Monogatari Series - Volume 5 - Chapter 6.21

021

The whole thing played out so smoothly that it was almost anticlimactic. Whether or not that was fortunate, however, is another matter.

“Fine then, I cede the issue. No more deceiving middle-school students. I will cease spreading these so-called charms. And Araragi, if you are worried about that spirited young lady─your sister─you needn’t be. Her condition is like a placebo effect. Instantaneous hypnosis, as they say─given her susceptibility to belief, I imagine her symptoms are quite severe, but she should recover within three days. Consider it a simple cold. As for you, Senjogahara, allow me to formally apologize for the situation with your mother. Legally speaking, I did no more than offer advice to you and your family. There is no law to indict me. But if I have hurt you, it would be untoward not to offer some consolation. Likewise, whatever money I took from your father I will do my utmost to return─as that money has nearly all been spent, however, doing so may require some time.”

So said the ominous man dressed in a black suit, as if he was in mourning.

Deishu Kaiki.

Senjogahara had chosen the location of our rendezvous─the roof of perhaps the only department store complex in our town. Close quarters would have put us at a disadvantage, whereas any place too deserted would also be dangerous. Which is why she had chosen the department store roof─of course, she also had the benefit of learning from Karen’s mistake.

It was the evening of July thirtieth.

After our fight I had carried Karen home piggyback. I figured she wasn’t going to try and sneak out again, but just in case, I scrawled “Need good time─all men welcome” across her face in permanent marker to ensure she wouldn’t leave the house (I also wrote “Hate bras─not wearing one” across Tsukihi’s face. Joint liability).

Then I met up with Senjogahara and headed to the meeting spot.

There was a mini-amusement park atop, with a small stage adjacent to it. Since today was Sunday, a performance was scheduled (a Power Rangers-type show). That would allow us to pretend we were just there waiting for it to start.

A man dressed in the deepest black and two high school students. It wasn’t the strangest combination, but it would draw some stares─which was probably desirable.

He may have driven her off, but Kaiki had already been confronted by Karen once. Even though he had answered his phone, counting on him to let himself be summoned again seemed like a gamble to me─for some reason, however, Senjogahara remained strangely confident.

In fact, it seemed less like confidence, and more like trust.

When we reached the department store roof, Deishu Kaiki was already waiting, alone. He was drinking a can of coffee.

When he spotted us, he tossed the empty can into the garbage.

“Hmph. You’re the boy I met outside the home of Gaen’s legacy. Come to avenge your sister? How rare these days to see a child with such chivalry,” he addressed me in a somber tone.

Next he turned toward Senjogahara.

“You’ve lost your charm though, haven’t you, Senjogahara. Such an ordinary girl you’ve become.”

He didn’t even smile.

“Excuse me?” Senjogahara spoke in reply. She stepped in front of Kaiki, her face still expressionless. “I’d say I never wanted to see you again─but I’d be lying. The truth is I never wanted to see you the first time. Still, I have to tell you─I’ve been looking forward to this moment.”

“Well, I haven’t been. Certainly not when you’ve become such an ordinary girl. When I met you before, you sparkled as the night─or maybe I should say you seemed enlightened. You were so worth deceiving,” Kaiki answered glibly.

I found myself thinking of them again. Of Oshino and Guillotine Cutter.

They were all very different─and face-to-face like this, Kaiki had almost nothing in common with them. Except for one point.

Their confidence.

As if they were perpetrating crimes of conviction, registering and comprehending all, they chose to be silent or eloquent as they saw fit.

“Is this your fault, Araragi? Are you the one who solved this young woman’s problem?”

“No─I just gave her a little push.”

“Then you and I are the same,” Kaiki remarked in a moody─an ominous─manner. “Of course, when I pushed her, it was in the direction of a cliff.”

“Which is what you’re doing now, isn’t it? To middle-school students? Giving them a little push─and trying to knock them over.”

Off the side of a cliff. Or a suspension bridge.

“Did your sister tell you? Yes, exactly. These country children have been saving up. I’ve earned a fair bit of coin in a very short amount of time.”

Shift.

I noticed Senjogahara was slowly closing the distance between herself and Kaiki─I’d say she was gearing up for a fight, but then she had been for some time now.

Ever since we had arrived on the roof.

Or maybe, since she heard me utter Kaiki’s name.

Or─ever since he deceived her.

“No, let’s talk,” Kaiki curbed Senjogahara’s approach. “I’ll listen to what you have to say. It’s why I’m here. It’s why you’re both here as well. Am I wrong?”

“……”

“……”

Then, in fact─we listened to what Deishu Kaiki had to say.

Fine then, I cede the issue─he said.

He admitted to everything, promised to pick up stakes─and even offered to make reparations.

An anticlimax.

Everything had gone smoothly─it was a perfect outcome, more than we had hoped for, yet…

It was, indeed, more than we had hoped for. His response wasn’t unexpected so much as unwanted.

“How very forthcoming of you,” praised Senjogahara, sarcastically─to be honest it sounded hollow, like she didn’t know what to say, and was making do. “But why should we believe you?”

“You wouldn’t, Senjogahara.” The man never seemed to bother with honorifics. He didn’t with me, either. “Araragi, what about you? Are you able to believe me?”

“Asking me to believe anything a conman says is ridiculous. At the same time,” I answered cautiously, “if we’re not going to trust you even one bit, then this whole conversation is moot. It’s like you said earlier, Kaiki. We came here to talk.”

“Hmph. You’re a very level-headed young man, aren’t you? Not one iota of a child’s innocent charm. Your sister was much cuter with her refusal to think. In that sense, I suppose you live up to your title as big brother.”

Kaiki didn’t seem to be trying either to provoke or to commend when he said this.

“To me, at least,” Senjogahara cut into him curtly, “you don’t look very repentant. I don’t smell a whiff of remorse.”

“Ah. I haven’t offered any apology yet, have I? Nor begged for my life. A thousand pardons, I am most repentant, truly eaten up inside─well... I suppose it’s not you two that I should be apologizing to, but your father and mother, Senjogahara─and all the children I deceived this time.”

“You expect me to believe that shallow apology? Everything you say is a lie.”

“Perhaps it is,” Kaiki allowed, nodding. From his oppressive tone, you might think that he was angry─but something made me doubt that.

I felt quite certain that he was a man incapable of anger. And not just anger.

I had a feeling he didn’t think about other people in any way.

“And if everything I say is a lie─so what?” he continued. “I am a fraud. It would be nothing less than sincere of me to only ever traffic in nonsense. And besides, Senjogahara…”

“What?”

“Isn’t it overly hasty to label a mismatch between words and feelings a mere deception? If the words are not reflective of feelings, why assume that the words are false? Must the words be a lie─and the feelings true? Who is to say?”

“Could you refrain from intentionally aggravating me? In case you didn’t know, I’m trying very hard to be patient.” Senjogahara closed her eyes for a moment. Not a blink, but a long pause. “I’m having a tough time resisting this urge to kill you.”

“So it would seem. And that’s what I mean by ‘ordinary.’ The old you would have never shown such patience.”

“At this point, what I want isn’t to have our money returned─it wouldn’t bring my family back.”

“I see. That is a great relief. I am a prolific spender and terrible at saving. In order to pay back your money, I was going to have to cook up a new scam.”

“Leave this town…immediately.”

“Of course.”

Once again, Kaiki assented with a readiness that was creepy and dubious.

“What’s wrong, Araragi?” he said. “Why are you looking at me that way? You shouldn’t. The results may not have been serious, but I did harm your little sister. If you’re going to stare at me, shouldn’t there be more enmity in your eyes?”

“My sister has herself to blame… She should have never gotten mixed up with someone like you. That goes without saying.”

“You’re wrong. Your sister’s mistake was in coming to meet me alone─if she wanted to trip me up, she should have brought a friend or two, like you knew to do. Then I would have thrown up a white flag, just as I am doing now. On all other points, the young lady was more or less right.”

“……”

“Or are you declaring her to be a fool and denying her as a fool?”

“I think she’s right. But…”

“She isn’t strong?” Kaiki beat me to the punch as if he’d already thought about it─as if he’d contemplated such trivial matters long ago and were done with them. “No, she certainly isn’t. But there is no denying that young lady’s kindness. What’s more…”

For the first time─Deishu Kaiki seemed to smile. A smile as ominous as a crow.

“What’s more, if it weren’t for young ladies like her, I’d go hungry as a confidence man.”

“And why,” said Senjogahara, who unlike me, was fixing Kaiki with a highly appropriate stare, “is that conman now so quick to do as we say? Surely you could just wheedle your way out of this…like you did with me before. I bet no one has any proof that you’re scamming these kids.”

“Senjogahara, you misunderstand me.” Kaiki was no longer smiling. Perhaps what I took for a smile had only been a trick of the light. “No, perhaps I shouldn’t say misunderstand, but rather overestimate. It is quite natural to view someone you consider an enemy as being larger than life. I understand the impulse. But Senjogahara, life is not so dramatic. Rail against me though you may, I am but a middle-aged dullard. Even as a conman, I am small fry at best. A dismal man.”

Hardly worthy of your resentment, he appended.

“I am not your enemy─just an annoying neighbor. Even if I did once seem like a monster to you.”

“Don’t kid yourself. You’re just─”

A fake, spat Senjogahara. But it was true that the same fake had been tormenting her.

“Yes, precisely. I am that,” Kaiki agreed. “A low creature whose mind is racing even now, desperate to get out of this fix. And the most effective means to that end is to be meek and submissive and to do as you say. Capturing your good graces is my only avenue of escape.”

“……”

Then…why come in the first place? He was obviously under no obligation to answer a summons from Senjogahara.

“You see, Senjogahara, I am not obeying, so meekly and submissively, because of who you are─I would obey anyone, under comparable circumstances. If I may─until your call this morning, I had completely forgotten you. From my point of view, what happened to your family was just one con in a line of many that I carried out. I learned no lesson from you back then.”

I had to wrack my brain to remember you, he muttered and looked at Senjogahara again.

“I am not special─and neither are you. There is nothing dramatic about me, and there is nothing dramatic about you. All the loose bills and small change I manage to gather are but a paltry amount in society’s grand scheme. However momentous a decision it was for you to confront me, its outcome is as insignificant as today’s weather.”

You’ll find no drama here, Kaiki reiterated as though to chastize her.

“And what of you, Araragi? Allow me to ask you. Is your life dramatic? Is it a tragedy? A comedy? An opera? I sense something…unsettling, in your shadow.”

“……”

“Also─you seem to have somehow absorbed half of your sister’s condition. What madness. Such a risky thing to do, and without the promise of monetary reward.”

Could he tell? About Shinobu─and about my body? And if he could─how?

“Just…which are you?” I asked him.

“Which… Which what?”

“For a fake, you did a pretty good number on my sister. Senjogahara’s thing too─you could actually see what was wrong with her, couldn’t you? Kanbaru, too.” It was starting to seem less like a matter of which, and more like whichever. “Are you familiar with aberrations?”

“Hmph. I wasn’t expecting such a silly question. My interest in you is waning, Araragi. Do you, for instance, believe in ghosts?” Kaiki’s lack of enthusiasm was apparent. He seemed almost embarrassed to be having this conversation. “Even if you don’t, I imagine you can understand the psychology of someone who is afraid of ghosts. My case is similar. I don’t believe in the occult, but there is money to be made in it.”

“……”

“I refute the existence of aberrations and anomalies─but there are others in the world who affirm such things. Which makes said persons easy to deceive. I may be a small-fry conman, but thanks to such superstitious people I am able to eke out a living. So, in answer to your question, no, I’m not familiar with aberrations. I simply know people who are. Or to be precise, I know people who’re under the impression that they’re familiar with them.”

This time, he definitely smiled. Once again─like a crow─it hadn’t been a trick of my eye.

“Money is everything in this world,” he said. “I would happily die for money.”

“When you take it that far, it sounds like faith…”

“However far I take it, it is a matter of faith. Faith is unswerving. Don’t forget, people whom I deceive pay me money in compensation for my deceit. It is precisely because they believed that they paid a just price. To doubt what they once believed─what could be more inconstant?”

The Cinderswarm Bee, Kaiki suddenly said.

The name of the aberration he’d unleashed on Karen.

One of those aberrations he wasn’t familiar with.

“Do you know of the Cinderswarm Bee?” he asked me.

“It’s from the Muromachi period or something, right? An epidemic of unknown origin that people attributed to the work of an unidentified aberration─supposedly, a lot of people died at the time.”

“You are correct. But you are also wrong.” Kaiki nodded first, then shook his head. “The Cinderswarm Bee is actually a tale of the weird from the fifteenth chapter of The Illustrated Compendium of Eastern Discord, which was written during the Edo period. A fairly obscure text─but the fundamental point is that, Cinderswarm Bee aside, no such sickness as described in the compendium ever spread during the Muromachi period.”

“Huh?”

“If such a thing had truly occurred, surely it would have been included in other texts─but the infection is mentioned only in The Illustrated Compendium of Eastern Discord. In other words, that ‘epidemic of unknown origin’ never existed in the first place.”

“……”

“Since there was no epidemic, there were, of course, no deaths and no actual phenomenon to attribute to an aberration─the entry was a product of the author’s passing fancy. A spurious invention penned to resemble historical fact.”

No such aberration─ever existed in the first place.

Not as cause.

Not as effect.

Not as process.

It was all─fake.

“It’s apocryphal,” Kaiki explained. “Search as hard as you like, but the aberration known as the Cinderswarm Bee traces back not to the Muromachi period but to the Edo period. Foolishly enough, later generations came to believe in the author’s bullshit. What do you think of that? An aberration born from a single person’s lie─with neither grounds nor tradition to support it.”

I stole a glance down at my shadow.

Oshino had to have known, too─in other words, Shinobu must have heard this story… But like she said, trying to remember all of Oshino’s ramblings was a fool’s errand.

Besides, even if she’d known in advance─it wouldn’t have been particularly helpful.

Whether or not it existed, and wherever it came from─at the end of the day, the Cinderswarm Bee was still the Cinderswarm Bee.

“It’s as true for these old tales as it is for today’s urban legends. There are cases that spring from reality and cases that spring from fantasy. As a conman, I simply happen to make my living from the latter.”

Placebo effect. Instantaneous hypnosis.

That was how he’d put it.

“But my sister…”

“Hmm?”

“My sister, who was stung by the Cinderswarm Bee… Will she really get better even if we did nothing?”

“Of course. The Cinderswarm Bee does not exist─these aberrations do not exist. By extension, neither must her condition. It only seems to because you people believe in it. To be blunt─don’t drag me into your game of make-believe. It’s annoying.”

Who was he to talk?

Deishu Kaiki, that was who.

That settled it for me.

He was as fake as they came.

Just like Senjogahara said. Just like he, himself, said.

A proud fake─willing to go through life feeling inferior.

“What’s more,” he said, “you absorbed half of it─it may take even less than three days for her to recover. I don’t know how you did it, but I’m impressed. It’s proof enough, Araragi, that you and I are incompatible─we’re not even like oil and water, but oil and fire.”

“Who’s the fire and who’s the oil?”

“Who knows? But neither of us seems particularly fiery─how about we change it to rubidium and water. In that case, I would be the rubidium.”

“So that’d make me…water.”

In which case, Karen and Tsukihi had to be the fire.

Fire and fire. Put them together, and they made a conflagration.

The Fire Sisters.

“Araragi, are you familiar with shogi?”

“Shogi?” Not picking up on his sudden transition, I simply repeated the word. Shogi? “I’m as familiar with it as the next person… But what does that have to do with anything?”

“It doesn’t. It’s just idle conversation. But humor me. What about you, Senjogahara? Are you familiar with shogi?”

“Nope,” she replied monosyllabically, but she was lying.

There was no way she wasn’t familiar with our domestic version of chess. In fact─I bet she was quite good at it.

“It’s a simple game, relatively shallow at its core,” Kaiki continued unperturbed as if he’d seen through her. “The number of pieces is limited. The manner in which they can move is also limited. The board is clearly drawn. Every aspect is finite. In other words, the possibilities are extraordinarily limited from the start─it is very low-level, as games go, with no room for complication. And yet, the very best shogi players are, without exception, geniuses. A game that should be open to mastery by the most mediocre of intellects is mastered by none but the most intelligent. Do you know why that is?”

“No,” I said. “You tell me.”

“Because shogi is a contest of speed. In an official match, there is always a timer set on the table. That’s why. If there’s a time limit, the simpler the rules, the more exciting the game is. How expediently can the player consider his options? In short─intelligence is a matter of speed. However masterful a given strategy, with enough time, any player could mimic it… The crux lies in not spending that time.”

“……”

“Like shogi, life is finite. How to spend less time thinking─or to put it another way, how fast you can think is key. As someone who’s been alive much longer than either of you, allow me to give you one piece of advice.”

“Save it. I don’t need any from you,” Senjogahara replied immediately.

“Now, now,” Kaiki disregarded her comment. “Don’t think too much. From my point of view, people who get too preoccupied with their own thoughts are as easy to deceive as people who don’t think at all. Think in moderation─and act in moderation. That is the lesson for you to take home from this.”

So said Deishu Kaiki.

“Your cell phone…” Ignoring his words as though in retaliation, Senjogahara held out her hand, palm up. “Give me your phone.”

“Hmph.”

Kaiki reached into his suit, drew out a black cell phone, and placed it in her palm as ordered. It was a flip phone. Senjogahara bent it backward with brute force─breaking it.

Then she dropped it onto the concrete and stepped on it as though to put it out of its misery.

“What a nasty thing to do.” Kaiki’s tone was calm. He didn’t even seem upset. “There was a lot of information I need for my work on that phone.”

“You mean─for your scams.”

“Of course. But now I can’t help those middle-school children, either. Because I no longer have my clients’ contact information.”

“Why should I care whether or not you help some middle-school kids I’ve never met? Araragi…” Senjogahara threw me a sidelong glance that I couldn’t read. “I’m about to say one of the worst things I could say.”

“Huh?”

“Wasn’t it their own fault?” she declared.

She was addressing Kaiki─the confidence man who had duped her, too─but spoke the words without hesitation.

“I’m no defender of justice,” she continued icily. “Only an enemy of the wicked.”

“……”

“Besides, you couldn’t help those victims, not you. Even if you tried, you’d wind up pulling a worse scam.”

“I probably would. I am a conman─even my reparations are made in lies. You two may not want to understand this, but for me, making money is about more than profit and loss.”

“Your problem is that─”

Senjogahara started to say something but changed her mind.

She suddenly stepped aside─out of Kaiki’s way.

It seemed to be her way of saying the conversation was over.

This was it─the end.

All done.

Kaiki tilted his head. “I should thank you. I came here ready to get slain, but I must admit, I do not like pain,” he said to Senjogahara, who refused to meet his eyes. “If there’s a thing or two you need to tell me to my face, I’ll listen. Surely you have feelings that have burdened you─these so many years. What is my problem, pray tell?” he solicited.

“……”

Nothing? muttered Kaiki. He sounded terribly disappointed. “You truly have grown into a very boring woman, Senjogahara.”

“……”

“If not dramatic, back in the day you sure were the best. Truly worth deceiving, a rare treat for a con artist. Now you have become tedious. Heavy with excess fat.”

“……”

“What happened to the seed that I sowed? Did it rot? If so, I wish you’d remained forgotten to me. That way, you’d have continued to shine on in the hazy recesses of my recollection.”

“…Shut up,” groaned Senjogahara. Her face was still expressionless─but it was a hard stare that she returned to Kaiki. “You can say whatever you like about the old me, but don’t insult who I am now─Araragi says he loves me. This me. So I like this me. I’m not going to stand by while you slight what I am now.”

“What, you two are in a relationship?”

Kaiki seemed genuinely surprised─he was a match for Senjogahara in how little his expressions changed, but a look of real astonishment had crossed his face. “I see, I see. In that case, I won’t say another word. The third wheel is the first to crack.”

He slipped past between Senjogahara and me and kept his back turned to us.

“Well then, if you say reparations are not required, I will not be making them. After all, I’d rather not engage in any activity that is not lucrative. I will slink away from this town. Come tomorrow, I will already be gone. Is that acceptable, Senjogahara?”

“Answer me one thing…” she said quietly to his back. “Why did you come back to this town? After you already left once?”

“I told you. I barely remember my last visit. It wasn’t until I got your call that I recalled working this area before. That’s how it is.”

“How it is…”

“A vampire,” Kaiki said suddenly, startling me. “I heard a ridiculous story about a vampire, the so-called king of aberrations, showing up in this town─if I had to give you a reason, I guess that would be it. Such places are ripe for occult-related work, a hangout for aberrations─not that I actually believe in them, of course.”

“……”

I glanced down at my shadow once more.

There was no reaction of any sort.

It was early evening─so she was probably still asleep. Either that, or she was listening, but staying quiet.

A vampire─king, and slayer, of aberrations.

An ironblooded, hotblooded, yet coldblooded─vampire.

“That reminds me, Senjogahara.” Despite claiming he wouldn’t say another word, Kaiki spoke one last time─without turning around. “I have a story I think you’d like to hear.”

“I’m not interested.”

“It’s about that man who tried to violate you. Apparently he was hit by a car and died. In a place and manner that have absolutely nothing to do with you─and without any hint of drama,” Kaiki reported indifferently as he started to walk away. “That’s how it is with the past that’s eating at you. It’s not even worth settling. The man who hurt you won’t be coming back as a worse threat, and the mother who left you will not repent and return. That is life. The past expires the moment it slips away. The lesson for you to take home from this─is not to expect the dramatic in life.”

“That’s probably just another lie, anyway,” Senjogahara managed to retort in a level but subdued voice. “Why would a man who didn’t even remember me until this morning know anything about the man who tried to have his way with me? And my mother─you don’t know what you’re talking about. Put a leash on your spite. Is trying to confuse me so amusing to you?”

“Not at all, as I don’t stand to earn a single penny. But Senjogahara, don’t see things so superficially─is it not possible that the lie was that I’d forgotten you?”

“A lie…”

That’s such a lie, Senjogahara said.

Which statement was she referring to?

Kaiki─Deishu Kaiki─didn’t even bother to ask. “Whether or not it’s a lie, in the end there is no such thing as truth in this world. You needn’t worry, the fact that you once had a crush on me doesn’t make you unfaithful─don’t hold a grudge against me in your exertions to be devoted to your current boyfriend. Let me repeat myself: the past is no more than the past. There is no value in overcoming─or overtaking it. A woman of your worth shouldn’t be bound by petty concerns. Go live happily ever after with this young man.”

Adieu, he bade.

Unlike Oshino, who never said goodbye, the swindler ended his speech with a farewell salutation, but without a shred of sincerity, almost as if it were slapped on in savage haste.

And so Deishu Kaiki went away.

I…Senjogahara, too…stood frozen for some time.

It had gone perfectly.

We couldn’t have asked for a better outcome.

And yet─why were we left feeling so powerless?

Not defeated, so much as hollow.

Sadly, at this rate─Karen would never go crushing on me. It was a far cry from showing off.

Still, putting aside my own regrets…I felt like we’d been able to work through Senjogahara’s. That deserved a passing grade.

“You had a crush on him?” I asked.

It wasn’t the best way to break the silence, but that was hard to let slide without comment. Maybe it wasn’t manly of me, but I had to put the question to her.

“Excuse me? Araragi, are you worried your girlfriend might not be a virgin?” a caustic reply came from her as expected.

There wasn’t much I could say in response. That wasn’t what I had meant, but I guess I had to admit to having given such an impression. But instead of taking me to task any further, Senjogahara answered me.

“Of course not. How could I? That was just his imagination. What a smug creep.” There was a hint of annoyance in her stone-faced expression. “It’s just─at that point in my life, I probably would have thought of anybody who tried to help me, whoever it was, as a prince. So I’d be lying if I said I didn’t look favorably on that fraud at all.”

He was only the first, she added.

True. This was Senjogahara, who had been more resigned but also more tenacious than anyone─who, resigning and giving it up, hadn’t resigned or given it up.

“I brought this up before,” she murmured, “and I don’t mean to hash it out again…but if someone other than you had saved me─I might have fallen for that person instead.”

She followed that up without giving me a chance to cut in.

“The thought makes me sick. I’m so glad─it was you who saved me.”

“……”

I tried to say something, failed, and in the end just lamely repeated something I’d said before.

“According to Oshino, though, you just went and got saved.”

Dammit, if only I could think of something cool to say at a time like this─I’d be a full-fledged man. Pathetic.

Senjogahara didn’t object to my words, nodding and murmuring, “Maybe.”

“After seeing Kaiki, I can understand why you disliked Oshino so much.”

“I disliked Mister Oshino─I hate Kaiki. There’s a big difference.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Let’s go home. The sun is already setting─I almost feel like this was all a waste of time. Still, it’s good that you didn’t meet that man under different circumstances. That’s something, at least.”

“True…”

Senjogahara made a good point. Kidnapping me might have been taking things a bit far, but I was lucky she had taken the initiative─the problem with me and Kaiki went beyond not mixing.

We couldn’t be less compatible.

We weren’t just enemies, but natural enemies.

“If we meet again, it will probably be to kill each other.”

That probably wasn’t the right thing to say in front of Senjogahara, but it was all I could. I didn’t mean much by it. Those were my honest feelings when it came to the man known as Deishu Kaiki. In other words…

The lesson for me, Koyomi Araragi, to take home from this was that I should never meet Deishu Kaiki again for the rest of my life.

“Not that there was any big catastrophe, but I think this couldn’t have turned out better.”

“What kind of dish was that, again? Catastroganoff?” deadpanned Senjogahara─even though she must have felt that way even more than I did. “Araragi, once you start thinking that it might be a valid creed with its different form of justice─you lose. Watch out.”

“I will…”

“Let’s go home,” Senjogahara repeated as if nothing had happened.

“Oh, right, by the way. Before we leave, what’s this request of yours? You can’t just foreshadow and then forget about it. To be honest, I’m on pins and needles here. What in the world do I have to do?”

“Nothing major. Maybe, like that swindler said, it wasn’t worth putting an end to. But as far as I’m concerned, I just settled with my past.”

“Settled, huh?”

It was something we all had to do.

Senjogahara, Hanekawa─me too.

And Shinobu.

“Tell me I did good,” Senjogahara said.

“Is that…your request?”

“No way. Praise from the likes of you, Araragi, would hardly delight me. You seem to be forgetting to fulfill a basic duty, so I’m simply reminding you.”

“……”

This woman─was she actually made of iron?

“Iron?” she asked. “Of course not─I’m a soft, cute girl. And after listening to that man go on and on, I feel very fragile. Look at me, I’m in shambles.”

“Liar.”

Who’s the con artist here, I quipped.

“I mean it,” she said. “So…”

Her face as expressionless as ever, or maybe a bit angrily expressionless, and in a supremely flat tone─Senjogahara voiced her request.

“So tonight, be kind to me.”