Monogatari Series - Volume 8 - Chapter 1.10

010

“I called you constantly since last night, you know,” Miss Senjogahara then said, having turned back into her beautiful, nonchalant self. It was incredible how speedily she could switch over. Still, she wasn’t quite put together since she couldn’t do anything about her red, puffy eyes.

Meanwhile, apparently my bedhead was awful, probably because of my bed (she called me Super Saiyan Hanekawa), so in terms of how put together we looked, the two of us must have been on about the same level.

I couldn’t help but be amazed, though, by how normal she was acting, as if all that bawling until a minute ago had just been for show.

I simply found it adorable.

So adorable I almost didn’t care about my bedhead.

She told me, “I couldn’t even imagine what it’d feel like for your house to be on fire… I thought you might not want to talk to anyone, and I considered not calling you, but I was just too worried. I decided, ‘Whatever, just call her!’ but you never picked up.”

“Oh. Sorry. I had my phone off,” I said. “I thought I should try to conserve as much as I can in light of the survivalist lifestyle I’m going to be living.”

I hadn’t used my cell phone as an alarm clock partly because of my faith in my circadian rhythm, but I also did have another, more pragmatic reason. There was no guarantee that I’d be able to use a power outlet at school (I’m sure my teachers would let me if I explained, but generally, phones are banned at my school).

“God, you’re always such a stickler for the rules… Just grab whatever random outlet you find, you don’t need to ask,” coaxed Miss Senjogahara.

“But that would be stealing electricity.”

“I ended up running all around town thanks to that honesty of yours. I talked to various people to come by the intel that you were probably staying over at a friend’s house─but no one in class said you were staying with them.”

“H-How many people did you talk to?”

“I went through my network.”

“……”

Compared to her days of being not just shy but out-and-out paranoid, how she’d grown. But it also meant the whole class now knew I’d gone missing…

My goodness.

“Actually, I should apologize, Miss Hanekawa. I went and met your parents, too.”

“What?”

I was surprised.

In other words, had she visited the hotel where those two were staying?

It did seem possible to figure out where they were if you were patient enough… It wasn’t as if they were in hiding, and they would have had to inform places like the post office.

Though Miss Senjogahara probably went to the hotel sure that I, too─that I’d be there.

“Oh. You met my dad…and my mom.”

“Do you really need to call people like them your ‘dad’ and ‘mom’?” Miss Senjogahara asked bluntly.

Bluntlier.

She seemed disgusted.

Her expression used to tell you nothing about her mindset, but recently her feelings were starting to show.

Whether it was joy or sorrow.

Or anger.

…It seemed like she’d had quite the meeting with those people.

If only they tried a little harder to keep up appearances─they’d been awful towards Mister Oshino over Golden Week, too─but then again, maybe I had no right to think so when I couldn’t come up with any appropriate reply.

I wasn’t able to paper it over.

“It looks like there’s a lot going on. I don’t mean to pry, though.”

Unlike Araragi, she barely knew a thing about my domestic situation, about the warped and disharmonious Hanekawas, but uninterested in digging any deeper, she put us right back on track.

An impressive feat.

I even felt admiration for her.

“I went around everywhere after that, until this morning, when I finally thought of this place. Well, no, I’d thought of it from the start but didn’t want to believe that a young lady would choose to spend the night in these ruins… I thought you would never, that you would never ever, and put if off until last.”

“Hm. Hmm? Wait, don’t tell me you were up all night, Miss Senjogahara?”

“Even if I didn’t tell you, Miss Senjogahara was. Not a wink, it was an all-nighter, in shining armor.”

Which is why I cried when I found you─I was so worked up, she explained.

What a cute excuse.

She was playing on “knight,” of course.

“It’s plenty dangerous for a young lady to be wandering the streets so late, too,” I retorted.

“I have nothing to say in my defense.”

I’m not the type to ponder the consequences, she added.

Dressed in a very casual outfit, jeans and a T-shirt, she was drenched in sweat. She hadn’t been wandering around all this time so much as dashing about as if she were Miss Kanbaru.

“Thanks,” I expressed my gratitude as briefly and undramatically as I could before getting off my bed.

My body didn’t hurt.

I don’t think of myself as particularly talented, even though Araragi insists that I am, but I do seem to have a knack for crafting beds.

Maybe I ought to become an expert craftsman of sleeping beds.

Does that require an apprenticeship in Germany or thereabouts?

“It’s fine,” Miss Senjogahara said. “It was my own decision─and by the looks of it, I was wasting my time sticking my nose into your business.”

“That’s not true. I’ve finally realized how dangerous this was now that you’ve told me. They say fire drives people mad, and it seems like the house fire got me all weirdly worked up, too.”

“You think? I hope that’s what it is─but you do terribly dangerous things even when you aren’t worked up.”

“Do I?”

“Like seduce Araragi.”

“Guh.”

Guh, indeed.

I didn’t know how to rebut that.

I didn’t, even though I never seduced him.

The theory that I’d made him the way he was had become surprisingly entrenched out in the world.

“He really was cool…when he first got mixed up with me,” Miss Senjogahara mused. “There’s barely a trace of that left now, though.”

“Is that…my fault?”

“Well, there was also that tiger─I did get excessively worried, true. I’m sorry, it wasn’t like me to lose it. Now why don’t we get going.”

“Get going? To where? School?”

“To my home,” she answered as if she were stating the obvious. “And I’m declaring in advance that if you try to resist, I’m going to stick a stapler inside your mouth and whack you on your neck. Is that what it’s going to take to bring you with me?”

“……”

When she’d done exactly that to Araragi in the past, there was no way I was going to defy her.