Monogatari Series - Volume 2 - Chapter 4.3

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“This one─and then this one, I guess. Oh, that book might not be very useful. My apologies to whoever wrote it, but all it really does is tell you to memorize things. This book should be better if you’re aiming for efficiency,” Tsubasa Hanekawa said─pulling one book after another off the shelves and handing them to me.

One, two, three, four, and five.

The location─a big-box bookseller not far from Naoetsu High.

Monday, June twelfth.

After school.

Hanekawa, class president, and I, class vice president, headed to a bookstore together on the way home from meeting and preparing for the culture festival, which loomed later in the week on Friday and Saturday. Well, it was more like I’d asked Hanekawa and she agreed to come with me.

Braids, glasses.

A class president among class presidents.

Tsubasa Hanekawa, the ultimate model student.

“Sorry, Hanekawa…but I’m about to go over my budget.”

“Huh? What’s your budget?”

“Ten thousand yen. I have a little more back at home, but that’s all I have in my wallet.”

“Oh. Yeah, study-aids are fairly expensive. You can’t complain when you consider what’s in them, of course. Okay, then I’ll take cost-effectiveness into consideration on top of the positives and negatives. So let’s return this book for…this one instead.”

Tsubasa Hanekawa─

Another person who had become involved with an aberration. But perhaps she needed to be placed in a different category from me, Kanbaru, and even Senjogahara─the reason being that she had no recollection of her involvement. She’d forgotten every last bit of that nightmare of a Golden Week that rivaled even my personal hell of a spring break.

But I remembered.

For me, a demon.

For Kanbaru, a monkey.

For Senjogahara, a crab.

And for Hanekawa─a cat.

“But,” Hanekawa said abruptly, “it makes me kind of happy.”

“…What does?”

“Being asked by you to help pick out study-aids. It’s like maybe all my efforts didn’t go to waste if you’re going to take school seriously.”

“………”

No.

Her efforts didn’t have much to do with it.

She did force me to become class vice president in a rehabilitation attempt, having mistaken me for a delinquent…

She could be off, or more like a runaway train.

“Er, I’m not sure if I’m taking school seriously,” I disabused her. “It’s just that I should start thinking about what to do after graduation.”

“After graduation?”

“Maybe I should say college? Senjogahara and I were talking about it the other day. And I heard what school she was trying to get into…”

“Ah. Senjogahara wanted to get into the local national university, right? She’ll be admitted on a recommendation.”

“…You know everything, don’t you.”

“Not everything. I just know what I know.”

It was the same back-and-forth as always.

Actually, Hanekawa had taken an interest in Senjogahara before I ever did, so maybe, as the class president, it was natural for her to know that much. Come to think of it, Senjogahara didn’t seem to hate Hanekawa too badly for her excessive fussing. Inviting Hanekawa to the birthday party I was currently planning for Senjogahara probably wouldn’t earn her full wrath.

But, having a girlfriend who might get angry that I planned a birthday party for her…

“So, Araragi. Are you actually trying to get into the same university as her?”

“Don’t tell her yet, okay? I don’t want to get her hopes up in some weird way.” I hid my embarrassment─or not exactly, but still flipped through a random study-aid within my reach. “Actually, I feel like she’d say something standoffish to me.”

“Brutal… Aren’t you two boyfriend and girlfriend?”

“Well yes, but. It’s like she believes that good fences make good strangers…”

“Huh? Oh, I get it. A gag based on ‘good fences make good neighbors’? Ahaha, you’re funny, Araragi.”

“Don’t go around explaining people’s jokes!”

And don’t call it a gag.

And don’t call me funny.

“Ahaha, Araragi! You must have been thinking that one up from the moment you said, ‘I feel like she’d say something standoffish to me’! It would’ve been easy to tell that I’d reply, ‘Aren’t you two boyfriend and girlfriend?’ Oh, you can be so elaborate!”

“Please, stop stripping down how I talk!”

I felt buck naked.

I put us back on track.

“It’s not like I have a specific goal, but I did better on the skills test the other day than I expected. I was just trying to avoid a failing grade… It of course pales in comparison to you or Senjogahara, but I did all right thanks to studying seriously for the first time in a while.”

“I forget, did you study one-on-one with her?”

“Yeah.”

In case you were wondering, Senjogahara effortlessly got the seventh highest overall score while watching over this washout as he studied. It was impressive, or maybe brilliant. She was at the level where my only possible reaction was admiration.

One more fact, in case you were wondering. Tsubasa Hanekawa got the top overall score.

It went without saying.

She took first place in every subject.

Close to a perfect score, apparently.

Putting that aside, while my scores weren’t worthy of being posted and ranked in any subject aside from math, they had still dramatically improved compared to all the skills tests I had taken up to that point.

They’d improved to the point that I was starting to have a little dream.

It was now June.

So if I hunkered down and studied for the next half-year─

It was enough to make me think along those lines.

“With Senjogahara tutoring me, I felt like I understood how to study for the first time in a while… It reminded me of how it used to feel in middle school. I’d given up on that kind of thing at some point during my first year here.”

“Huh… I think that’s a good thing. I do think that wanting to go to the same university as your girlfriend is a bit impure as far as motives go, but the doors to scholarship are always open. Yes, in that case, I think I’ll do everything I can to help you, too.”

“………”

Being educated by Senjogahara was scary, but education-by-Hanekawa was a pretty frightening thought, too…

Not that I told her that.

In fact, no matter how I looked at it, I needed Tsubasa Hanekawa’s help if I wanted to get into college.

“So,” I asked her, “if I can get a good idea of where I stand, I might start going to a test-prep school starting summer break. Do you know of any good ones?”

“Hmm. I can’t say that I do. I’ve never gone to a cram school or anything.”

“I see…”

Damned genius.

“But I’ll ask my friends.”

“You really know how to look out for people, you know that? I appreciate it. Of course, while I may not be able to get in this year, if I plan my studies with the understanding that I’ll take a year off after high school, I think I can do it.”

“Why are you setting your sights so low before you’ve even started? If you’re going to do this, try getting in on your first attempt… And when are you thinking of telling Senjogahara?”

“Again, once I have a good idea of where I stand…I guess? I know I’ll need her help, too. It sounds like the national university Senjogahara is trying to get into offers various exam types, so I could choose a set that focuses as much as possible on math…”

“Makes sense.” Hanekawa handed another study-aid to me. “Okay. That’s ten thousand yen on the dot.”

“…What? No way. You found a combination that costs exactly that much? You can really pull off a trick like that?”

“It’s just addition, you know.”

“………”

It was just addition, sure… But these were mostly four-digit numbers, in her head, while having a conversation… I’d thought math was my strong suit… It seemed I couldn’t hope to compare to Hanekawa even when it came to arithmetic.

The thought sapped my motivation a little, or put a dent in me…

I was feeling discouraged from the very start.

In other words, I’d have to spend half a year busting my ass and in the throes of an immeasurable inferiority complex toward Hitagi Senjogahara and Tsubasa Hanekawa…

Well.

I just had to bust my ass.

“Incidentally, Araragi.”

“Why so formal all of a sudden?”

“Tell me more about what you said earlier. You found the corpse of a snake cut into five at the overgrown ruins of a shrine─what happened then?”

“Huh? Oh, that.”

I’d told her about it after school while we were getting ready for the culture festival. I’d only meant to update her on Oshino, but it had happened only yesterday. I couldn’t stop myself from talking about it given how fresh it was in my mind. I didn’t go into any detail because hearing about the cruel deaths of small animals could only be unpleasant, but it seemed to have grabbed Hanekawa’s attention.

“Nothing, really. Kanbaru and I did at least dig a hole for the snake and bury it…but when we wandered around the area after that, there were dead snakes all over the place.”

“Dead─all over the place?”

“Yeah. Chopped-up snakes all over the place.”

Several of them.

And then I stopped counting.

I gave up─on burying them, too.

Kanbaru had looked legitimately sick.

“So we ended up going straight down the mountain… And then we ate the lunch that Kanbaru made at a nearby park. I was surprised at just how good it was, but when I asked, she told me that her grandma helped her make them. Actually, the other way around. It was more like she helped her grandma make them. When I asked her what exactly she did, it was ‘I got the knives ready’ and ‘I boiled some water’ and ‘I watched to make sure the pot didn’t boil over, but it did.’ Wanting to be a good cook when she’s already so athletic is a bit greedy, huh?”

“That might be true. But it’s too bad about Kanbaru. She’d be right in the middle of a tournament right now if not for her arm injury.”

“……”

Oh, right.

I was keeping that part a secret.

I’d nearly slipped up and run my mouth.

The only people at Naoetsu High who knew the truth behind Suruga Kanbaru’s retirement were me and Senjogahara. No one would be added to that list, and that seemed perfectly fine.

The funny thing was that once we ate lunch, Kanbaru really did feel better again. In typical born-athlete form, her body seemed to be unusually efficient at absorbing energy.

“Well, Araragi… That must have been a handful.”

“Yeah. Killing snakes that way seemed like a ritual or something and made me think. Kind of gave me the chills, it’s a very uncool thing to do. Plus the place is an abandoned shrine, you know? Oh, by the way, did you know there was a shrine there?”

“Yup.” Hanekawa nodded briskly, as if to say, of course she did. “Kita-Shirahebi Shrine, right?”

“Kita-Shirahebi?” North Whitesnake Shrine─

“Yes, I guess they must have worshiped a snake god there. I’m not that familiar with it, though. I just happen to know as a local.”

“I feel like it’s precisely the kind of place you don’t know as a local… Plus, you already seem plenty familiar with it, but huh… Killing snakes in a spot where they were once worshiped… It really does seem like a kind of ritual to me. Maybe I should…report it to Oshino?”

An aberration.

I hoped I was making too much of it.

But─there was the bit about Sengoku, too.

Nadeko Sengoku.

“………”

…I didn’t want the conversation going in this direction.

Hanekawa had forgotten her involvement with an aberration. She remembers being helped by Oshino, at least, but the part where she was charmed by a cat and everything else that followed─she has no memory of it. That isn’t the only reason, but I don’t want Hanekawa to have much to do with aberrations. She doesn’t need to know about what happened with Senjogahara, or Kanbaru, or Hachikuji─not now, not later.

That’s how I see it.

Because she’s a cool person.

My concerns turned out to be extraneous here, though.

“But you know, Araragi, that’s not what I wanted to talk about. I meant that dealing with Kanbaru must have been a handful.”

“……”

If anything.

It seemed like I needed to be worrying about myself.

“Dealing. With. Kanbaru,” she punctuated her words. “Must have been a handful, I’m asking.”

She was grinning.

Her smiling face was actually scarier than anything…

“O-Oh… Yeah, she did suddenly start feeling unwell. I wondered what it could be, but…it was nothing, fortunately.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Hanekawa said in a serious tone. Well, she said just about everything in a serious tone, but especially this time. “Don’t you think it’s a problem being a little too friendly with your girlfriend’s junior? I think it’s fine for you to be somewhat friendly with her since you were the one who helped them make up, but you shouldn’t be linking arms, should you?”

“What was I supposed to do? She’s a friendly girl.”

“Do you think that passes as an excuse?”

“Well…”

It didn’t, did it.

No matter how you looked at it.

“Part of me can understand,” she said. “I suppose this must be the first time you have a junior who looks up to you. You didn’t have any extracurriculars in middle school either and went straight home then, too, right? It’s nice to have a cute little junior. Or could it have simply been that you enjoyed how Kanbaru’s breast felt? You perv.”

“Ngkk…”

I found it vaguely difficult to argue.

She was wrong, but even if I told her that, there was no way to keep it from sounding like a lie.

Hanekawa continued, “I’m sure Kanbaru is feeling insecure to some degree because of her retirement, but isn’t that where you should jump in and set the record straight?”

“Uhhm…”

“Wouldn’t it be a shame if the Valhalla Duo split up over you when you helped bring them back together?”

“Yeah, that’s true.”

Weak-willed.

Feeble me.

“But in that sense,” observed Hanekawa, “I guess Kanbaru doesn’t have much experience with men, either. This is an odd way to put it, but maybe being treated like a star for so long deprived her of those kinds of opportunities.”

“Probably.”

Plus, she was a sapphist.

Plus, she was in love with Senjogahara.

Those were secrets, too.

“And you don’t seem too good at communicating about this stuff, either,” the class president went on. “While that’s sometimes a valid excuse, it isn’t always.”

“I dunno. Senjogahara keeps telling me to take good care of Kanbaru. ‘I won’t overlook any rudeness toward my junior,’ and that kind of thing. It makes me wonder who really has the power here. Like, if this is a love triangle, it’s one hell of an isosceles. It even sounds like Kanbaru was told by Senjogahara to have me pamper her.”

Right.

What didn’t make sense here was Senjogahara’s psychology.

What on earth was she thinking?

“Well, okay. Couldn’t it be like this?” Hanekawa gently reached for my head with both of her hands. They sandwiched it and stayed there. My own hands were full carrying a pile of study-aids so I couldn’t swat hers away.

“Huh? Wait, what?”

“Okay, go ahead.”

Hanekawa used her hands to adjust the angle of my head and pointed it directly toward her own upturned face. Our eyes met. Or so I thought, but Hanekawa’s were shut. Behind her glasses were two closed eyes, and her eyelashes seemed to be trembling. Her lips, sealed too, naturally appeared to convey a message─

“Huh? Huh? Huh?”

Wh-What was going on here?

Or rather, where was this going?

Hanekawa was the class president and someone I was indebted to, just as much as, no, even more than I was to Oshino─

B-But did I need to do something here?

She did tell me to go ahead…

Those glasses would get in the way a little, but…wait.

Wasn’t the right move here to not do anything?!

“…Like that, I guess?”

Her eyes blinked open.

Hanekawa let go.

A mischievous grin spread across her face.

“Araragi, were you about a second away?”

“N-No… What’re you saying?”

I admit, my voice was obviously cracking.

What was I saying?

“See. Weak-willed, feeble you.”

“………”

Coming from someone else, those words really struck me.

Not only that, I couldn’t deny it.

I wouldn’t say a second away, but it was the undeniable truth that I’d wavered.

“You’re kind to everyone, right, Araragi? I think that when Senjogahara sees that side of you, it makes her pretty insecure. You’re the only one for her─but to take it to an extreme, it’s like you’d be fine with anyone.”

“…Insecure?”

Was she that sentimental of a person?

Then again, it was to help get rid of that part of her that I’d acted as a mediator between her and Kanbaru. So was Senjogahara, in turn, trying to help get rid of that part of me? No, it didn’t make sense. I didn’t see how that could possibly follow.

“You’re quick to go with the flow, and you don’t want to hurt people. Being kind is usually a good thing, of course, but it doesn’t always serve the people around you. Senjogahara might not want you to become too friendly with Kanbaru, you know? But she could never tell you not to befriend her and might even end up saying the opposite─am I wrong? Like she’s fine if you’re friends, she wants you to be friends, in fact, but wants you to draw a clear line… Maybe Senjogahara wants you to choose her after you’ve compared her to Kanbaru.”

“What the hell? You’re not making any sense.”

“Don’t you think Senjogahara is in a dilemma of her own? You’re very important to her as her boyfriend, and Kanbaru is very important to her as her junior.”

“Uhh.”

In addition, Kanbaru was a sapphist.

And Senjogahara already knew that.

Our relationships were pretty complicated when you took that into account.

“And Senjogahara is a tsundere,” Hanekawa said as if to wrap up our conversation. “I don’t think you should ever try to understand her actions in a simplistic way. You need to always be looking for the reasons behind them. If Senjogahara is important to you, I don’t think you should let your heart waver over a tiny little temptation. It really is a little irresponsible to be kind to everyone.”

“Yeah… Don’t worry, that part has hit home.”

Her live-fire exercise had worked.

I felt like I now knew for sure how flimsy I was.

…Though I did wonder about concluding our conversation with “And she’s a tsundere”… Wait, so Hanekawa knew what that word meant…

She really did know everything.

Maybe she was even starting to see through Senjogahara’s feline subterfuge.

Cats were Hanekawa’s specialty, after all.

“Speaking of which,” I asked her, “where were you planning on going to university? Tokyo, I guess? Or do students who get nationwide top scores on practice tests like you end up going overseas?”

“Huh? I’m not going to college, okay?”

“………Wha?”

Where did that bombshell come from.

She’d honestly caught me by surprise.

“You’re not…going to college?”

“Nope.”

“Is it a money problem? But this is you we’re talking about, I’m sure you can get a scholarship…”

Schools would be scrambling to grab her as their first draft pick.

I could even see her getting paid to go to school.

“It’s not like that. There isn’t really anything I’d want to study in college, anyway… Yeah, I guess I could tell you, Araragi. I’m going to go on a little journey after I graduate.”

“A-A journey?”

“I want to spend two years or so seeing the world. There are a lot of World Heritage sights you need to visit now, or they might disappear. There are times when I find myself relying on nothing but knowledge, so I think I should go out and experience more things. And if I do want to go to college, I can afterwards, and it won’t be too late.”

“……”

It was the kind of idea that floats into your head when you’re daydreaming.

But that wasn’t what it seemed to be…

Hanekawa didn’t have the grades of a student who needed an escape from the harsh realities of the struggle to get into a good school. You could tell her that entrance exams were tomorrow and it wouldn’t matter, she had the chops to handle it unassumingly. You could spring the exams on her at that very moment and she’d probably waltz her way into any school you cared to name. That’s who I was dealing with, which meant these travel plans of hers must have been fairly worked out, to the point that they weren’t going to change…

“Keep it a secret for now from our teachers and others, okay? I think they might be surprised if they heard.”

“Yeah…I’ll bet.”

“My plan is to watch and wait for the right time to bring it up.”

“I see… Well, I have a feeling that no matter when you bring it up, there’s going to be a little more than a surprised commotion…”

It would be total pandemonium, I was sure.

If the top student at a prep school made that kind of decision, leaving behind a precedent, it could even affect the institution’s legacy. This was Hanekawa, someone they held greater than great expectations of. She had to know all of this full well…

“Please don’t tell,” she requested. “In exchange, this time around, I’ll keep everything about Kanbaru a secret from Senjogahara.”

“Hey, I don’t feel like I’ve done anything particularly questionable…”

“And neither have I. But, you know?”

“Yeah. I get it.”

Hmph.

Could Oshino─have influenced her?

Hanekawa treated that rolling stone with the utmost respect. You couldn’t discount his influence, at the very least. If that were the case, it felt like Oshino had a lot of blood on his hands… What a meddlesome bastard.

So…that’s how it was. I was convinced that Hanekawa would continue to be some kind of class president even after she graduated from high school, that the gods had decided her destiny was to be a class president, but she wouldn’t be a class president or anything if she went off on a journey by herself.

I kind of felt like sighing.

Things never went smoothly.

I, a washout, was deciding this late in the game to try to go to college.

Tsubasa Hanekawa, a model student, aspired to become an outsider.

Suruga Kanbaru had retired from the basketball team early.

Mayoi Hachikuji couldn’t go back to the way things were, either.

The only one who could go back was─

Hitagi Senjogahara.

“…Ow!”

Then.

Hanekawa suddenly placed her right hand against her head.

As if to support it.

“Hm? What’s the matter?” I asked.

“No, it’s just─I’ve got a headache.”

“A headache?”

I recalled how Kanbaru had suddenly started to feel unwell the day before at the shrine, and I instantly began to fret. But Hanekawa soon raised her head.

“Oh, I’m fine, I’m fine. They come now and then, I started getting them a little while back. My head starts to hurt out of nowhere.”

“Whoa, hold on… That doesn’t sound fine at all.”

“Hmm. But it gets better right away. I don’t know what causes it, though… Maybe it’s because I’ve been so busy preparing for the culture festival lately that I’ve slacked on my studies.”

“You get headaches when you skip out on studying?”

How exactly did her body work?

Was she wearing some ring on her head like Monkey in Journey to the West?

She deserved to be in the diligence hall of fame.

Down to her marrow.

“Do you want me to walk you home?” I offered.

“No, it’s fine. My home─”

“Oh…right.”

A blunder.

I shouldn’t have said that.

“Sorry, I’m going to head back,” she announced. “You stay here a little longer and pick out study-aids. The ones I gave you are my suggestions, but personal preference ends up playing a big role in that kind of thing.”

“Okay. See you…”

“Yup.”

With that, Hanekawa left the bookstore like she was fleeing.

Maybe I should have walked her back until she was in the general area of her home anyway─but she was pretty headstrong, or rather, she didn’t like the idea of showing weakness to others. Since she said she was fine, I shouldn’t be a busybody.

But.

A headache…

It made me wonder a little.

For Hanekawa, a headache meant…

“………”

Hanekawa knew nothing about Senjogahara’s crab, Hachikuji’s snail, or Kanbaru’s monkey, nor anything about her own cat, at this point─

But she did know about my demon.

Not that it meant anything.

But nothing could change the fact that I owed a debt of gratitude to Hanekawa. It wasn’t simply over my aberration─I couldn’t begin to tell you just how often her words had saved me.

Like today.

That was why I always wanted to help her out in some way…

Sigh.

I’d have loved to be a busybody.

“…Might as well check out some of the other sections.”

Though I heeded Hanekawa’s advice and continued to flip through study-aids, I just wasn’t used to it, and they all looked the same to me. I decided to go ahead and buy the ones she’d picked out (It ended up being six books in total. I did take the time to add up the prices, which did come out to ten thousand yen on the dot. Wow) and left the study-aids section. I was at my budget exactly so I couldn’t buy anything else, but the great thing about books is that it doesn’t cost a thing to peruse them. I’d look stupid checking out the latest manga with my hands full of study-aids, but on the other hand, I felt smarter just carrying them around, so maybe spending some time there wasn’t such a bad idea… Actually, I was already thinking stupid...

“…Hm?”

While I didn’t have a destination yet, I decided to start moving─and that’s when I froze. Having seen something impossible, I couldn’t help it. I nearly dropped all the study-aids I was carrying.

No.

It wasn’t exactly impossible.

The chances of two people living in the same town encountering each other at the largest bookstore in town couldn’t be particularly low─at least, it was far more likely than passing by each other on a path that you could easily miss, on stairs that led to a deserted shrine.

And even the probability of that wasn’t zero.

So─if they occurred on consecutive days.

It wasn’t a mystery.

“…Sengoku.”

There in front of the sorcery and occult shelves, located just next to the study-aid section, and reading a thick book, was Nadeko Sengoku─my little sister’s old friend, Nadeko Sengoku.

She was wholly focused on reading the book─so she hadn’t noticed me. It’s not as if I could pass directly in front of her, so I could only see her in profile, but…I could tell it was her. Sengoku, who’d come to my home to play when she was in grade school…or who’d been brought to my home to play. It was an unusual name, Nadeko Sengoku, so I’d remembered it in full. Especially the name “Nadeko.” Anyone else whose name was written with those characters would be named “Nadeshiko,” and even as a grade school kid, I’d wondered where that one syllable had gone…

She was the same age as my youngest sister.

That meant─she was now in the second year of middle school.

I couldn’t tell because she wasn’t wearing her uniform, but she probably went to the public middle school that I’d graduated from. Few kids all the way out where I lived chose to go to private school like my little sisters did.

“………”

I remembered Sengoku.

But did she remember me?

She looked surprised when we passed each other the day before─but that could just have been the sight of people other than her climbing up that mountain. Your friend’s older brother isn’t normally the kind of person you remember…which would make saying something to her odd.

But.

Snakes.

Yes, snakes─

As I was thinking, Sengoku returned the book she was reading to its shelf and began to walk. I promptly hid myself so as not to be spotted. There wasn’t any particular reason for me to hide and I’d only done so reflexively, but I missed any chance I might have had to call out to her. I took a detour, using the bookshelves as walls, made sure she was gone, and stepped over to where she’d been standing until moments earlier.

I wanted to know what book she’d been reading.

I looked at its title.

“Hold on… This is─”

The book─was a hardcover priced at twelve thousand yen.

Not a book a middle schooler could buy. Even a high school kid like me couldn’t purchase it with the cash I had on hand. I wouldn’t be able to buy any of the study-aids.

That must have been why she contented herself with reading it in the aisles.

But─more than that.

The issue was the book’s title.

I left the section in the back of the store to look around for Sengoku, but she was already nowhere to be found. Maybe she was hiding somewhere in another section, but it seemed more likely that she had exited the store. And those clothes she was wearing…

Long sleeves, long pants.

A hat pulled far down on her head, and a bag around her waist.

If my intuition was right…then yes.

“Damn… Give me a break.”

I decided to go to the cash register and pay for the time being. There was a long line of shoppers waiting, but I toughed it out. Nothing good could come from getting flustered and rushing. I needed to start by calming myself down. Still unsure what to do, I placed a ten-thousand-yen bill on the cashier’s tray. The clerk seemed surprised that my total came out to ten thousand yen on the dot, but what did I care. The honor didn’t belong to me.

Hmm.

She was an old acquaintance…but me alone might not do.

There’s only so much you can do on your own.

I had to seek someone’s assistance…and the circumstances led me to just one person. Someone who might be particularly suited to this case… Hanekawa had just warned me, but I couldn’t help it.

With a bag filled with study-aids in my left hand, I took out my cell phone as soon as I left the store and called the number I’d learned after we were done the day before. I was reminded again of how nervous I felt about calling a new number for the first time, just like two days ago when I’d called her house.

The phone rang about five times.

“This is Suruga Kanbaru.”

No sooner than it connected, she answered with her full name. The oddly uncommon act surprised me a little.

“Suruga Kanbaru. My special move is double jumping.”

“Liar. No human can do that.”

“Hm? Judging by that voice and the quipping, I’d say it’s my dear senior Araragi.”

“You’re right, but…”

That voice and the quipping? That’s how she figured it out?

I’d given her my number the day before, too. Hadn’t she put it into her contacts list? Now, that was sad… Well, never mind, she just hadn’t mastered using a cell phone. She didn’t seem too good with tech.

“If you have some time, Kanbaru, there was something I wanted you to help me with… What are you doing right now?”

“Heheh,” Kanbaru laughed daringly for some reason. “Whether I have time or not, I’ll go anywhere you ask me to, no matter how far. I don’t even need a reason, just give me your location and I’ll be there right away.”

“No, putting all that aside… If you’re not free, you don’t need to force yourself. I dragged you along with me just yesterday, so I’m already feeling bad. Where are you right now, and what were you doing?”

“Umm…if you must know, well…”

“That’s a pretty half-hearted reply. So you’re busy? In that case─”

“No, uh…yes,” Kanbaru said as if she’d made up her mind. “I can’t keep any secrets from you. I’m in my room at my home right now reading dirty books and indulging in dirty fantasies.”

“………”

I shouldn’t have been so insistent.

Now I felt like a sexual harasser.

“Oh, but don’t get me wrong,” she cautioned. “They might be dirty books, but it’s all boys’ love.”

“Please, why couldn’t you at least let me get that part wrong!”

“New releases came out today, you see, and including ones I couldn’t buy since we were in the middle of tests, I got around twenty.”

“Huh… Not one for paring down your selections?”

“Tsk tsk tsk. You ought to know that I love every pairing under the sun.”

“Oh, shut up!”

So Kanbaru had been at this same bookstore after school… It was probably the only one in the neighborhood big enough to have a dedicated boys’ love corner. But that meant our town really was tiny… If my life were a dating simulator, new flags would be popping up all the time.

“In other words, you’re not busy.”

“I guess I couldn’t argue if you put it that way. Thinking about how you and Mister Oshino would work together doesn’t exactly make me busy.”

“That’s what you meant by ‘dirty fantasies’?!”

“So where do you need me to go?”

“Don’t change the topic, no, wait, don’t put us back on topic! You’d better tell me, Kanbaru, who’s on top and who’s on bottom?! I’ll never forgive you if you say I’m on bottom!”

It was a stupid conversation.

Talking to her was always like this.

“Good grief, Kanbaru. It’d be nice to have an intelligent conversation with you someday… You’re supposed to be pretty smart, right?”

“Yeah. My grades are definately good.”

“From the way you spelled that, though…”

Anyway, I said.

Even as we entertained our idiotic conversation, Sengoku was getting farther and farther away from the store… Well, she could go as far away as she wanted─I knew where she would end up.

She was in street clothes.

Her sense of fashion wasn’t refined, but that wasn’t the point.

The point─was her long sleeves and long pants.

As if she was about to head to the mountains.

“The shrine we went to yesterday,” I said. “We’ll meet on the sidewalk by the stairs that lead up there. Um, location-wise─you must be closer, but I should get there first since I’m on a bike. I’ll wait for you there.”

“Really? Do you think I’m going to make you wait on me two days in a row? Your faith in me must be at rock bottom. I have my pride, and I’m not going to let a comment like that go unanswered. I’ll use this opportunity to clear my name and restore my honor. I absolutely will get there first.”

“I don’t even know how to respond to your weird sense of pride…but either way, get there as soon as you can. Oh, and don’t forget. Long sleeves and long pants.”

I was on the way back from school, so I was still in my uniform. We had just changed to our summer attire, which meant I was wearing a short-sleeved button-down, but there was nothing I could do about that now. I was wearing slacks for pants, so good enough. An insect or snake bite wouldn’t be a big deal for me anyway─those vampiric “residual effects,” once again.

“Okay. Your wish is my command.”

“All right, see you,” I said and hung up, circling behind the bookstore to the bike parking and unlocking my bicycle. More than ten minutes had passed since Sengoku left the store… I didn’t know how she was getting there, but the day before, I hadn’t seen any bicycle that might be hers near where those stairs began. She most likely walked… Well, either way, if she was heading to that shrine, I wouldn’t catch up with her.

Now that I thought about it, Kanbaru really didn’t ask me why I was summoning her…

How frighteningly loyal.

Senjogahara was obviously my superior in Kanbaru’s chain of command, but being served so assiduously by someone as high-status as Suruga Kanbaru made me feel, to be honest, more scared than happy…

There didn’t seem to be any way of ruining her image of me, though, which actually made me want to start acting like the ideal senior around her and not betray her overblown expectations.

Well─it didn’t seem like a bad thing.

“I wonder what Senjogahara was like.”

In middle school─during the Valhalla Duo’s honeymoon phase, what had it been like between them?

As I was thinking that, I reached my destination.

The entrance to the shrine on the nameless mountain.

I got there fast. That’s a bike for you.

Or so I thought, but Kanbaru was already there.

“………”

Were there wheels on her feet or something?

There was a limit to being fleet-footed… She might have no trouble passing the average scooter and leaving it in the dust. I doubted that the automobile would have ever been invented if all of mankind could run as fast as her. If she’d gotten ready to go right after I hung up… Well, no, she’d changed into long sleeves and long pants like I’d told her (plus, having learned from the day before, she wore unripped pants and wasn’t showing her navel)…

“Uh-uh,” she said, “it didn’t take much time at all for me to put these clothes on. In the summer, I’m always in my underwear at home.”

“Kanbaru… I’m saying this purely out of concern for you, but you know I can’t make any guarantees about your chastity if you keep fanning the flames of my earthly desires.”

“I’m prepared for that.”

“Well, I’m not, okay?!”

“I trust your sense of reason.”

“I don’t trust it myself!”

“Really? I’m surprised to hear that. Do you find girls only wearing underwear when they’re at home so moé?”

“Not even if you were dressed in cat ears and a maid outfit would I find you moé!”

“I see. So if we turn that around, as long as it’s not me, cat ears and a maid outfit work for you?”

“Ack, it was a trick question!”

I decided to go ahead and park my bike at least.

While I did feel somewhat guilty about parking it illegally, it wouldn’t be for long. I’d beg the law’s forgiveness. If it did get confiscated, I’d just resign myself to my fate. Beggars couldn’t be choosers.

“Even taking that into account,” I remarked, “you really are fast… You could probably make it into the Olympics or something if you really tried.”

“You don’t get to go to the Olympics just because you’re fast… And I’m not cut out for track competitions, anyway.”

“Oh, I guess not.”

Senjogahara was on the track team in middle school, and they’d first met when Senjogahara heard that the basketball ace was quick and went to see Kanbaru─or something along those lines.

“From my point of view,” I said, “your speed doesn’t even seem human.”

“Hm. If it isn’t human, would that make me…amphibian?”

“Try naming an amphibian that’s a fast runner!”

“You got me there.”

“I mean, what do you stand to gain by comparing yourself to an amphibian?”

“It’s not about gain. If you would call me that, I’d present myself as such with great joy.”

“Uh oh, ‘great joy’?”

“Hurry and please call me your ‘lowly, filthy pet’!”

“There are actually two equally important things I have to say to that, and while I’d normally ignore them because it’d be hard to without tripping over my words along the way, I like you so much, Kanbaru, that I’m going ahead and pointing them out anyway! First of all, I wouldn’t keep an amphibian as a pet, and second of all, your great joy has nothing particular to do with amphibians anymore!”

If you’re curious, I’d thought of a cheetah.

Of course, they aren’t animals you’d keep as pets, either.

Agh, and I even admitted to her that I liked her a lot.

Yippee, the feeling was mutual.

“Please, don’t be so cold and just say it,” Kanbaru pleaded. “‘Lowly, filthy pet!’ You have to try it out just once. I’m sure you’ll understand if you do.”

“Why are you acting so desperate?!”

“Urk… Why won’t anyone understand? She told me no, too…”

“Even Senjogahara didn’t want to?!”

Well, actually.

Of course she wouldn’t want to.

Saying it was one thing, but Kanbaru feeling great joy?

“So, what do I need to do?” she asked me.

“Oh, right. This was no time to be amusing ourselves with small talk.”

“Do you need me to strip?”

“Why so eager to take off your clothes?!”

“If you have to take them off for me instead, I wouldn’t mind.”

“We’re not talking about who should perform the action! What are you, the embodiment of my middle school fantasies?!”

“I’m someone who tries to pursue a cheerful sexy.”

“I don’t care about your creed…”

“Okay, then let me put it this way. I’m a fairy who tries to pursue a cheerful eroticism.”

“Oh my god! All you did was change ‘sexy’ to ‘eroticism’ and ‘someone’ to ‘fairy’ and you’ve turned what you were saying into something sublime…in no way whatsoever!”

What would it take to teach this woman that men could be sexually harassed, too? It seemed like an issue I needed to address.

“Then what do you want me to do?” she complained. “Just say it, don’t hold back. I’m not a refined person, so subtlety doesn’t work on me. Whenever people are roundabout, I just get esaxpera… Esapxer… Esapxer…”

“Do you have any idea how exasperating you’re being right now?!”

“I’m sorry. I’m starting to get all beduffled.”

“Yeah, and you’re befuddling me, too!”

“So, what is it?”

“Oh─well, I’m pretty sure that up there,” I pointed at the stairs, “is someone I used to know.”

“Hm?”

“Do you remember that girl who passed by us as we were climbing these yesterday?”

“Yes. She was petite and cute.”

“I don’t know about remembering her that way…”

“To word it like you might, she was a girl with ‘pretty’ hips.”

“I wouldn’t say that!”

Well, whatever.

She was a sapphist, after all.

It made for a smoother conversation than if she didn’t remember her at all.

“I’d thought I’d seen her somewhere before…but I only remembered later. While I wasn’t a hundred percent certain yesterday, after I saw her again today at the bookstore, I knew for sure. She’s an old friend of my youngest sister’s.”

“Really, now?” Kanbaru seemed taken aback. “What a coincidence… I’m shocked.”

“Mm-hm. I was surprised, too.”

“Mm-hm. I haven’t been this surprised since I woke up this morning and saw that my alarm clock had stopped.”

“That’s awfully recent! And that’s not much of a surprise at all! It’s way too commonplace!”

“Hmm. Okay, then allow me to correct myself. Uh, I haven’t been this surprised since the Cambrian explosion.”

“Now you’ve gone too far back, and this isn’t that amazing! Don’t bring up the greatest event in Earth’s history for a coincidence like running into an old acquaintance in a small town! I’m even beginning to feel like it wasn’t such a big surprise after all now that I really think about it!”

“You can be so demanding. So─you’re saying that girl is here again today?”

“Right. Probably.”

Judging by her reaction, even Kanbaru’s quick feet hadn’t managed to get her to the stairs before Sengoku. Of course─while I could be somewhat certain that Sengoku had come straight to where we were after leaving the bookstore, it was ultimately just my guess. If she wasn’t here, she wasn’t here, and that’d be the best outcome of all.

But─the book that Sengoku was reading at the bookstore.

That was the problem.

“The book she was reading?” asked Kanbaru.

“Yeah. Well, I can tell you more about it later. Anyway, about what I wanted to ask you─I may have known this girl in the past, but it’s still awkward for me to speak to her. Actually, I don’t even know if she remembers me, and it might look like I’m using some weird pick-up move on her─the defensive instincts of a freshly pubescent girl can be a scary thing.”

“You say that like you speak from experience.”

“Well, I won’t deny that.”

All sorts of people have told me that I’m kind to everyone, but there was a price: I’d gone through some bad experiences because of it. Not that I felt like my efforts were a waste, but it didn’t feel great when I ended up not being able to help someone I might have otherwise.

“On that note, Kanbaru. You must be good with girls younger than you. You’re the biggest star at our school, after all.”

“That’s not true anymore, and I don’t feel like it ever was, but I see what you’re getting at. You’re an excellent judge of people. I really am good with younger girls.”

“I thought as much. I knew you were the right person to call.”

While not on Hanekawa’s level, Kanbaru did seem to look after others.

She’d been captain of her team in both middle school and high school.

In that sense, she was the complete opposite of the way Senjogahara was now… Or maybe I should say that Kanbaru succeeded the middle-school Senjogahara.

“To be specific, count on me,” Kanbaru boasted, “to seduce any girl younger than me in ten seconds, tops.”

“Bringing you here was the biggest mistake of my life!”

I didn’t need that kind of goodness!

I wasn’t here to ruin a girl’s life!

“Don’t tell me that you saw the basketball team as nothing more than a personal harem…”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“How far would you go?!”

“I’d take out the ‘nothing more than.’”

“That barely changes anything!”

“Hm? So she’s your youngest sister’s friend… Which means that you have a little sister… In fact, two or more…”

“………!”

Oh no!

The sapphist now knew about my little sisters!

“Heheheh… I see, your little sisters… Heh heh heh, heh heh heh. Are they anything like you, I wonder─”

“Don’t get any funny thoughts…and jeez, what is with that awful grin I doubt I’ve ever seen before?! Is that a smile you ought to be pointing at me, the object of that selfless devotion you pride yourself on?!”

If you’re curious.

They do look like me. Both of them.

“Oh, please,” scoffed Kanbaru. “I would never lay a finger on your little sisters. Yes, seducing a younger girl or two might come easier than breathing to me, but there’s no reason for me to ever do such a thing─ as long as you and I stay close.”

“Damn you, that’s a veiled threat…”

“A threat? Oh my, what a grating accusation. Such shocking words from a revered senior might cause a nervous person like me to panic and, well, who knows what I might do? Don’t you think there’s, oh, something else you ought to be saying to me right now?”

“G-Gah…”

It was happening…

She was absolutely being influenced by the present-day Senjogahara!

The very definition of a bad influence.

“Ah, I think my chest is feeling a little stiff from running here. I wonder if I could find someone to give me a massage.”

“How do I not come out ahead in that deal?!”

“Joking aside,” Kanbaru said, switching to a serious tone. “Of course I wouldn’t hesitate to help since you’re asking me─but you’re taking into account what happened yesterday, aren’t you?”

“Well─yes.”

“So─that’s what this is.”

“…Yeah.”

“Sheesh.” Kanbaru shrugged, as if she had no other choice. She raised her bandaged left arm to scratch her head─before stopping and doing so with her right hand instead. “You’re kind to everyone─that’s what she told me, and it seems like it’s true. Sure, I learned that well enough while I was stalking you─but I get a different impression now that I see it in person.”

“Kanbaru…”

“It feels so pointless to be indebted to you─that’s how she put it.”

“……”

“It’s fine. I’m talking to myself. No, I’m talking out of turn. Okay, let’s go. If we don’t hurry, this girl might finish her business.”

Her business.

Her business at a deserted shrine.

“Yeah…you’re right.”

Side by side, the two of us took the first step up the same stairs we had climbed the day before.

Today─Kanbaru wasn’t holding my hand.

“Hey, Kanbaru.”

“What is it?”

“Any plans post-graduation?”

“Post-graduation… Before my arm turned out like this, I thought college on a sports scholarship, but that’s not going to happen now. My plan is to take entrance exams and get into a school fair and square.”

“I see.”

While her left arm would heal, it wouldn’t until she turned twenty. Now seventeen, those three years had to seem long and gloomy to Kanbaru.

“I haven’t decided on a specific school,” she said, “but I’d like to go to one with a strong basketball program─so I guess a Phys Ed school.”

“You’re not thinking of going to the same university as Senjogahara?”

“What, is that what you’re planning?”

“Actually, yeah.”

But keep it a secret from Senjogahara, I said.

Yes, Kanbaru nodded.

When it came to heeding my wishes, she was my cute junior. I hated to admit it, but Hanekawa was right about this… Just having a cute junior made me happy.

“With your grades,” I asked, “couldn’t you try to chase after Senjogahara?”

“I don’t know about that. I’m a striver, which also means my current scores are already the best I can do.”

“Ah, right. But─”

“Also,” added Kanbaru, “what would come of spending all my time tracing her footsteps?”

“……”

That seemed─like a real change in her mindset.

It wasn’t like Kanbaru to say that…or maybe I had misjudged and underestimated her on this point. Still, wasn’t the woman I met a month ago dedicated to tracing Senjogahara’s footsteps?

Did something change?

Thanks to the aberration?

Aberrations─weren’t all bad.

Good or bad wasn’t the question to begin with.

“Well, I say that,” Kanbaru continued, “but no matter what path I choose, I’d like to stay involved with both you and her even after we graduate. It’d be nice if the three of us could get together and take a commemorative photo for the final episode.”

“Final episode…”

“Or maybe I gaze up at the twilight sky to see the two of you reflected there in the final episode…”

“Did you just kill off me and Senjogahara?!”

What a crappy ending.

To what sounded like a crappy story.

“So there’s this girl named Hanekawa in my class.”

“Hm.”

“Do you know her?”

“No─I’m not aware of her.”

“I guess you are in different years… But she’s famous among us. She has the best grades of our whole year, after all. She hasn’t given up her seat at the top a single time since she started at our school and is the very picture of a model student. Sounds like a joke character or something, doesn’t she? I heard the other day that she didn’t do the best just here but nationwide on a practice test once. I’m pretty sure she went to the same middle school as you and Senjogahara.”

“Is that so. There are some incredible people out there…”

“But that incredible person says she’s not going to college.”

“…Is that so.”

“She wants to go on a journey because there are a lot of things she wants to see. I don’t even know what to make of that, but it did make me think, you know? Oh, and I guess this also needs to stay secret. It’d be a huge deal if the school found out.”

“I understand… But yes, it does make you think. You could say that Naoetsu High, being what it is, doesn’t even offer any paths apart from college─so setting out on an uncharted road without qualms is something.”

“Without qualms─or with them, I don’t know. But it sounded like she’d made up her mind.”

It was probably because we already knew the way, having taken it once, but Kanbaru and I climbed up the stairs and reached the shrine sooner than we had the day before.

It goes without saying, but the shrine was just as desolate as yesterday.

Out in the distance─I could see the talisman I’d placed on the shrine’s main hall. My eyesight was enhanced after letting Shinobu drink my blood on Saturday, and I could see everything down to the individual characters written with a red-ink brush.

It was the only difference from yesterday.

“………”

I glanced over─and Kanbaru was pale. She wasn’t just moments ago, we’d been carrying on a regular conversation, but now she was visibly tired.

That was also the same as yesterday.

No─she looked worse.

It─wasn’t from climbing the stairs.

She wasn’t feeling ill.

It happened the moment we entered the grounds─the moment we passed through the gate.

“…Hey, Kanbaru.”

“I’m fine. Let’s─just hurry.”

Despite her state, Kanbaru replied firmly, encouraging me to move forward and not stand idle. She was obviously forcing herself to keep going. I started to say something but ended up doing as she said. Right now, our top priority was to attend to what we were here for.

This shrine.

It had something.

A something that messed with Kanbaru’s body.

It was originally─a job from Oshino.

And Oshino─would never give us a simple job.

“…Sengoku!”

As soon as I spotted a girl─long sleeves, long pants, hat pulled far down, bag around her waist─crouching in front of a large rock across the grounds, my reaction was to shout her name. So much for bringing Kanbaru all the way here.

But I couldn’t stop myself from shouting.

In Sengoku’s left hand, fingers pinched around the neck, was a snake.

In Sengoku’s right hand, a chisel.

Pressed against the rock─

The snake was still alive.

However─it was about to get killed any moment now.

“Stop it, Sengoku!”

“Ah…”

Sengoku─looked at me.

Using the chisel to push the brim of her cap, worn low over her eyes, back up.

Nadeko Sengoku─slowly looked at me.

“Big Brother Koyomi…”

You.

You’d still call me that─

The thought ran through my head as if I were some dark hero who once walked the line until a lapse in judgment derailed him, who, after battling through trials and hardships that you do not relate or sit through without tears, now sat among the top echelons of a shadowy organization and committed an endless chain of unspeakable, unwatchable atrocities, in the midst of which a comrade from bygone days while he was still on the side of justice appears and calls him, by his old name.