017
In the end, I wasn’t able to absorb all of the aberration’s, the Cinderswarm Bee’s, poison. Maybe half─or even just a third. That was all.
Which was unfortunate, I guess. But at least it was enough to lower Karen’s fever somewhat─from over 104 degrees down to about 101. That might not seem like much, but it made a huge difference for her.
In fact, she was feeling so much better that, up until a moment ago, she had been making a big ruckus. “My first kiss! I can’t believe you stole my first kiss! I was saving it for Mizudori!!”
By the way, Mizudori is Karen’s boyfriend. That’s his last name. I haven’t met him yet and don’t know his first, but apparently he’s a cute younger boy.
While we’re on the topic, Tsukihi’s boyfriend is named Rosokuzawa (I don’t know his first name either, nor have I come face to face with him). Supposedly he’s a dashing older boy─the polar opposite of Mizudori─so I guess the two sisters have very different tastes in men.
In any case, Karen had worn herself out and was asleep. I guess the treatment had its intended effect.
Afterwards, Shinobu said, “Spreading a cold through a kiss, or giving a cold to someone else to get better, does not even rise to the level of an urban legend. But be it mouth to mouth or indirect kissing, it takes a charm to beat a charm.” She added as though she was fed up, “Thou art less a vampire than a demon. Or should I say, a devil.”
Hmph. For the first time in ages, I’d made my sister cry.
………
It served her right, the idiot!
It was the morning of July thirtieth. After putting Karen to sleep, I waited until it was past nine and got on my way, leaving a note for Tsukihi to “stay put at home with Karen for today.”
Since I’d lent my bike to Hanekawa, I walked. Destination─Senjogahara’s house.
Along the way, I spotted Hachikuji.
As usual, she was plodding along with a massive knapsack strapped to her back─what did she cram into that bag, anyways? I liked to imagine that it was full of heavy dumbbells, and she was using it to beef up.
In any case, I must have really been in luck to run into her two days in a row. Probability-wise, that seemed even less likely than running into her twice on the same day. I’m not sure I could keep treating her as a lucky charm, though. After all, I’d run into some pretty bad luck the day before.
In any case, was this area actually part of her territory, too? Unless she was branching out? Was she making a map of the neighborhood or something? Who did she think she was, Tadataka Ino?
“Hey, Hachikuji,” I just greeted her normally. I’d learned my lesson the hard way with Kanbaru.
“……”
Hachikuji had a very dissatisfied look on her face.
“H-Hachikuji?”
“Oh…it’s Mister Araragi.”
“Come on, don’t pronounce it right!”
What happened to our routine?!
Don’t just change things up!
“Mister Araragi, that was such a boring hello. You’ve really come down in the world. Did something happen?”
“Why so maligning?!”
The look in her eyes!
It wasn’t cold so much as incisive!
Even Senjogahara didn’t glare at me like that!
I had to object. “I thought you didn’t like it when I harassed you!”
“I was signaling for you to step it up. How could you stop just because you were told to? Tsk, you’ve fumbled a great pass.”
“That was an overly complex cue!”
“I feel like I’ve been told a long joke with a flubbed punch line.”
“Is it that bad?!”
“Besides, ‘maligning’ is too fancy a word for you. Maybe if you misspelled it…”
“So malighning!”
“An easy way to remember how to spell that one: associate it with ‘malignant,’” Hachikuji gave me a gratuitous lesson.
Then she turned her back to me, forlornly, and began trudging away.
Leaving me in her wake.
Well, she wasn’t going to.
“Hey, Hachikuji. Wait.”
“Go away. The friend I knew is dead and gone… When you take the sexual harassment out of Araragi, all that’s left are the fleas.”
“There were no fleas to begin with!”
“I don’t even want to look at you anymore. Get lost.”
“Don’t say that! Senjogahara has at least a hundred times, but when you do, I really want to disappear!”
“Strange, I told you to scram, and yet you’re still here… Can’t you even manage that much?”
“I wish I could start over from my last save!”
I pulled up beside her.
Although Hachikuji still looked dissatisfied (It didn’t seem like she was doing a bit. The girl was hard to understand at times), she finally sighed after a while and turned to face me.
“So, what happened?” she asked. “You certainly seem to be in serious mode today, unlike yesterday.”
“Serious mode… Yeah, I guess.”
The day before, I’d been heading to Sengoku’s house just to hang out.
Senjogahara─was scarier. Who knew what she’d been up to after we parted.
“A lot happened,” I said.
“Oh. I won’t press you for details.”
Hachikuji nodded. She could be considerate when it came to boundaries, like no other grade schooler.
“But, Mister Araragi, I’m a little worried that you look a bit under the weather.”
“Huh? I do?”
“Are you feeling all right?”
“Hmm…” Although I’d absorbed half of Karen’s illness, I didn’t think it had affected me enough to be visible. But maybe since this was Hachikuji─she could tell? “Apparently it’s called the Cinderswarm Bee. It’s a very different kind of aberration than your snail… Still, it’s a pain in the neck.”
“I see─what a bother.” Hachikuji crossed her arms and frowned like she was genuinely bothered. “But I’m sure you’ll be fine. You’ve dealt with these things plenty of times.”
“I hope you’re right. Nothing seems to be going smoothly, so far. Not that I ever handled it smoothly before. I always mess up.”
Griping to someone younger than me seemed lame, but I’d have pretty much no one else’s ear on the topic, so I went ahead.
“You see, my sisters are such idiots.”
“Even bigger idiots than you, Mister Araragi?”
“Hey, what’s with that premise?!”
Yup, this was how it ought to be. It was too stupid to discuss seriously.
“What they say is right,” I conceded, “and I want to respect that─but they’re too simpleminded. What they want to do is right, but they don’t know how to go about it. At least, that’s how I see it.”
“Isn’t that what people always say about you, Mister Araragi?”
“Hrm…”
True, Oshino and Hanekawa criticized me in similar ways. In my case, I tended to be told that a pretty solution wasn’t always right, but it meant essentially the same thing.
“Plus, if you weren’t that kind of person,” added Hachikuji, “I wouldn’t be here strolling down the street so fancy-free. Maybe there are a lot of people out there who were helped by your sisters, too.”
“………”
There were.
A lot of them, no doubt.
How else to make sense of my sisters’ ridiculous reputation?
Their charisma skill was rooted in results─at the very least, the pair were more popular than I was.
Loved, even.
What more could you ask for?
Wasn’t that sufficient proof?
Hachikuji made a persuasive point, and yet─
“They’re such brats,” I said. “They don’t listen to anyone. I have to try to wrap this all up while they’re still stuck at home, behaving…”
The fact that the aberration was this Cinderswarm Bee was in a sense a lucky break. It was forcing Karen to stay at home and be mature.
Mature…
“Hachikuji, when does a person grow up?”
“Not while they’re still asking,” nailed Hachikuji, the fifth-grader. “The age of majority in Japan is twenty now, but it depends on the times. Back in the day, girls used to get married when they were fairly young. It was like all men were pedophiles.”
“That’s unsettling.”
“All the warlords were into BL.”
“That’s even more unsettling.”
“The biggest historical battles were all just lovers’ spats, maybe? Social studies textbooks become so much more interesting then.”
“I don’t even want to think about that.”
“Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Ieyasu were in a love triangle!”
“That totally subverts Japanese history.”
I suppose that was one aspect of war. Neither society nor the world ever changed. What a poignant reality.
“Subverted or reversed, reality is reality,” Hachikuji said. “They call it the Warring States period, but that should be ‘Rawring’ instead.”
“I don’t know… I’m not sure everyone would agree that it was so great.”
“Well, it depends on what your idea of paradise is. Me, I picture a drink bar with free refills.”
“Why?!”
Such an intense longing for free refills… Not that it didn’t make any sense. When I was a kid, it did offer its sense of wonder.
“Mister Araragi, what do you picture when you hear the word ‘paradise’?”
“I don’t know… Clouds and angels?”
“Hmph.”
“If I had to say, then Hanekawa.”
“Is that because of all the obscene thoughts you’re harboring for her?”
“They’re not all obscene!”
What a rude thing to say.
In any case, that was my image.
It was Senjogahara, by the way, when I pictured hell.
That kind of went without saying.
Hell hath no fury like her every whim.
“Some people would say you’re a grownup if you’ve started working, but you can grow up without ever working,” opined Hachikuji.
“You mean growing up is just part of getting older.”
“By the way, do you have any vocation in mind, Mister Araragi?”
“Sorry, I haven’t thought that far ahead…”
“That doesn’t sound very mature.”
“……”
Hmm. Maybe so.
“A job where I hold Hanekawa’s breasts so they don’t spill out would be great,” I stated.
“How did you ever say that with a straight face?”
“Seriously, who the hell invented the bra? I don’t know how much money the bastards made, but thanks to them I’m out of a job.”
“Please calm down. That career option never existed in the first place.”
“How about what we said once? A job fondling your breasts all day until they get bigger would be quite acceptable to me.”
“I would fear for their shape… Besides, are you even aware that your fantasies are leaking out?”
“Uh oh.”
“Zip your lips.”
“They don’t come with such a convenient feature.”
“Then staple your lips.”
“I’m having a flashback!”
Ah, by the way, Hachikuji mumbled as if she’d just remembered something. “After we said goodbye yesterday, I passed a group of freshmen girls from your school who must have stayed behind for extracurricular activities. They were gossiping about it.”
“About what?”
“Apparently, there’s a rumor that a third-year called Araragi can make your breasts super big by fondling them.”
“……”
I think I knew who might have started that rumor.
A certain second-year who ran like the wind.
Talk about a nasty surprise. I’m sure she meant well, but it was plain harassment.
Now I was scared to go back to school!
“Mister Araragi, returning to our discussion, I heard this joke.”
“What kind of joke?”
“A bachelor is asked by his mother, ‘When are you going to get married?’ ‘Very soon,’ he promises, ‘I’m just waiting for the girl to turn sixteen.’”
“That’s not funny!”
What a point to return to.
Why were we discussing that, anyway? That was just going off-topic.
“Well,” I said, “maybe there’s no point telling girls in junior high to grow up. Age-wise, they’re kids, after all.”
Unlike Shinobu.
Glancing down at my shadow, where she was probably asleep, I had that thought.
“That’s it,” Hachikuji agreed. “How could middle schoolers not be kids? The problem is not knowing that they’re children.”
“Ooh.”
Hachikuji was on to something. She could be very good at catching things that I missed.
Maybe that was it, and the issue was self-awareness.
“Still,” Hachikuji said, “it might beat adults who don’t see themselves as adults.”
“Yeah, grownups who think of themselves as kids are the worst.”
Not that they were uncommon. A few of my teachers fit that bill.
“By the way, Hachikuji, which do you consider yourself?”
“I have the body of a child and the mind of an adult.”
“Like Detective Conan!”
“Speaking of detectives…”
Hachikuji was about to go off topic again, but I didn’t stop her. We were getting close to Senjogahara’s place, but we had enough time for one more round.
“Lately standard mysteries have been getting popular again, as opposed to newfangled ones.”
“You actually know and care about that sort of trend? Well, fine. ‘Standard’? Standard or not, isn’t the whole mystery genre in decline?”
“What are you saying? Even if mystery novels aren’t big anymore, the mystery genre is going strong. Procedural dramas, mystery manga, whodunit games─the category is alive and kicking. All of those are pretty popular.”
“……”
That was true.
On TV, mysteries regularly cornered prime time. Even the repeats were on round the clock.
Why was it that only the novels had gone out of style?
It had become like a traditional art form.
“I guess people just don’t read as much as they used to?” I hypothesized. “But then cell phone novels are all the rage.” Though I wasn’t very good at using mine and hadn’t read any. “Still, I haven’t heard anything about mysteries being mainstream in that world.”
“They say the number of words people will read in their lifetimes is set. However many hundreds of millions that is.”
“Oh yeah?”
Yet another bit of odd trivia.
You had to wonder just what kind of books Hachikuji read.
“And so,” she continued, “exhausting that amount through emails and the internet, people read less.”
“Do you think that’s true?”
“I highly doubt it,” Hachikuji withdrew her theory (well, probably not hers) without protest. “Mystery novels aren’t popular simply because they’re getting trite.”
“Is that your own view this time?”
“I’m contrite that they’re trite… Ahahaha!”
“That wasn’t so clever that you should be laughing hard at your own pun!”
“It was different back in the day, but you can’t compete with the kinds of images and directing you get in other media. The main weapon left to novels is identification. Being a novel and not relying on visuals makes it easier to step into someone’s shoes. But you don’t want to be identifying with any character in a mystery. The whole selling point is that you never know whom to trust.”
“Hmm, you may be on to something.”
“Which is why mystery novels are now a minor genre. They’re even less popular than hanafuda.”
“Huh?” Now that was a comparison that piqued my interest. “You know how to play hanafuda?”
Hachikuji nodded. “Because of my name, I always liked the hachi-hachi variant.”
“At last, I’ve found you!” My soulmate! I wanted to play right now! “Ah…but we don’t have a deck! Dammit! When I try to play hanafuda, no one knows the rules, and when I find someone who does, no one has a deck!”
“Well, I can’t imagine anyone happening to have one on hand.”
“No, from now on, I’m going to carry one with me,” I vowed. “The next time I run into you, we’ll have a hanafuda tournament!”
“Mister Araragi… For some reason you seem to be under the impression that you mustn’t meet me except by accident, but we could just make an appointment, you know? Why not pick a date and place?”
“Uh…that’s so formal, I’d feel shy!”
“Are you actually blushing?”
Hachikuji shrank back. Unmistakably, as the tide ebbs.
N-No, it was an expression of my love for hanafuda, not Hachikuji… Wait, did I love hanafuda that much? I couldn’t help but suspect that a total dearth of opponents was inflating my interest in the game.
The only combo anyone seemed to know was boar-deer-butterfly.
“I bet Sengoku doesn’t even know that the game exists. Ugh… Why can’t somebody put out a hit manga about hanafuda?”
“Aren’t you being a little over-dramatic? Plenty of people know how to play.”
“Maybe, but I never seem to meet any of them.”
“I’ve heard that it’s relatively popular in Okinawa.”
“Is that true?”
“Only relatively speaking, though.”
“I see… It wouldn’t be worth moving there, then…”
“Are you really that crazy for it? Well, I guess it rivals mahjong in having a strong gambling element.”
“Gambling element?”
“Which is also to say a strong affinity with illegality.”
“Hrmm.”
I see.
Recalling the Washizu mahjong tiles that I had found in the same area as the hanafuda deck in Kanbaru’s room, I gave a deep nod. It was quite true. In fact, even for regular playing cards, young people of my generation did shy away from poker, blackjack, baccarat, and other typical gambling games.
The temperature difference between people who understood the game and those who didn’t was severe, so to speak.
Gambling element, huh?
“Anyway, what were we talking about, Hachihachiji?”
“Where did that one temple go?”
“Oops, I didn’t even notice. Anyway, what were we talking about, Hachikuji?”
“About how much you love panties.”
“I’m pretty sure that was yesterday.”
“Not panties… Then do you mean mysteries?”
“Don’t pair those two things. Anyway, you were saying that mystery novels aren’t big anymore but that the genre itself is going strong─and standard setups are on the rise. But I’m not sure exactly what you mean by a non-standard mystery.”
“If the catchphrase is, ‘The killer is not in this room!’ then it probably isn’t standard.”
“Definitely not!”
“How about, ‘This case is clothes!’”
“That would be pretty niche!”
“‘QUod Erat…S. T. I. O. N!’”
“The demonstration is intentionally lacking!”
When you went that far, a certain catchphrase was inevitable.
It’s no mystery.
“Anyway, Hachikuji, we still haven’t gotten to your point, have we?”
“No. If it’s a mystery, someone gets killed, and the killer is revealed, but in a lot of the cases, the culprit ends up having a really sad motive. Something about that feels like it lacks closure. You’re left not quite sure who was the bad guy… Though reality is like that, too, and I should find that interesting.”
“Well, dramatically, when a good person gets killed and the killer is a bad person, we don’t have much of a twist─though with period pieces and such, that actually works better, so I don’t know. Still, no matter who the villain is, he’d have some reason or other, wouldn’t he.”
Deishu Kaiki.
His reason─was money.
Money, the be-all and end-all.
“Hm? Oh─sorry, Hachihachiji…”
“You’re forgetting a temple again.”
“A-Ah, sorry, Hachishichiji…”
“Is a temple disappearing every time you say my name?!”
“Hachirokuji. We’re almost at Senjogahara’s house, so I’m going to have to say goodbye.”
“Hmm? Right, yes. Right, your friend doesn’t like me very much.”
Hachikuji halted and turned around.
She had no destination in the first place.
“Mister Araragi, farewell.”
“You too.”
We waved at each other and parted ways.
Thank goodness I’d run into Hachikuji to make the trip interesting, I thought idly as I watched her receding figure─however.
At the time, I didn’t know what would beset the amiable girl named Mayoi Hachikuji─
No, I mean, just in the sense of actually not knowing.
Hachikuji was a mystery, in her own way─what did she do while she was alone, or rather, when she wasn’t out for a walk?
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