Hanamonogatari

by Nisioisin

  Apparently it’s fine to call from a private number, and if you want to get across the gravity of your situation, it might be better to select Normal over Easy─the number to call also varies, though it seems to always be a cell phone.

  The voice of the person on the other end is muffled, like there’s a handkerchief over the mouthpiece or something, so you can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman. And they barely say anything at all, by which token it barely constitutes a conversation. Simply offering responses on the level of nods and prompts, they don’t urge you on like a therapist.

  In other words, an answering machine onto which you unilaterally unload your worries─I guess.

  At the end, the voice on the other end tells you whether or not they’ll accept your case. I can only imagine how it would feel to pour out all your worries only to be curtly refused, but I’d say that at least insofar as that refusal is clear and immediate, it’s kinder than Easy Mode, where it remains ambiguous whether or not your plea has been rejected.

  Hearing about this Normal Mode made me think the whole thing had to be the work of a human posing as a “devil” after all, just like Karen said.

  Not that humans can’t be devils─but.

  A phone─a cell phone, no less, feels… How can I put this, it feels too real. Totally disconnected from the world of aberrations.

  But since I couldn’t be completely sure of that, I had to see things through to the end.

  And finally, Hard Mode. Having followed me this far, you should have an idea, but this is the option to meet Lord Devil in person. And naturally, this was the option I chose.

  “So, where do I go if I want to meet Lord Devil today?”

  “Let’s see… That varies too, and it’s a crapshoot whether you’ll actually find her. If you don’t, then apparently it means your case has been declined,” Karen said by way of preamble to revealing the location. “At the moment─”

  Once I’d heard the location, I didn’t really have a choice anymore─I no longer had any other option. Was it really just a coincidence?

  That at the moment, the location was those ruins─

  The ruins of that abandoned cram school.

  So full of memories, now nothing but a burnt field.

  009

  Why was that abandoned cram school (where Mèmè Oshino, the authority on all things monstrous, had headquartered himself while he was in town) so full of memories for me? Well, I did engage my dear senior in a no-holds-barred battle in one of the rooms and thereafter stayed up through any number of nights there on aberration-related business─not to mention, I had a front-row seat when the building burned to the ground─but that isn’t why.

  Well, that’s part of it, of course, and to say those things contributed wouldn’t be a lie, but there was another, more fundamental reason.

  I didn’t tell Araragi-senpai this.

  Or rather, I couldn’t tell him.

  And I still haven’t.

  But there was a time─before the cram school was abandoned, when it still functioned as a cram school─that I was a student there.

  Specifically it was during my second and third years in middle school─I had found out that my other dear senior was going on to Naoetsu High, and knowing that it was highly doubtful I could get in with my grades, I begged my grandparents to let me take extra classes. And (what have I got to hide now?) it was that selfsame Eikow Cram School that I attended.

  Of course, it was while I was a pupil there that the school fell on hard times and had to close. You wouldn’t have known it then, given the healthy number of elementary and middle school students studying there, but I heard later that the salaries of the instructors they hired to try and combat the big-name competition by the station were just too high, and they couldn’t turn a profit─I found it really hard to come to terms with the fact that my beloved teachers, with whose help I improved my grades enough to get into Naoetsu High, were responsible for the financial distress that ultimately resulted in the school’s collapse.

  In any case, one of the desks Mister Oshino or Araragi-senpai or Shinobu used as a bed may well have been the one I’d used as a student there.

  Which means, exactly nothing at all.

  Sure, it’s a memory, but it isn’t important to me─and the reason I haven’t told Araragi-senpai or anyone else is that it simply hasn’t come up, it was never the right time.

  If the last vestiges of the cram school that somehow survived the fire were to disappear completely from this world─I wouldn’t feel sad, wouldn’t feel even a twinge of heartbreak.

  How can I put this─well, it’ll sound cold but I’ll just come out and say it, but when I became a high school student, the memories that connected me to that place “expired.”

  Even while I was a student there, and though it had been my idea in the first place (I couldn’t feel sorrier about this towards my grandma and grandpa who ponied up the fees), I resented having to attend a cram school─because I was frantic about it conflicting with my schedule for basketball practice.

  Therefore.

  And so.

  When the cram school did fall on hard times and closed─I feared, needless to say, that it was because I’d made a wish.

  …Which might be why I couldn’t tell anyone.

  In hindsight, at least, it seems like that may have been what was going on, but─either way I suppose I was bound to the place in some fashion or another.

  Bound to it more tightly than Mister Oshino, who used it as his headquarters, more tightly than Araragi-senpai, who bedded down there from time to time─I say this because I ended up there again even after it had burned down, ended up at that place that was finished for everyone.

  “Go ahead and kid yourself that the path you’re on now leads to your dreams for the future─the reality is that most of the time, it’s simply a one-way street running right into the past, and people are just going the wrong way. What’s more, the traffic enforcement on that one-way street is so strict that if you accidentally look back over your shoulder, they’ll take your soul.”

  My mother once told me that, but you know, it’s pretty much impossible to walk without ever looking behind you.

  So I ended my phone conversation with Karen and B-dashed straight over to the burnt field where the former abandoned cram school ruins (oh, come on) stood─and there.

  There.

  I came face to face with Lord Devil.

  I call it a burnt field, but it had been about six months since the building had burned down, and the municipal government hadn’t been idle. They’d cleared the site with bulldozers, so it’d be more accurate to call it a plain old vacant lot with not a blade of grass to be seen, but─in the center of that vacant lot.

  There was a girl with a crutch.

  A girl around my own age.

  Around high-school age─just as Ogi said, I suppose. It felt inevitable and still rubbed me the wrong way somehow.

  She was wearing a jersey─which reminded me of Karen and her year-round attire, partly because I’d just spoken to her, but if Karen looked sporty in a jersey, this girl looked sloppy.

  Her jersey was baggy.

  So big it looked like pajamas─just sloppy.

  Her rumpled hair appeared to have been neither combed nor untangled and was lightened to a tea-colored brown, which added to the impression─or rather, it was the first time I’d actually seen anyone with hair dyed that color.

  From what I gather it’s not that uncommon in this day and age, but this is a rural town, after all, so the most I ever see is the swim team’s hair looking faded from too much immersion in chlorinated water (and of course Shinobu’s blond hair), so naturally it made me feel timid.

  In a certain sense, dyed-brown hair was more frightening to me than a devil.

  Which is why─which is precisely why I turned defiant instead.

  No.

  That wasn’t the only reason.

  There was another.

  “…Even though I o
ffer three options, almost every kid sticks to the first one.”

  She spoke first while I was waffling about how to break the ice, unsure how to address her.

  And that’s when I realized she was looking at me.

  The fake-brunette devil was looking at me.

  “Seven out of ten people are glad to have their appeal to Lord Devil take the form of a letter─and two out of the remaining three opt for a phone call.”

  “And the last one comes to meet you face to face…like this?”

  “No, the last one gives up. When faced with the third option. The kid who comes to meet Lord Devil is number eleven out of ten.”

  Her manner of speaking was even more boyish than mine.

  Her voice was low, and calm─and the pace of her speech was bizarrely languid. Not in a charming laid-back-dude kind of way, though, just sluggish─or (and I’d prefer to avoid using this word, given the strong negative nuance) maybe “slow” just about perfectly captures it.

  I got impatient waiting for her next word.

  That’s the pace we’re talking about here.

  Like a slowed-down version of a recording you’re used to hearing played at a certain speed.

  “And those kids are usually dealing with genuinely serious problems, so I refer them to the police or a lawyer, or to Child Protective Services. Only two eleven-out-of-tens have ever come to see Lord Devil, and I dealt with both of them that way─but,” she said with a lazy stare, “that’s not why you’re here, is it, Suruga Kanbaru?”

  Hearing my name out of the blue, my heart leapt into my mouth.

  Not because I was surprised that a stranger knew my name─nor was it how she knew my name without being told thanks to some great and mysterious power, being Lord Devil and all.

  “You’re right, Roka Numachi,” I said.

  Said her name.

  And when I did, she─Numachi grinned for the first time and returned, “I’m pleased you remember me.”

  Yup.

  I didn’t recognize her at first on account of the dyed hair, but Lord Devil was an old acquaintance of mine.

  I didn’t strictly speaking remember her face, though─it was the crutch she was holding on her left side that tipped me off.

  Roka Numachi.

  We had crossed swords in middle school, when she was playing basketball for another school in the district.

  She’d been more than a rival─“archenemy” was more like it, really─and we’d confronted each other countless times.

  I don’t have any clear memories of losing against her, but I don’t distinctly remember beating her, either.

  If I was an offensive player specializing in the fast break, Numachi’s specialty was a loitering defense. There were rumors that she’d once completely shut out an opposing team, but who knows if that’s true…

  Her clothes and her “slow” speech made a little more sense as elements of her personality when I recalled her playing style.

  She’d been an opponent, though, so while I knew her by sight in middle school, I’d never conversed with her like this…

  “Heheh, Kanbaru─that left arm of yours.” Numachi pointed at my bandaged arm with her right hand, the one not holding the crutch. “I guess the rumors that you hurt yourself were true. So we’re peas in a pod. Seriously, star players don’t handle injuries very well. Or is it arrogant of me to refer to my past self as a star? No, you wouldn’t think so, Kanbaru─”

  “…”

  I looked at Numachi’s left leg without making a reply.

  It was hard to tell at a glance since her oversized jersey was so baggy, but if you looked carefully, her left and right legs weren’t the same width. I only noticed the difference because I knew what to look for, but─her left leg.

  She had a plaster cast─on her left leg.

  Solid.

  Firm.

  Protected from any impact.

  Protected from the world.

  Because of which, she wasn’t wearing a shoe on her left foot─her bare toes were touching the ground.

  An injury─to her left leg.

  Uh huh.

  Hence the crutch.

  During the final tournament of our junior high years─right before her school was about to face ours, Numachi broke her left leg in a collision during the game, and as a result she was forced to retire; or rather, the injury hadn’t completely healed yet, as far as I could tell─and if it hadn’t three years later, it must have been the kind that haunts you for the rest of your life.

  It was a hard subject to broach, and now wasn’t the time.

  “Did your injury come from an on-court collision too?” she just went ahead and broached the unbroachable.

  She may very well have been commiserating with me for having to retire due to an injury, but if that was it, all I could do was hang my head.

  I didn’t deserve a medal for what happened to my arm─it was a mistake I made in the past, nothing more. Even putting our injuries in the same ballpark was disrespectful.

  “Yeah, well,” I nodded vaguely, unable to tell her the truth.

  “That’s Naoetsu High’s uniform, right? So you made it to the nationals with that prep school… Amazing. Plus, you were smart.”

  “No, not really…” I corrected, looking at Numachi’s jersey.

  It was flashy, a bright red.

  A brand name was stitched into the chest, but at that distance I couldn’t make it out─if it were famous I’d recognize it even from far away, so it had to be some minor one.

  Even if it wasn’t, it didn’t look like a school training outfit, to say the least.

  “Oh? Me? I’m not going to school. Rehab made a hash of exams for me. Now I’m just living it up as a part-timing freelancer.”

  Though with this leg, I can’t seem to get hired anywhere. So when I say freelance, I actually mean unemployed, Numachi elaborated, thrusting her right hand into the pocket of her jersey.

  Not going to school.

  In that sense, then, Ogi was wrong to call her a high school girl. I felt somewhat relieved by that, which goes to show my personality isn’t as cut and dry as everyone thinks.

  “Which is why I’m able to be Lord Devil.”

  “…”

  “Making the most of my free time, you know?”

  Saying this, she pulled a cell phone out of her pocket─and pressed a few buttons and put it back.

  Checking her messages, it seemed.

  Had there been a call for Lord Devil from somewhere─from someone? No, in that case, she would have answered the phone, so maybe it was simply a performance for my benefit.

  In middle school, she’d do the same kind of thing on the court─she excelled at messing with the heads of the players she was up against.

  “So because you couldn’t get a job after you injured your leg─you became Lord Devil in place of a part-time gig?”

  “Huh?”

  Numachi’s face registered surprise at this.

  This time it didn’t appear to be a performance, she seemed properly stunned by the conclusion I’d come to─but who knows, maybe it was all part of her act.

  Let me repeat that I never knew her well enough to learn to read her expressions.

  “No, no, no─you’ve got it all wrong, Kanbaru. I don’t know what you’ve heard, or from whom, but you’ve got it all wrong.”

  “What have I got wrong?”

  As far as the what and from whom went─the answer was Lord Devil and from Ogi, but…

  “I’m Lord Devil, sure, but I don’t make any money from it.”

  It’s a free counseling service, Numachi footnoted.

  Her reply caught me off guard─but then, neither Ogi nor Higasa, nor Karen for that matter, had mentioned anything about Lord Devil seeking recompense for solving people’s problems.

  In fact, the implication was that the clients incurred no risk whatsoever─

  “…”

  If that was true, I felt like I’d been out of line─I cou
ldn’t help but conflate Lord Devil’s activities with the image of Mister Oshino demanding five million yen in compensation from my dear senior, or of Deishu Kaiki swindling middle school girls out of their pocket money, and I’d jumped to the conclusion that cash was changing hands here as well.