Monogatari Series - Volume 24 - Chapter 2.11

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You may have noticed by now, but I didn’t buy the car I’m driving – I may have said all this time that I bought it second-hand at a bargain during a clearance sale using my hard-earned cash from my part-time work, then restored it to my liking, but I admit all of that was just a bluff.

It’s a brand new car my parents bought for me.

It’s a lie I wanted to continue, but as someone who admittedly was raised and cared for by my parents for nineteen years, I want to build up the courage and be honest about it.

For completeness’ sake, my love for my bicycle was real, though if I genuinely were to expound on that, it’d end up being a very long passage, so I’ll liberally abridge that…anyway, as the golden child whose parents bought a car for, I have some expectations for it, that is, for it to be a powerful transportational tool – not to be all holier-than-thou, but I want to see a greater world with it.

And in reality, it did get bigger.

It feels like I could go anywhere in the world as long as I have it – well, then again, it’s nothing compared to what Kagenui-san uses as transport, Ononoki Yotsugi’s ‘Unlimited Rulebook’.

In Kagenui’s case, she’s restricted in that she cannot walk on the ground, so I shouldn’t compare myself to her – that person might not be a primary schoolgirl, but she could easily walk on walls better than Kanbaru.

While I thought that, we arrived at the next town over.

If I was still in high school, it would’ve taken much longer just to get to this starting point…hmm, with that alone, I feel like I can already do much more than before.

But with the car barely being something I got with my own hard work, unlike Kagenui-san with Ononoki-chan, I wouldn’t say I’m very good at handling it…more specifically, I’m still not very good at stopping it.

Yes.

Convenience comes at a cost…unlike bicycles, cars are the kings of society, but at the same time, if one has a car, one needs to park it.

Where should I park?

This is something that’s never cropped up when I was still on my bike…no, there are designated places to park one’s bicycle too, but a bicycle is not the same size as a car.

Right, let’s just park around here!

– Isn’t something you can do with a car.

If I park illegally, my car could end up towed, or I could have points taken off my license, and then there’s the fear of someone breaking into my car…they don’t teach this stuff in high school, and all these fears are racking up at the moment.

Additionally, since it’s the middle of the night, back when I went up the Kitashirahebi Shrine, I parked my car on the shoulder that’s normally used for emergencies (the Kitashirahebi Shrine, being a shrine where gods have descended, does not have a large car park next to it), but I only risked that because that was up on a mountain road, where there’s little traffic both in cars and in people.

On a residential street?

Without a pedestrian road or a guardrail, if I parked at a random place in the middle of the night, chances are I’d be reported (the irony of someone contacting the police on an illegally-parked car but not over a missing child is not lost on me), and even if not, it is exceedingly likely that it’ll end up in an accident.

I was hit by a car once, and it was a real tragedy…I do not wish that experience upon anyone else.

With that, before I start looking for Benikujaku-chan, I first looked for a car park…having found a twenty-four-hour parkade,12 I parked in there.

I know ‘parkade’ is a regionally-specific word, but I like the way it rolls off the tongue.

Like ‘parkade’, you know?

To park in a car park, high school me would’ve been livid over such expense.

He’d ask me where the money came from.

I don’t have a job, and I live at my parents’ house…well, I may have overlapped Beniguchi Hibari’s situation with my own, but that thought shows more vanity on my part.

But it wasn’t a lie when I say me and my parents were on bad terms when I was in high school – with that, although it took a bit of time in addition to moving about, all it took in total was about half an hour.

The night is long.

Let the search begin.

‘So, where do we start? My master. If, as the lost god advised, she is playing hide and seek, that should make it a monumentally difficult undertaking…’

To be unrestricted by common sense, to hide in some unimaginable place, that much was said – however, that was only the first part of Hachiikuji’s advice.

The first half, the first guess.

‘Hm. Then what about the second half?’

‘You didn’t hear the rest? Weren’t you literally there?’

‘’Twas in one ear and out the other.’

It’s sincere advice, how could it go in one ear and out the other; then again, Shinobu wasn’t the person in question…I say person in question, she’s not even a human.

Shinobu may care about me, but she won’t care about Benikujaku-chan…this is my trusted partner’s line in the sand.

A wall – a fortification, if you will.

Though technically, I’m not the person in question either, but it’s important to me to think like the person in question, otherwise I won’t win this game of hide and seek.

Of course, all that is predicated on this actually being a game of hide and seek…

‘She may have mentioned that I, as an adult…no, as a teenager, an “ex-child”, that I can’t get into the head of a small girl who left her home, and that there’re a huge range of places to look for, from the top of walls to the insides of waterways, but on the other hand, she also advised me on ways to narrow things down. Small girls lack transportation.’

‘Transportation?’

‘She wouldn’t have driven a bike, let alone a car…chances are she’s only got slim pickings, so taxis are out of the equation, and neither would she go on a train or a bus. In summary, she’d be somewhere within walking distance of her house.’

That might have been an overstatement.

This is an extension of that second hypothesis, that the front tooth was dropped on the second day – but it’s true either way that a year five schoolgirl couldn’t go very far on her own two feet.

‘Why eliminate the possibility of a bicycle? Can primary schoolchildren not ride one on their own?’

‘That part isn’t definite, but she went missing whilst on her way back from school. If she came back home to grab her bike first, then that info would’ve been included in “the thing that stays in this room”.’

Benikujaku-chan’s bike went missing with her too – that’s the sort of sentence that would’ve been there. Strictly speaking, she could’ve rode a bike to and from school too, but this isn’t middle school or high school; I’ve scarcely heard of any primary schools allowing students to come and go via bicycle.

‘Obviously, I’m not completely sure. Maybe Benikujaku-chan started riding on a bike she picked up from the street, or she could’ve hitch-hiked if she’s brave enough. But we’d be here forever if we listed every possibility, so it’s better if we started small.’

This is completely against the done thing when it comes to searching for people; normally one would look through a large area before narrowing it down, but since I don’t have an army of people with me, it’s the best I can manage.

By the looks of it, should we start with a radius of a few kilometres from the Beniguchi residence?

‘’Tis a good approximation of the extents of walking distance. But I do think if that small child wanted her parents to be more worried, she would have walked even further away…however, my master.’

Shinobu said – she may be completely uninterested in finding small girls, but she seems willing to help me with it.

Is that how she’s going to waste the rest of her days?

‘That small girl doth not only have her own home as a base, doth she? ’Tis a small radius, yea, but from what I have been hearing –

You haven’t been though.

‘Compared to her house, would her school not be the place her life revolveth?’

‘Ah, I see…it’s a blind spot for me. I didn’t go to primary school much, you see…’

‘Useless for thee in pretending to be a rebel.’

I was actually very serious back in primary school.

The habit of skipping class only began after my fall in high school.

‘So in addition to a circle around the Beniguchi residence, we’d need another circle around the primary school…no, that’s not right.’

If we involve the school, things would get complicated really quickly.

Shinobu may have used that past episode of ‘looking for a cat’ as a jab against me, but while we were talking about where she would be, the idea of ‘hiding in a friend’s house’ did crop up.

On second thought, that’d be difficult to see happening.

If not outright impossible.

For another family to receive a child, even in the name of protection, would still count as imprisonment…though the reason I’m sure Oikura would receive her all the same was because she managed to do the exact thing herself with the Araragi household.

The only reason why it worked was because both my parents were policemen…you could also say it was still permissible back then.

If I did the same thing right now, it’d probably cause such a big problem that my parents would get fired…I normally dislike phrases such as ‘isn’t the past great’, but it is true that as people became smarter and as life became easy, human society gradually lost its capacity for generosity.

Then again, the same generosity also meant turning a blind eye to domestic violence or abuse…

‘But even if she isn’t hiding, if she goes to her friends’ house often, then we’d have to consider how familiar she is to her friends’ houses’ neighbourhoods, or parks where she and her classmates gather and play…tsk, I’ve never played with friends back in primary school, so I’m completely blind-sided by that.’

‘That doth make thee sound like a true rebel.’

‘I spent most of my time playing with my sisters’ friends.’

‘Actest thou so all along?’

Never expected you to take a jab at that…then again, even these days the people I meet the most isn’t my lover at university, or my friends, or my childhood playmate, it’s the friend of my junior in my alma mater.

That’s no good, I’ll have to play with Meniko more.

Go to Sodachi’s lodgings more often.

As for Hitagi-san, I’ll see her in the epilogue anyway…

‘My circle of friends aside, so if we determine Benikujaku’s feasible walking distance with the addition of her friends’, then that means widening the search radius – that’d mean the entire school district, right?’

‘Something like that.’

Assuming she’s in a state school, then I could find out where it is in an instant with my smartphone – then I’d have to find the school district…I don’t need Ononoki-chan for that, I can find it out myself (with my smartphone, that is), and it’s safe to assume that the Beniguchis’ house would also be within it.

Yet, even with that narrowing down, the area is still much larger than I imagined…could I really finish it in one night?

It could be difficult.

Should I make a U-turn and grab my car…? No, it’d be even harder to search for a girl with the window down. Remember the first half of the advice – small girls could go where cars (or adults, even) can’t.

‘Well, I’d just have to comb through the area as best I can…take it as a challenge. Moving on, rather than head to the Beniguchis, let’s head to the primary school first. It’d be embarrassing if we run into Ononoki-chan in the Beniguchis’ house.’

‘The same embarrassment one goeth through after bidding goodbye only to walk into the same lift together.’

A very specific example, that.

Ever after getting out of the car, Shinobu’s still toying with my smartphone…shame, really. When it comes to technological innovations, this young girl’s even more flexible than me.