by Nisioisin
001
Tsukihi Araragi, the younger of my two little sisters, doesn’t really give the impression of someone walking down a road─but when I say that, I’m not trying to evoke some cool sense of treading a path that is not a path or blazing new trails in life. How can I put this? It seems like she forges ahead lightly, airily, as if she’s flying.
That’s just my personal view as her big brother.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a viewpoint.
Though I bet almost everyone who knows her thinks of her as being hard to pin down─as she floats about like a bird.
Hard to pin down, hard to figure out.
Everyone knows that birds can fly─but the fascinating thing is, apparently they were equipped with the capacity to fly even before they flew. They call that preadaptation.
Without the capacity they could never have flown, so it stands to reason. Still, it’s strange when you think about it. Before birds branched off from reptiles, before they flew, they were already prepared to fly.
When you get right down to it, isn’t that more like a dormant ability than evolution? Knowing that they’d soar through the skies someday, they steadily prepared themselves─evolution is supposed to be a process of natural selection via adapting to circumstance, but they foresaw the potential circumstance and adapted to it in advance.
That sort of canny shrewdness does remind me of my little sister. She may not have her feet planted firmly on the ground, but that only contributes to her birdlike quality.
Asking someone like her might be pointless, but I asked her anyway.
Tsukihi, how do you see the path you tread─even if her road isn’t contiguous with the ground, the skies must have pathways too.
They must have tracks.
Even airplanes follow fixed courses at fixed times, traveling along predetermined flight paths─taking into consideration air resistance and the direction of the wind. So even Tsukihi, floating along like a cloud, had to have a path, or the concept of a path, that served as her compass, that she took to be her compass.
Hence my question.
However.
“There’re no paths in the sky, big brother,” answered Tsukihi. “Even if there were, I’d ignore them. I just can’t do things the way they’re supposed to be done.”
My little sister was even more of a risk than I’d imagined.
If she was dead set on being a bird, not an airplane, then getting sucked into the engine of a jet and causing a major accident almost seemed like a certainty.
002
“Welcome home, big brother!”
“Hi, Tsukihi.”
“Back early, huh? I’ve got goodies, you want some?”
“Goodies? Yeah, I’d love some.”
“I’ve got tea, too.”
“Well, aren’t you thoughtful.”
“I’ve got something I need to talk to you about, too.”
“I’ll have some of that as well…hey.”
And so I was cajoled into listening to what Tsukihi had to say. Such a fluid delivery, truly a rare bird of a strategist─though this time I’d left myself wide open.
Always a mistake to be too amiable with my sister.
In any event, my defenses were down because I’d just gotten home from school, and Tsukihi ambushed me, one day in October.
Enjoying the tea and cakes she’d set out in our living room, I found myself lending an ear to her, like with Karen the previous month. Both of my little sisters were starting to communicate with me like they’d used to, which was in itself a welcome turn of events, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me happy, but it was also getting in the way of my exam prep.
Well.
It was hard to imagine that Tsukihi’s issue would be as sensitive as Karen’s and something I’d want to help out with. As far as I could tell, Karen was the driving force behind the Fire Sisters’ game of defenders of justice, and Tsukihi was just along for the ride─I was pretty sure her problem was asinine.
No doubt we’d have it sorted out before the tea and cakes were even finished─the cakes were the real deal, she must’ve brought them home from the school tea ceremony club’s supply.
Wondering if they could be lumped under the general heading of “sweets,” I nonetheless ignored etiquette and started grabbing them and popping them into my mouth.
I say ignored, but damned if I know the proper etiquette.
“Okay, dear brother. My dear, dear brotherother.”
“Keep it simple, stupid.”
“I’m doubling the respect I’m showing you. So, about this thing.”
“Keep it brief. I’ll stay as long as these delightful cakes hold out. Now, can you put your big brother to good use?”
“Do you believe in ghosts?”
“Ghosts?”
If I have to say, I generally don’t. They’re just an excuse to disappear some donuts.
“Why, did you hear something from Sengoku?” I probed, not sure how candid I should be with my little sister.
Given her information network, keeping tabs on the happenings in this town over the past six months, regarding that swindler or anything else, wasn’t all that hard. But how much of it would she swallow even if she found out about it?
The thing is, though in a different way than Karen, Tsukihi too is a realist─however birdlike, she wouldn’t be gulled into believing in “charms” and what have you so easily.
“What does Nadeko have to do with anything? Sometimes I have no idea what you’re on about, big brother.”
Indeed, she cocked her head in confusion. That was comforting, but to keep her from realizing that it comforted me, I answered her question with a question. “Never mind. Why this sudden talk of ghosts, though? Is there one in the tea room at school or something?”
I had no basis for supposing there was, I was just continuing with the questions to distract her from the Sengoku thing─and simply combining her talk of “ghosts” with the cakes I assumed she’d brought from there.
It just so happened I was right on the money.
Let no one cast aspersions on my hunches. If only I could manifest my penetrating intuition on a scantron sheet─it never seems to work when I fill in the bubbles with wild guesses.
“Exactly, I’m impressed,” confirmed Tsukihi.
“Huh? Exactly, like how?”
My pathetic response made it seem like I couldn’t even remember what I’d just said. What a birdbrain, a fitting brother for Tsukihi.
Yours truly.
“Like, there’s a ghost in the tearoom─” she said, twisting her pigtails, which she had for a month now, around her finger. I’d advised against the look, but she wasn’t the type to listen to her big brother. “Or actually, there was a ghost in the tearoom.”
“Actually?”
Once there’s a ghost involved, we’re miles away from actual, but I could check myself a little longer to see where this was going.
“And?” I prompted.
There were still plenty of cakes and tea, so I was ready and willing to stick with her story a little longer. Unlike Karen, Tsukihi was thankfully blessed with at least a modicum of conversational prowess─the act of listening itself was unlikely to be a source of stress.
“I just told you, there was a ghost.”
“When you say ‘there was’…what exactly do you mean? There were signs a ghost had been in the tearoom?”
“Signs, no…I couldn’t tell you there was. There’s no objective proof that the girl was there.”
The girl? Oddly specific.
“Tsukihi, let me enlighten you about something. No proof means no ghost. Great, so it’s settled. We’ll use whatever time we have left for a nice chat.”
&nb
sp; “Hup!”
Tsukihi launched an attack at me, her older brother. Wielding a three-color retractable ballpoint pen that happened to be sitting on the table─she wasn’t trained in any kind of combat technique, unlike Karen, and so had no compunction about bringing a weapon to a fight.
Just when Senjogahara finally gave up using office supplies as armaments… Tsukihi had a short fuse, but I was starting to suspect she was also the other kind of mad.
Truly terrifying.
To think that one phone call was all it’d take to cart off someone who lived under the same roof… Thankfully, primed by my long years of being her brother, I easily dodged the three-color clicky pen.
I used the boxing technique known as a sway. It’d never be of use to me in the future, and naturally, I want nothing to do with a future where I’d need it to be of use.
“Chat, my ass. I want to talk to you about something, not just talk to you.”
“Okay, okay…whoa there. I get it, so stow that pen already.”
“Stow? Which color?”
“All of them. Black, blue, and red, stow ’em all. So? What’s the deal? There was a ghost in the tearoom, but there’s no proof?”
“That’s what I said. Weren’t you listening?”
“You’re the one who’s not listening. No proof means no ghost, doesn’t it.” I didn’t think it bore repeating, but my sagacious little sister was also stubborn, and maybe I just needed to say the same thing twice. “In fact, let me guess. You proved there was no ghost?”
“Wow. How did you know?”
Tsukihi was floored.
Her reaction was gratifying. Just a touch more and it would’ve seemed contrived, but if I may, my little sister is quite good at discerning where to draw that line.
“Well done, big brother, you’re a genius!”
“I’m no genius, all it took was a little hard work.”
By contrast, I tend to get carried away and step right over it.
Well, in this case, it was less about hard work and more about having accumulated XP as a big brother─I can sort of tell what she’s likely to do.
You never know what she might be getting up to, but at the same time, I know how “you never know what she might be getting up to”─there’s a high degree of randomness to her behavior, but I have some sense of its general orientation.
Thanks to that, I can apply the brakes… Karen’s similar, but the problem with her is that her speed and power are of a different order of magnitude. I can try to stop her, but a “road closed” sign means nothing to her.
She blasts right through any roadblock.
True, Tsukihi might soar right over it─but that’s what nets are for.
I bet the story went something like this:
Whether it was a so-called “school ghost story” or more like “the seven wonders of campus,” rumors had sprung up about a spirit haunting the Tsuganoki Second Middle School tea ceremony club’s venerable tearoom─and Tsukihi set out to investigate, probably as private citizen Araragi rather than as a member of the Fire Sisters.
And she resolved it.
“Resolved” might be the wrong word when the truth is that there was no “it”─but anyway, she gathered evidence and testimonies, and demonstrated that no spirit haunted the tearoom.
There is no ghost there, she concluded─more or less.
Through plain old intuition, or something sub-intuition, I’d hit upon the notion that a ghost lurked in the tearoom; meanwhile, on my honor as a big brother, the above conjecture must be more or less correct. That would also raise some questions, though.
If I was right, what the hell did Tsukihi want to discuss with me? Wasn’t the issue─the case, already closed?
This “girl” doesn’t exist─and never did.
That was the punch line.
We could call it a day with a simple: Nice one, Tsukihi.
Maybe she wanted me to lavish her with praise?
I’d feel awkward praising my little sister…yet if that was the right epilogue, well, I don’t know about in ages past, but these days I had no real objection.
“Well done, Tsukihi, you’re a genius!”
“You’re missing the point. I’ve got a problem.”
I thought she’d be as pleased as I was if I praised her in the same way, but nope─her face just clouded over.
“What should I do, big brother?”
“Hm? About what?”
“C’mon, like you said─I explained, logically, that there was no ghost… But nobody believes me.”
Everyone.
Believes in the ghost instead─griped Tsukihi, sipping her tea.
003
There’s a game called Square.
Well, it doesn’t have much entertainment value, or as we’ll see, it’s a group activity that doesn’t pass muster as a game─but it’s famous, so I’m sure everyone will have heard of it, even if I don’t go into it here. That said, it’s kind of my job to go into stuff that everyone must have heard of, so here’s a barebones description.
The field, or scene, is often a cabin on a snow-covered mountain during a blizzard─and the players are four stranded climbers.
The standard fare in that scenario is “Don’t fall asleep, you’ll die if you do!” as they slap your cheek─though there are various theories about whether you’d actually die. Some argue that it’d maintain your strength, and your life, by slowing down your metabolism─but anyway, Square is played under those circumstances, to keep from falling asleep.
Each person goes to stand in a different corner of the room─and the game begins. A goes to where B is standing, and taps B on the shoulder. This signals B to go to where C is standing and tap C on the shoulder. As you might expect, C then goes to where D is standing and taps D on the shoulder. Finally, D goes to tap A on the shoulder, and one circuit, or round, is complete, and we’re back to the beginning.
Circling the room in this fashion, the quartet manage to stay awake until dawn, and that’s that─okay, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that “that” is not in fact “that.”
You see, when D finally goes to tap A on the shoulder, A isn’t there─since at the outset, A went to where B was standing. D just heads to an empty corner, and the game would end right there, hence the lack of entertainment value.
Mysteriously, though, sometimes the game continues through the night without interruption. Or so they say.
For Square to work, you need five people for four corners, so at some point, a “fifth person” gets involved to help the stranded climbers stay awake. When morning finally comes, the survivors realize: You can’t play this game with only four. Who was the fifth person?
It’d be uncouth of me to sneer that surely someone would’ve noticed sooner─I mean, however sleepy you are, notice it already─or to opine that if your goal is to kill time and stay awake, surely there are smarter ways. Understood as a ghost story, it’s mysterious but not very scary, a kind of feel-good anecdote. After all, the “fifth person” saved the lives of the other four…
Not that Tsukihi played Square in the tearoom with her club-mates. From what I’ve heard of the kimono fashion show they put on for the culture festival, they seem pretty uninhibited, but I doubt tea ceremony aficionados would run around in circles in their sacred space.
I don’t even remember where I first heard about Square, or from whom, but what Tsukihi said reminded me of that rumor of a ghost story.
The “fifth person.”
Well, since there were currently seven people in the tea club, the “eighth person”─Eight is Great, as they say, though I don’t think that’s relevant here.
“Um, so you’re saying there’d been sightings of this ‘eighth person’? And you squashed the rumor?”
“I didn’t squash anything. There wasn’t any ‘eighth person’ to begin with─it was just a rumor that arose spontaneously. The idea that my stronghold was being fingered as the point of origin for such a weird-ass rumor stuck in
my craw, so I decided to look into it, big brother.”
“…”
Weird-ass, stuck in my craw─pretty rough choice of words… Talking with her one on one like this, I couldn’t help but think that dealing with Karen, whose personality was super straightforward even if she seemed like the rough one at first glance, was so much easier.
“I’ll spare you the details, but I logically refuted every single account of a sighting and every piece of circumstantial evidence that this rumor about an ‘eighth member’ was based on. Logically.”