Hanamonogatari

by Nisioisin

  “Don’t expect an interesting story from me,” I said, a little fed up with Numachi’s roundabout style. “People always seem to get the wrong impression─but I’m an extremely uninteresting person.”

  Yes.

  I’m not interesting─just hypocritical.

  021

  It really isn’t an interesting story.

  And I, myself, don’t fully grasp the particulars of everything surrounding the arm─the Monkey’s Paw or the Devil’s Hand or whatever you want to call it. Like Kaiki said, it’s just something I inherited from my mother.

  My mother.

  If we’re going to talk about Toé Gaen’s legacy, that tattered, desiccated left hand in its paulownia box is it as far as I’m concerned.

  Because it’s the one and only thing─my mother left to me.

  It makes me a little sad to think about.

  I think I would have preferred if she just didn’t leave me anything at all.

  It was probably my mother who inducted Kaiki-the-swindler into the world of aberrations, but for all that, she didn’t teach me a thing.

  She didn’t tell me anything about how to use the Monkey’s Paw.

  If I’d known what kind of item it was, I doubt I would have used it─no, now I’m just making excuses.

  I would have used it, even if I’d known.

  That’s the kind of person I am. A weak one.

  And I’m probably just trying to pass the buck by saying that she didn’t teach me anything.

  It’s true that the only object she left me was that sketchy-ass hand, but she also left me her words.

  She taught me all kinds of things about how to live my life.

  “If you can’t be medicine, be poison. Otherwise you’re nothing but water.”

  I learned that from her─it’s just that I haven’t been able to make use of that particular nugget of wisdom.

  I let it get swept away on the tides of time.

  Simply forgetting it.

  “Huh. ‘I want to be able to run faster’ and ‘I want to be by my beloved senpai’s side again’─those are pretty simple-hearted wishes. I might even go so far as to call them mediocre.”

  Those were Numachi’s thoughts on the story I’d just finished telling her. Kind of harsh, when she’d made me do so─but leaving out the part about Araragi-senpai being a vampire might have diminished the overall impact of my arm’s backstory.

  But it’d have taken all night to give a full account of his relationship to Shinobu, and I didn’t think it was anything that I, as an outsider, should be telling people.

  He was the only one who had the right. For Numachi, who subsisted on the unhappiness of others, his story might have been a real feast. I had to wonder…

  How would Araragi-senpai deal with this baffling brown-haired girl?

  “I’d heard a thing or two about Senjogahara. She and Hanekawa were making waves even beyond Kiyokaze Middle,” Numachi said. “So Senjogahara was ill, huh? That’s tough. I’d have loved to hear her story. Well, she’s better now, that’s all that matters.”

  Yup, I lied about that as well.

  Of course, there was no way I could tell Numachi that Senjogahara-senpai had met a crab aberration. But the relaxed look on her face as she relished my “pity-bragging,” even while venting all sorts of horrible thoughts and whatnot, made me feel guilty, as though I’d spat out lies for my own selfish reasons.

  I’m not against lying per se, but it felt like I was conning her.

  Did Deishu Kaiki─feel that way all the time?

  It’s hasty to assume that someone who’s skilled in the art of deception has no scruples about deceiving people, when you think about it.

  Likewise─

  Just because Numachi collects people’s unhappiness, just because she seems thrilled and proactive about it─doesn’t necessarily mean she has zero scruples.

  We have no idea how other people really feel.

  And when it’s not just unhappiness that she’s gathering, but the pieces of a “devil”─what the hell could her motivation be?

  “Well, I suppose time solved Senjogahara’s problem, too? Well, she was sick, so maybe ‘salved’ is a better word.”

  “No… Haven’t you been listening? It was the guy who’s now her boyfriend who solved her problem─and he was the one who solved my problem, too.”

  “Huh, okay. Sounds like he’s quite a standup guy. That such a decent human being could even exist surprises me more than anything.”

  “…”

  Maybe I should have told her she was dead wrong about him being “decent” or a “standup guy.”

  His character got more and more out of control as time went on, to the point that even I, with my honeyed words, stopped being able to cover for him. It was a sad state of affairs that I found myself pausing about a mentor I respect so much.

  Nevertheless.

  Nevertheless, Araragi-senpai was Araragi-senpai to the end─and I’m sure he still is.

  Right, however sordid his relationship with his little sisters may become…

  “Heheh. Well, you really are more into girls than boys, aren’t you, Kanbaru?”

  “What do you mean, ‘really’?”

  “I mean that even back then, there was always something sketchy about the way you looked at your teammates and opponents.”

  “I never once looked at anyone in an unseemly way during a wholesome game of basketball.”

  Probably.

  I think.

  Though now that you mention it, I’m not so sure…

  I might be seeing the past through rose-colored glasses─on our high school team, too, I’d made Higasa’s life more difficult…

  Aaaanyway, moving on.

  “Hey, let’s smooch.”

  “Pfff!”

  I couldn’t help but titter at Numachi’s sudden proposal─because it seemed exactly like something I would say.

  “Heheheh. I prefer girls to those oafish boys too, you know.”

  As she said this, Numachi started crawling towards me on all fours. Her movements were so slow, I should’ve been able to make my getaway very easily, but I just couldn’t move, frozen like a deer in the headlights, or as if I were sewn to the floor.

  Temporary paralysis?

  Why?

  Numachi slowed her pace even further, as if to savor me in that state, and after what seemed like ages, she entwined her body with mine and pushed me down onto the floor of the gymnasium.

  I say she pushed me down, but she was a petite girl.

  Plus, she couldn’t adequately move the joints of her left arm and leg, restrained as they were by the plaster casts.

  I was almost certainly her daddy in terms of simple physical strength, so I could have forced her off me if I wanted.

  Even with her entire weight pressing down on me, I could have thrown her off easily─not to mention the fact that, while she was lying on top of me, she was doing so solicitously, tenderly, not actually pinning me down.

  Even with her twined around me, the situation didn’t change: I could have gotten away any time I wanted.

  I should have been able to, but couldn’t.

  “In other words, you don’t want to,” Numachi said. From atop me. “There are so many people like that. Even though almost anything can be solved by running away─there are so many people who think that running away means you’ve lost. Kaiki would probably disagree, but from my point of view, they simply seem to be going out of their way to make themselves unhappy.”

  “Going out of their way─”

  “There were basketball players like that too, weren’t there? The self-defeating kind─what the hell is up with that, anyway? With racing towards unhappiness.”

  “Not racing… More like routed,” I said. From beneath Numachi. “It might be hard for someone like you, who was somewhat lacking in motivation as a player, to understand─never mind for someone who’s made a hobby of collecting other people’s unhappiness─but those people
went in looking for something more important than winning or losing.”

  “Than winning or losing?”

  “Or─more important than happiness or unhappiness, maybe…”

  What about me?

  What was I looking for when I started playing basketball? Like I’d told Numachi, my initial incentive was dealing with the fallout from the wish I’d made on the Devil’s Hand.

  Somewhere along the line I got hooked.

  But─I really don’t think it was because I wanted to win.

  Would Numachi have seen my style as “racing towards unhappiness”?

  As being routed?

  “But running away doesn’t mean you’ve lost, nor does it equal unhappiness,” she insisted. “If you try and fail to run away, you can at least feel resigned. Or, Kanbaru, maybe deep down inside, you want me to force a kiss on you?”

  “…”

  “We’re both boyish, but for some reason you strike me as more of a bottom than a top. It cracks me up that you, the Prince Charming whom all of your juniors adore, are more of a little girl than anyone. Our sense of self is so different from how others see us─not that either one is truer than the other.”

  As she said this.

  A bewitching smile rose to her lips, which moved ever so slowly towards my face.

  “W-Wait a second…”

  All I needed to do to escape Numachi’s hold was to roll over like I was turning in my sleep─but my body made no such attempt.

  “S-S-Someone might come.”

  “They won’t.”

  “………!”

  No, really, wait a second.

  Sure, I talk all kinds of big talk to Araragi-senpai, but while I’ve got plenty of book learning under my belt, when it comes to practical experience, I’m a total─

  “Smooch.”

  Numachi lightly brushed my cheek with her fingers and withdrew quickly, in stark contrast to the languorous way she’d approached me.

  “Disappointed?” she asked with a mischievous gleam in her eye.

  “…”

  I could make no reply, and, touching my cheek where she’d caressed it as if to make sure it was still there, I sat up.

  Nrrgh.

  She got me.

  “Let’s keep things wholesome, nice and wholesome,” she said. “We’re young people with bright futures ahead of us, and if we keep playing with fire like this…”

  She grabbed the ball she’d been holding under her arm and started dribbling it with her right hand, leaving me behind as she made for the basket─then, planting her foot, the left one in the plaster cast, she took off.

  I was sure she was going to do a lay-up, but to my surprise she went for a dunk.

  I was under the impression that I was the only high school girl in Japan who could dunk─but she made it look easy.

  Her hand stuffed the ball straight into the hoop.

  “Freestyle basketball, indeed. Well said. Like some street performer’s show, for sure─a far cry from what I think of as the essence of basketball.” Numachi hung from the hoop as the ball bounced away across the floor. “But don’t forget that a master street performer is a true artist, too. Kanbaru, so you dislike dunking because it feels like cheating? Being able to do something no one else can do can give you a complex, perversely enough.”

  Being too talented is a heavy burden, huh?

  By that, she was talking about pressure, I thought, and therefore unhappiness.

  Ultimately, in Numachi’s eyes, perhaps everything constituted a reason to be unhappy, anything could cause misfortune─not that she was wrong, necessarily.

  “You definitely couldn’t dunk in middle school, though. I didn’t know you’d had the nickname Poison Swamp until Higasa told me, but I remember you being called Can’t-Jump Swamp.”

  Then again, that moniker had come about as the abbreviated form of “The Swamp You Can’t Jump Out Of,” which played on her family name (literally “swamp”) and which she’d been called because her Quagmire Defense robbed whatever player she was guarding of the option to jump. It’s not that her style involved not jumping─still, there’s no way she could have dunked back then.

  This isn’t a manga.

  “Hahaha, well, either way I’m muddy terrain. In which case, I’d feel better being called the Bottomless Swamp.”

  “And─with that leg.”

  “Yup. With this leg,” she said, finally letting go of the hoop and dropping to the ground─unbelievably, or maybe that was the whole point, but at any rate, ostentatiously landing on the gym floor with her plaster-encased left leg. “Well, your unhappiness is entirely my problem now. I, Lord Devil, have taken up the full burden. You don’t need to worry anymore, you can smile and live happily ever after and just forget about some devil’s arm.”

  “…How can I?” She seemed halfway serious, in other words like she actually meant well, but there was no way I could accept her words just like that. “That arm is proof of my sins. If you think I’m going to let it be taken from me in a way I don’t even understand yet, if you think I’m going to let you shoulder it for me─”

  Araragi-senpai retains vampire factors in his body. That’s the proof of his sins─an apology to Shinobu, a sign of his sincerity, I think. He can probably go back to being fully human any time he wants. That’s what Mister Oshino said, anyway.

  But he wouldn’t.

  Not a chance.

  So I couldn’t just let go of that arm, either─

  “That’s my arm,” I declared.

  “Nope. It’s a devil’s arm.”

  “If that’s the case, haven’t you retired Lord Devil?”

  “Then I just start calling myself O Most Gracious Lord Devil. According to a certain ominous gentleman, this thing belonged to your mother. So it was your arm for exactly no time at all, not for a single second.”

  And so saying.

  Numachi rolled up the sleeve of her baggy tracksuit to the shoulder, exposing the plaster cast to me─and in the blink of an eye.

  With the strength of that arm─she split the cast open.

  Shattered it, more like.

  And, no surprise, what appeared from within was indeed─or rather, of course─that all-too-familiar beast’s arm, covered in thick hair.

  “Hm?”

  No, although I wasn’t surprised as such─wasn’t surprised at the fact that Numachi’s left arm had transformed into that of a devil, something nevertheless didn’t feel right.

  I had the sense that the arm was slightly─shorter than the one I knew.

  I’m pretty sure that when that arm had been integrated into my own, the devil part encroached on my flesh all the way to my elbow─but now that it was part of Numachi’s flesh, it went no further than the wrist.

  It had gotten shorter.

  “Why─”

  “Isn’t it obvious, Kanbaru? Your first wish was granted. At that point, the devil’s arm grew longer, right? Didn’t you say so yourself?”

  “Yeah, sure…but─”

  “When I took the arm, I left behind the part of your soul that the devil had consumed. So it returned to its original size.”

  “The price I paid─for my first wish?”

  No way. This was crazy talk.

  I made a deal with a devil. That’s written in stone, or blood, and it wasn’t right that I could retrieve any part of my being that had been taken away.

  In the words of that manga Senjogahara-senpai is fond of, it ignored the Law of Equivalent Exchange─what, did I use the Philosopher’s Stone or something?

  No.

  It’s easy to throw around terms like “collector” and “junk man,” but what did it really mean to be assembling the pieces of a “devil”?

  “All right, let’s get on with it, Numachi. There’s a limit to how late the basketball team can be,” I said, steadying my resolve. “I told you the backstory of the arm just like I promised. Now it’s your turn.”

  Honestly, even at that point, I wanted to t
urn back─I intensely desired to head home without hearing her story, and to start studying for exams or something, but I steeled myself for whatever was to come.

  I would see this thing through.