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Monogatari Series - Volume 24 - Chapter 2.19




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019

‘Please excuse me, is this seat taken, please?’

Seconds after Hitagi left the cafeteria, with almost impeccable timing, as if they’ve been watching the whole time, someone asked to share a table with me.

‘Have they been waiting this whole time for an empty seat?’ I originally thought, but that wasn’t it…the cafeteria may be busy during lunch break, but there’re still a few seats available.

It’s a girl in a recruit suit.15

Or is it not a girl?

She…looks older than me, and the fact that she’s dressed like a jobseeker tells me she’s probably in her final year…although it also looks more like the suit was wearing the person, so maybe her penultimate year?

Regardless if she’s in her third or fourth year, she’s an adult either way, so saying ‘girl’ was rude of me.

Though hasn’t it become a trend these days?

Anyway, since Hitagi exited the cafeteria like a stage actress who missed her cue, all I can answer with was a –

‘It’s free.’

‘Thank you very much, thank you.’

The woman in the recruit suit nodded and sat.

To sit after me giving her permission; seems like she’s in full interviewee mode.

My senpai, huh…having changed jobs from the most senior year to the most junior, I’m still new to dealing with my senpais in university.

What’s going on, recruiting new society members? I thought that period had long gone…or is she looking for a successor, now that she found work?

What did she see in me? Right as I was in the middle of this confusion, a waiter approached us for our orders. The woman in the recruit suit answered, ‘A coffee, please. Black, please.’

‘Nice to meet you. Please, my name is Beniguchi Hibari.’

She then gave her name.

Beniguchi Hibari?

I think I’ve heard that somewhere before – isn’t what I’m thinking at all.

It’s a name I’ve heard only yesterday, and more than that, it’s a name I’ve seen yesterday, albeit crossed off with a line.

‘Beniguchi…-san?’

‘Ah, please, there is no need to be polite with honorifics. Please, we are in the same year.’

She said – yes, that’s it.

My junior’s (Higasa-chan’s) teammate’s (Shounou Mitono’s) senpai in middle school, that is, Beniguchi Hibari, should be in the same year as me – so a senpai of mine she isn’t. Neither is she in her third or fourth year; she’s no adult either.


But why the recruit suit?

‘Sorry, that would be because the companies have started recruiting for new recruits.’

She answered.

For real…? I haven’t even rid myself of a high schooler mindset. I guess this is what people mean by being ‘highly adroit’.

So that’s the difference between someone working hard to make ends meet, and someone complacently living in their parents’ house.

Come to think of it, I remember hearing about recruitment seminars or classes on interviews…I heard it from the one who sat in front of me just now, Senjougahara Hitagi.

Since now’s the best time to mention it, the girls’ dorms that Hitagi’s staying in are full of people like that – students living there are studying for their future, a bit like a private school of their own.

It’s a place where students go to university at day and live there at night – intermingling with every kind of student from every subject for four full years, a place where people develop and refine what they have.

Ahh, I see.

Ononoki-chan did say this – that Manase University was the first choice of Benikujaku-chan’s older sister…

Great to see she’s made it.

‘Do please excuse me, your name is Araragi Koyomi-san, is it?’

For her to tell me to drop the honorific, she’s awfully polite herself – feels inconsistent, if anything.

Or should I say, she’s probably too eager to ‘please’.16

Is there even a need to be this deferential in an interview? Even before thinking about ‘how do you know my name’, this seems a more burning question to ask Hibari-san – or more specifically, Benihibari’s [紅雲雀, lit. ‘red skylark’] attitude.

Mmm?

‘Ah, I have heard about you from Shounou Mitono-san, if you’ll excuse me.’

Benihibari answered the question I didn’t even had on my mind – about how she knew my name.

So I see.

A reverse engineering of the five circles.

But hang on, this only explains how she got my name, it doesn’t explain why she’s here with me.

She’s the one whose younger sister got kidnapped – to be honest, I originally had in mind someone who looked on top of things, but she looks restless and insecure.

Having thought that, it does make its own sense…because if she got wind of me witnessing that scene on the landing…

If it was confirmed to be a kidnapping, then the police would’ve already been mobilised – for an older sister who’s worried for her little sister after she left her alone, it’d be impossible to stay calm.

Ah, so she found me because she wanted more details about the case? Then how did she know I was the first one to witness it?

So even with an injunction, if there’s a place that leaks information, the leak’s still going to happen…frankly, with that brutal a scene, in front of a victim’s anxious relative, it’s too overbearing a task for me to walk them through; but with things having come to this, it’s an ‘interrogation’ I have to accept.

Or so I thought, but my hacky detective deduction has struck empty once again – no, it skirted the edge, but it got nowhere near the heart of the matter.

‘I am going to be straightforward with this, please, if you will excuse me, Araragi-san. Can you please help me, please? I am now suspected to have kidnapped my own younger sister.’

Benihibari said, her eyes shifting incessantly.





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