Monogatari Series - Volume 23 - Chapter 1.32

032

I decided to just go to my own home. Of course I needed to catch up on sleep, but I wanted to take a bath, too. Alas, I didn’t have any clothes to change into at Oikura’s place. I’ll do something about that later.

Afterwards, I thought about saying thanks to Ononoki-chan for last night—since I’d left in a hurry, I hadn’t been able to talk to her about how she relayed Hachikuji’s message to me, or how she called over Gaen-san to the mountain after that.

From Ononoki-chan’s point of view, I’d gotten a fortune slip and left all of a sudden, and then decided to go to hell—I probably seemed pretty weird to her… I couldn’t bear being thought of as a weird guy by Ononoki-chan.

With both parents working, the first daughter a high schooler, and the second daughter a middle schooler, the Araragi house was generally empty in the daytime—I would be able to speak to Ononoki-chan, who’d infiltrated the house as a stuffed doll, without reservations.

It was one thing to give my thanks, but I figured I may as well tell her that Kagenui-san was approaching this town like a hurricane—for Gaen-san and me, it was an approach that was currently fairly inconvenient, but it could be good news for Ononoki-chan, who idolizes (?) Kagenui-san as an “onee-chan”.

Because Ononoki-chan was busy with something else, she wasn’t participating in this incident, but it wasn’t like she was intentionally left out of the loop, unlike Shinobu until she found out—if the conversation went well, perhaps I’d be able to learn about the past between Suicidemaster and Kagenui-san, which I had failed to ask about, or rather, which I had wanted to hear but didn’t want to hear.

Perhaps those ulterior motives led to my ruin, for when I arrived home, it was not just my parents and sisters but also that expressionless, frilly-dressed stuffed doll that was absent.

It seemed that the tween girl was even busier than public servants and middle school students, though not college students.

Well, I’d like to hear as much as what she had to say, but I didn’t think it was a past that I wanted to dig into myself… If anything, maybe what I should be doing is to let the foreshadowing die so that her past doesn’t get revealed?

Araragi Koyomi, killing the foreshadowing.

With that, feeling a mix of disappointment and relief, I took a shower and crawled into bed.

It seemed I’d been more tired than I realized (perhaps out of worry, too), so I slept soundly until the afternoon, waking only to the sound of Karen’s return—despite her training in martial arts, she was a lot noisier in her movements, so it was easy to hear.

“Yo, Karen-chan. By the way, I wanted to ask about Kanbaru’s fan club.”

“That’s way too direct. I haven’t even taken off my shoes yet! At least welcome me back. You gotta have some sort of introduction before starting off the main topic with a ‘by the way’. What happened?”

Araragi Karen. Sixteen years old.

She was super tall. My bigger little sister.

Tsuganoki Private High School first-year. She did not take part in any clubs, and continued to attend a martial arts dojo—something like that.

Also, her hairstyle returned to a ponytail.

“Kanbaru-sensei’s fan club? Ah, aah. The one that nii-chan smashed up, huh.”

“If I didn’t break them up, they would’ve broken me. Just remembering it now, it’s super scary.”

The fact that she was still calling her Kanbaru-sensei was pretty considerable, but then again, the way Karen yearned for Kanbaru was… pretty unique.

I couldn’t exactly give a thorough explanation of the circumstances, so I simply said, “Have you heard anything about, say, them having resumed activities?” and continued the conversation without explaining my reasons.

“Mmm. No, I don’t think they have. When an organization like that comes apart once, it’s pretty hard to reorganize.”

“Is that so?”

“The crux, Kanbaru-sensei, retired, after all. Fans easily heat up and easily cool down.”

I see… I guess it was like that.

Just as Karen said, if Kanbaru had continued to be active, then perhaps the fan club could have been passed down to the next generation, but now that the target of their admiration had retired, it was probably hard to gather new members.

And Kanbaru herself wasn’t the kind of person that liked attracting that kind of attention, too—I had to admit I felt a bit elated at the inspiration of reading the deciphered code “F/C” as fan club… But I guess it wasn’t that easy.

When comparing the girls’ basketball team, of which Kanbaru had been a member, with the fan club, which was unofficial and separate… The quality was certainly different—if it became a fan club full of stoicism that could enforce ironclad laws without the actual person in question, it would be one of the best in Japan.

If only it had been “C/F”, then it could at least have been read as “center forward”, a basketball position…

Well, whether the culprit was in the girls’ basketball team or in the fan club, it didn’t change the reality that the vampire might be nonchalantly attending Naoetsu High—if that was even possible.

Of course, even though Gaen-san had been trying to implicate me, there were quite a few students that had gotten entangled with oddities, like Senjougahara Hitagi, Hanekawa Tsubasa, Kanbaru Suruga, or Oshino Ougi.

Well, a high school girl being a vampire did make for a prettier picture than a high school boy being a vampire—oh yeah.

“Karen-chan. You’re a high school girl now, right?”

“What’s with that, all of a sudden? But, that’s right. I’ve become able to get married.”

“That’s not because you’re a high school girl, it’s because you’ve turned 16 years old. If anything, you’ve gotten harder to marry. Especially for me.”

“Nii-chan, for you I’m the most difficult person in the world to marry. I’m your little sister!”

“How does it feel to be a high school girl? Is everything going well with your new friends?”

Regrettably, I pretended to be an overprotective older brother and started a survey to try and collect some live opinions—could even Karen be mired in the murky depths that had been a downer for the easygoing Gaen-san?

“I dunno what sort of school life you mean by ‘going well’, but this new world is pretty fun. I almost want to go to school on the weekends, too.”

That’s pretty insane.

But that’s true, it’s not like all high school girls have a dark side to them. There are individual differences, and it depends on the environment and the situation.

To put it in a good way, Karen’s personality was endlessly bright, and to put it in a bad way, she was endlessly idiotic, but that wasn’t just it—when surrounded by a stiff atmosphere, even the brightest idiot would lose some of that excitement. However, Karen was a follower of Kanbaru—

“—Oh yeah. Can I ask one more thing, Karen-chan?”

“What is it now? Today, it’s all questions and no groping my boobs, huh.”

“Don’t talk like groping your boobs is a regular occurrence. I’m not going to touch them. This year.”

“It was a problem when you’ve been touching them for the last year. Touching a girl’s boobs like you were kneading clay. And? What’s the question you were gonna ask?”

“You know the Fire Sisters, that you and Tsukihi-chan were a part of? You guys disbanded after you graduated, right? What happened after that?”

“Whaddya mean what happened. I told you, didn’t I? Now, Tsukihi-chan’s working hard on her own as Moon Fire.”

I may have heard that before, but regrettably, the information she had on her sister was a bit vague.

Not that I could speak for others, considering I was the same way when it came to that sister.

What I wanted to ask was how the community of Tsuganoki 2nd Middle School changed after Karen, the mainstay and core of the school, left, like with the girls’ basketball team—wasn’t there anything like a war to be the replacement for Tsukihi’s partner, or any sort of factional strife?

“Oh, for that, Tsukihi-chan, as the staff officer, handled it pretty well. For better or worse, Tsukihi-chan thinks she’s so special that she doesn’t expect anyone else, including me, to be able to imitate her.”

I see. I’d been worried about my youngest sister’s (excessive) self-consciousness, but that was an insight.

As is often the case with hard-working superstars, Kanbaru’s self-esteem was quite low, and she had a tendency to believe that “anyone can do what I can do if they work hard enough”—that was something I could appreciate from a human perspective. However, if someone that was charismatic on a national level said such empty words as “if you work hard, your dreams will come true”, then it would lead to a generation of people that actually buy into it.

Even though it wasn’t Kanbaru’s fault, the current state of the girls’ basketball team was probably a climate formed by such a belief in hard work.

If I had to say it, when Kanbaru returned from the club because of her left arm, she should’ve picked a proper successor instead of leaving everything to Higasa-chan—though it was useless to say that now.

“Tsukihi-chan is basically a ‘wasted effort is wasted’ kind of girl. She’ll say stuff like, ‘Instead of hard work, just do what needs to be done!’ ‘If you put in wasted effort, you’ll get even farther away from your dreams!’”

“I can’t say that leaves a good impression…”

“She’d always insist, ‘Find a way to make yourself a lucky boy or Cinderella girl!’”

“Tsukihi-chan probably shouldn’t publish any business books. Speaking of which, it worries me that Tsukihi-chan, a middle school student, is coming home later than you, a high school student. Rub rub. What in the world is Moon Fire up to now that she’s gone independent?”

“I dunno either. Rather than being independent, Tsukihi-chan’s always been a dependent person with an independent spirit. Nii-chan, what were those rubbing sound effects you tried to mix in for the first time this year, without even trying to get them lost in the confusion? And I’ve heard rumors that you were helping out a magical girl, but how much of that is true?”

“Hmm.”

Especially with Kagenui-san’s return, I wanted Tsukihi to stay quiet, but she wasn’t exactly the kind of sister that listened to her brother.

If I’d been able to talk with Ononoki-chan, I could’ve asked her to do something about that… Rather than worry, it made me a little anxious.

Being a big brother was a lifetime job.

“Then, Karen-chan. I’m going to leave the house now, and I don’t think I’ll be coming back today, so in the meantime, watch over Tsukihi-chan carefully, all right?”

“You mean, today also, right? College students shouldn’t be so flashy with their playing around at night. Your new life is an important time for you, too, nii-chan. I don’t want to see you get burned like you did when you became a high schooler.”

“Those are useful words. Worthy of engraving onto a chest.”

“Don’t engrave them on my chest!”