Monogatari Series - Volume 25 - Chapter 14.01

Chapter Trick- Rai Roulette

001 

It all began when I, a 23-year-old in the middle of my probationary period to be an assistant inspector of the Naoetsu Police Department’s Rumors Squad, received a report that one Fudatsuki Rai was, outrageously, running a casino out of the gymnasium of the Tsuganoki Second Middle School. 

Though when I said report, I didn’t mean anything official. My younger sister, Officer Araragi Karen of the Naoetsu Police Department’s Community Safety Division, formerly known as the enforcer of the Tsuganoki Second Middle School Fire Sisters, popped by to ask me about it after hearing rumors. 

She didn’t hide her anger. 

“I don’t know who this kid is, but nobody’s allowed to mess around in my old school. I’d like to just go in there and teach this kid a lesson, but it’s a ‘delicate situation’, so I haven’t even reported the information I gathered to the upstairs yet.” 

I, of course, tried to get her to report it, but I could understand why she didn’t. If word got out that a middle school had been playing host to gambling activities every night, it would be a massive scandal. It wouldn’t end with the arrest of the ringleader of the gambling either, as all of the other students who went there would be treated as accomplices. To say that the private school’s reputation would be dragged through the mud would be an understatement. 

It was truly a big mess. 

I was forced to think of a conman from another time as I considered how skillfully this person had managed to get so many middle school students from the area involved. Not only that, but the kid didn’t even attend the school that he was using for his gambling, AND this Fudatsuki Rai was only a 15-year-old middle school student himself. 

Nevertheless, it was the duty of the police department to act in cases like this. 

“Alright. Listen. I didn’t become a cop to protect the law; I became a cop to protect the futures of children.” 

I felt impressed for the first time in a while hearing my mischievous little sister say that. It was impressive that she’d managed to get through three years of high school without becoming twisted like me. 

She still had the same mentality she’d had in middle school. 

I deeply respected that. 

Ignoring how my middle-school-mentality little sister talked rudely to her older brother… Especially considering the sorry state of my current affairs. Anyway, it wouldn’t do to just leave this matter unaddressed. But even if the investigation was limited to the Araragi siblings, how could we approach resolving this? “That’s it, niichan.” What’s it? 

“That casino is currently limiting itself to Tsuganoki Second Middle School students. If you look at it the other way around, it doesn’t matter who you are—as long as you’re a student of the school, you’re let in and welcomed. Which means infiltrating that soon-to-be-closed school as an alumni should be a viable means of investigating.” 

Saying that the school was soon-to-be-closed seemed a bit much to me, but okay—get out the school uniform and student ID from the closet, where they’d been stored for the last four years. Preparing a costume and a fake ID from scratch would take a long time and a lot of effort, but if we already had access to them, we could simply make a few modifications and it would be done in no time. However, there was a problem. 

And it was a big problem. 

Officer Araragi had been pretty tall when she was in junior high school, but she’d grown even more since then. She was over 180 centimeters tall and was probably pushing 190 centimeters. If a girl that tall was attending the school, everyone would have noticed her already. Even if she had not grown an inch from the time when she unironically called herself an ally of justice, her body had developed in a way that marked her as an adult. 

“I see. So…” 

Officer Araragi seemed disappointed when I said as much. 

She then told Assistant Inspector Araragi, “I’ll let you borrow my uniform, so my beloved niichan, who hasn’t grown an inch since middle school, will have to be the one to infiltrate.”