Monogatari Series - Volume 6 - Chapter 7.06

006

Later, after returning home: “I’ve something urgent to discuss with thee. Can we parley for a moment?”

I’d actually already eaten at Kanbaru’s─I meant to head straight home after dropping Karen off, but before I could leave, Kanbaru’s grandmother propositioned me.

To stay for lunch, I mean.

Kanbaru lived with her grandfather and grandmother. It was just the three of them─as you would expect from the impressive mansion where they lived, her grandfather, the breadwinner of the family, had the type of job with no mandatory retirement age, and he was rarely in the house during the day.

Today’s “matchmaking” had been so sudden that it hadn’t occurred to me, but when I stopped to think about it, noon meant lunchtime. Kanbaru’s grandmother had already prepared extra meals in addition to her granddaughter’s.

Which is how I wound up being invited to partake.

I figured since I had come all this way, I might as well be polite and stay for a little while. Maybe I’d troubled them, though, like a guest who didn’t know that it was time to leave. But Kanbaru’s grandmother was an iron chef in the kitchen, and I couldn’t quite resist the temptation. Because it was still Obon, I guess, it looked like she’d put more effort into it than usual. My stomach certainly appreciated the proper, home-cooked traditional Japanese repast.

While I ate, I couldn’t help wondering when Kanbaru’s grandmother had grown to trust me so much. Maybe she just couldn’t neglect a strange older boy who came over twice a month to clean up her granddaughter’s room…

Still, though. I knew she was my younger schoolmate’s grandmother and was pushing well past sixty, but my heart skipped a beat over the fact that I was eating alone with a woman, just the two of us.

Putting that aside.

I imagined she was worried about Kanbaru’s left arm─about her granddaughter.

But as Kanbaru said the other day, her grandmother…and grandfather couldn’t poke in their noses too far. Thanks to all the business with Kanbaru’s mother.

If Grandma Kanbaru felt beholden to me somehow on that score…I’m afraid her gratitude was misplaced. Like Senjogahara, Kanbaru─got saved all on her own. There was nothing I could do, or did do, in the matter.

So let’s just assume that she’d invited me to lunch simply to be welcoming.

Just in case, I exchanged phone numbers and email addresses with her (unlike Kanbaru, she was a whirling dervish with her phone, a regular Cyberspace Granny) before heading home─which is when I had my hanky-panky with Hachikuji and that girl Ononoki asked me for directions.

Thus, walking through our front door, I went straight upstairs to my room to change, ready to study with renewed vigor without dallying. As soon as I sat down at my desk, however, a budding young girl with golden eyes and hair emerged from my shadow.

“……”

Shinobu Oshino.

A vampire who had lived for five hundred years─the aberration who had died for as long.

Ironblooded, hotblooded, yet coldblooded.

She was also the monster who, over spring break, plunged me, an ordinary high school loser, into the deepest depths of hell and ruthlessly forced me to writhe there on my belly─or rather, the husk and dregs of that monster.

She was my former master─and my current servant.

Koyomi Araragi became a vampire from being attacked by Shinobu Oshino, and Shinobu Oshino ceased to be a vampire for attacking Koyomi Araragi. Much transpired, and much was lost. Indeed, all was lost. There wasn’t a lot more to say about it.

These days, Shinobu was sealed in my shadow. In turn, so long as she remained there, she could utilize her vampiric skills to a certain extent.

Shinobu was also free to enter and leave my shadow as she pleased.

She had no problem ignoring me when I wanted a reaction out of her, but now that I was trying to study, lo and behold, she dares to show up.

“Hmph…”

I swiveled my chair and faced my desk.

Hm? Where was my pencil?

Ah, right, Karen had made me break my five-sided pencil. I’d just have to use a mechanical one for now. I could buy a new lucky charm for myself another day.

“Are ye deaf, ye clotpole?!”

Shinobu grabbed me from behind in a sleep choke and began relentlessly crushing my windpipe with her wan, thin arms… Hey, I thought vampires used striking techniques!

“I give, I give, I give! Let go, let go, let go! We can talk this outch!”

Shouting the famous line from the May 15 Incident (I had all the studying to thank for that, but having messed up a word, I didn’t get full points), I desperately tapped Shinobu’s elbow. Ah, of course, I realized, this morning Shinobu must have watched from my shadow while Karen “draped herself over” me.

While my sister hadn’t meant it as a chokehold but was probably just being playful (to butter me up so I’d introduce her to Kanbaru), all I could think about on the receiving end was whether she was going to break my neck. That concern, or rather panic, must have been transmitted to Shinobu via my shadow. That explained why she was doing this now.

Yet by that logic, if we were connected by my shadow, when Shinobu choked me she was choking herself as well. She probably just hadn’t thought that far ahead. Removing her arms from around my neck, she began coughing and hacking a little, in pain.

Talk about dumb.

By the way, our shared sensations only went one way, from me to Shinobu. It didn’t work in the other direction. If Karen kneed me, the damage was reflected on Shinobu, but if I caressed Shinobu’s flat chest, there’d be no feedback.

An awful example, but ease of understanding is the priority here.

“What? Parley? You’re always doing this,” I complained. “Whenever I want you to come out you never show, but as soon as you see me starting to do something, you decide to pop out. Who are you, the reverse Bob in a Bottle? ‘You don’t sneeze, I don’t please, that’s the way it goes’?”

“I think I’d be Illana,” Shinobu said, finally recovering. For a former aristocratic vampire, she was oddly steeped in Japanese culture.

Oshino’s elite tutoring had produced dramatic results in a very short period of time, but a slight imbalance was observable due to the forced cultivation.

“My lord and master, ’tis only natural that I do not appear at the hour of thy choosing. Our daily cycles are opposite.”

“Oh yeah, you’re a night person.”

That was a funny concept to apply to a vampire, but they hated the sun and loved the moon. It was ingrained behavior, a survival instinct that she couldn’t help but maintain even after ceasing to be a vampire.

Just the way humans fear fire.

A phony term like “night person” that belonged to human culture was far too paltry to describe a true creature of the night.

“Aye, I am a night person.”

“……”

Shinobu, where is your vampire pride?

Says the guy who took it away from her.

“But what about now?” I asked her. “It’s broad daylight. Heck, this is probably the time of day when the sun is strongest.”

“Aye. I would appreciate a little sunscreen. And mayhap a pair of sunglasses. My eyes blister.”

“Okay…” I don’t know, lately Shinobu seemed to be turning into a sad-sack cartoon vampire. Before long she’d be drinking tomato juice instead of blood.

“I obviously have a fair reason for dragging myself awake at this hour.”

“A fair reason? I don’t know what that might be, but I recall you interfering with my perfectly innocent attempt to canoodle with Hachikuji. Why should I parley with you about anything?”

“Hmph. As someone in the same category, I could not look the other way. Maybe while I sleep, but I was awake.”

The same category.

Was that the Lolita category?

“Can’t it wait until later?” I requested. “Until after I get a little studying done?”

“’Tis a thorny matter. It importunes fast action.”

“What… Fine, tell me.”

I was such a softy.

I wasn’t even pouncing on an excuse to slack off… I was actually beginning to enjoy studying (Hanekawa’s doing).

But I guess Shinobu was my weak point.

My biggest complex, you might say.

Though it was in my shadow, we were basically together around the clock. We had to get along going forward, so it was important to meet each other half way.

I swiveled my chair back around and faced Shinobu, who now spoke in a grave tone.

“According to intelligence I have become privy to through channels most secret, Mister Donut is holding a hundred-yen sale this very moment.”

“……”

Hey. Her secret channel was clearly just the ad that came with the paper. I’d seen it too.

“My lord and master, pray let us depart immediately before they sell out.”

“Calm down, those kind of stores don’t sell out so easily…”

I couldn’t believe she was interfering with my studies for this. Shinobu’s love for Mister was a tradition that stemmed from her days in the abandoned building with Oshino, but she was graduating from passive waiting and getting proactive about it.

She sure had gotten lowbrow, fast. At least seek blood instead of donuts.

I’d often used them as bait to lure her out like a crawdad on a fishing pole when she’d sunk into my shadow and refused to come out, but all that over-fishing was taking its toll.

She’d become picky about food.

“The talk in certain quarters,” she informed me, “is that there are new specials. We must make forth on this.”

“Certain quarters… This source of yours just consists of store flyers. Quit pretending like you’ve got some vast network. Did you drag yourself awake just to tell me that? It couldn’t wait until tonight?”

She’d even obstructed my rendezvous with Hachikuji.

That was her fair reason? Then my best guess as to why there’d been no reaction from my shadow after Ononoki left was that the former vampire had simply been dozing off.

True, when I thought about it, Mister Donut was already closed during Shinobu’s regular waking hours.

“Fine, fine, I get it,” I said. “I’ll go buy you some before dinner. It’ll be a nice break for me. You like the golden chocolate flavor, right?”

“Nay.”

Shinobu shook her head emphatically, obstinately.

Hmm?

I could have sworn that’s what she told me─was I mistaken? I remembered thinking golden like her hair, so I was almost positive it was golden chocolate…unless there were others in the golden line at Mister Donut that I just wasn’t aware of?

But that wasn’t why Shinobu had shaken her head. She had a terrible request to make of me.

“Ye can take me to the store. I wish to see them with my own eyes and choose for myself.”

“……”

Right, if she just wanted me to buy them, she could have left a note. She’d fought off her drowsiness to appear in the middle of the day because she hoped to make a personal visit.

“It’s pretty bright outside,” I warned. “Are you sure you can handle it?”

“Perhaps my eyes sting a little. But I am hardly a proper vampire now─not even sunscreen, but a simple bonnet, should be more than adequate.”

“Huh…”

Maybe for her, but not for me─well, I say that, but I suspected Shinobu might request something like this soon. I guess the day had come.

Parley my ass, baby girl. She just wanted to be spoiled.

Like I said, I knew Mister Donut was hosting a hundred-yen sale─I’d seen the same ad that Shinobu had. I actually meant to pick some up soon.

Shinobu was probably pestering me like this right now because this morning, just in time (a late “night” for her), she’d witnessed me giving in to my usually hostile sister.

Just as she’d imitated the sleeper hold, she must have figured I was an easy mark. The fool, she must have thought, he is in a happy dream and his guard is down just because his sister was affectionate to him.

Shinobu was a crafty one.

Hrmm.

Perhaps as an act of largesse to commemorate Senjogahara’s rebirth, I could honor such a minor request.

But Shinobu stood out, so I didn’t like to take her outside. On top of her blondness and foreignness drawing attention, she was as pretty as a doll. In a way it was worse than chatting with Hachikuji.

In all honesty, if we’re being truthful, turning down her bratty request was a simple matter… We had a strange master-servant relationship where each of us was simultaneously the other’s master and slave, but strictly in terms of the chain of command, I stood on top.

That authority was unimaginably coercive. I’d experimented in a variety of ways, but at present, it seemed that Shinobu Oshino was well and truly subservient to Koyomi Araragi.

It was more than just a right of command but a wholesale transfer of rights. Vampire rules were frightening.

So if I answered her with a flat-out no, Shinobu had no choice but to back down. My potent authority, however, meant that I shouldn’t wield it casually, and I couldn’t brush away her requests. In a way, power that was too powerful was vulnerable. Strength could be weakness.

“It would behoove thee to grant my suit, would it not? Ye may not want me to meddle always in your trysts with the pigtailed maidling.”

“Hah, you’re taking her hostage?! My beloved Hachikuji?! You scoundrel!” Well, actually, she wasn’t taking her hostage but into protective custody. “But you forget… I usually run into Hachikuji during the day. Do you think you can stay up forever? Two or three days maybe, but always?”

“Hmph, ye have a point.” Shinobu folded her arms. Vampire appetites were fierce, and that extended to sleep. Desire came first for them.

“Besides, you’re underestimating me. I’m not the kind of guy to bow to threats.”

“Fine, then I have another notion for thee. With my unstinting aid, thou could have thy way with the little maidling.”

“Urk. That’s a pretty attractive offer.”

A little girl’s human rights were being trampled on with relish in a nondescript room in an ordinary house. It was a horror story. Or did Hachikuji have no human rights?

“Keheheh. ’Tis a sweet thought, is it not? Abetted by my special power, thou could fulfill thy erotic urges with all the maids of the land, her included.”

“Nrk… You’re tempting me.”

Right, Shinobu looked like a little girl, but she was Draculina underneath. There was a succubus element to her, and she didn’t particularly balk at sexual topics. If her appetite for food and sleep were so strong, that only made sense.

Dammit… I was kind of all over the place at the time, but why hadn’t I noticed over spring break when she was her adult version and in grownup mode?!

I would never stop lamenting that bitter past, that grave misstep.

“Hm? But Shinobu, you’ve lost most of your vampiric skills. What could you possibly do? In general you can’t use your ‘special powers,’ can you?”

Energy drain and not much else, wasn’t it?

In a broad sense, that was just her version of eating.

I wasn’t going to let her snack on Hachikuji, my forever-preserved rations.

“Let us see…” Shinobu knitted her brow.

She looked perplexed. Once upon a time she’d been a legendary vampire capable of extraordinary, omnipotent feats. She seemed overwhelmed in the face of her current powerlessness.

“I could conceal myself in thy shadow…and peep up her skirt from the ground to spy out the color of her underwear,” she suggested feebly, and it was indeed a shabby plan.

The whole thing stank of small potatoes and was beginning to make me sad.

“Aye, call it underpants transparency!”

“Using administrative lingo doesn’t make it any more persuasive, okay?” I sighed. “Enough already, I get it. The stars just have it out for me today. I’ll take you to Mister Donut.”

I was probably wasting way more time arguing with her like this, anyway─and it wasn’t just that it was getting too sad for me, although that was of course the main reason. Now that I thought about it, I had something I wanted to ask Shinobu, myself.

She’d ignored me earlier─but Yotsugi Ononoki. And Yozuru Kagenui. I wanted to ask her about them.

Even if she’d been half-asleep, if those two were somebody, then Shinobu would have sensed something.

As an aberration among aberrations, the king of aberrations─the aberration slayer that she was.

“Fool, ye fell for my gilded words!”

“Geez, tell me how you really feel, why don’t you? Anyway, I’ll signal for you once I’m outside the store. I’m gonna go by bike so you can stay in my shadow until we get there. You probably don’t want to be out in the sun any longer than you have to, right?”

“Aye, the sun is my enemy.”

“Your enemy.”

“One day I shall vanquish it.”

“……”

She may have been small potatoes, but she still thought big for sure.

“It should only take me about half an hour to get there, so try and stay up that long.”

“Fret not. While I wait, I shall play my Nintendo DS in thy shadow.”

“……”

She had a Nintendo DS in there? I didn’t realize my shadow came equipped with a four-dimensional pocket. Think of all the extra storage space.

“Nay, I cannot bring in any material items. The only substance that can enter thy shadow is my own flesh.”

“So how do you have a DS in there?”

“I have the ability to create matter, so a game device is simple enough. For my model, I used the one ye borrowed from the maiden with the forelocks like Yo Nihiruda.”

“How do you even know the leader in that program?”

Sengoku, she meant.

Anyways, now it made sense… Shinobu could create clothes for herself. A game device should be easy enough, and in fact, Sengoku had lent me her DS a little while back.

When I went to her place before to hang out, she only had old consoles like the MSX 2 and the MZ-721, so I assumed she wasn’t interested in more recent games. I happened to mention, though, that I wanted to try out the Nintendo DS because I heard there was a lot of educational software for it. The very next day she lent me her DS along with the software.

So you had one all along, I thought.

It did bother me how it looked strangely new and sparkling, as if it had been bought just the day before. In any case, I used it to study for a little while afterward.

I’d already returned it, but it had been such a huge help that as a thank-you I promised to take her to the pool someday soon.

Cute, wasn’t it? That’s where she begged me to take her. She was still just a kid, I guess.

Oh yeah, she also asked me to be her acting coach for the class play they were putting on for her school talent show. I’d have to do that for her over summer vacation, too.

……

You know, I’m not sure why, but sometimes I got this feeling that enemies were pressing close to the gates─this creeping feeling that something was hot on my heels, driving me into a corner. Like a forest of established facts was rising around me…

All I did was borrow a DS from one of my sister’s friends, but from a distance, did I look like I was in danger?

“Alas, it is only in thy shadow that I can play with the concocted DS─I still cannot draw my powers while outside. Until later.”

With that, Shinobu dove into my shadow.

Honestly, if she could make a gaming device, couldn’t she make herself Mister Donut snacks as well?

I guess it just didn’t work that way. Self-sufficiency might be the cornerstone of life, but sometimes food only tasted good because someone else prepared it for you.

In any case, off I go.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel abused, but since I wasn’t being subjected to domestic violence from Senjogahara anymore, all things considered, I hadn’t met much misfortune lately. If I didn’t strike a balance like this, I’d be a no-goodnik who spent all his time harassing gargantuan little sisters and lost little girls.

I had to shore up my favorability rating. I could certainly chauffeur a vampire.

I got out of my seat, changed from my around-the-house clothes back into my outside clothes, grabbed the key to my bicycle lock, left my room, and went down the stairs─and bumped into Tsukihi walking down the hallway.

Hrmph. Bad timing. I was hoping to sneak out without her seeing me.

She’d just bathed.

The heat must have been too much for her, and she’d decided to take a shower after lunch─Tsukihi had a strong metabolism and tended to sweat easily.

Incidentally, both our parents worked, even over Obon and New Year’s, so during summer vacation my sisters and I had to make our own lunch. I’d wedded Karen off to Kanbaru and also had my fill there, so Tsukihi had managed on her own, cooking and then cleaning up all by herself. Self-sufficiency, indeed. As a member of her school’s tea ceremony club (?), cooking and housework came easily to her.

If you thought, That’s par for the course for the Fire Sisters, however, you lose… The other half of the duo, Karen, is as horrendous a cook as you might expect (her cleaning skills are okay).

Anyway, Tsukihi must have headed for the shower after doing the dishes.

Talk about relaxed.

A fan of traditional Japanese attire, she was dressed in a yukata and holding a washcloth in one hand, her skin supple and faintly rosy from the hot water. She was plodding along her house’s hallway like she was at some kind of hot springs.

This wasn’t Hanekawa─Tsukihi with her hair all wet and slick left me cold.

“Ah, Koyomi. Are you heading out again?”

“Yup, again.”

“What happened to studying?”

“God has other plans for me today.”

Well, not God but a certain demon.

Uh huh, Tsukihi nodded as if she didn’t quite understand.

Hmph, she looked so laidback and carefree as she stood inclining her head.

Her droopy eyes, slack expression, sloping shoulders, and hunched posture reminded me of a certain lazy-panda mascot.

But appearances were deceiving. Tsukihi Araragi, who had tried to make shish kabobs out of Karen and me with an awl this morning, was anything but laidback, carefree, or lazy.

She was a non-lazy panda. In other words, she was a bear.

Tsukihi didn’t have Karen’s fighting skills and was the Fire Sisters’ strategist, but her hysterical, moody aggressiveness was almost freakish, even if I shouldn’t say that about my own sibling.

My honest-to-goodness view was that Karen, the hotheaded type of moron, was at least manageable, while Tsukihi, a twisted and devious sort of stupid, was beyond me.

If Karen was a red flame, Tsukihi was a blue flame. If you drew too close, you might get burned, and it wouldn’t just be your skin.

Now that we had smoothed over the sharp edges of the fierce tiger, Hitagi Senjogahara, the biggest task on my plate was how best to civilize my middle-school sister.

I’d have to discuss it with Hanekawa next time.

An even more extensive therapy course might be necessary.

“Koyomi, do you think Karen will be late coming home today?”

“Maybe. Dunno.”

I’d told her to be back by dinner, but she was so elated to meet the great Kanbaru-sensei that she might not have heard me. Worst case, she might even stay the night.

Hey, maybe she was becoming a woman tonight─or at least, a young lady. In which case, I washed my hands of the whole thing.

I didn’t know and I didn’t care.

“Huh, I see,” Tsukihi said. “When Karen gets worked up about something, she loses sight of everything else.”

“Like you’re one to talk,” I quipped.

Tsukihi puffed her cheeks out as if that was uncalled for.

She had no self-awareness. That was what made her so scary. The fact that puffing her cheeks out made her even more like a lazy panda was also scary.

“What,” I asked, “did you need something from Karen? I thought you were done for now with your Fire Sisters defenders of justice make-believe, including the follow-up.”

“No. I don’t need anything. It’s just that…” The expression on her face was complicated─like she didn’t really want to finish her sentence. “It seems Karen’s been doing a lot more stuff without me.”

“Hm?”

Was she? As far as I could tell, they were together around the clock like always. Joined at the hip. Fellow pilgrims.

Well, they were my family and all, but maybe that was just the view from outside. Maybe Karen and Tsukihi felt some disconnect─some harbinger of change.

“Are you two fighting? Have things been awkward?”

“Nah, not at all, not at all,” my sister replied. “I’ve no better friend, or Ribbon.”

“Ciao?”

“Chu Chu!”

The secret language of siblings.

Anyone overhearing us would have no idea what the heck we were talking about. The fact that we were able to communicate like this proved just how scary siblinghood is─unless, well, we didn’t know what the heck we were saying, either.

A total communication breakdown.

“Still, I guess I’m starting to think we can’t go around calling ourselves the Fire Sisters forever.”

“Hah,” a laugh half-escaped my lips. I’m not surprised, part of me wanted to say, but the other part was pretty surprised to hear her say that.

“When you think about it, you used to be BFFs with me and Karen, too. We even called you Homie Koyomi, remember?”

“Never once.”

We did all play together, though, with Sengoku in the mix, for example.

We might not have been on best terms as siblings, but we weren’t born with bad blood between us─I guess we’d started to grow apart around the time I began middle school?

I think my sisters suddenly felt like little kids to me. Looking back on that time now, it seems pretty selfish and egotistical of me.

I wasn’t the best older brother, and Karen and Tsukihi were fairly unorthodox little sisters, so maybe I shouldn’t generalize about brothers and sisters.

“Well, when all’s said and done, Karen will be starting high school soon,” I reminded. “I know you guys go to an escalator school, but the high school is on a different campus, right? You’ll be on different schedules, too…”

I glanced down at my own shadow as I spoke─it was vague and indistinct since we were in the hallway and the lights were off. Although Karen wasn’t going to start staying up all night and sleeping all day, I thought about the vampire playing with a Nintendo DS in there.

“Your lives will branch apart in various ways. That’s probably not something you’re real happy about, nor Karen for that matter.”

“Yeah. And once we hit our late teens, the police will probably stop overlooking stuff.”

“……”

She appeared to lack even a moment’s compunction over using her gender and age as a weapon.

Scary girl.

If you asked me, it was just make-believe, but the Fire Sisters playing at defenders of justice was probably helpful according to society. That said, I doubted Karen’s and Tsukihi’s idea of justice were even the same.

Working tirelessly for the sake of others without expecting anything in return─if that qualified as justice, then in Karen’s case, justice was her goal.

It was an extremely straightforward conception─straightforward and juvenile. Obvious, upright, no one could ever misinterpret her intentions. That was Karen Araragi.

However, in Tsukihi’s case─justice was her hobby.

Something to do.

It was harder to brand as juvenile─because plenty of adults out there were like that, too.

Both versions of justice reeked of fakeness, but their natures were actually diametrically opposed.

There was diversity in fakeness.

Though they accommodated each other well, Karen believed that the end justified the means, while Tsukihi believed that the means justified the end.

If Karen was a masochist─then Tsukihi was a sadist.

If Tsukihi was true south─then Karen was true north.

They weren’t identical like twins.

They were compatible only when all their bumps and sockets fit together.

An older sister always eager to go on a rampage and a younger sister always able to ferret out a reason to do so─the Fire Sisters of Tsuganoki Second Middle School.

Red flame, blue flame.

“Koyomi, you’ve probably figured this out already…” I doubted she’d read the flow of my argument, but Tsukihi turned to exactly what I was thinking about. “I don’t think I’m as passionate a believer in justice as Karen is.”

“Okay…” Another surprising remark. That was pretty clear to me, but Tsukihi’s self-awareness left me totally flabbergasted.

“I love justice, I think it’s great and all, but I don’t think there’s any firm core of justice in me. Karen’s always saying that the justice coursing through her veins won’t allow it or that the spirit of justice flares up in her.”

“She is.” Such embarrassing words, and with a straight face.

“But I’ve never felt like that. There’s justice in Karen, but not in me. The justice that I believe in─is Karen’s justice, and yours.”

“Mine?” Huh, what was that supposed to mean?

“I might be the strategist of the Fire Sisters, but in the end the Fire Sisters is all about Karen. I’m just support, a helping hand. If she didn’t believe so strongly in justice, I probably wouldn’t believe in such a shaky thing,” Tsukihi stated impassively. “In that sense you’re right, Koyomi. When it comes to me, at least─my justice is a fake. I’m too easily swayed by other people’s views to be able to claim that mantle.”

“……”

Hrrm. When she said it outright like that, I wasn’t sure how to respond─I felt like she’d chosen me as her audience for a guilt-free admission.

It was so contrary to the stuff she usually spouted. If this was what she thought about when she was alone, that really was surprising to me.

Whenever the Fire Sisters disagreed, Karen’s opinion took precedence─I’d always assumed that was because Karen was older, but I guess there’d been another reason.

And here I thought I knew everything there was to know about my sisters. Even as I struggled to mask my confusion, Tsukihi spoke again.

“If Karen is someone who carries out justice for others, then I’m someone who does it influenced by others. We were facing in different directions from the start─so you see, I’ve started to suspect, more and more these days, that the Fire Sisters might be past its prime. Just look at what happened last time, when you put yourself on the line to stop her. Karen acted alone, didn’t she?”

“Yeah, now that you mention it…”

Karen had pretty much acted alone. I’d seen it as yet another one of her trademark rampages, but now that Tsukihi said so─maybe it was a clear and present indication of coming change.

A sign that Karen Araragi─was graduating from the Fire Sisters.

“But so what? It’s no big deal,” I commented. “Look at it this way instead... Up until now, you guys were just way too close.”

When I began middle school, my attitude toward my sisters changed. When Karen entered middle school, however, for better or for worse, her attitude toward Tsukihi remained the same.

That probably owed to Karen’s clear-cut and simple personality─but even she couldn’t stay a kid forever.

She couldn’t.

She couldn’t!

Please tell me she couldn’t!

Ahem… I just want that to be true so bad that I got carried away─but anyway.

Once Karen entered high school, her world would expand again. Sure, she might change─and in an entirely different manner from how I became a loser in high school.

She might end up changing. Growing.

She was still only fifteen─there was plenty of room for her to mature.

“I understand that’s just how things are,” Tsukihi said. “But still. Once she’s in high school, is she going to start teasing me the way you do?” She let out an exaggerated sigh. “Two against one would hardly be fair. A one-sided match, a power play! The game balance we managed to preserve for so long would come tumbling down. I’ll be crying into my pillow every night before I go to sleep.”

“You’re making me sound bad. I see myself as your dependable big brother, always taking care of you guys.”

“Taking care. What, you mean by brushing our teeth while you grab our tits?”

“Ahahaha,” the dependable big brother tried to laugh that scene away.

Tsukihi was being open with me, but unfortunately she hadn’t forgotten about this morning─that was asking for too much. Stumbling upon your older brother and sister making out in bed was generally the kind of trauma that lasted a lifetime.

“All right, I’ve decided.” Tsukihi balled her hand into a tight fist as if to indicate some inner resolve. “When Karen comes home today, I’ll have a talk with her. A serious conversation about the future of the Fire Sisters.”

“Really? You mean you might split up?”

“It’s possible! Her music and mine just don’t mesh! If Karen wants to go solo, I won’t hold her back! I’ll swallow my tears and send her off with a smile!”

I was partly (okay, totally) teasing her when I mentioned splitting, but as she spoke, Tsukihi pointed her finger at me as if I’d hit the nail on the head.

She looked like an idiot.

I was hopeful about the likelihood of Karen growing up once she began high school, but I couldn’t help thinking that the day Tsukihi finally grows up was still a long, long way off.

You’d think she was smarter from the way she’d been talking.

“Koyomi, you have to come to the wrap-up party! There’ll be lots of middle-school girls!”

“If you insist. I’ll free up enough time and show my face, at least,” I answered indifferently.

The bit about lots of middle-school girls had nothing to do with it, of course.

Well, regardless of her resolve, I doubted my little sisters would actually be having that discussion tonight. Tsukihi was going to be sidetracked by a most infuriating surprise: the loss of Karen’s precious ponytail.

That awl was going to be wielded against me once more, that was guaranteed.

Hmm. Just to be safe, maybe I should have Shinobu drink a little of my blood in advance.

Ah, I almost forgot. Having brought up Karen’s ponytail, I need to tell you about Tsukihi’s hairstyle.

This morning I was so busy trying to dodge an awl that I lacked the peace of mind to go into any detail, but she, too, had changed her hair at the start of August.

Unlike Hanekawa, Senjogahara, or Karen, however, Tsukihi changed her hairstyle as easily as you changed clothes, so it wasn’t surprising. But the Dutch bob must have not pleased her because she kept it for less than a month, a particularly brief cycle.

As of today, August fourteenth, Tsukihi Araragi had her hair in a refined, single-length shoulder cut. It was hard to tell since she’d just come out of the shower, but I noticed a slight inward curl. Whatever it was that she did, it was a glossy styling that made her cuticles sparkle even though there was barely any light in the hallway.

If I could stop being her brother for a moment and give an objective appraisal, the cut made her look somewhat grown up in contrast to what she was really like on the inside.

Still, long and straight, Dutch bob─her hairstyle was all over the place… Were cornrows next?

Now that was where I put my foot down.

Anyway, new hair, new girl, I suppose. Although I said “in contrast,” I felt like Tsukihi was acting a little less childish after switching to this new single-length style. Maybe I was just imagining things, but the possibility filled me with hope─take this morning, for instance. Looking back on it now, an awl might actually signify moderation. Back when she still had the bob, she could easily have grabbed an electric drill from the shed instead.

Not that any of this really matters. I just thought you might like to know.

By the way, since I’d been growing my hair out to hide the kiss mark Shinobu had left at the base of my neck during spring break and missed my chance to get it trimmed up, I was sporting quite the mop by this point.

Less like Kitaro, and more like Misery from Outer Zone.

Okay, that was an exaggeration.

“Well, dependable big brother? Weren’t you headed out somewhere?”

“Ah, that’s right.”

I’d gotten wrapped up in our conversation. I may not have been able to feel what Shinobu was feeling, but she was probably starting to lose her patience inside my shadow. For all I knew, there were tears of bitterness streaming down her face as she played with her DS.

“Well then, mind the fort,” I said. “I should be back soon. I’ll head to the store while I’m out, too. Do you need anything?”

“I’m fine. Have funs.”

“Funs I will have. Now hurry up and get back to your room. I can’t open the front door while you’re standing half-naked in the hallway.”

“Hrn?”

“I’m telling you not to walk around in such a loose getup. No being provocative unprovoked.”

Japanese clothing was all fine and dandy, but she had to do it right. What an amateur. Her obi was wrapped around her waist in slapdash fashion, so her tits and legs were practically on display… She had the body of a kid, so it wasn’t even sexy.

If anything, the sight was a turn-off.

Hm? Wait a second…

“Tsukihi.”

“Yeah?”

“Prepare to be undressed,” I announced, reaching for the knot on her obi.

“Wha? What? Koyomi, stop, what are you doing?! Aieee!!”

Tsukihi tried to resist me, but it was the other sister who was the fighter. My littler little sister’s resistance meant little to me. Believe it or not, I had seen my fair share of battle.

I wasn’t quite the dastardly magistrate in a period piece, but I did grab the sash and spin her round and round, faster and faster, until it was completely unraveled. I mercilessly peeled away her yukata, tied her hands together with the now-free obi, and shoved her down onto the hallway floor and straddled her.

Seriously, if the front door opened now and someone caught a glimpse of this, I was finished in all sorts of ways.

If it was Karen, that would be one thing, but if it was my mom and dad, then more than finished, it would be the end.

The series would end with this paragraph.

The worst possible conclusion… We’d really regret that the story had continued.

Today wasn’t looking good for my favorability rating. It wasn’t just falling but freefalling, in practically a straight line, with no sign of bottoming out.

And thus.

“Hmm? Just as I thought,” I said.

“What, what, what? What just happened? What’s going on? Can someone please tell me why my brother just stripped me, tied me up, and shoved me down?”

“Well, Tsukihi. Didn’t you use to have a scar right around here?”

I pointed at a spot near her chest.

Usually it would be hidden by her underwear, but she’d just gotten out of the shower and wasn’t wearing a bra (one of her sports bras made out of soft material), leaving the area completely exposed.

I caught a brief glimpse through the opening of her flimsy yukata and thought that something seemed off─and I was right.

The scar that should have been there─was gone.

The event that left that scar had created such a strong impression that I still remembered it. In fact, it was impossible to forget. It was more an incident than an event.

The scar.

Back when Tsukihi was in elementary school, she got herself wrapped up in trouble for reasons that weren’t entirely clear─and as the result of that trouble, she jumped off the roof of the school building and got that scar.

She didn’t hit the ground. As luck would have it, or maybe like in a kung-fu movie, she landed on the canopy of a truck that just happened to be parked underneath, and thereby managed to escape with her life─but the injuries she suffered were obviously pretty grave.

In particular, the scar on her chest, where a piece of the canopy’s frame stabbed her, had been guaranteed in no uncertain terms by the doctor to remain for the rest of her life.

Hm?

“Wait, wait,” I said. “Actually, you don’t have any scars on your body at all.”

Now that I looked closer, it wasn’t just the wounds from then. As a Fire Sister and defender of justice who lacked the impressive fighting skills of her partner, Tsukihi was constantly acquiring new scrapes and bruises.

Okay, I’ll level with you, I may have been behind some of those scrapes and bruises─but all of them had vanished.

Not a trace of them, her skin was smooth and clean.

Faintly rosy from bathing─supple, lustrous, like a drop of water would just bounce off.

“Wounds heal, you know. I’m a human being.”

“Hrm? Yeah, I guess that makes sense.”

It made sense. It did.

Still, something seemed strange. I mean, why hadn’t I noticed before? I’m not always ogling my sister’s skin (what kind of pervert do you take me for) so I couldn’t say for sure… But was it because she was still young?

Part of the metabolic process? Hrrm…

“Um, would you mind getting off me now, Koyomi? Taking my clothes off is one thing, but if all you wanted to do was check for scars, I don’t see why you had to tie my hands up or straddle me.”

“No, I suppose that was unnecessary.”

I’d gotten carried away.

In the course of one day, I’d straddled both of my sisters. What kind of brother was I?

Hmph. Well, I guess this was a good thing. Better less scars than more scars. She was a girl, after all, and “battle scars” only sounded cool.

Satisfied (it probably wasn’t that big of a deal in the first place), I touched Tsukihi’s breast once and let her go.

“Why did you grab my breast before getting off?!”

“No reason, really.”

Why not, as long as it was there?

On a whim, to put it succinctly.

“It caught my eye so I just wondered what it felt like.”

“That casually?!” cried Tsukihi.

“Yeah. Here. Puyo-puyo. Puyo-puyo.”

“Don’t poke them with your feet! And stop making goofy sound effects like some puzzle game.”

“Fire!”

“Don’t make a chain!”

“Ice Storm! Diacute! Brain Dumbed! Jugem! Bayoe-n!”

“Zonked!”

No garbage puyo fell on my side─though I felt like there might be a disastrous number of nuisance puyo in the queue (hard puyo, at that).

Honestly, as a fan since Story of Sorcery, I wanted to get off a real seven-hit chain at least once, while I lived.

“Hey, stop touching your little sister’s breasts so much!”

“I’d seem like a very, very incredible character if someone heard that out of context…”

There wouldn’t be a speck of favorability to him, and words like “fiendish” and “monster” would be too tame.

That guy was an evil rakshasa.

“We’ll use that on the in-store displays!” recommended Tsukihi.

“What bookstore would want to put that up?”

“Brave ones, let’s hope.”

“Don’t go stirring up trouble.”

Talk about interference with business.

“Cripes…” Grumbling, Tsukihi stood up from the floor and hurriedly put on the yukata that I’d removed. “If you keep doing stuff like this, Karen and I are gonna have to squeal on you to Miss Hanekawa.”

“No, not that.”

I could only imagine how angry she’d get.

Be that as it may, I was pretty aboveboard as to where I drew the line, to turn a calm gaze on it. There were people whom it was all right to touch, and people whom it wasn’t all right to touch, a clear difference.

“Cripes. Cripes and criminy,” muttered Tsukihi. “After all the trouble Karen and I go through to keep our relationships with our boyfriends so pure, why should we have to subject ourselves to such a deep relationship with our own brother?”

“Quit your complaining. Chances are Karen is going through something similar at this very moment.”

A deep, or as they put it, a Teens’ Love relationship─courtesy of the wicked clutches of my junior. When you thought about it that way, maybe the Fire Sisters did share a connection on some unseen level.

Anyway, boyfriends. That’s right, they did have those.

“Ah, let’s see. Was your boyfriend’s name Rosokuzawa? You still haven’t broken up with him?”

“I hate to disappoint you, but we are head over heels in love. Call us love bombers. As for Karen’s boyfriend, Mizudori, I understand there’s been some discord…but I think they’re still getting on well, overall. Of course, if they found out the kind of stuff our brother does to us, we’d have to break up right away.”

“Hmph.”

That got on my nerves.

As their older brother, the mere fact that they had boyfriends was unforgivable. Dating while they were still in middle school? It made me resentful.

I wish they’d break up.

Of course, for my own part, if Senjogahara ever found out how I behaved with my sisters, she might hit me with her own set of divorce papers.

In that regard, it was still probably too early to introduce Senjogahara, reborn or not, as my girlfriend. I was already in enough trouble on account of my sisters using the Tsubasa Hanekawa card. When it came to this stuff, Hanekawa wasn’t exactly on my side.

“Anyway, I’m really going this time,” I declared.

“Don’t come back! You’re not welcome in this house anymore!”

“Oh, but I will always return…to your heart!”

And so, after our spontaneous exchange in sibling-speak, I waited until Tsukihi ascended to the second floor and finally opened the front door and stepped outside.

Naturally, I had no way of knowing.

No way of knowing, at that point in time─that I would never place my hands on that front door again.