by Nisioisin
“Not that there was anything I could do, of course.
“But I figured I might as well meet up with Deishu Kaiki and see what he had to say. He called himself a ghostbuster, so he might be able to do something even if he was a swindler─soon I was calling his cell phone.
“He said: ‘It’s going to cost you.’
“To which I responded: ‘Money isn’t an issue.’
“Cool, huh?
“But I ended up not having to pay him a red cent. I got up early the next morning to catch the train to meet him─and that’s when I realized.
“That inside my plaster cast─my own left leg had transformed into a devil’s.”
025
“Your leg… How can that be?” I interrupted, unable to immediately grasp what her words signified.
Numachi seemed to have expected the question, but apparently expecting it was not the same as having an answer because she responded somewhat equivocally. “Who knows? My interpretation was that my powerful desire to help her brought about a wondrous miracle, that when I embraced her the devil’s leg was transplanted from her body to mine.”
The way she put that almost seemed designed to piss me off─it made me feel like her entire story was unreliable.
“Aberrations─aren’t such slippery, equivocal things,” I said.
“That’s where you’re wrong. They’re slippery and equivocal─like me. Don’t just swallow some blinkered expert’s bullshit about every aberration having its reason. Basically we’re talking about folk beliefs here, so a layman’s intuition should be more on the mark.”
“…”
With a devil residing in parts of her body, maybe Numachi was qualified to make such a statement.
Which didn’t leave me with much I could say─but since she’d told me her story, I had the responsibility to craft some kind of response.
The responsibility?
No, not really.
That wasn’t it.
I would just speak my mind, period.
“That girl… Roka Hanadori. What happened to her?”
“I don’t know. We only met that one time.”
“One time? Hang on a sec─don’t tell me you don’t know what happened to her after the devil’s leg was ‘transplanted’ to you,” I demanded, leaning towards Numachi. “Even if you didn’t actually speak to her─didn’t you at least go scope out the situation?”
“I probably should have, but unfortunately I didn’t know her address─she’d approached me via Hard Mode, so I didn’t even know her phone number. And even if I did, a call meant talking to her, so I wouldn’t have contacted her.”
“Why? That’s so─”
Irresponsible.
Is that what I was going to say?
If so, I should have said it.
And yet, what is responsibility?
I refused that word only a moment ago, and it felt just as dishonest now.
What more could I ask of Numachi, who’d taken over the burden of a devil’s limb from a troubled girl─some stranger to her who’d been as troubled as me?
I think I can safely declare.
That not even Araragi-senpai or Hanekawa-senpai could have done the same.
You couldn’t call it self-sacrifice, and even “self-satisfaction” didn’t do the job─it was such a selfless act that parents might not suffer it for their own children.
So, how?
How─could someone like Numachi?
“Basically I wanted to avoid getting too deeply involved, the same as when I was collecting unhappiness… Yeah, if you want to ascribe another reason to it, I was afraid that if we met up, if she learned that I’d taken on the weight of her ‘devil,’ she might feel burdened.”
“Burdened? You mean grateful.”
“Same thing.”
“…”
“Since the leg was transplanted to my body, hers ought to have gone back to normal─in which case, there was nothing left to do. Kanbaru, you may have reevaluated me to some degree, but you’re still only seeing part of the picture. What I did probably didn’t matter anyway. I couldn’t do a damn thing about her pregnancy, about her relationship with her mother, or her relationship with the flaky boyfriend who got a high school girl pregnant in the first place.”
You could say it would have been better to let the devil kill her mother, Numachi added, once again making me wonder how to take her words.
Her arguments reminded me of Mister Oshino’s stance, always trying to settle the world into some kind of golden mean, but I also had the feeling that there was a decisive difference between him and Numachi.
The difference between expertise and a layman’s intuition.
Or maybe more a disconnect than a difference?
I can’t put my finger on it, exactly…but I feel like it has something to do with willingness.
The willingness to stick your neck out, to get involved, that Mister Oshino didn’t exhibit…
“What’s more, what I did really wasn’t altruistic. There was something to be gained, and I knew it. By getting my hands on a devil’s leg, I replaced my own ruined one. As weird as it sounds that I got my hands on a leg.”
“…So then, the cast and the crutch are fake?”
“Well, yeah─I can walk normally without any pain, but I still can’t expose this leg to the world. And unlike you, Kanbaru, my injury was a big enough deal to make the papers. There was no way I could suddenly say, ‘It got better!’ I just have to keep on pretending it’s injured─like you’re doing now.”
“Every single thing you say has to end in a barb…and it’s getting on my nerves. Do you actually hate me, Numachi?”
“You’re asking me that at this late date? You actually thought I was fond of you? Or should I say fondue?”
“What does that even mean.”
“It means nothing at all. Ah, but as to why I still keep this leg hidden under a cast, there’s another meaning─it’s useful for my ‘unhappiness collecting.’ It’s a statistical fact that people find it easier to spill their guts to an injured person, so after all this time I couldn’t give up that user-friendly experience.”
“Then…” I said. “Then─nothing changed after that, you just kept collecting people’s unhappiness.”
“Obviously, since I’m still at it. Why, you thought I’d have a change of heart? Not a chance. But I did pick up another hobby to go along with it. In other words─collecting ‘devil parts.’”
“…”
“While I ended up not having to commission Kaiki, we continued to share info, and he told me later what kind of thing this devil is─I realized that it was ‘my rival.’”
“Rival?”
“Yeah. My business rival.”
For the first time, I saw naked hatred in Numachi’s eyes as she turned her gaze on her own left arm and leg. No, they were hers, but also not hers─
“A business rival who nullifies people’s problems and in so doing renders their unhappiness irretrievable. Kaiki may be a sort of business associate, but the devil is my business rival. Which is why I decided to get rid of it─every time I caught wind of it somewhere, I visited that town and endeavored to drive it out. Or should I say…to bring it in?”
“You mean…”
“Yup. I told you at the beginning, but it’s not just this arm and leg. I’ve got pieces of the devil all across my body. It’s like that line from the Nausicaä movie, if you will─‘He who becomes my husband shall see a sight worse even than this.’ You don’t think I’m wearing this baggy, thuggish tracksuit because I like the way it looks, do you?”
“Well…”
In other words, she was wearing it─for the same reason that Roka Hanadori wore track pants under her skirt.
Was that it?
“Haha, I’m just messing with you. I wear it because I like it. It’s obviously convenient that it also hides the outline of my body, though,” Numachi said, tugging down her sleeve and the cuff of her pantleg to cover her devil
ish limbs. “Guess I’ll never be a swimsuit model.” Apparently, when she contrived to split open her cast as part of her staging, she hadn’t considered the consequences─the fact that she would have to get home.
A tracksuit, which can cope with such a situation, is an exceptional article of clothing indeed.
“That’s the end of my story, Kanbaru. Do you understand now? That I took your left arm very much for my own personal reasons, based on my extremely personal predilections? I’ll make it sound cool and say that it was the last vestige of that long-gone moment when I wanted to be kind to someone─make no mistake, it was never, ever for your sake.”
So you don’t have to thank me.
That’s what she told me.
Her words made me feel as though she’d seen right through me─and as though she’d schooled me.
Could it be?
Yeah, I guess.
I’d wanted to─thank Numachi.
And to come to terms with it.
But now that she pointed it out to me with her remark, that road was closed.
We were totally incompatible, she and I.
“…How much of the devil’s body have you collected at this point?”
“Not even one third.”
“If you collect them all─won’t you become a devil yourself?”
“Maybe, but my intention is precisely to assimilate the devil into myself.”
Was that even possible?
No, it wasn’t about possible or impossible. Numachi wanted to do it, and she was.
Sacrificing herself─hurling out her body.
But even if she was able to, why did she feel like she needed to?
Wasn’t she just being dragged along by a moment’s whim?
It was the same as her unhappiness collecting.
It wasn’t that she wanted to help people, even if that’s what ended up happening. Nor did she want to complete the devil because she had a wish she wanted granted.
What did Numachi’s life─even mean.
…Nothing at all?
“According to Kaiki, things stalled in the middle of your second wish─and your plan was that if you left it alone, the devil would depart because it had defaulted on its promise. But the thing about stalled is that you never know when or why it might start up again. It’s a dormant volcano, not an extinct one. So I think you should count your lucky stars that I’ve taken over for you. Yeah, that would make me happy.”
“You really think I can think that?”
“If you can, great, if not, that’s also fine. You think I give a shit how you feel? I really couldn’t care less. Or─do you want to try and take it back? It’s right here, this left arm.”
“…”
“You wouldn’t want to do that, now─would you?”
Well then. Having said everything she had to say, she casually turned to leave my presence─to leave the gymnasium.
No, “everything she had to say” is a weird way to put it when she’d told me everything I wanted to hear.
What more could I hope for?
Only, I got the feeling that it wasn’t the gym she was leaving─but rather the basketball court on which we’d been talking this whole time.
Maybe she had come to discharge her duty to explain everything to me, or maybe, as she put it herself, she had simply come to learn the provenance of an item in her collection.
But I thought.
That maybe, just maybe, she came to see me at school that day─just so we could play basketball.
Hadn’t she said something to that effect─that she wanted to be reunited on the court? She had made that wish, at least, come true.
Made that wish.
Come true.
Sure, her injury had been nullified, but she had that left leg, and pieces of a devil all across her body─even so, she played the sport at a level that left her with very few partners─very few with full knowledge of the situation─apart from me.
In fact, I was probably the only one.
…But had I been able to do enough for her?
What had I done for Numachi?
By listening to her story─did I ease her mind at least a little bit?
“Okay then, Kanbaru. I don’t think we’ll meet again, but do me a favor and take care of yourself. I mean, like… Do all those things people do, study for your exams, make new friends, find a boyfriend, find a job, get married, raise some kids, fight with them, all that human stuff.”
All the things I couldn’t do.
She seemed to have spoken the last bit to forestall anything I might have been about to say, and, holding her crutch with her right hand and waving with her left, which was ensconced in her tracksuit’s baggy sleeve─moving at her usual leisurely pace, in no particular hurry, Roka Numachi disappeared from my sight.
The now very late members of the various sports teams that used the gym arrived en masse only a moment after.
026
We come to hate the manga we loved as children, while later in life we find great pleasure in the novels we couldn’t understand when we were young.
We begin to hate the people we once loved, and love those we once hated, we become indifferent to things we valued, and regret getting rid of things we didn’t value─if the repetition of this adds up to a life, adds up to living, then it would be dishonest to say that it never seems empty.
Which is exactly why we should cherish every moment? What an overblown, insincere way to put it.
What we thought were precious memories fade away, we suddenly need the things we discarded as worthless─doesn’t life become nothing but regrets if you start thinking that way?
What in the world should I have said to Numachi? Should I have put on an act and demanded that she return the arm after all? Pretended to be a resolute woman of conviction who could take on losses?
I hadn’t been able to.
Nor could I thank her.
In the end I just let it be, I just let it go, I couldn’t do a thing. I’d finally seen her again after searching high and low─she came to see me for crying out loud─but I still couldn’t do a thing.
I listened to her story.
And I got depressed─it put me in a gloomy mood. That was it.
I was convinced that, in my own way, I’d gotten a raw deal─but my life had been a cakewalk compared to Numachi’s. Though of course such comparisons are pointless.
Even after I got home, I didn’t feel like doing a damn thing, and I just flopped face down on the futon I’d left out on the floor of the disaster I called a bedroom.
I didn’t even bother to take off my school uniform.
But apparently the common sense not to let your uniform get wrinkled works subconsciously and is even more basic than routine; laying face down where I’d fallen, I lazily began to undo my uniform.
Partway through, it seemed like I might never get untangled from it.
If I used both hands, I was up to the task of getting my clothes off, even in that position─if I used both hands.
“Right…that’s right. Now there’s nothing I can’t do. With this left hand…I can take my clothes off, I can play basketball,” I mumbled, hoping to just go to sleep.
And I thought─how wonderful if I’ve forgotten everything when I wake up, like it was all just a dream.
But that wish didn’t come true.
Maybe no more of my wishes would come true, now that the devil was gone. Just as I was beginning to drift off, I heard the ringtone of my cell coming from the pocket of my discarded skirt.
“…”
When I reached out for it and took a look, Karen’s number was displayed on the LCD screen.
“Ah, Miss Suruga? Sorry, were you sleeping?”
“No, it’s fine… I was just lying down for a minute.”
“Sorry, I’ll be brief then,” Karen said in a solemn tone. “I’m calling because I have info on that Roka Numachi person you asked me about yesterday.”
“Oh…I see.” Feeling bad tha
t I couldn’t manage to keep the listlessness out of my voice, I said, “Sorry, when you went to all that trouble on my behalf, but I actually ended up running into her today.”
“Running into her?”