by Nisioisin
My instinct told me she was lying.
An instinct, but not a true intuition─just the same simple conclusion anyone would come to. Since she came by plane, any kind of knife or blade she might have had would have been confiscated.
Then again, who knows, maybe she concocted an elaborate scheme to smuggle one in her checked baggage…and even if not, even if she hadn’t prepared a weapon, one false move and she would probably leap over the table and try to kill me anyway.
That’s how much she had suffered at my hands.
How much I had made her suffer.
That said, I had no intention of making it up to her. That would be plain rude to the money I made back then.
When it comes to money, you mustn’t forget your manners.
Never, ever, ever.
But while on the one hand I felt nothing but antipathy at having my actions dictated to me like that, I was also overcome with curiosity.
If this wasn’t about making it up to Senjogahara, who was I supposed to make it up to?
Who, and why?
Could it be that other girl?
Koyomi Araragi’s little sister?
What was her name…Karen? Quite the brave little thing─not that we could ever be friends, but I have a soft spot for stupid kids like that. You might be surprised to learn that I actually really like kids. Which is why I remember her.
Hmm, maybe I could get on board if she was the one I was supposed to make it up to.
Like hell─why should I do anything for a cheeky little brat who would beat the shit out of me the second she saw me?
I’ll pass, even if there’s money in it. Actually, if there’s money in it I’ll consider it. At the very least I’ll come to the negotiating table. After that, it’s a question of how much.
“I’d prefer not to be stabbed. Fine, I give up. I’ll hear you out. Whether I actually pay attention or not is another story…”
Curiosity 1, Antipathy 0.
I was pandering to a high school girl.
My pride would remain intact─pandering didn’t begin to express my attitude towards her when she was a freshman, so why be haughty now.
“Let’s hear it, Senjogahara. Who is it you want me to deceive? From your tone, I’m getting the sense that it’s someone I know.”
“Nadeko Sengoku.”
Her response was concise and perfectly clear, which was a welcome change, but I had been wrong. It was a name that I had never heard before in my life.
008
Let’s pause the action for a moment here while I explain the beginning of the affair, or rather fateful bond, between Hitagi Senjogahara and myself, Deishu Kaiki─I won’t bore you with platitudes about how it comes from my personal perspective, and how it might deviate from the facts to some degree.
You won’t catch me saying that.
First off, it’s self-evident, so there’s no need to say it; plus I told you right from the start that the truth doesn’t exactly roll off my tongue.
There’s something called “The Mouth of Truth” in some church in Rome that’s supposed to bite a liar’s hand off if he sticks it inside, but that itself is a lie… Anyway, in that vein, mine is like the Mouth of Half-Truth.
Don’t bother thinking about how much of this is true.
It’s chock-full of lies.
However true it may seem, don’t believe it.
Two years ago, when Hitagi Senjogahara was an efflorescent first-year, newly matriculated at Naoetsu High, I was still in my effervescent teens─or was it my evanescent forties?
I was working as a ghostbuster at the time and received a professional inquiry from Senjogahara’s mother. It was on behalf of her daughter, that being, of course, Senjogahara.
The girl was suffering from a mysterious ailment that rendered her weightless. She wasn’t excessively thin but somehow weighed no more than a dozen pounds.
A mysterious ailment indeed.
If that’s not a mysterious ailment, I don’t know what is.
The doctors at her hospital made a case study out of it─which came with an honorarium, so at least as far as medical expenses were concerned, the family purse wasn’t under so much pressure at that point.
Wait, is that true?
Or did her mother misappropriate that money as well? She had foolishly become involved with a shady religion, and apparently even her father’s high-paying job at a foreign firm wasn’t enough to keep up with her profligacy.
Well, maybe that’s not such an unpardonable offense─if you ask me, it’s not so different from those New Year’s worshippers.
What’s more, it was that shady religion that put her in touch with this “ghostbuster,” so you won’t hear me saying anything critical. How could I, I feel nothing but gratitude.
So, summoned to heal Senjogahara’s mysterious ailment in my capacity as an exorcist of great spiritual power, I sucked up as much of the household fortune as I possibly could, and destroyed their family in the process.
Not only did I not cure the girl’s ailment, I set her parents on the path to divorce, irreparably sundering her family, on top of which I helped myself to all the money that they hadn’t already sunk into that shady religion. Family troubles tend towards the emotional, so they typically aren’t paying much attention to money─a fact that I slyly exploited.
The particulars are a trade secret, but I should probably confess that the key was skillfully winning over papa and mama’s darling only daughter.
I essentially took advantage of the naïveté of an adolescent, the tender feelings of a high school girl ground down by a bizarre illness. I exploited her emotional teenage heart, manipulated her parents like puppets on a string, and ultimately drove the family to ruin─looking back, it wouldn’t have been surprising if she had stabbed me back then.
What’s surprising is that I’m still alive.
At any rate, that’s how it was: I made the money I could make, cheated who I could cheat, and ran off without a backward glance, but when I had reason to return to that town this year, or no, last year now, the middle of last year, I ran into a grown-up Hitagi Senjogahara─a girl I had forgotten about completely.
A who the hell is this girl.
Unlike two years earlier, the massive con I’d planned didn’t go so smoothly. Hitagi Senjogahara and Koyomi Araragi blew the whole thing to hell. In that sense, she had already exacted her revenge on me.
My bottom line was obliterated, and I was forbidden from ever setting foot in that town again─well, I recouped the money from ol’ Kagenui later on, so no problem there, but being banned from any place in Japan is seriously stressful for a freedom-loving guy like me or Oshino.
Still, I counted it a felicitous condition of my banishment that I’d never have to deal with Hitagi Senjogahara or Koyomi Araragi again─or Shinobu Oshino, that vampire who had cheated death.
Or I would have counted it so, but the woman who had forced me to make that deal in the first place had contacted me. And she didn’t just contact me, she called a meeting, and what’s more offered me work, and commissioned a con at that. What a train wreck.
It was absurd, really, I had every right to be angry.
“And Araragi…” I began, a thought occurring to me. I was concerned in a grandmotherly kind of way, if you would. “Does he know? That you’re seeing me today like this? Aren’t boyfriends and girlfriends supposed to visit a shrine together on New Year’s Day and throw their money around like it was worthless?”
“Don’t mock me.” Senjogahara’s expression didn’t change at all as she said this. She continued, “He has no idea, obviously. He might kill you on sight. You’re natural prey for a defender of justice like him.”
“Hmph.”
I hadn’t intended to mock her─or had I? I don’t know, but at any rate, her little trip to Okinawa was apparently a secret from Araragi.
Even if they didn’t visit a shrine, you’d think they’d spend the day together─but maybe my sensibilities are out
dated.
Maybe with cell phones, kids don’t feel the need to be together physically.
As a swindler I try not to fall behind the times, but a generation gap is almost impossible to bridge.
Speaking of which, the con of mine that Senjogahara thwarted was targeted at middle schoolers─maybe that’s why it failed?
Then again, they say if you’re feeling your age, you’re still young. I bet noticing someone else growing up or getting old is when you’re feeling your age for real.
“No idea, huh? In other words…”
Reconciling my value system to Senjogahara’s wasn’t going to make my daily bread taste any better, so I decided to move the conversation along. If this dragged on, I wouldn’t be able to get a return flight to Kyoto.
Not that there was anything left for me to do in the old capital, having finished my people-watching… Actually, a few more days in Okinawa sounded pretty appealing.
The climate, well within the range of “hot” despite it being New Year’s Day, which is to say the dead of winter, was appealing indeed─I was totally comfortable in nothing but a Hawaiian shirt.
In fact, Senjogahara seemed too hot in her winter sailor blouse─was she planning to head home today? Or did she have a reservation at a hotel?
She didn’t seem to have given it much thought.
Was there snow on the ground in her town? Kyoto wasn’t getting much snow lately…
“In other words, you kept our meeting secret from Araragi.”
“So what? Is it anything to try and make sure of repeatedly, or even just once?”
“It’s not like that.”
It was just a thought. To tell the truth, Koyomi Araragi and I had met without her knowledge─right after I had been banished from their town, so around August.
That was when he showed me the photo of her with short hair.
It was pretty damn brazen of me to go back there so soon after being banished─so let me guarantee that, since then, I’ve kept my promise and really haven’t gone anywhere near their town. I don’t know or care how much weight my guarantee carries, but anyway, that’s why I asked her again.
Lovers keeping secrets from each other even as they looked out for each other, and engaging in more or less the same behavior as a result─it reminded me of the story of the man who sells his watch to buy a comb and the woman who sells her hair to buy a watch fob. Maybe Senjogahara, too, had sold her hair and bought a watch fob.
That stupid notion crossed my mind.
By the way, much as I go to a shrine every New Year’s to do some fieldwork, as a part of my health regimen I’ve developed a habit of reading romance novels and watching “tear-jerker” dramas people are always talking about.
Exposing myself to the right books, and movies, and music, I reassure myself that they don’t move me in the slightest.
I confirm my lack of emotion.
Unless you remind yourself that you’re not going to become a decent, law-abiding citizen even by accident, who knows what might lead a human being astray?
If you’re thinking that I’m totally enamored of my own unique sensibilities, then fine─all I’m trying to say is that Senjogahara and Araragi’s behavior didn’t touch me one bit.
It didn’t.
Touch me.
One bit.
I just thought, Are they morons? Or rather, They’re definitely morons.
“So, what’s this about? You’re willing to spend some of your precious final winter break of high school away from your boyfriend Araragi, and in secret, just to become my accomplice in a con? Who is this Nadeko Sengoku anyway, a romantic rival or something?”
“He’s studying for exams and is up to his eyeballs in it whether it’s winter break or New Year’s Day.”
“Huh,” I nodded. I figured she was lying, which is why I nodded and didn’t pry. Not being a man of character, I have no time for childish vanity. “What about your own exam prep?”
“I’ve been recruited, so it doesn’t matter.”
“Outstanding, how wonderful.”
I wasn’t just saying that, it was my honest response. Having suffered over those exams, I can’t help but be impressed by an outstanding high school student─impressed, if not inspired.
I hadn’t laid store in her for nothing. The girl laughed in the face of exam prep.
I was sorely disappointed that someone like her had come to me for help─maybe I’ll spit those words and leave, I thought.
It was just a thought.
At that point the coffee and orange juice I’d ordered arrived─pretty slow, but not so much that you’d complain.
I swallowed a mouthful of coffee, but Senjogahara didn’t even reach for her juice, didn’t even take the wrapper off the straw. Maybe it was meant to show that she absolutely wouldn’t accept any generosity from me. If so, then in spite of her school smarts, she was an idiot after all.
Like I’m ever going to treat you. Just the opposite─I was busy figuring out how to get you to pay for my coffee in the end, don’t you see?
“Well, I have no idea what Araragi’s academic performance is like,” I said, “but if he’s under your tutelage, then it’s in the bag. You’ll both be college students come spring.”
I didn’t mean anything by this idle remark and was just filling time, but Senjogahara responded, “No, we won’t.”
She was just disagreeing with me on principle. Or so I thought, but I was wrong.
“At this rate, there will be no springtime for me and Araragi.”
“Hunh?”
“No future for us.”
“Hunh?” I asked again, not taking her meaning. I had let my honest response slip out─and in so doing let the initiative slip through my fingers, despite having won the first-impression round.
Her words did arouse my interest, though.
No springtime.
No future.
What did she mean?
“If things proceed without a hitch, Araragi and I will be killed on graduation day.”
“Aha…”
I nodded, but it was not a nod of comprehension. I hadn’t gained any more info. Whether they were going to be killed at their high school graduation or their college entrance ceremony didn’t seem to matter. I’ll be damned if any manner of getting killed is shocking at a graduation but not an entrance ceremony.
It looked to me like Senjogahara was having trouble telling─like she was trying to figure out how to explain the predicament that she, or she and Araragi, were currently in.
Judging from her character─though by that I mean the Senjogahara I knew two years ago─this didn’t happen often.
Rough sailing ahead, it seemed.
Not that I cared. Smooth or rough, I couldn’t care less.
Still, it wouldn’t do if she clammed up or went around in circles, so I sent out a lifeboat. Ordinarily I would expect her to pay for passage, but we were old friends, so this time the trip was all expenses paid.
“In other words,” I took a wild guess, “you and Araragi somehow incurred a grudge, and this Nadeko Sengoku or whoever is going to kill you, so you want me to talk her out of it?” It wasn’t some feat of deduction; I pretty much made it up figuring I couldn’t be that far off, but…
“Basically,” Senjogahara responded, “that’s correct.”
I was surprised to see some respect mixed into her facial expression─if that level of guesswork was all it took for her most-hated foe to win her respect, then the girl was too damn soft.
Maybe I oughta pull one over on her again, I thought, seized by an irrational emotion akin to rage. It was way too irrational, so I suppressed my anger.
Knowing me, maybe I was actually happy that I’d won a kid’s respect, in which case I’m the one who’s soft. Maybe she had loosened me up─and I needed to tighten things back down.
“Getting killed is no laughing matter, though, is it,” I remarked.
“Right, it’s no laughing matter. It’s a scary, ter
rifying story… So please, Mister Kaiki, hear me out,” requested Senjogahara, suddenly formal─if that was a calculated move, forget being soft, the woman was a fearsome she-devil.
How could that standoffish freshman have ended up this way, was it my fault? Probably.
Well, whatever she-devil act she might put on, or however standoffish, it wasn’t going to do the trick when she was still wearing those Groucho glasses.