Monogatari Series - Volume 3 - Chapter 5.7

007

It was night before I knew it.

I ran around town on my bike─going everywhere I could think of, but that wasn’t enough. I did a second lap of the same route, this time literally running around town, but still came up almost empty-handed─before at last realizing how tired I was.

I hadn’t eaten, and I hadn’t drank.

I hadn’t rested, just pedaling my bicycle─for nine hours.

Honestly, I was surprised. This was how much I had to do before my body got tired─and while I had fed my blood to Shinobu a day earlier, most of the effects of that should have been spent healing my arms and legs─

A human mockery of a vampire.

A vampire mockery of a human.

I didn’t know which I was anymore.

Shinobu Oshino.

A vampire who’d run away from home─could it get any more ridiculous? What’s more, she’d disappeared with only the clothes on her back and not a penny to her name─she’d practically absconded. What kind of vampire was she?

Disasters always strike at the worst times.

Misery always travels with company.

That was exactly what had happened here.

Oshino hadn’t noticed that Shinobu wasn’t around until that morning─but when he thought back, he realized he hadn’t seen her since the afternoon of the previous day.

According to Hachikuji’s testimony, a blond girl had been sighted near the Mister Donut by the highway at five in the afternoon a day earlier─which would mean Shinobu Oshino was already busy absconding then.

She was a child. She couldn’t go that far.

Only a day had passed─and Shinobu wasn’t even a legendary vampire now, or anything of the sort. She was, for the most part, a simple child, one with a far weaker body than mine. A simple child─no, she’d be even weaker than that without me. The few faculties she had left would be close to cut off.

With exhaustion came hunger.

…Wait, hold on.

That was right─she could’ve been walking by a Mister Donut, but she didn’t have a penny to her name.

Did that mean she was getting hungry?

Alone─somewhere in this town?

“………………”

While I was speeding around on my bicycle, I nearly smashed into Mayoi Hachikuji as she walked on the street─a little past noon, maybe. It was our second encounter that day. As much as I wanted to chew on my good fortune of running into Hachikuji twice in one day by chance, the only way I could meet her, there was no time. Though unlike the first time, this second meeting wasn’t pure chance, strictly speaking─I was running around town with reckless abandon, so of course I’d run into her sooner or later.

“Miste rAraragi.”

“Now you’re just typoing my name…”

“Excuse me. Slip of the tongue.”

After exchanging our greetings, I asked Hachikuji to give me a more detailed account of what she saw the day before.

“Now that you mention it,” she said, “she did seem lonely, somehow.”

“Lonely?”

“Yes,” she affirmed with a serious expression. “Almost as if she were a lost child.”

A lost child.

The words were particularly convincing coming from Hachikuji, a girl who’d been lost on the street for ages.

“All right,” she nodded, “I’ll do what I can to look for this girl too.”

“Would you? I’d appreciate it.”

“Yes. You see, Mister Araragi, looking for a lost child requires careful attention and manpower. Try to do it all by yourself and the hunter is sure to become the woods.”

“The woods?! I’d be huge!”

“I understand you’re often nonplussed, Mister Araragi, but stay strong. You can’t allow yourself to get too minused.”

“I know you get words wrong a lot, but you’re crossing a line right now!”

“You must stay calm. When you search for a lost child, time is obsolescence.”

“I agreed with you until the end there! But come on, time is of the essence!”

“I won’t be able to approach her if I do find her, but I’ll contact your cellular phone if I do, from a pay phone or the like.”

“…Do you know how to use a pay phone?”

“Of course I do. I’m very good with mechanical devices.”

“That’s not what you said this morning…”

“What are you talking about? I have all the tools you need to watch television even after 2011.”

“Oh, so by ‘good’ you mean you figured out digital broadcasting…”

“A ‘1seg’ is something you have for breakfast, correct?”

“She’s an idiot!”

All joking aside.

However good or bad she was with tech, she must be able to use a pay phone, right? I was in the one situation where I felt glad I lived in the countryside, where pay phones were still alive and kicking. Yes, this was the town I lived in, a place where every convenience store that dotted its map had a parking lot and even pachinko parlors failed to flourish.

Anyway, Hachikuji and I split up.

Just as I began to feel more positive, sure that if I met Hachikuji, I’d meet Shinobu too, I thought of something.

While I appreciated her offer to help, Hachikuji was almost the same age as Shinobu (as she appeared now). I couldn’t allow myself to expect too much from her. Yes, there were some places that only children would think to search or hide in or enter into, and she could help in that respect. But while her field of activity might have been far broader than the average child’s, it was still limited. She could only do so much and go so far as a child.

Meanwhile─I needed manpower.

Hachikuji was right about that, at least.

And so.

I called Sengoku’s home when it was close to four. She was going to my old middle school, so I knew she’d have returned already unless she’d taken a detour on her way back. Yes, and I think she told me she was in the no-extracurriculars club─

My chances weren’t all that great, but luckily she was home.

“Oh, Big Brother.”

Sengoku’s voice sounded lively to me. She seemed more energetic when she was talking on the phone, where you didn’t have to be face to face with another person. I thought she ought to get a cell phone soon.

“You’re calling me already?” she said. “I’m so happy.”

“Yeah…sorry for calling you so soon. Umm…”

Uhh, where should I be starting?

Unlike when I talked to Hachikuji, I needed to explain everything from the beginning with Sengoku…

“…? What’s the matter, Big Brother?”

“Oh, er…well.”

“Calm down. What happened?” Sengoku asked, sounding concerned about how unclear I was being.

“Well, you see, I guess what happened is─”

“J-Just calm down for now. Calm down. O-Oh! I know. I’ll tell you a funny story.”

“………”

I couldn’t believe she said that.

How much confidence did it take to say to someone that the story you’re about to tell is funny?

“While maids might be shown as living fun and carefree lives in manga and anime, being a maid is a surprisingly difficult job, you see.”

“So you’re the Bearcat Lover!”

No wonder the story was so hard to understand!

There’s no way she’d ever been to a mixer, either!

She’d taken on a different persona in her listener’s letter!

“D-Did that calm you down?”

“Yeah… I actually looped back around to being calm.”

Not that I wasn’t calm from the beginning.

You couldn’t blame me for being careful about what I said, though.

“So,” she ushered, “you wanted to tell me something?”

“Yeah… Sengoku, I wanted to ask you a favor.”

“A favor… What is it?”

“I want you to find Shinobu,” I said rather directly. “You’re one of the few people who’ve seen her with your own eyes─so to be frank, you could really help by pitching in.”

“Find her? Does that mean…she, er…Shinobu disappeared?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure…she’s not out on errands?”

“She never came home last night.”

“O-Oh, is that so…”

From across the receiver─

I thought I could feel her hesitate.

That was right, I’d carelessly forgotten. Shinobu had glared at her persistently, according to Sengoku─she was scared of Shinobu on an instinctual level.

I made up my mind.

Sengoku shouldn’t have anything to do with aberrations again, no matter how indirectly─hadn’t that already been my decision? Regardless of the circumstances, what was I doing pulling her into this…

“Sorry, Sengoku. I should be taking care of this myself─”

“N-No. It’s not like that.”

“It’s not like what?”

“I just thought it might sound false if I answered you immediately… Let me help. Please.”

“Oh… Are you sure about that, though?”

“Yeah,” Sengoku said with conviction─for a change.

Could it really be because we were on the phone?

Because we weren’t face to face?

“If I can pay you back that way─then I’ll do it. You’re searching for Shinobu─just like you helped me, right?”

“…Well, yeah.”

“Then how could I not help you?”

So she was going to put it that way for me.

How could she not help me.

“I don’t think anything wild is going to happen,” I assured, “but I can’t guarantee your safety no matter what. She might have lost most of her power, but she is a vampire…”

“It’s okay.” Sengoku, that reserved girl, said it with true conviction. “It’s fine. Let me do it.”

Now I was almost starting to feel awkward despite being the one to ask her in the first place─but Sengoku left to search for Shinobu moments later.

I felt like breathing a sigh of relief. I found myself quite glad to have the help of someone who’d met Shinobu─but I wasn’t ready to breathe that sigh yet.

Sengoku couldn’t ride a bike.

Well, she didn’t even have one.

That was why Sengoku never touched a bicycle in traveling to that abandoned shrine the other day. She’d be searching on foot, making her only as mobile and dependable as Hachikuji.

Mobility, huh…

Yeah. Mobility.

I felt bad about asking her time and time again, case after case, but I had to now if I wanted to save Hanekawa. To begin with, there were only six people who’d seen Shinobu in her current form, and that included me─as for two more of the six, Tsubasa Hanekawa was tied up as Black Hanekawa, while Mèmè Oshino was busy standing guard over her.

That left four. Subtract me and Sengoku, and you had two.

I decided to start with the easier one to deal with, Suruga Kanbaru.

I selected her name on my phone’s contact list. Her cell should have been on by now, with school already over─or maybe not. She’d only gotten one a few days earlier, so it was hard to say how familiar she was with the precise wording of the school rules, yet─

“Suruga Kanbaru here.”

As always, she answered the phone with her full name.

I’d gotten myself worked up over nothing.

“Suruga Kanbaru. My special move is holding B to dash.”

“……”

So that’s how she saw it.

Not takkyudo or a flash step.

Well, I couldn’t exactly call her a liar over that.

“Suruga Kanbaru. Employed as my senior Araragi’s perverted slave.”

“I’m absolutely going to call you a liar over that!”

“Hm? Judging by that voice and that retort, I’d say I’m talking to you.”

“Did you really say that without even knowing you were talking to me?!”

“Oh, did the sexy slave part displease you? Well, I do understand. I was thinking of a different, more appropriate title for myself, but I decided to self-censor because it was a little too extreme.”

“If you found it too extreme, I shudder to imagine it!”

And hold on.

She needed to hurry up and learn how to use a contacts list.

“Are you at school right now, Kanbaru?”

“No, I already left.”

“What? Really? What about preparing for the culture festival?”

“It wasn’t my turn today.”

“Oh. So your class takes turns… I’m jealous, you guys sound really well-organized.”

Right.

Her phone wouldn’t have been on if she was at school.

“Uh, so does that mean you’re at home right now, Kanbaru?”

“No, not that either. It’s not like you to guess wrong twice in a row, is something the matter? So it’s true, even the mightiest can fall. Right now I’m amusing myself by playing Fashionable Witches: Love and Berry in the neighborhood supermarket’s game room.”

“How was I supposed to predict that?!”

Damn it, she was always undermining my expectations!

Couldn’t she ever act like I thought she might for a change?

“Um, I’m not super familiar with that game, but is that actually fun for high schoolers to play?”

“What are you talking about? Great games can be enjoyed by people of any age. I’ve already spent nearly three thousand yen today alone. There’s a small line of kids behind me, but I don’t have any intention of giving up my seat.”

“You’re acting like a terrible person just because you have some money! What are you doing?! Stop right now and let those kids play!”

“Hmph. My senior, of all people, saying the same thing as that clerk who just kicked me out of the store.”

“You got kicked out?!”

“If someone gets angry at you for real, the only thing to do is get just as angry back at them.”

“No! You need to apologize for real!”

“Even if I’m being told the same thing, an order from you is different. Fine, I’ll go to the next machine down and start playing Mushiking…”

“Stop playing them!”

“It’s important to always stay playful, Araragi. It’s through play, not study, that we’ve grown and built our history as humans. Oh, that’s right. Speaking of which, a little while back, I was playing cards with two friends and we decided to play President…”

“So you’re ‘Oracle’s Auricle’?!”

I couldn’t believe the girl.

She was so cute.

So cute that she never became too cute for me.

“All right then, my senior Araragi. Why don’t you tell me why you called?”

“Right…”

I couldn’t talk to her about anything serious without some stupid banter first, so I’d write our conversation so far off as a necessary introduction.

“Kanbaru. I want you to lend me your strength.”

“Lend it to you? Don’t be silly. My strength belongs to you from the start. All you have to do is tell me how to use it.”

“……”

That was actually cool…

It was a cool, grown-up thing to say.

Even though she was amusing herself by playing video games meant for children…

I began to wonder. Why did she have such a hardboiled personality? That, at least, couldn’t have been Senjogahara’s influence…

“I want you to find Shinobu. That twerp ran away from home.”

“She ran away from home?”

“She absconded, in other words.”

“Oh. Okay, then. That’s all I need to hear. So you’re saying I need to strip?”

“If you’re that desperate to, then you’re welcome to take off all the clothes you want next time we’re alone! We can both do it, we’ll make a contest out of taking it all off and showing it all off! Heh, you’re going to be blown away if you ever see me strip! So please, Kanbaru, hold off on that for now and just find Shinobu like a normal person would find someone! I hate to say it, but I’m putting more hope in you than anyone else! I need you to lend me those legs that can run faster than a bike!”

“Lend them to you? Don’t be silly. My calves, thighs, knee pits, shins, ankles, and groin all belong to you from the start.”

“That doesn’t sound very hardboiled to me!”

“What was that? The soles of my feet? Now there’s the man I’ve come to know. So kinky that you fear no gods…”

“I never said that!”

She was a total pervert!

She just ruined all of Senjogahara’s careful spin!

“You’re overestimating me. I’m not that much of a pervert,” denied Kanbaru. “The words ‘women-only train car’ gets me terribly excited, but that’s where it stops.”

“That already makes you unique!”

“Ah, so you acknowledge me as your perverted slave at the end of the day.”

“No, I never called you my slave!”

“I just remembered. Speaking of kinky acts.”

“That’s how you keep this conversation going? You do realize we’re still in high school…”

“Fine, then we can say indecent acts instead. I understand that you engaged in an indecent act with her last night.”

“………”

Why did Kanbaru know?

Well, actually, if she knew, that meant…

“That’s right, I heard it straight from her. She said she engaged in an indecent act with you under the stars.”

“There’s nothing indecent about a kiss, is there?!”

Maybe it was on the far reaches of a scale of indecency. Did I not want to see it that way because I was a little boy?

“And wait, Senjogahara goes around talking about stuff like that?”

What an open person…

There was nothing about it to feel guilty over, we were boyfriend and girlfriend…but it did feel like she could afford to be more tactful.

“Did she tell you today at school?”

“No, I heard about it last night. Well, I say I heard about it, but…it’s more like she forced the information on me, calling me in the dead of the night and bragging about it for five hours or so.”

“What an annoying senior!”

That meant Senjogahara had been up nearly all night, even if she’d called right after getting back from the observatory. She didn’t show any signs of being sleepy when I met her in the morning, though… Did she wear an iron mask or something? You can only be so expressionless.

Still, Senjogahara was bragging? So it was something to brag about. Hitagi Senjogahara never struck me as the type to talk herself up, but then again, not only were she and Kanbaru junior and senior, they were both girls.

So she’d talk, huh?

That was a little surprising to learn.

“Allow me to congratulate you,” Kanbaru said.

“Oh… Thanks.”

“But I don’t want you thinking that you’ve won quite yet.”

“Was that a declaration of war?!”

“Love means never having to say sorry…to you!”

“Hold on, to me?!”

We were getting way too off track.

Even so, she was mobile enough to make up for all my wasted time and more…

The strong always have a fundamental advantage.

They get to do what they want.

“In any case, yes,” Kanbaru reiterated. “You’re saying you just want me to find that cute blond girl. I hear you loud and clear. If it’s a request coming from you, then I’m really going to run. Heheheh, however big the world is, only three things out there can get me serious about moving my legs: my two dear seniors and BL novel release dates.”

“At the risk of being misunderstood, I’m going to say it doesn’t make me particularly happy to be on that list!”

Actually, no. I didn’t want to be on it at all.

She needed to make that last one a separate category.

“You know,” she footnoted, “even though I go for most any boys’ love genre, there are a few that I still can’t get into… Some of those novels wouldn’t get me serious about moving my legs.”

“Enough!”

And.

They might not get her serious, but it sounded like she bought them anyway.

“But didn’t you take your basketball matches seriously before you retired?” I asked her.

“If I have to give an answer, then I’d say no, contrary to expectations. I’d tear up the floor in the gym if I got serious.”

“Sorry, is your body a tank or something?!”

“And, well, you leave behind afterimages if you move around too fast in a small area like that. Basketball is played with five people a team, so cloning techniques are against the rules.”

“Don’t mess with the level of realism of our world for no good reason! Aberrations are enough, people can’t actually leave behind afterimages!”

“Being called for traveling would be a more pressing issue than the number of players.”

“Refs shouldn’t be calling beginner fouls like traveling if a player’s cloning herself, should they!”

“I can get up to nine people by cloning myself. If I can just make one more, I’d be able to visualize an entire match on my own.”

“No, you wouldn’t! That’s not possible, of course it’s not! You won’t fool me no matter how detailed your explanation gets!”

“A request from you is a different story, though. I think I’ll try taking off my limiters for once and running like I mean it.”

“I don’t know, part of me feels like it wants to stop you?!”

I wasn’t sure if she was kidding.

She was as dangerous as a junior could get. A ballistic missile.

“There’s no point in trying to stop me. I’ve received an order from my senior, and nothing could make me happier. I’ll vow to you right now, I’m going to run until I can’t move another step.”

“Listen, you don’t need to push yourself. I know you’re fast, but didn’t you tell me before that you weren’t good at running long distances or something?”

“Huh? Oh, don’t worry, that was part of my character and background story when I first appeared, before I really started to take shape.”

“Don’t say that kind of thing out loud!”

“If it really bothers you that much, then I wouldn’t mind reverting back to those defaults.”

“Stop talking like you’re a video game options menu!”

Well.

When Kanbaru said she wasn’t good at running, it was different from when I said it. I didn’t have too much to worry about.

“Heheheh. Now that I’ve received an order from you, my old name won’t do. Having evolved, I should assume a new one. That’s right, I’m no longer Suruga Kanbaru─I’m Omega Kanbaru.”

“Be still my heart!”

“Incidentally, if a marina evolves, it becomes a mariner.”

“Sounds both tougher and fouler!”

“And if a ‘Caution: Falling Rocks’ sign evolves, it becomes a ‘Caution: Falling Meteors’ sign.”

“Hold on, I don’t need that much evolution!”

What would happen if I evolved?

I actually wanted to give that a little thought.

“Anyway, Kanbaru. If you find Shinobu─um, I actually don’t know about you. There is the stuff with your left arm, so I wonder if you’d be okay… No, you’d still be in danger if that’s all you had. Okay, so if you find Shinobu, do not approach her, just contact me immediately.”

“What? You’re saying I can’t run up and hug her?!”

“No!!”

In more ways than one, because none of them would turn out well.

“Hold on there,” complained Kanbaru. “I can’t have you making light of me like that. My life isn’t so dear to me that I wouldn’t trade it in to cuddle with a little girl.”

“Well, it’s going to have to be dear to you for now… And what’s so great about getting to cuddle with a little girl, anyway?”

“How could you need anything more to be happy in life?!”

“You’re mad at me!”

My own junior, mad at me! Over not knowing I only needed a cute little girl to be happy in life!

“Putting your principles and beliefs aside, Kanbaru… I think I’m the only person in the world right now who could stand up to Shinobu, realistically speaking─Oshino can’t for his own reasons. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Sengoku is helping out too, so fill each other in if you happen to meet… Oh, right. Sengoku gave me your volleyball shorts and school swimsuit to hold onto.”

“Oh, thank you. They’re not washed, are they?”

“Uh, I think they are.”

“Excuse me?!”

She’d shouted. She really needed to do something about her characterization…

“Foolish…” she muttered. “It was all meaningless if they’re washed… It’s unlike you to allow such a misdeed.”

“Um, how exactly do you see me? Do you expect me to stop a middle schooler from washing a pair of volleyball shorts and a school swimsuit that she wore?”

“I can’t believe you… How could you be this cruel? You gave me hope, only to snatch it away seconds later… I’d surely have committed suicide by now if I had potassium cyanide with me here…”

“The premise that you’d ever have any with you is far-fetched in the first place…”

So it was something she’d want to kill herself over?

Is that how she saw herself?

“My senior Araragi, I truly regret having to say this to you of all people, but I have no choice. It looks like you’re going to have to pay for this blunder.”

“………”

Why, exactly?

At the same time, I couldn’t let this put a dent in Kanbaru’s motivation…

People with power really do have an advantage…

“Understand?” she asked.

“Yeah, yeah…just tell me what I need to do.”

“You only need to ‘aah’ once.”

“Is that supposed to be romantic?!”

What was even going on now?

“I just said that I’ll make it up to you. I’d be happy to pay you recompense. What do you need me to do?”

“Okay, then. You need to sleep in those volleyball shorts and school swimsuit for a night, sweat like crazy into them, and return them to me unwashed. If you do that, I’ll forgive you.”

“You realize that actually doing that would make us both perverts of the highest order?! Actually, it might make you even worse off than me!”

“Sounds like a fun path to walk down, so long as you’re by my side.”

“I’m sorry, Kanbaru, but I’m not ready to die with you!”

“Then I could always make it a forced lovers’ suicide.”

“That’s called a murder-suicide!”

“We better think of how to go about this some other time.”

“No, think better of it right now!”

“Anyway, you said Sengoku’s helping us out too? In that case, it feels like─there are a handful of people on this.”

“Yeah. I know this might not sound very convincing after all the time we’ve wasted talking nonsense─but every second counts. Please, Kanbaru. Help us.”

“Of course. I’m so on board that it brings tears to my eyes. It’s not in me to say no to you. I act only according to your orders,” Kanbaru said, then hung up the phone.

She was supposedly at the neighborhood supermarket, but neighborhood or not, there was only one supermarket in the area… You could call it our podunk town’s one lifeline, so I began to feel honestly concerned that Kanbaru was now holding B and digging through its flooring as she dashed outside─but it was heartening to have her on board, that nonsensical and unrealistic concern aside.

So. On to the last person.

The last person with first-hand knowledge of Shinobu─

I called Hitagi Senjogahara’s number.

The phone rang for an awfully long time─it felt like I waited almost twenty seconds. Right as I was on the verge of wondering if I was going to be sent to voice mail, the call went through at last.

“I’m not going.”

“………”

She opened with a refusal.

What was she, psychic?

And she’d said no, too…

“It felt like it took you forever to pick up the phone, did something happen?”

“No? Not particularly? It was too much of a bother to pick up the phone, and I let it sit in my pocket without checking who the caller was, but it rang for so long that I gave up and checked only to see that it was you, which made me think I didn’t have to pick up after all, so I went to press the power button to hang up on you but accidentally pressed the call button instead and had no choice but to take it. What do you want?”

“Why would I want anything from you now?!”

What a horrible person.

She never showed any signs of letting up, even on the phone.

“Anyway, Senjogahara─could you hear me out?”

“No. In fact, you’re the one who needs to hear me out. So I went to a video rental store the other day with my friend.”

“So you’re ‘Ain’t Nothin’ Like a Found Dog’?! You haven’t had a single friend for years! Now that I know you pretended to have one to write in to a radio station, what was meant to be a funny letter just sounds sad to me!”

And what kind of ratings was this radio show getting?

Was everyone listening to it?!

Everyone except me?!

Popular culture had left me behind!

“Please, Senjogahara. Forget about that and listen to me.”

“I guess I have no choice if you’re getting down on all fours.”

“I’m not!”

“So, what is it?”

“…Shinobu disappeared.”

“Shinobu─that blond kid?”

“Yeah.”

“Hmph.”

No thoughts.

Indifferent and insensitive.

Of course, while she may have been acquainted with Shinobu, it wasn’t as if she’d ever spoken or socialized in any way with her─and not just Senjogahara. Kanbaru and Sengoku, too. Of us all, the only people who knew what Shinobu was like on the inside were me, Oshino, and─Hanekawa.

“You went so far as to play hooky to find this girl?”

“Yeah. Which is why I want you to help out. The only people who’ve met Shinobu in person─”

“But,” Senjogahara cut me off, “that couldn’t have been what you meant by ‘humanitarian aid’ this morning─you’d never refer to that kid as human.”

“……”

“Hanekawa took today off from school,” Senjogahara added impassively.

She didn’t betray any emotion. I could practically see her ever-expressionless face from across the call. Had this girl really called Kanbaru to brag all night about what she’d done?

“Could it be related in any way? Oh, you don’t have to answer that. Your silence is eloquent,” she said.

“Even if it is, I’m going to answer you. Yes, you’re exactly right. Hanekawa’s─”

“Now that you mention it, Mister Oshino did say something about that─the girl did good work during Hanekawa’s case, or something. Is that what this is? You need that girl’s abilities for Hanekawa’s sake, but she’s absconded for other reasons?”

“You have really good intuition, you know that? And a good memory, too.”

“I’m confident about my memory. I even remember when the Kamakura Shogunate was founded.”

“Only the most generic Japanese history question ever…”

“In eleven hundred ninety-two, they formed that useless bakufu.”

“What a mean mnemonic!”

“You know, Araragi, you sound equally worried about the two, Hanekawa and the kid─impartial in your concern, even though it’s obvious whom you ought to be prioritizing. That’s so like you.”

“……?”

What was she saying?

I was supposed to be prioritizing?

What did that have to do with the situation we were in?

It wasn’t like what happened with Sengoku. We weren’t in a position where we had to choose who to save─were we?

“I’m not going,” Senjogahara repeated. “I won’t be going anywhere.”

“Hey, Senjogahara─”

“I need to prepare for the culture festival, after all.”

“Well, okay…I understand that, but right now we’re─”

“Hanekawa entrusted me with this.”

Those were powerful words.

Powerful and steadfast─like a drawn sword.

“How could I possibly sneak away? And the more danger Hanekawa is in, the more I’m needed here to fulfill my role.”

She was right─

It was no ordinary case of being asked to help.

Hanekawa had entrusted Senjogahara with those duties under pressure from an aberration. How could Senjogahara skip out on that to look for Shinobu?

“Not to mince words, the chain of command is in chaos without Hanekawa here─nothing is working right. She was dealing with all of this? She has to be insane to put together this schedule. And you’re not here, either, the one person who was supporting her─honestly, I can’t even afford to be wasting time on the phone like this.”

“Well, Hanekawa was doing most of it by herself─”

Just how much of herself had she devoted to our class? And─just how hard had she worked to keep them from noticing? Did she never show them any of the toil she was going through? She could have easily been swamped with all the work she had, yet she never showed any sign of being busy─not a single complaint escaped her lips. It was that way with everything she did─what was impressive wasn’t how hard she worked, but how she never allowed anyone to catch on. I was right by her, supporting her all this time, and even I had a hard time saying I fully grasped everything she was going through.

Honestly.

She, and no one else, really was the real deal─

……

Though I did wish Miss Hitagi wouldn’t dismiss speaking to her boyfriend on the phone as a waste of time…

“I doubt I’ll be able to go home until pretty late,” she said, “and it looks like there’s no way I’d be able to finish by the time school closes. I’ll probably have to take this home with me and work on it there. I’m almost astonished she was doing this much during school hours. Listen, Araragi. You just need to do what you always do─and I’ll do what I always do.”

“Yeah… All right, then,” I relented, having understood the situation very well. “You take care of school. Let’s make this a good culture festival.”

“Yes. I’d like that.”

The same flat tone as ever.

She seriously didn’t betray a single emotion.

That was still what Senjogahara said, though.

“Okay─I’ll call you again later,” I told her.

“Oh, Araragi. Just one more thing?”

“What is it?”

“Your tsundere bonus,” she wrapped up. In her flat tone. “Don’t misunderstand, it’s not like I’m worried about you or anything─but I’ll never forgive you if you don’t come back, okay?”

She cut the call off there.

She nearly took my consciousness with her, but I somehow managed to endure.

Oh, god… I really didn’t know what to say. Every single time I talked to her, she… No, I don’t mind being told my vocabulary is lacking… I just don’t have any other words for it.

I loved her so much.

So much I didn’t know what to do.

Of course I’d come back.

If she was waiting for me, of course I would.

“…Don’t worry, you can count on me.”

In any case.

I had now asked everyone I could for their help.

It was the extent of my third-year high school network.

It may have only been a consolation, in perspective─the situation may not have shifted by much, but still─

My confidence was on another level.

I pedaled and pedaled and pedaled and pedaled and pedaled and pedaled─then continued for another three hours.

I had now been searching for nine hours.

Seven p.m.

Before I knew it─it was night.

I hadn’t eaten, and I hadn’t drank.

I hadn’t rested─

And I was finally feeling tired.

“Still…what is Shinobu thinking?”

Running away from home─really?

Absconding─really?

A journey of self-discovery─really?

When you shouldn’t be able to go anywhere─

Just like me.

“……………”

It all started─during spring break.

It all started with my second-year closing ceremony.

It was a while ago by now.

I learned of the existence of aberrations─

I became an aberration myself─

And it’s been that way ever since.

A demon.

A cat.

A crab.

A snail.

A monkey.

A snake.

And then, once again…a cat.

A Changing Cat─a Hindering Cat.

Black Hanekawa─another Tsubasa Hanekawa.

In most cases, cat monsters turned into humans─countless legends all went the same way. It first eats an old lady, changes into that old lady, enters her house, then eats everyone else.

A cat changes into a human.

And then─eats them.

But a Hindering Cat did the opposite─no, perhaps you could call it an interpretation of the same legends from a different angle. Cases where a cat doesn’t change into a human─but where a human changes into a cat. Cat monsters who turn into humans are spotted because of their odd behavior─but with Hindering Cats, that unnatural behavior is understood as a case of multiple personalities. If you focused on only that element, it was similar to cases of foxes possessing humans. There’s a way that most folk tales about Hindering Cats go─night after night, a virtuous wife turns into a harlot and walks the streets─then a traveling monk (or maybe a warrior, or maybe a hunter) declares that it’s the work of a cat monster and takes action─only to discover it was just the wife all along.

If you were to take only the ending of the stories into consideration, then yes, at no point does a cat ever appear in the tale. The reader is given a little peek at a white cat with no tail, but it’s nothing more than a plot conceit, or something used to make the story more engaging─but the theme, the anchor, is humanity itself.

The obverse and reverse sides of humans.

Hanekawa in reverse─the black, awful Tsubasa Hanekawa.

No─should that be white?

Either way, there was no arguing she’d been consumed, but─

I wanted to hear what Kanbaru had to say.

The Hindering Cat and Kanbaru’s monkey did seem similar─though they were probably only similar and not the same. The biggest difference was that all the monkey had done was grant Suruga Kanbaru’s wishes according to a fair and reasonable contract─while the Hindering Cat was on Tsubasa Hanekawa’s side, thoroughly and through and through, unconditionally and without reserve. During Golden Week, it attacked me, Oshino, and even Hanekawa herself in the end, with both malice and hostility─but even that was for Hanekawa’s sake. It may not have been what she wanted or wished for─but the cat was on her side.

It wasn’t just on her side─it was her, after all.

That was the difference with Kanbaru’s monkey.

Kanbaru. She’d still be running around.

But─she hadn’t called.

No one had called.

We hadn’t just failed to find our first hint, we were clueless.

What did it mean?

A blond girl would be the most conspicuous person in the entire town─yet we didn’t even have an eyewitness?

Could she have already skipped town somehow?

No, her legs were a child’s…at least, they should have been.

She shouldn’t be able to do anything─without me at her side.

I looked up at the sky.

Night.

No trace left of dusk.

There were stars in the sky─it was nothing like the one I’d seen the night before by the observatory… Even so, the stars were pretty. I had a feeling I’d be making a habit out of looking up at the sky─since it was a memory that I shared with Senjogahara.

Everything.

So she said.

That’s about everything I can give you─

But no, she was wrong.

Just look. She’d given me these memories.

Not only of that starry sky─of it all, from our first contact on the stairs to the present moment.

Memories… And memory.

Hanekawa’s memory─would never be wiped again. Personally, I thought losing all memory of ever getting involved with an aberration might be for the best─but maybe Oshino was right in the end.

Not just in the way he meant.

Me, too─I didn’t want to forget, either.

That spring break.

That hell.

It all started from there, after all─

“…Shinobu─Shinobu Oshino.”

I’d find her, no matter what.

I’d find her, and I’d show her.

I decided to be responsible for you for the rest of my life─

“Okay… That’s enough of a break.”

I started pedaling again. I’d recovered most of my stamina from the breather─I really did have an absurd body.

The stars in the sky aside─it was getting to be late.

A little longer and I’d need Sengoku, a middle schooler, to go back home. We were already short-handed, and that would cut down on our forces. Filing a police report about a missing child was out of the question, given the circumstances…

The night part was a little concerning, too.

It goes without saying that vampires─are nightwalkers. You couldn’t call Shinobu a vampire any longer, but it was true that her activities were less limited at night. As it deepened, so did her powers.

And so did the danger.

It was past seven now… The next two hours were crucial.

I need to hurry, I thought, standing up from my bike’s saddle and pedaling as hard as I could─until, with a thunk, both of my pedals grew heavy and my speed dropped like a car whose emergency brake had been pulled.

I thought I’d broken my bike at first after going too hard on it. Either my chain had broken or my tires had blown…but that wasn’t the case.

Someone had jumped onto my back seat.

No, “someone” might not be the right word.

If I had to say, it was a cat.

“……”

“Meow.”

“……”

Right…

Just like vampires…cats were nocturnal, too.

White hair, cat ears, still in her pajamas─

A woman I knew well.

She’d taken her glasses off─she saw well in the dark.

The look she was giving me, though, was awful… And it wasn’t just her eyes. Her entire expression was so sour that I couldn’t believe she could make it with her face.

She’d taken off her long-sleeved sweater─she must have felt hot.

So, “The North Wind and the Sun” was right after all. I finally happened to get a glance at Hanekawa in her pajamas from head to toe, but I’d have been twice as happy had she not been in her present state.

And so.

Black Hanekawa was there.

“…Why are you here?”

“Rolly-meow.”

“Answer me.”

I didn’t want to hear some fake cat sound in reply.

We’d placed Black Hanekawa under tight bonds in that abandoned cram school and under Oshino’s tight watch. So why─

“Don’t be such a sourpuss, human. Rolly-rolly.”

“And I’m not going to let you pussyfoot around my question.”

“Hmph. No purrticular reason. So stop giving me that fishy look, human. Not sure why, but I clawed myself out of those ropes like it was nyothing when I was pawing around just a minute ago.”

“Just a minute ago…”

Oh─right.

She was nocturnal.

Even during Golden Week, it was always around noon when a small bit of Hanekawa as Hanekawa managed to resurface─this aberration’s power and control was overwhelmingly stronger at night. Hmm, that was another thing it had in common with Kanbaru’s monkey.

“Myaa-hahaha!” Black Hanekawa laughed in delight.

It probably didn’t mean anything.

She was laughing for no reason.

She had the intelligence of a cat, too─Oshino had said something about her being missy class president underneath, but it didn’t seem that way to me… In her current state, Tsubasa Hanekawa didn’t seem to have any reverse side.

Actually, no.

This already was Hanekawa in reverse.

If she had any, it’d be her obverse side.

“But what about Oshino standing guard?”

“I’m a cat. Mewving around without making a sound is kitty’s play to me.”

“Now that you mention it…I guess you’re right.”

Oshino was proving to be incredibly useless this time around.

It wasn’t like him.

His odd demeanor when we first arrived at the abandoned cram school and the evasiveness he’d showed thereafter could be attributed to Shinobu’s disappearance (he must have been outside looking for her), but letting Black Hanekawa escape so easily? It seemed unthinkable.

It was right after Shinobu had run away.

He wasn’t the kind of man to make the same stupid gaffe twice in a row.

Wait, don’t tell me he’d done it on purpose… Had he freed Black Hanekawa? Did he tie her up in knots that were only strong enough to keep her there during the day (the Hindering Cat’s words, “clawed myself out of them like it was nothing,” supported the idea) and pretend not to notice as she got away?

She must have pinned down my location simply through her smell and her hearing.

That was how cats hunted.

The question, though, was why she’d come to me after being freed─the reason, not the method. If Oshino had intentionally allowed her to escape, that of course made this yet another instance of things going exactly as he and his know-it-all attitude dictated…

But if so, why?

Another reason I didn’t understand.

One thing I did know was that he’d used a “heterodox” method, or whatever he wanted to call it, to summon the Hindering Cat by force because he “didn’t have time”─because he wanted to talk to it directly. He claimed that she made just as little sense to him as she did to me, but he was a master of self-effacement. Could he have found a hint in her incoherent babble, or at least a trace of one?

“Hey, cat…”

“Myes?”

“……”

I got off my bike, held its handlebars with one hand, and turned to face Black Hanekawa who sat on my back seat, only to involuntarily swallow the words I was about rain down on her.

I was left speechless.

Wow… I could see every curve in her body now that she’d taken off that sweater. I’m talking up the fact that she was in pajamas, but come to think of it, they were just pajamas. Even so, she was impossibly hot. Forget what I said earlier about potentially being twice as happy. I mean, the slightest movement and her breasts were bouncing everywhere. Boingy. Boingy. That onomatopoeia isn’t a sound a human body should ever make. Forget about moving the story forward, forget about narrative coherence, I wanted to throw it all out and spend all night jumping rope with her.

Kanbaru might talk dirty, but Hanekawa’s body…

Plus she had cat ears.

It scared me just to imagine her with black hair.

I understood that physical sex appeal was an absolute necessity for continuing the species, but was there any need to go this far?

“What’s the myatter?”

“A, er─um.”

Then again, she went on her Golden Week rampage in her underwear… This was way easier in comparison. No matter how much of Hanekawa’s memory returned, that one needed to stay erased from her brain for eternity.

“…Um, okay, cat. Repeat after me. ‘Now, the manic maniac mused, mentally mangling mammalian mammaries naturally atrophied.’”

“Meow, the myanic myaniyac mewsed, meowntally myangling myameowlian meowmyaries myaturally meowtrophied.”

“So! Damn! Cute!!”

I’d managed to use my love of cat talk to find a replacement for jumping rope.

A brilliant call, if I do say so myself.

Wait, no.

“I was going to ask you what you’re here for.”

“That must be your way of meowing hello,” she said mockingly. “To purrsent ya with my help, human. Why else would I have come?”

“To─help me?”

“Don’t be mistaken, human─I’m nyot interested in fighting ya any longer. Didn’t I tell ya that a mewnute ago?”

“A minute ago…”

Oh…she meant this morning.

Who calls half a day earlier “a minute ago”? That’s an aberration for you, their grasp on time is just… No, maybe it was best to think of it here as a cat’s intellect being unable to grasp the concept of time.

Plus.

“Did you ever…tell me that?”

“Oh, myabe not. It doesn’t myatter anyway, because I just did. I don’t intend to go on any rampage this time─I’m not in that kind of mewd today.”

“…………”

Could I…believe her?

There was no way I could if I took last time into consideration… But on the other hand, that was the normal way to look at it. Trying to read too much into what this cat said left you looking like a fool.

If she said it wasn’t her intention─then maybe it wasn’t.

And─

If she said she was here to help, then she really was here to help.

“But─why? You’re like…Hanekawa’s stress, right? A second personality she has that manifested to reduce her stress─”

That─was how the nightmare started.

She attacked her parents, she attacked innocent bystanders in town─she went on an unfettered rampage. She was utterly audacious about it, too. It wasn’t quite as bad as the hell that was my spring break in terms of damage─but the Hindering Cat may have surpassed even the vampire in terms of dread. She indiscriminately attacked people with all the drive of an adolescent boy who hid at school until night in order to smash all its windows, unable to hold it in any longer─it was a preposterous stress relief method.

“So don’t get the wrong idea─I still feel like thanking ya. Nyormally it would’ve taken a year to relieve my meowster’s stress, but it only took nine days thanks to you─”

Oh…

So you could look at it that way, too.

Of course, from the Hindering Cat’s point of view─all she cared about was venting Hanekawa’s stress. So no matter how simple, hasty, or efficient the method─it didn’t matter.

To the very end, aberrations─were logical.

“Ah…so you want to find Shinobu as soon as possible, too. You’re saying─our interests align.”

“Purr-cisely.”

“…Okay,” I nodded.

I still had my doubts, but there was no time to hesitate.

“In that case, your help is exactly what I need.”

“Myaa-haha. So you could say that my offer to ya…is the cat’s pajamas!!”

“………!”

The Hanekawa I knew would never look so triumphant over that obvious and stupid of a joke…

But this was Hanekawa’s flipped personality.

It was kind of depressing.

“Well, I’m more interested in your feline senses of smell and hearing. You’ve fought her before, so you ought to know her scent and her voice. All you need to do is track those.”

“Hmm. All righty.”

“I’m going to drive around at random, so let me know if you notice something, okay?”

I got back on my bike.

With Black Hanekawa on its back seat.

It might be a lie to say that I didn’t have a single wicked thought in my mind at that moment. Okay, it would be a lie. That plump sensation from when I rode with Hanekawa that morning was still fresh in my mind. But my vulgar motives were met with instant karma of the highest order.

“Gah!”

I reflexively fell from my bike, and the momentum caused it to crash to the ground as well. Only one person, no, cat survived, Black Hanekawa, who dexterously sprang into the air, spun, and made a clean landing.

That’s a cat for you. This was no time to be impressed, though.

“Hm? What’s the myatter, human?”

“…Ah, gaah…ah─”

The Hindering Cat hindered in more ways than one.

To give a modern name to a particularly notable characteristic of this type of cat monster, they were able to drain one’s energy. In this way, she was less like a cat monster and more like a succubus, incubus, or ju-rei. She was a lust-besotted cat. An aberration that consumed humans─those she touched found their strength and vitality sucked dry. There was no case of it being bad enough to kill someone─but at the very least, she did send some people to the hospital over Golden Week.

She sent two people to the hospital.

Hanekawa’s parents.

Of course─they were discharged in three days or so.

This was the aberration that had fully embraced me as she sat on my back seat… It was only for a moment, and while you could write off whatever small bit of resistance there was, Black Hanekawa, unlike Golden Week, was now wearing proper clothes, pajamas though they may have been─so I wasn’t sucked dry in an instant, but I was wearing light clothing myself…which meant I took an incredible amount of damage. Just as I thought I had recovered my stamina, it had disappeared again in a flash.

Energy drain.

Still, allow me to say this.

I may have fallen, but I had no regrets!

“……………”

I started to think that I might really be misunderstood if I kept saying those kinds of things… It wasn’t that I was trying to be considerate of anyone in particular, but Senjogahara did have an awfully good sense for it…

You can never be too careful.

“Oh, I get it, human. My myaster’s breasts felt so wonderful you’re writhing with pleasure!”

“I’ll admit that I’m stupid, but you know, you’re pretty stupid, too…”

Did she not understand her own abilities?

The Hindering Cat’s ability to drain energy was always-on, activating whenever direct contact was made. It had nothing to do with the cat’s intentions…

“Well, human, if you’re that despurrate for it, I’ll let ya myassage these breasts if we can agree to some conditions.”

“Stop trying to sell your master’s chastity, you lustful cat.”

“One pack of bonito flakes a go!”

“What a bargain!”

It was such a cheap price to pay for Tsubasa Hanekawa’s chastity! If that was really the offering price, I’d pay sixty years’ worth up front for an exclusive contract!

“What’s the myatter? Then one catnip…no, one cat food!”

“Change the unit all you want, it won’t matter. You need to say a number bigger than one! Or can you only count that high?!”

Hmm.

What a strange feeling.

I was conversing normally with someone I could have died fighting over Golden Week, not too long ago… Then again─aberrations were all about how you approached them. How you dealt with them…I guessed.

“You’re kind of a nyasty person, treating me like an idiot… Fine then, human! It’s time to decide who’s the bigger idiot!”

“Why would I want to do something that pointless?!”

“The event will be a match of shogi!”

“If two idiots faced off in a serious shogi match, the result would be so lame it’d hurt to watch!”

Shogi chess.

As far as contests of skill that everyone knows how to play but few have mastered, shogi was right up there with baseball in Japan.

“Hmm. Then how about this? A game where whoever pawses a stopwatch at purrsisely one second wins!”

“How dull can you get?!”

And wait.

You couldn’t measure intelligence that way.

I picked my bike up off the ground… Trusty old granny bike that it was, it was oddly sturdy, suffering only a bent basket. Nothing was broken.

“All right,” I said, “I think we should walk around looking for her together after I park my bike somewhere around here… It’ll be slower going, but we’d be more thorough that way. Okay?”

“Meow.”

“Her blond hair won’t make her any easier to find with human eyes now that it’s this dark out…so I’m counting on you, okay?”

“Count on me!”

I began walking, pushing my bike along. Black Hanekawa followed behind me…no, she overtook me and walked in the front, as if to lead. She really was a stupid cat… Maybe some instinct made her want to run past anything that moved.

The cat and the aberration were inseparable─apparently.

In that sense, I could call the cat monster the easiest aberration of all to understand─it was definitely the best-known one I had encountered until that point, aside from vampires. Well, I got cat monsters in general, but I, with my limited information, hadn’t heard of the identifier that was “Hindering Cat” until Golden Week.

Hmm, but I wondered… What would it look like if an objective bystander saw me walking alongside Black Hanekawa? A high school boy walking alongside a young, cat-eared maiden…how would they see me? No one could ever think the cat ears were real, and walking around in her pajamas was way better than walking around in her underwear, but… Maybe it would’ve been a good idea to head back to the abandoned cram school for now to grab her hat and sweater.

Then again, putting clothes on any beast, not just a cat, was a Herculean undertaking… It was a miracle in itself that she hadn’t taken off those pajamas…

Oh, whatever.

It wouldn’t mean anything to worry about it now.

There were already rumors about me walking arm-in-arm with Suruga Kanbaru, our second-year star. Adding a rumor about me walking around with a cat-eared beauty to that didn’t really change anything. I could deal with Kanbaru and Hachikuji, and though it’d be hard to come up with an excuse to tell Sengoku, you know, what happens happens. Our top priority now was to find Shinobu.

It was Hanekawa’s honor I was concerned for if anything. Then again, the pajamas might just barely pass as street clothes, plus she had her glasses off, and she had a different hairstyle, and most importantly her hair had changed from black to white. No one would think I was with Hanekawa unless they knew what was going on. No amount of dye or bleach could do this good of a job on someone’s hair color. Her facial expressions were totally different, too… Even I didn’t know who Black Hanekawa was when I first saw her during Golden Week. If not for the shape of her hips─no, it was only because she’d saved my life that I was somehow able to pin down her identity.

Plus.

This was also─Tsubasa Hanekawa.

Another Hanekawa.

She had two sides, and this was the reverse side.

“Hey, human,” Black Hanekawa said from the front. “Refresh my meowmory. What was it ya wanted me to do again?”

“……………”

The intelligence of a cat…

Should I be relying on her?

We reached a bookstore after walking for a bit─the bookstore that boasted the largest selection in town, the same one where Hanekawa and I had picked out study aids together the other day. The store was still open…so while it pained me to park my bike there when I wasn’t going to be doing any shopping, I had no choice. I decided to put it there.

We departed once again.

Still no traces of Shinobu’s scent.

Speaking of scents, I could imagine a cat’s sense of smell being better than a human’s, but how much better was it, if you were to quantify it? Not as good as a dog’s, I assumed.

“Hey, human.”

“What is it, cat monster.”

“Seems a lot happened after ya battled it out with me─between you and us.”

“What, did Oshino tell you?”

Did he talk to her while he kept watch?

It would be like him. He did like to talk.

“Yeah,” I said. “A crab, a snail, a monkey, and a snake.”

“That myakes a Nue!”

“Only the monkey and snake part… What about the crab and the snail, where did those go? And wait, stop saying whatever pops into your head.”

My image of Hanekawa was growing worse and worse.

I wished she’d show me at least a glimpse of her intelligence.

“And I’m─a demon.”

“Hm. Meow,” Black Hanekawa said. “Human─you call us aberrations, but…what do ya think about them?”

“What do I think about them?”

So her nocturnal nature did make her a little more coherent at night… It was the same way last time, too─but the changes weren’t drastic.

What could the question mean?

It was a vaguely worded sentence.

“Well, human, if ya think you’ve gotten nyused to us─I need to drag ya by the scruff back to reality. Aberrations are aberrations, humans are humans─nyever together. They can’t get along, nyo matter what.”

“I…don’t really understand. What is it you’re trying to tell me?”

“Well, that’s because you’re stupid.”

“No one could hurt me more with those words than you!”

“Hmph. You nyow what they say about hurt feelings… Meow? Err, what do they say.”

“Don’t run your mouth if you can’t come up with anything! It’s painful to watch someone incapable of a snappy line trying to say something smart!”

Our conversation was going nowhere.

What we were even talking about, anyway?

“So are you trying to say that it’s impossible for me to get used to aberrations? I guess I do feel that way… I’m left speechless and looking like a loser every time I deal with one. It’s as pathetic as it gets. Things never go for me like they do for Oshino.”

Mèmè Oshino.

A professional─an authority on transformed creatures.

It was strange when I thought about it. How did he ever start down that path? I knew next to nothing about his background. Oh, maybe he said something about having gone to a Shinto university… But I didn’t know how much of his resume I could believe. He was the sort who made things up to suit the occasion.

“Nyo, that’s nyot what I want to say─for example, human. Can ya imagine why that vampire could’ve hightailed it?”

“…Not at all.”

“Ah. So that’s how little ya understyand about us… And that’s purrobably why Hawaiian shirt tends to be right. He─nyows the difference.”

“Knows the differ─”

“He nyows what he’s nyot.”

“……………”

Offer a hand without knowing what you’re doing─and you’ll get burned.

Was that what she meant?

I hadn’t just offered a hand, I’d offered my neck. In that case, there really wasn’t anything I could do. I was at the whim of the waves─I couldn’t claim to have gotten used to anything.

Especially─when it came to Shinobu.

A legendary vampire─descended from a noble bloodline.

“Did you─hear about me and Shinobu from Oshino? You say all that, but do you really understand our relationship?”

“Nyot that well─I may have heard, but I already furgot. I don’t understand, to say the least.”

“Well, that’s awfully casual of you.”

“Maybe, but I get it in large part─but when I say ‘large part,’ I’m not meowing about my myaster’s breasts, mrowkay?!”

“……”

I couldn’t detect the slightest bit of intelligence from that joke…

She wasn’t being dirty, she was just being vulgar.

“Aberrations understand aberrations best─we’re the same, after all.”

“The same…” They seemed like very different types of aberrations. They were the same in that both were inhuman? No, that wasn’t it. “The same, being aberrations, huh?”

“I’m nyot saying anything difficult─I can’t say anything difficult, anyway. Listen, human─that word ‘aberration’ says it all,” Black Hanekawa asserted. “Aberrations─creatures that are aberrant, meow. Different from humans─that’s why ya can’t get used to us. If ya did, there’d be nyothing aberrant about us anymore. People need to believe in us, fear us, dread us, loathe us, revere us, respect us, hate us, shun us, and pray to us─that’s why we exist.”

“……………”

“But get used to us? Nyot gonna happen.”

If you want to treat us like friends? Nyo thanks─

Is how Black Hanekawa summarized it.

For some reason, it felt like I’d been warned. But when I thought about it, she was right… The boundaries between us might have become fuzzy for me because I’d once become more than half aberrant myself. Being overly conscious of it was an issue─but not being conscious of it at all was also an issue.

Shinobu.

Somewhere down the line─hadn’t I started treating her as a simple kid?

I’d never refer to her as human.

But─hadn’t I been thinking of her that way?

“Hey… Wait, hold on… Don’t tell me, is that why?”

“Meow?”

“It’s because I saw Shinobu in that kind of way─that Shinobu, as an aberration, decided to disappear? ”

A vampire.

But─a mockery of a vampire.

It would have been a challenge to her identity.

And strangely enough, Oshino had said something similar. A journey of self-discovery.

Did Shinobu─no longer know who she was?

She─couldn’t comprehend herself.

“Purrhaps, or purrhaps not. I wouldn’t know those kinds of details─I might be the same, but I’m also different. But, human, there’s one thing you should remeowmber… What was it again?”

“You forgot it yourself!”

“Right, that’s it. We might be here as a myatter of course─but as soon as people think that’s a myatter of course, we become mere reality.”

Demons─would be mere blood disorders.

Cats─would be mere multiple personalities.

Crabs─would be mere illnesses.

Snails─would be mere lost children.

Monkeys─would be mere slashers.

Snakes─would be mere pain.

Aberrations─would be mere reality.

“And we’d end up saying something dull like ‘There’s no room in our scientific society for aberrations’?”

“Nyope. We just wouldn’t be able to maintain the same forms─we’ll be here, always and forever. So long as you humans are around.”

“And that’s how─you’ve come all this way alongside humans.”

“Purrcisely.”

Precisely, she said─the Hindering Cat.

“Still─I haven’t gotten a sniff of her.”

“Hm? Oh, you’re talking about Shinobu’s scent… No tracks, either?”

“I should pick up on it in nyo time at all, she’s got a unique scent… Hey, human. Are you sure that vampire really left?”

“Yeah… I’m sure of that much. She’s been spotted at least once.”

“Oh. So nyo chance she just purrtended to leave and hid inside those ruins…”

“That’s pretty smart, coming from you… I never considered that one.”

“What if she left once, then came back? That place is so full of her scent she could cameowflage herself there.”

“I’m pretty sure Oshino would notice if that was the case…”

Camouflage─huh.

Hm? Hold on, I thought, I’m about to come upon something… What was it? I lost the thread… How could I complain about the cat monster at this rate? It really was going to become a contest to see who was the bigger idiot.

Did I have the intelligence of a cat?

Umm.

“Oh, right─why don’t we try going to where Shinobu was spotted? It’ll take us off this path, but we can head to the Mister Donut…and then we just have to follow Shinobu’s scent from there.”

“Hrmm. I’m nyot exactly following her scent, though─strictly speaking, I don’t rely on the intensity of a scent.”

“You don’t?”

“To be honyest, I went to look for the vampire alone after sneaking out of the building─so I probably went by that Mister Donut, too.”

“Seriously? You need to tell me that kind of thing sooner.”

So we needed to change course. If we were searching for her scent, there was no point in searching a place that had already been searched.

“Sorry, I furgot.”

“………”

Now I felt an urgent need to obstinately go back and forth along our path, checking it again and again.

“The scent…vanished along the way,” Black Hanekawa said.

“Vanished?”

“It wasn’t possible to follow her any further… So, human. A question. How much of her vampire powers can that vampire use right nyow? If she can disappear, reappear, and turn into shadows and darkness─then I’ll be honest. I won’t be able to find her.”

“It’s safe to assume that she can barely use any of her powers as a vampire right now. They’re close to fully limited─and even if she somehow manages to use them, she only can when I’m around. She’d be able to do a little bit, since I fed her my blood at the beginning of this week, but if I’m not around, she’s just─”

Just a kid.

Not an aberration.

Reality.

But that understanding─was wrong?

“Hmm. In that case…” Black Hanekawa muttered to herself. She seemed to be thinking, not that it would do her any good. “But if we look at it that way, it’s nyot very…”

“What is it? Stop leaving me out of this. We have a saying in our world, you know. ‘Gather three men and you shall have the wisdom of prajñā─”

“I see. What’s prajñyā?”

“………”

What could it be?

I’d been using the word without ever knowing.

“There aren’t three of us, anyway,” she said.

“Yeah, you’re right.”

“One man and one cat─meow.”

Not two men─one man and one cat.

She wasn’t saying that because she could only count to one─right?

“Anyway─human. Nyow I don’t think that vampire can be found with just ordinary meowthods.”

“So she might have left town? I know this is just the flip side of what I just said, but well, if she’s that far away from me, I don’t think she─”

I’d be going too far if I said she couldn’t do anything.

But if she tried, there was a possibility she’d no longer be able to maintain her existence.

“The reason vampires suck blood─meow.”

“What?”

“Vampires suck human blood─but it means different things when they suck it for food and when they suck it to make companyans.”

“……”

I knew that.

I heard that during spring break─but why did this cat know? She only had the intellect of a cat… Oh, of course. Intelligence was different from knowledge. Despite the difference between Hanekawa and Black Hanekawa’s intellects, they probably shared some degree of knowledge.

“Myaybe that’s why she ran off…”

“Huh? How so?”

“…Mrow, you’re so dense,” Black Hanekawa said, sounding flabbergasted.

“Dense? What do you mean?”

“I’m saying you’re obtuse.”

“Well, I’ll agree I’m not the best at reading people’s minds…”

“I’m saying you’re obtusely angled.”

“Don’t tell me you’re going to need a protractor.”

“I’m saying that ever since she met ya during spring break or whenever, that vampire has seen ya getting involved with one aberration after anyother. Myaybe that didn’t feel so great.”

“You mean, seeing all of those different aberrations, yourself included, made her feel less special? That’s why she couldn’t stand being around any longer─”

“So dense,” Black Hanekawa repeated.

Dense… I didn’t like the word, for some reason.

She added, “They say beasts separate themselves from humans when they realize the time has come for them to die─myaybe vampires are the same way?”

“Don’t say ominous things like that.”

“Are ya really mewing about omens to an aberration? But what are ya going to do if ya never find that vampire?”

“What am I going to do? Well, I’d be in trouble. Hanekawa wouldn’t be able to turn back to normal, plus─”

“But that’s the only problem? If you ignyore my myaster─wouldn’t ya be better off if that vampire wasn’t around?”

“……” What was she trying to say? It didn’t make any sense to me.

“You still have the vague scent of a vampire because she exists. Ya let her drink your blood or something─that’s what ya said, murright? So you can go back to being a simple human if the vampire disappears.”

The demon─would be a mere human.

I could go back.

All I had to do was abandon Shinobu.

“You can’t─expect me to do that. I could never abandon her. I─”

If Hanekawa was my savior.

Then Shinobu was my victim.

“She could kill me,” I continued, “and I still wouldn’t have any right to complain. What I did to her was that bad.”

“You say that, but are ya sure ya just don’t want to give up your immortal body?”

“That’s not it. If she dies tomorrow, I’m ready for my life to last just as long.”

“…Hm. I see.”

That’s your empathy speaking, Black Hanekawa said.

If you’re going to put it like that, then sure─it was just unilateral sentiment. I couldn’t complain if Shinobu saw that as annoying or irritating.

Or maybe that was why─

It could have been why Shinobu left.

“Also, cat. The premise of your hypothesis is flawed to begin with. How could I ‘ignore’ your master? It’s impossible. Sorry, but we need to get you back into the deepest reaches of herself─I’m not going to have another Golden Week.”

“Oh. But, human─I wouldn’t say it’s impossible at all. There’s a way to get me back deep inside of her without relying on that vampire at all.”

“…There is?”

There was a way?

If it was quick─that’s exactly what I wanted.

Ten days was our limit─in other words, it’d be fine so long as we could bring everything to a resolution within nine days in the worst case, just like last time.

“If ya want to talk about Golden Week, it was the same then, too. I’m a nyavatar of my myaster’s stress─get rid of the root of the stress, and I’ll disappear once again.”

“Hmm…”

When this Hindering Cat sent Hanekawa’s parents to the hospital using her energy drain, Hanekawa became aware of what was going on as herself for a brief moment─probably because doing so considerably relieved the stress she felt. It wasn’t enough in the end, given all the stress that had piled up and up inside of her, so Black Hanekawa reappeared right afterwards─

So. The root of her stress.

“Oshino brought that up too, but we don’t have the time to pin down the root of her stress,” I said. “It doesn’t seem to be her family this time, plus─”

“Why would ya need to pin anything down? I nyow what it is.”

“…Oh, right.”

I’d carelessly overlooked that fact.

If she was the avatar of Hanekawa’s stress, then she’d know the nature of that stress and what the stressor was better than anyone, even Hanekawa herself. That was exactly why she’d attacked Hanekawa’s parents first─

“Wait, but that still leaves us with an issue, cat. Even if we do learn what the stressor is, we don’t have any way to get rid of it. It’d become Hanekawa’s issue at that point, so─”

You can’t resolve another person’s distress.

Just like with Hanekawa’s parents─there was nothing I could do.

It was the same with everything else that caused her distress.

“So it doesn’t matter what the stressor is…though I admit I’m curious to know. Is it about what she’s doing after graduation, given the timing? Come to think of it, it seems like she had a headache when we were talking about post-graduation plans at the bookstore, too─it sounded like she knew what she wanted to do, but maybe in her heart she actually─”

“It’s nyot about graduation.”

“It isn’t?”

“Anyway─I think you in purrticular could easily resolve her distress, and all this stress.”

“Easily?”

“Mice and easy.”

“Would Hanekawa get distressed over something that’s so easy to resolve? Or I guess its simplicity could be what’s giving her such a hard time… Hm? Hold on, cat. What do you mean, me in particular?”

If I could do it─couldn’t anyone?

But in that case, once again, would she really get distressed over─something that anyone could fix? If there was something I could do, Hanekawa herself would be able to as well─

I suddenly glanced at the watch on my right wrist.

More time had passed.

Senjogahara would have to be back home by now─but she did say she planned to bring work home with her, so the real struggle was only getting started. Now that I thought about it, Senjogahara was probably the only one in our class who could handle what Hanekawa had been dealing with… It seemed like Hanekawa’s eye for people was spot on even when she had cat ears growing out of her head.

An eye for people, eh.

But if that was true, her eyes must have been shut when she installed me as class vice president… Doing that had essentially doubled her workload. Then again, you could increase her workload tenfold, and she’d probably handle it with ease─

“Well, ya see, human. My myaster,” Black Hanekawa said, sounding a bit cagey, “she’s in love with ya.”

“…Huh?”

“So if ya love my myaster back, I should be able to get out of the way, but─meow? What’s the myatter?”

“……Um.”

My feet halted.

Actually─my brain did, too.

What was that supposed to mean?

“Are you trying to be funny or something? I can’t come up with a quip for every stupid setup, you know… And if that’s a joke, it’s really too nasty. You need to know there are some things you can lie about and some things that you shouldn’t─”

“You’re such a fool, human. Is this the face of someone who can tell a lie?”

“………”

It wasn’t.

To be honest, I hated the old line, “If I was going to lie to you, I’d tell a more believable lie” (some lies anticipated you’d assume so), but in this case, the Hindering Cat didn’t have the ability to lie to begin with. I’ve never lied before in my life─Hanekawa told me once, but this was the diametric opposite.

The Hindering Cat couldn’t lie.

Which meant.

“B-But…” I stammered. “If you’re not lying, cat, then you must be mistaken. There’s no way that could be true.”

“What makes ya think that? How could I ever misunderstand my myaster. She’s my one and only myaster.”

“But Hanekawa…”

She was kind to everyone.

The worse someone was as a person, the more sympathy she showed.

That’s why─she picked me, of all people.

And that’s why─during spring break, too.

“You only understand things that have to do with her stress,” I argued. “I know you might share her knowledge, but there must be some things you can’t access. It’s impossible. Why would Hanekawa─”

No.

Then again, Senjogahara had once tried to trick me into telling her how I felt about Hanekawa─back when Senjogahara was like a mass of self-defensiveness and caution. If that Senjogahara tested a hunch, wasn’t there some basis to it?

“Yesss, and that’s what I’m saying,” Black Hanekawa stated as though she were teaching a slow student how to use a calculator. “That’s what the stress was─my myaster is in love with ya, but you’re dating someone else. And ya’ve been─flaunting it.”

“………”

Headaches─starting about a month ago.

So she said.

A month ago from now would be─right, Mother’s Day. The day Senjogahara and I started going out─and Hanekawa knew about us from that very day─

The class president─there was nothing she didn’t know.

She knew everything.

“But Hanekawa never acted that way─if anything, it was like she was cheering us on, giving me advice and stuff─”

“That’s exactly why the stress kept building up. Do ya really think my myaster would ever be able to snyatch away a taken man? She’s fair and just, clean and pure, she values harmony over everything─she thinks it’s nyatural to sacrifice herself for the sake of others. She wouldn’t ever breathe a word.”

Love means never having to say sorry─

But.

Not everyone could do that.

So I was asking someone like that for advice and having her cheer me on? It was the same when I had to deal with Kanbaru, too, and even when we were at the bookstore, it wasn’t just graduation we were talking about, but Senjogahara─I was choosing what to do next with her in mind─

Hanekawa’s headaches didn’t abate─

They only got worse and worse.

“………”

I felt─sick.

What had I done?

But how could I have noticed… I mean, Hanekawa? If that woman made a serious attempt to hide her own feelings, even Senjogahara wouldn’t be able to suss them out.

But.

Dense─huh.

So her plans after graduation, too… Oshino must have had some influence on her, but you could also look at it as Tsubasa Hanekawa’s grand heartbreak journey─and she started showing signs of a headache right after we talked about post-graduation plans.

Plus.

There was the time she closed her eyes, her lips turned up to me─

“When─did it start?”

“Around spring break. I dunno exactly what her heart was going through then, since it was before I ever appeared, but my myaster was living in an environment that put her under constant stress. Your story of humans and vampires was so purrposterous that ya must have seemed to have the power to break her out of her predicament.”

“Break her out?”

How could I?

My hands were so full then that─

“Though I don’t think you could say there were nyo signs at all. My myaster was close to perfect when it came to that─but she must have let her guard down here and there since it was a myatter of love. Ya never found it odd that a dead-serious class president would choose a vice president like you? Any nyormal person would realize that was a wrong pick.”

“Oh… Well.”

Yes, she had picked the wrong person for the job.

There’d been a reason.

“Assuming you were a delinquent and trying to rehabilitate ya sounds like a reason that’s not much of a reason at all.”

“That’s─”

Back then─in early April, when Hanekawa appointed me as her vice president after half-pushing her recommendation through a decent amount of opposition─her pick generated a fair amount of backlash. I was so intimately involved in the affair that I didn’t see it that way then, and I’d unreservedly bought Hanekawa’s line that people mature when they’re put in positions of responsibility. But actually, didn’t she hate that kind of push by way of authority more than anything?

“Then why?”

“Why else? Because she wanted to be with ya as much as possible. Third-year class presidents and vice presidents get to work together to prepare for the last culture festival of their high school lives, meowfter all… But she stopped trying that on ya a month ago. The romyance my myaster slowly built up and up, one piece at a time─ended there. Myaa-haha, no, should I say that’s when it really got started?”

“………”

When it happened, Hanekawa─was happy for me.

Or so I thought.

But─that was another lie?

She’d never lied before in her life? Uh-uh.

If this was true, Tsubasa Hanekawa, you’ve been lying through your teeth!

“To be honyest, I think my myaster was careless. She all but nyever thought a rival would ever appear. If only my myaster had known that you’re kind to everyone the same way ya were to her during Golden Week─if only she’d considered that someone else might get saved by you just like she was, I know my myaster is smart enough to have acted sooner. The woman you’re dating didn’t waste a meowment in comparison, right?”

“Yeah, that’s true…”

Senjogahara─didn’t hesitate.

She went in for the kill as soon as she made up her mind.

To the point that the normal reaction was to feel creeped out.

“A girl raised in a cold and loveless home,” narrated Black Hanekawa. “During spring break, she encountered something shocking and unusual, and that something also happened to be her classmate. It felt almost like fate. Feelings of love started to bud. And then her own life was saved by that classmate─turning that love into something certain. Or something. Nyaa-hahahaha, ya know, my myaster would obviously be the purrtagonist if it were a girls’ myanga─but the way it all got snyatched away from her, I don’t know if I should call it purrfect or pathetic.”

“No one strikes faster than Senjogahara─she could start later than everyone else and not even think of it as a handicap.”

Or─

She moved with almost hasty speed on Mother’s Day because she was sensitive enough to Hanekawa’s intentions even to be testing a hunch. That might also explain the strange distance she maintained vis-à-vis Hanekawa─but.

That wasn’t Senjogahara’s fault.

That kind of thing isn’t a competition to begin with.

“Whatever the case, it’s all too late nyow. My myaster isn’t the kind of person who could ever steal from anyother, but how pure. It was supposed to be the kind of love you read about in girls’ myanga, but it turned into longing for a taken man in nyo time flat, ending up as an illicit, and unrequited, love…and she felt guilty about it, meow.”

“Well, she’s─a serious person.”

She couldn’t be open about how head over heels she was about someone, unlike Sengoku’s tormentor. But that didn’t mean coming to a neat compromise with her feelings, either. She wasn’t the kind of person who could bargain and settle with herself.

“She must have had her regrets, too─if only she’d confessed her feelings sooner…” observed Black Hanekawa. “But it’s nyot an early cat gets the bird kind of thing, and humans who think that way are petty, ridiculous, and boring─”

But.

She never breathed a word about it.

She cheered me on─and humored me when I needed advice.

Is that what had been going on?

All the time she was cheering me on and giving me advice, she was talking about her own feelings─

Of course she would have opinions regarding the subtleties of romance and relations between the sexes.

A girl in love would─she’d have understood how Senjogahara felt better than anyone else.

“That’s also why you triggered my myaster’s stress during Golden Week. You might have been the one person she didn’t want knowing─meow.”

“Then─”

Be there when she needed me? Far from it.

At that moment, I was the last person she needed, the greatest hindrance.

“You’re so dense that you didn’t show any signs of nyoticing my myaster’s affection or her turmoil, and her stress just continued to build─if you ask me, I’m impressed she lasted a month.”

“Wait, cat. Hold on. Are you sure─that’s right? Even if you’re right and I was the cause of her stress─”

If I wasn’t merely the trigger during Golden Week, but also the very bullet that tore through her guts─

“That wouldn’t be enough to make you appear, would it? I was only part of it at most, and there must have been some other powerful stressor that─”

“Nyope. It was all you,” Black Hanekawa declared. “As far as her parents go─my myaster considers that somewhat settled after Golden Week. Ya might not understand, though.”

“But that doesn’t make sense. You’re the incarnation of the stress that kept building up inside of her because of her family. If it was only over a couple of months of romance, why would you─”

“Only?” The cat’s eyes─shone forebodingly. She made no effort to hide her irritation. “Is there some reason a few months of exacerbated heartbreak shouldn’t be allowed to surpass ten-odd years of family strife?”

I haven’t led the happiest life up until now… But I think I could call it all even if I see it as what let me meet you.

If it was my unhappiness that caught your attention─then I’m glad it happened that way.

Those were Senjogahara’s words.

But─then again.

Did such things really happen?

“You look like ya don’t get it, human… Could it actually be that you’ve never really fallen in love with anybody?”

“Wha…”

“Are ya sure you’re not just going out with that girl because that’s what she insisted on? If so, you oughta break up right away and go out with my myaster instead. That would make me disappear, too. You’d be just as happy dating anyone, wouldn’t ya?”

“……”

Maybe I should have gotten angry here─maybe I shouldn’t have stayed silent after being so blatantly provoked. And really, if I hadn’t been talking to someone who looked like Tsubasa Hanekawa─I think I would have.

But─it was Hanekawa saying this.

I felt like I had no right to get angry.

“…I can’t do that, cat.”

“Hrrm? Why nyot? You think of my myaster as your savior─so shouldn’t you be repaying the favor? At the end of the day, are your feelings of love more important than your feelings of gratitude?”

“If I let that happen─Hanekawa would be taking advantage of my gratitude. I’m not going to put her in that position… No, that’s not it. That’s just a convenient excuse. It’s simpler than that, I can’t lie about my feelings for Senjogahara. And even if I did, wouldn’t Hanekawa see right through it?”

I’m bad at telling lies, and I’m bad at hiding things.

I’m flimsy and weak.

I couldn’t deceive Hanekawa even if I wanted─I didn’t want to, of course, and while a part of me might have wanted to if I could, just to do it, I couldn’t.

“It’s not an issue of me accepting it and sticking it out,” I said. “There really isn’t a thing I can do it about it─right? It’s not like Hanekawa would want to go out with me if I was doing that, either…”

“Is that so? Actually, I felt myself fading a teeny bit just now when I told ya how my myaster feels─it’s clearly relieving her of her stress. No one’s beautiful through and through, nyot even my myaster. See how I lurk beneath her. You myight be surprised, maybe she’d love it and wouldn’t mind at all. It could be painful at first, but completely fine once she’s used to it.”

“Once she’s used to it─are you really saying that? If it were that simple, Hanekawa wouldn’t have worried you all the way into existence. She’s not the kind of person who could push someone else aside for her own sake. She couldn’t put herself ahead of another. It’s that fact about her─that makes me feel so indebted. I probably would have said yes before Mother’s Day. Yes, I cared for her then, as a friend. But I can’t do it now. My feelings are frozen in place for only one person now, and it’s Senjogahara. You asked me if love is more important to me than gratitude, but─I can’t put either one ahead of the other. It’s a double bind. That’s why I can’t choose Hanekawa.”

Wouldn’t the normal choice between the two be Miss Hankeawa─that’s what Hachikuji said. She wondered why I chose Miss Senjogahara─it struck her as odd.

Why.

How was I supposed to answer that one?

“It’s everything about Senjogahara, including her personality, that I love.”

I spoke the sentence in full.

Yes.

I love everything about her.

There’s not a part of her that I don’t love.

“It’s the first time in my life I’ve really fallen in love with someone.”

“Hmm. Really nyow.”

Black Hanekawa backed down─casually.

Like she knew from the start what I was going to say.

Maybe she did─she was Hanekawa.

Maybe she saw it all coming.

She knows everything.

No─not everything.

Only what she knows.

“And also, cat─even if a few months of exacerbated heartbreak surpassed ten-odd years of family strife…that still isn’t a reason for her to bring you out. She should have endured those headaches, like it or not. And not just this time, but during Golden Week, too─she relied on you out of weakness.”

She may not have been flimsy─but weakness was weakness.

Even if it wasn’t the result she wanted.

The weakness she ran to was the aggressor’s.

“It’s not you who should be saying those words to me, it’s Hanekawa─all she did was force the unpleasant work on you.”

Like the time with Sengoku’s snake.

That’s what I did to Kanbaru.

I put off a painful decision─and entrusted it to someone else.

That was just─having your cake and eating it too.

“You’re a Hindering Cat─an aberration. But an aberration that appeared out of Hanekawa’s weakness. She may not have wished for what you gave her─but what you gave her was what she wanted. Everything you did, Hanekawa did. I know, of course…Hanekawa has her reasons. And I know this isn’t something I should be saying, given that I share some responsibility for both times─but I’m pretty sure there are people in similar environments who manage to get out of them on their own, without relying on any aberration. The fact that Hanekawa relied on something like you is an insult to all of them.”

“Well, well. Listen to you,” Black Hanekawa sneered at me. “I guess ya have a right to say that─it’s okay for you. You’re a kind soul who’d even sacrifice himself to save a vampire on the brink of death.”

“……”

“Being kind to everyone means ya don’t have anyone special─I know, because my myaster is kind to everyone, too. Hmph. Well, okay, nyothing I can do. Ya can’t change someone’s feelings─I found that out last time. I found out, and learned.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” So we were just going to have to find Shinobu, after all. No surprise that there was no convenient solution. “But…I wonder if it’s also the case for Hanekawa. If it is, then attacking her like I just did might be a little harsh…”

“Hrm? Whatcha talking about?”

“Oh, you know─I might be a mockery of one, but I’m still kind of like a vampire. And vampires have this ability, the power of fascination…which is why I’ve been so popular with girls ever since spring break. You must know about this, Hanekawa was the one who told me.”

“We might share knowledge, but we don’t share meowmories. Like ya said, I only know about things related to her stress.”

“Oh, right.”

Still, I was already a vampire when I met Hanekawa. And not any mockery, either─it was before I became human again, during my genuine, full-fledged vampire days─you couldn’t begin to compare my powers of fascination and whatever else now to the ones I had then. Hanekawa fell face-first into the middle of that.

“She’s a serious girl,” I said. “If that’s why she started brooding over me, I think it’d make her a complete victim─”

“………”

“What’s wrong? Why’d you go quiet?”

“Nyo─that’s nyot true,” replied Black Hanekawa. “Yes, it’s true that vampires can charm people─but even among true vampires, only certain types have that ability. So there’s nyo way a knockoff vampire like you, who went from human to vampire, could ever use it.”

“What? But─”

“And fascination isn’t like some handy love potion ya might see in a myanga, anyway. The targets lose control of their will. It’s the power to make puppets out of people.”

“Make─puppets out of them? Not enthrall them?”

“Tell me, human. Is there a girl around you who’s purrfectly obedient to your orders? Someone that does exactly what ya tell them, never once defying you?”

“………”

There wasn’t a single person like that.

There absolutely wasn’t.

Even Sengoku, the most docile of the bunch, inflicted unthinkable acts on me like handing me volleyball shorts and a school swimsuit in front of my own high school’s gates.

But was the aberration saying that based on Hanekawa’s knowledge?

After all, it was Hanekawa herself who’d told me─

That was mean of me, wasn’t it.

Oh…that’s what she meant.

It was a lie.

A lie─something she claimed never to tell.

In that case, I knew what that meant about me and Senjogahara─but Hanekawa, too.

But given what I now knew, it seemed less like a case of being mean than a sort of lament─Tsubasa Hanekawa’s doleful wish for that to have been our reality. She’d have been able to relieve some of her stress had it been the case─because she could blame it on an outside force.

But there was no one else for her to blame.

“Ya can’t change someone’s feelings─meow. I see, though. That wasn’t like my myaster to do. Hmph, looks like not being able to lie caused me to let the cat out of the bag.”

“I guess it’s another instance of forcing the hard work on you.”

It wasn’t a good thing. The relief I felt, though, overshadowed that. It wasn’t thanks to any vampire’s, any aberration’s power, it was me, as myself─

It was because I’m Koyomi Araragi.

“So─I can feel proud.”

“Hrm?”

“That Hanekawa fell in love with me─”

What was that if not an honor?

I felt like that fact alone was enough to keep me going.

But to think that things would turn out like this… What would I have to do, at this point, to repay Hanekawa?

“Well, for now, we need to focus on tucking you away─damn it, where did Shinobu run off to? I haven’t heard a word from anyone helping, either… Oh, and I need to order Sengoku to pull back soon…”

Wait, how would I do that?

She didn’t have a cell phone.

Oh no. She could use a pay phone to contact me, but I had no way to contact her… What was I going to do? She could be stubborn in her own weird way, so she wasn’t going to head home of her own accord without finding Shinobu, no matter how late it got…

Maybe…Kanbaru?

I could get her to temporarily stop looking for Shinobu and try to find Sengoku instead. Was that going to be it? Agh, why was I always having to rely on her when it mattered the most… I wouldn’t ever be able to pay Kanbaru back at this rate. I was feeling ready to do anything she told me.

“Hey, human.” I had my cell phone in hand as Black Hanekawa spoke to me. Her tone seemed somehow different from every utterance she’d made so far. “There’s─one more way.”

“One more?”

“A quick and effective way to get me back in there without relying on any vampire─the easiest way is for ya to date my myaster, but this might be the second easiest.”

“I have my doubts about any plans you and your brain would come up with…but I’ll listen. What is it?”

“Walk for me a bit. Over there, to below that street lamp.”

“Like this?”

I did as she said.

I wasn’t getting my hopes up, but I needed to try any plan I could get my hands on. Still, I didn’t see what moving a dozen feet would do.

“Ah, a little to the front. You’d be right below it otherwise.”

“Right below?”

I tilted my head as she continued to talk nonsensically, but still took a step forward─and then.

She embraced me from behind.

There was no sound of her footsteps─there was no sound at all.

She had moved like a cat on the hunt.

She passed both of her arms under my armpits and wrapped them around my torso─as she held me. A sabaori, no, a sabaori is done from the front, and it’s used to bring an opponent to his knees, not to crush his internal organs─and.

It’s not used to drain an opponent’s energy.

And instantaneously─it was being absorbed.

Whatever clothes we may have been wearing didn’t matter.

Those two large cushions didn’t matter.

I could rapidly feel my entire body weakening.

“C-Cat─you─”

I didn’t have the energy to turn my head toward her. I didn’t even feel like I could scream the way Hachikuji had when I’d done the same to her that morning.

I couldn’t lift a pinkie.

But I didn’t need to look behind me to know─it was Black Hanekawa holding me. My moving away from her had been a ruse─all she wanted was for me to turn my back to her─

To let my guard down.

So she could suck me dry.

“Remember what I said? Don’t ever think ya’ve gotten nyused to us. Humans can’t ever get along with us, nyo matter what.”

“Guh… Urgh, urrg─”

“The more we play nyice with you humans, the worse off we are─looks like we know who the bigger idiot is nyow.”

It was true─I hated to admit it, but the Hindering Cat was right.

The situation was already hopeless. I could never put up a fight against the Hindering Cat even if I faced her head-on. All I had were some lingering aftereffects of being an aberration, I had no means to oppose an actual one. But to make it worse, she had come from behind─

It seemed ridiculous.

It seemed past ridiculous.

“B-But─what are you trying to do? Why do this to me here and now? It’s not as if absorbing just me would get rid of Hanekawa’s stress─”

“Like I said, it’s one more plan─about the second easiest. Of course, it’s the sharpest one from my purrspective,” Black Hanekawa said─before slurp, licking my nape. I say lick, but the feeling wasn’t what I’d call sensual─cat tongues are barbed in order to scrape meat from bones. The skin on my neck was torn from my flesh, and I could feel my blood gushing.

The cat monster drank that blood─and laughed.

“You’re the cause of the stress─it’s you who’s the stressor. Get rid of you, and I don’t nyeed to be here anymore. It’s not ‘just you’ I’m absorbing─you’re the only one I nyeed. Ya myight nyot be able to change someone’s feelings─but you can erase someone’s existence.”

“Th-That’s─”

Her ability to drain energy.

There’d been no case of it being bad enough to kill someone─but that by no means meant that it couldn’t. No human could have their energy and their core exhausted─and continue living.

But…would this make your master happy, Black Hanekawa?

“My myaster doesn’t remember anything I do─okay? She won’t think of it as something she did herself. She’ll be sad if you’re gone, of course, but even then─it’d be better than now. I can feel it─sucking ya dry like this is making me fade away─”

“I-I thought you said you’d learned─after you attacked Hanekawa’s parents over Golden Week… It still wasn’t enough? A person’s stress isn’t that simple of a─”

“Nyo, that’s nyot it─my mistake then was nyot killing my myaster’s parents. I went wrong when I tried to be considerate in some weird way to my myaster─not killing anybody was what I did wrong. That’s what I learned. And I’m nyot going to make the same mistake again─I’m killing you nyo matter what.”

“Kill me…”

I couldn’t believe the words.

I couldn’t believe the words were coming out of Hanekawa’s mouth─but perhaps even these were her own, coming from somewhere inside of her.

Flip it around, and the reverse was the obverse.

In that case.

Hanekawa, in fact─might feel happy about this. She’d never wish for this to happen─that thought might have been nothing more than an illusion I projected on her. It could have been─the result she wanted. She might be getting this─because it’s what she wished for. The Hindering Cat’s earlier proposal of going out with Hanekawa, even if it meant lying, had to have come from somewhere inside of her.

In that case.

“…Hanekawa.”

In that case─this would be a good way.

She’d saved my life.

I’d do anything for her sake.

I may not be able to change how I feel─

But I could think that I wouldn’t mind dying.

“Ya oughta be happy─ya get to die in the embrace of my myaster’s naughty body. Nyow shrivel in bliss.”

“……”

It was going to be hard for me to feel that way while all of the feeling was leaving my body─and anyway, my most immediate sensation was the pain in my torso─from the sharp claws at the end of those arms around me stabbing into my abs─but even then.

If I could die for Hanekawa’s sake.

“………”

No─I couldn’t.

I couldn’t do it.

There was what Senjogahara had said─so I couldn’t let myself be killed. If Hanekawa killed me─or even if Hanekawa’s body killed me, Senjogahara would kill her in turn. This was no projected illusion, this was certainty. Senjogahara wouldn’t hesitate, I knew that. And there’d be no way to prevent it when it came to that. Senjogahara wouldn’t even give Hanekawa the time to feel stressed.

So─I couldn’t do it.

This was the absolute worst way possible.

“L-Let me go.”

“Hrrm?”

“Just─let me go.”

I didn’t have room to explain. The Hindering Cat didn’t know Senjogahara─no, she’d have had some knowledge of her, but Hanekawa’s knowledge of Senjogahara was limited. Unless you knew her as well as I did, or at least as well as Kanbaru did, you wouldn’t recognize the danger Hitagi Senjogahara posed…but I’d be like a sheet of paper floating in the wind by the time I spelled it all out.

“Begging for your life? That’s good─I wouldn’t mind letting ya free if ya say you’ll go out with my myaster.”

“Gah… Like I said, that’s impossible─”

“I thought as myuch,” Black Hanekawa said─casually, once again. “Fine, then. Just die.”

“………”

“Or do ya want to try asking someone for help? You’ve saved so many people up until now─maybe someone myight come save you.”

“Someone?”

Like who?

Hachikuji? Sengoku? Kanbaru? Senjogahara?

“There’s no way─anyone could save me.”

“No? Why nyot?”

“Because people just go and get saved on their own─”

“That’s nyot your own opinyan, is it?” she retorted, gently. “Those are just words─nyot how you feel. If you’re just parroting the words of others, it barely means a thing─the question is how you feel, meow.”

“…Guh, gurrh─”

“Yes, people do go and get saved on their own─but why should people who help others care? They can go and save as many people as they please.” The cat’s voice was throaty. “Tell me, how many people do ya think are out there─who want to help you? And are ya gonna reject every single one of ’em─?”

The strength─left my body.

I couldn’t stay standing anymore.

It was like Black Hanekawa’s arms, wrapped around my body, were the only thing supporting me─like I’d entrusted my body to her completely.

My mind grew hazy, too.

I could do nothing.

I could do nothing─on my own.

It made me want to laugh, but I didn’t have the strength for that, either. I didn’t have the strength─but still, I wanted to laugh.

Yeah.

I guess…she would be sad.

Hanekawa…and Senjogahara, too.

And Kanbaru, and Sengoku.

Maybe even Hachikuji.

If I died.

“Help…”

I mustered the words.

I mustered the words together─and spoke them.

“Help…Shinobu.”

At that moment.

A single girl leapt out─from my own shadow.

A blonde.

A helmet with goggles on top.

She had a small build─but she tore Black Hanekawa’s hug from my body in the blink of an eye. A breath later and she’d sent Black Hanekawa’s body flying. The cat couldn’t even turn its body in the air and slammed into the lamp on the opposite side of the street. The streetlight bent─no, it wasn’t that hard, but the impact was enough to make it sway.

Then she landed.

Shinobu Oshino leapt out from the shadows─

And landed as she shook her blond hair everywhere she pleased.

Shinobu.

She was hiding…there?

But when I thought about it─that was about the only possible place left. It was impossible not to have received so much as a report of a sighting after searching this town for so long─and the Hindering Cat’s sense of smell shouldn’t have failed so utterly.

So.

I should have assumed what followed, that she was using some kind of vampire ability─but I’d convinced myself that she couldn’t because her abilities were limited.

No.

There was a hole in my logic.

I’d known, hadn’t I? She could use a little bit of her powers if she was near me─which meant she had to be hiding near me. That was all there was to it.

A psychological blind spot─one of the fundamentals of the mystery novel.

If you want to hide something, hide it in plain view.

Not only that, the hiding spot was extremely effective against a cat’s sense of smell, too─because her scent would be masked by mine.

My presence was weak and in the background─

Shinobu took advantage of that.

It was probably in the afternoon─or maybe the morning. As I was looking for Shinobu─she found me first. To make a random guess, I’d say it was around the Mister Donut. And that’s where Shinobu─hid in my shadow. She belonged to the world of darkness, and hiding in someone’s shadow was a vampire specialty─but that was the old her. Now mine might have been the only shadow she could hide in─

Oh.

Right below it─that’s what she meant.

Because that would cause my shadow to be directly below me─so telling me to go under the streetlight… It was obvious who would win in a fight between a Hindering Cat and a mockery of a human like me, and there was no need for her to go to the trouble of attacking me from behind. She didn’t have to toy around with any complicated plans, she needed only to attack me fair and square. Which meant─

I looked over to Black Hanekawa as she sat cowering under the streetlight.

Black Hanekawa─grinned.

But that too was only for a moment.

Shinobu had no mercy─the moment after the Hindering Cat landed, Shinobu sprung toward her and attacked. Extending her short limbs as far as they could go, she entwined them around Black Hanekawa’s body─and sunk her teeth into her neck.

Black Hanekawa never stood a chance.

From there─Shinobu sucked.

If a Hindering Cat had the ability to drain energy─so did a vampire. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, an aberration for an aberration, an energy drain for an energy drain. Even then, Shinobu’s vitality was being sucked away by the Hindering Cat simply because the two were touching─but Shinobu was sucking away even more vitality from the Hindering Cat.

As utter food.

As aberrations, a Hindering Cat and a vampire are made from different stuff.

As aberrations, a Hindering Cat and a vampire are made of different stuff.

The scene was a rehash of what I witnessed during Golden Week─a perfect recreation. Though it took quite a fitting amount of hardship that time to force her into this position…Black Hanekawa wasn’t fighting back this time.

Because she had neither the chance nor the will now.

While there was no way to prevent her always-on energy drain─the Hindering Cat was surrendering to Shinobu. If she felt like it, she had the strength, endurance, and mobility to take on Shinobu as she was now (and only as she was now), and yet─

For Hanekawa.

It was for─her master.

Of course, I shouldn’t pretend that I understood. Just as Black Hanekawa said, I couldn’t act like I was used to them, too familiar or over-familiar─and I find it hard to believe that it was what Black Hanekawa wanted from the beginning.

While her intelligence might have been that of a cat, she must have realized that Shinobu could be hiding in my shadow─and also that there was no easy way to lure her out. To that end, she’d used me as bait, as a hostage, moving me under a street lamp where my shadow would be isolated even at night, before using her energy drain on me. That much was clear─but.

Would Black Hanekawa not have minded really killing me there? If Shinobu wasn’t hiding in my shadow and truly had left town, would she have been fine sucking up my entire existence?

It only happened to end up this way.

She didn’t have the brain to tell a lie.

Everything the Hindering Cat said─she meant.

It was how she really felt.

And─it was also how Hanekawa felt inside.

The hard work─that she was forcing on the Hindering Cat.

She was right.

Looks like we knew─who the bigger idiot was now.

“…Ah.”

Black Hanekawa’s hair─gradually regained its color.

It turned gray, then brown─then black.

Her cat ears, too, slowly dwindled.

That existence, the aberration─was being sucked away by Shinobu.

Aberration slayer.

That was the curse spat at Shinobu until spring break.

Whether it was a Hindering Cat or anything else, she sunk her fangs in and sucked─ripping its very existence out from the world. A genuine, full-fledged aberrant creature─

A vampire, the king of aberrations, the ruler of unlife.

“Time to stop─please, Shinobu. Stop,” I said. “If you keep sucking, Hanekawa will be gone too. And I─don’t want that.”

And when I said those words.

Shinobu moved away from Hanekawa’s neck with surprising nonchalance. Hanekawa’s neck─had two clear fang marks carved into it, but I didn’t need to worry about those. It was different from the bite mark on my own nape. Unlike with me, Shinobu only sucked the Hindering Cat’s vitality, in order to feed─she was simply eating.

Vampires suck human blood─but it means different things when they suck it for food and when they suck it to create thralls.

Maybe that was why Shinobu ran off.

So said the Hindering Cat.

The aberration that had just been sucked away.

Shinobu plodded back toward me, done with her meal─and sank right back into my shadow.

Had she taken a liking to it?

Living in my shadow?

And then─

It was just me and a black-haired Hanekawa.

She wasn’t conscious─her eyes shut, she was sleeping.

She probably wouldn’t wake up until the next morning.

“………”

And with that, the incident was settled.

But─that of course didn’t mean the problem was solved. We had rid her of the Hindering Cat, but nothing else had changed─we had only eliminated the Hindering Cat, and not her stress itself. Not only that, this new stress had taken shape over little more than a month─so there was no small chance it would reappear. Even if it didn’t, Hanekawa had her longstanding family issues, so─

No.

That wasn’t true.

Putting her family stuff aside.

What happened this time─was an issue I could do something about.

I could make things a little easier for Hanekawa starting from the very next day, all depending on how I behaved. Of course, I didn’t think I could change the way I felt─but those feelings of wanting to repay her were certainly my own.

I wanted to save Hanekawa.

Her given name conjured up images of taking others under her wing, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t take her under mine.

I’d go and save her as I pleased.

No matter what anyone said, just as I pleased.

“Phew…”

A sigh left my lips.

I did have to admit, though, I was tired… My energy had been drained down close to its limit, after all. Even my mock-vampire body seemed like it was going to need time to recover. I doubted I’d be able to budge until the next morning, too. Sheesh, and I needed to be thanking everyone who’d helped me out…

Well, it would be fine.

I did get to see Hanekawa in her pajamas.

Going back to “The North Wind and the Sun,” this made me closer to the North Wind, but…there was no better sight than a black-haired, slow-breathing Hanekawa in her pajamas under a street lamp, as though a spotlight had been placed on her. Not only did her present state make me twice as happy, it felt like you could double my joy again on top of that. As compensation for the day’s hard labor, it was bliss. Spending the night with Hanekawa there, as I saw her from the side of the road, didn’t seem so bad now…

The stars in the sky.

They were so beautiful, after all.

“Mm, mmmh,” Hanekawa made a sound.

Like she was talking in her sleep.

“Araragi…”

Or maybe─she wasn’t talking in her sleep as much as words were spilling from her mouth in her hazy state of mind. Shinobu had sucked only the Hindering Cat’s existence from her, so perhaps she still had trouble separating Black Hanekawa and Hanekawa in her head, putting her in a state where the two intermingled.

So she wasn’t talking in her sleep─she was giving voice to her feelings.

Tsubasa Hanekawa’s unadorned, honest feelings were spilling from her lips.

“What do you mean, paying me back is more important to you than our friendship─don’t say that. What a sad, lonely thing to say.”

“……”

Hanekawa kept her eyes closed─as she murmured the words.

“Araragi… You need to shape up.”

And then─she fell back into a deep sleep.

My goodness, even when she sleeps.

Serious until the end─a master in the field.

It was no time to be worried about someone else.

Even so, my reply to her was immediate and candid, like a conditioned reflex. I hadn’t been trained by Hanekawa in the two months since becoming a third-year for nothing. Despite it all, I knew how I needed to reply.

“Okay.”