Monogatari Series - Volume 3 - Chapter 5.2

002

“Oh…Big Brother Koyomi. I was waiting for you.”

“………”

I’d been waited for.

After classes were over on Tuesday, June thirteenth, which promised to become a memorable day for me, I used every minute available after school to prepare for the last culture festival of my high school career that weekend, and the time was a little past six-thirty p.m., the place the front gates of Naoetsu Private High School. There, looking bored as she waited for me, was Nadeko Sengoku, one of my younger sister’s old friends, with whom I’d spent several aberration-related hours until the morning of that day, along with my junior Suruga Kanbaru.

The girl was wearing─a school uniform.

A middle school uniform that took me back.

Her uniform was a dress, rare for these parts.

She had a belt clasped around her waist─to which she’d attached a small pouch. And yes, given the circumstances, it only made sense, but I realized it was my first time ever seeing her in uniform. The dress looked good on Sengoku, with her generally childish appearance.

She wasn’t wearing a hat.

Her eyes, though, were still hidden by her long bangs. It seemed to be her default hairstyle…Whether it was pulling her hat down or letting her bangs overhang her face, she seemed thoroughly shy about making eye contact or even letting others see hers. Her shyness approached historic levels.

“H-Hey there.”

My greeting rang somewhat hollow, Sengoku’s sudden appearance having surprised me more than you’d expect. She was standing in the gate’s shadows, and her timing had been like a “Boo!” from someone lurking in a corner, though I was sure that wasn’t her intention.

“What’re you doing over here?” I asked.

“Oh, uh…Big Brother Koyomi.”

Sengoku seemed to be looking away from me as she spoke.

With her hair covering her eyes, I couldn’t even tell if she was.

Did she, at least, see me from in there?

Hmm… I have to admit, being called “Big Brother Koyomi” right outside of my own school was somewhat embarrassing… But if I told her to stop calling me that, I ran the risk of hurting Sengoku, as delicate as a newborn fawn…

While my reaction to seeing her was surprise, seeing me clearly put her at ease. Naturally, it took a decent amount of resolve for a second-year middle school student just to visit a high school, but she’d been feeling way more frightened than necessary. I couldn’t deal her a final blow… Luckily, the time of day was on our side. I’d stayed at school late, even among the students preparing for the culture festival, so the chance of any I knew passing by was close to nil. If someone did, my nickname would most definitely become “Big Brother Koyomi,” but the risk had to be slim.

“U-Um,” Sengoku said before falling silent.

I knew that she wasn’t talkative and that I had to bear the silence. If I couldn’t stand it and tried to fill the void, she’d just clam up even more. Still, and this is only a figure of speech, it was as if I was dealing with a timid little creature like a rabbit or a hamster…

Hmm.

It made me want to spoil her.

“I wanted to…thank you again,” she said at last. “You…really helped me.”

“Ah, I see… You were waiting all this time not knowing when I’d leave, just to tell me that? How long have you been here? If you came right after middle school─”

“Oh, no. I took today off. From school.”

“Huh?”

Right, of course.

Being in uniform didn’t mean that she’d been to school.

“Okay, so you didn’t go there afterwards.”

“No…I was sleepy.”

“……”

That line on its own, well, it made her sound like the carefree princess of some tropical island… While she’d technically gotten some shut-eye at the abandoned cram school the night before, in that awful environment, with only a plastic bottle as a pillow and other people right beside her, no wonder the utterly delicate Sengoku couldn’t sleep well. Even I couldn’t and went back to bed after getting home… Kanbaru was the weird one to sleep soundly in that environment. So then, afterwards, Sengoku had gone home and fallen asleep just like me─but unable to get back up, unlike me─had come to these school gates around the time I would be leaving. It was a weekday, and the uniform must have been her attempt to ward off any truancy officers.

“Yikes, today was the worst timing,” I said to her. “Didn’t I tell you? This high school is having a culture festival over the weekend, and we’re right in the middle of getting ready for it. Which is why I ended up leaving so late, my bad. Um, did I actually make you wait for more than two hours?”

“N-No.” Sengoku shook her head.

Huh? Classes normally ended at half past three, so I’d come up with that number assuming that she arrived at around four… Could she have gone off somewhere in between because I was taking so long?

“I started waiting at around two, so it’s been more than four hours…”

“What are you, stupid?!”

I ended up shouting at her with everything I had.

Waiting in front of the gates for over four hours… If anything, the uniform made her seem all the more suspicious in that case. It’s not like any high school’s classes finished at two. What were the security guards the place spent a fortune on doing all that time? Feeling soothed by a cute middle schooler?

“I-I’m sorry for being stupid.”

I’d been apologized to.

I’d never been apologized to before for such a reason…

“Still…I wanted to thank you… I just wanted to so much…so much that I couldn’t sit still…”

“What an upright girl you are…”

The word I really wanted to use was uptight.

To thank me, huh?

“In that case,” I said, “you should be thanking Kanbaru. She must have passed by here already, right? Did you not meet her? You and I are old acquaintances, while she did everything she could for you when you two barely had anything to do with each other. There aren’t a whole lot of people out there like her.”

In more ways than one.

I won’t go into detail, but it was the absolute truth that Kanbaru had worked selflessly to solve Sengoku’s case.

“Yes…I thought so, too,” Sengoku said timidly. “You and Miss Kanbaru saved me at the cost of your lives─”

“Hold on, hold on! We didn’t exactly sacrifice our lives to save you! Look, I’m alive right now!”

“Oh…that’s true.”

“Don’t just say stuff guided by your feelings… You surprised me there.”

“Yes… So I wanted to thank Miss Kanbaru again, too, but…”

“Huh? Oh, has Kanbaru not come by yet? I thought my class was the last to leave…but I guess it’s second-years who can put the most into culture festivals. First-years don’t know how things work, while third-years are busy preparing for entrance exams. She does seem like the type to find herself at the center of her class whether she likes it or not…”

“N-No. Miss Kanbaru came by here just half an hour ago or so.”

“Oh, she did? You didn’t call out to her because she was with her friends or something? She must have many.”

“No…she was alone, but…” Sengoku made a difficult face. “Before I could say anything, she ran past me so fast I almost couldn’t see her…”

“……”

Kanbaru must have been in a rush…

I assumed it was to do something immeasurably sublime, like finish reading the mountain of boys’ love novels she’d bought the day before, but Sengoku, who hesitated even to catch the attention of people she knew well, wasn’t going to stand in the way of a running Suruga Kanbaru.

“I thought she might run me over…”

“Yeah, I understand… I really do. I wouldn’t dare call out to Kanbaru while she’s speeding, either.”

“Yes… It was as if she was using takkyudo.”

“Why would you compare something she did to a special attack used by Prince Yamato, one of the main characters in Bikkuriman, of all things?! Not only are you making the situation harder to understand, you’re forcing my retort to essentially be straight commentary!”

“Yes… I didn’t think you’d get it.”

She seemed honestly surprised.

Man, it appeared as though she’d underestimated my abilities as the designated quipper… Okay, wrong time to be boasting.

“Still, middle school girls these days know about Bikkuriman? Maybe the characters’ names thanks to the new set of chocolates they’ve been selling, but the names of special attacks?”

“I watched it on DVD.”

“Ah, I see… We live in such a world of convenience. But either way, that’s a difficult reference to get. You could have at least compared it to a flash step.”

“Flash step… Um, is that when…flashing images begin to look like motion?”

“That’s called persistence of vision!”

“Oh, is it? But they’re similar.”

“Not one bit! Don’t lump together one of the most closely guarded secrets in all of martial arts and a basic optical illusion!”

When I yelled at Sengoku, she turned her back to me, and her shoulders began to quake. I fretted that my harsh comeback had made her cry, until I realized that she was desperately stifling a laugh. She was gasping for breath.

Right, she was quick to laugh.

Even when she was part of the exchange, it seemed…

“Big Brother Koyomi…you’re as funny as ever…”

So she said.

…I couldn’t remember well, but had that been my role as far back as elementary school?

The thought was kind of depressing…

Either way, Sengoku had it in her to be a fun conversation partner, after all. Maybe I wasn’t going all out with my comebacks, but I was quipping just fine. In fact, she’d been at the peak of her aberration troubles the day before…maybe she simply hadn’t had the necessary peace of mind. I was starting to want to test this introverted girl’s ability to draw out my skills.

She confided, “I was worried her shoes might not last if she ran at that kind of speed…but Miss Kanbaru did look very cool when she was running.”

“You’d better not fall for her. I don’t mean to take back what I said, but she’s a handful in her own way. I will admit, she’s as cool as they ever come nowadays… Fine, I’ll set up a chance for you to thank her properly, so you can─”

“Y-Yes. But…I also had another reason to see Miss Kanbaru.”

“You did?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm…”

I couldn’t think of any business Sengoku might have with Kanbaru other than thanking her, but then again, they’d spent no small amount of time together. Maybe they had made some kind of promise.

“If you want,” I offered, “I could handle it for you. I need to go thank Kanbaru, myself.”

Sengoku’s case─the case of Sengoku’s snake.

Had Kanbaru not gotten involved─it was dubious whether I’d be standing there talking with Sengoku. It had to be irritating to be on the receiving end of the same repeated apologies and thanks, but one last show of gratitude once we’d both settled back down didn’t seem out of the question.

“But…” said Sengoku, “I’d be bothering you.”

“Don’t stand on ceremony. I wouldn’t even think of it as a chore, so leave it to me.”

“Oh…then maybe I’ll ask you, Big Brother.”

Sengoku took two small, folded pieces of clothing out from the bag she carried.

Volleyball shorts and a school swimsuit.

“………”

Forget not having thought of them, I’d erased every trace of that business from my memory…

“I washed them, and wanted to give them back to Miss Kanbaru when I saw her…but if you can return them for me, please do. The sooner the better, after all.”

“Yeah…”

What a high bar!

Now this was a trial.

A guy receiving volleyball shorts and a school swimsuit from a middle school girl right outside his high school… If anyone I knew saw me, my nickname would somersault past “Big Brother Koyomi” and be, without question, “Pervert”!

But given our conversation, I couldn’t say no!

If this was a trap someone had set for me, how clever it was! O heavenly lord, the deeds you force upon me!

“O-Okay…I’ll hold onto these.”

Sure that I’d never see another occasion to receive the like, I took the two articles of clothing from Sengoku. As she handed them to me, for a brief moment she seemed somehow reluctant (perhaps she felt that she ought to return them herself, after all), but in the end she let go.

Hmmm.

This was a somewhat strange turn of events, though.

Today─was supposed to become memorable for me.

As our conversation ended, Sengoku began to blush, her eyes to the ground. Freed from the snake aberration, the gloom that enveloped her had thinned, but her naturally quiet nature seemed unchanged.

On a vague impulse.

I reached out toward Sengoku’s bangs.

“…Wha?”

I missed.

My hand touched nothing but air. Sengoku had pulled her downcast head to the side to elude me. I went after her bangs again, on another vague impulse, but this time she took a step back to shun my pursuit.

“…Wh-What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I dunno, just…”

Did she have to act so bothered?

These were quick movements that you’d never expect from the usually mild-mannered Sengoku. They say bangs can diminish your vision, but it didn’t seem to be an issue for her at all.

“…Hmm.”

I thought I’d try something.

I slipped my other hand downward to grab the hem of her one-piece uniform. The way she’d moved to keep me from touching her bangs reminded me of how a grade school girl might evade attempts to flip her skirt, so I was conducting a little experiment.

Yet Sengoku didn’t react to that hand. All she did was tilt her head to the side, as if she found it strange.

A thought came to me that I’d also had the day before.

This girl was far too pure for a middle schooler…

She was defending herself in all the wrong places.

I let go of her uniform right away.

“Facing you,” I said, “feels like a test of my mettle as a man…”

“…Because I don’t talk very much?”

“No, it’s not that…”

Because she doesn’t talk much, huh…

Oh…speaking of which.

“That’s right, Sengoku─there was something I wanted to ask you. May I?”

“Hm? What is it?”

“Nothing big… It’s about Shinobu.”

“Shinobu?”

“You know, that cute little blond girl at the ruined cram school. Maybe I never told you her name. Whatever. Anyway, did she say anything to you when I wasn’t around?”

“………?”

Sengoku made a puzzled face like she didn’t understand the point of my question before going ahead and replying in the negative.

“Uh-uh.”

Okay.

Well, I’d expected as much… I thought there might be some kind of shared ground between two silent girls, but upon further consideration, there was none between Shinobu, who used to be loquacious, and Sengoku, who’d always been taciturn…

Shinobu Oshino.

Blond hair and a helmet with a pair of goggles on top.

The beautiful girl who, along with Mèmè Oshino, my savior, currently called that abandoned cram school home─though their life there was too hollow to describe it as a home.

“That girl…is a vampire, right?” asked Sengoku.

It wasn’t something I could hide if I were to heal the wounds I’d suffered from exorcising her snake, so I’d already told her last night before going to bed with plastic bottles as our pillows. Since she’d been told about Kanbaru’s left arm to an extent as well, I didn’t have to tread lightly on the topic of aberrations around Sengoku.

Except when it came to Hachikuji.

And Hanekawa─but that aside.

“Ah… Well, now,” I answered, “she’s more like a mockery of a vampire than an actual vampire.”

Just as I was more a mockery of a human than an actual human.

That─was who she was.

“So it’s because of her─that you…”

“It wasn’t anything she did,” I denied. “I did it to myself. And─it’d be a mistake to hold aberrations accountable for anything. All they do is exist as they are.”

There’s a reason for every aberration.

It’s as simple as that.

“Yes, you’re…right,” Sengoku agreed with a solemn nod.

She seemed to be thinking about my words in relation to her own case. According to Oshino, hers had quite a different significance from the other instances I’d experienced until then, so it wouldn’t do to generalize…

“But unlike me and Kanbaru, you’ve been completely freed from your aberration. You shouldn’t worry yourself too much about it. All you need to do is go back to living a normal life.”

Because you─can go back.

She had to go back.

“Yes… That’s true, but now, I know that these things happen…that these things exist…and I doubt I can pretend that I don’t.”

“……”

Well, yes─I doubted anyone could.

It wasn’t as if Sengoku was uniquely timid. All in all, not many people are able to fight on a field where the rules of common sense don’t apply. Maybe in that regard, taking a step toward that world and staying there, like Kanbaru and me, was easier on you.

“For the time being,” I advised, “stay the hell away from ridiculous curses─that’s all I can say.”

“Yes…”

“I feel like Oshino said that people who become involved with aberrations are more likely to draw their attention again, but still, it has to do with your mindset. It sounds like things can balance out if you choose to avoid them. Well, just talk to me if anything happens. Did I give you my cell phone number?”

“Oh… No, not yet.”

I don’t have a cell phone, anyway, she said.

Right, maybe she’d told me that before.

“But,” I insisted, “you could still call me on mine. Here, take this down.”

“Okay…”

Sengoku looked bashful.

She also seemed somehow happy. Could it be that getting someone’s cell phone number felt pretty grown-up to her? She was in her second year of junior high, when you start wanting to act more mature. Of course, since I don’t have many friends and can’t deny feeling a little nervous when I exchange numbers even now, it’s not like I had any right to be poking fun at Sengoku.

She wrote my number on a fancy notepad that she carefully placed back in her waist bag. Wearing such a bag definitely clashed with her uniform, but she’d had it on even when I met her in the mountains, so it had to be a favorite item of hers.

“Then─let me give you my home number in return,” she said.

“Much appreciated.”

“If you need help, please call me, okay?”

“Uhh… Do you see that ever happening?”

“Big Brother Koyomi.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. I will.”

“You only need to say ‘yes’ once.”

“Do I now? But actually, if you’re ever in serious trouble, it’d be quicker if you went straight to Oshino… Though I guess a middle school girl visiting a shabby old dude unaccompanied is a little much.”

That awful man making an exception for Sengoku and acting oddly generous was still bugging me. It was probably nothing, but I wouldn’t want her going to that abandoned building alone, just in case.

Pedo suspect Mèmè Oshino…

“I-I don’t think…” stuttered Sengoku, “it’d be a problem.”

“Yeah, maybe not. But he just reminded me. We can’t go to him for every little thing that happens─like in that anime, always counting on Doraemon and his secret gadgets will make you as helpless as Nobita.”

“Y…es.” Sengoku nodded. “That amulet Mister Oshino gave us really was like a Doraemon device… Yup, like the Genius Helmet and Technology Gloves.”

“Why go out of your way to choose obscure ones that only ever appeared in the theatrical feature for your comparison?! Why not the Bamboo-Copter or the Anywhere Door?!”

“Wow, your comebacks are always so timely and precise…”

Sengoku seemed impressed.

The light of respect gleamed in her eyes.

What a thing to be respected for…

“By the way,” she continued.

“What?”

“People say that in the movie versions of Doraemon, Giant suddenly becomes a weirdly grownup and good-natured character, but shouldn’t they be saying that about Nobita more than anyone?”

“Where did that even come from?!”

“Huh? I don’t feel like I spoke out of context.”

“It might be connected, but it’s only connected! It’s a total tangent! Why would you go into greater depth about the Doraemon movies?!”

Though she was right, Giant barely grows at all in the films compared to the progress Nobita makes!

“I think,” she said, “Suneo is the one character who never experiences any growth, no matter what.”

“True, given his positioning as the local bully’s sidekick, it’d be hard for him to change, even in a negative direction… Wait, why are we going on about this?!”

At that, Sengoku fell silent.

She wasn’t trying to stifle a laugh this time. She really seemed down. Oh no, maybe I’d gone a little too far… Maybe she’d been trying her best, her quiet-person best to keep the conversation going, and yet, childishly enough, I’d yelled at her even if it was to play the straight man.

“I’m sorry,” Sengoku eventually said.

Agh. I felt awful.

“No, it’s not anything you need to apologize for…”

“I wanted to see how far you’d go making retorts, and I got carried away…”

“Well, if that’s the case, you ought to be saying a lot more sorries!”

She was the one testing me?!

My quipping was unlimited, but my patience was.

Look at this introverted girl, having her fun.

“When I said ‘by the way,’ I actually wasn’t planning on talking about Doraemon.”

“Oh… Aren’t you the little improviser. Okay, start again from there.”

“Okay. By the way.”

“What?”

“Well, it’s about Shinobu.”

Sengoku didn’t seem to know that repetition was key to playing the fool in a comedy duo, so she actually went back to the meat of our conversation instead of continuing to talk about Doraemon.

Hmm. I felt somehow unsatisfied.

If it were Hachikuji, she might have gone beyond repetition and even come up with something snappy to turn the tables.

Maybe we’d touched the limits of Sengoku’s abilities.

“What about her? You two didn’t talk.”

“No, but…” Sengoku said, “that girl was glaring at me the whole time.”

“…? Oh, don’t worry about that. She’s always looking at people that way. She glares like crazy. At me, and at Oshino, and at Kanbaru. It’s not just you, Sengoku.”

Getting stared at by a vampire, even a child vampire, might have been tough on the timid Sengoku. Then again, even I find that gaze dreadful, filled as it is with the kind of spite you’d expect from the classic ghost of Oiwa… So much more Nadeko Sengoku.

But she said, “No. I know that she glares at everyone… But she doesn’t look at me and Miss Kanbaru the same way she looks at you and Mister Oshino─I thought.”

“…Hm?” What the heck? I didn’t get it. “You’re saying she looks at men and women in different ways?”

“Yes… That’s it.”

“Huh.”

“I’m…sensitive to the way people look at me, so I can tell… It felt like for some reason, she hates Miss Kanbaru and me.”

“She hates you? That’s funny.”

Maybe not funny, but strange.

“Impossible” would be another way to put it.

Despite her current cute-kid appearance, on the inside she was an aberration, period, and at bottom she was a vampire, period─she basically wasn’t interested in humans. Whether it was Sengoku or Kanbaru, or me or Oshino, she’d see everyone the same way. I wasn’t sure if she actually differentiated between men and women.

Likes and dislikes, on top of that?

…Well.

I was an exception─maybe.

“But Sengoku, if you say so, I believe you… Why would that be, though? Maybe I’ll try asking Oshino next time I see him.”

“Mister Oshino? You’re not going to ask Shinobu directly?”

“She used to talk a lot, you know,” I said with a bitter smile. It was the only expression I had for the situation, really. “But now she’s closed her heart off and locked it tight. I haven’t heard her voice in over two months now. She’s kept mum the whole time.”

For over two months─ever since spring break.

Not a word had come from her mouth.

I hadn’t checked, because what would be the point, but I assumed it was the same for Oshino.

It couldn’t be helped.

There was no helping it.

“I see…”

“I find it impressive,” I said. “She has to have a lot to say, but she’s keeping it all in. Especially when it comes to me, there’s probably no end to what she’d like to tell me, and yet─”

Like her resentment.

Like her hatred.

She had to be bursting with it─but never put it into words.

Or maybe there were no words for how she felt, but she never confronted me with those unspeakable feelings, either.

“…Isn’t it the other way around?” asked Sengoku, puzzled. “Aren’t you actually the victim─”

“I’m the guilty one,” I interrupted. “I really am when it comes to Shinobu─I was a bigger perpetrator than you were a victim, Sengoku. I’d prefer not to go into details, if we could─but please, at the very least, don’t blame Shinobu for it.”

“Oh, okay…”

Sengoku nodded, but looked somewhat dissatisfied. I couldn’t fault her for not understanding how things stood between Shinobu and me, though. Even I don’t, not all that well.

There is one thing I do get.

I have to devote my whole life to Shinobu─because that’s the only way I, the guilty one, can atone for what I did.

Still─even though it can’t be helped.

Still, I do think.

I can’t help but think.

Will I never hear that vampire’s beautiful voice─ever again?

“Well.” To shatter the oppressive mood that was starting to come over us, I spoke in an upbeat tone. “It might be best if you never met Oshino or Shinobu again. It might be hard going back to life as usual when you know about these aberrations, but knowing also means you can work to avoid them.”

“Uh, yes… But I still need to thank Mister Oshino, too…”

“Hmm. I have a feeling he doesn’t really like that kind of thing… But you’re right. Never seeing him again might be for the best, but it does seem like a sad choice. Some tie must have brought you together.”

Not that I knew how to feel about ties wrought by an aberration.

…Then again.

Maybe I shouldn’t say that.

Hanekawa and I, Senjogahara and I, Hachikuji and I, Kanbaru and I─those were all ties brought about by aberrations. I knew how I felt about them.

The same went for my reunion with Sengoku.

“Say,” I added, “we were in a rush yesterday, and the situation being what it was, you were forced to hide, but you should see my little sister again sometime. I asked and she still remembers you.”

“O-Oh, really? Rara does?”

“Yep. So come to our house to play again when you have a chance.”

“Is that okay? I can go to your room and play, Big Brother Koyomi?”

“Yeah.”

Wait, it’d be an issue if she came to my room…

Our house, please, not my room.

“Wh-When? When can I?”

“Hmm. Well, I guess after the culture festival is over─”

Just then.

As I was mentally flipping through my upcoming schedule─

“Oh, Araragi, it’s you,” a voice came from behind me. “What are you doing out here?”

I turned to find Hanekawa.

Tsubasa Hanekawa.

My class’s class president─the model student who’d been hard at work preparing for the culture festival with me until just a while ago. It’d been my turn today to return the classroom key to the teacher’s lounge, and she should have gone home before me, so why was she walking up to me from behind?

Jogging up to me and coming around to my front, Hanekawa discovered Sengoku. Prior to exiting through the school gates, Hanekawa hadn’t seen the girl hiding behind my body.

“Oh… Um?”

“Ah. Hanekawa, this is the girl I told you about yesterday─” I began.

“E, e-e-e-e-excuse me!”

Pardoning herself in an utterly cracked voice, Sengoku turned tail and─while I’d never say it put Kanbaru to shame, the burst of speed did remind me of her─dashed away from the front gates of Naoetsu Private High School.

It was only a few seconds before she vanished from sight.

If anyone ever darted off like a hare, she had.

……

She took her people-phobia a little too far…

Are high schoolers really so frightening, Sengoku?

If this is how she was going to act around Hanekawa, how was I ever going to introduce her to Senjogahara? I’d considered inviting Sengoku to the culture festival depending on how things played out, but it didn’t look like she’d be able to set foot on the premises of a high school…

“Araragi,” Hanekawa said after a moment. “You know, I think that kind of hurt…”

“Yeah…”

No matter how gentle and tolerant Hanekawa was, she’d have to object to someone running off after nothing more than seeing her face─I bore little if any responsibility for the situation, but I still found myself feeling bad about it.

“Didn’t you go home before me?” I asked.

“I got tied up talking to Hoshina in the hall.”

“I see.”

Hoshina, our homeroom teacher.

Hanekawa was widely loved, after all.

“Er,” I began, “sorry I didn’t introduce you sooner, but…” By now it was too late. The person was already gone. “That girl just now is my little sister’s friend that I told you about yesterday. Her name is Nadeko Sengoku, and she’s a second-year middle schooler.”

“Huh… Oh, right. I wanted to ask you, Araragi─about, um, that snake. Whatever happened with that?”

So it was weighing on her after all.

I did leave a lot of things unresolved when I talked to her about it yesterday.

“Well,” I replied, “it got solved─though we ended up having to rely on Oshino yet again.”

“Hm. I don’t really understand, but okay, that was a quick resolution. So all it took was yesterday to close the case.”

“I wouldn’t say the case was solved…but sure, something like that. She was waiting here all this time because she wanted to thank me and Kanbaru. What a chump.”

“That isn’t something you ought to say about a person who went out of their way to thank you, Araragi.”

“Hey, that was just a manner of speaking─” I started to make an excuse for myself.

But then I stopped.

“Well, you’re right. I shouldn’t have been sarcastic.”

“Very good,” Hanekawa said, looking satisfied.

It was almost as if I’d been domesticated by her.

“She was an awfully cute girl, though. Sengoku, you said? Nadeko Sengoku. I want to say that uniform is from the middle school you graduated from.”

“You know everything, don’t you?”

“Not everything. I just know what I know.”

“Uh huh.”

Sure.

I guessed I could see her knowing that.

“I don’t know, though, Sengoku seemed incredibly shy…”

“Yeah… She’s so shy that she’d bring her own bag to the grocery store just because she’s too scared to answer a clerk when she gets asked ‘paper or plastic.’”

If you’re curious, that was entirely my own preconception of her.

I wasn’t saying it to put her down for no reason. I needed us to be able to laugh off her sudden escape, or else I’d feel bad for Hanekawa.

“Ahaha. Araragi, whether it’s Senjogahara or Kanbaru or Mayoi, you’ve been getting along with a whole bunch of cute girls lately.”

“Don’t put it that way, you’re making it sound like there are more than just those three.”

“There aren’t?”

“Nope,” I asserted, but it was a lie.

There was at least one more.

Tsubasa Hanekawa.

There’s you.

“Hm? What?” she asked.

“Nothing…”

I mean, if I called Hanekawa a cute girl to her face, she’d probably treat it as a simple act of sexual harassment… There was no need for me to incriminate myself.

“By the way, Araragi.”

“Yeah?”

“Didn’t you say you had something to do today? I thought that’s why you were in such a rush to go return the classroom key… Don’t tell me that important business of yours was a chat with a cute middle school girl.”

“No.”

“My impression of you as a ladies’ man gets stronger every day, Araragi.”

“No, it’s not that…” This was actually something that caused me distress. Hanekawa, at least, might get it. “I was being vague about it earlier, but I’ll explain because I don’t want you to misunderstand. The ‘something important’ I need to do involves Senjogahara. I didn’t want to tell you because it was embarrassing, that’s all.”

“Senjogahara, huh?”

Hmm, Hanekawa said with a doubtful expression.

As president, Hanekawa had to be frowning on a classmate who, even with the culture festival right around the corner, skipped out on any and all preparations with nothing more than an “I’m going to the hospital.” That was, of course, a big lie coming from Senjogahara, who was nothing close to ill, regardless of what may have been the case before. Then again, this was Hanekawa─just maybe she had figured out that was a falsehood. Actually, I felt like Senjogahara was overplaying that perceived trait of hers and it was wearing thin…

“Want to hear an interesting rumor?” Hanekawa asked.

“What is it? Doesn’t sound interesting, but I’ll listen.”

“Senjogahara has been acting weird ever since you became friends with her.”

“Urk.”

“You’re acting as a bad influence on Senjogahara.”

“Urrk.”

“That kind of thing.”

“Urrrk.”

What the hell.

Rumors?

“Hoshina just asked me, ‘Do you know anything, Hanekawa?’”

“Ungh…”

It was an irresponsible rumor─of course it was.

But while it was unpleasant, I couldn’t find it in myself to get upset… I felt like it was partially true, or at least I could understand why people might say that.

“I might’ve also been told that someone did or didn’t witness you walking arm-in-arm with Kanbaru, the second-year, on Sunday.”

“Nkk.”

That one was true.

Still, what a small town I lived in…

One full of snitches, too.

Hanekawa continued, “I don’t know exactly what caused you to become so friendly with Senjogahara─but I do think that more and more people are going to say that kind of thing about you from now on.”

“Yeah─they probably will.”

“So it’s going to be difficult. You’re going to have to prove that none of it is true.”

“……”

“You can’t have people saying unflattering things about Senjogahara─like she’s been no good after she started seeing a guy. I don’t think it’s fine for you to be talking to a cute middle school girl in front of the school gates.”

“…You’re right.”

I couldn’t offer a word in my own defense.

Senjogahara being cast in a poor light because of me was unacceptable. That might sound conceited, but I had to feel at least that much responsible for her.

“Say, Hanekawa. Aren’t there any about you?”

“Hm?”

“Those kinds of rumors. Like acting weird ever since you became friends with me.”

“Who knows. Even if there were, no one’s going to tell me to my face. Though I do doubt it. I haven’t changed, after all.”

“………”

She was right.

If any rumors did exist, they’d be the opposite─Araragi’s behavior improving ever since he became friends with Hanekawa, or something along those lines.

And that one─was also true.

It was hard to express just how much she saved me.

“Anyway, I did deny it,” she informed me. “I said I didn’t think any of that was true.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

“There’s no need to thank me. I spoke my mind, that’s all.”

“Ah. But do you really feel that way?”

“Huh?”

“That─none of it is true.”

“Oh. Yeah, of course. I’ve never lied before in my life.”

“You might be the only person I know who dares to say that and isn’t a liar.”

“Really? There must be plenty. Yes, that’s right─if anything, I think Senjogahara is headed in a good direction.”

Though I don’t think it’s good for her to be skipping out on work─Hanekawa said. So it was obvious to her that Senjogahara was lying. In fact, how would you ever hope to hide something from a class president who knows everything?

“I’m not sure whether it was getting over her illness or thanks to you─but you do need to stand by her to support her as she changes.”

“…That doesn’t sound like anything a high schooler would say, you know that?”

“Really? It’s just normal.”

“Okay.”

One of Tsubasa Hanekawa’s unique traits was her conviction that she was “normal”…but if she was normal, what rank in the world did that put me in?

A thought came to me.

For a while now, and that included the present moment, this class president here had a lot of opinions regarding the subtleties of romance and relations between the sexes, but did she have someone like that to begin with?

She was kind to everyone─but.

Did she have a special someone?

I never even got a hint of that being the case, but maybe serious girls like her did have a proper partner. Or didn’t. Hmm, I hadn’t thought about it…

“Hey, Hanekawa─”

“Yes?” she asked in reply, puzzled.

Agh…

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t ask…

If I may borrow a page from Sengoku and make a Bikkuriman reference, merely mouthing such a question felt impure when Tsubasa Hanekawa was bathing me in the powerful white light of seriousness that she gave off naturally as if she were Arrow Angel.

“What is it, Araragi?” she asked again with her innocuous gaze.

Gah… I didn’t know why, but it was like I’d been cornered. Was this how the culprit felt right before he got pushed into confessing by a famed detective? Damn, an “actually, never mind” wasn’t going to work on her now that I started to ask, not with the way she is. I needed to pose a question. Ack, I was regretting this no less than the time I tried using two different-colored bath bombs.

“Uh, well, those secret gadgets that Doraemon uses─”

Having run out of options, I turned to Doraemon talk as a last resort but was only halfway through when Hanekawa interrupted me with a murmur.

“Ouch.”

Ouch… Was she talking about me? Was she cringing because I, a high school senior, was bringing up Doraemon (and as a desperate measure, at that)? Even though it was fine for middle schoolers?

I was consumed by paranoid thoughts for a moment, but no, Hanekawa had her fingertips to her head. In other words─she probably had a headache. And while much of the previous day had blurred together, what with how messy it had been, she did say something like that then, too…

“Hey─are you okay?”

“Yes… Yes, I am,” Hanekawa assured me.

The smile she pointed in my direction was indeed unclouded─but that would mean her earlier utterance was false.

I’ve never lied before in my life?

Just look, though─that was a lie.

“We could go to the nurse’s room─no, Harukami must have left by now, too. In that case, we could go to a hospital─”

“I said I’m okay. You’re overreacting, Araragi. All I have to do is go home and study a bit for it to go away.”

“You seriously believe that studying cures headaches…”

She was, quite simply, bizarre about these things.

She thought in different ways from the rest of us.

“You said it’s been happening a lot lately, right? What if it’s something terrible?”

“You’re worrying too much. You can be pretty lily-livered sometimes, you know? And forget about that, Araragi. Do you understand what I told you? And understanding me isn’t enough. You need to put it into practice, too.”

“Yeah, I get it.”

Forget about that.

Putting others ahead of yourself.

On that point, too─I thought she was a weirdo.

But.

“Sorry for making you fuss over me so much,” I said.

“It’s not like I mind. But anyway, if you understand what I’m trying to tell you, Araragi…” Hanekawa let out what sounded like a forced cough before continuing, “Why not start by putting away those volleyball shorts and school swimsuit you’re cradling like some kind of treasure?”