Monogatari Series - Volume 2 - Chapter 4.2

002

“I’m sorry I made you wait, my senior Araragi.”

June eleventh, a Sunday.

I’m not sure if “jockish” is the best way to put it, but at 10:55 a.m., exactly five minutes before we’d agreed to meet in front of the main gate of our school, Naoetsu High, Suruga Kanbaru, the former star of the basketball team and one year my junior, came dashing, and unable to stop, jumped, sailed easily past my head, landed, turned, and spoke those words with a fresh smile on her face and her right hand in front of her chest… I realized that I wasn’t particularly tall for a high school student, but I’d never considered my height a non-issue that a girl shorter than me could clear with a scissors jump. It seemed like I had some reconsidering to do.

“No, I just got here myself. I haven’t been waiting.”

“Wow… Being so transparently considerate just to avoid causing me undue mental stress testifies to your good nature. You’re just born magnanimous. The likes of me can only take three steps back and look up to take in all that you are. I’m truly stunned that you’d move me with your largeness within a mere few seconds of seeing you. Seems like I have no choice but to spend all the respect I can muster in my lifetime on you alone. Good heavens, I think I nearly resent you for that.”

“………”

She was the same as ever.

And hey, don’t go around calling people transparent.

The best response to casual kindness is to feign ignorance, okay?

“No, I really did just get here,” I assured her. “And in any case, you came early, too. There’s no reason for you to apologize.”

“I won’t have any of that. No matter what you say, the fact that I wasn’t here before my senior is cause enough for an apology. I think it’s an unforgivable sin to waste the time of someone above you.”

“I’m not above you.”

“You’re a year ahead of me so you are.”

“True, but…”

That was just a matter of age.

Or how tall we were, I guess (physically speaking, I was above her).

Not that she couldn’t easily leap over me, though.

Suruga Kanbaru─a second-year at Naoetsu High.

She was our ace basketball player until just a month earlier, and her name was known across the whole school as its biggest celebrity and star. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, it was her who had led our private prep school’s weak little sports organization to the national tournament the same year she joined it. She was a frightening junior, and a half-assed washout third-year like me would normally be unable to so much as speak to her, or even step in her shadow for that matter. Just the other day, she gave her position of team captain to one of her juniors because of an injury to her left arm, then quit the basketball team early─and it was still fresh in my mind the way the whole school was shaken by the impact of the news. I doubted the memory would ever go stale.

Kanbaru’s left arm.

It was still wrapped tight in a long white bandage.

“Yes,” Kanbaru began to say in a quiet voice, “as you can see, I’ve retired. The only thing I was ever good at was basketball, and now I have nothing to offer the school. So you ought to deal with me accordingly.”

“What do you mean, ‘deal with’ you? For all the confidence you seem to have, your self-esteem can be weirdly low. What you’ve done for the basketball team won’t go away just because you’re retiring early.”

Guilt over her early retirement─wasn’t exactly it, but then again, it seemed unreasonable to expect her to stay the exact same after all that happened to her. Personally, though, I did wish that Kanbaru wouldn’t be so self-deprecating.

“Thanks,” she told me. “I couldn’t appreciate your concern more. I’ll gladly take those feelings into consideration.”

“Take the words into consideration, too. Okay, why don’t we get going.”

“Yup,” she said before scurrying over to my side and taking my open left hand into her right in what could only be described as a natural motion. She didn’t “hold my hand” as much as wrap her fingers around mine. From there, she pushed her body into my arm, sticking to me like she was about to embrace me. Her chest was right around my elbow because of our height difference, and the delicate, nerve-dense area of my body was beset by a sensation like mashed potatoes.

“No,” corrected Kanbaru, “I think the usual comparison is to marshmallows.”

“Wait, what?! Did I voice that stupid monologue out loud just now?!”

“Ah, no, you didn’t, you didn’t. Don’t worry, I only heard it telepathically.”

“That’d make it an even bigger problem! Everyone around here must have heard it, then!”

“Heheheh. Well, we’ll just have to show them, in that case. It’s not like I’m someone who worries about appearing scandalous anymore.”

“Stop smiling and saying what a girlfriend might say when you’re just my junior! You know it’s not you I’m dating, it’s your senior who you respect very much!”

Hitagi Senjogahara.

My classmate.

And girlfriend.

And─the senior that Suruga Kanbaru admired.

She, Senjogahara, was what had connected the school’s biggest celebrity and star to the ever-nondescript average student that I am. Kanbaru and Senjogahara had been junior and senior since middle school, and while this, that, and the other happened between then and now, the two were still friends as the Valhalla Duo. For a time, Suruga Kanbaru stalked me because I was the person who was dating her admired senior.

I told her, “It’s not like you ever worried about scandals to begin with. Now get off of me.”

“No. I read that you’re supposed to hold hands when you’re on a date.”

“A date?! When did I ever call this a date?”

“Hrm?” Kanbaru tilted her head as if that were the last thing she expected to hear. “Now that you mention it, maybe you never did. I was so excited when you asked me to go somewhere with you that I didn’t really listen to what you were saying.”

“Oh…I guess you were mumbling your replies the whole time…”

“Still, I don’t know about that. I’m on the open side when it comes to sex, and I do want to follow your wishes wherever possible, but you’d proceed to the deed without even going on a date first? I worry about your future.”

“We’re not proceeding to any deed so stop worrying about me! And a high school second-year shouldn’t be talking about how open she is about sex!!”

“Then again, we’ve already come this far. This pleasure cruise has already set sail.”

“So you are enjoying it after all!”

I caught a look of how Kanbaru was dressed.

Jeans and a T-shirt, with a long-sleeved shirt on top. Expensive-looking sneakers. On her head was a baseball cap, probably in part because the sun was getting stronger. It suited a sporty girl like her perfectly, but we’ll put that aside for now.

“You’re technically wearing long sleeves and long pants like I told you…”

But.

Her jeans were stylishly ripped here and there, while her T-shirt was short enough to show off plenty of her curved waist. It almost seemed a little much… Of course, people were free to dress as they wanted on Sundays, but still…

“…You really weren’t listening to a word I said, were you?”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re about to go up into the mountains.”

“The mountains? So we’re performing the deed in the mountains?”

“There’ll be no deed.”

“Hm, pretty wild. I think I like it. That’s quite manly of you. I’m into being treated rough now and then.”

“I said no deed! Listen to me!”

I was certain I’d told her to wear long sleeves and long pants to protect herself from bugs, snakes, and the like in the mountains, yet she’d showed up in clothes with plenty of openings… It didn’t seem like they’d do her much good…

“Fine,” she said. “Wherever you go, I’m willing to come along with you. Even if you try to tell me not to. Neither rain nor snow nor heat nor overcast skies will stop me.”

“Overcast skies don’t sound like much of a deterrent…”

In fact, I could have used some clouds with all the sun we were getting.

But even the day before, when I called Kanbaru’s home, she wouldn’t listen to a word I was saying and made the same kind of distracted replies (“You don’t even need to tell me where we’re going. The needle of my compass is always pointing in whatever direction you’re headed,” and so on)… It was actually impressive in a way how prone to making assumptions she was. She went about it in a different way than Hanekawa, like she had tunnel vision and could only see straight ahead.

“In any case, this isn’t a date,” I clarified.

“Oh, so it’s not… I was so sure that it was. I’d gotten myself fired up for it.”

“Fired up?”

“Yup. I mean, this is my first-ever heterosexual date.”

I decided not to comment on the “heterosexual” part.

I wasn’t confident I could make a good quip about it.

“I was so fired up,” she continued, “that I broke my solemn vow to myself and bought a cell phone just for today, the first one I’ve ever owned in my seventeen years alive.”

“……”

…Please let’s keep this light!

“It’d be awful if I somehow got separated from you and couldn’t get in contact,” she explained. “We live in an age where pay phones have all but disappeared, so a cell phone is an essential dating tool.”

“W-Well…you’re right. Heh, heheh. But there still are a good number of pay phones left out here in the countryside…”

“That’s not all. I woke up at four to make us lunches. One for me and one for you. Since we were going to meet at eleven, I assumed I’d get to eat lunch with you.”

As she said this, Kanbaru presented me with a bundle her bandaged left arm held… Yes, I’d noticed from the beginning, but judging by its tall rectangular shape, it was one of those multiple-box affairs…

Could we keep this light, please?

I mean, literally now…

I certainly knew we’d be together for lunch, so my plan had been to take her out to a fast food place once we were done, like a good senior. But it seemed that this junior of mine operated on a more deadly plane.

So that was her move. Homemade lunches…

It was a surprise attack.

“I was so happy and excited about getting to go on a date with my revered senior that I could barely get any sleep and also woke up early, so it was a nice diversion.”

“A diversion, huh? Is all of that for lunch, though? It’s a lot of food… I should let you know up front that I can’t eat that much.”

“I made it for us to split half and half, but I can just eat whatever you don’t finish. I hate wasting food, so I did take that into account.”

“Okay…”

I took a look at Kanbaru’s fully exposed navel.

Maybe around ten percent body fat, at the most?

She basically had an hourglass figure.

Fit Sugaru’s hourglass figure.

It almost seemed like a palindrome…

It wasn’t, though.

“Hold on, Kanbaru. Are you one of those people who don’t get fat no matter how much you eat?”

“Uhm, it’s more like I’m one of those people who lose tons of weight unless they eat like crazy.”

“People like that exist?!” That would make girls envious of her… In fact, even as a boy I was envious of her! “How exactly do you get your body to do that?”

“Simple. First, start off with two sets of ten-mile sprints every morning.”

“Okay, never mind.”

So that was it.

What she considered a normal amount of exercise was on a different level.

It seemed that Suruga Kanbaru was still making sure to work out every day, even after her retirement from the basketball team. Impressive. It made perfect sense, though. She might have claimed she quit because of an injury to her left arm, but the truth lay elsewhere.

“Ah…” she let out an exaggerated sigh. “But it looks like it was all a waste… So it wasn’t a date after all. I was really looking forward to it, too. I feel like an idiot, the way I went off and got myself excited for nothing. I’m red with embarrassment. My dreams were too big for reality. It seems so obvious that a noble senior such as yourself would never bother dating a fool like me. I couldn’t have been any more conceited… I’m sorry to have troubled you with my wild assumptions. Well, this cell phone and these lunch boxes are pointless now. They’re just going to weigh us down, so I’ll toss them somewhere. Wait here just a minute, I’ll change into a tracksuit real fast.”

“Actually, this is a date!”

I lost.

Such a weak man…

“Today was a date after all, Kanbaru! Yeah, I just remembered I was, um, really looking forward to today, too! Hooray, I finally get to go on a date with Miss Kanbaru! Okay? So hold onto your phone and those lunches! You don’t need to change your clothes, either!”

“Really?” Kanbaru’s expression started to glow.

Uh oh. She looked super cute.

“I’m glad. You’re very kind,” she said.

“Yeah…though I have the feeling my kindness is going to be my downfall one of these days…”

………

I was going on a date with Kanbaru, Senjogahara’s junior, before I ever went on a date with Senjogahara herself, my girlfriend. I doubted she’d count this as cheating, given how unusually lenient that tsundere girl was with Kanbaru, but it was still undeniable proof of how weak-willed I was…

Also, we were still holding hands the entire time we were having this conversation, our fingers still entwined. I made a sly effort to disentangle them, but we were locked tight as if our hands were in a rugby scrum. It felt like my hand was a piece in a wire puzzle or the victim of a submission hold.

Like a snake had wrapped itself around it.

“Still, Kanbaru. Button up that shirt you’re wearing on top. You have to agree that baring your navel is a bad idea when we’re going into the mountains. As far as those distressed jeans─well, I guess you’ll be fine with those as long as you’re careful.”

“Hmm. Okay, as you wish.”

Kanbaru followed my instructions and buttoned up her long-sleeved shirt, hiding her curved waist from sight. I had to admit that a small part of me regretted it, but I knew I shouldn’t be having such wicked thoughts about my girlfriend’s junior.

“Now let’s get going,” I said.

“Oh, now that you mention it. Are you going to be walking today?”

“Yeah. We’re heading to a mountain. I don’t know where I’d be able to park a bike, plus I can’t afford to have my only bike stolen.” The mountain bike I’d used for trips had been smashed to smithereens, after all, thanks to a certain someone’s left arm. Not that I’d say that to her since it could only come out sarcastic. “It’s not like this is much of a trip. Look, you can even see where we’re going from here. That mountain over there…”

As I said this, I suddenly remembered something. When I’d first started to speak to Kanbaru a month ago, she was so averse to touching the body of the boy dating her idol Senjogahara that she declined to ride on the back of my bicycle, opting against all common sense to run alongside me as I pedaled… And now that same girl was holding my hand, wrapping her fingers around mine, and shoving her chest into my body…

“Heheheh.” Kanbaru wore an innocent and bashful grin and nearly skipped down the street. “My senior, Araragi, my senior, Araragi, my senior, Araragi, my senior, Araragi~~~”

“………”

Well, hasn’t she grown attached!

She’s even humming to herself!

“By the way, Kanbaru… I’ve always meant to tell you this, but could you stop calling me your senior?”

“Huh?” She seemed puzzled, like she hadn’t expected to hear that. “Why? I call you my senior because you are my senior. I couldn’t imagine calling my senior anything but my senior.”

“Well, there’s a lot of other things you could call me.”

“Like ‘my senior, Kesennuma’?”

“Don’t change my name.”

No, the other part.

Plus “Kesennuma” was a place name.

“I’m talking about the ‘my senior’ part. It’s so stiff and formal.”

“Please don’t say that. Stiff and formal is exactly what I want to be.”

“O…kay. Well, sure, I suppose I am your senior, but it just sounds too serious. And ‘my senior, Araragi’ is a mouthful like my full name.”

My full name is Koyomi Araragi.

Seven syllables.

The same as “my senior, Araragi.”

“Hmm. Should I call you ‘Mister Araragi’ in that case?”

“I guess that’s one solution? But I’m only a year older, so I don’t think there’s any need for you to be so proper and uptight with me. And I feel kind of weird about being called ‘Mister’ in the first place. There’s a grade school kid I know who always calls me that, but in her case, she speaks in this weirdly polite manner.”

Her personality couldn’t be any worse, though.

That reminded me. I hadn’t seen Hachikuji lately.

……

That made me feel kind of lonely.

“Kanbaru, I know a lot happened between us over Senjogahara, but I’d like us to treat each other more like equals.”

“I see. I’m glad to hear that.”

“Then again, I’m not sure I’m on even ground with our school’s biggest star.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Nothing could ever make me happier than being with you like this. Getting to know you makes me nearly as happy as reconciling with my other esteemed senior Senjogahara. If there’s anything about you that I’m dissatisfied about, it’s that I didn’t meet you sooner in life.”

“…Uh huh.”

She really did have low self-esteem.

I could understand why, though, considering what I’d learned a month ago.

She had a lot going on, too.

“So,” she confirmed with me, “I’m getting the sense that it would be okay for me to refer to you in a more intimate way than ‘my senior’?”

“Yeah. You can call me whatever you want.”

“All right, Koyomi.”

“………”

……

Only my family calls me that!

“And Koyomi, you can call me Suruga.”

“You’re going on again like we’re an item! And why do these milestone events keep on happening between me and my girlfriend’s junior?! Even Senjogahara still calls me ‘Araragi’! Do you have any idea how much of a leap you just made?!”

“Please don’t get so worked up. You know that was supposed to be a joke, Koyomi.”

“Why are you still calling me that then, Suruga?!”

“The ‘Dashing Knight of Lightning’ Koyomi.”

“And now you’re sticking some weird slogan on my name? My grandfather gave me my name, stop messing around with it! There’s nothing dashing or lightning-like about me, and I’m not a knight, either! And that’s like, twice as long as my full name, anyway! You’re losing sight of our initial goal here!”

“The ‘Last Hero of Our Century’ Koyomi.”

“The last one this century?! Isn’t that a little premature?!”

“Well, in any case, I can’t bring myself to address my senior casually. So ‘Koyomi’ is out. I don’t feel comfortable not using a title. But if a slogan is too much, can we try a nickname?”

“A nickname…” Her sensibility could be a little off the mark…or more like off target. I couldn’t imagine her giving me a proper nickname, but then again, you never know. “Fine, then try coming up with something,” I told her.

“Yup.” Kanbaru closed her eyes for a bit as if she were deliberating. A few seconds later, her head popped up. “I thought of one,” she said.

“Wow, that was fast. Hit me with it.”

“Ragi.”

“That’s a lot cooler than I thought it’d be! Too cool, in fact!”

Like she was purposely using a nickname that was too cool for me just to make fun of me… It sounded too edgy to be the nickname of a Japanese high school kid…

“I took the bottom half of ‘Araragi’ to come up with it.”

“So I gathered… But shouldn’t nicknames be a little softer and more charming?”

“You have a point. In that case, we can take a bit from ‘Araragi’ and a bit from ‘Koyomi’ to get…”

“To get?”

“Ragiko.”

“Now you’re obviously making fun of me!”

“Don’t be shy, li’l Ragiko.”

“Go home! I don’t need you after all!”

“Ragiko is being mean to me… But I actually don’t mind, heheheh…”

“Agh! I forgot, yelling doesn’t work on a masochist! Are you the strongest opponent I’ve faced yet?!”

I was having fun talking to her.

Maybe a little too much fun.

I was nearly losing sight of what we were setting out to do.

“I know it’s probably inappropriate to say this, but…Kanbaru. Not to seize on what you said earlier, but if I’d met you before I started going out with Senjogahara, I wonder if we’d be going out instead…”

“Yes. I was actually thinking the same thing. What if I’d met you before becoming drawn to her. It’s so rare for me to feel this way about someone of the opposite sex.”

I sighed.

Of course, I wouldn’t have come to know Kanbaru if it wasn’t for Senjogahara, and the same went for Kanbaru, making this hypothetical no more than that.

“What do you say,” she offered, “to the two of us killing and burying that nuisance of a woman?”

“You’re scaring me!”

We’ve talked enough, but I still can’t pin down your character! I can’t fathom your depths! Just how much is there to you, Suruga Kanbaru?!

“I know that you respect Senjogahara as your senior, but…you’re surprisingly wicked.”

“Don’t shower me with praise. You’ll make me blush.”

“That wasn’t praise.”

“I’m happy to be called anything by you.”

“I can’t believe you, you little masochist…”

“Ooh, little masochist. I like that. Keep going.”

“……”

While I’d harbored fears that Kanbaru might find herself lost after coming into contact with the true nature of her middle school idol Senjogahara, it seemed that thanks to such a proclivity I didn’t need to worry.

In any case, about Suruga Kanbaru.

She was actually a sapphist.

As you could probably tell from our conversation up to this point, she not only worshiped Hitagi Senjogahara as a senior but also loved her from the bottom of her heart. You could even say that yes, Kanbaru and I were rivals in love─and yet we were walking arm in arm. It was hard to say what was going on. Then again, it was probably that she felt indebted to me for what happened at the end of last month, or maybe that she felt grateful, or something along those lines…

It didn’t feel bad having one of my juniors get attached to me, but it didn’t feel great that the attraction was due to a misunderstanding.

To borrow a phrase from Oshino─just like with Senjogahara.

Kanbaru simply had gone and saved herself all on her own─

“………”

But yes, I couldn’t deny it.

Indebtedness or misunderstanding or whatever, it seemed like I needed to do at least something to adjust Kanbaru’s overblown image of me. Or maybe to destroy my image… If her impression of me stayed too positive, she’d be that much more disappointed when everything went south.

Which is why I hatched Operation Ruin Koyomi Araragi’s Image.

Part One.

A man who was loose with money.

“Kanbaru, I forgot my wallet. Think you could lend me some cash? I promise to give it back right away.”

“Okay, sure. Is thirty thousand yen enough?”

She was rich!

Hmm…someone who was loose with other people’s time…wouldn’t be very convincing after I’d arrived before her at our meeting spot today…

Operation Ruin Koyomi Araragi’s Image, Part Two.

A hopeless lecher.

“Kanbaru, you know what I’m interested in right now? Girls’ underwear.”

“Oh, what a coincidence. Me too. I consider women’s underwear works of fine art. I never thought we’d agree on this point.”

She agreed!

Right, I could never hope to match Kanbaru when it came to smuttiness… Wait, no! Regular lechery might be out, but maybe I stood a chance if I went in some strange direction…

“I’m particularly interested,” I proclaimed, “in elementary schoolgirls’ underwear!”

“I couldn’t agree more! Wow, I always knew you weren’t the type to be constrained by what society thinks. You know how to live!”

“My stock rose?!”

Why?

Hmm. Okay, then it was time for Operation Ruin Koyomi Araragi’s Image, Part Three (I was having too much fun with this and already losing sight of my original goal).

A megalomaniac who goes on and on about his dreams.

“Kanbaru, you’re talking to a man who’s gonna be big one day!”

“You don’t need to be telling me that. In fact, I think you’re already huge. I don’t know if there’ll be any space left by your side if you get any bigger.”

“Nkk…!”

No, this much was to be expected!

I needed to keep going!

“I’m gonna become a musician!”

“Oh? Then I think I’ll become your instrument.”

“I don’t even know what that means, but what a cool line!”

Her stock had gone up in my ledger.

Man, why?

“What’s all this about?” Kanbaru asked me. “You don’t need to tell me these things because I couldn’t possibly love and respect you more than I already do.”

“Yeah, it’s useless…” Just as she was happy whatever I told her, she was going to worship me no matter what kind of person I was. “I don’t get it, though. Why do you overrate me that much?”

“Listen to you.” Kanbaru laughed. “Until just now, I’d always thought that there was no such thing as a stupid question, but I stand corrected.”

“………”

It sounded like a cool line to me for a brief moment, but then I thought about it and realized that someone here was just an idiot.

“I vowed to devote this life of mine to you,” she added. “Not because you helped mediate between me and her, but because I think you’re worthy of that kind of vow.”

“A vow, you say…”

“Yes. I thought I’d make my vow to the sun, which never stops shining upon us and bestowing its gifts, but the thought came to me at night, so I chose the closest street lamp instead.”

“That’s the most arbitrary thing I’ve ever heard of!”

“But street lamps shine upon us and bestow their gifts, too, don’t they? Life would be pretty tough without them.”

“True, but…”

Vow to the moon, at least.

Maybe it had been cloudy.

“But perhaps,” Kanbaru conceded, “I, myself, am not worthy of vowing to spend my life preying upon your good graces.”

“I don’t know where to begin with you, but that spelling mistake…”

Urkk.

Operation Ruin Koyomi Araragi’s Image was at an impasse!

“…Hmph.”

Koyomi Araragi.

Suruga Kanbaru.

Come to think of it, there’s one thing other than Senjogahara that we have in common.

Neither of us is human.

Well, actually, both of us are mostly human. Only─

Koyomi Araragi’s blood.

Suruga Kanbaru’s left arm.

Each is something other than human.

No small part of my blood is a demon’s─and Kanbaru’s left arm is altogether that of a monkey. Just as I grew out my hair to hide the fang marks left on my neck by a vampire, Kanbaru hid her monkey’s left arm by wrapping it in a long bandage. That’s the real reason the once bright and shining star was forced to retire from the team early. What else could she do? There’s no playing basketball with a monkey’s arm.

Both Kanbaru and I had gotten ourselves involved with aberrations.

…And speaking of aberrations, Hitagi Senjogahara, my girlfriend and Kanbaru’s senior, had also encountered one.

For me, a demon.

For Kanbaru, a monkey.

For Senjogahara, it was a crab.

But Kanbaru and I were different from her in a decisive way─Senjogahara faced her aberration every day for over two years but finally exorcised it and became human again. Kanbaru and I got rid of our aberrations─but parts of our bodies were still not human. You could say that we were like aberrations ourselves─we’d gotten involved with them and become them.

It was─

A sad thing to have in common.

“Hm? What’s the matter?” she asked me.

“Oh… Er, nothing.”

“You’re going to spoil this date with that gloomy expression of yours.”

“Date… Fine, whatever.”

“By the way, I meant to ask you earlier, but what are we going to do once we get to this mountain? Is there anything to do up there, other than our deed?”

“If you’re being serious right now, please stay far away from any Wandervogel clubs… But I take it you haven’t been to the mountains very much?”

“My team did do some runs through the mountains as part of our training back in middle school, kind of like mock cross-country races. We ended up having to cancel them after some students started getting sprains, though.”

“Hunh.”

So to her, even the mountains were just a spot to work out.

Then again, it wasn’t her technique per se that had made her our basketball ace, but rather that overwhelming leg strength of hers that easily hopped over my height.

“Does that mean you’re at home in the mountains?” she asked me.

“No, not particularly…”

“But don’t boys scrounge around for rhinoceros and stag beetles when they’re little?”

“Stag beetles…”

“Yes. So precious they’re like black mold.”

“That doesn’t sound too valuable…”

But why would I look in the mountains for them?

That was called illegal dumping.

“I suppose it’s not exactly the kind of place to go on a date─especially considering the season,” I admitted. “I’m pretty sure I gave you a full explanation yesterday, but you know, it’s a job from Oshino.”

“Oshino? Oh, Mister Oshino.”

Kanbaru’s expression turned ambivalent as soon as she heard the name. The reaction was an uncommon one from her, but it did make sense.

Mèmè Oshino.

Me, Kanbaru, Senjogahara─the man had saved all of us. No, he would never agree to that word choice. We’d gotten saved on our own, that was the only way to put it.

An expert on aberrations, and a rolling stone and vagrant.

A frivolous man who wore a tacky Hawaiian shirt.

He was by no means a respectable adult, but it was the immutable truth that we were obliged to him.

“Yeah,” I said. “There’s apparently a small shrine up in the mountains that isn’t being used anymore, and he said to stick this talisman on its main hall─that was the job he gave us.”

“…What’s with that?” Kanbaru sounded mystified. “The talisman part doesn’t make any sense, but to begin with, can’t Mister Oshino just do it himself? He has all the time in the world, doesn’t he?”

“I agree, but that’s our job. I went into a ridiculous amount of debt when he helped me out… Doesn’t the same go for you, Kanbaru?”

“Huh?”

“I know it’s a little fuzzier in your case, but he’s a professional, despite everything else about him. He’s not so kind that he’d lend you a hand pro bono. You’re indebted to him, and you need to work to pay it off.”

“Ohh, so that’s why...” Kanbaru nodded, seemingly convinced.

“Yup,” I picked up where she left off, “that’s why I asked you to come out here. Oshino asked us to do this yesterday when I went to have Shinobu drink my blood. He said to make sure to bring you along.”

“Now that you mention it, Mister Oshino did insist that he was lending me a hand… Huh. I see, it meant that I’d be in his debt.”

“There you go.”

“All right. No point in arguing if that’s the case.”

Kanbaru squeezed and latched on to my arm even tighter. There seemed to be a complicated meaning behind the act that I couldn’t hope to understand, but at any rate, it looked like she’d made up her mind. She certainly came across as the upstanding type who honored her end of the bargain.

“Still,” she said, “I’ve been near that mountain a few times but never knew there was a shrine.”

“Me, neither… Even if it’s fallen out of use, you’d at least expect to have heard about it. Why does Oshino know about spots that locals like us aren’t aware of? I guess the same goes for that abandoned cram school he’s living in now.”

Maybe he was actually more knowledgeable about ruins than he was about aberrations. At the same time, like our pay phones, it really is the mark of a rural town that a forgotten shrine and cram school aren’t getting overrun by weirdoes… Then again, that could be exactly how you described that cram school since Oshino and Shinobu lived there…

“But─if you’re going to put it that way,” questioned Kanbaru, “why hasn’t my other dear senior come along with us? Both of you owe Mister Oshino a─”

“Senjogahara is astute about that kind of thing, so she already paid back her debt. Remember I gave Oshino a hundred thousand yen when you were there? That was it.”

“Ah, now that you mention it, you did discuss some such matter. I see, so that’s what you meant… Hm, now there’s my senior.”

“In her case, it’s not so much about being upstanding, it’s more like she hates being indebted to people. She’s the kind of person who’d endure life all alone.”

“Did she say anything about today?”

“Hmm? No, not really. Not even a ‘be careful.’”

She really hadn’t.

Since I was technically bringing “her” junior along with me, I did make sure to bring it up with her before calling on Kanbaru, but Senjogahara’s reaction had been bland, as if I shouldn’t have troubled her with such a trivial matter. I found myself wanting to complain that it was thanks to her attitude that I’d ended up going on a date with her junior before I went on one with her, conveniently turning a blind eye to my own weak will.

“Did she say anything to you, Kanbaru?”

“Mm. She said to have you pamper me.”

“………”

She really did indulge Kanbaru.

Jeez, a tsundere was supposed to show her sweet side to her boyfriend, not her junior.

“She told me something else. ‘If Araragi tries to lay a finger on you, don’t hide it from me but report it right away. He can choose between being buried in the mountains and becoming fish food, whichever he hates more.’”

“Whichever I hate more?!”

She was merciless.

But─well.

It did seem like Hitagi Senjogahara was heading in the right direction. She’d encountered an aberration before entering high school, and apparently she’d thrown everything away, given up on everything─so this meant she was getting back to where she used to be. For someone who’d endure life all alone─learning how to interact with others couldn’t be a bad thing.

I was actually glad to see it.

Since she was human─that was good.

“Oh, right, Kanbaru. Talking about Senjogahara reminds me. It’s her birthday soon, isn’t it?”

“Yes. July seventh.”

“…Sounds like you don’t need to check your calendar for that one.”

“We’re talking about someone I love.”

“Well, I have a request about it.”

“Anything you want. This body belongs to you, to begin with. There’s no need to check with me over every little thing, use me as you see fit.”

“No, it’s nothing that big, just that it’s a special day that I thought we could celebrate. The only thing is that I’ve been fairly detached from those kinds of events for a while now, and I don’t know how they go. That’s where I was hoping you could help me out, Kanbaru.”

“I see. You need me to strip?”

“Even I know that birthdays aren’t that kind of event! What kind of occasion are you trying to turn my girlfriend’s special day into?!”

“Ah. I jumped the gun.”

“There isn’t going to be a time when that gun ever goes off. Go back and sit on the bench. For the rest of your life. Well, actually, I’d appreciate it if you could help out with the setup and planning. I know there was a gap in your relationship, but you probably know more about Senjogahara than I do. That’s all.”

“Hmm. I don’t know, this is her first birthday since you started going out, so don’t you think you should set the mood and spend the day alone together? I feel like me trying to help out would only get in the way.”

“Get in the way?”

“Yes. An unwanted kindness can be a pain in the butt, just a nuisance.”

“Ahh. I did consider that, but I thought a livelier celebration might be good for our first birthday together. I was thinking of inviting Oshino and Shinobu, and maybe this one grade schooler that I know, and holding a nice little birthday party.”

The idea did have issues in that Senjogahara disliked Oshino, Shinobu, and Hachikuji, but that was something I needed to power through. I had to do my best to create a situation where she couldn’t say so outright.

“Well─if you’re okay with it, so am I,” Kanbaru consented.

“Really? That sounds evasive.”

“Well, if you don’t mind me saying so, while I do have the utmost respect for your intentions, she might want to spend the time alone with you.”

“You think she’s that sanctimonious about our relationship?”

She hadn’t even gone on a date with me.

I’d been asking her out pretty clearly, too.

Of course, it hadn’t been the right time, what with Kanbaru and the skills test right afterwards.

Her defenses were just so tight.

“At any rate,” I noted, “you seem to care about me and Senjogahara in a pretty normal way when you and I are supposed to be rivals fighting over her.”

“Well, true… But right now, it’s like I’m in love with her even as she’s going out with you… And I love you, her boyfriend, almost as much as I love her.”

“……”

Did she just confess to me?

Uh oh, my pulse was rising.

She might even feel my heartbeat through our arms.

What a simpleton I was.

“…You know, you’re letting Senjogahara influence you a little too much,” I scolded her. “The sun or a street lamp or whatever you made this vow to, you don’t have to see me in such a positive light just because I’m Senjogahara’s boyfriend. You don’t need to like someone just because she does─”

“No. That’s not what it is,” Kanbaru said awfully bluntly.

I felt a little cowed by her forceful gaze.

If something needed to be said, she said it, juniors and seniors be damned.

“Then,” I asked her, “could you still be carrying around baggage from last month? I don’t mind at all, really… You know what they say, hate the sin, what’s for dinner─”

“It’s not that─either,” Kanbaru stated, seemingly overlooking my gaffe. “I’m fortunate that you’re able to forget and forget, but that isn’t what it is.”

“Forget and forget…”

She made me sound so feebleminded.

I had a feeling she wasn’t wrong, though.

And it certainly was simpler that way.

“Please, listen to me,” she said. “I was stalking you, okay?”

“……”

What a thing to say so unabashedly to my face.

Like I was the one who needed a talking-to.

“So─” she continued, “I think I have a very good idea about the kind of person you are. I really believe that you deserve no less. Even if you weren’t her boyfriend, even if last month never happened, no matter how we’d met─I would have seen you as someone worthy of my respect. I swear, upon my legs.”

“…Oh.”

Well, in that case.

It was foolish even to contemplate other scenarios where Kanbaru and I could have met…

However.

“If it’s upon your legs─what can I say.”

“Right… I respect you so much that even if you’re bringing me to some lonely mountain on the pretext that Mister Oshino has a job for us, only to force upon me every single lustful desire that your heart cradles, I can forgive you with a smile.”

“I don’t want that kind of respect!”

And “pretext”?

She didn’t trust me at all!

“Huh? Hold on,” she said. “Are we really not proceeding to it?”

“Don’t act so genuinely surprised!”

“Wait, are you having the girl make the first move? A-ha… Your plan is to insist to your lover that it wasn’t cheating because you’d been tempted.”

“Now I get it, Kanbaru, that’s what you’re trying to do! You’re plotting to wreck my relationship with Senjogahara through this! You’re using your body, no less!”

“Oops…”

“Don’t stick your tongue out at me! You look so damn adorable, moron!”

So scheming.

Well, I knew it had to be a joke, of course.

…It was a joke, right?

“But speaking of birthdays,” she said, “it seemed a little suggestive to me when I heard that a crab had possessed her.”

“I don’t know if ‘possessed’ is the right word, but…pardon me? Suggestive? What’s suggestive about a crab? And what does it have to do with her birthday?”

“Well, she’s a Cancer, isn’t she?”

“Huh?” July seventh, right? “What are you talking about? July seventh would be Gemini.”

“Huh? No…um, I don’t think that’s correct.”

“Really? Am I the one who has it wrong? When I heard she was born on July seventh, I assumed that she was a Gemini…” I remembered it well because I’d thought then that Senjogahara having an identical twin with the same personality would suck to high heaven. “Well, it’s not like I know the exact dates of the zodiac or anything… No, but wait. I want to say Cancer starts on July twenty-third?”

“Oh.” Kanbaru seemed to have realized something. “…A quick pop quiz.”

“Why?”

“What sign is someone who’s born on December first?”

“Huh?” Come on, that didn’t even count as a quiz. “I know the answer to that one, at least. Ophiuchus, right?”

“Pfft!” Suruga Kanbaru burst out laughing. “Ha…haha, ahaha!”

It seemed to hit her so hard that her knees shook and she couldn’t stay standing, and she was even clinging to my arm. She went from pushing her chest against my elbow to trapping my upper arm in her cleavage, but her irritating laughter made it extremely hard for me to register my good fortune.

“Wh-What’s so funny… Did I make that bad of a mistake?”

“O-Ophiuchus… Pff, pffahaha! Ophiuchus… Ahaha, in this day and age, y-you’re using the thirteen-sign zodiac…”

“………”

Oh.

So that’s what it was.

Right, I understood now. July seventh was Cancer in the twelve-sign zodiac…

“Ah, that was a good laugh. Five years’ worth.”

Kanbaru finally raised her head. There were tears in her eyes. I understood why she might have found it so funny, but she’d laughed at me way too much.

“Okay, let’s go, li’l Ragiko.”

“You’re openly treating me worse! All of that respect you had for me as your senior, gone! This actually hurts pretty bad!”

“O-Oh. My mistake, dear senior Araragi.”

“Cover for me as thanks for making you laugh that much.”

“Cover? How, when you sounded so sure? To begin with, why are you even using the thirteen-sign zodiac?”

“I mean, what can I say? Didn’t we switch from a twelve- to a thirteen-sign zodiac a while ago?”

“We tried, but it didn’t spread and people gave up on it. How could my esteemed senior Araragi not know that?”

“Hmm…maybe that was right around the time I stopped caring about astrology…”

Okay…

So it never caught on…

“I guess aberrations are the same,” I mused. “You could have the most terrifying ghoul or ghost imaginable, but it never existed if it didn’t catch on.”

“No, I don’t think it’s anything so deep…”

“I wonder what Ophiuchus is, anyway.”

“It’s a summer constellation with the alpha star Ras Alhague. It’s well known for containing Bernard’s Star, which has the largest proper motion of any fixed star.”

“No, I’m not talking about the stars themselves… I’m wondering why it has that name. Does it have to do with snakes or something?”

“I want to say that it represents the master physician Asclepius from Greek mythology. He’s grasping a snake in the constellation, which is why it’s known as Ophiuchus, or the ‘serpent-bearer.’”

“Huh.” I nodded. I’d had no idea. “Kanbaru, I’m surprised you know all that, both about the stars themselves and the constellation. Do you actually know a lot about stars or something?”

“Does it seem unlike me?”

“To be honest.”

“Hm. Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say I know a lot about them, but I do like looking up at the night sky. It’s a simple one, but I also own a telescope. Twice a year, I go to a stargazing event they hold at an observatory in another prefecture.”

“Huh. So not just a planetarium. Experience over knowledge, huh?”

“I like planetariums too, but those places don’t have shooting stars, do they? Fixed stars and constellations are nice, but I prefer fleeting shooting stars.”

“I see. How romantic.”

“Yes. I hope that someday soon, Earth becomes a shooting star, too.”

“Is humanity going to be all right?!”

I couldn’t believe her.

Where was the romance in that?

That was a disaster movie.

“…And it looks like we’ve arrived after all of that talk,” I told her. “There should be stairs around here, according to Oshino─oh, there they are…Well, more like a game trail…”

A roadside mountain.

I didn’t know its name.

Oshino didn’t, either.

I should say the road had been paved to bypass the mountain, but branching off from the sidewalk, toward the peak, were steps─or at least their traces. Well, actually, you could still call them steps. I’d heard that our athletic teams came jogging all the way here, as Kanbaru mentioned too, but I doubted any of them took these stairs up the mountain. It was overgrown with foliage, and if I hadn’t known in advance, I probably wouldn’t have noticed or recognized them as such.

A game trail.

Mm, no─I saw signs of trampled grass when I looked closer. Footsteps. So the stairs weren’t totally unused, but then, whose tracks could they be? If I remembered correctly, Oshino hadn’t even approached the shrine, so they couldn’t be his. He also said the shrine was already out of use, so it couldn’t be anyone who worked there…

Was it overrun with weirdoes?

Unlikely.

“……”

I looked at the girl attached to my left arm.

Her guard was always so low, just like now, but she was such a cute girl… Would she be okay? If there were weirdoes who were textbook cases of weirdoes up there…I could protect her only so well alone. Some vampire blood still coursed through me, but that merely improved my metabolism and healing, anyway.

“Balkan, my junior.”

“What is it, Ragiko?”

“Your left arm─how’s it feeling?”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“Well, I was just wondering if anything was new or unusual about it.”

“Not in particular.”

Not in particular─she said.

True, she’d been holding that heavy-looking bundle in her left hand without switching the whole time, like it was nothing…

Maybe there was no need to worry…if having the power of that monkey left arm on top of her base stamina was the new normal for Kanbaru…

“Yup,” she assured, “it’s still strong enough that I can shove you down onto a bed with my left arm alone.”

“I’m not really seeing why it has to be onto a bed.”

“Then, strong enough that I could bridal-carry you with my left arm alone.”

“It’s not a bridal-carry if you do it with one arm, it’s more like a bandit making off with a village lass… But I guess I’m fine with that one.”

“Heheheh,” Kanbaru let out a vaguely obscene laugh in reply. She seemed to be enjoying herself. “You really are kind…worrying yourself over me, of all people. Ahh, I could feel safe entrusting my body and soul to you…”

“Why are you blushing and saying that like you’re deeply moved? What are you, a mind reader? Stop digging up every little thing that I’m thinking or I’ll have to get out my tinfoil hat.”

“I may not look it now, but I was once our basketball ace. I can figure out most of what people are thinking by looking into their eyes. And we’re talking about the thoughts of a senior I respect very much! As your faithful subordinate, I practically have you wrapped around my little finger.”

“Don’t have me wrapped around your little finger, then. What are you, a femme fatale? Hmph… All it takes is a look into my eyes? Yikes. I mean, that really does sound like telepathy… Okay, Kanbaru, what am I thinking right now?”

“Probably something like, ‘Would this woman take off her bra if I asked her to?’”

“Is that how you see me, Kanbaru?!”

“Want me to take it off?”

“Um, nkk… No, of course not!”

I’d hesitated for a moment despite myself.

Kanbaru only gave me a brisk nod along with an “Oh, then,” and continued to cling to my arm… Her complete non-reaction to my hesitation seemed to be intended as a show of tolerance, almost maternally broad in scope, for the ulterior motives of men, and it honestly got under my skin…

She was the one who’d gone in that direction.

Where did she get off acting like I was her younger husband?

“Let’s go,” I urged. “We haven’t even climbed up this mountain and I’m already tired…”

“Mm.”

“Do be careful where you step, though. Aside from bug bites, it sounds like there’s a ton of snakes around here.”

“Did you say ‘snake’?”

Pfft, laughed Kanbaru.

I must have reminded her of our earlier conversation about Ophiuchus.

I continued, unperturbed, “Well, apparently they aren’t poisonous. Snakes have long fangs, though, and you wouldn’t want to get a bite wound out here.”

“…Yours is on your neck, right?”

“Yeah. It’s from a demon, though, not a snake.”

We spoke as we climbed the mountain’s stairs. Our coordinates hadn’t changed much, but the humidity seemed to shoot up the moment we entered the mountain, and it was sweltering. The stairs led to this shrine according to Oshino, but I hadn’t asked how high up it was. I didn’t imagine it was actually on the summit, but…that would be okay. It wasn’t that tall of a mountain.

“My left arm,” Kanbaru said. “Mister Oshino told me it should heal by the time I’m twenty.”

“What? Really?”

“Yes. Well, only if I don’t do it again.”

“That’s good to hear. So it means you can play basketball again after you’re twenty.”

“Right. Of course, that hope will be crushed if I slack off, so I need to keep working out on my own.” After saying that, she asked me, “What about you?”

“Huh? Me?”

“Are you going to be─a vampire for the rest of your life?”

“…I.”

The rest of my life.

A vampire─for the rest of my life.

A mock human.

Something other than human.

“I’m fine with it. In any case─unlike your left arm, it’s not that much of an issue. The sun, crosses, garlic, and all that stuff doesn’t bother me at all. Ha ha─and I heal right away if I get hurt, so I got a good deal, you know?”

“I don’t want to hear you acting tough. What Mister Oshino told me─is that you resigned yourself to being a vampire to save that girl Shinobu.”

Shinobu.

That was what the vampire who’d attacked me was called now.

That blonde vampire.

She was now─living in the ruins of that cram school together with Oshino.

“……”

That bastard really was loose-lipped.

I hoped he hadn’t told Senjogahara. I assumed it was on account of the left arm that he provided Kanbaru with an example she could reference, so I probably didn’t need to worry…

“That’s not true,” I maintained. “They’re just residual effects. As far as Shinobu─well, she’s my responsibility. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it saving her. We have an understanding, and I’m sticking to it. It’s fine… I’m no basketball star so I can’t tell just by looking into your eyes, but you’re worried about me, aren’t you, Kanbaru?”

“…Well.”

“I’m fine. Your worries are misplaced─just like with the deed you kept bringing up.”

I cut the topic short with a little joke at the end. Kanbaru seemed to want to say more, but probably realizing it was better left unsaid, fell silent. If something needed to be said, she said it─but if she only wanted to say it, she could hold her tongue. She was too good of a woman to be wrapped around my left arm, honestly.

“Ah.”

“Oh.”

Just as our conversation ended, someone came down the stairs. Perfect timing. The person was jogging down the treacherous steps a bit precariously.

A girl, probably in middle school.

She was fully protected in her long sleeves and long pants.

There was a bag around her waist.

A hat, pulled far down on her head.

I was very unsure if she could see in front of her, and even if she could, she was running down the stairs looking only at her feet, so a couple of false moves and she might have collided with us head-on. It was a good thing that Kanbaru and I had just hit a pause in our conversation; we noticed her quicker than we normally would have and shifted to one side of the stairs to dodge her.

The moment she passed by.

She looked at the two of us─and seeming to notice us for the first time, made a startled expression, and just as soon, began descending the stairs at an even faster pace. Her figure was out of sight before we knew it. She’d sped up so much that I expected her to trip and fall at least twice before she reached the street.

“………?”

Hmm?

There was something about the girl…

It was like I’d seen her somewhere before, or maybe not.

“What’s the matter?” asked Kanbaru.

“Oh, nothing…”

“Well, I didn’t expect to run into someone on this mountain trail. I didn’t want to say it in front of you, but I was convinced we were on a road to death. She was pretty cute, too. You said the shrine isn’t being used anymore, but maybe some people still visit it, after all?”

“A girl like that, though?”

“Faith knows no age.”

“Sure, but still.”

“Just as love knows no age.”

“You didn’t need to add that, did you?”

Even as I spoke, I tried to remember where I’d seen the girl before, but I couldn’t in the end. Then again, I thought, maybe I didn’t know her in the first place. I came to the conclusion that it might have been a simple case of déjà vu.

“Well, let’s keep climbing,” I told Kanbaru. “If someone came from up there, that means there has to be something above us. I was wondering the whole time if Oshino might be playing a prank on me, but this rules it out.”

“Yep. As it almost does the possibility that you’re tricking me.”

“It not only actually existed but hasn’t been ruled out yet?”

“I’ll forgive you with a smile on my face.”

“Not a word more about how sexually frustrated you are, okay?”

“You can call it a mistake, I won’t mind. I don’t intend on pestering you afterwards.”

“You’re already pestering me.”

“Oh. In that case, how about this? You just go ahead and relieve my frustration, and I’ll probably stop harassing you. It’s the easiest and fastest way to calm a bitch in heat.”

“Well, that’s a first, a woman referring to herself that way…”

“It’s only embarrassing in the beginning. Let’s hurry and get this out of the way so there’s less trouble down the line.”

“I’m going on ahead.”

“Abandonment play, I see.”

“And you can go home!”

“So cold to my advances… Do you not like women who take the lead? I guess I need to act like I don’t really want this, then.”

“Whatever, I don’t care.”

“Just imagine. We’re holding hands against my will now… You left me with no choice, threatened me with violence, and ordered me to. And I hesitantly ask you, ‘L-Like this?’”

“Uh…if you thought that’d get me excited, actually─it doesn’t, dammit!”

Nope.

Absolutely not.

“Hmph. A prude. More indifferent than cold. Being treated like air is making me lose confidence in my feminine charms. Do you not care about me at all?”

“No, that isn’t true. But I have a girlfriend, and her name is Senjogahara. If I didn’t behave indifferently, that would be a problem, no?”

“But you two seem to have a platonic relationship. I’m sure you need some space where you can unleash your pent-up sexual desires.”

“No, I don’t! And don’t volunteer to be part of that space!”

“She can take care of your emotional needs while I support your physical ones. Behold, a golden triangle.”

“No, you behold, that’s a muck of a love triangle! Why would I ever want to get dragged into that kind of Three’s Misery situation?!”

“While he said so, Araragi seemed unable to take his eyes off my breasts. At the end of the day, he could not resist his male instincts.”

“Why are you voicing a monologue?!”

“This one is a side story, so I get to be the narrator.”

“What are you even talking about?!”

And anyway.

Side story or no, she could never become the narrator.

We’d need to shrink-wrap it before it went on the shelves.

“Hmph. This isn’t going as well as I thought,” Kanbaru lamented. “With a body like mine, I expected the likes of you to become my plaything in no time.”

“Is that what you really thought about me?!”

A platonic relationship…

That was one way to describe a cool girlfriend who wouldn’t even go on a date. Either way, it looked like others could tell. I always made fun of manga where couples who’re supposed to be going out drift apart and make up over and over again and cajoled them in my mind to just get on with it, but now that I had a girlfriend, I knew that’s really how it is.

Uh-uh.

You didn’t just get on with it so smoothly.

“If you’re going to call me a prude, then what about her?” I said. “She’s totally chaste.”

“And why not? It makes sense when you consider her past, and it only makes her that much more moé as long as you think of her as a bashful, innocent girlfriend.”

“Bashful… I don’t know, I feel like once you start identifying a trait as moé, it starts to feel less moé and more like a selling point.”

“Well, if she is selling, I don’t see how it’s wrong to take her up on the offer.”

“You’re right about that.”

We climbed the stairs.

The grass trampled underfoot that I noticed down below must have been that girl’s, I thought, and arrived at the shrine about five minutes later… Like the stairs, it was in such a state of disrepair that I wouldn’t have recognized it as such if I hadn’t been told beforehand. My concerns about weirdoes hanging around were proved utterly meaningless. Countryside or not, weirdo or not, no person would choose to be there for a single second. I could just barely tell it was once a shrine from the torii gate, but it wasn’t clear which of the structures was the main hall. I’d have to figure it out based on the layout.

Could the girl from earlier have been here too?

For what, though?

There clearly weren’t any gods in this shrine.

Even a god would have fled.

To put it like Oshino might, the gods are everywhere─but even so, it didn’t feel like they’d be here. Whatever… I’d get my job out of the way. All I had to do was place the talisman, which ranked it among one of the easier jobs that Oshino had tasked me with so far. I took the talisman I’d received from him out from my pocket.

But then.

“Ungh.”

Kanbaru─hopped off of my arm.

That pleasant sensation that had been with me for so long disappeared from my elbow.

“What’s wrong, Kanbaru?”

“…I guess I’m feeling tired?”

“Tired?”

From what?

Climbing those stairs?

Yes, it was a decent number of steps, but it didn’t seem like enough to wind a jock like Kanbaru. Even I was only breathing a little heavier than usual.

But Kanbaru really did seem tired, and her face looked pale, somehow. It was the first time I’d ever seen her in such a state.

“Hunh… Wanna take a break somewhere around there?” I offered. “Um…I guess the only place you could sit would be…on top of a rock… But I feel like sitting down on the wrong rock in a shrine could get you cursed…”

Putting aside whether there were any gods around at the shrine to curse us─something still felt wrong about it. I knew from experience that when my guts warned me like that, it was best to stop.

What to do in that case, though?

As I worried over the question, Kanbaru proposed, “How about we just have lunch?”

“Lunch?”

“Yes. It might be an impolite request and a breach of etiquette for a junior to suggest that we eat, but when I don’t feel well, it usually goes away if I fill my tummy up with food.”

“………”

She was like a manga character.

What a funny junior, even when she didn’t feel well.

“He did say not to eat until we placed the talisman, though… Something about keeping our bodies pure. Okay, then why don’t you go and find a place where you can spread out all those lunch boxes? I’m not the biggest fan of lunching at a deserted shrine, but I guess it has a charm of its own. I’ll run over and slap on this talisman while you do.”

“Mm. Yes, let’s do that. Sorry, but I’m going to leave the job in your hands.”

“Later.”

Turning my back on Kanbaru, I pushed through the grass toward the structures. Oshino had said to place the talisman on the main hall, but I wasn’t sure where exactly it needed to go… Inside, or could I just put it on the door? I would say that Oshino’s lack of directions was at fault for my ignorance, but then, his directions were always lacking. Maybe he was trying to tell me to think for myself.

Anyway, I decided to take a look at the edifices, and as I did, I thought again about the girl we’d passed earlier. I didn’t know why, but she bothered me… No, it wasn’t that.

It was like I’d seen her.

Like I’d met her.

But more immediately─I felt something about her.

Not that I knew what that something was.

“I do feel like I’ve met her before, though… Where was it? It’s not like I get to know middle schoolers often…”

My little sisters were one thing, but…

My little sisters?

“Hm…I wonder.”

I ended up placing the talisman on the door of a building that I took to be the main one. Actually, I felt like it might collapse in on itself if I opened the door, so you could say I had no other choice.

I gently walked away and returned to the gate. Kanbaru hadn’t returned yet. I thought about pulling out my phone…but realized that she’d never told me her number. And now that I thought about it, I hadn’t given her mine, either.

That cell phone of hers was useless after all.

“Heyyy, Kanbaru─!”

And so I ended up yelling out loud.

But there was no reply.

“Kanbaru!”

I tried yelling in an even louder voice─but the result was the same.

I suddenly felt anxious.

She couldn’t not have heard my voice if she were around. While Senjogahara might, Kanbaru of all people would never leave me and head back home without a word. Losing sight of someone in a place like this could only mean─

“Kanbaru!”

I started to run, confused.

She said she wasn’t feeling well. Maybe she collapsed while looking for a place to eat… Was that what it was? Worst-case scenarios crossed my mind. How would I deal with the situation then─what would be the right course of action? If something happened to her, I’d never be able to look Senjogahara in the eyes again.

But fortunately, no worst-case scenario came to pass in any form. Running around the shrine grounds, I was finally able to find her, facing away from me.

The lunchboxes were on the ground by her side.

She looked befuddled─and stood completely still.

“Kanbaru!” I said to her, placing my hand on her shoulder.

“Hyeek!” A jolt shook her, and she turned around. “O-Oh… It’s just you.”

“What a warm greeting.”

“Ah…I’m sorry. What an unthinkable thing to say to someone I’m greatly indebted to. I was just so surprised… You suddenly grabbed my flesh, after all.”

“‘Flesh’? Come on.”

Her shoulder.

“Allow me to make up for my faux pas with my body,” she said. “I might pretend to resist a little, but it’s all a performance to make the scene more exciting, okay?”

“Good, you seem to be in a normal state of mind if you’re able to prattle on like that. I’m relieved. Yeah, I’m fully aware that you’re saying that to be ridiculous. So enough of that. You really do shriek in a cute way, you know.”

Her face─was still pale.

In fact, she looked even worse.

It didn’t seem like the right time to be poking fun at her unexpected shriek.

“What’s up, are you okay? If you’re feeling that bad─yeah, if I cleaned it up a bit, you could probably lie down on the porch of the main shrine back there. Let’s do that, I can carry you there on my back. If you’re worried about how sanitary it might be, I could lay down my jacket─”

“No…that’s not it.” Kanbaru pointed─directly ahead. “Look at that...”

“Huh?”

I did as she said and looked in the direction she pointed.

At the forest a bit past the shrine grounds.

She pointed at a single thick tree.

At the base of that tree─was a snake chopped into pieces.

A snake, slain, cut into five─its long, winding, squirming body, chopped.

Into five.

Slain.

But its head looked alive.

Its tongue flicking and its mouth open wide.

It was moaning in agony.

Or so─it looked.

“………!”

I was struck silent by the sight─

And I suddenly remembered the kid’s name.

The girl we’d passed.

Right.

The girl’s name was─Nadeko Sengoku.