Monogatari Series - Volume 8 - Chapter 1.54

054

She introduced herself as Izuko Gaen.

A young dame whose large clothes looked quite casual on her small frame─but of course, while I call her a “young dame,” this was just after I had been completely unable to figure out how old Episode was, so I didn’t have much confidence in my ability to guess ages. I would believe you if you told me she was in her twenties, but if she really was Mister Oshino’s senior, she had to be over thirty at least. To be honest with you, though, I could see her as being in her teens, too.

Actually, though I say this after all of that speculation, she was composed in a way that made it seem a little pointless to try to pin down her age─something about her seemed to stand apart. Just as it’s boorish and meaningless to look at a masterful work of art and immediately start thinking about the year and age of its production, its origin, or who its creator is─she shut down such questions.

In that sense, her casual dress looked just right on her─a regular person wearing XL-sized clothes on an S-sized physique risked giving the impression of only being slovenly, but to be frank, she looked refined.

She wore a baseball cap tilted to the side and the heels of her sneakers were crushed, but it didn’t strike you as improper or inelegant. It all fit perfectly in her brand of fashion.

“Hey, ’Sode─you were taking forever to show up at our meeting spot, so I decided to come get you. Now that I’m here, it looks like you were in the middle of hitting on a girl? Sorry if I got in your way.”

That was her greeting.

She spoke with an amiable smile.

There was something odd about the way she talked─like she was providing a running commentary on her actions.

It felt like she was using her smile to cover up that oddness.

“Hmm? My, isn’t the young lady…”

And then she looked at me.

“Tsubasa...Hanekawa─is it?”

“Oh, yes─”

Hearing my name before I’d given it─I was confused.

In part, I was already astonished because Episode said she was Mister Oshino’s senior─but even if she’d heard about me from li’l Episode or Mister Oshino, unless she also had this “vampire sight” thing, there was no way she could recognize me as Tsubasa Hanekawa with my cut hair.

“─Yes, that’s me?”

“Well, what a surprise. I’m glad I decided to act on a whim and come here because it meant getting to meet you, Tsubasa. Mèmè probably didn’t tell you, but I was ahead of him in college, and my name is Izuko Gaen. He used to call me his senior. There are a lot of situations in my life where people call me that.”

So she said.

She really did speak in an odd way.

And it was a strange self-introduction.

“Please don’t call this hitting on her, Miss Gaen─I just happened to meet a familiar face, and the two of us were reminiscing, that’s all,” complained Episode (though I was taken aback to hear him say “that’s all” about our conversation), to which Miss Gaen replied, “Well, that doesn’t matter either way.”

It really didn’t seem to matter to her.

“So if you’re done with your reminiscing or whatever it is, why don’t we go─time is wasting and we’re racing against the clock. Yotsugi will probably be coming too, but we can’t wait around for that to happen.”

“Yotsugi? Who’s that?”

“It doesn’t matter who, not to you, ’Sode. But there are some folks for whom that isn’t true, and for example, it’s not true for me. Well, to tell you the truth, I wish either Mèmè or Deishu were here. But the two of them are such drifters. By the way, I don’t want Yotsugi to be here, not at all.”

“You’re really only able to think about yourself when you talk, huh? It’s like you assume whoever you’re talking to knows everything you know.”

Episode didn’t even try to hide that he was appalled, but paying this no heed, Miss Gaen spoke to me.

“Hey, Tsubasa,” she said. Her speech was way too free. “I know that normally I should edge my way into this conversation between you and ’Sode, and maybe go to a vending machine and buy you two sodas as the adult in this situation, but the circumstances are like I just gave. Sorry, but I’m taking ’Sode with me.”

“Oh… Okay.”

That was fine with me.

In fact, I would be breathing a sigh if she took him and left─he was still scary to me despite everything (I’d actually lost all my memories about the time he nearly killed me, but my body must still remember. My stomach was swirling), and I needed to complete my trip and get to school.

Being treated to a soda would only complicate things.

“So I can’t help you with this tiger problem that you’re having, either. Figure out how to take care of it on your own, okay?”

“What?”

My tiger─problem?

Wait… How did she know?

Could she have heard me mentioning it in passing to Episode earlier? No, that seemed unnatural given the distance.

Compared to getting my name right, this was almost another dimension─of unnaturalness.

It wasn’t like she had read my mind.

I hadn’t thought about the topic a single time while I was speaking to her.

“Hm? Why the strange expression? You can’t be that shocked just because I knew about the tiger. There’s nothing that I don’t know.”

“There’s nothing─that you don’t know.”

“Yep,” she said, “I know everything.”

Full of confidence.

Like she really did know everything─

Like she had a grasp of the entire tale.

“Anyway, you’ll probably end up facing the tiger some time today or tomorrow. You’re about to name this peerless and all-powerful aberration the Kako, the Tyrannical Tiger, but no one is going to be able to help you with it. No one is going to save you. Because this problem is your own. It isn’t my problem, and it of course isn’t the problem of the boy you’re in love with.”

“Wh─”

What do you, I began to say before losing the words.

The boy I’m in love with?

“I’m talking about Koyomi Araragi. Don’t tell me you don’t know that?” said Miss Gaen like it was the most natural thing, like it was common sense─like it was something known by every human other than me.

And in fact─

“You don’t know a thing, Tsubasa, do you,” she accused, like she was deriding me, like she despised me.

Like she pitied me─like she sympathized with me.

Like she was looking at a poor little child.

So she said.

“You don’t even know that you don’t know anything. Not the wisdom of being simple, but the simplicity of being simple─you’re thick and naïve. Ahaha, ‘thick and naïve’ sounds a bit naughty, like I’m talking about how full-figured you are. As a slender person, I’m quite jealous.”

“……”

“Then again, maybe you’re better off without the wisdom of being simple─remember how the brainless scarecrow always lamented the unbearable fact of his stupidity?”

“What…” I said.

My voice shaking.

I didn’t know why my voice was shaking.

Even when I faced Episode over spring break─my voice, my body never shook so badly.

“What─do you know about me?”

“I know everything. And that’s why.”

I know everything, repeated Miss Gaen.

Again and again.

Like she’d repeated it time after time in the past.

Like “good morning” or “good night” or “thank you” or “you’re welcome.”

She repeated it.

And repeated it.

Then repeated it.

“I even know that you don’t know anything. But that’s nothing to be ashamed of since no human in this world knows anything. People try to make do unknowingly in living. You’re not an exception, you’re not special.”

“I’m not an exception─I’m not special.”

“It makes you happy to hear that, doesn’t it?” Miss Gaen said, still as if she derided me. “I know.”

“……”

“And of course, I also know quite well that the ruins of that abandoned cram school, a spot that should have a place in all of your hearts, including Mèmè’s, burned down last night… Oh, is that another piece of information that you don’t know yet? My cute little Tsubasa who doesn’t know a thing.”