by Nisioisin
A free counseling service, a free counselor.
That was just like…
“Like Araragi-senpai.”
“Hm? Did you say something, Kanbaru?”
“No, I didn’t say anything, Numachi─”
I shook my head.
“I definitely had the wrong idea. Sorry about that,” I apologized. “I get it now. In other words, you’re an equal-opportunity ‘do-gooder’ out to help the struggling people of the world as best you can.”
“Heheh. It’s kind of embarrassing to hear it put so plainly─”
“So why call yourself Lord Devil?” My words hadn’t been meant as a compliment, so I felt icky seeing her blush. Which is why I cut in and asked these questions without waiting for her to finish her sentence. “Isn’t it impossible to avoid a certain amount of prejudice being directed your way when you use that name?”
“This is the age of impact. Impact and buzz. First off, if you can’t shake up your clients, no one will notice you. Entertainment, culture, politics, these days unpredictability is priority number one. And however godawfully godless I may be, I’m not so shameless as to call myself Lord God or The Archangel.”
“…”
“More than anything, troubled people are basically caught up in a complex. In that kind of psychological state, rather than looking to exalted beings like angels or even God for help, it’s much easier for them to look to the lowest of the low─to the Devil.”
“…There’s a certain twisted logic to that.”
“You think so? That’s a surprise, coming from someone like you, who stays on the sunny side of the street─or has that injury to your arm warped your humanity a teensy bit?”
“That’s…not how it is.”
Sure, it was something of a symbol of my warped humanity, but my left arm was the effect, not the cause─still, her ability to see through to the heart of things hadn’t changed a bit since her days as an active player.
In fact, now that she quit basketball, perhaps her powers of insight were even more honed─and formed the cornerstone of her free counseling service?
…Nope.
It’s true that we barely spoke a word while we faced each other on the court back in middle school─but precisely because I had faced her as a player, I think I had some sense of her “character.”
Roka Numachi the basketball player.
Is─was─not the kind of person who’d lend an ear to you.
Not the kind of girl to place her powers of insight at other people’s service.
Did she change during the past three years?
Change─growth.
And yet…
“I vacillated between Lord Devil and The Fallen Angel at first─The Fallen Angel was hard to pass up, but I was afraid that guys would be put off because it sounded a little too cool. Now I can’t imagine having chosen anything other than Lord Devil.”
“Why.” I couldn’t figure it out for myself so I just asked her flat out. “If you’re not doing it for money, then why are you doing it?”
“Do I have to explain it to you?” she answered my question with a question of her own.
Realizing that it absolutely wasn’t her duty to spell it out for me, I was momentarily at a loss but declared, “You have to.”
As firmly as I could.
She opened her eyes wide, taken aback by my demand, before shrugging her shoulders like it was all a joke─every one of her movements was so drawn out that they seemed staged─and smiling.
“Oh well. When someone like you comes looking for Lord Devil just for the hell of it, it’s time to close up shop.”
Too bad, I was really into the name I picked this time around, Numachi added with seeming regret.
“This time? You mean you’ve done this before?”
“Yeah, well─ever since I quit basketball three years ago, one way or another, under one name or another─I’ve been lending an ear to all kinds of people.”
Really.
With Deishu Kaiki in mind yet again, I’d assumed that at most, she’d only begun doing this last year─but it was much more deeply rooted than that.
“I retreat as soon as it seems like I’m going to be exposed. Then I start again. That’s the trick.”
“The trick to what?”
“Longevity?” answered Numachi, cocking her head.
Then she repeated herself.
Slowly.
“When someone like you comes looking for me just for the hell of it, it’s time to close up shop and hit ‘continue’─that’s the path to longevity and perpetual youth. Though it’s more a process of trial and error than a ‘continue.’ They’ve more or less died out, but apparently there used to be tons of video games like that thirty years ago─”
“I didn’t come here just for the hell of it…”
“What else do you call it when someone who doesn’t need counseling visits a counseling service? You came just for the hell of it, and here you are face to face with a devil.”
“…”
When I had no reply, Numachi appeared satisfied and said, “What was your question again? You want to know why I’m doing this? If not for money, then why─was that it?”
“Yeah, that’s what I asked you.”
“For the sake of humanity─is not why, of course. Your question is based on the deeply biased assumption that I’d never do such philanthropic work, right? Well, let me tell you upfront that you’re absolutely correct. You seem to think highly of my powers of insight, but yours aren’t too shabby, either.”
“Okay, so why?”
“I do it for myself. For the wholesome benefit of yours truly, Roka Numachi. Though you might also say for this left leg,” she divulged, unapologetically─but without conceit, and if anything, somewhat coolly. “Listening to people’s stories, their troubles and worries, I assure myself, ‘Thank goodness, there are plenty of people out there at least as unhappy as I am’─that’s the only reason I’ve taken on the mantle of Lord Devil.”
“…”
“Oops, now you think less of me, in no time flat. My, my, so serious. You always were a straight shooter, if you’ll pardon the pun, and that was your appeal as a player. But to your foes on the court, myself included, it was nothing but a weakness to be exploited.”
Having seen me frown at her previous declaration, Numachi didn’t bother to hide her conceit this time and cracked a smile.
“…You’re kidding, right?”
“About what? Yes, everyone did go after your weak point. Are you trying to tell me you never noticed? Or are you going to condemn it as a low thing to do? The statute of limitations is up on that one, so I’d say crying foul and harping on your own fairness at this late date is what runs counter to the spirit of sportsmanship.”
Maybe she meant to draw out my feelings with this provocation─but that’s putting a positive spin on things, and it seems truer to say she was just having a ball teasing me.
Of course, what seems truer isn’t always true.
I took a deep breath, little by little so she wouldn’t notice, and exhaled, “That’s not what I meant. I was asking if you were kidding about preying on people’s misery.”
“Preying on people’s misery─not quite. I don’t recall saying that. All I want is to be able to use their unhappiness as a baseline to tell myself, At least I’m doing better than them. That’s all. I’ll never run again for the rest of my life─but there are lots of other people in this world who’re struggling. Knowing that, I’m just barely able to maintain my psychological balance.”
“Balance─”
That word.
Mister Oshino had used it often.
He, who always adhered to the principle of neutrality.
“In that sense, Kanbaru. Seeing your left arm puts my heart at ease. A top player like you reduced to the same state as me─no, maybe it doesn’t ease my heart. Because, unlike me, you don’t seem to be too upset about your arm.”
“That’s not…�
��
True, I said.
I don’t know if my denial really got through to her, though, since I’d come to terms with my arm’s condition─as something I’d simply brought on myself─while she didn’t seem to be there yet.
So it was no surprise if, from her standpoint, I seemed carefree.
“Heheh.” Numachi smiled. “The letters that I─Lord Devil receives from high school kids, and the recordings I make of their phone calls, are my prized collection. There are unhappy people in this world, there are so many unhappy people in this world─that fact has been my saving grace. Real stories, straight from the horse’s mouth. I get so much more into them than I do reading some canned tearjerker of a novel. I’ve been collecting other people’s unhappiness for three years now, hanging out different shingles. It’s not about preying on them, Kanbaru, it’s about appraising them.”
“…Not a particularly laudable hobby, is it?” I probably should have told Numachi how that really made me feel─maybe it was exactly what she wanted, too─yet the words I finally managed to get out had passed through a series of filters, been strained and sugarcoated. “Those people who come to you for help are actually suffering, aren’t they?”
“Which is what gives the collection its value─does that sound villainous enough? Heheh, don’t get so serious, Kanbaru. You look like you’re going to hit me. Don’t come any closer, I’m frightened of your intimidating presence.”
“You were never this far away when you set a screen.”
“I wonder. It’s been so long, I’ve forgotten. After all, I’m not a basketball player anymore. I’m a counselor.”
I hit her.
It surprised me, I didn’t see myself as the kind of person who could just up and hit someone─but before I knew it, I had definitely slapped her in the face with my right hand.
Though I suppose I must have retained some of my composure, since I didn’t slap her with the monstrous strength of my left hand.
Even as her cheek was reddening from the slap, Numachi’s face wore a scornful smile that clearly said─
You lose.
“I told you not to get so serious, Kanbaru. I mean, like, check it out,” she invited in a suddenly overfamiliar tone, dropping her hand on my shoulder like we were the best of friends. Casually, cheerfully, she said, “You really think people who come to me for help are actually suffering? People who are wouldn’t turn to any Lord Devil. We’re talking ordinary, everyday unhappiness. Miniscule unhappiness. When someone does occasionally show up with a legitimate problem, I refer them to an appropriate organization─which I already told you, didn’t I?”
“…”
“And it’s not like I stir up their unhappiness, I just listen earnestly to their stories. Earnest, like you were back in your playing days. Who’s hurt by that? I only snicker on the inside, while my expression remains the picture of gravity. When I read their letters, same as when I answer the phone. I regard that as the courtesy due to them for kindly providing me with a supply of unhappiness.”
“The moment you snicker on the inside, you’re being faithless…though I suppose it’s not going to do any good to tell you that.”
“No good at all.”
“So what you’re saying, Numachi─is that, apart from those who are clearly beyond your help, you’re actually solving people’s problems, so they have nothing to complain about.”
Your problems solved, without fail.
That was the word on Lord Devil.
And─Numachi was faithfully doing just that for the people who came to her for advice. Whatever she was feeling on the inside, she was taking care of their unhappiness for them and claiming it for herself.
Her role as a counselor aside, she was faithful in her role as a collector.
That was going to be her assertion.
“Nope,” she said.
Yet it wasn’t so. She was faithless as a collector, too.
“I don’t do anything. I just listen.”
“…Huh?”
“I listen to their stories, and that’s all. For Mode 1, I get their letters, and then do nothing. For Mode 2, I say, ‘Duly noted,’ and that’s the end of it. For the Mode 3 people, I listen to the general outline, and then without waiting to hear the particulars─that is, without actually doing anything─I send them down the conveyor belt to an appropriate organization.”
Because I don’t want to hear any truly unhappy stories. I really don’t, confessed Numachi─sliding her hand down off my shoulder and grabbing my right breast.
It was a rough motion, perfectly described by the word “grab,” with nothing of the loving caress, nothing seductive about it at all.
Quietly and distinctly painful.
In retaliation for the slap, perhaps─which made it hard to brush away her hand.
“Lord Devil just listens. That’s all.”
“Why─”
“What d’you mean, ‘why’? Because sticking your nose into other people’s unhappiness only makes things more complicated. If you really want to help them, you need the backbone to shoulder the full burden of their unhappiness or you’ll get nowhere. Thanks, but I’ll pass.”
“No, that’s not what I meant by ‘why’─I already know it’s no use telling you anything. It’s just, if what you say is true, then why is there a rumor that Lord Devil will solve your problems without fail? You don’t actually do anything.”
“Oh, come on, everybody knows that time heals all wounds.”
Numachi said this with the easy-going air of someone revealing the answer to a trick question for grade school kids.
She still didn’t remove her right hand from my breast.
“It’s quite literally a matter of time. The truth is that our worries are basically anxiety about the future. The foreboding feeling that things might get even worse is enough to disrupt anyone’s psychological balance─so people who come to me just need to hear me say ‘I’ll take care of it,’ not for their problems to be solved.”
“…So that’s the truth behind your hundred-percent success rate?”
Which essentially meant that Numachi was just “stalling” the people who came to her. Saying, “I’ll solve your problem, so just wait awhile”─and thereby liberating her clients from the psychological state called anxiety.
She offered not resolution, but release.
Meanwhile, the underlying problem would fade with time─or become irrelevant to the client, was that it?
“They say simply talking is enough to ease your worries, and─they’re absolutely right,” she confirmed. “That’s the truth, that’s the answer. Even though I do nothing, everybody eventually feels better.”
“But isn’t that just avoiding the issue? Running away? Aren’t you just averting your eyes from your clients, and their problems?”
“What’s wrong with running away? You can solve almost any problem in the world by running away from it. While you’re running and kicking it down the line, the problem stops being a problem─it’s only because people want their problems solved ‘right away’ that they’re suffering.”
“…”
I was starting to feel like I was being hornswoggled─no, I’m pretty sure I was.
……
No.
Putting it that way still dumped the responsibility onto Numachi─and that was low.
She’d managed to convince me.
Readily.
Yes.
Back then─back when I made a deal with a real devil, if I hadn’t faced the problem, if I’d just persevered and hadn’t been so desperate to solve it─
I wouldn’t have injured anyone.
And leaving aside what she said, and how she said it, it did seem to be true that, as Lord Devil, Roka Numachi had been listening to numerous high school students’ complaints and easing their minds.
Which is why the Fire Sisters─the former Fire Sisters, that is, were so hesitant to act.
Those sisters who styled themselves the defenders, t
he avatars of justice, were fairly powerless in the face of a foe that was “right” in some way.
“…Take your hand off me.”
“Hm?”
“I told you to take your hand off my chest.”
“Hmph.”
I’d expected a little more resistance, but Numachi quickly complied with my demand─she removed her hand from my chest, then clenched and unclenched her fingers so I could see.