005
Though the preliminary inspection for a birthday party had been hit with some unexpected developments, well, there was still some time before Senjougahara’s birthday—the weather seemed like it was getting worse, and I could come back to this shrine whenever I wanted, so it felt like more of a priority to make sure Mayumi-kun reached the station safely.
The idea of closing his eyes to block his unnaturally good eyesight and erase the existence of the piranha was not too bad, so if I simply became Mayumi-kun’s eyes and walking stick, then going down the mountain safely shouldn’t be too difficult.
Although, if you asked me, as someone who’d fought against invisible oddities before, then honestly, there were still some points of concern regarding this plan… However, right now, getting down the mountain before the weather became even worse was of the highest priority.
“Hey, it’s actually more dangerous if you don’t stick close to me. Just think of it like a three-legged race. I can see why you might be feeling reserved, but there’s no need for that awkwardness.”
“It’s true that it feels awkward, but by no means am I just being reserved…”
“If you want, I don’t mind giving you a piggyback ride, all right?”
“No, if you do that, then I’ll be found out… Er, I mean, I couldn’t allow you to spoil me like that. It’s already bad enough that you’re acting as a walking stick for me. I mean, it’s already enough.” “Is that so? Well, that’s fine, then…” I didn’t really mind spoiling him, though.
Perhaps, like Oshino, he held the same belief that “people could only save themselves”—or maybe he was simply just being shy.
In that case, we had no choice but to keep proceeding down the mountain unsteadily like this, with our arms and shoulders pressed up against one another. Even though I was acting like I was in fear of a major disaster, considering the way he fell so dramatically back there, doing this wasn’t even really an exaggeration.
Incidentally, if he were simply closing his eyes, then there was a risk that he might open them reflexively if he stumbled a bit, so Mayumi-kun was also blindfolded.
He’d untied the necktie around his neck and used it as an eye mask, but when combined with his pretty boy nature, it made him look weirdly sensual… But, right now, it wasn’t the time to be concerned about his looks.
I figured it would be better to avoid talking about the piranha until we got off the mountain, but seeing as his eyes were blocked off, it would be really depressing if we didn’t talk at all, so along the way, I tried to deliberately engage Mayumi-kun in some conversation. But as a result, I realized that my first impression of the darkness he emanated had not been wrong at all.
For example, he would say things like,
“I don’t like being misunderstood, but being understood in itself is also something that I don’t really like,” and like,
“I respect figure skaters. Because, even when they fall partway through, they absolutely get back up and finish skating to the end, right? If it were me, I would 100% get sick of it and quit when I fell down. Like a yokozuna that refuses to appear after a series of defeats,” and like,
“They call him the ‘faithful dog Hachiko’, but considering that dog was given such an unaffectionate name like ‘Hachiko’, it’s hard to think that he was faithful to humans at all,” and like,
“When you talk about intelligence, then ultimately, it just refers to the amount of endurance you have to study continuously for long periods of time. In the end, you just can’t win against the physical types,” and so on, and basically everything he said was negative, to the point that it seemed like he would swallow up his surroundings with his darkness.
But, well, even so, since it was a middle schooler saying those things, it still seemed pretty cute, so I earnestly tried to respond to each and every one of his sayings with things like, “You might just be misunderstanding that you’re being misunderstood,” and like, “Figure skaters still have upcoming competitions, after all. If they gave up halfway, then they’d lose their next chance, too. And it’s not like yokozuna stop appearing in matches because they got sick of it,” and like, “I don’t know about the ‘ko’ part, but ‘Hachi’ part of the name actually has a surprising amount of affection to it,” and so on.
However, regarding his point about intelligence being the endurance you needed to pull all-nighters studying, then considering the fact that I’d used my endurance as a former vampire to study for my entrance exams, it was hard to refute—even the members of Team Good Girls, Senjougahara and Hanekawa, had some pretty good endurance, too.
But for someone as negative as Mayumi-kun, who got all depressed and frightened, to keep up the attitude of trying to go down the mountain without giving up—I felt that it was pretty hard to explain that away as him just having guts.
What made him go so far?
“I don’t have any guts at all. If I were alone, I would’ve given up long ago.”
“Is that so? So because I’m here for you, you can keep going? I wasn’t doing this just because I wanted to hear that from you, but it isn’t bad at all to hear something like that.”
“Ah, no, I wasn’t talking about you…” said Mayumi-kun.
In the complete opposite way of the aforementioned concept of “people can only save themselves”—though Mayumi-kun was pessimistic even regarding his eyesight that should’ve been a strong point for him, he sounded just a bit triumphant for this subject alone.
“No matter where I am, I’m still a member, after all. And I know very well that those guys would never give up, even in a situation like this.”
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8 The highest rank a sumo wrestler can attain.
9 This refers to the story of a Japanese dog who waited for almost ten years for his owner’s return after he died. Hachiko was remembered in Japanese culture as a symbol of loyalty.
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