Hanamonogatari

by Nisioisin

  “Oh? Isn’t ‘serious’ usually meant as a compliment?”

  “I don’t deserve the overestimation. I’m stupid, foolish. And I’m a clown. The word ‘serious’ actually doesn’t suit me.”

  “Are you─sure?”

  “I am. Also, I’m a coward.”

  A liar and a coward.

  Who was I to criticize Kaiki, anyway─I’d lied to my teammates, people I should have trusted, about why I was quitting.

  That was wrong, any way you slice it.

  “The way I see it,” opined Kaiki, “seriousness and cowardice aren’t necessarily incompatible. But I don’t give a shit whether you’re serious or not. What is it? Why did you stop me?”

  “Oh─yeah.” I wracked my brains and finally came up with something to ask him, narrowly managing to salvage the situation. “How did you know I would show up at the station today? How come you were able to ambush me there?”

  “Because I heard you’d be there. From your friend.”

  I’d only asked the question to weasel out of a fix, but upon consideration, it was the very first thing I should have done─hell-bent on reviling Kaiki, I’d completely forgotten my initial feeling that something was off.

  For him, however, it seemed to be a “you only have to ask” kind of a thing.

  “My friend… You mean, Higasa?”

  “Higasa?”

  As the one who invited me to the open campus, she was the only friend I could think of who could be his source. Still, it was hard to imagine someone who claimed to be shy counting Kaiki as an acquaintance, and he was reacting like he’d never heard her name before.

  “That─wasn’t the kid’s name.”

  “Then what was it?”

  “Numachi,” he answered. “Roka Numachi. Yeah, I’m pretty sure that was it.”

  017

  Apparently the smell clings to your entire body even at classy barbecue places, so as soon as I got home, I decided to take a bath.

  I scrupulously scrubbed my hair and body then immersed myself in the tub, which I had filled to the brim. I sank in up to my shoulders, up to my neck.

  My hair was much longer than it had been back when I was playing basketball, and I left it down as I got into the tub, so it floated on the surface like seaweed.

  How had Numachi and Kaiki come in contact? I couldn’t figure it out, and I hadn’t asked. Kaiki might know where I could find Numachi, but I couldn’t ask without bringing up Lord Devil and my left arm.

  I felt like it might be dangerous to share too much info with that man.

  However avuncular Deishu Kaiki might be with me, placing excessive trust in him was risky. Even if I got off unscathed, there was no guarantee that his machinations wouldn’t affect anyone around me.

  “But I’m more worried about Numachi giving Kaiki that information than about Kaiki himself…”

  Why would she do that?

  What was her goal?

  Had she found out that I was looking for her?

  Either way─I couldn’t be concerned about keeping up appearances anymore.

  No more putting on a show.

  Up to that point some part of me had thought that I would try my best to find her, and if I couldn’t, then so be it. But now it seemed I had to break out of that mentality of good sportsmanship.

  At this stage in the game, fair play was not what was called for.

  What was called for was a single-mindedness to settle things with her no matter what─which probably folded in my anger at having been bested by Kaiki in a sprint, and if so, all the better.

  Because it was an incontrovertible fact that I suffered the humiliating defeat thanks to Numachi tipping him off about my trip.

  After continuing my full-body soak for about thirty minutes, I got out and wrapped a towel around my head like a turban, threw a bathrobe over my still-damp naked body, and returned to my room to call Karen.

  “I’ve got a favor to ask, Karen, think you can help me?”

  She responded with a quick “Sure, of course” after a moment of quizzical silence.

  I felt a little guilty about exploiting her faith in me─particularly since this was a personal matter, unrelated in any way to “justice.”

  “I think there’s a girl called Roka Numachi living here in town, can you help me find her?”

  “Sure thing!” she agreed without hesitation─once she decided on a course, she never wavered, it seemed.

  Hmm. I really worry about her.

  Protect her, big brother!

  Then again, the number-one threat to her safety was that big brother.

  “What middle school did she attend?”

  I gave her all the data I had, a mixture of what I’d already known and info I’d gathered over the course of the past week.

  “Got it. With that much info and Tsukihi’s help, it’ll be a sure thing. Let’s see… Okay then, I should be in touch some time tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow? No need to rush…”

  “Not rushing might be hard for Tsukihi─she’s been on a real ‘better to burn out than to fade away’ kick lately. I wonder why… She used to take it so easy, it was like she was immortal or something.”

  “Hunh…”

  Search me.

  I don’t really know Tsukihi.

  We’ve barely met.

  “All right,” I said. “Anyway, I appreciate it. I promise I’ll find some way to repay you.”

  “Kwaaa? Just hang out with me again sometime,” Karen returned cheerfully.

  It was a reassuring, happy reply.

  Totally crushable.

  I just said, “Thank you,” and left it at that.

  But─in the end, the former Fire Sisters struck out.

  No, they didn’t actually strike out.

  Karen did thoroughly investigate Numachi for me, as I’d requested.

  Just as you’d expect of an Araragi─but in the very, very short term, the request itself was superfluous to our tale.

  Because the very next day, Monday.

  At school, in my own homeroom of all places─I came face to face with Roka Numachi once again.

  018

  “When I was still in school, I thought it was the rudest thing in the world when my classmates addressed our teacher without proper honorifics. I thought they were shameful, acting like they were adults when they were still just kids and pretending to be on equal footing with someone who actually earned a salary. I felt strongly that a teacher should be spoken to with respect, so I addressed them properly even if they sucked, regardless of what the other kids did. I thought it was overfamiliar and impolite to throw people’s names around. What a proper kid I am, with real manners, I used to think.”

  The next morning.

  When I hauled myself into my new third-year classroom that I was just starting to get used to, Numachi was sitting there all by herself─in my seat, no less─with her legs crossed obnoxiously like it was the most natural thing in the world.

  Mister Oshino would have said, I’ve been waiting.

  It’s not like I’d arrived particularly early─in fact, since my morning schedule is packed, I often arrive later than my schoolmates, and that day was no exception.

  And yet, there was no one in the classroom other than Numachi.

  Had she chased them out? No, if a girl with her demeanor, clearly an outsider, planted herself in the center of the classroom, Naoetsu High’s quiet, indoor-kid herbivores wouldn’t even be able to cross the threshold, as if some kind of force field were in place.

  Even I might do an about-face if I didn’t know her─if it weren’t for our fateful meeting the other day.

  Her wild brown hair alone, less dyed than punished in some kind of self-flagellation, had that much power.

  The wise man avoids danger, as they say.

  Then again, the proper aphorism for the occasion was probably: Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

  “But when I think about it now, maybe it was actually the kids who called
them by name who had it right. Etiquette aside, I think they did─because they weren’t worried about someone’s position, they only cared about who they were as a person. By getting the etiquette right, I got it wrong. I’ve completely forgotten all those teachers whom I supposedly revered. I have no idea what their names were. Japanese, Math, Science, Social Studies─Technology and Home Ec, Music, Phys Ed. I thought of all of them only as ‘teachers,’ and I never got it that each of them were real people with their own individual lives.”

  “…”

  “Middle school and high school are different in some ways, of course, but those are the, what, the impressions that came to me upon visiting a school for the first time in ages.”

  With this, Numachi gave a leisurely shrug, and taking hold of the crutch that had been leaning against the desk, she stood up (in a leisurely fashion, of course).

  “Why are you here? Or actually…” I asked, confused. Yes, confusion. The Lord Devil whom, up until yesterday, I couldn’t find no matter how hard I tried, was right there in front of me─in the classroom I’d totally thought of as my own turf.

  I felt like I really was face to face with a devil.

  “…Why have you come here?”

  “I just happened to be passing by─not. In fact, it was a hell of a stealth mission sneaking into this school without being detected. And I came to see you, obviously. I thought maybe you wanted to see me.”

  “Well…”

  All I could muster was that vague response.

  In my head, I wondered if yesterday’s call to Karen had already borne fruit, but that didn’t seem likely.

  It was simply too soon.

  Then─thanks to my investigations the previous week, so to speak… Numachi somehow got wind of it…

  And she was here to see me.

  But why?

  She was here to see me?

  How come?

  Total confusion.

  “What’s the matter, Kanbaru,” she said. “Isn’t there something you want to ask me? That’s why I so kindly legged it over here to see you.” She raised her leg laboriously─the leg that was encased in a plaster cast.

  Laboriously.

  Nastily.

  “I don’t need to ask it anymore,” I told her.

  “Hm?”

  “Now that we’ve met face to face like this─now that I’ve seen that left arm.”

  I pointed.

  At Numachi’s left arm, also encased in a plaster cast─the end of which was peeking out of the sleeve of her baggy jersey.

  She hadn’t been wearing the cast the other day.

  Had she had an accident since then and broken her arm?

  No, that hypothesis itself was too laborious, noxious.

  There was no need to quibble with the evidence, but if I were to anyway, she was using that encased left arm to hold her crutch.

  If you really had a broken arm, you could never pull that off. And even if you could, you wouldn’t.

  So─there was only one answer. A single possibility.

  “You,” I said, “stole─my left arm.”

  “I hauled away your junk. Or─I collected it,” Numachi rephrased, taking some gum out of her pocket like she couldn’t care less about our conversation.

  Not a stick of gum, but the kind that comes in a bottle. The whole bottle seemed to have been shoved into her pocket. Which wouldn’t have worked if her jersey weren’t so big.

  Opening the lid, she shook six or so pieces out onto her palm, threw them all into her mouth, and started chomping.

  A thrilling display.

  “Want some?”

  “Nope…”

  “’Kay.”

  Her offer having been declined, Numachi returned the bottle to her pocket, a little disappointedly but without any hesitation.

  She performed the entire operation with her left hand.

  It was in a plaster cast, but her fingers were sticking out and merely bandaged─so she could use it normally.

  “When? When the hell did you take it?”

  “While you were enjoying that little breast massage I gave you. Though that was the prep. It took effect the next morning, right?”

  Her prediction was accurate─but for the planner to guess the plan wasn’t in the least bit impressive.

  In fact it was ridiculous, like a culprit boasting about her crime.

  “Hey, why are you glaring at me like that? Shouldn’t you be thanking me, Kanbaru? After all, I took care of the arm that was the source of your worries.”

  “My arm wasn’t─”

  “It wasn’t worrying you? Really? Says the girl who made such a face─when she saw my leg?”

  “…”

  What sort of face had I made? Seeing the broken leg of my former archrival who’d been forced to retire due to it─wait.

  “Wait a sec… Speaking of your left leg. Don’t tell me it’s also…”

  Even as I began to voice the thought, I arrived at the conclusion that no, it was inconceivable. I mean, unlike my (fictional) situation, Numachi’s injury had come in the middle of a game, hadn’t it?

  In other words, she was surrounded by spectators when it occurred, so she couldn’t be faking it.

  Her injury was real.

  But that said─since she really had stolen my arm…or if not my arm, the devil’s arm, it wasn’t unreasonable to assume that she was the “collector” that Deishu Kaiki had mentioned.

  I felt uneasy, but this was an unease that had an answer.

  “Kaiki…” I began─knowing full well that it was absolutely not the kind of thing to ask Numachi point blank─“didn’t know you were the collector?”

  Hedging and using the interrogative form was my last little act of resistance. The question assumed that Numachi was Kaiki’s “junk man.” Come to think of it, she’d already admitted that she’d stolen my left arm, so I was the questionable one here.

  “Oh. So he did find you yesterday. Glad to hear it.” Her response, though, was that blithe remark. She continued, “And yes, that swindler knows the truth about me perfectly well. We’ve known each other for a while, and we’re very well acquainted. He’s a weird fellow─I’m not talking about his swindling technique, I mean that no matter who he’s talking to, he always seems to give the other person only half the information he has. I don’t really understand his philosophy myself, but he seems to always want to be a ‘bona fide third party.’ Or is it more like he ‘sets aside’ information, on principle? Like he doesn’t want to be the director. In fact, he doesn’t even want to appear in a supporting role. You could say he’s devoted to working behind the scenes. He knew all about my secret identity, and I’m sure he realized that your arm had been taken. But he didn’t talk about it. Why, I have no idea. Maybe it’s his policy, or more likely he didn’t want to jinx it.”

  “…”

  Only say half of what you’re thinking.

  What such a principle could be based on, I will never understand─but the fearsomely systematic mechanism made some kind of sense to me.

  It did match up with the portrait of Kaiki that my seniors had painted for me─they both agreed that he was always oddly reluctant to give out information.

  Interesting.

  So─he was also being stingy with his info yesterday?

  Accusing him of deceiving me would be going too far, but realizing that the man was indeed a congenital swindler was strangely calming.

  But, that was interesting. Numachi was the “collector” in question, after all─yet in that case.

  “What were you up to, telling a guy like Kaiki that I’d be going to that open campus yesterday? Thankfully, nothing bad came of it─but it could have.”

  “But it didn’t. Right?”

  “Don’t hide behind the outcome.”

  “You say that like the outcome isn’t what matters most─listen, I’d been hearing about you from Kaiki. He also wanted to see you, but for some reason he couldn’t. I can’t just turn a blind eye to a
person in need, can I?”

  “Give me a break.”