Monogatari Series - Volume 6 - Chapter 7.02

002

“Hey, Koyomi, do you know the sure way to win at rock-paper-scissors? I bet you don’t. Of course not, I mean look at you! If I weren’t around to teach you stuff, you wouldn’t know anything at all. Ahaha. Well, what can I do. I guess I can be nice and teach you. I’ll lend you a hand, and the shirt off my back, streaking butt-naked until you get the whole picture.”

Karen Araragi.

My little sister, who’s in her last year of middle school, said this suddenly, with absolutely no preface, while doing a handstand.

A handstand. Which was actually typical of her.

By the way, just so there are no misunderstandings, allow me to clarify that it was not as if we were in our living room at home, or in Karen’s own room, or even in a gym or some other sports facility─we were in the middle of a residential neighborhood, atop a section of paved surface commonly referred to as a sidewalk.

Beneath the brilliant, glittering sun, perched above the asphalt, my sister, believe it or not, was upside down. In a way, it was even more embarrassing than if she had gone streaking.

The Nike Shox she was wearing, supposedly designed not only to absorb impact but to spring off the ground as you stepped, served no purpose at the moment.

“Huh? What are you blabbering on about? A sure way to win at rock-paper-scissors? You expect me to believe that? I mean, there isn’t any. That’s about as ridiculous as you.”

An acrobatic posture is an accomplishment in its own right, but since I’m hardly the type of person who enjoys being gawked at by the whole neighborhood, I’d have preferred to put at least three miles in both physical and emotional distance between myself and a mysterious schoolgirl standing on her head (if it were up to me, she’d either stop that or stop being my little sister), but I didn’t have much of a choice and answered her instead.

Maybe this stupid way of walking was part of her fitness regimen, but for my own part I was doing everything I could to get her to knock it off. I aimed sharp kicks to her head from behind whenever I saw an opening, but she seemed to have eyes on her back like the hundred-eyed goblin and managed to dodge each and every strike.

I guess a martial arts junkie like Karen was just cut from different cloth. Without real gaps in her defense, I wouldn’t be able to kick her head─well, not that that was my goal.

I sure wouldn’t have minded landing one, though. It sounded like a great way of repaying her for her daily antics.

By the way, Karen’s hair was styled in her usual, old-school ponytail, but when she did a handstand, her long hair wound up touching the ground and dragging along, so she wrapped it around her neck like a scarf while she was upside down.

If I could grab the end and give it a tug, I could choke her nice and good. I’d given that a few tries as well, but of course my attempts had all ended in failure.

Given that it was the height of summer, August fourteenth, with about a week left of summer vacation, a scarf of hair seemed like it would be too warm, or even hot (plus her face was just inches away from the baking asphalt), but perhaps it was precisely what Miss Karen Araragi’s Spartan nature craved.

A woman on fire─she even liked to call herself “a human fireball.” The first character in her name meant fire, but I almost wanted to scrunch it together with the second to yield the one for phosphorus.

“Heheh. But there is a way. As surely as I exist.”

With that declaration, for a moment Karen appeared to sink, but then ricocheted up like a powerful spring, performed an agile, elegant somersault, and returned her body to the right way round.

Karen Araragi, the woman in the jersey. I forgot to mention that she’s also quite tall.

Even though she’s a girl, still in middle school, and what’s more my little sister, Karen is taller than me (incidentally, I stopped growing in the second year of middle school, can you believe it), so when she stood upright, her eyes hovered higher than mine─um, in which case, maybe she ought to spend the whole rest of her life standing on her head? Was I self-centered to think so?

“Listen,” she said, “knowing it will completely change your rock-paper-scissors life. I’d kind of like to keep it to myself, but it’s thanks to you that I’m enjoying this fine day. Not that I’m trying to pay back that debt, just think of it as a special, cool gesture.”

Heck, I haven’t even shared this with Tsukihi, she added with a cheeky grin.

Her legs never stopped moving. She was marching backward at a brisk pace.

She was indeed agile, but it hardly surprised me at this point─when it came to physical prowess, including her sense of balance, she was a regular monster. Despite being human, maybe she was more monstrous than a vampire.

She wasn’t the Fire Sisters’ “enforcer” for nothing─without even recalling the whole bee commotion from the other day.

Compared to her ongoing training, walking backwards was almost normal.

It’s just that being seen with her tends to get very embarrassing. Generally speaking, though, that means everything.

“I don’t have a rock-paper-scissors life, let alone completely changing it.”

“Oh, but you might. Even morning, day, and night. Don’t reject possibilities, okay? Imagine the advantages of being great at rock-paper-scissors. For instance, Russian roulette. What if an argument over who goes first comes down to a game of rock-paper-scissors?”

“The probability would still be the same.”

Pretty remedial stuff she ought to have learned by her third year of middle school.

More to the point, when was I ever going to be forced to play Russian roulette? Once things came to that, I was most likely well on my way to kicking the bucket, no?

“Huh? The probability is the same? Are you sure? Isn’t the person pulling the trigger first at a disadvantage?”

“What if he doesn’t get a bullet? Then the chance of shooting yourself heightens.”

“Huh? What? Help me out here.”

“You see─”

“What does ‘heightens’ mean?”

“That’s what you don’t understand?!”

Was a simple word like “heightens” not part of her vocabulary? How did she ever manage to survive for fifteen years?!

And your backstory is that you have good grades!

“Heightens… Heightens…” she muttered. “Hmph. That sounds like the name of some demon.”

“You’re thinking of Hiten!” I hollered like a straight man, although to be honest I wasn’t sure if it was a demon. I considered myself a utility player when it came to fielding a joke, but I was rusty about some shows.

“Wait, the Dutch scientist who studied Saturn’s rings and wrote a pioneering treatise on probability, Christian…”

“I think you mean Huygens… It’s not even pronounced the same way. Besides, why would you not know what ‘heightens’ means and come up with Huygens?!”

“Hrrm, then who could it be… I feel like I’ve come across it somewhere.” Her arms folded, Karen got sidetracked into recalling some random name─search as she might, she was lost now.

“Hey, you want me to believe that someone with such a poor vocabulary actually knows a foolproof way to win at rock-paper-scissors?”

“It’s not about knowing, it’s about feeling. When it comes down to it, what you know or don’t know doesn’t matter, it’s what you can do, and do do…”

“Well, true…”

Just look at Hanekawa. She’s certainly a treasure trove of knowledge─but what’s so amazing about her, so exhilarating, is how she applies it.

The veni vidi vici of knowledge. No half-measures for her.

No wonder there are all kinds of crazy rumors about Hanekawa, like that she took the ancient Chinese imperial exams while in middle school, or that she passed the German A-levels over summer vacation as a high school freshman (I spread those rumors, by the way).

“So Koyomi, I might not know my probability theory, but I’ve survived Russian roulette and that’s what really matters.”

“You’ve played Russian roulette?!”

It wasn’t a hypothetical!

Seriously, it wasn’t a hypothetical?!

If it was true, and she survived, that meant her opponent blew his brains out!

Officer, we have a criminal case! A case involving my little sister!

“Hm? Oh, don’t worry,” Karen assured me. “Once we were down to the last chamber, my opponent chickened out and gave up. Bzzz, end of game.”

“I guess it’s fine, then… Wait, no, that’s so not fine.”

You Fire Sisters… I knew they got up to some insane stuff, but not that they’d been in a conflict where firearms made a showing…

Did I need to go to the cops for real?

“That Italian Mafioso was a pretty tough cookie, though.”

“What was an Italian Mafioso doing in our little country town?!”

“Mostly sightseeing, apparently.”

“Sightseeing!”

“You know how delinquents go on a school trip and get into a big fight with the local high school thugs in some manga? It was that sort of thing.”

“What sort of thing?!”

If all this was true, it went well beyond playing at defenders of justice.

What had I done to deserve such a sister? Forget about justice, this slant-eyed Ponytail Head was defender of jack squat.

“It got pretty exciting toward the end! A real party─that’s how it got to Russian roulette. Ahaha, a Japanese girl playing Russian roulette with the Italian Mafia. That’s so globalist, you forget who’s from where.”

“In that case, how about we exile you and strip you of your citizenship.” It was time for Karen to leave Japan, if she cared about peace. “Hm? But wait a sec. If your opponent had the last chamber, that means you went to bat first, no?”

It was odd to be speaking of Russian roulette like it was baseball, but anyway, for the last one to fall to her opponent, she had to have been the first to place the gun to her head… But didn’t that mean she’d lost at rock-paper-scissors when they were deciding the order?

What happened to her sure way? Unless maybe it wasn’t one on one? If there were three of them─

“Koyomi, you idiot!”

Karen hit me. Across the face, for no good reason.

When it came to violence, my sister never hesitated. She studied at a dojo geared toward actual combat, and her skills were beyond first-rate, but when it came to mental composure she was a rank amateur.

Sadly.

“In a serious battle where lives are on the line,” she proclaimed, “I’d never use anything as underhanded as a sure way to win at it! I embody justice!”

“If that’s how you feel, when does your method ever come into play?!”

What a pinhead. She’d forgotten what she’d told me only a minute ago.

Well, once we started talking about Russian roulette, the rest was probably all nonsense. The whole premise was bankrupt.

“What’s my name?!” yelled my sister.

“Uh, wasn’t that the line of an incredible villain?”

An incredibly funny one, too. What Jagi lacked in strength, he made up for in impact relative to his fictional brothers.

Such a contrast with Raditz.

“I think I get it,” I said. “This sure way of yours must take incredible kinetic vision, like seeing how your opponent’s fingers move and reacting in the blink of an eye.”

As unbelievable as it sounds, apparently some people out there are capable of such extraordinary feats. I heard it from Hanekawa, so it’s probably true.

Huh, so maybe if it was right after feeding Shinobu my blood, I could pull it off too?

“Tsk tsk tsk. What sort of sure way is that? If you got your eyes poked, it’d be useless.”

“Why would you be playing rock-paper-scissors after getting your eyes poked? Who’d ever want to under such harsh conditions?”

“A real martial artist is prepared for all contingencies. I aim to be as omnidirectional as possible.”

“Well, I’m not a martial artist, let alone aiming to be whatever an omnidirectional one is. What sort of unprincipled mastery is that, anyway? And if they poked your eyes, how would you know if you’ve won or lost?”

Your opponent could just lie. Anyone willing to go after your eyes would hardly flinch at the idea of telling a lie.

“What’s essential is invisible to the eye, Koyomi.”

“Don’t be sounding like the Little Prince to fudge things.” Speaking of which, I always thought they should add a footnote to that famous line: Not everything invisible to the eye, however, is essential. “If your eyes got poked, I guess they went with scissors.”

“Haw! Seriously though, the sure way I’ve come up with works even if your opponent tries to lie. Heheh, I should win the Nobel Prize for this!”

“Really? Because I can’t think of anything stupider than believing that every clever idea qualifies for a Nobel Prize.”

“Heh, squawk all you like, little birdie, but after you hear my method, you’ll never ever say ‘Rock and paper and scissors, I win!’ like a grade schooler again.”

Combining the three into a single hand gesture─with the middle and index fingers opened to make scissors, the thumb lifted to make paper, and the last two fingers clenched in rock…

“Ah, when I was a kid, we used to call that a ‘pistol’…” But forget about never saying it again, I’m pretty sure no high schooler ever did it. In fact, did anyone who was already in middle school?

“A pistol? Oh, right. It looks like a gun. Huh. But my method even works against people who claim victory that way… Let’s see, if not the Nobel Prize, then I deserve, uh, uh, the Pulitzer for this…”

“……”

Didn’t she even know what the Pulitzer was? Without my noticing, had she fallen behind? My sister who was supposed to be smart having turned into a total blockhead at some point was kind of depressing…

Did my sisters feel the same way when I turned into a slacker after starting high school?

Talk about sad. It made me want to go easier on them.

“All right, all right, lay it on me,” I said. “Your sweet big brother Koyomi is ready to listen, Karen-chan.”

I raised my hands in the air. Not in celebration, but in surrender.

Until I let her tell me her method, our conversation, though maybe not our legs, would stand still. It was like some flag you had to trigger to proceed in a game. Like a YES/NO question that keeps popping back up until you finally choose YES.

I doubted it was a quest line that I needed to clear to beat the game, though…

“Okay! Since you insist, Koyomi, I’ll teach you. In practice, too. Ah, but you probably need some motivation. We should make a bet.”

“No thanks, that sounds like too much trouble.”

“Come on, otherwise you might try to be a sore loser and say you lost on purpose or something.”

“Losing on purpose at rock-paper-scissors would be as impressive as a sure way to win…”

What a pain in the ass my sister could be. Couldn’t she just jump out into the street for no reason and get herself run over?

“All right, Koyomi, how about something physical? A dare. Whoever loses has to piggyback the winner.”

“Piggyback…”

“Yeah, all the way to where we’re going.”

“……”

Hell, why not? I was pretty sure there was no sure way to win at rock-paper-scissors, and if I did win, she could carry me piggyback. It would be a fitting punishment for all her nonsense.

What’s that you say? Even if there’s no sure way to win, I might still lose normally?

That would be that.

All I had to do was not honor my end of the bargain (grin).

Alas, unlike in the little baby world of middle schoolers, any contract not executed on paper wasn’t much of a contract at all in the adult world of high schoolers.

What guy in his right mind would parade around his own neighborhood with his taller (and maybe also heavier) sister on his back?

“Fine, then,” I said. “I agree to your terms.”

“Hm? You accepted awfully quick.”

“Nah, I’m not plotting anything. Trust your big brother. He’s the type of man who never goes back on his word, yeah?”

“That’s right. I sure am proud of you.” Karen nodded and flashed a pleasant smile.

Promises with my smarter little sister, Tsukihi, were another matter, but having broken thousands of them with Karen by now, your guess is as good as mine as to where her trust came from.

I was starting to worry if she was seriously stupid.

“All right,” I said. “Rock─”

“Ah, wait, wait, wait,” Karen interrupted me mid-stance. “The match has already begun at that point. I need to be the one to say it. That’s stage one of my method.”

“Stage one… Sounds pretty overblown for just a game of rock-paper-scissors. How many are there?”

“Two.”

“La-a-me!”

Just two.

Maybe you needed to mind your step, but they weren’t actual stages.

“Is it,” I asked, “in order to control the field? Some kind of spiritual thing─like Feng Shui? Not that I get Feng Shui…which means ‘wind’ and ‘water’? Anyway, whatever. Knock yourself out.”

“Okay, let’s do this.” Karen drew back one arm. “Rock…”

Then she yelled─

“Paper!”

And stuck her hand out in rock shape.

“……”

Obviously, I hadn’t made my move─or rather, never had the chance.

Karen stood there with her hand in a fist against thin air.

“Heheheheh. Do you get it, Koyomi? Do you? I go ‘rock,’ then stick my hand out at ‘paper.’ That way, since your opponent is still waiting for ‘scissors,’ you get them to throw late! An ultimate technique that uses the name of the game to force your opponent into dropping the ball! In other words! Regardless of whether he plays rock, paper, or scissors, he’s thrown late so I win automatically! Now! I’ll be accepting my piggyback ride!”

Whereupon I punched my sister in the face. How’s that for rock?

It was no love tap either, but a demonic iron fist.

My punch wasn’t half bad. My sister had her own iron defenses, but since she was so busy grandstanding, it connected squarely. They say people are at their most vulnerable when they’re certain of victory, and I guess that wasn’t a cliché for nothing.

“Bullshit,” I scolded. “Who in the world is going to recognize such a win? If you pull that with the Italian Mafia, they’ll shoot you dead on the spot.”

“Nrgh, but it seemed like a pretty good idea when I thought of it just now.”

“You just thought of it!”

Well, I’d figured as much. But the confidence with which she talked up an idea she’d just thought of… Even if she was my sister, I had to hand it to anyone who could bluff that hard.

Still, she’d given it hardly enough thought. It was too simplistic.

Couldn’t she see that I’d get mad?

“Karen, you lose for breaking the rules. A piggyback ride isn’t going to cut it. As punishment, you have to carry me on your shoulders.”

“Ack. I guess,” Karen readily accepted my harsher punishment.

I called her Spartan, but actually she was a flat-out masochist. I often wondered if she bugged me whenever she had the chance because she wanted to be punished.

“All right, Koyomi. Get on my shoulders.”

She crouched down for real─and I started to think that maybe I was the one being punished here. Was I about to travel around my own neighborhood, my own territory, on my sister’s shoulders?

I didn’t need to go to the police, they’d come to me. What was I gonna tell them?

“Hrrm, you know…maybe we should just forget about this, Karen. With all the studying I’ve been doing I’ve put on some weight lately.”

“How much do you weigh?”

“About…125 pounds.”

“That’s nothing. Anything less than four hundred pounds is light as a feather to me.”

“You live on the Moon or what?”

Four hundred pounds. Even on the Moon that’d come in at around sixty-five pounds, still pretty heavy for some people.

“W-Well, Karen, even so. On your back is one thing, but your ponytail would get in the way of carrying me on your shoulders. It’d stick right into my belly, so I’d have to lean back, and I might end up tipping over. And if you undid it, your hair might get wrapped around my legs, and that might get pretty painful.”

“Hm? Ah, my ponytail. Maybe you’re right.”

“Don’t you think?”

“Yeah, you have a point. Like always, my big brother knows best.”

She stood up immediately as if she’d given up─perhaps trying to persuade her hadn’t been a waste of time, but I also knew better than anyone that Karen wasn’t the type of girl to listen once she got an idea into her head.

As soon as she got out of her crouch, she reached into her jersey pocket and pulled out her key to our house.

The key? Why would she pull it out now?

“Hm? Koyomi, haven’t you ever used the teeth on a key to cut through packing tape and clothes tags?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess I’ve done that before.”

When there weren’t any scissors around─but it’s not like there was any packing tape to cut… Wait a second, scissors?

Scissors, like─

“Hup.”

It was already too late.

With the key in her hand, Karen stretched her arm behind her, placed the teeth against the base of her ponytail, and snagged them back and forth like a saw to hack through her hair.

As casually as you or I might peel a banana.

In contrast to her casual air, the noise was hideous and grating.

“………nkk!”

“Hum hum… Ah, and there’s a garbage can right there.” Whoa, I feel lighter, she remarked in between her humming as she half-walked, half-skipped over to the bin, into which she lobbed her severed and curled-up ponytail.

Like it had been nothing, she returned the key to her pocket.

“All right,” she told me, “now you can get on my shoulders!”

“That was badass!”

She was a stone-cold badass…and a total moron! My sister really was a blockhead! Depressing didn’t begin to cover it!

She ditched her trademark hairstyle since grade school just to carry me around on her shoulders─in other words, just because she’d cheated at rock-paper-scissors. Or to put it even more starkly, just because she’d lost at rock-paper-scissors!

“Y-You! You you you! Your hair looks so…jagged!”

“Hrm? Ah, who cares. I’ll just swing by my usual hairdresser tomorrow. Well, come to think of it, they might be closed for the Obon holidays.”

“If they saw what their customer did to her hair, they might close down for good!”

Karen’s head looked like a retired sumo wrestler’s…

I don’t think I’d ever been so surprised in my life. Not even when I got turned into a vampire.

“You’ve had that ponytail since grade school! I thought that was your thing?!”

“I don’t know, it was long and a pain to take care of. It got in the way whenever I was trying to sleep and I always had bedhead when I woke up. Honestly I’ve been sick of it.”

“But you kept it anyways?!”

She really was a masochist! Since grade school! The real McCoy, a masochist through and through!

“Still, don’t just throw your hair in the bin! The collector might think that something terrible happened! ‘A woman’s hair is her life,’ haven’t you heard?!”

“Hrm? Nope.”

“You dunderhead!”

Such unfathomable stupidity! Was she the kind of moron who’d write “Merry XXX” on her Christmas cards and actually send them out?!

Maybe even the kind of moron who gets invited out by a guy (a date) and brings him dried fruit (not the same thing)?!

“A woman’s hair is her life? Hmph, that’s a fine saying. But words can’t quite measure up to life. And I dare to throw mine in the gutter. I strive to shine like a beautiful gem even in the gutter, like my master exhorts me to.”

“So it’s this master’s fault you turned out this way?!”

I knew it, I needed to pay a visit to that dojo! There were things we needed to discuss! Transforming my little sister into some human weapon… Was the place called Shocker by any chance?

“Ack, there’s no going back… What now? I wonder what Tsukihi will say.”

“Yeah, she might not like it,” Karen muttered, (finally) looking concerned. Tsukihi’s opinion was very important to her. “Urgh, I can’t believe you made me do this.”

“Don’t blame it on me! She’ll kill me!”

Well, either way, Karen’s hair wasn’t going to grow back by talking about it (or rather, I didn’t want to anymore).

“Okay, Koyomi, time to get on my shoulders. Chicken walk, chicken walk ♪”

“What are you so perky about… Having to carry someone around on your shoulders excites you? You damn masochist. The only one being punished here is me. Uh, let’s see…” Giving up, I started to get on Karen’s shoulders, straddling her neck and wrapping my thighs on either side of the sad wreckage that was now her hair.

“Huh? Wait, are you getting on sitting up?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s just, don’t people usually get on sideways?”

“Only in a judo throw!”

She’d look like a bandit abducting me. The normal way was at least a little better.

As we continued to banter, I straddled my sister’s shoulders.

Straddled.

……

Ooh…such a feeling of conquest.

The position really was like mounting. Not in the sense of getting on a horse, but as in what dogs did.

Thanks to her height and skill at martial arts, my sister maintained a perfectly subtle dynamic with me, where it was never quite clear who had the upper hand. At the moment, though, it was hard not to feel like I was on top.

I was overcome with an odd sense of superiority.

The moment, however, was fleeting.

“Okay, upsie-daisy!”

With that, Karen rose with my 125-pound frame on her shoulders as easily as if she were carrying nothing at all.

“Wh-Whoa, whoa, whoa! This is scary, this is damn scary! My eye level is so high, it’s scary! Put me down! Put me down! Put me down right now!”

My vantage point was about equal to Karen’s height, minus her head, plus my sitting height. Heck, even without doing the math, it was easily more than seven feet off the ground… Wow, some basketball players in America walked around like this every day?

My embarrassment at being carried around on my sister’s shoulders vanished, overwritten like the ideology of the losing side in a war.

All that remained was the sheer terror of my vantage point.

“I’m sorry, please let me down! Uncle, uncle!”

Forget any sense of superiority, I was feeling like a loser now. I might actually grovel once she let me down. I’d do a handstand if that’s what she wanted.

“Hmmm…” Paying no mind to my mangy yelps, Mistress Karen began walking at a brisk pace. In time, however, she stopped and tilted her head. “Koyomi, do you mind?”

“What is it?”

“Your crotch grinding into the back of my head feels gross.”

“……”

Right, I knew we shouldn’t be doing this at our age. It was a weird thing─

“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Karen suggested. “Since I cut off my ponytail, it’s only fair if you cut off your thing.”

“That’s horrendous!”

This was all so frightening! The height, her inspiration! She deserved the Bram Stoker Award!

Besides, she decided to cut off her ponytail on her own, so how was that fair? Don’t make it sound like it was merely my responsibility!

“Your hair might grow back, but if I cut off my thing, it’s all over for me! In all kinds of ways.”

Maybe back when I was a vampire! No, not even then!

Pain was still pain! Just thinking about it hurt!

“I see. Anyway, Koyomi, I can handle your weight but don’t keep swaying like that or we’ll lose our balance.”

“Easy for you to say. I’m not you. How the heck am I supposed to balance myself stuck here like a giraffe?”

Giraffes have some amazing neck muscles, you know? If anyone’s ever suggested that the Loch Ness Monster might actually be a giraffe, I for one lend my support to the theory.

“Fine,” Karen conceded. “It will probably be a bit of a strain, but lean your upper body against my neck and head and shift the center of gravity forward. And then tuck your dangling legs under my armpits. That way I can hold you in place like the safety bar at an amusement park.”

“Like this?”

“Clank,” Karen added a sound effect. Instantly, not just my torso or my legs, but my entire body seemed to lock into place. It was less like a safety bar and more like a judo hold.

Like when they disable you by bending back just one thumb.

Or wait…that was aikido, wasn’t it?

Either way, I’d yet to see Karen perform one normal, straightforward karate move.

What was up with her Shocker dojo?

“There, we’re good,” she said.

“Uh, I’m not sure I am. In fact, it’s even less good? How much less good for me is this gonna get? I can’t even move my fingertips. And I’m starting to feel pins and needles. Boss-lady, are you sure you’re not cutting off my circulation?”

“Well, it’s definitely better for me. Before, your calves kept chafing me right on the tip of my breasts and it was gross… I had your crotch on my head, and you’re all up in my armpits now. Who knew carrying someone on your shoulders was so kinky?”

“Hmm… Usually, it’d be the guy carrying the girl.”

It wasn’t supposed to be a weird affair, but rather, cheerful and jaunty.

“Okay, Koyomi, let’s get going. Tee-hee.”

With that, Karen’s legs, which had stood still, began to move again. Maybe that ponytail she cut off weighed as much as I do because her pace didn’t even slow.

No, with each step she seemed to gain steam. You couldn’t blame her. Considering our destination that summer vacation morning─you definitely couldn’t blame Karen.