Monogatari Series - Volume 23 - Chapter 1.46

046

With my complaint that I was only going to crossdress only once not being acknowledged by the customer support center, I was stripped of my clothes and made to wear new clothes.

They made me wear silk pajamas that I didn’t know to whom they belonged to, and to top it all off, they tied my hair, which I’d been growing out since my spring break when I was seventeen, into twintails.

What merciless humiliation.

A little while later.

“It’s not really as cute as I’d been imagining, so it’s not exactly what I had in mind, but oh well!” said Higasa-chan, giving her approval for me to participate in the pajama party.

I wasn’t sure if she was being tolerant or intolerant.

“Hehe, last year we’ve been all about sports, and this year we’ll be all about exams, but while we’re still in high school, we’d like to be able to gain the achievement of playing around with a science-major college student!”

Don’t make it sound like putting me in girls’ pajamas is some sort of achievement for high school girls.

What a greedy girl.

It seemed like such a blunder that I hadn’t gotten involved with such a delightful girl in my high school years.

“Oh geez. What a mess I’ve gotten myself into. The last time I did something like this was during Pajama Day in an American elementary school.”

“Araragi-senpai, you’ve been to a Pajama Day in an American elementary school before…? That sounds like a problem, even from my perspective. An international problem.”

Kanbaru knit her eyebrows together, but her level of formality had dropped. So that was the state I was in right now.

For the record, I’d come rushing over here for your sake, all right?

“Anyway, let’s all introduce ourselves for the new member! In a long T-shirt, I’m Higasa Seiu! Born May 3rd, 18 years old! 165 cm tall, my position is small forward, and my favorite play is the steal!”

“In a jinbei, I’m Shounou Mitono! Born April 9th, 18 years old! 170 cm tall, my position is point guard, and my favorite play is the double team!”

“In an oversized button-up, I’m Mayoko Reika! Born December 12th, 17 years old! 169 cm tall, my position is shooting guard, and my favorite play is the run and gun!”

“In short pants, I’m Umikawa Nikawa! Born January 18th, 17 years old! 164 cm tall, my position is power forward, and my favorite play is the alley-oop!”

“In a jersey, I’m Sylvia Civia! Born September 19th, 17 years old! 185 cm tall, my position is center, and my favorite play is the block!”

“In a babydoll, I’m Ooki Seiko! Born August 1st, 17 years old, 180 cm tall, my position is the reserve sixth man, and my favorite play is cheering!”

“And I’m Kanbaru Suruga! Araragi-senpai’s ero-slave, my favorite play is abandonment play!”

“You’re the only one with a different goal, huh. The ace shouldn’t be in charge of the punch line! I’ll abandon you forever!”

Why did I have to come hear and listen to these pushy people introduce themselves?

Giving their full names and all. It’s like they were trying to be regulars in the new season.

Six new characters at this level of excitement, huh. Compared to the first- and second-year students, who numbered a total of one hundred, the third year OGs, all together, numbering less than ten, seemed a little small—well, of course.

At least until Kanbaru joined the club, the girls’ basketball team was a normal athletic club in a normal college-prep school—however, it was hard to believe that there were only seven of them.

And why were they all so energetic?

“No, we haven’t had any alcohol!”

“We haven’t told any dirty stories!”

“We haven’t brought any indecent books!”

“Of course, videos are out of the question!”

“This isn’t an exhibition of our dark collections!”

What the heck is a dark collection.

They weren’t just energetic, they were pretty cheerful, huh.

Rather than coincidentally having a group of people like Kanbaru all at the same time (there was no way such a coincidence could happen), the members were most likely influenced by the superstar Kanbaru in a good way.

I guess you could say it was the exact opposite of the current girls’ basketball team—it would certainly be tough if you were asked to aim for these girls as your objective.

They wouldn’t be able to do it.

No wonder they’d stray from the right path.

No wonder they’d become vampirified—although I wouldn’t go that far.

“So, Araragi-senpai? The favor that you asked of me over at my house earlier has naturally not been fulfilled yet, but what was the urgent motion about the girls’ basketball team that compelled you to come over here despite this? We were just about to talk about it, too.”

Liar.

I was also lying, but it was way too flowery to be a gathering of people concerned about their juniors—even taking into account Kanbaru’s influence and so on, the feeling of “we have been recognized” exuded by high school students who have achieved results at the national level can be pretty overwhelming.

Gaen-san had been poisoned by the darkness of high school girls, but in my own way, it was like I was being poisoned by the light of high school girls.

I couldn’t believe that such a group had come together at the same time that I was living my gloomy high school life… No, this wasn’t the time to be depressed.

As a bodyguard, I had to stay the night at all costs… Almost frighteningly so. It wasn’t just out of politeness that I wasn’t immediately leaving after confirming their safety.

Even if it was fine now, there was still a chance that Kiseki-chan could attack the place as soon as I left—even though I had my doubts about whether I could handle being on security, the facts that have come to light indicated that Kiseki-chan was working to thoroughly avoid Gaen-san’s investigation team.

As long as I, at the very end of the investigation team, continued to stay in the pajama party room of the Higasa residence, then at least for tonight, the newborn vampire should not try to approach the house.

In the worst-case scenario, Shinobu was here.

Putting aside Kanbaru and Higasa-chan and the others, Shinobu wasn’t the kind of person that would choose not to interfere until my life was in danger—or so I believed.

To tell you the truth, I would rather join Gaen-san and be out there looking for Kiseki-chan, but I had a job that only I could do, that only the one at the end of the line could do—and that was participating in a pajama party of high school girls.

Anyway, how should I turn this conversation around?

Now that I’d been caught in twintails, I had better tell even more lies—while I might be able to with Kanbaru, I couldn’t exactly tell the truth to any of the other members of the girls’ basketball team’s OG association, but I couldn’t just sit back and stay silent either, when I’d barged in pretending that I had something I needed to talk about either.

But, with me being here, I had to play my part, not just to fool around and entertain everyone, and certainly not to play the role of a clown that livens up the place.

“About Kiseki-chan—about Kiseki Souwa-chan. I wanted to talk about her.”

No. Actually, I wanted to ask about her.

“What kind of girl is she?”

“Oh my, how curious. Didn’t I give you that list for this purpose, Araragi-senpai?”

“No, not that—not her profile. I want to know about her personality.”

If I knew that, it would be easier to build a plan or countermeasure—I would be able to predict where they were now, what they were doing, what they were thinking about.

If you thought of her as a missing person, then it would be more of a secondary piece of information that could be put off for later, so to speak. But if you thought of her as the criminal, it was the most valuable piece of information.

“Umm. I guess, in a good way, she was pretty hard on herself. And in a bad way, she was pretty hard on herself.”

That was what Shounou-chan in the jinbei said, choosing her words carefully—although the impression was more that, instead of choosing her words carefully, she couldn’t choose her words well enough.

“She pushed herself too hard, and it sometimes produced good results, but when things didn’t go well, she got hysterical—it got so rough that she even lashed out at her friends.”

“She’s the type of person that gets motivated by imagining a supposed opponent, so when things go wrong, she ends up feeling like she’s losing. Even though that’s not the case.”

Higasa-chan in the long T-shirt added—I see, well, it seemed like a personality that didn’t contradict the image of the culprit in this case, but looking at things with a calm mind, you could say that everyone and anyone had a similar personality to some extent.

When I asked the other members of the team, I didn’t end up hearing any particular characteristic, any personality trait that might be useful for tracking her down.

Incidentally, Kanbaru said this.

“She was an absurdly cute junior! I always wished we could play naked!”

The only personality trait that I could gather from that comment was Kanbaru’s… If you were the culprit, it would be easy to set you up for an ambush.

…In fact, things had been much more straightforward in the case of that mummified monkey. I wondered how much difference there was between a monkey and a demon, but at the time, the high school girl who made a wish to that monkey had ended up targeting—

“In that case, let me change the question. It’s about the five team members that have currently gone missing…”

Harimaze Kie. Honnou Aburi. Kuchimoto Kyoumi. Kanguu Misago.

And Kiseki Souwa.

“Do they have any points in common? They happen to be exactly five people—perfect for the number of players on a basketball team. But have the five of them ever been in a game together?”

It’s an idea that wouldn’t have come up if I hadn’t participated in this pajama party, but when she introduced herself earlier, Ooki Seiko-chan had mentioned that her position was a reserve.

If these five had ever played as teammates, perhaps not in an official game, but in a practice game or even an inter-squad match, wouldn’t there have been some reserve players on the bench at the time?

And though I feared that Kanbaru and the third-year students of the OG association would be targeted, there was a possibility that Kiseki-chan’s next target, or someone who had already been poisoned, would be a reserve player—they are all under protection, but if we manage to identify a single target, we might be able to set a trap for her. At least, Gaen-san would.

However, in response to this reasoning, or perhaps wishful thinking, Higasa-chan shook her head.

“They don’t really have any points in common. I don’t think they’ve ever played together in a match—I feel kind of bad saying this, but compared to Kiseki-chan, Harimaze-chan and Kuchimoto-chan weren’t all that good at sports, and weren’t at the level to participate in games yet.”

“Plus, they had completely different tastes in BL.”

Uh-huh… As expected, even the missing people outside of Kiseki-chan each had their own personality, so it was hard to lump the five of them together as a team. From what Civia-chan said, I wondered if they could be categorized as BL lovers, but, well, that was probably just a commonality on the level of “breathing in oxygen and breathing out carbon dioxide”.

It didn’t seem like we could approach this like a question on a Japanese language exam that went, “What are the common characteristics of the following words?”

I then tried to ask the question, “Then, what if it was just four of them?”—in other words, the four excluding Kiseki-chan, the four victims that had been discovered. If they had anything in common other than they were members of Naoetsu High’s girls’ basketball team, not by gathering information from their cell phones, but by asking for first-hand opinions.

By gathering information from this cheerful bunch of people, there was no way I’d get drawn into the murky depths of high school girls and become a downer—I imagined that, even if I wasn’t very useful normally, I wouldn’t become even less usable from this.

And then I realized.

Points in common? The four of them? Cell phones? Usability—

“Ah—wait.”

Perhaps. Maybe. Possibly.

Rather than looking for common ground from the five of them.

Rather than assuming they were friends.

If this was a Japanese language problem where you needed to find the outlier from the following words—the differences.

Spotting the differences.

Or, like a college freshman attending a pajama party of high school girls, the odd one out.

Ah. So that was it.

I remembered the favor I had asked of Kanbaru. And the conversation I had exchanged with Meniko.

So that’s how the information about our investigation was leaked—in that case, this wasn’t the place I should be right now. This was definitely not the time to be infiltrating the home of a mother and child, where high school girls were currently gathering.

I was reluctant to leave behind being pampered and toyed with, but I had to leave now—but, it was bad. Fatally bad. My New Beetle had been driven away by Gaen-san.

If I walked, or even ran, would I make it in time?

“Hi—Higasa-chan—”

“Behind you.”

“You’re not a ninja! I already knew you were there.”

I was really curious how she managed to evade my scrutiny for two years at Naoetsu High with a personality like that.

But anyway… Higasa-chan.

“Do you own a bike?”