Monogatari Series - Volume 8 - Chapter 1.16

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“I know it’s already late enough to start getting ready for dinner, but why don’t we talk about the future?” Miss Senjogahara cut our conversation short with the kind of regret in her voice you’d expect from someone announcing that the party was over.

We both felt rejuvenated for some reason. Supple. What exactly was this sense of solidarity?

“What do you mean, the future?”

“Your future. Okay, you’ll stay over at my house tonight. What will you do starting tomorrow? Do you have some kind of lead?”

“Well, I─”

If I said, “I’ll just go back to that abandoned cram school, I guess,” even as a joke, she’d probably smack me. Actually, I could even see her kicking me.

“─don’t.”

“I see.” She gave a solemn nod. She looked so serious, I found it hard to believe that just moments ago, she’d been criticizing the wicked deeds of her boyfriend with all her body and soul. Sure, she was expressive now, but it was almost two-faced. “To tell you the truth, I’d like you to continue to stay here after tomorrow… I’d like to keep you under my control.”

“Your control?”

“Under my watch.”

“I’m not sure if that correction helped much…”

It felt like the same thing.

It must have been the truth, though. She was trying to say that she was worried about me.

“But you can see for yourself just how cramped my home is─and I’m not going to ask you to go to sleep, wake up, and change clothes in the same room as my dad after he gets back tomorrow.”

“Yeah, that’s a little…”

It definitely gave me pause.

Plus, it would probably be a pretty massive annoyance as a father to have your daughter’s classmate staying over in the same room.

“I mean, whatever would I do if my dad fell in love with you?”

“That’s what you’re worried about?”

“The day may come when I’ll have to call you mom.”

“No. It won’t.”

“Excuse me? Are you saying my dad isn’t good enough for you?”

She glared at me for real.

What a bothersome character trait.

It seemed like she wasn’t lying about being a daddy’s girl.

Hm.

When I considered that, or even if I didn’t, I wasn’t going to be able to stay at her place for much longer.

So, what to do?

“I think he could take it for a day or two, though,” Miss Senjogahara said. “We could just have him stand outside while you change or something.”

“There’s no way I could ever ask someone’s dad to do that, you realize…”

What kind of guest would that make me?

“By the way, Miss Hanekawa, what’s your read on what’ll happen next with the Hanekawa family?”

“Those people,” I began.

I didn’t have to force myself to call them my “father” and “mother” in front of Miss Senjogahara anymore, so I deliberately chose the term “those people.”

“Those people won’t be able to live out of a hotel forever, so they’ll look for a place to rent soon. It has to be the cheaper option. They’re going to be getting a fire insurance payout, so I assume we’ll live out of that rented place while they use the money to rebuild a house.”

“Rebuild a house, huh? I wonder what that takes?”

“If it’s the same size as the old one, probably around thirty million yen?”

“Oh, no. I was talking about time, not money.”

“Oh.”

What an embarrassing mistake.

I’d gone straight to how much.

“Hmm. It depends on how they make it, but when you factor in all the paperwork, maybe half a year?”

“Half a year…”

In other words, Miss Senjogahara said.

“You’ll have graduated high school by then and will be off to travel the world.”

“─I guess so.”

It wouldn’t be ready─in time.

No, I didn’t know what was supposed to be ready in time or not for what here. The house I had lived in for fifteen years was burned to the ground now─it would be a different house, rebuilt.

Everything had been lost.

That was all.

There was no making it in time or not─it was simply the wrong time to make anything of it.

“Well, let’s forget about six months from now. You’ll have somewhere you can stay if they hurry to find a place to rent, right?”

“Yes, a hallway.”

“A hallway? Oh, right,” she reacted, seemingly having forgotten what I’d told her. That was the only reaction, though. “Well, a lot of things happen─in every house.”

“Yes. In every house.”

“Which means…” Extending her arm to snatch her phone off the charging station, Miss Senjogahara opened its calendar. “You’ll need a place to stay until that rental gets figured out─did your textbooks and notebooks go up in flames, too?”

“Up in flames,” I nodded. “The only things that made it out were what I’d brought to school that day, my writing tools and my wallet. But I think our teachers will let me borrow a textbook if I asked.”

“I see. So there’s no need for me to worry about that, either.”

As she said this, Miss Senjogahara operated her cell phone with one hand─I couldn’t see what she was doing from my angle, but she didn’t seem to be using the calendar anymore judging by how fast she was hitting its keys.

Was she writing an email?

“Miss Hanekawa. I just had a good idea, would you like to hear it?”

“A good idea?”

“You could even call it a scheme. Call me Hitagi the Schemer. A series-spanning collaboration that readers could only dream of.”

“……” Seems more recycled than collaborative to me.

“So it should take a week at the very longest until your parents find somewhere to rent─and if that’s all, I think I could make something happen.”

“Hmm.”

To be honest, this idea, scheme, or whatever it was didn’t feel particularly enticing─in the worst case, I just had to go to the hotel where those two were staying. In other words, this was about me being selfish, not something worth having Miss Senjogahara fret and ponder over.

So it wasn’t the idea itself.

Rather, the fact that she’d thought one up made me so happy that I said:

“I’d like to hear it. Would you please tell me?”

“Oh, I’m not so sure. Should I, or shouldn’t I?”

“……”

Over the course of her rehabilitation, Miss Senjogahara’s once-subdued personality had grown the slightest bit obnoxious.