Monogatari Series - Volume 6 - Chapter 7.04

004

Thus ends the flashback.

And so I was currently heading to Kanbaru’s with Karen.

A promise may have been a promise, but considering nothing was written down, I was under no obligation to keep it. Still, a promise is a promise is a promise.

I would accept my role as their mediator, their go-between. With that decision made, my one condition for Karen was that she change immediately─which is why she was now dressed in a jersey.

Of course, since she was about to meet the great Kanbaru-sensei, it was no ordinary jersey. It was her best outfit, the lucky one she only wore on special occasions: a loud and flashy, fluorescent bicycle-racing jersey finished off on the bottom with a smart set of cycling shorts.

I guess no one asked for that info…

But why did my sister own a bicycle-racing jersey when she didn’t even own a bicycle? It seemed bizarre.

I did own a bicycle, by the way, but wasn’t riding it.

Although I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Kanbaru’s house was isolated, it was a bit far to walk. Nevertheless, I decided to hoof it because I wanted to avoid riding two on a bike (not on principle, just with my sister).

She’d been walking on her hands instead of her hooves.

Now I was riding on her shoulders.

You know, once you got used to it, it was actually kind of fun being up so high.

Well, my reluctance to ride two to a bicycle with my little sister leading to me riding on her shoulders proved how halting and awkward our conversations were, even if we were getting along a little better.

As for Karen, she usually wasn’t quite this much of a dunderhead, but I guess she was so worked up or worked over at the thought of meeting Kanbaru that her brain had plain stopped working.

However.

What I hadn’t expected was Kanbaru’s response.

Introducing them hardly qualified as a good deed and it didn’t have to be today, but I figured if I was going to keep my promise, I might as well do it soon. Immediately afterward (as in immediately after escaping, by the skin of our teeth, the demonic glint of Tsukihi’s awl, a part of the story that is too realistic to be funny and that I therefore omit), I rang Kanbaru’s cell phone.

As I mentioned earlier, it was the middle of summer, during the Obon holidays. Since Kanbaru already lived with her grandfather and grandmother, there was no need for her to go away to visit her country home.

The call did connect, but her reaction surprised me.

“I don’t know, my senior Araragi. That doesn’t sound like a very good idea. I did express my interest in your little sister, but it was just a joke. I wasn’t being serious.”

That didn’t sound like Kanbaru at all. Perverted fool or not, she was just about the most big-hearted person of anyone I knew. She definitely wasn’t the type to act shy.

When I pressed her, she seemed genuinely distressed.

“As grateful as I am that you would think of me, I wouldn’t feel right taking your sister’s virginity.”

“Who said you could?!” I’d rather take it myself in that case! Drop dead!

“I do appreciate the thought.”

“You can’t have the thought either! There’s nothing about my sister you can have!”

And so.

Kanbaru’s unexpected response just meant she was the same wonderful woman I’d come to know and expect. Eventually, after a little pushing, I was able to successfully arrange a noontime visit to her house with Karen.

“Sure thing,” Kanbaru said. “I’ll put on clothes and wait for you.”

“Why is nudity the default…”

I nearly changed my mind again about introducing them, but after coming this far, it wouldn’t be right.

Karen would beat the crap out of me. I wouldn’t like that.

“Koyomi,” Karen asked suddenly from below, “you know how the number for ambulance services and fire fighters is the same? 119. Why is that? Isn’t that a little confusing? Does a fire truck ever show up when someone meant to call an ambulance, and vice versa?”

……

What a silly question. What even made her think of that? I’m pretty sure we hadn’t passed any emergency vehicles.

“Maybe it does happen once in a while,” I answered. “But if there were three emergency numbers, for the police, ambulances, and the fire department, and they were all different, won’t people have trouble remembering them all?”

“All? It’s only three numbers. And they’re three digits each. How could anyone have trouble remembering that much?”

“Well, just think about it. Have you ever meant to call the weather forecast and gotten the current time instead?”

“Never.”

“Oh.”

“I’ve called for the time and gotten the weather forecast instead, though.”

“Same thing.”

Never underestimate the challenges posed by simplicity. It’s precisely because the numbers are only three digits that people sometimes mix them up in a panic.

“Of the ten numbers beginning with two ones,” I continued, “1-1-0 and 1-1-9 are the easiest to remember. That must be why they took the three most urgent services and shoehorned them into two numbers. The scenario you mentioned is probably a lot better than a police car showing up when you meant to call for an ambulance or a fire truck.”

“Really? If someone’s injured the police could arrest the assailant, and if there’s a fire they could arrest the arsonist.”

“Why do injuries and fires have to be crime-related for you?” Her idea of justice was dangerous. Her premise was criminal behavior.

“But then, if you were injured and a fire truck showed up, you’d get angry and yell, ‘What are you gonna do, hose me better?!’”

“I’d never yell that even if I got angry.”

“If an ambulance came to a fire, you’d get angry too. ‘What, did you just assume that I got burned?!’”

“That sounds like a reasonable assumption.”

“It’d be different if a police car showed up. You wouldn’t get angry. They’d arrest you.”

“For a defender of justice, you bend pretty quickly to the state.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I was just talking in general. Tsukihi and I never bow to authority. The Fire Sisters have clashed with the police plenty of times.”

“Yeah… I’m the one who always has to pick you up from the station.”

Geez, I didn’t want to be reminded. I’d ended up befriending a female officer for no reason.

“But Karen, aren’t you forgetting something? What if a fire truck or an ambulance showed up in the middle of a crime? Wouldn’t people get really mad then?”

“Hmm, you can’t win them all. It’s so hard to make everyone happy. Well, the perp would get scared off by the sound of the sirens, so I guess it’s okay?”

“Like a panic buzzer?”

“Like a panic buzzer. So yeah, they should separate ambulances and fires. You’re right that 110 and 119 are easy to remember, but what about 111? That’s pretty handy, isn’t it? Why don’t we make that for fire?”

“‘We’? I don’t have that kind of power. Besides, I’m not sure, but isn’t 111 probably already assigned to something? Come to think of it, all the numbers starting with ‘1-1’ must be taken.”

“Maybe, but I bet 111 is just the number for some lottery. I don’t see why they shouldn’t have to give it up.”

“If you’re playing on ‘one’ and ‘won,’ you’ve got the mind of a grade school kid.”

Give me a break.

Our banter would sound hopelessly moronic to someone like Hanekawa, who no doubt knew the answer to all this.

This conversation went beyond halting. We were headed straight into the bushes.

“What they usually say,” I went on, “is that 110 and 119 were chosen to help people calm down since they tend to be in a panic and can hardly think straight when they’re calling those numbers.”

“Huh? What do you mean? Quit talking nonsense or I’ll punch you.”

“Aren’t you being a little too impatient with your older brother?!”

“I am?”

“I don’t deserve a knuckle sandwich for explaining things in order… Anyway, this is from before cell phones and touch-tone phones, way back in the day. Apparently there used to be these artifacts called rotary phones. Maybe you’ve seen them on TV?”

“Ah, rotary. I might have, I’m not sure. That word ‘rotary’ does sound pretty retro, though.”

“Right. And on rotary phones, dialing the numbers ‘0’ and ‘9’ took time. They were set up so you had to rotate a dial.” Not that I’d ever seen one in person, either, but apparently the “0” and “9” were placed at the end of the dial.

“What about ‘1’?”

“Hm?”

“If the ‘0’ and ‘9’ took time to dial, what about the ‘1’? Did that take time to dial, too?”

“No, the ‘1’…was on the other end, I think.” Meaning it actually took the least amount of time to turn. Hrrm.

“Shouldn’t they have made the emergency numbers 009 and 000 in that case?”

“Well, 009 sounds like you’re calling for a cyborg… The fact that it’s an emergency only makes the situation feel less serious.”

“I get that. I totally get that.”

“You do? You actually do?”

“What about 000?”

“Everyone knows you can’t use one number in a row for your PIN. There are too many people out to scam you these days. You gotta watch out, okay?”

“We were talking about phone numbers.”

“That reminds me, Karen-chan, I have something interesting to share with you about three-digit numbers.”

“If it’s not interesting, I’m going to punch you.”

“How about a less scary rejoinder!”

“Get on with it.”

“Actually, it’s just some math trivia I learned from Hanekawa. Think of a three-digit number. Any, including 110 or 119. Now repeat it.”

“Okey dokey.”

“The six-digit number you end up with will always be divisible by seven. 110110 or 119119, it doesn’t matter. Give it a try.”

Seven was a solitary number, but since it was solitary, nothing remained─when you put it that way it sounded pretty deep. But honestly, it was just a mathematical trick.

“Huh,” Karen grunted. “Let me give it a try… Uh, wait…I’ve got three left over.”

“How can you mess up single-digit division? What a waste of a neat piece of trivia.”

And so on.

And so forth.

As described above, around noon on August fourteenth, on our way to the Kanbaru residence, I was engaged in an unproductive, harmless, and not particularly interesting conversation with Karen, on whose shoulders I sat─

When at the same vantage point more than seven feet off the ground─

Another point of view suddenly presented itself before me.

“You, fiendish young man─there’s something I’m keen to ask. Can you spare a moment?”

The tallest person I’ve ever met, it goes without saying, is Dramaturgy, the vampire hunter. In addition to his seven feet, thanks to the traumatically terrible impression he left, I recall him as being closer to eight or even ten feet tall.

To be precise, whether or not Dramaturgy qualifies as a person is open to debate…

In any case, if you’re wondering if she, who had appeared before my eyes, rivaled even Dramaturgy in height, that is not in fact the case. Purely in terms of stature, she didn’t look much taller or shorter than me.

She was merely propped on top of something that added to her natural height─just as I was propped atop Karen’s shoulders.

This person was─standing on a mailbox.

“I’m fixing to get to Eikow Cram School. Can you tell a body how to get there?”

Kyoto dialect─and not the pidgin accent my sister Tsukihi slipped into, confused, in the morning. From what I could tell, it was the genuine article.

The shorthaired woman wore a cool, detached expression.

She looked to be about in her late twenties. She was clothed in a muted pants and top, with a striped inner and a pair of classy, heelless shoes. Overall her outfit was clean and prim, like something a grade school teacher might wear─there was nothing particularly unusual about her.

That is, of course, if you ignored the fact that she was standing on a mailbox.

“Umm…”

I wasn’t sure how to respond. For some reason, I sensed that the comic-relief stretch was coming to an end.

Enough fun and games?

Was playtime over?

Well, after more than a hundred manuscript pages of goofing off, even I was starting to feel a little full.

“Hey, fiendish young man,” the woman said. Still in Kyoto dialect, her words sounded pushy, but her expression was laidback. “Didn’t your folk rear you to be kind to a body in trouble?”

“Um, well…”

I was at a loss for words. Of course, I had been taught to be nice to people in trouble, but the lady didn’t really look to be in trouble. And I certainly wasn’t taught to be nice to people who stand on mailboxes.

If anything, I needed to tell her to stop that.

On the other hand, though I wasn’t standing on a mailbox, I was perched on the shoulders of my sister, a middle schooler. It was the fair outcome of a fair match, but the unlikely situation was hard to justify. To an objective observer, at least, treating a mailbox as a stepping-stone was somewhat preferable to putting your little sister to like use.

You couldn’t fault the woman for calling me fiendish. In fact, it was sort of impressive that she’d asked me for directions.

“I’m Yozuru Kagenui─have you heard of me?” the lady introduced herself out of the blue.

Usually, you didn’t introduce yourself just to ask directions (nor did you stand on a mailbox─but maybe neither was as unusual as making your little sister carry you around). Was this lady famous enough to receive special treatment when she gave her name?

If she was, her fame rivaled an actress or politician’s.

She didn’t look like either.

Being pretty clueless about both celebrities and politics, however, I didn’t have much faith in my judgment. Maybe I was facing a VIP.

I glanced down at Karen to check her reaction.

“……”

A blank slate.

Hmm. Come to think of it, Karen was just as clueless when it came to celebrities and politics.

Tsukihi would have been a different story. She was practically glued to the TV─though your middle-school sister being familiar with the ins and outs of politics in addition to show business would be less endearing than freaky.

I took another glance at the lady─at Yozuru Kagenui.

She did have a pretty face.

Was she a pop star known for her Kyoto dialect?

Or maybe a politician known for her Kyoto dialect? Well, most politicians from there probably spoke that way, so there’d be nothing unique about that.

It wouldn’t do not to introduce myself in turn.

“I’m Koyomi Araragi,” I replied for the time being.

“I’m Karen Araragi,” my sister followed suit. Just when I thought she was a good girl who knew her manners, she continued, “Some folks choose to call me one of the Fire Sisters, but what can I say.”

To my great dismay, my sister was the sort of oaf who shared her nickname with a complete stranger. The fact that she worded it like it was gossip made it even more cringeworthy. To begin with, it was mostly just my sisters calling themselves that.

“Hmm… A fiendish older brother─and the little sister a hornet. Amusing.”

“……”

Huh? Did she just say─hornet?

“Hyahaha. But that looks to be settled now, so I’ll not stir that pot. Well? I hate to keep jawing on about this, but do you know where Eikow Cram School is, or not?”

“Oh, uh…”

Ei…kow… Eikow Cram School…

Unfortunately, I’d never heard of it… There were a few cram schools near the train station, maybe it was one of those. Should I just point her in that direction?

She did look like she was traveling.

On closer inspection, her hair appeared to be lightened slightly, so at the very least she didn’t seem to be a local.

No one in our town dyed our hair. I doubt you could even buy hair dye around here.

When Karen turned hers pink on a lark way back when, apparently she’d done it with regular paint. It was colored over with India ink, so it must have been a crazy marbled mess right afterwards.

As middle-school debuts go, it was a straightforward blunder, and I imagine she still winces at the memory─unless she’s forgotten about it completely.

Dying her hair on a whim, chopping it off on another. My sister loves to trash her equivalent of life.

“Let me see, just a second,” I muttered.

There was no reason for me to go to too much trouble just because I was asked for directions─she was an adult, after all. Wouldn’t it actually be rude if a kid like me acted like she was helpless? I mean, she could just use the GPS on her cell phone.

But perhaps, like a certain someone who used to live in our town, Kagenui sucked at anything tech. Perhaps she belonged to the rotary-phone generation (←a most definitely rude thought).

I glanced down at Karen again, but she was keeping quiet, happy to let me deal with the situation all on my own. While she was very much the philanthropic type and didn’t begrudge an act of kindness to a stranger, this wasn’t the kind of issue that could be solved through violence, which rendered her useless.

Sheesh, what sort of defender of justice did that make her…

“Just a second,” I said. “One of my friends is a wondergirl who knows where all the cram schools in the country are located.”

At the end of the day, I was about as useless as Karen.

When in trouble, rely on Hanekawa.

Tsubasa Hanekawa, my classmate and our class president. A model student among model students boasting top scores in the national mock exams─no, who didn’t even boast about it because she was in a league of her own.

She’d helped me in all sorts of ways since I met her during spring break. In fact, this summer vacation too, she was helping me all the time, in the progressive tense, as my tutor for college entrance exams─from dawn to dusk, good morning to good night, even in my dreams.

I did ask her to take Obon off, though.

Still, like Kanbaru, although for entirely different reasons, Hanekawa had no hometown to return to─and was probably at the library focusing on her own studies at the moment.

It was time for a phone call!

A phone call to Miss Hanekawa!

Oh lucky day!

You might consider me a nuisance for calling my savior, Tsubasa Hanekawa, over such a trivial matter, but trivial matters are what I want to discuss most with Hanekawa!

At least…

At least it was better than getting her embroiled in something serious like what happened last time.

That said, I needed to keep the call brief today and cut out the chitchat. This part of the story didn’t feel like a comic-relief sequence. I just had to ask where Eikow Cram School was, and frankly, to hear her voice.

“Yes, this is Hanekawa. Araragi? Are you studying like you’re supposed to? You’re not slacking off? Ah, good. Me? Of course. I’m just doing some light lunchtime learning.”

Lunchtime learning… It sounded like a segment on a TV show.

Despite her nation-leading scores, Hanekawa had no intention of applying to college, so these were probably private studies.

“Private studies” was some phrase when I thought about it…

Hmm. It was noon, the hottest time of day. Was Miss Hanekawa only wearing a single, thin layer without a bra for her private studies? Maybe she just got out of the shower, and her hair was all wet and slick─

“Araragi, you’re not thinking dirty thoughts, are you?” she quipped on cue. I swear, she had ESP. I couldn’t even fantasize safely. “Also, it sounds like you’re outside. Are you sure you’re studying?”

So sharp.

Well, I wasn’t slacking off, though. I made sure to finish my morning drills before leaving, and I meant to get back home and study once I dropped Karen off at Kanbaru’s.

“Also, Araragi, it sounds like you’re speaking from a position about three feet higher than usual. Please tell me you’re not making Karen carry you on her shoulders?”

Too sharp!

This was getting into horror territory!

I mean, hold on. Did a few feet really change how your voice sounded? It wasn’t like I was talking to her face to face, so my voice wasn’t coming from overhead or anything… Sure, voice is sound, and since sound is vibrating air, I guess a change in air pressure would alter your voice… But did another person’s worth of height make for such a drastic change?

Come on. That made it seem like I’m super-short…

“In fact, Araragi, I have this nagging suspicion that you’re toying with Karen and shoving your crotch into the back of her head…”

What a way to put it. Some pervert she was making me out to be.

No, I wasn’t bullying or toying with Karen… But now that Hanekawa put it so matter-of-factly, I had to wonder what the heck I was doing on my little sister’s shoulders.

Uh-uh, I couldn’t be so matter-of-fact. This was no time to come to my senses. I had to embrace the fever and forget myself!

“Eikow Cram School? Yes, I do know it,” Hanekawa said.

She did know. She really did…

I’d hyped her to the lady, but Hanekawa was the self-educated variety of genius. Though I hadn’t really expected her to know where all the cram schools in the country are, now I half-believed it.

Like always, I told Hanekawa that she knew everything. Like always, she responded, “I don’t know everything. I only know what I know.”

How wonderful.

Every time I heard her say it, I was reminded that I had lived another day.

……

Well, I made her say it so often, lately I had a distinct feeling that she was just humoring me with that reply. She’d look a bit put-upon half of the time.

But how I loved the face she made!

“Araragi, you’re not having naughty thoughts again, are you?”

Wow. That was beyond sharp. That was pointed.

Piercing.

“You know,” she lamented, “I’m beginning to give up on making you turn over a new leaf.”

Don’t give up, Hanekawa! Don’t abandon me!

“Too bad,” she said, “since Senjogahara did mend her ways─humph. Well, all right. It sounds like you’re in a hurry, so I’ll save the lecture for next time.”

I had a lecture to look forward to.

A part of me thought, Crap, now I’ve done it, I’m gonna get scolded by Hanekawa! But another part of me couldn’t help but feel excited at the prospect, so I guess I was Karen’s brother after all.

The Araragi siblings. We were M cool.

“Besides, Araragi, you ought to know where Eikow Cram School is─because, you see, it’s those ruins where Mister Oshino and Shinobu lived for all that time. It’s the name of the cram school that used to be in that building.”

Hanekawa didn’t make too much of it, but when I heard her answer, I was both surprised and persuaded.

I was surprised to learn that the place I knew so well, the cram school in those memorable ruins where I spent most of spring break, (obviously) had a name.

I was persuaded─for the lady’s sake. A newfangled feature like GPS was worse than helpless when you were dealing with a school that had gone out of business years ago.

Eikow Cram School, huh? That place had such a smart-sounding name? Given that they once took up a whole building, I did figure they were fairly big even if they weren’t a famous chain.

Well, smart-sounding or not, it had since been turned into a squat by a scruffy aloha shirt-wearing geezer and served in the abduction of an innocent high-school boy, so I guess it had come down hard in the world. Sic transit, and all that.

Humph…

But I could think about that later. I didn’t want to keep the lady waiting or interfere with Hanekawa’s studies.

I didn’t mind Karen having to stand still with me on her shoulders─not one bit, I’m proud to say!

When I thanked Hanekawa, she replied, “No need to thank me, that was nothing. Okay, Araragi. Say hello to Kanbaru for me. Bye-bye.”

I hung up.

Wait a sec… I never said a word about going to see Kanbaru…

There must have been some clue in our exchange (for Hanekawa it was probably self-evident and hardly worth a remark), but still, she wasn’t just off the charts, I was using the wrong units.

All I meant to do was ask for directions real quick, and I’d surrendered my privacy.

What a terrible deal.

Now Hanekawa thought of me as a guy who fantasized about the class president and enjoyed shoving his crotch into the back of his little sister’s head as he headed to a female schoolmate’s house…

If I ever ran into a pervert like that, I’d punch first and ask questions later.

“Any progress, fiendish young man?”

I was starting to feel a little cobalt and a little blue (in other words, I was feeling cobalt blue), but the lady’s voice brought me back to Earth.

“Ah, yes… Let’s see…”

I may not have known the name, but explaining how to get to that ruined building was even easier for me than pointing the way to the station. Obviously my trips had decreased in frequency since Oshino’s departure, but I’d trekked out there countless times.

Yet three or so problems remained.

One: that building was off the beaten track, so explaining the way step by step didn’t mean that she’d get it right─it was easy to explain but hard to understand.

The barrier or whatever that Oshino had set up was long gone, but that didn’t alter the geographical conditions.

That worry, however, proved unfounded. Despite her funky, acrobatic entry atop a mailbox, Ms. Kagneui seemed to possess a decent head on her shoulders. I only had to explain once for her to get it.

“A-ha. Hm, I see, that way.”

It didn’t sound like she was pretending to understand out of vanity because I was a kid and a younger person. From her response, I got the impression that she already had a general idea of the route to her destination prior to asking for my help.

As for the second problem:

“It’s pretty far, though… Will you be all right?”

“Don’t fuss yourself about me. I got from home to here on foot fair enough. Anything up to fifty miles is just a daunder in my mind.”

From home… Kyoto? Somewhere in the region, at least.

Amazing. That was even more amazing than anything up to four hundred pounds not counting as weight for Karen.

Oh, uh, was it just a joke?

But if she said she was fine, then I guess she was. I decided to put that aside and move on─to the third problem.

“That cram school has gone under, though. Ms. Kagenui, what do you want to go there for?”

The last problem─which maybe it wasn’t my place to address.

I’d simply been asked for directions and had no cause to pry. Whatever she wanted to do there was her own business. I didn’t need to know.

Maybe there were reasons to visit a cram school that had gone bankrupt. Those reasons surely had nothing to do with me.

Still, try to see where I was coming from.

That abandoned building didn’t just hold memories for us, it also really meant something─and hearing that some stranger was on her way there was making me feel a little stressed.

Not so much that it was worth mentioning. But mention it I had.

“Eh, what do I want to gang there for? For starters, I might set up base there,” Kagenui deflected with a vague answer, just as you might expect.

I could hardly blame her. She was under no obligation to report her goals to me.

All I’d done was give her directions. It had given me the opportunity to talk to Hanekawa when she wasn’t tutoring me, so in any case, as far as I was concerned, I’d been paid back any debt in kind.

We were even.

“Thank you kindly, fiendish young man. Oh, by the by. If you happen across a waif this tall with the same question, show her the same generosity you did to me?”

With that─Kagenui leapt from atop the mailbox.

And onto a nearby concrete block wall─that is to say, to a more elevated point of view than my own─before strutting away like a gymnast traversing a balance beam, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Until she was lost from sight, Kagenui never once touched the ground─skipping from concrete wall to guard rail, and so on and so forth, as she went.

Ahh…of course.

She was playing that game. The ground was a shark-infested ocean, and she’d get eaten if she descended too low… Well, I did play it, too─when I was a kid.

That’s why she’d been standing on a mailbox…

“Hm? Hey, Karen, you’ve been awfully quiet.” I conked my sister on the head like I was checking to make sure she was in working order. “What’s the big idea anyway, leaving me to deal with a weirdo all by myself? It’s your fault I’m getting scolded by Hanekawa.”

“Ah, sorry,” apologized Karen, not noticing my subtle diversion of blame, my elegant pass. “It’s just, I don’t know─she seemed really strong. I was on guard.”

“Strong?”

Huh? Since this was Karen, didn’t she mean strong in the sense of combat proficiency?

“Oh yeah? Not to me,” I disagreed. “Putting aside her speech and behavior, she seemed like a pretty lady you’d find anywhere.”

“While she was talking to you, the axis of her body didn’t bend even an inch. She has a figure skater’s sense of balance.”

“Huh…” True, even if it was a childish game, at grownup size and weight, walking along a block wall was quite a feat. “You do it all the time, though. Upside down on your hands, too.”

“Uhh, sure… But she was really built. Her fists were the perfect shape for beating the crap out of people.”

“Th-They were?”

“Yeah. At her level, if she punched a car on its bumper, she’d set off the airbag.”

“Hmph.”

Traffic-accident level.

I found that hard to believe… Astonishing if true.

Karen was in no way a good judge of character, but she did have a keen eye for physical prowess.

Barking dogs seldom bite, and perhaps the opposite was also true.

“Well, come to think of it,” I admitted, “she did seem pretty relaxed and confident─intrepid, or indomitable. She had the kind of vibe that only people who’re sure of their fighting abilities do.”

In fact, her vibe resembled Dramaturgy’s. It overwhelmed everyone and was the hardest to deal with for timid people like Sengoku.

In terms of civilians, Kanbaru, whom we were on our way to see, had a bit of that going. Or Karen, I suppose, for that matter.

They were the same breed.

“My master might be an even match,” my sister commented. “I wouldn’t be able to beat her, to say the least.”

“Oh my,” I answered teasingly, but Karen, who belonged to the same breed, speaking in such a way was quite surprising to me. “Why so humble?”

“I know when I’m out of my depths─as long as the opponent isn’t evil.”

“I see.”

In other words, if the opponent was evil, she couldn’t tell anymore and charged in whether she was dealing with a monster or at her worst condition.

What a dangerous little sister. She and Tsukihi shouldn’t be the Fire Sisters but the Danger Sisters.

“Not that we’re sure,” Karen went on, her head moving just a little as she glanced somewhat disgustedly in the direction of Kagenui’s exit, “that she isn’t evil.”