Hanamonogatari

by Nisioisin

  You can’t live your life without playing a character, that’s the way of the world─Numachi wasn’t totally off base when she said that I play the clown.

  I can’t criticize Ogi on that score.

  In that sense, Senjogahara-senpai’s “character” was perfect─in its imperfectness. When she was running, though, she could leave even that character behind.

  Beautiful.

  I’d never found the sight of someone running beautiful until I saw her run─never thought that the sight of a person huffing and puffing, desperately throwing out every ounce of strength they had, could combine to such beautiful effect.

  Which is why I also thought, “I don’t want to run beside that.” I didn’t want to be compared to her. Having worked so hard at running to atone for the weakness that made me turn to a devil for help, I felt like I didn’t deserve to run beside her.

  It was impermissible.

  So no matter how many times she invited me to challenge her in a sprint, I turned her down, again and again, for two whole years. I could have just won, pact with the devil or no─but I don’t think I even wanted to beat her.

  Running, not fast, but beautifully.

  No match.

  “She started running again last year saying she wanted to lose weight…and God, it was beautiful. How I’d love to be able to run like that─”

  The uncouth blaring of a car horn dragged my mind─adrift on a cloud of reverie and helpless nostalgia no sooner than I’d stopped running─back to reality.

  True, I’d collapsed in the dead center of the road, my arms and legs splayed out like I was making snow angels. It was only dumb luck that the car didn’t run me over.

  Dawn had come, but it was still so early. I had my guard down and very nearly lost my life.

  When I looked, a dazzling yellow New Beetle rested a dozen feet short of where I lay.

  “I’m sorry, I’ll get out of the way,” I said in response to the horn, but my voice was much too quiet to carry to the driver.

  I felt like a slug.

  I was too exhausted to stand up.

  I considered rolling out of the way so the car could at least pass by me, but before I could move, the driver opened the door and stepped out.

  “Hey, you okay?”

  Whether he thought I was a drunk sleeping it off or the victim of a traffic accident, he must have been worried. Approaching me, he crouched down and peered into my face as I lay there still unable to stand up.

  “…Wait, Kanbaru?”

  “Ah.” I sounded pretty stupid.

  It was someone I knew.

  “Araragi-senpai.”

  029

  “What a letdown. What a letdown. What a letdown… You, driving a car…”

  “Shut up! What’s wrong with me driving a car? Do you have any idea what I had to go through to get my license?”

  “But you said your bicycle was your life… You said you wanted a racing bike… Secretly, I was still feeling guilty about smashing your mountain bike, and now you’ve made a fool out of me.”

  “Keep feeling guilty about that.”

  “I thought it was going to be a motorbike once you graduated. You used to go on about getting a license.”

  “I’ve been trying to. I just got my regular driver’s license first.”

  “And I mean, a New Beetle? Not exactly the manliest car.”

  “Don’t you mock the New Beetle! Say what you will about me, but don’t mock it! It’s the coolest-looking car in the world!”

  “Didn’t you use to say that real men drive muscle cars?”

  “Did I? Hmm, the words ‘muscle car’ really hit hard when you hear someone else say them…”

  “I never wanted to see you like this… I wish you’d stayed a third-year forever…”

  “Don’t worry. In the next book I’m back in high school as if nothing happened.”

  “Really playing fast and loose, huh? But, good for you, buying a foreign car when you just graduated from high school. Did you take out a loan?”

  “No, my parents bought it for me for graduation.”

  “What a letdown!”

  He bundled me into the car like a piece of luggage and lay me down across the back seat, then offered to drive me home.

  First I got taken home in a police car, now I was being taken home by Araragi-senpai; the two felt somehow like opposite ends of the spectrum.

  But even with my wild imagination, I never dreamed that a precious opportunity to be swept up in my precious senpai’s arms would arrive in this fashion.

  I felt a tiny bit awkward about all the ways our bodies touched as he picked me up and put me into the car, but I felt too spent even to crack a joke.

  Well, I certainly felt spent.

  But more than that, it was the shock of the Araragi/car combo that had taken the life out of me.

  “Ahhh… I feel like I’m being abducted…”

  “That’s a little disturbing.”

  “I could ruin your whole life if I screamed right now…”

  “Is it such a cardinal sin that I deserve to have my life ruined by a junior of mine from my high school years? Driving a car, I mean.”

  “Heheh,” I laughed weakly from where I lay across the back seat.

  His high school years. It was obvious, of course, but he’d entered the next phase of his life after graduating from Naoetsu High in March…

  “Still, my dear senior. The whole time we’ve been texting back and forth, you never told me you’d gotten a car. Was it because you were ashamed?”

  “Hunh? Heh, maybe. The truth is, I feel pretty embarrassed that you caught me red-handed zipping around in the early morning with nowhere to go, trying to look cool in my brand-new car with my hot-off-the-presses driver’s license.”

  You always did have a knack for turning up at the exact wrong moment, he grumbled as he eased to a stop at a red light.

  His driving still had “Learner’s Permit” written all over it.

  “The wrong moment… I see, from your perspective it might seem that way,” I said.

  Looking at the back of his head as he drove.

  Wow…his hair was getting really long.

  I heard he started growing it out to hide the marks on his neck after he was bitten by a vampire, but now it was so long that he looked like a painter or a musician─I could cover both those options by just saying an artist.

  Araragi, Artist.

  That sounds so…

  Just get a haircut.

  “You’ve always had excellent timing from my perspective, though, my dear senior.”

  “Hunh?” He cocked his head to one side like he didn’t understand what I meant but had no real interest in finding out. “Well, I guess it’s not actually such a bad moment. As in, you’re the first person besides my little sisters to ride in this car. Except for Shinobu, of course.”

  “What about Senjogahara-senpai?”

  “She doesn’t trust my driving.”

  “Sounds like something she’d say…”

  “‘Anybody would sooner ride on you while you crawl around on all fours than in a car you’re driving.’ Anybody would sooner? Where do I fit in?”

  “Haha. Her acid tongue has gone NC-17 since she graduated from high school.”

  “‘Regulations? Huh? What’re those?’ she says.”

  “Guess she’s not done turning over that new leaf…”

  “‘I! Am! In college now! I’ll be nineteen soon! So those regulations don’t apply to me anymore, top or bottom!’”

  “Your imitation is a little too close for comfort…but didn’t they get rid of any regulations having to do with age?”

  “They sure did. To put a positive spin on it, the government is putting an attraction to little girls on equal footing with an attraction to cougars. In a sense, you might say they’ve recognized lolicon as a basic human right.”

  “That spin is so positive it’s scary.”

  “I’m not sure about Senjoga
hara’s use of ‘top,’ though… And she also said, ‘Publishers ought to have the guts to turn this situation around and profit from it. In particular, beat the government to it and set up independent civil review boards that will issue lenient rulings, claiming at the same time some of the big bucks the nation and the PTA are throwing around.’”

  “Sounds like a little too much entrepreneurial spirit…”

  “‘Moreover, the review committee can expect a little something extra from the creators to grease the wheels.’”

  “That’s low!”

  “Yup. If possible, I don’t want that kind of person in my passenger seat.”

  “You’d give Hanekawa-senpai a ride, though, wouldn’t you?”

  “My driving technique isn’t up to snuff yet. I couldn’t display it to someone who drives military vehicles around minefields for NGOs in conflict zones.”

  “…”

  Is that what she’s doing with herself?

  That’s some hardcore self-discovery.

  “Did something happen?” asked my dear senior─gently bringing the conversation around to me. If anything triggered it, it might have been the light turning red, but I’m pretty sure that wasn’t it─I found myself thinking that even if he replaced his bicycle with a car, even if he grew out his hair or nails, he was still very much Koyomi Araragi.

  Whether he changes or not.

  Whether he matures or not, he’s the same old Araragi-senpai.

  “Things aren’t working out for me,” I told him pathetically, griping when I hadn’t seen him in so long. “Things just aren’t going my way. I feel really unstable.”

  “You being unstable is nothing new.”

  “Yeah… I think I’m just really lonely by myself, with you and the others gone.”

  “There’s Ogi-chan.”

  “Chan?”

  Finding the diminutive odd (was he the kind of guy who ever applied it to boys?), I shook my head.

  When he put it that way, I had Higasa.

  I’ve actually got plenty of friends, and I enjoy talking with my juniors from the basketball team.

  And yet.

  The disappearance of my stalwart seniors has poked a gaping hole in my heart.

  “You know, Senjogahara’s sad too. She misses you.”

  “And you?”

  “Of course I miss you. I miss you a lot. You’re the only one who can follow me to the banter underground.”

  “…Oh.”

  That remark made me happy.

  Even if he was just being diplomatic─no, he never was the type to be diplomatic.

  Therefore.

  Therefore, I.

  “What’s not going your way? It’s not like you to run until you collapse.”

  “Not like me… I’ve completely lost track of what is or isn’t like me.”

  “Lost track?”

  “Uh huh. What the hell does it mean for something to be like me? What do you think it means for something to be like you, for instance?”

  “That’s a good question─I dunno. I was always just struggling to live up to the role of your dear senior. In that sense, maybe it was you who decided what was or wasn’t like me.”

  “I decided?”

  “In the end, maybe we play whatever character people we want to like us will like─though there’s got to be more to it. There are things we lose, that we lose track of, when we put on such a performance.”

  “Things we lose… Right. I feel like I’ve already lost all kinds of things.”

  I was thinking of the arm underneath me as I lay there. It was still wrapped up, so he probably had no idea what it looked like beneath the bandage.

  This past week really brought home how that left arm had become very much a part of what was “like me”─but also how it had been something I needed to cut loose sooner or later.

  If that arm was the punishment I had to bear for my sins, then it had been necessary for me to complete my sentence.

  I’d been terribly wrong in thinking that checking the morning paper and the TV news and tying up my arm before I went to bed for the rest of my life would serve as my atonement.

  Atonement was something more…much more…

  “I wonder…if you’ll be done someday too,” I muttered.

  “Hm? With what?”

  “Uh, nothing…”

  Sprawled across the back seat, I let out a sigh.

  There was such a gap between the burdens he and I bore that it didn’t even bear comparison. Nor was it something I should ask about lightly.

  So I asked something else instead.

  “Hey, Araragi-senpai, how were you able to make yourself do so much for everyone, even to the point of sacrificing yourself?”

  “Like I ever did. You’re talking about Hanekawa.”

  “It was…different with her, I think. What she sacrificed wasn’t her own life─but you denied yourself, and kept on denying yourself, to arrive at where you are now. How were you able to do that?”

  I asked him. Maybe I was criticizing him more than asking him.

  The fact is.

  I did want to criticize him.

  Because I knew how hard, how unbearable it had been for Senjogahara-senpai to watch him be that way─and keep silent.

  And.

  It had been hard─unbearable, for me too.

  Especially─at the beginning of second semester when the ruins of the cram school burned to the ground along with all our memories, and during that other case right before graduation…

  It had been so bad that I’d wanted to die in his place.

  “I don’t think it was just your immortal body. In fact, your immortal body is your greatest self-denial and a sort of tomb.”

  “…”

  “Tell me. What makes you…go so far?”

  I felt sure─that the answer would provide some insight into Numachi and her collections too.

  What was this about wanting to accomplish something─

  So badly that you’d deny yourself.

  So badly that you’d die for it.

  “That’s a tough one… The truth is, I’ve never really thought about it. That sounds disappointing…but hmm, let’s see.”

  He made a show of thinking about it.

  As far as I could tell, he really hadn’t thought about it─maybe he never even needed to.

  But I wanted to know.

  The reason.

  Or rather, the purpose.

  I wanted him to consider the principle that governed his actions.

  “…Back when I was in elementary school,” he began.

  “Huh?”

  “During class, I’d think about this kind of thing: If a spaceman suddenly appeared in the classroom and was going to do something horrible to everyone, what should I do?”

  “…”

  “The me in my imagination would take down the spaceman without a second thought─I would thoroughly beat his ass into the ground with a finishing move like the muscle-buster or something.”

  I was the hero, he said.

  His awfully serious tone contrasted sharply with what he was actually saying─I couldn’t quite tell if he was being serious or if it was all a joke.

  “I think every boy has daydreams like that to some extent. And you, Kanbaru, as a girl? What were you thinking about during class in elementary school?”

  “What was I thinking? Well…”

  Hmmm.

  I don’t think I ever indulged in fantasies like those…or at least that’s what I’d like to think, but upon reflection, the first time I asked a devil to grant my wish was during elementary school… In that sense, I had no right to laugh at his story.

  It was too similar to my own.

  “I guess I’d be lying if I said I never had such thoughts,” I replied vaguely in the end.

  “I see. Well─after I graduated from elementary school, I learned that everybody had been thinking the same kinds of things, and I felt embarrassed about how ‘not special’ I w
as. At the same time I was also kind of relieved─it was reassuring more than anything.”