Monogatari Series - Volume 22 - Chapter 2.04

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And so we spent the entire morning inspecting that school road. (Just as an experiment, Kizashima-senpai and I tried slashing at each other with some sticks to see how it felt. From someone else’s point of view, it probably looked like some adults pretending to swordfight for some reason—with the fact that Kizashima-senpai basically looked like a middle schooler, it wouldn’t have been surprising for me to be reported. Even though I was a policeman.) After getting lunch (Kizashima-senpai was very senpai-like when she paid for lunch—although the workers were giving me a look as if saying, why are you making a kid like this pay for you?), the two of us decided to visit our dearly missed alma mater.

We’d made an appointment to do so.

That was the power of a public institution—a freelancer like Oshino or a con man like Kaiki wouldn’t have been able to enter a school in the middle of the day.

We’d made plans to hear what the affected students had to say (calling it police questioning would be an exaggeration) during lunch break.

Of course, this wasn’t as simple as it sounded—it was thanks to the section chief’s resources that we managed to make this work so smoothly. And it was for the process to go even smoother that the school’s graduates, Kizashima-senpai and me, were dispatched.

So the feeling that it wasn’t going smoothly was probably just me.

It felt vaguely difficult to do this.

To be honest, I hadn’t expected to come back to my alma mater like this—or rather, I hadn’t expected to come back at all.

Though I’d made plans to visit the Kitashirahebi Shrine at least once over my four-month training period, I hadn’t especially felt the desire to visit Naoetsu High even once.

I didn’t personally have anything to do, and there wasn’t anyone that I knew—no, that wasn’t true.

Strictly speaking, there was someone I knew at this school, but as for whether or not I wanted to meet her…

“It’s fine to be more confident about this, Assistant Inspector Araragi. There are teachers that you learned from that are here, aren’t there? Go and brag about how you’re a career man now!”

“Why are you phrasing it like a command? I don’t want to. I don’t want to be seen as conceited for becoming a police officer after having been unable to keep up in school. I don’t want them to think that I came to tell them off, or misunderstand that I came to get back at them…”

“If you actually do have those feelings, then aren’t you just feeling guilty? Don’t worry, nobody really cares about you that much.”

Really?

Well, I did act like I was a problem child, but like how there were plenty of immortal students, I suppose from the school’s perspective, I was just one of many problem children that they had.

I may not even be remembered.

In the end, I’d managed to avoid them, as the teacher that guided us around was someone I didn’t know, and the conversations with the affected students ended without any problems—that was all thanks to Kizashima-senpai’s skill.

Though nowadays I felt a huge barrier in trying to converse with today’s high schoolers, Kizashima-senpai appeared to have no problem with it.

It seemed her childish appearance was surprisingly effective in removing that barrier… Though it wouldn’t have been surprising to develop a complex over it, she was much heartier than that.

I probably wouldn’t be able to make use of my own short height like that.

While Suou-san was an adult that liked kids, Kizashima-senpai’s strong point was her ability to communicate with kids, whether she liked them or not—and because oddities were more likely to get involved with those who were younger, this was most likely an indispensable disposition to have in the Rumors Squad.

At the very least, it was a lot more useful than just being immortal.

As such, although Kizashima-senpai really got into chatting with the victims, she still managed to hear what everyone had to say by the end of the lunch break, not having forgotten her main reason for coming.

She had naturally even managed to obtain everyone’s phone numbers, be they boy or girl.

“This cell phone is my work phone, by the way. I make a very big distinction between work and leisure, so don’t worry, I wasn’t trying to get close to any cute guys here—and I don’t think you’re the sort to mess around with high school girls. Considering your age.”

“Thank you for your concern. But I feel like I’ve gotten even older in the past 30 minutes. It doesn’t feel like I have the energy to speak with high schoolers anymore. Even though in my mind, I’m still a young boy.”

“Well, in terms of my body, I’m still a young girl, after all. So growing older would be nice for a change. But anyway, we didn’t hear anything new, but at least that means we didn’t hear anything that could overturn what we’ve confirmed so far. That’s still a good harvest of information.”

I personally couldn’t see that as a good harvest… Working really was just an accumulation of wasted effort, wasn’t it?

“Well then, shall we head back to the site, Assistant Inspector Araragi?”

“Ah… Kizashima-senpai, do you mind going on ahead? There’s somewhere I want to visit in that building over there.”

I’d been hesitant the whole time I’d been within the school, but once our duties were finished, I finally decided to say that—we hadn’t driven the police car here but simply taken the school road, so it wasn’t like she needed me to drive her.

But detectives really had good intuition.

“Didn’t you want to leave as soon as possible before? You said you had no good memories of this place, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t go that far… I do have some good memories. Well, you’re right that I do want to leave, but seeing as I’m already here, there’s someone that I should probably see before I go. It’ll be scary if I don’t.”

“Hmm? …Is it something personal?”

“Yes, it’s personal. But there’s a possibility that we could get some information to help the investigation—because she’s a mystery maniac.”

Or rather, she herself was wrapped in mystery.

As mysterious as the darkness.