Monogatari Series - Volume 3 - Chapter 5.5

005

That park─I still didn’t know if its name was read “Rohaku” or “Namishiro” or something else entirely. And if I still didn’t know, I doubted I ever would─but speaking of memorable, perhaps the park was a place to remember.

Because of that one Mother’s Day─when I arrived at this park that lacked any playground equipment other than a swing, after wandering around on my beloved mountain bike (back when it still took that shape), and ran into Senjogahara who was out on a walk and encountered a lost Mayoi Hachikuji.

And I still remembered.

That day─not only did I happen to meet those two, but I also saw Tsubasa Hanekawa. Yes, she’d told me something then─that she lived in the area.

The fact that her text asked me to meet at the very same park was neither a coincidence nor, I thought, some allusion. In her wisdom, Hanekawa simply chose the one landmark near her home that I knew, this park with the indecipherable name. Her deft hand when it came to these matters always had my vote.

Yes─

Tsubasa Hanekawa had sent me that message.

Forget about the warning bell, the late bell had gone off long ago. Not only that, it took a bit of time to arrive at the park. It was in an unfamiliar area, and I’d only been to it once after going wherever the streets took me. Despite it all, around the end of the first period I managed to appear in front of Hanekawa, who was sitting on a bench with her back rounded, shrinking.

Her appearance gave off a very different impression than usual.

It was extreme even for a makeover.

Her light long-sleeved sweater almost seemed to conceal her upper body and had noticeably long arms. The pants that protruded from below it were also baggy. They were pink, a gaudy color to wear for just stepping outside─and instead of the school-specified plain white socks and shoes that she customarily stuck to, she now opted for the more carefree bare feet and sandals.

Her glasses were the same as ever, but her braids had come undone. No, that wasn’t entirely correct. Not even a class president among class presidents, elected not by her classmates but the gods themselves, was born with her hair braided. Especially this early in the morning─the right way to put it was that she had yet to tie her hair in braids. It was the first time I’d seen Hanekawa with her hair untied… Naturally enough, it seemed fairly long now that it wasn’t. Longer than Senjogahara’s, from the looks of it.

Hanekawa was wearing a hunting cap on top of that hair.

A hat was another first.

“…Oh, Araragi.”

Hanekawa finally noticed me. Cradling herself and looking down at the ground, she must not have even though I was standing right in front of her.

Her expression was a touch uneasy.

Or so it seemed to me.

“Tut-tut,” she cautioned me first thing. “You shouldn’t ride your bike all the way into the park. They have bike parking, so you need to use it.”

That’s Hanekawa for you.

“Now’s not the time,” I reminded her. “Are you going to scold me about my bicycle of all things after making me skip school?”

“This and that are separate issues. Now hurry up and park it.”

“……”

Hmph. She really wasn’t having any of it.

Was she not going to start with some words of gratitude for me? I had run over to her like a faithful little dog.

But nothing was going to come of complaining here.

Hanekawa was right, too.

Saying “Fine,” I got off my bike and pushed it to the distant parking area. The same rusted and broken-down bicycles from May fourteenth were still parked there, unchanged. I put my bike next to them and locked it. Since there were still no signs of any man, woman, or child in the park (this seemed to be a constant, whether it was a weekday or a holiday), I didn’t see much point in locking up my bike…

I returned to the park.

Hanekawa was sitting on the bench.

The light sweater was hiding some of her baggy pants, but I was certain they were pajamas, given their color and material… So that meant she was wearing pajamas on the top, too? And her sandals looked like slip-ons. Had she woken up, gotten straight out of bed, put on nothing more than a sweater, and left home?

“I’m sorry, Araragi,” she apologized to me when I returned.

Though they weren’t words of gratitude.

“I made you skip school.”

“Oh, never mind,” I said. “Did it come across that way to you? I wasn’t trying to be sarcastic.”

“Don’t worry, though─I calculated it all out. You won’t have any problems at all given today’s schedule, even if you skip the whole day.”

“……”

Those were nasty calculations.

To be doing that even when she asked for help…

She really did think too hard about everything. Didn’t that mean she wouldn’t have sent me the text if the day’s scheduling caused a problem for my attendance or some other issue?

She thought too much about consequences.

I tried asking, “With the class president and vice president missing, what’s going to happen to the culture festival prep? Do you have some kind of plan for that, too?”

“I called the teacher’s lounge after sending you that text… I told Hoshina about the work that needs to be done today and how to do it.”

“…”

God, she had her act together.

How about the way she called our teacher after texting me so she could make good use of her time waiting at the park?

“Senjogahara is going to be in charge after school,” Hanekawa informed me.

“What? Are you sure you’re not making a mistake?”

My girlfriend hated nothing more than working with, and for, others. I could imagine no greater hybrid of the two than preparing for a culture festival. No “Caution: Do Not Mix” warning could be big enough.

“Senjogahara skipped yesterday. This is to make up for that.”

“Hunh…”

Against Hanekawa, all of Senjogahara’s audacity and defiance amounted to nothing… Well, our class still saw her as the cloistered princess, so if asked, she would at least carry out her duties no doubt…

“I’m glad you’re a good person,” I said. “There’s no one more calculating than you, so just imagine what would happen if you used that brain of yours for evil.”

“That’s not true. As far as how calculating I am…it was pretty risky of me to bet on your cell phone being on. I couldn’t try calling you first, either, because you might already be on the premises at that hour…”

“Huh? Couldn’t you call and hang up after one ring if you wanted to see if my phone was on?”

“If I did, you’d try to call me back, being the principled person you are. Right?”

“Oh, so you’d even seen through my personality.”

So receiving a text was fine, but calling back wasn’t… That was pretty subtle. It seemed like a tough choice for Hanekawa, too. I’d thought I didn’t have the time, but now I was glad I’d texted her back at a stop light on my way to the park.

My chat with Hachikuji had been meaningful, then─if I’d arrived at school earlier, I’d have turned my phone off in our classroom.

……

Well, putting that aside.

Knowing that someone was in her pajamas flustered me even if that someone was Hanekawa… It was my first time witnessing something as extraordinary as a girl in her nightwear (cases involving my two little sisters don’t count).

Her sweater was the one lamentable part. I could make out only the pants, and just from the legs down, which lacked that finishing touch…or should I say, it had the final touch and nothing else? People talk about tantalizing glimpses, but this felt like starving.

Wasn’t there some way to get that bland thing off of her?

You know, like in “The North Wind and the Sun.”

“Hey, Hanekawa.”

“What?”

“Er─Miss Hanekawa.”

“Miss?”

“Allow me to take your sweater for you.”

“……”

Ack.

She couldn’t have looked any more unamused.

I had tried my best to imitate a waiter at a fancy restaurant greeting a valued customer, but that charade wasn’t going to be persuasive in an open-air park.

“Araragi.”

“Yes?”

“You’re going to make me mad.”

“…I’m sorry.”

It was a beam of blinding sobriety.

I felt like getting on all fours and begging for her forgiveness.

“All right,” I said, “enough joking around─what happened, Hanekawa? You didn’t tell me what the actual problem was in your message, but…is it those headaches?”

“Yeah─the headaches…” Hanekawa said slowly, “are gone now.”

“Oh? They are?”

“I guess you could say they’ve ended…”

Hanekawa was choosing her words carefully.

Choosing─or rather, she couldn’t express herself without coining new ones, such seemed to be her situation.

I had an idea what it was, to be honest.

I did.

“Um─Araragi? About Golden Week. I…remembered.”

“Oh─you did.”

Her headache.

That─was the significance of her headaches.

“Well, maybe not,” she continued. “It’s more like I remembered that I’m forgetting something…but no matter how hard I try, I can only recall a hazy image.”

“Oh─yeah, I’d imagine as much. It shouldn’t be possible for you to remember it all to the end.”

Actually, remembering that she’d ever forgotten should have been impossible for her in the first place. Hanekawa was never supposed to recall those nine nightmarish days─

And yet.

“Until now…I’d vaguely known that you and Mister Oshino saved me, but…it’s so strange. Not only could I not remember how, but from what─it’s like I was under some weird hypnosis.”

“Hypnosis, huh…”

Well, it was something else entirely.

But I could see where she was coming from.

She said, “I still don’t feel a hundred percent about this─but I’m glad I remembered. At last, I can give you and Mister Oshino my proper thanks.”

“Oh─but we didn’t save you. As Oshino says─”

“I just went and got saved on my own─right?”

“Right.”

Absolutely right.

Especially when it came to me. I hadn’t done a thing.

When it came to the case of Hanekawa’s cat, Shinobu had done the most. If there was anyone whom Hanekawa needed to thank, it wasn’t me or Mèmè Oshino, but Shinobu Oshino, the little blonde.

“A cat,” Hanekawa said. “A cat─right?”

“…”

“I recalled that part─the cat from back then, right? The one you and I buried together─that cat. Yeah…I recalled that part.”

“Well─you were still you back then.”

“Huh?”

“Er, nothing─but Hanekawa. You didn’t summon me here just because you remembered─did you?”

No matter how much my attendance record wasn’t going to be an issue, she wasn’t going to make me play hooky over something like that.

Not only had she remembered, there was something after that─the recollection had to be secondary.

“That’s right,” Hanekawa affirmed.

She was still resolute despite her situation─people with her kind of mental fortitude really were different. This was in a different league from my conversation with Sengoku the day before yesterday.

“An aberration…”

An aberration.

There was a reason for an aberration.

“Yes…which is why,” Hanekawa said, looking at me, “I was hoping you could take me to Mister Oshino’s place… He still lives in that abandoned cram school, doesn’t he? I know that much, but I just couldn’t figure out how to get there─”

“……”

It wasn’t that she didn’t know.

She’d forgotten.

The place had gone under, so a map could only help so much… Maybe it wasn’t impossible if she unearthed an old map, but it would take too long, and time was of the essence here. She must have decided that sending me an SOS was faster.

“Could you show me the way?” she requested.

“Yeah, of course─”

I had no reason to say no.

Although Oshino was probably asleep at this hour of the morning and we’d be interrupting his slumber, that wasn’t something I needed to be bringing up. He tended to wake up on the wrong side of bed, maybe because of low blood pressure or something…but we had to do this anyway.

“─Of course,” I said, “but could I ask you a few questions first?”

“Um…sure, but why?”

“I’m constantly relying on Oshino when it comes to every little thing relating to aberrations. We need to keep on trying to do as much as we can by ourselves. Even if we end up dumping the whole thing onto him, we should at least get the story straight before we do.”

“Oh… Yes, you’re right.” Hanekawa sounded convinced. “Okay, ask me anything you want.”

“You had headaches, right? You said you’ve been having a lot of them lately, but when exactly did they start?”

“When exactly…”

“You would remember.”

“…About a month ago, I guess? Hm, but while they weren’t so bad at first…yesterday and the day before─I was with you both times, at the bookstore and in front of school─they were actually pretty bad.”

“You should’ve told me.”

“Sorry. I didn’t want you to worry.”

“Whatever, it’s fine. Okay, then… Did you have any episodes involving cats after Golden Week?”

“Episodes involving cats?”

“Even something like a black cat crossing your path.”

“……”

Hanekawa closed her eyes and made a show of sifting through her memories.

Frankly, I wasn’t sure if it was the kind of thing you could remember if you tried…but then again, she was “the real deal” who lived in a different world, even according to Senjogahara…

Try to apply common sense to her and you’d end up hurt.

Which is precisely why─she was visited by an aberration.

“On the night of May twenty-seventh, I was listening to a radio program when a message by one ‘Bearcat Lover’ was read on the air. Could that have something to do with it?”

“…No, I don’t think so.”

Oh my god.

I knew, but oh my god.

“By the way, the letter went, ‘While maids are shown leading fun and carefree lives in manga and anime, being a maid is a surprisingly difficult job. It’s not all about being cute and saying ‘moé moé!’ From what I understand, they barely have any time to themselves. I’m sure of it, because that’s what I was told the other day at a mixer.’”

“Really, you don’t have to explain all that!”

“What do you think is so interesting about that letter, Araragi? I had a hard time understanding.”

“Um, it’s supposed to be funny because the maid says there’s barely any time she has to herself when she’s off at a fun and carefree mixer, meeting guys─and why do I have to fill in the gaps that this ‘Bearcat Lover’ left in the story for you?!”

“Oh, so when it said ‘told the other day at a mixer,’ it means told by a maid. I see, it might be amusing if you interpret it that way. But I do think it’s a bit hard to understand if you only get to hear it once.”

“And now that I think about it, bearcats aren’t cats, they’re more like civets.”

“Yes, I guess you’re right.”

“Anything else?”

“Hm? Anything else? Well, there was one ‘Oracle’s Auricle’ on the same program. ‘A little while back, I was playing cards with two friends and we decided to play President. After we dealt out the cards, one of my friends said something. ‘So at my middle school, we played with a rule where 4’s were the highest card.’ This was a listener’s corner so I imagine it was a true story, but what’s so funny about it?”

“No, when I asked you if you had anything else, I didn’t mean other listener letters that you couldn’t find the humor in! But well, you have to listen to that story knowing that President has a lot of local variants, whether that means 8’s are played as the highest card or that if Presidents fail to keep their position they automatically become the asshole. You’re supposed to laugh because the friend used the existence of all these variants as an excuse to make up a rule that would make his hand better!”

“Oh, I see. I can always count on you, Araragi.”

“You can be as impressed as you want, but I’m not going to take it as a compliment… Oh, and I guess the handle ‘Oracle’s Auricle’ is also a little joke in that it might actually be ‘Oracle’s Oracle’ or even ‘Auricle’s Oracle’ but you wouldn’t know for sure.”

“Oh, but it’s not as if every letter they read on that program is hard to understand. Some of them are regular, funny letters. There was another true story during that same listener’s corner from ‘Ain’t Nothin’ Like a Found Dog.’ ‘I went to a video rental store the other day with my friend. I wanted to borrow the DVDs for this drama series that aired about three years ago, but someone else had rented volume eight of a set of thirteen, so I could only get up to volume seven. I was disappointed because I’d heard the end of the series is its best part. It was only that eighth volume that they didn’t have, while nine through thirteen were all there on the shelf. When I told my friend, “It’s like I’m playing Sevens and I’ve been cut off at the eights,” my friend replied, “I bet whoever has volume eight is chuckling right now.”’ Haha, get it? Because whoever has volume eight doesn’t see it as playing Sevens at all!”

“I’ll admit that might be funny, but enough about the radio!”

But we digressed.

Anyway.

If that was all she could come up with as far as memories relating to cats, maybe we should consider the current case to be last time’s leftovers?

We probably should.

“All right, Hanekawa. Next question.”

“Okay.”

“That hat,” I said. “Would you take it off for me?”

“…That’s─” Hanekawa’s expression changed. “That’s not a question, Araragi.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“I know it’s not.”

“Miss Hanekawa. Allow me to take your hat for you.”

“Araragi.”

“Yes?”

“You’re going to make me mad.”

“Then be mad,” I said, not faltering despite Hanekawa’s threatening glare. “If you want to get mad, get mad. You can even hate me if you want, I don’t care. Paying back what I owe you is a lot more important to me than our friendship.”

“Paying me back? What…” Hanekawa’s voice grew a bit softer, as if my words had made her feel awkward. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about spring break.”

“That’s─but that was just… That, if anything, was a case of just going and getting saved on your own─no?”

“No. Oshino might say so, but I think you saved me. You saved my life.”

It felt like I’d finally been able to say it.

Right.

If either of us needed to properly thank the other─then I did.

“I don’t think I can ever pay you back in full,” I told her. “But I want you to let me do something for you. I’ll do anything, everything for you. And if you get mad or hate me in the process, so be it.”

“So be it, huh?” Hanekawa laughed─just a little.

No, perhaps she cried.

I couldn’t tell.

“Oh, get over yourself,” she said.

“Really?”

“This is you we’re talking about, Araragi. Do you really think you’re so great?”

“…That line belongs to some neighborhood bully.”

And not to a model student.

Yes, you’re right, Hanekawa said, and then─“Don’t laugh.”

She took off her hat.

“………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………”

She had cat ears.

A pair of cute cat ears protruded from Hanekawa’s little head.

I bit my lip in silence.

So hard that blood began to ooze from it.

…Don’t laugh…

I’d just acted serious in getting her to do this. I mustn’t laugh… I’d finally gotten her to agree after crafting the most serious and solemn excuse I could come up with. It’d be a textbook manga gag if I burst into laughter and ridiculed her, but I swore that I wouldn’t…

Still, the cat ears went well on her. It was as if they were tailor-made to go along with her neat and straight bangs. A thought I first had during Golden Week came back to me: she’d been born to wear a pair of cat ears on her head someday…

That said.

During the Golden Week nightmare, it was never Hanekawa as herself with cat ears─so she was blowing me away now. I see, I thought, so the color of the fur on her ears in this case was black, the same as her hair…

It still was no excuse to laugh.

She really would hate me then.

I’d said I wouldn’t mind if she did, but I preferred to avoid that outcome at the end of the day. It’s depressing to be hated by a decent person who even saved your life.

“A-Are we done?”

Hanekawa sounded embarrassed.

It was rare to see her cheeks so tinged with color.

And she had cat ears!

“Oh, yeah…sure. Thanks.”

“Why are you thanking me?” she said, putting her hat back on. She wore it deep and avoided my eyes. It was similar to when Kanbaru showed me her left arm or when Sengoku showed us her body…but Hanekawa’s cat ears were on a different plane.

To the point where I wanted to thank her.

Thank you so much.

“Well…okay, I think I get it,” I said. “It really is like we’re picking up where Golden Week left off. So I guess it wasn’t all over…”

The headaches must have been from the ears growing on her head.

Easy enough to understand if you thought of it that way.

Like wisdom teeth growing in.

“Picking up where Golden Week left off?” asked Hanekawa. “So you mean─the stuff I forgot.”

“You’re better off forgetting.”

“Yes, I’m sure…but I don’t know, it just feels so unpleasant to have a hole in my memory. Like I’m lacking whatever ought to be there.”

It wasn’t a lack that she was feeling.

It was probably─loss.

“Don’t take it the wrong way, but I’m a little relieved,” I said. “If that’s the problem─there’s a way to deal with it. You might not remember, but I went through this once already. All we have to do is repeat what we did, and this will be settled. Only this time, we’ll be thorough, through and through.”

“Oh─is that so.”

Hanekawa was visibly less tense now that she heard this.

Well, of course she’d panic. Who wouldn’t if they woke up with cat ears sprouting out of their head─even if she recovered some of her memories in the process? You couldn’t blame her for leaping out of the house still in her pajamas.

In such situations─

Hanekawa couldn’t stay cooped up at home.

“Okay,” I said. “Now that we’ve sorted things out, why don’t we head to Oshino’s place… You’re not gonna tell me that riding two to a bicycle is against traffic laws, are you?”

“As much as I’d like to,” Hanekawa replied standing up from the bench, “I’ll overlook it. But we’re even for me getting you to skip school.”

Wait, how did that make it even?

Both of them were her call. She could be surprisingly cunning at times…

Actually, it must have been her idea of a joke.

Or maybe you could call it her way of hiding her embarrassment.

“Shall I lend you my shoulder? You seem tired.”

“I’m fine. Remember, I said my headache’s gone. I’m emotionally exhausted right now, but that’s all. My body feels better than usual, if anything.”

“Does it now.”

Well, she was a cat.

It was the same with Kanbaru’s monkey.

We walked to the bike parking and unlocked my bicycle and got on, me first on the saddle, then her on the back seat.

Hanekawa’s arms wrapped around my torso, then squeezed.

Her body was now stuck to mine.

“………”

Ack…

They were so soft!

And so big!

The two sensations I felt on my back mercilessly assailed my heart, whipping it into a frenzy… I confess, it was such a shock that I’m sure I’d have lost control if she’d been anyone but Tsubasa Hanekawa, the girl I owed my life to, and if I didn’t have a girlfriend, and also if that girlfriend weren’t Hitagi Senjogahara.

Tsubasa Hanekawa was a girl with hidden assets.

Yes, it was hard to see thanks to the utterly plain appearance she put forward, following the school dress code to a T, but she had an incredible body… I’d come to learn that more than well enough over Golden Week. Senjogahara had sat on the very same back seat, but aware as she was, she’d used her innate sense of balance to barely touch me…

And we weren’t even going out then.

Meanwhile, Tsubasa Hanekawa’s morals and ethics stood no chance in the face of her devoted adherence to traffic safety. She entrusted her entire body to me, making the situation, quite frankly, no laughing matter.

Plus, I’d been wearing my high-collared school jacket with Senjogahara. Now that I was wearing my summer uniform, I was in a short-sleeved button-down. This difference was, practically speaking, a pretty big one. But was that all it took for them to feel this soft? As far as summer uniforms went, I was in mine the day before yesterday when Sengoku sat behind me, too… Well, there was the more basic issue of Sengoku’s body not protruding much in any direction, but still.

And then I realized. Oh. Right, just as I wasn’t wearing anything under my button-down, she was only wearing her pajamas under that light sweater… Miss Hanekawa, are you not wearing a bra?

Oh, wow…

So these kinds of things really happen over the course of your life…

“Araragi.”

“Hm?”

“We need to talk once we get off this bike.”

“………”

The words sent a chill down my spine.

She saw straight through me…

I was so shallow.

“Well, uh,” I stammered. “Putting that aside, let’s go. Hold on tight so that you don’t fall off…”

Hey!

I was trying to get myself out of it, why was I digging myself in deeper?!

I couldn’t find my normal footing in this situation!

While I was busy throwing myself to the sharks, Hanekawa stayed quiet.

Too quiet.

She wasn’t saying a word.

“O-Okay, here we go.”

In the end, all I could do was coweringly announce our departure before beginning to turn the pedals. With the weight of two people on my bike, they felt that much heavier. The standard routine here would have been the classic “You’re heavier than I thought” and Hanekawa getting mad, but I’d decided to pass that up, too.

Plus, she wasn’t what I’d call heavy.

It wouldn’t take too long to get to the abandoned cram school where Oshino and Shinobu lived─an hour or less if I went as fast as I could, even with two people… Something incredible happened on my back every time we hit a bump in the road, but I chose to pay as little attention as possible to the fact. I wasn’t going to intentionally steer us over any bumps on the asphalt, I was a gentleman. Well, then again, I wasn’t sure─even if I didn’t intentionally go over any bumps, might I not merely fail to avoid whatever bumps that presented themselves on our way and still call myself a gentleman?

“It must be hard for you,” Hanekawa said to me after a while─after starting to get used to what must have been her first time riding two to a bike, or at least her first time since she was six. “Looking after so many people in so many different ways.”

“So many people? What do you mean?”

“Like Senjogahara, or Mayoi, or Kanbaru, or that junior high girl from yesterday, Sengoku… Haha, they’re all girls.”

“Oh, shut it.”

“And every time─it had to do with aberrations. I remember now.”

By “remember,” I assumed she meant something like “connect the dots.”

“It’s still a little fuzzy, but…yeah. There’s no way Senjogahara would have gotten over her illness so suddenly…”

“…”

“So it started when you were attacked by a vampire over spring break… It all started from there.”

“Aberrations themselves are always there, like a part of nature─it’s not as if they appear out of nowhere one day. Apparently.”

At least according to Mèmè Oshino, the expert.

“Did you know, Araragi?”

“Did I know what?”

“There’s a special trait that vampires have─fascination. They can use it to enthrall humans.”

“Enthrall?”

I didn’t exactly know what she was getting at. Um…was it their ability to suck blood to increase their numbers? Like Shinobu did to me?

When I asked her, she shook her head.

“Uh uh.”

I could tell she was shaking her head no by the way it moved along my back.

“That’s their most famous trait. This is similar, but a little different…It doesn’t involve sucking blood. If anything is like hypnosis, maybe that’s it… Looking into someone else’s eyes allows them to enthrall the opposite sex. Though I’m not sure if ‘the opposite sex’ is the right term here, since vampires and humans belong to different species.”

“Huh. Okay, so what about that?”

“Nothing. I was just thinking.” Hanekawa’s voice was quieter now. “Maybe that’s why you’ve been so popular with girls lately.”

“……”

Fascination.

A special vampire trait.

Ah. I may not have been a vampire anymore, but it was still entirely possible. It wasn’t like I was a dating-sim protagonist like Hachikuji and I had discussed earlier…but that was a realistic justification for what was happening.

That’s Hanekawa for you.

She saw things in a different way.

But─it’d be awful if that’s what it was.

I mean, if that were true, wouldn’t that change everything about my relationship with Hitagi Senjogahara─

And all that fun I had talking to Hachikuji─

And how attached Kanbaru was to me─

And even Sengoku, too─

“…Sorry,” Hanekawa said. “That was mean of me, wasn’t it.”

“Not really─I wouldn’t say so. Actually, it all makes more sense to me now. Of course. Up until last year, I pretty much didn’t have a single friend if you think about it─yeah, I can remember those days when my phone’s contact list didn’t have one entry on it…”

I could memorize every number I needed.

It was a little too hard for that now.

“Huh, fascination,” I grunted. “Okay. You really know everything, don’t you?”

“I don’t know everything,” answered Hanekawa. “I don’t. I don’t know anything.”

“………”

Huh?

That didn’t sound like her normal line?

But before I could voice my doubts, she continued, “You were already a vampire when you met me over spring break─weren’t you.”

“Yeah. I was right in the middle of it. I wasn’t a mockery but an authentic, genuine, full-fledged vampire then. Heh, so I guess you might’ve also been fascinated by me after all─ow!”

Hanekawa had squeezed her arms tighter around my torso.

Wasn’t that a sumo move? A sabaori, I think?!

“No, Araragi. A sabaori, or a forward force down, is done from the front. Also, it’s used to bring an opponent to his knees, not to crush his internal organs.”

“Oh, okay. You’re really well-inform─wait, crush my internal organs?!”

Hanekawa had just said something I’d expect to hear from Senjogahara!

Women are terrifying!

What if Hanekawa realized that her move wasn’t that effective thanks to the two large cushions on my back?!

Well, it was my fault.

I wasn’t paying attention and had said something inappropriate.

Hanekawa must have been in a fairly uneasy state of mind─she’d half-regained her memories, and now she was thinking about all sorts of things she normally wouldn’t to make up for all that was lacking and lost.

I couldn’t blame her if her head wasn’t in the right place.

I’d been impressed a little earlier by how Hanekawa calculated everything out from my attendance to prepping for the culture festival. But when I thought about it some more, if all she wanted was to get to the abandoned cram school where Oshino lived, it could have been handled via texting. She only had to ask me for directions─there was no need to get me to skip school and summon me all the way to that distant park.

Yet she had.

And not because her head wasn’t in the right place.

It must have been because she felt uneasy.

If I’d figured it out with enough time, Hanekawa would have noticed immediately─so it wasn’t as if she hadn’t. She was just too afraid to face an aberration alone.

That made me glad.

I probably wouldn’t be any help to her at all yet again─the only option seemed to be to ask Mèmè Oshino and Shinobu Oshino to deal with this cat aberration. There was nothing I could do for her. I could say I’d do everything for her─but from the start, that was nothing at all.

Even then, I could be by her side.

The simple fact of being there when you’re needed is enough. There’s nothing more you have to do to earn someone’s gratitude─as Daddy Senjogahara put it.

If that was the case, the one person who was there for me when I needed it the most was none other than Tsubasa Hanekawa.

That’s why I’d decided.

Even if there wasn’t a thing I could do, I’d be there for Hanekawa when she needed it, no matter what─

I don’t ever change, after all.

Hanekawa had said that to me yesterday.

But really, I thought, there’s nothing that never changes─and from my point of view, Hanekawa had actually changed, and quite a bit.

She’d changed─ever since getting involved with an aberration.

The biggest example being the post-graduation plans she’d shared with me at the bookstore.

She’d take two years or so─and wander the world.

She was going on a journey.

Hanekawa would never have chosen such a fantastic path for herself, at least not the Hanekawa I knew until the end of last school year─she’d been traveling along the hammered-out, conventional set of rails for a model student like herself.

This isn’t to pass judgment about right or wrong paths─but there was the simple fact that Tsubasa Hanekawa had changed. Whether it was after the end of Golden Week or after spring break─that was something I didn’t know.

But.

From there, Hanekawa and I continued without talking about much else until we arrived at the cram school that had grown derelict a few years ago and was now serving as Oshino and Shinobu’s den. A tattered fence snaked around this building that could only be described as dilapidated. “No Trespassing” signs were scattered all around the structure, making the two squatters. How many times have I come to this place over the last three months, I wondered. I realized that I’d become completely used to visiting it. Aberrations were no longer something out of the ordinary for me─

“Oh? Why, if it isn’t you, Araragi.”

Suddenly.

I heard this voice ahead of me.

“And missy class president…right? I tend to have trouble keeping track of who women are when they change their hairstyle, but from the glasses I’m sure that’s missy class president. Ha hah, it’s been a while, class prez. And Araragi, it’s been a day.”

It was Mèmè Oshino.

There on the other side of the ripped fence stood a middle-aged man in a psychedelic Hawaiian shirt, looking aloof. He looked as shabby as ever, but I also realized it had been the first time in a while I’d seen him doing something outside the building. What was he up to? I thought he was supposed to be a weird kind of shut-in who refused to leave his ruins.

“Hmm…” I mused. “Wait, you always say something like ‘I’ve been waiting for you’ or ‘You kept me waiting for long enough’ when I see you, like you saw it all coming. You’re not going to do that this time?”

“Oh… Huh? Do I?”

Oshino was acting somehow unnatural.

“Missy class president,” he continued as if to dodge the question, switching his attention to Hanekawa who stood behind my bike. “It really has been a while, hasn’t it, class prez. What’s the matter? Isn’t today a weekday? Araragi’s one thing, but I couldn’t imagine you ever playing hooky. Ha hah, I know, it’s one of those School Foundation Days I’ve heard so much about, isn’t it?”

“Oh, um… No, it isn’t.”

“Hm? You look good in a hat─like that one on your head,” Oshino immediately zeroed in on Hanekawa’s headgear.

When it came to this kind of thing─you could tell he was a pro.

“…Thank you.”

Oshino returned his attention to me. “Huh─so that’s how it is, Araragi?”

His expression was lax─the same Oshino as ever.

“You really can’t go three steps without attracting trouble, can you─that’s actually a talent, in a sense. Maybe you ought to cherish it. Ha hah, well come on in for now. So, Araragi─actually, I’m in the middle of something for once. I’m busy and don’t have much time.”

“Oh─really?”

In the middle of something?

Busy?

He didn’t have time?

None of those things sounded natural coming from Oshino’s mouth.

“Were you─in the middle of work?”

“Well, you could call it work if you wanted. But it’s fine. You’re one thing, Araragi, but I can be flexible if it’s something serious with missy president.”

“You’re being really dismissive of me today…”

“What, do you want me to like you? You’re creeping me out, how unpleasant.”

Oshino shooed me away with a cold gesture.

My vampire fascination didn’t seem to work on him, at least… Oh, but if it was the power to enthrall the opposite sex, I guess it only worked on the opposite sex.

“Now stop complaining about nothing and get yourself inside, both of you. Come in through that hole in the fence over there. We’ll talk on the fourth floor, like always.”

“Yeah… Fine,” I said.

I did as told.

In any case, thanks to Oshino being outside, I escaped getting chewed out by Hanekawa the moment we got off my bike. It may have been a godsend, but I was dealing with Hanekawa and her miraculous powers of retention. I couldn’t rejoice over being spared; I’d only delayed my inevitable lecture. In fact, I almost started to feel depressed when I realized I might end up accruing interest on that chewing-out in the meantime.

We entered through the fence and pushed our way into the ruins through the vegetation that now grew everywhere with summer approaching. The mess inside the building was still part of Hanekawa’s memories, so she said nothing about it. It may sound like a nasty joke, but Hanekawa really did look at Oshino with respect, making her excessively lenient when it came to all he did that made him unfit to live in society.

That’s right.

Tsubasa Hanekawa’s post-graduation path that you could barely call a path, the idea of wandering the world, owed more than a little to Mèmè Oshino, who tread an unblazed trail. Not that it meant anything in the end since Hanekawa had ultimately made that choice for herself, but─

I still had my thoughts.

“A Sawarineko. A Hindering Cat.”

Oshino said the words─as we climbed the stairs.

A cat.

A mammal belonging to Carnivora Felidae.

Notable for their flexible bodies, sharp teeth, coarse tongues, and claws─they say cats hide their claws, and there’s a reason for that, which is the sheaths they store them in. The soft pads on their paws that humans love to touch play a practical role, too, muffling the sound of their footsteps when hunting prey.

“Also known as a Silver Cat. They’re also called Dancing Cats, but not often, due to another creature with the same name. Yes, Sawarineko would be the customary name. A hindrance that is a cat, or a Hindering Cat. Sawarineko. A cat with no tail─a cat that leaves no trail. An aberration. It’s said that cats entered Japan in the Nara period, during the eighth century. It’s well-known they were once used to make shamisen guitars, but─yes, cats are now entirely pets, even more so than dogs. They don’t catch mice. You never hear of police cats or seeing-eye cats. If we were to discuss Japanese legends involving cats, we would have to mention the three famed tales of bakeneko, Changing Cats… Ha hah, well, you may be one thing, Araragi, but I’m sure this all goes without saying for you, missy class prez?”

“Hey, Oshino. Stop saying ‘You’re one thing, Araragi’ like it’s some sort of refrain whenever you talk about Hanekawa. It’s actually starting to get to me.”

“Well, it’s not like I’m doing it intentionally, but the truth tends to slip out of people’s mouths.”

“You’d better watch out next time you’re out walking at night.”

“No need to worry, I’m nocturnal. Ha hah, and I guess cats are, too,” he noted as we reached the fourth floor.

Hanekawa spoke less and less as we walked up the stairs. And just like Oshino said, Hanekawa shouldn’t need any explanations about this aberration─the exact same words had come out of his mouth during Golden Week.

But─were those memories still there?

It might have been Oshino’s way of checking. Mèmè Oshino was a man who never seemed to be thinking anything but usually was.

We entered the classroom.

First Oshino, then me, then Hanekawa─

Then Oshino went back to close the door.

The classroom was reasonably bright. It was the afternoon, and sunlight was coming in through the window (though I hesitate to call that frame with a couple of shards of glass sticking out of it a window).

Hmm…Shinobu wasn’t around.

It seemed like she wasn’t on the fourth floor very much these days… Oh, and I was forgetting because of the matter with Hanekawa, but I needed to bring up what Hachikuji had told me about Shinobu yesterday…if Hachikuji indeed saw what she thought she saw─

And then.

I turned around at almost the exact moment Oshino took Hanekawa by surprise and tapped her through her hat from above.

It was only a tap.

And yet─Hanekawa crumpled.

She fell to her knees and slumped over, her face to the floor.

Like her strings had been cut.

“H-Hanekawa?!”

“Don’t get so worked up, Araragi. You’re spirited today. Something good happen to you? Like you got to see missy class president’s cat ears, or maybe her in her pajamas?”

“No tacking on actual guesses to your catchphrase! She’ll get the wrong idea!”

“There’s nothing wrong about it. In fact, you ought to be thanking me for ignoring for all this time how missy class prez was on the back seat of your bike and holding her arms around you.” He was looking down at Hanekawa as she lay collapsed on the floor. “And it seems to me that you’ve already gotten her story─look at you, you’re learning. Almost like that experience with missies tsundere, lost girl, sapphy, and bashful wasn’t all wasted on you. And missy bashful’s case the day before yesterday seems to have made an especially big impact on you.”

So Sengoku had become Bashful.

That didn’t seem like enough to describe her, but…

Whatever, there was no need to correct him.

There was something more pressing.

I asked Oshino, “Anyway…what’d you do to Hanekawa?”

“Like I said, thanks to the lessons you’ve learned, there was barely anything I had to do. I skipped a few steps.”

“You did what?”

What did that mean?

Could he do that?

“Though I’d call it heterodox. There’s no time─that’s what you said, right? And in this case…as I think you know well enough, it’d be much quicker to have a direct discussion than to go through missy class prez.”

“…So you want to go direct.”

“We can grill her all we want, but no matter how much of her memory has returned, she still doesn’t remember─we won’t get anywhere. I understand that you might feel upset because I hit a girl on the head when she wasn’t expecting it, but this wouldn’t have worked without the element of surprise. Okay? Your forgiveness, please.”

But it was a tough finding an opening, this girl never lets her guard down─Oshino said.

Well, that’s Hanekawa for you.

So Oshino had been studying Hanekawa and searching for his “opening” this whole time?

“You said a direct discussion…”

“I don’t think there’s any need to explain. Let’s do a good job here, Araragi. We’re going to be facing off against someone as smart as missy class president. If we aren’t prepared ourselves─well, even I was taken by surprise over Golden Week. But we’re not going to make that mistake again. And speak of the devil, she’s here already, Araragi. The lust-besotted cat has made her appearance.”

Then, when I looked at her.

Even as Hanekawa lay there facedown on the floor, her long hair, normally tied in braids─began to change color.

It changed color.

No─it lost color.

It went from a solid black to a near-white silver.

As if all life were being drained from it.

“………”

No words.

I had somewhat of a feeling this would happen from the moment we went to visit Oshino, and I thought I’d prepared myself to a degree─even so, I couldn’t hide how shaken I felt now that I’d been reunited with her so suddenly.

I really was shallow.

Shallow and weak.

I was going to be there for Hanekawa when she needed me, no matter what─wasn’t that the promise I’d made?

Then, lunging─

She leapt to her feet.

The hat flew from her head from the momentum.

It flew away─exposing it.

Her white hair, cut in straight bangs.

The pair of white cat ears protruding from her little head.

“Myaa-hahaha!”

And then─

She narrowed her eyes like a cat and flashed me a catlike grin.

“What a surpurrrise. I never thought we’d meet again, human─and I see ya still haven’t learned, ya bad little kitty. Getting aroused by my myaster’s breasts, you’re so purrsistent. Trying to get yourself eaten alive?”

“………”

A single outburst that succinctly conveyed her character traits and positioning─

It marked the second coming of Black Hanekawa.