by Nisioisin
A devilish human.
Or─a human devil?
But I’m not directing that at Numachi─nor am I directing it at my mother.
When I think it through, it seems to me that a devilish human isn’t someone who’s a bad person, or a sinful person, but the kind who’d turn to a devil for help.
In other words, me.
014
But after that, the pace at which the story unfolded slowed to a crawl, very much in keeping with the way Roka Numachi moved and spoke.
My hope, or rather my overly optimistic evaluation, was that I might be able to learn her whereabouts right off the bat by asking Higasa, who, like Numachi and me, had made a name for herself playing middle school basketball. But when I asked her first thing after I got to school (managing to slip in just under the gun), Higasa said, “Nope, no idea,” and shook her head. “Numachi, right? Famous for bogging players down with her Quagmire Defense and nicknamed the Poison Swamp─Roka Numachi?”
“People called her that…”
“They called you Godspeed Angel, by the way.”
“…”
Even the one I’d come up with, Li’l Suruga Can-do, was cooler.
Woof, now that’s embarrassing.
“By the way again, I was Sunshine Umbrella.”
“Why was only your name in English?”
“Hey, I was just the captain of a minor team. You two were in a different class. Or maybe even a different phylum.”
“Minor? You’re being more sarcastic than modest. A dark horse, that’s what you were.”
“Anyway, I have no idea─from what I hear, she transferred out of that powerhouse middle school soon after she quit basketball.”
“Really?”
“Yup. I remember because it made a big impression on me. It seems she’d been getting a tuition waver thanks to her sports scholarship─which she lost when she got injured, so she couldn’t afford to go there anymore.”
“…She wasn’t just forced to retire, she had to change schools too?”
What could I say─it was a hopelessly pitiful tale.
I recalled her crutch.
Then, her injury had taken away everything she had.
“Actually, it seems that even with her injury, there was still hope that she could stay on. It’s a legit school, after all. I’m sure she could’ve avoided transferring if she’d gone about it right, but I guess her pride wouldn’t allow it.”
“Her pride… She didn’t really seem the type, though.”
“Who doesn’t have any pride?” Higasa said, rather emphatically.That was very much like her─no, it was more that even though I wasn’t Ogi, my words had come out wrong.
If anything, my statement was lacking in pride.
“I heard that she and her family moved away when she transferred, so yeah, I don’t think she’s still around,” Higasa told me.
“Not around─”
That wasn’t true.
In fact I’d seen her the day before─it was probably true that Numachi had moved, but she must have moved to this town from wherever she’d been living.
She’d been right under my nose─yet I wouldn’t have recognized her as that Numachi even if we’d passed each other on the street.
With her dyed-brown hair, and that baggy jersey no athlete would wear.
Having undergone such a total transformation─even Higasa, who was telling me all this stuff about Numachi, wouldn’t have known it was her.
Not that I’m one to talk.
If she hadn’t called my name first─I doubt I would have been sure that she was that Numachi─that she was the Poison Swamp.
What a strange relationship we had.
Even as we crossed swords on a narrow court, even as our rivalry played out as something very like a life-or-death struggle─we knew essentially nothing about each other.
If we hadn’t ended up on the same team in high school, it would have been the same with Higasa. I never would have known which girls’ comics she liked, nor that she thought of herself as shy, and ultimately I would have forgotten about her as well.
“Ties that bind,” I sighed.
“Hm?”
“Nothing─so in other words, Numachi’s current whereabouts are unknown.”
“Yeah. Though putting it that way sounds a little overblown. If you absolutely need to know, I can contact an old acquaintance of mine who might be able to put me in touch with a former teammate of Numachi’s, but… Their school is a combined junior and senior high athletic prep school, so a student who retired due to injury is sort of a taboo subject. I wonder if they’ll tell me…”
“That’s okay, thanks anyway. You don’t need to go that far. It’s no big deal, I was just reading a novel yesterday and there was a character with the same surname, so all of a sudden she popped into my head.”
“Huh. Sub? Dom?”
“Don’t go assuming it’s a boys’ love novel.”
Anyway, it’s really nothing, I said, and Higasa seemed satisfied─since it was only idle gossip to her.
But the same wasn’t true for me.
Not wanting to get my friend caught up in something that involved an aberration, I ended the conversation, but this made things tricky.
I didn’t know what to do─or no, I knew exactly what to do. It’d be best if I gave it up.
I’d made an effort to see Numachi again, but it hadn’t happened, end of story.
Nice try, good hustle.
I could let it go at that─no one was in dire straits because I couldn’t find her.
Let me repeat that I had no idea whether or not seeing Numachi and the restoration of my arm bore any causal relationship. It was a wild guess. If your mother were to break her back, it might have nothing to do with the crack you stepped on earlier in the day─maybe it was just pure coincidence that I’d run into my old nemesis the day before my arm returned to normal.
Forget “maybe,” the chances were extremely good.
That kind of coincidence is perfectly plausible.
And so─I could let it go at that.
I could say “and they all lived happily ever after” and end the story.
The lingering reservations, the feeling that things were still somehow up in the air─surely time would take care of all that.
“…Ugh.”
But I couldn’t do it.
Even though I’d retired a long time ago, as someone who’d given her life to basketball, it was beaten into the very marrow of my bones that you can’t win if you don’t play.
So I couldn’t give up.
There was no excuse for giving up.
I had to see Roka Numachi.
A week went by.
015
One week later─on Sunday, to be precise, five days after the Tuesday when I found out that Numachi had gone missing, I got on the train and left my town for the first time in ages.
I was going to an open campus at the local college─it wasn’t the school I hoped to attend, but Higasa was dragging me along with her. It wasn’t the school she hoped to attend either, but this was “a dress rehearsal for going to an open campus at her dream school,” which sounded like rehearsing for a rehearsal, a calculated move very typical of the cautious Higasa.
For me, well, the road ahead wasn’t as clear, but I assumed I’d end up going to college, so saying that Higasa was dragging me along makes me sound more unenthusiastic than I was. It gave me the chance to simply enjoy an alien space known as a college.
Even though it wasn’t the school I hoped to attend, experiencing that kind of place and seeing it with my own eyes did bring home that I was studying for entrance exams.
Around this time next year.
What in the world will I be doing?
…Up until recently, I couldn’t picture that kind of future─but now that my arm was back to normal, I might even spend the next four years of my youth as a basketball player.
My comeback was a realistic reality.
Having been restored without warning, it wouldn’t be at all strange if it became a monkey’s paw again without warning, so I couldn’t afford to let my guard down─not that there was any way for me to be vigilant or negligent─but for the moment, it seemed like I could let myself believe that my arm had in fact become “human” again.
So there they were.
There before me─choices.
Options.
Whether the road would be easy, normal, or hard─or boast an even higher difficulty level, who could say? In any case, a path to a place I thought had been closed off forever appeared before me.
I thought it only stretched behind me.
Now it appeared before me.
All that remained was to decide whether or not to take it.
There wasn’t much time left─but before I could make my decision, there was something I had to take care of.
Roka Numachi.
I needed to be clear on her role─if I discovered that she had nothing to do with it, that’d be fine.
Until I settled the matter, I absolutely couldn’t report it to my dear seniors.
Still, there was a limit to keeping Araragi-senpai off the scent with pervy texts.
There was a limit to keeping our pervy conversation limited.
In various senses.
Keeping secrets from my savior was exacerbating my feelings of guilt.
Nevertheless─during the past five days.
I’d exhausted every means at my disposal and yet found no clue to help me get to Numachi.
How could it be?
I mean, her jersey aside, it was impossible that there was no information about a girl with such conspicuous hair.
Bleached to that unnatural brown.
In a way, it should have been easier than finding Shinobu, with her natural blond hair─but the fact remained that I couldn’t.
It was as though when she gave up being Lord Devil, she exited the world altogether.
It was like trying to grasp a cloud─no, grasping a cloud might have been easier.
It was yuckier, like trying to grasp a bug, and that should have made me draw back my hand, but I didn’t know when to quit.
I could always go to Karen for info, but only as a last resort. Not that I thought she’d tell her brother that I was asking questions─but making her promise not to would be odd, and furthermore, I had some qualms about enlisting a defender of justice like her in dealing with Numachi, who hadn’t actually committed any “evil deeds.”
Hmm, when I put it that way, defending “justice” is such a quandary. I mean, most people aren’t particularly offended by evil.
At this rate, though, the last resort was becoming my only option…
“It’s your job to impose on people. Anyone who doesn’t impose on others is just plain creepy.”
My mother’s words, which I recalled at crucial moments, seemed pregnant with meaning but never really served.
They seemed like nothing but twisted self-affirmations.
She was the one who entrusted me with the Monkey’s Paw, with the Devil’s Hand, in the first place, but why did she do it?
She told me not to ask (I think).
Did she really think it wouldn’t cast a pall over her child’s life? Did she really believe it wouldn’t warp me?
Look, I don’t mean to blame my mother about my left arm─even now I believe that the responsibility for having turned to a devil lies squarely with me.
I don’t know.
I seriously don’t know.
What that person was thinking when she entrusted the “hand” to me, when she bequeathed me her hopeless inheritance.
Nor did I know where the arm had gone─when I used the “hand” in elementary school, it was back inside its box the day after my wish was granted.
This time, when I managed to dig out the box─it was empty.
In which case, where the hell did the devil─
“At last we meet, Gaen’s legacy.”
When we were done with the open campus, Higasa and I convened a meeting at a fast food restaurant and discussed our impressions of the day, then parted ways at the station─she was returning to town by train, while I was going to run─directly after which.
I was addressed thus by an ominous-looking man.
“Ominous” was, what, just the impression he gave; there was nothing specific, but I’m confident that he is perfectly summed up by that word.
A funerary suit.
A beard, his hair slicked back, shadowy eyes behind silver-rimmed glasses.
His appearance was darkness itself.
I’d never actually met him and knew about him only secondhand through Araragi-senpai─and I’d only heard anecdotes and never had his appearance described to me─yet I recognized him in an instant.
This man.
This middle-aged man who was suddenly before me, an expert in aberrations who went to college with Mister Oshino, but first and foremost a swindler─
“Deishu…Kaiki.”
“Oh?”
Hearing his name come out of my mouth, he raised his eyebrows in apparent surprise─but if that was how he felt, the expression was all too moderate.
Not much different from a blink.
“You know who I am─I see, you must have heard about me from Araragi or Senjogahara. That’ll speed things up. It saves me the trouble of introducing myself. How fortunate. The lesson for me to take home from this is that you can never predict where and how your ties will come in handy.”
“…”
I drew in a breath─then turned my back on him and began to walk away.
“Whoa there, hold on now, Gaen’s legacy. I’ve been waiting for you─”
“……nkk!”
As he spoke, I sensed him moving to put his hand on my shoulder, and broke into a run. I was wearing running shoes, naturally. I hit my top speed with the first step, rocketing out of the gate fast enough to gouge holes in the ground.
It had been five days already since my arm had returned to normal.
Almost a week.
Plenty of time to get used to my fully restored bilateral balance.
Without so much as a glance over my shoulder, I took matters into my own hands (feet) and strove to make a clean getaway from Kaiki─
“Don’t take off running like that. It’s dangerous.”
“……nkk?!”
I hadn’t gotten away.
Which is to say, he overtook me.
In his snug-fitting suit, his leather shoes kicking up a terrible racket, the man passed me on the left with incredible speed, cut around in front of me, and spread his arms like a roadblock.
“Guh…”
I reversed my momentum with enough torque to tear my Achilles tendon, thinking that this time, this time, I would leave him in the dust.
I was absolutely sure I would leave Kaiki in the dust.
I must have unconsciously gone easy on him, but my running speed was my absolute identity, my raison d’être, and my one defining character trait. Getting outpaced by an ominous man who looked like he’d never exercised in his life was exactly─
“You’re not on a track, so don’t take off like that or you’ll stumble and fall. Quite the little tomboy, aren’t you? Be careful.”
─Was exactly what happened.
It was Kaiki in a low stance who left me in the dust like it was nothing, and as before he set himself in my path like a roadblock.
“…”
I didn’t have it in me to reverse direction again.
Having cranked my motor too high, severe pain was shooting through my thighs, and even if that weren’t the case, I could only stop.
No way…
No way in hell…
My legs, which
had undergone training that was beyond rigorous since grade school, utterly surpassed by…a humanities type.