Monogatari Series - Volume 6 - Chapter 7.05

005

That reminds me, I have some good news.

Rejoice.

A few of the more overenthusiastic fans might be disappointed, but the vast majority of people, I’m sure, will consider it a positive development.

Hanekawa touched on it during our conversation─but Hitagi Senjogahara.

A fellow third-year and classmate at Naoetsu High, the school that Hanekawa and I attend, and my so-called girlfriend, she turned over a whole new leaf.

Yes, the happy news I have to share is that the woman known for catchphrases like “Roll over and play dead, doggy” or even “Roll over dead and play, doggy”─the second coming of Tiger Jeet Singh, the fierce tiger─was reborn.

From a naughty girl into a good girl.

How could I not feel happy even if it makes me a happy fool?

It goes without saying that a grand banquet was held among friends, but I will leave it to another time to regale you with stories of those raucous celebrations, and for now relate the rebirth itself.

The events leading up to it were as follows:

You’re all aware of Senjogahara’s vicious personality─or perhaps I should say, the almost otherworldly effrontery and despotism with which she indulged herself. It hardly bears mentioning at this point. But her venom was not a wanton quality that she displayed from birth. There was, in fact, a perfectly good reason for her maliciousness.

She had been emotionally traumatized.

Put that way it might sound trite, but it was pressing for her.

Nothing is more pressing in this world than the trite stuff.

We might all bear scars pertaining to our birth or upbringing, but the main reason that Senjogahara’s axle snapped in the way it did was that she tried too hard, in my opinion.

Trying hard can be a sin, for which you are punished.

A crab.

She met─encountered a crab.

Met with and robbed, she lost it.

In the end, I can only vaguely imagine what high school must have been like for her─vaguely imagine, despite being classmates our first and second years as well…

Those two years would have been more than enough to close her heart. Let alone a couple of years, one day─might have done it.

Rejecting anyone who approached her.

Viewing generosity as aggression.

Opening her heart to no one.

Allowing no one into her heart.

Making no friends, barely speaking to her classmates, always answering teachers who called on her with a cold and curt “I don’t know”─

Withdrawn.

Distrustful.

Aloof.

As a sort of joke behind her back, she was dubbed the cloistered princess─but for those who knew the truth, that nickname sounded terribly ironic.

Discovering her secret entirely by accident, I found myself serving as an intermediary between her and Oshino due to that knowledge. As a result, for better or worse, we were at least able to resolve her problem with the aberration.

But so what?

Even with the aberration resolved, even liberated from the crab.

Though released from turmoil and parted from her troubles.

While she opened her heart and let people in…

That didn’t mean─her broken heart had been mended.

Her wounds could heal in time. The scars, too, might fade, in time─but that didn’t erase the fact that she’d borne them. Old wounds could still be fresh memories.

Her manners and person, covered all over in bristles like a cactus, touchy from head to toe, couldn’t easily return to normal─or rather, it was her new normal.

The touchiness was now her.

The venom and malice, the withdrawal and distrust and aloofness, and even her hostile nature were her actual personality─a troublesome situation.

Scales might fall from one’s eyes, but the ones coating Senjogahara didn’t.

Even after she began dating me, and even after she reconciled with Kanbaru, her personality didn’t experience any essential or fundamental transformation.

That said, only ever showing her true colors to me and Kanbaru, she continued to act like a shy kitty at school─but after the crab issue was solved, maybe her motivation to play the part was beginning to wane, and her “actual personality” became known to our cat specialist Tsubasa Hanekawa.

Since then, unbeknownst to me, Senjogahara had been subjected to Hanekawa’s personality rehabilitation program (supposedly an enhanced version of the one administered to me since April, the mere thought of it makes my hair stand on end), but with all due respect to Hanekawa, this rebirth I’m talking about had nothing to do with it.

Deishu Kaiki.

A colleague, so to speak, of Oshino─and a competitor.

A conman.

Senjogahara’s reunion with him played a big part.

In fact, it’s the only cause, really.

All there is to it.

Kaiki was a useless fraud and a terrible nuisance─but a chance encounter with the man who had swindled her family served as wonderful shock treatment a few years later.

It wasn’t good fortune, nor was it a miracle. According to Hitagi Senjogahara’s own words, thanks to her reunion, her rematch, with Deishu Kaiki, she─settled it.

She must’ve expelled all the poison in her on that occasion.

A detox.

The venom festering in her system for two years─was countered.

It probably isn’t necessary for me to say this, but just in case, I want to state in no uncertain terms that it wasn’t thanks to Kaiki─he doesn’t deserve a single ounce of gratitude.

He didn’t do a damn thing.

To borrow a phrase from Oshino, Senjogahara got saved all on her own. Not thanks to Kaiki.

Of course, it isn’t thanks to Koyomi Araragi or Tsubasa Hanekawa, either─this is a triumphant rehabilitation that Hitagi Senjogahara wrested from a loathsome con artist through her own will and action.

And thus, in that manner, she became sweet and affectionate─totally the dere in tsundere, so to speak.

Karen this morning didn’t hold a candle to her.

Color me surprised, for my part, that Miss ’Gahara actually included the non-dismissive mode.

If I told you that it affected her ability to tutor me for college exams, and that Hanekawa and I, after serious deliberation, dismissed her before the holidays (hence Senjogahara was currently away visiting her father’s family), maybe you’d get a picture of just how fawning she became.

But you’d be picturing it wrong, or should I say, insufficiently.

Her sweetness exceeded those dimensions.

Calling me for no reason (before, she even blocked me some days), sending texts with emoji (she used to forward spam to me), and giving me cute pet names (instead of making do with belittlement) was just the beginning.

She no longer tore off flowers.

She no longer squashed insects.

She didn’t initiate conversations by bitching.

She spoke frank words of praise where they were due.

She reserved stationery for its intended uses.

This wasn’t limited to stationery, so using a potato peeler to julienne off my skin if I said anything remotely negative about her cooking was a thing of the past, too.

So was her threat to perform amputations if her bare legs were ever witnessed (meaning, of course, the viewer’s legs). No longer so reluctant to expose her skin, she wore shorter skirts (the hem moving from below to above her knees) and lighter clothes that were decently appropriate for midsummer.

Even her expressionless iron mask was gone, her once monotone and mechanical speech featured a certain amount of intonation, and, more than anything, she laughed often. Laughed pleasantly.

In other words─she’d become an ordinary girl.

It was such a drastic shift in personality that I wondered if someone had taken her place while I wasn’t looking.

It wasn’t a polite front, either.

Not a cloistered princess, not a shy kitty, but a normal, cute high-school girl acting her age.

Neither risqué nor outré, neither weirdly closed off nor combative, reacting normally to normal events, she was a normal high-school girl.

Back in junior high, she’d been a track-and-field ace, respected and popular, and thinking that maybe this was what she’d been like, and that Hanekawa and Kanbaru had gotten to spend their middle-school years near such a beautiful presence, I sulked, You cheaters, I am so, so disappointed in you, but according to them─

“This goes beyond the way she was then.”

Senjogahara was being so sugary sweet that even Kanbaru, who revered her as a goddess and fully accepted even her most biting remarks, was a little taken aback.

I don’t know, I’m not sure “tsundere” described it anymore.

Tsunderrhage, maybe?

The genre was niche to begin with, so why was Senjogahara striving to break new ground?

……

Tsunderrhage makes it sound like an official medical emergency, and I suppose in a way that was how it felt to me. Well, not official, maybe, but personally alarming. That’s because I was worried that all of it might be an unbelievably long setup. In fact, her rehabilitation and sweetness being an epic prank was an easier idea to swallow for me.

If that was it, though, she was taking the joke too far.

Even for a nasty prank.

If she was being malicious, then she wasn’t just trying to make me fidget. I was being shaken down.

After all─as part of her sickly sweet offensive, Senjogahara had cut her straight black hair, which she’d grown out for ages.

From what I’ve heard, she’d worn the same hairstyle since grade school, like Karen─though, of course, unlike with my sister’s ponytail, Senjogahara didn’t hack her own hair off impulsively, not being a moron.

She made a decision and an appointment and went to a hair salon. She paid the appropriate price─and came out of it with short hair.

She’d even gotten rid of her straight bangs, replacing them with an exaggerated shag that looked like a saw.

Tsubasa Hanekawa, Suruga Kanbaru, and now Hitagi Senjogahara─not one of the Naoetsu High straight-bangs sisterhood remained.

That was just sad. Not being able to call Senjogahara “the last line of defense” anymore fills me with regret.

Since Kanbaru was growing her hair out (by the way, hers now hung down in two bunches, i.e. low pigtails, a tantalizing contrast with her boyish speech), Senjogahara’s hair was even shorter than Kanbaru’s.

Since some girls cut their hair out of heartache, why shouldn’t other girls do it out of love? That was Senjogahara’s own take. The former must have been a reference to Hanekawa, who changed her hairstyle after the culture festival.

She, too, broke with the past that way. She’d always been overly serious but was taking it easier since then, relaxing her draconian measures against herself.

I guess you could say Hanekawa had become a normal girl as well. Perhaps, in the same way that Hanekawa was my role model, she was also Senjogahara’s.

Normal.

For people who had led their kinds of lives, whether for a long or brief while, those two syllables were in no way business as usual.

Because it was too lofty an ambition─to say they yearned for it didn’t come close.

That’s why.

In any case, my significant other insisting that she was going to cut her hair out of love didn’t feel all that bad (in fact, any rhetoric that it was just sad or that I was filled with regret to the contrary, as a matter of taste, I rather like it when girls change their hairstyles), but I can’t help but conjecture that it was really her way of finding closure.

A clean break of a haircut, not setting but resetting.

Especially because long hair with straight bangs─a “princess” cut sounds nice and all, but the old-fashioned, doll-like style, rare these days─had been chosen for Senjogahara when she was little, by her estranged mother, who said it looked good on her daughter.

It had occurred to me before that despite her grownup visuals, her hairstyle was pretty Lolita, and it was in fact a holdover from her Lolita days.

From a certain perspective, the style wasn’t just a sentimental issue but, if I may exaggerate, one of identity. It might sound silly to make so much of hair─but what else was there for Senjogahara to rely on?

She didn’t mess with it throughout middle school and practically forgot to in high school.

For her, it meant more than a style update or wanting to try something different, but a turning point.

Neither forgetting it, nor carrying it as a burden, but accepting it was what made it the past.

In that sense, Hitagi Senjogahara didn’t change or turn a new leaf, didn’t revert or redeem─let alone become oversweet.

She overcame a complex.

She managed to grow up, that’s what we ought to say.

………

Maybe, along with the fizz, she’d lost a great deal of charm as a character, but she also acquired more depth as a person, so that’s that.

That goes for Hanekawa, too. Being asked to maintain such an extreme personality indefinitely is nothing if not a nightmare. Being flexible and growing as they did is necessary.

It’s not like they can’t die or age.

In practice, unless you’re Deishu Kaiki─no one would say that Senjogahara’s growth made her a boring woman.

To begin with, I’d hate to share the opinion of someone whose last name reads like you typed it out by mistake.

Speaking of which, Hanekawa once noted that Senjogahara seemed prettier and more evanescent than she was in middle school─but recently expanded on that by adding, “This Senjogahara is the best so far.”

Yup.

I knew this day would come.

I’d wished for the day.

I’d believed in the day.

Congratulations, Hitagi Senjogahara.

Congratulations to me, too.

Even putting aside my personal relief that I was no longer in mortal danger, when I took in all this, I was simply glad, as someone close to Senjogahara, and I also felt inspired to truly live.

Not that I was dead, or anything.

I had yet to do a pinky’s worth of lifting my own complex regarding aberrations, though.

That’s too serious a matter to say enough small talk, but let’s put it aside for now and get back to the story at hand.

Afterwards, I (still riding on her shoulders) safely dropped Karen off at Kanbaru’s house and introduced both parties at the gate.

“Karen, meet Suruga Kanbaru, a junior at Naoetsu High. Be careful, she’s a pervert. This is Karen Araragi, in her last year at Tsuganoki Second Middle School. Be careful, she’s stupid.”

After much fretting, I’d given up and decided to go the honest route.

You just don’t tell lies that aren’t gonna hold up. No point in upselling.

I didn’t want them demanding a cooling-off period because I’d omitted important details.

I had a strict no-returns policy in place.

“Aww.”

“Aww.”

………

Why were they blushing in unison?

I wasn’t complimenting them!

That was something of a digression, or a joke session, but having introduced them, and trusting that Kanbaru wouldn’t actually try to put the moves on my little sister (any lapse of self-control would be resisted by Karen’s combat skills), I figured that I was done and decided to go home. That was when Kanbaru invited Karen in of all things, a barbaric deed that I promptly thwarted with a flying dropkick to Kanbaru’s back.

Out of concern not for Karen’s chastity but for Kanbaru’s good name.

I hadn’t been over to tidy up since the end of July, and the next visit was scheduled for the fifteenth, in other words, tomorrow, which meant that Kanbaru’s room was at its most festering state of disarray at the moment. So you see, it was a drop kick of love.

“What do you think you’re doing to Kanbaru-sensei?!”

Exploding in a fury the way I might if someone slandered Hanekawa, Karen slammed me with her knee before I could even land.

Talk about a burst of speed.

I did not stick my landing.

“What do you think you’re doing to my senior Araragi?!”

Fearing a follow-up attack if I lay there sprawled, I quickly righted myself just in time to catch sight of Kanbaru rushing in to berate Karen.

Uh, so my flying drop kick had done absolutely zero damage… What had I been kneed for?

Hmm. Some weird love triangle was forming here.

Or should I say a three-way standoff?

How about an unlovely triangle?

At any rate, as I headed home alone, walking neither on my hands nor carried on anyone’s shoulders, at last─

Mayoi Hachikuji made her appearance.

About halfway between my house and Kanbaru’s─on a street corner a little past the mailbox where Kagenui had asked me for directions.

I spotted a fifth grader with pigtails and a knapsack. Hachikuji.

Enter Mayoi Hachikuji.

She had yet to notice me in turn.

“……”

I fell silent. And then exhaled a long, slow breath.

Now, now… I’m sure you’re all expecting me to make a big scene and run up and tackle her. A little girl standing there obliviously like a fawn that knows not the meaning of danger─I bet you think I’m going to hug her from behind and rub my cheeks all over her face, or something.

Please.

Fine. I admit that there was a time when I would have.

It’s true.

But that’s such a long time ago. Ancient history, as they say.

As a person, I was still a work in progress back then. I hadn’t grown up yet. They’re episodes from a bygone era when I was a boy, and emotionally immature.

As much as I’d like to summon and unspool some of those memories now, um, I honestly don’t remember much of it.

Understand if I don’t exactly welcome people digging up every little thing that may or may not have happened back in those days.

Does that make me small?

If you dredge up stories about when I was a brat every time I see your face, I might start to avoid you. Who wouldn’t be baffled if, say, your first crush was your teacher in kindergarten, and people brought it up after you’ve become an adult?

I’m an adult now, okay? Those days are over.

Biologically speaking, the past Koyomi Araragi and the present Koyomi Araragi are practically different people. After all, the cells in my body are constantly being replaced.

No one stays the same forever.

That time in my life was fun while it lasted, but everyone has to graduate from kindergarten at some point.

Yeah, that happened, didn’t it?

That’s the only impression that the remembrance sequence requires.

That’s what living means.

Sad or not, it can’t be helped.

Because there’s no life without growth, is there?

Hitagi Senjogahara grew up.

Tsubasa Hanekawa grew up.

Now I had to as well. Didn’t I just say so?

Complexes are meant to be overcome.

Lolicon included.

During our elementary-school safety drills, they taught us not to SDT (shove, dash, or talk), and I somehow came to think of that as Small Darling Tweens, but that, too, is only a fond memory.

Yes, our interests and tastes keep changing, shifting.

No child plays with transformer robots or Barbie dolls forever.

Moving on is almost a duty.

In the first place, who gets excited over grade schoolers with pigtails in this day and age?

Pigtails? Grade schoolers?

A bit dated, no? May I say, out of touch?

I, for one, have lost all interest in this girl Mayoi Hachikuji. Sure, depending on your perspective, long ago there might have been a time when I really liked her. Even if there had been, in the grand scheme of things, that past is so long gone as to be B.C. It’s passé, as the French would say.

Currently, I’m only interested in, you know, Sima Qian. Great historian.

That’s right, I’m moé for Sima Qian.

Yup.

Well…

Well, well.

Well, well, well, well, that said, precisely because I had lost interest in Hachikuji, maybe there was no reason to ignore her now.

I didn’t care enough about her to ignore her.

In fact, if I did ignore her, wouldn’t people make the outlandish, uncalled-for assumption that I was trying to overcompensate?

You could say ignoring someone was a backhanded compliment.

Given the case.

Given the case, all right?

Maybe the sensible thing to do was to call out to her casually, to offer clear proof that Hachikuji meant nothing to me, the way you might attend a class reunion just to demonstrate that you weren’t hung up on whatever.

You had to honor the past for what it was. Growth and change were important, but yeah, something taking you back was a valid emotion, and keeping in touch wasn’t a bad thing.

Nostalgia.

Who hasn’t thumbed through a photo album? Perused old memories?

People talk about learning from the past. Sometimes that’s how you take a new step in life.

It’s not like always looking ahead lets you see the future.

You could say that real spiritual growth comes not from neglecting the past but from valuing it.

There. I couldn’t argue with a conclusion like that. Why resist or have any misgivings? If I didn’t get home soon and start studying, Hanekawa would scold me, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t spare a minute for Hachikuji.

“Now then.”

No more preliminaries. It was time for the drama to begin.

I was getting impatient too, I can assure you.

As if to make up for the time I spent on those preliminaries, I sped forth like the howling wind.

I couldn’t break the light-speed barrier, but I could have broken through a speedway barrier.

Okay!

I’ll grab her tight!

I’ll rub my cheeks all over her!

Touch and fondle her!

Love her to my heart’s content!

Today is the day I embrace Hachikuji!

“Hachikujiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii…gahhh!!”

Just as I was about to bury my talons into her, my feet tripped on something, and I splattered against the asphalt like a rotten apple against a grater.

Zlik zlik zlik.

The amazing sound came from my skin.

Or more like my flesh.

“A-Ack?! Mister Araragi?!”

Turning around at the noise, Hachikuji yelped in surprise.

It was the most surprised I’d ever seen her.

And she’d noticed me…

Now I wasn’t going to get to grab her. Or rub my cheeks on her.

Touch or fondle her.

Love her, or embrace her.

Oh, the despair… That my great fortune, running into Hachikuji, should end so ignominiously!

They say to seize opportunity by the forelock, and the expression seemed meant for the situation.

Dammit. What kind of bizarre haircut was that anyway?

Opportunity was so high fashion.

Crushed more by my disappointment than the pain of having my skin scraped off, I was unable to get up for a while.

My clothes were in tatters to match my body and soul, but I couldn’t care less.

It was my heartache that consumed me.

It hurt.

Oh, I felt so alone it hurt.

Then I noticed something else.

Amidst the pain that afflicted my whole being, there was a different sensation against my skin, something that wasn’t quite pain.

It was my ankle.

A small hand was gripping my ankle firmly, sock and all.

I caught just the briefest glimpse, but the small hand, so pale it didn’t look Japanese, immediately sank into the ground─no, not into the ground.

It sank into shadow.

My shadow.

My shade.

“Hey, Shinobu! You did that?!”

I’d begun to think that I was pasted onto the ground and might never get up again, that the Creeping Chaos was none other than me, but buoyed by anger, I sprang to my feet and madly stamped on my own shadow like I was dancing the Twist.

Not that it would do any damage to Shinobu, but I had to vent somehow.

“Shit! You! You! How dare you? How dare you get in my way? In the way of my biggest goal in life! No more blood for you, you golden-eyed blond! I should’ve just abandoned you!”

I couldn’t snap out of bizarre antics that any bystander would have found completely mystifying and unhinged. Meanwhile, there was no reaction from my shadow─I looked like a total lunatic.

Urk.

She was going to play dumb.

What an inconsiderate jerk.

“U-Umm,” a voice called from behind me, “Mister Kikirara?”

It was Hachikuji.

How rare, she was addressing my back instead of the other way around─obviously, she didn’t try to hug me. If anything, she seemed to be keeping her distance.

“There’s so little of it left that I’m not even sure you’re mispronouncing my name,” I answered, “but don’t be referring to me like I’m a Little Twin Stars collectible figurine. I’ll keep telling you until you remember, my name is Araragi.”

As I spoke, I turned around. Cutting short my impotent Twist.

“Besides, when I fell down just now and surprised you, you said it perfectly fine.”

“Sorry, a slip of the tongue.”

“No, it was on purpose.”

“Smile of the month. Tee-hee!”

“That’s so adorable!”

Now it was my turn to be surprised.

What was this? She’d switched up her usual routine.

While I stood there unable to respond to my unexpected cue─

“Hah. Mister Araragi, you’re still so bad at improvising.”

She turned on her heel and began to walk away.

W-Wait!

She couldn’t flash a smile like that and just leave me!

Dammit, lately she was setting the bar way too high for our exchanges.

Just what did she expect from me?

What kind of guy did she want me to be?

It probably took someone of Hanekawa’s caliber to come up with a proper reaction to that on the spot.

Hachikuji could try to leave, but she had the gait of a grade schooler. I caught up with her right away.

I thought about yanking on her pigtails, but that would be like bullying so I decided not to. She’d flipped out on me once for it, too.

Hmm. Come to think of it, of all the people I knew, she was the only one who hadn’t changed her hairstyle from the initial setup. As I said earlier, Senjogahara now wore her hair boldly short, and after this and that, Kanbaru had hers down in two strands. Sengoku often pulled her overly long bangs back with a headband these days, and Hanekawa ditched not only her braids but also her glasses.

Karen also cut her ponytail off this morning on the spur of the moment, and that reminds me, at the beginning of August, Tsukihi also changed her hairstyle─though in her case she always is so I didn’t make much of it.

Well, I’ll come back to Tsukihi’s image change later.

As for me, I’d been growing my hair out ever since spring break, while Shinobu didn’t have a hairstyle in the usual sense.

In this regard, too, Mayoi Hachikuji was a precious character.

Although…that lack of change─that stasis─was far from a good thing for her.

In fact, it was sort of tragic.

Always the same, down the road.

Incapable of alteration or transformation, eternally unchanging.

A snail.

A snail, spiraling like a vortex.

“Hey, Hachikuji, you want a ride on my shoulders?”

“Excuse me?”

“Come on, it’s perfectly normal. A high-school boy giving a grade-school acquaintance of his a fun ride on his shoulders.”

“It’d only be fun for you…” grimaced Hachikuji.

My attempt to support and console had fallen flat. I don’t think even the sentiment got across to her. If anything, she resented it.

“With times being what they are,” she warned, “please be more careful about what you say. You’re really starting to come off as some sort of sex offender in your dealings with me.”

“True, the word on the street is that my love approaches criminal proportions. You can’t blame them. At its most potent, love has brought kingdoms to their knees. But unlike the statesmen of yore, I’d never lay the blame on a ruinous beauty. I’d take responsibility as the ruinous dude.”

“Ahaha. How annoying.”

Hachikuji laughed merrily at me.

Well, at least I made her laugh.

I guess she didn’t need any support or consolation from me regarding her circumstances. It was none of my business and maybe only puzzling for her.

Man, my own characterization was so ad hoc. Bullshitting about Sima Qian had come back to bite me.

“Anyway, Mister Charabuki….”

“Ugh, Hachikuji. Please don’t mispronounce my name like I’m a veggie ingredient simmered in soy sauce for true connoisseurs. It’s Araragi.”

“Sorry, smile of the month. Tee-hee!”

“You skipped a step!”

Why was I getting the abridged version?

Yet when she smiled like that, it was hard not to let it slide.

“Hmm,” she pondered, “if I wanted it to be food-based, maybe I should have gone with Arrabiata.”

“You’re very strict on yourself…”

Not that she was lenient with me.

“Anyway, Mister Araragi, you seem pretty fancy-free today, strolling around town in the middle of the day. Did you give up on studying for your exams?”

“Fancy-free strolling…”

“Have you gotten tired of trying to impress Miss Hanekawa by pretending to be serious?”

“That’s defamation!”

“If this were a twelve-step plan, she wouldn’t be taken in by your act forever. Let me guess, did she catch on to how you were gazing at her in her camisole in the name of entrance exams? Half your motivation has to do with her breasts, anyway.”

“What do you take me for?!”

“The other half owes to my bodacious body, if I do say so myself.”

“Exactly what part of your body is bodacious? I’d say it’s chunky, like a nice beef stew.”

She was developing nicely enough for an elementary schoolgirl, but only for an elementary schoolgirl.

Also.

Hanekawa still wore her uniform even outside of school, despite her image change.

Let alone a camisole, her everyday clothes remained an enigma. Really, what did she wear?

……

In the first place…

I don’t know. Did she own any? Her home situation was complicated, but the neglect couldn’t be that severe…

Hmm. A bit of mysterious darkness?

“Um, Mister Araragi, I’d like to talk to you about serious stuff for a moment,” Hachikuji said with a serious, stuffy look.

I smelled a setup. These expressions of intent had never once led to a serious conversation.

“People not sticking to their fashion and hairstyle choices is hardly helpful,” she grumbled, “for the anime adaptation.”

“Again with the anime!”

“They won’t be able to reuse those cells.”

“Why is reusing them the premise?! Don’t make it so low-budget!”

“Good grief. The only part they’ll be able to recycle now is my transformation scene.”

Yeah, like there’d be any.

Since when was she the magical girl?

“Well, true,” I admitted, “anime characters’ clothes and hair and stuff do stay the same. Sometimes you even see them going to bed with their hair up.”

“That’s partly for the studio’s convenience, but apparently it’s also for the viewers’ sake.”

“Oh?”

“When the design changes, you honestly can’t tell who’s who anymore.”

“……”

Baloney, I wanted to say.

But to the uninitiated, all of the Gundam designs supposedly look the same. Or all the girls tend to look the same─you hear that a lot.

“My goodness,” sighed Hachikuji. “Thanks to everyone just fooling around, I have to sound like a spoil sport. Please, give these matters some thought. What about the second and third seasons? If a character nobody recognizes starts cavorting across the screen, they’ll just turn the channel to something else.”

“Nope. No second or third season. First time’s the charm, and that’s it.”

It was icky to plan so far ahead.

And “turn” the channel? That was some musty diction.

Did she have a rotary phone at home, or what?

“But I guess Senjogahara is the worst offender,” I pointed out. “It’s not just her recent haircut, she was always tying it up and letting it down and arranging it all sorts of ways.”

“It’s going to be difficult to reproduce that in the anime.”

“Yep.”

“To begin with, though, do you think it’s okay to broadcast a character like her?”

“Uhh…”

I couldn’t reply straightaway.

Her successful rehabilitation made it all the more clear how flat-out bonkers Miss ’Gahara used to be. Without her, though, the story wouldn’t make much sense.

“Fine, then what about this,” Hachikuji suggested. “In the anime version, I could play the heroine for you.”

“Ambitious, much?”

“Why not? Time to forget that woman who’s the heroine in name only.”

“Don’t be so harsh to somehow who just turned over a new leaf!”

“That’s my point. Getting reborn turned her into a completely uninteresting character. Am I right?”

“You sound like Kaiki!!”

“Tee-hee. I’d wear a camisole, you know? I totally would.”

“Is there any demand out there for you in a camisole?”

“Maybe a bra top?”

“Bra top… Putting aside the demand issue, wearing something so provocative in my presence would not end well for you.”

“I’d strip if it’s necessary!”

“You’re not safe for broadcast, either.”

What a dangerous grade schooler.

I’m begging you, show a little moderation before the sponsors start to pull out.

“Et tu, Brute? Right in my flat chest!”

“Sorry, Hachikuji, I can’t bring myself to laugh at that. Remember, you’re a girl. Stay away from smutty jokes.”

“Did you tune out at the mere of mention of my flat chest?!”

“Well, Hachikuji. You know I love you, but it’s not because boobless Lolitas are my type.”

People get me wrong on this. My preference is actually for busty, bodacious bodies.

“I only spare time for you,” I explained, “because you have large breasts for your age. It’s just that I have high expectations for their future, as nearly nonexistent as they may be today.”

“Did a human being just say that?”

“You know, though, Hachikuji. While I’m dating Senjogahara and totally love Hanekawa, I can’t picture myself marrying anyone other than you.”

“My precious first time getting proposed to isn’t something you, Mister Araragi, ought to snatch away from me.”

In fact, it’s best if you didn’t propose to anyone still in grade school, chided Hachikuji, shaking her head.

Urk.

She wasn’t giving me the time of day.

How might I transmit the passion overflowing in my chest to hers? Maybe if I touched hers directly? Or massaged it, to increase conductivity?

“Uh oh,” she muttered, “I’m getting a bad feeling.”

“Stay vigilant, Hachikuji. I’ve been casing your breasts for ages, waiting for the slightest opportunity to touch.”

“I thought you said you didn’t care for flat chests. In fact you’ve been mapping every nook and cranny.”

“Assume that every male in this country is after your nearly nonexistent breasts.”

“I can’t ever step outside…”

Actually, that country is doomed, Hachikuji noted.

My favorability rating probably was, our country’s fate aside.

Were there at least some percentage points left? Where did I stand if we took a poll?

“When we come down to it,” Hachikuji lamented, “Miss Kanbaru, Sengoku, and Shinobu are also quite problematic in terms of broadcast standards.”

“Yeah…”

It was the quiet Sengoku who might pose the greatest issue.

You just didn’t visit a shrine in your school bathing suit.

What kind of centerfold photo shoot was that?

When I stopped to think about it, all of the members were pretty awful. There wasn’t a single decent character among us.

“Only Hanekawa will survive,” I predicted.

“But in her case, her upbringing is way too out there in being so dark and gloomy.”

“Yeah…more like pitch-black.”

Did this story only feature dark pasts, black hearts, and murky libidos?

“As far as Hanekawa goes,” I remarked, “there’s also the cat problem.”

“Ahh, Miss Toyama Black.”

“You mean Miss Black Hanekawa.”

Not only did it sound completely different, Toyama Black was no household name. Unless you were from Toyama Prefecture or a ramen aficionado, you could only scratch your head at the farfetched reference.

“Ah, speaking of which,” Hachikuji said, “I saw the design for the anime version of your character the other day.”

“What?”

“They made you handsome. For my own part I find that kind of disappointing and boring, but you should be glad. It looks like you dodged the bullet on this one.”

“Huh…”

I wasn’t sure how to respond.

I hadn’t seen it.

Made me handsome…

“You know,” she went on, “not like Sengoku back in the day, but your hair was hiding your left eye. Kind of a nihilistic vibe.”

“Nihilistic? Ah, come to think of it, that was my characterization at the outset…”

An acerbic wiseass. You’d never know it now.

I feel like I abandoned that side of my personality pretty early on. I guess once I started hanging out with Hachikuji.

An elementary-school temptress.

“Your nickname is going to be Kitaro without a doubt,” she declared.

“Without a doubt…”

Our tale did have to do with yokai. I could see that happening. Hanekawa would be Cat Girl, then. And Senjogahara…

……

Would she be the human heroine Yumeko?

Are we sure about that?

“It really does suit you almost like it was custom tailored,” Hachikuji remarked. “I mean that tiger-print geezer house vest of yours.”

“I’m not wearing one!”

What kind of teenager would that make me?

I wasn’t wearing remote-control clogs, either! My hair didn’t stand like an antenna in the presence of monsters, for that matter!

“Mister Araragi, you need to be more faithful to the concept. Don’t be so obstinate.”

“The real me has to adapt my design to some anime?!”

“It’s known as the law of ‘When the Adaptation Begins, the Original Suffers.’”

“What a scary law!”

“Well, I suppose it’s not so much the original, but the original creator, who suffers.”

“Way too scary!”

“Hey, Koyomi!”

“You sound just like him!”

In print, though, you couldn’t even tell it was an impression. She was just being overfriendly for all you knew.

“It’s impossible,” she observed, “to do a bad impression of his Eyeball father.”

“True… Anyway, I like Kitaro and all, but I’m not sure how I feel about it being my nickname.”

“Is that so.”

“Anyway, putting aside whether they made my character handsome, the height, what about the height? What did they do with my height?”

“Mm. They stayed faithful to the original.”

“Nkk…”

Okay.

Okay, then.

I knew this day would come, when my height (or lack thereof) would be exposed to the world… They say you have to know when to throw in the towel, but I was crestfallen.

Sigh.

Maybe I should spend the rest of my days riding around on Karen’s shoulders.

When it came to overcoming complexes, aberrations were one thing, but I didn’t see how I’d ever get over how I felt about my height.

I could just stop caring so much, I know.

“Because you’re no stranger to me, Mister Araragi, I tried talking them into changing your height to seven feet, but no luck. The truth is the truth, they told me.”

“Now I’m more worried that you have such a say in how the anime turns out.”

Was she the producer or what?

Hachikuji Pro?

“Well, my only real concern,” she confessed, “is what kind of dance we’ll be doing for the ending theme.”

“You really are fixated on that.”

“Usually I might go for something like break dancing, but what if we went really out of the box and did the Awa Dance?”

“How avant-garde…” Traditional yet funky moves. But we’d probably made enough meta-comments. We were trying some people’s patience at this point.

“Ahaha! It’s written into my character. I’m allowed to get meta.”

“I suppose.” She really was like a producer. I envied her, but I couldn’t leave it at that. What to do with this girl? “You know, you spouted some pretty foreboding stuff, but you’re still hanging around town. In fact, I’m running into you more often now. Since August started, I feel like I’ve been bumping into you everywhere.”

“Yes, you’re right. I dropped a foreshadowing bomb on a whim, but I have no idea where to take it from there.”

“Like a newspaper serialization in its last gasps…”

Why draw it out at all, then? Could she stop being so misleading?

“Well, I tried negotiating with the director of programming,” she shared. “No good ever comes of dragging out the original on account of the anime. No good, plus it’s just unnecessary. There’s always room for an anime even if you’re finished with the original.”

“You make it sound like you’re ordering dessert.”

“They didn’t listen, though. My opinion fell on deaf ears. Needled from above and prodded from below. I tell you, the TV business is rough.”

“So you let them gang up on Hachikuji Pro.”

“Go big or go home. The only option left is to put out another sequel…from a different publisher.”

“From a different publisher?!”

“You see, the original suffered.”

“No, it didn’t! It did not!”

“How about from   Paperbacks?”

“Why black it out?! That only gives off an air of impropriety!”

“How about from Fujimi Fantasia Paperbacks?”

“For the love of God, do censor it, actually!”

“By the way, Mister Dusteragi…”

“While I indeed have plans to go clean up Kanbaru’s room tomorrow, don’t make it sound like I’m some cleaning aficionado who just loves to clean and consistently opts for a method that doesn’t involve any moisture. It’s Araragi.”

“Sorry, a slip of the tongue.”

“No, it was on purpose…”

“A slip of the teeth. Chomp!”

“That better be a love bite?!”

Yes! I managed to keep up with the adlibbing!

I wasn’t the type to be outwitted at every turn!

You’ve grown, Koyomi Araragi!

“To change the subject,” Hachikuji continued without pausing to praise me. I seemed to have a producer who believed in negative reinforcement. “Are you familiar with the urban legend about the Rolls Royce?”

“Huh? Rolls Royce… You mean the car?”

“Yes. Um, judging from your reaction, you’ve never heard it?”

“Nope. Well, not that I’m aware of.”

“Ahh. I’m not surprised. I bet the only urban legend you do know is the one about the axe-man.”

“You think I’m that pathetic?”

Urban legends. Whispers on the street. Secondhand gossip.

Sure, I was nowhere as knowledgeable of such things as Oshino.

“Don’t put on a front, Mister Araragi. Trying to act smart will only embarrass you later. Quoting game theory like a know-it-all when you’ve only heard of the Prisoner’s Dilemma is just painful.”

“I know the Rational Pigs, too!”

It was only because Hanekawa talked about it once, though. I’d already forgotten the details. All I remembered was getting flustered at the prim Miss Hanekawa going, “Pig… Pig… Big pig… Little pig… Pig eats… Pig wants to eat… Pig wants to eat and presses lever.”

What an unfortunate memory I had.

“A Rolls Royce breaks down in the middle of a desert road,” Hachikuji backtracked and started telling me the so-called urban legend. “With no solution in sight and at his wits’ end, the driver decides to call the manufacturer for repairs. Unexpectedly, despite being in the middle of the desert, an aircraft soon delivers a brand-new Rolls Royce of the same model.”

“Wow, that’s amazing.”

“No, the amazing part is yet to come. The driver gets home safely, but after waiting and waiting, no bill arrives from the manufacturer for services rendered. Since it’s a luxury car, he wants to be clear about the cost, grows impatient, and calls the manufacturer again. But the company says it doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“Doesn’t know? After delivering a friggin’ Rolls Royce by air? Or did some other company send the new car?”

“Naturally, the driver has the same question. Confused, he begins to explain, ‘But the other day, when my Rolls Royce broke down in the desert…’ The representative curtly interrupts, ‘Rolls Royces don’t break down, sir.’”

“So cool!”

Wow.

The customer support for fancy companies was on a different level!

“No, Mister Araragi. It’s just an urban legend.”

“Oh…right.” She’d told me so at the start, but I’d gotten too wrapped up in the story. “And? It was pretty interesting and all, but why bring it up now?”

“No reason. I thought it’d make for good small talk.”

“You… Don’t introduce random bits just so you can mispronounce my name.” Maybe a rival company like Rolls Royce was on the mind of a Harley Davidson like her.

“Well, if you don’t care for small talk, then how about a riddle, Mister Doalagi.”

“Let me resist the urge to point out that I was right and you clearly just want to mispronounce my name and instead ask you not to make it sound like I’m the Chunichi Dragons’ mascot! It’s Araragi!”

“It wasn’t a slip of the tongue. You’re Mister Doalagi.”

“You sound so sure!” Another curveball! It broke so hard I was ducking!

“The only person who thinks your name is Araragi is you. Everyone else thinks you’re Mister Doalagi.”

“Huh. They do?”

“Don’t go around thinking you own your name just because it’s your name. Ninety-nine out of a hundred people are saying that it’s Doalagi, so don’t be obtuse and insist that it’s Araragi.”

“Uh, umm…”

When she put it that way, I started doubting myself.

Weird, was I mispronouncing my name all this time? Wasn’t Araragi─

“You’re very popular in Nagoya,” Hachikuji assured me.

“Like a hometown idol…”

“If I mispronounced it as Ayaragi, you’d be very popular in Yamaguchi Prefecture.”

“That minor place name at least sounds more similar, but Hachikuji, what about the riddle? If you aren’t just out to mangle my name, then get on with it already.”

“Hm? Oh, uh…”

“You’re clearly trying to think of something only now.”

“Ah, there’s a good one.” Pam, she struck her palm with her fist. “Hmm, you might know this one already. It appeared in Die Hard 3.”

“Die Hard 3. Yeah, I’ve seen it so I probably do. The villain poses all sorts of mean riddles to the cop who’s the hero, right?”

“I’m not sure if I remember it right, but I think this is how it goes. ‘Imagine a dog enters a forest. How far can that dog walk into the forest?’”

“……”

Hold on, was that in the movie? Honestly, I hadn’t experienced that masterpiece since it was on TV when I was in middle school, so I didn’t remember very well, either.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Hachikuji apologized. “This riddle only appears in the novelization.”

“Then how’d I possibly know?! You think I’ve checked out the novelization of a movie from more than ten years ago?!”

The riddle itself was the blind spot! Most people in Japan didn’t even know that the first two Die Hard movies were based on novels!

“Oh, but this might spoil it for people,” Hachikuji cautioned. “Anyone who doesn’t want to know the answer should skip ahead a few pages.”

“How thoughtful of you…” That is, if the book could still be hunted down in the first place. “What are you a buff of, anyway? Well, fine. And the answer is?”

“Don’t be so impatient. Try thinking for yourself a little.”

“The truth is, I’m not good at riddles. I’m not very witty.”

“I wouldn’t say that…but okay, in that case, time’s up. The answer is that the dog can walk halfway into the forest.”

“Huh. Why?”

“Because for the remaining half, he’s walking out of the forest.”

“A-ha!”

It was a pretty neat answer. You could even say witty.

I let myself feel impressed. Yes, old movies had a thing or two to teach us, this was how culture got carried down from one generation to the next─

“Right, it was pretty interesting and all, Hachikuji, but why bring it up now?”

“Please don’t repeat yourself. When you do that, you’re forcing me to do it again.” If you were going to repeat a gag, up to three times was the iron rule. “I promise to make it seem like it was actually foreshadowing in the guise of small talk, so could you let me off the hook just this once?”

“How could that riddle possibly turn out to be foreshadowing?”

“Let’s see. Here, how about this. On the road of life, you’re living for the first half, but proceeding toward death for the second half─that makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“Sort of…” Framing it as a life lesson was so phony, though. She was starting to sound like a conman I knew. “But that doesn’t apply to immortal beings, like vampires.”

“Right. There’s no beginning or end for immortals.”

And they obviously don’t break down, tied in Hachikuji.

True. Going on living and going on dying being synonymous─that defined immortality. No breakdowns, no replacements, and needless to say, no guarantees.

“Still,” Hachikuji said, “if I don’t mix in a little nonsense, everything would be foreshadowing, and that could spoil the second half.”

“What an icky kind of foresight…”

If she was going to be so mindful, she might have directed the scene differently. What an amateur. For all her strategizing, who was ever going to suspect that a Rolls Royce in the desert and a dog wandering in the forest were clues?

“Well, Mister Araragi, why am I the only one with anything to say? It’s your turn now. Initiate some interesting small talk, please.”

“Geez, get off my back. I’m out of fun trivia.”

“Whaaat?” Hachikuji looked displeased. “Don’t be such a stick in the mud. Educate me. Something math-related, your forte, would do nicely.”

“I tried that with my sister this morning and bombed.”

“Ah, say no more.” Hachikuji’s grumpy expression turned smug. “Since you’ll be getting more attention thanks to the anime, you’re distancing yourself from all the anarchic banter. Basically, you’re selling out.”

“What a nasty way to put it!”

“Hey, why not, right? If that’s what you want, then by all means, go ahead. Excuse me for getting in your way. Here, I’ll butt out, so why don’t you continue with the plot? You’re through with any kind of silly banter if it’s not foreshadowing anything, yes? Go on, practice your oh-so-lofty craft and fashion your noble, moving masterpiece, if that’s what interests you.”

“What did I say to deserve all that?!”

I was being subjected to such a tongue lashing just because I couldn’t think of a good math story to share?

Hmm, knowledge─so important. Maybe I should have discussed root numbers.

“But Hachikuji, trying to be clever can backfire. You don’t want to get too convoluted in your approach.”

“I suppose you have a point. But if small talk and riddles are off the table─hmmm. Okay, how about this?”

Hachikuji suddenly straightened up. She looked serious, the smile disappearing from her face. With a vulnerable, lonely, and yet fulfilled air, she nodded.

“Mister Araragi. I came here today to say goodbye.”

“You’re gonna make me cry!”

That line, alone, almost made me bawl reflexively like a little mallet testing my nerves!

“You know, Mister Araragi… I always liked that side of you.”

“My tear ducts! They’re going to burst!”

“The truth is, I was supposed to go back to my town a long time ago. I was so worried about you that I ended up staying this long… But it’s fine now. You’ll be fine on your own, now.”

“No! You mean it was all for me?!”

“Please find happiness with Miss Senjogahara. And don’t be such a burden on Miss Hanekawa, okay? And…every now and then, could you please think of me? Don’t forget that you once knew a little girl named Mayoi Hachikuji─who was a very good friend.”

“You might as well kill me!!”

I was past tearing up and sobbing my heart out now.

Yeah, forget it!

That bit of foreshadowing could remain a loose end!

Or else, even if there were a million of me, I’d die a million sobbing deaths.

She could go on making small talk as an excuse to mispronounce my name.

“Hey, Hachikuji, now that it’s come to this, why don’t you just live in my shadow with Shinobu? That way, you’ll never get lost again.”

“Living face to face with her sounds pretty nerve-wracking…”

Then─

And then.

Like always, just like always, it was right in the middle of such lax, nonsense banter with Hachikuji, in the midst of a silly, fun chat that could go on for a thousand more manuscript sheets─

Like eight trumpets announcing the end of comic relief, another voice inserted itself, as if it had found an opening.

“Hello, kind monster sir. Do you know how to get where I’m going? Tell me if you do─he said with a dashing look.”

The speaker wasn’t standing on a mailbox or speaking in Kyoto dialect, but I immediately sensed that the kid, who looked about Hachikuji’s age, was something to that lady, Kagenui, from earlier.

“There’s supposed to be an Eikow Cram School that shut down… You don’t happen to know where it is, do you, kind monster sir?─he said with a dashing look.”

“……”

Despite the last bit, the kid’s face was expressionless. It was a flat, inanimate, and inorganic expressionless that reminded me of how Senjogahara used to be.

And despite the choice of pronoun, the child was dressed in an orange drawstring blouse paired with a cute tiered skirt.

A girl who used the male pronoun!

So they really existed!

I’d thought it was an anime invention!

Once I recognized her as such, her colored-tights-and-mules combination filled my heart with joy.

Next to me Hachikuji muttered, “Seeing you dance on your heels at the sight of a little girl makes it hard to put much stock in your assertion that you’re not a loli-lover…”

Be quiet!

Hmm? Huh?

When it came to shyness, Hachikuji gave even Sengoku and pre-change Senjogahara a decent run for their money. The fact that she was still standing next to me instead of running off after being accosted by a stranger was pretty unique.

Did Hachikuji know this girl? No, that didn’t make sense.

“My name is Yotsugi Ononoki,” the kid went on to introduce herself.

Doing so without being asked was another thing she shared in common with Kagenui.

Maybe they were together after all─in fact, didn’t the lady mention something about a little girl in parting?

Ononoki?

That was an odd name…and pretty stalwart sounding. Ono meant axe, and as with the axe-man that had just come up─it had a ferocious or virile ring to it.

On the other hand, Hachikuji might mispronounce my name that way.

Ononoki, huh?

“─he said with a dashing look.”

“……”

What an obnoxious verbal tic.

It was way too long for rounding out a sentence.

And where was the dashing look, anyway?

It made for a pretty lackluster performance.

“I see. I’m Koyomi Araragi.”

“Nice to meet you, kind monster sir─he said with a dashing look.”

“Uh, same here.”

She didn’t get it, did she?

And why was she referring to me like I was a character from some children’s show?

Unlike the time with Kagenui, I wasn’t riding on my sister’s shoulders or anything, so why call me that?

I was pretty sure “monster” wasn’t one of my nicknames.

Unless Ononoki had witnessed my failed attempt to sexually harass Hachikuji as per my usual custom?

“Let’s see, Eikow Cram School…”

I’d explained how to get there just a while ago, so I barely needed to think.

Too bad. If I didn’t remember, I could call Hanekawa again.

Yozuru and Yotsugi.

Their first names sounded similar. Maybe she and Kagenui were sisters on vacation somewhere nearby, and they got separated and were meeting up at an abandoned building?

That seemed pretty improbable.

Unlike their first names, their last names were just different, and they didn’t look like each other, either. Furthermore, our town wasn’t exactly a popular vacation spot, and what sort of travelers chose school ruins as a rendezvous point for when they got separated?

Kagenui, herself, had said something about setting up base.

In any case.

It wasn’t my place to pry.

I just needed to answer her question.

When Kagenui stopped me it had resulted in a lucky accident, namely an unplanned exchange with Hanekawa, but right now I was having a fun chat with Hachikuji. Maybe it was rude, but you could say I wanted Ononoki to move along.

Besides.

Although her blank face made it difficult to tell if she was really in trouble, she wasn’t standing on a mailbox or anything, and I had no reason to think twice about helping her.

I could dismiss her weird verbal tic as just a juvenile attempt to stand out.

Not that I thought it was working out for her, but it was hardly my responsibility to dispense such advice.

In fact, I didn’t even need to ascertain if she and Kagenui were really together.

Coming to deeply regret not finding out their relationship while I had the chance─didn’t seem like a possibility.

“Hmm, I see. You saved me, thank you, kind monster sir. You too, li’l miss snail─he said with a dashing look.”

Apparently having understood the complicated directions on her first try like Kagenui, Ononoki spoke those words quietly in response to my explanation. Then she turned her back on us in a fairly cold manner. Her words of thanks were accompanied with a deep bow of her head but came off sounding perfunctory, and she barely said goodbye.

She somehow didn’t strike me as disagreeable, though.

How to put it─what she seemed to be lacking weren’t mere manners, but on a larger scale, any sense of culture.

She wasn’t a stranger to feelings, but rather, to means of conveying them─that was the vibe.

In that sense, the kid really did resemble the old Senjogahara. In Senjogahara’s case, the traits had been acquired, but I got the feeling that Ononoki’s personality was innate.

To tell the truth.

She didn’t seem human─or even biological.

A chunk of iron imbued with personhood.

Or maybe even a blade that was a person─a little girl.

Wait.

“Huh?” A question floated into my mind only now that Ononoki was gone. “Hachikuji… Didn’t she refer to you as ‘li’l miss snail’?”

“Hm? Ah, yes, she did.” Hachikuji nodded, so I hadn’t simply misheard. “What’s the matter? You shouldn’t be so petty, Mister Araragi. Don’t you know by now that jealousy leads nowhere? As grateful as I am for the inimitable love you shower on this puny, that is to say, lola-cious body of mine, is a little girl my age talking to me any reason to scowl?”

“Well, I do find it unforgivable… But that’s not what I meant.”

Hmm. It was weird, wasn’t it?

Kagenui─Yozuru Kagenui─had called me “fiendish” as well and added something about Karen.

Something about bees or hornets.

“Monster? Fiendish?”

A fiend.

Monstrous bloodsucker─vampire.

I couldn’t help but glance down at the shadow the summer sun cast─as usual, as ever, there was no response.

“Mister Araragi, as far as I could tell, though, that girl looked really competent. My master might be an even match.”

“Except you don’t have a master.”