Suruga Kanbaru had told me that─in no uncertain terms.

Kanbaru smothered her own feelings for Senjogahara’s sake.

Stood by and watched her own heart die.

What she didn’t want to forget.

What she couldn’t forget─she did forget.

“But a year later…I found out about you. I ended up finding out about you and her. I ended up seeing her by your side.”

She couldn’t hold out anymore.

She couldn’t do it.

She couldn’t give up.

She had no recollection of when she’d opened the closet, when she’d taken the paulownia box out of it, when she’d undone the seal, or when she’d wished upon the paw─she hadn’t paused even when the paw that had only gone down to its wrist was extended to the elbow─and when she noticed.

Her left hand─had turned into an aberration.

Her arm had turned into a beast’s paw.

Kanbaru─

Felt truly terrified for the first time in seven years.

“…And so you started stalking me after that. Come to think of it, every time we met, you asked me if anything odd had happened to me.”

So─that’s what she meant.

She wasn’t making small talk.

She wasn’t trying to spy on Senjogahara, either… Unable to play the sport she loved with her arm in that state, Kanbaru must not have wanted to go out in public at all, but she went as far as to bandage it up and hide it─because she was concerned about my safety?

But then, four days after she started stalking me.

The night of the fourth day.

That’s when─it happened.

Kanbaru said she had a dream─

A dream where a monster in a raincoat attacked me.

And that was why she seemed so calm from the moment I stepped into Class 2-2.

She already realized everything─

Knew what had happened.

This backstory was quite different from my analysis.

I’d surmised that an aberration was involved, but Kanbaru actually didn’t intend the phenomenon… It was all the paw’s doing.

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

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

The simplest way to be by Senjogahara’s side was to eliminate her current boyfriend, Koyomi Araragi─thought the paw.

Probably.

And afraid of that, Kanbaru was stalking me─

But her premonition was on the mark.

In truth, if I wasn’t who I was…if Koyomi Araragi wasn’t Koyomi Araragi, the formerly immortal human with an experience of being a vampire, I would have certainly died at that point. I wouldn’t have been able to dodge the first two strikes, and even if I had, the third blow would have been lethal. That was its absurd potential and capacity for destruction. My guess was that those four elementary school kids had been spared thanks to Kanbaru’s body still being a fourth grader’s and also still being unathletic─but now she was on another level. Ironically, the body she’d forged to escape her first wish was making her second wish inflict that much more damage. Only her left arm had attacked me, but the incredible speed that my eyes couldn’t even track─that physical capacity belonged to Suruga Kanbaru. It was an upgraded version of the same.

Capacity─destructive capacity.

A capacity for violence.

And.

It was far from over─nowhere near over, since I had survived. Once the sun set and night came, the monster in the raincoat would attack me, again and again─Kanbaru would keep on having dreams about that fiend assaulting me.

Over and over, until I died.

Until her dream came true.

Until her wish was granted.

Until Kanbaru’s second wish was granted.

She wanted to be by Hitagi Senjogahara’s side.

That was all she had wished for─

“‘Annoyances come / In forms none greater than that / Of the visitor / But then of course I speak not / Of yourself, my esteem’d friend’─”

“Huh?” Kanbaru opened her eyes dubiously when I recited the poem. “What was that?”

“Nothing… I was just wondering if the person we’re visiting will welcome us─”

And then.

Without changing our clothes or eating lunch, we went straight to the remote, abandoned cram school where Mèmè Oshino and Shinobu Oshino lived, me riding my bike and Kanbaru dashing on her own two legs.

And that─finally brings us to now.

The present moment.

Kanbaru and I were facing Oshino on the fourth floor. Despite giving him the rundown, he showed nothing resembling a reaction, simply looking up at the fluorescent lights hanging (just hanging, of course, since there was no power) from the not-so-high ceiling. He wiggled the unlit cigarette he’d stuck in his mouth midway during the explanation─but didn’t speak. I’d said everything there was to say, including about Senjogahara, and didn’t have any more cards to play.

A vague awkwardness drifted in the air.

Normally Mèmè Oshino gabbed more than he should as if he were born full-formed from a tongue, but he sometimes sank into these deep silences, which made him really hard to deal with… He was cheerful and happy-go-lucky on the surface, but at times like these, I wondered if he might not be an awfully gloomy guy at heart.

“The bandage,” Oshino said─at last. “Could you undo that bandage for me, missy?”

“Oh, okay─”

Kanbaru glanced at me beseechingly. To put her at ease, I told her, It’s all right. At that, she started to unravel her bandage using her right hand. Whip whip.

Then─the beastly hand appeared.

Without being prompted, she rolled her sleeve up─all the way to her upper arm. She bent her elbow, as if to indicate where the monster’s arm and her human arm connected.

Taking a step forward she asked Oshino, “Like this?”

“…Yes, that’s good. I see. That’s what I thought.”

“What you thought?” I cut in. “And what’s as you thought, Oshino? Damn you, acting as inscrutable as ever─you constantly leave people hanging on your words. Pretending to be omniscient can’t be that fun, now.”

“Don’t prod me like that. You’re feeling spirited, Araragi. Something good happen to you?” Spitting out the cigarette in his mouth without ever having lit it─well, actually, I’ve never seen Oshino smoking one─he directed his trademark flippant and frivolous smirk at me. “Araragi, and you too, missy. To start off with a correction─that isn’t a Monkey’s Paw.”

“Wha?”

Oshino had overturned the premise out of the blue─and I was shocked. Kanbaru looked like she’d been caught off-guard, too.

“There’ve been so many versions since Jacobs that it’s hard to know what’s true without seeing one for yourself─but from what little I know, I’ve never heard of the Monkey’s Paw combining with the owner’s arm. A crab for missy tsundere and a monkey for missy here would be like the old Japanese folktale and downright neat, but the world isn’t so accommodating. You researched it yourself, missy, didn’t you? And found nothing? No story where the Monkey’s Paw merges with the owner. If there is one, that means uneducated old me has a big hole in his knowledge.”

“…I did some research, but I was still in grade school.”

“That’s what I thought. So how did you get it into your head that it’s a Monkey’s Paw? Your mother absolutely must not have said such a thing to you… But I guess the conditions did match by and large.”

“The conditions?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“There are a pair of them in how the story goes, Araragi. The Monkey’s Paw is an item with a story attached to it. It grants its owner’s wishes, the story goes. But not in the way its owner intends, the story goes─was that it?”

Heh, Oshino snorted with an unpleasant smile.

It was the smile of someone with an awful personality.

Or may I say, rotten to the core.

“I suppose it was a convenient interpretation for you, missy─or maybe a comforting one? It doesn’t really matter. What’s for sure, though, is that it’s not a Monkey’s Paw─originally it was mummified, right? And it gained life by melding with you. Then─my guess is that it’s a Rainy Devil.”

“Rei...?” I blurted out when he spoke the name, but without allowing me a question, or even a moment, Oshino pushed on.

“So, Araragi. Have you read Faust?”

“Huh?”

“Thank you for the reaction, I see that you haven’t. In fact, it seems like you haven’t even heard of it. But I’m not the least bit surprised, not anymore. I’ve decided to get accustomed to these reactions of yours. What about you, missy? Have you read Faust?”

“Ah, umm.” Kanbaru sounded surprised to be put on the spot but replied, as if it were a spinal reflex, “No, I’m not very well read, so I haven’t. Of course, I’m familiar with the plot and rough outline of the tale.”

“I see. No, that’s par for the course. Yup, yup. Usually, a high schooler would at least know that much. Uh oh, how embarrassing, Araragi.”

“Don’t make fun of him! He just happened not to know, that’s all! To begin with, he’s not someone you can fit into existing frameworks like ‘reading’!”

Suddenly incensed by Oshino’s words, Kanbaru had raised her voice to scold him. Puzzled by her unlikely reaction, he turned his eyes toward me for an explanation.

I couldn’t bring myself to meet them.

…Kanbaru.

I appreciated that she was getting mad on my behalf… I never imagined someone getting mad on your behalf would be so heartening, but yelling at Oshino there came too close to agreeing that I’m stupid…

“Kanbaru,” I said. “Could you please drop that routine for now? It’s amusing, yeah, but if you pull that every time Oshino makes fun of me, we’re never going to get anywhere …”

“Hm. I see. Profound words, befitting someone like you who faces any person with an open heart. Honestly, I struggle to accept your wisdom, as lacking in virtue and as quick to spite as I am, but if you say so, I’ll restrain myself and persevere.” Kanbaru nodded and bobbed her head in a bow to Oshino. “I’m sorry.”

She was a girl who could say sorry.

Good girl.

“…No, I don’t mind,” Oshino excused her. “And it was amusing. But considering that one of your arms has turned out that way, you’re a spirited missy. Something good happen to you? Well, in any case─Faust. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was the leading author of the Storm and Stress, or Sturm und Drang epoch, and his career-crowning achievement was the drama Faust. It’s about─do you think you could tell him, missy? Whatever you know is fine.”

“Um, sure.”

Kanbaru looked at me hesitantly.

She seemed almost apologetic.

Like when she gave me the outline of Jacobs’ “The Monkey’s Paw,” Suruga Kanbaru’s personality was such that she couldn’t instruct her elders about anything without feeling presumptuous.

“As Mister Oshino said, it’s Goethe’s masterpiece, and…well, to mention a simple characteristic, it’s a story split into two parts. Urfaust and Faust, a Fragment led to Faust, Part One and Faust, Part Two. It’s a massive accomplishment that took him over sixty years to complete. I can only bow to it. Goethe is also famous for The Sorrows of Young Werther and Elective Affinities, but if we were to pick a single work he put his whole body and soul into, the unanimous answer would be Faust. The protagonist, Doctor Faust, sells his soul to a devil, Mephistopheles, in order to gain all knowledge─and that ought to do for an introduction. I won’t go into details because I don’t want to spoil it, but Part One is about his romance with the commoner Gretchen, while Part Two depicts the establishment of an ideal nation. It’s generally read as a sort of philosophy or, I should say, a narrative about the pursuit of knowledge. I’m sure you’re aware, but it even gave rise to the expression ‘Faustian impulse,’ which describes the drive, the intellectual desire to know and experience everything.”

“……”

Why in the world did this jock junior of mine think that her senior who hadn’t heard of Faust knew of any “Faustian impulse”?

Oshino took it from there. “The heart of the story is that he sells his soul to the devil─Doctor Faust tries to fulfill his namesake impulse by having his wish granted that way… Of course, if you want to learn what happens in the end, Araragi, I recommend that you head to your nearest bookstore. But yeah, that’s what it is. Missy’s explanation is what you’d consider common knowledge, so if you know that much, it makes my job easier. I’m impressed that she was able to give such an eloquent speech about it despite not having read the book. If there’s anything I should add, it’s a bit that surprisingly few people know about─you’d find it in any commentary about Goethe, of course, but people these days don’t read the classics. I’m not talking about you, missy, but people think there’s no reason to go through and actually read a famous story when they feel like they already have. So yes, you can’t blame people for not knowing, but the Faust story is based on a real person.”

“What? Really?” Kanbaru sounded surprised.

As her Faust-ignorant senior, I didn’t even know why that should be surprising.

“Johann Faust. It’s said he lived during the Renaissance period… While I say he was real, there are different theories about that, but stories about him ended up turning into folklore. A wandering physician or magician who, yes, sells his soul to the devil Mephistopheles, and in exchange for all kinds of knowledge and experience, promises to act as an enemy of Christians, for twenty-four years he lives according to those ‘Faustian impulses’─and the moment the contract expires, he meets a sad end. Look it up yourself, you can find the details in Doctor Faustus.”

“Huh…I didn’t know.”

Kanbaru sounded impressed by Oshino’s trivia. Putting aside Faust, the story did have to do with folklore, his field of expertise, so this level of erudition was nothing new, but at this rate was she going to start flattering him, too? In fact, I didn’t understand Kanbaru’s standards for that. It wasn’t like she indiscriminately bombarded everyone she met with praise…

“I was convinced Goethe had come up with the whole thing himself,” she said. “But he’d based the thing on local legends.”

“Well, he arranged a lot of the story in his own way, so at the end of the day, it’s the Goethe edition of Doctor Faust. It’s similar to Dazai’s ‘Run, Melos!’ or Akutagawa’s ‘Rashomon.’ The medieval folktale and Akutagawa’s version feel pretty different, don’t they? Same deal. The Faust legend has been turned into stories by lots of other people, too. A famous instance would be the English author Marlowe. Do you know Marlowe? Not Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe. Christopher Marlowe. He’s often spoken of as a forerunner of Shakespeare, but he did write Doctor Faustus.”

“It’s kind of interesting that it was Faust who was the doctor,” Kanbaru noted, a bit of bashfulness sneaking into her voice.

Huh, Oshino tilted his head in puzzlement, and I could tell that the reason for her bashfulness was lost on him.

“But…Oshino,” I attempted to wade into their exchange, afraid that we were getting off track, though I still didn’t know much about Faust. “So what? I don’t mind that you’re as frustratingly longwinded as ever, but I don’t see how it has anything to do with Kanbaru’s current predicament. I think we’ve gotten derailed and are skidding sideways. Yeah, the part where the devil grants wishes in exchange for your soul resembles the Monkey’s Paw, but it’s not like Kanbaru’s arm is the arm of this Mephistopheles from Faust, right? As if it’s not a Monkey’s Paw but the hand of the devil─”

“Well, that’s exactly it, Araragi. You’re on point today.”

Oshino─

Pointed his finger at me pretentiously.

“The hand of the devil on missy here, whose name starts with the character for ‘god,’ seems to line up a little too perfectly, but it’s not as bad as a crab-monkey spat or what happened with that lost girl the other day. It’s just a plain old hint this time around. Mephistopheles isn’t particularly terrifying, as far as devils go─he’s more of a vulgar one. Low-ranking, or maybe not part of the rankings at all, just a familiar. That would normally make it extremely difficult to identify its exact category, but a raincoat-wearing devil with a monkey arm narrows it down, of course─and if it merges with its owner, then it’s a Rainy Devil.”

A Rainy Devil.

“It’s not a Monkey’s Paw, it’s a Devil’s Hand. Ha hah, isn’t this much simpler if you think of it that way? I mean, why would an ape grant human wishes without asking for anything in return? It’s said the Monkey’s Paw grants them because an old Indian ascetic imbued it with mystical power, but you don’t need any explanation or reputation if it’s a devil. Of course it’ll grant wishes, it gets a soul in return.”

“A soul─”

“What kind of devil wouldn’t grant three wishes in exchange for a soul?” Oshino puffed a laugh through his nose. He was in full mockery mode. “Anyway, the Monkey’s Paw is a right hand, not a left hand.”

“…Really?”

“It’s an item you hold with your right hand to use, so I assume that it’s a right hand itself. But a Devil’s Hand. It might not be a devil, taxonomically speaking, but I’m still surprised. You might not be shocked by much these days, Araragi, since you already encountered a vampire…but it’s incredible to come across such a devil in Japan. It’s a notable find. Though, of course, there’s no shortage of Japanese yokai that would grant wishes in that manner. I don’t know, what with li’l missy class president, li’l missy tsundere, and our li’l lost girl…this is one strange town. Seriously. How’s it all going to end, with someone summoning the ruler of all hell to this place? …Missy, you said your mother gave you that left hand, yes? Kanbaru must be your father’s surname. Do you know your mother’s maiden name?”

“In fact─um, it’s a bit of an unusual name.” Kanbaru spoke slowly as if she were trying to remember. “I think it was ‘Gaen.’ Ga as in the phrase ‘hell or high water’ and en as in ‘smoke screen.’ Toé Gaen was her full maiden name.”

“…Huh. Oh, all right. And Toé must be written with the characters for ‘far’ and the one for ‘river’ used in Yangtze. The same way you’d write Totomi, the name of the old Japanese province. So that’s where your name comes from. Ha hah, nicely done.”

“Of course, after she got married, she was Toé Kanbaru. Why does that matter, though, Mister Oshino?”

“Why does it matter? Did you just ask me that? Oh, no, it doesn’t matter at all. I was trying to fill some time, it doesn’t have anything to do with your situation. And who cares about that background stuff in this case. So, Araragi, and you too, missy. Now you know everything. Whether that hand is a Monkey’s Paw or a Devil’s Hand might not make a difference to you, but having come here to visit me, what’s your plan going forward?”

“What do you mean─”

“You see, Araragi, I am what you might call an expert in this field. As a semi-passable excuse for an authority, in situations like these, I’m not opposed to helping out.”

“You─” Kanbaru leaned forward. “You’d save me?”

“I’ll do no such thing. I’ll only help out. You’re going to get saved all on your own, missy. You’ve come to the wrong place if you’re seeking salvation, and it wouldn’t be my scene. But considering the situation─Araragi, what should I do?” Oshino asked in a mean-spirited tone─but then fell silent, as if he hadn’t meant it rhetorically and were really waiting on my answer. Why was that? What should he do… Wasn’t it obvious?

“Hey, Oshino…”

“I’m wondering how exactly I should help, Araragi. Should I help missy’s second wish come true? Or should I help annul it? Should I help turn her left arm back to normal? All of the above? That might be a little too greedy─but what I can say is that none of the above is going to be simple.”

“Well…um.”

If I said all of the above─would that come to pass?

But.

“There are two easy ways to solve this phenomenon for the time being,” Oshino said. “The first is for you to be killed one night by the monster in the raincoat─the Rainy Devil. That will turn missy’s arm back to normal and probably grant her wish. The other is to take that beastly left arm that’s turned into an aberration and to lop it off.”

“L-Lop it off?” I started fretting at Oshino’s alarming proposal. “…Can you cut off just the part that belongs to this monkey─or devil? Will her old arm grow back?”

“It’s not a lizard’s tail, so it’s not going to be that convenient. Still, an arm is a small price to pay to solve this whole situation,” he said casually─but it was no joke.

You got what you paid for, with a vengeance…

Plus, it would be bad enough for anyone, but even worse for Kanbaru. If we did that, she’d never be able to play basketball again. Given how the sport had saved her, and how it continued to sustain her, the proposal really didn’t bear voicing even if it came to mind.

“A-Ah,” Kanbaru spoke up. “That, I don’t think I could─”

“You tried to kill another human being, all right? It would only be fair,” Oshino tossed the harsh words at her when she immediately balked at the idea─he was merciless at such moments. He’d acted the same way with Hanekawa and Senjogahara─

“Then again,” he said, “Araragi getting killed is nice and simple as far as solutions go.”

“H-Hey, Oshino, I take your point, but hold on. She tried to kill another human being… That’s me you’re talking about, right? But that’s not what she wished for. She only wanted to be by Senjogahara’s side─”

“Only to be by her side? What a riot,” Oshino continued to me in his harsh tone. “You’re so kind, Araragi. You’re a good, kind person─what a good and kind person. Makes me sick, really. How many more people do you have to hurt with that kindness until you’re satisfied? It was the same with little Shinobu. Only to be by her side? Did you believe those saccharine words just the way they came out of missy’s mouth?”

“…You’re saying that wasn’t it?” I asked Oshino and glanced at Kanbaru. She was silent. “Hey, Kanbaru─”

“For example, Araragi. You don’t find it odd? That story of her first wish when she was in grade school. Why do you think the left hand didn’t just make her faster and roughed people up instead?”

“Well─that’s because the Monkey’s Paw grants its owner’s wishes in an unintended way─”

“But it’s not a Monkey’s Paw,” Oshino declared. “This was in exchange for a soul. The wish ought to be granted exactly as it’s made. The Rainy Devil may be a low-level demon, and it may have a nasty habit of rushing to violence, but a contract is a contract. A deal is a deal. If your wish is to be faster, that’s normally what should happen. How does roughing up her classmates make her any faster? Doesn’t that causality seem off? It’s obvious that beating them up would only get her placed in another group.”

“……” I couldn’t argue with him if he put it that way. “Then why? Why did the monster in the raincoat go to her classmates and─”

“Because she wanted to beat the shit out of them, of course. Unable to fit in at her new school, missy was constantly being teased. She says it wasn’t what you’d call bullying, but that’s what bullied kids say. If you’ve just had your parents die on you and you’re persecuted at school on top of that, wanting revenge isn’t weird at all. If anything, it’d be weird if she didn’t want any.”

“I…” Kanbaru said─then fell silent.

How had she wanted to explain herself?

Why did she decide not to after all?

What did she realize?

Oshino went on. “I’m sure it wasn’t a conscious decision. I do think it was in the realm of the unconscious, okay? If it had been intentional, she’d know. I’m sure the way she saw it, she made a wish to become faster. On the face of it, yes, but not on the flip side. Behind her wish was a dark desire to get back at her classmates─to beat them up. That’s what missy wished for, even if it was unconscious. The devil saw through to that desire. It read what was on the flip side. But deep down, missy must have known that, all right? It might have been unconscious, but those were her honest feelings all the same. But not wanting to accept that, she sought a different interpretation for the phenomenon…and arrived at the Monkey’s Paw. Not the stuff about granting a wish, but defying the owner’s will─that was the axial part, wasn’t it? A psychological excuse that it wasn’t her intention at all to attack her classmates. Well, that kind of thing is important.”

A psychological excuse.

A question of interpretation.

“It’s not just true for the Monkey’s Paw, most cases involving aberrations that grant wishes end horribly for the protagonist─and in that sense, when missy looked them up in grade school, she could easily have found a different one. She just happened to come across Jacobs’ ‘The Monkey’s Paw.’ But what would you say? Have things turned out horribly for missy? Is she miserable because her wish came true? Araragi, would you say missy is truly miserable because those classmates who teased her were made to suffer? Isn’t the normal response to that a quick and tidy ‘serves them right’?”

“The normal response… But Oshino─”

“Ha hah, Araragi, are you wondering what evidence I have to be so sure? Well, it’s obvious if you actually listen to her story. Clear as day. That arm of hers…how was it in grade school, again?”

“………”

Now that he mentioned it.

The mummified hand that only went down to its wrist at the time─how was it then?

“I heard nothing about bandages─” pointed out Oshino, “and until she went to class the next day and found out those four were absent, she didn’t notice that it had happened, right? If her left hand turned out like that, she surely would have. What does that mean? You see, when her classmates got beaten up that night, her wish came true. The aberration merged with missy’s left hand overnight without her realizing it, and likewise unattached overnight. It unattached with a bit of her soul equivalent to the wish─and grew from the left wrist into a forearm, I bet.”

“…Wait, Oshino, that would mean─”

It made sense.

But his argument suggested...

“Your initial thinking was on the mark, Araragi. You’d actually arrived at the right answer for once. Didn’t I tell you? You’re on point today. There was no need to get tied up into knots, you just had to use your common sense to think it through. You’re such a chump to believe your assailant’s excuses. You’ll never make it onto a jury, Araragi. You stole away her idol for yourself. It’s hardly bizarre if she felt murderously jealous. There’s no way missy’s own intention had no part in this, all of it was exactly her intention. Left hands don’t have any.”

So said Oshino.