by Nisioisin
“Right. You, meanwhile, were easy to track down… Aren’t you a little too free with your spending? How much money do you have right now? I bet you’re poorer than I am.”
It was none of her concern.
There was no call for her to feel concerned.
I hadn’t fallen so low that I needed some high school student worrying over my finances─when I see a penny on the street, I pick it up, but that has nothing to do with what’s going on inside my wallet.
I certainly wasn’t poorer than Senjogahara, at least I think not. Assuming she hadn’t actually won the lottery.
“As things stand, I have no debts─my work just involves a high rate of failure. Thanks to high schoolers interfering and whatnot… Overall I’m breaking even, or a little bit in the black─poverty is a stranger to industry, as they say.”
“I know what the answer will be, I know I’m wishing for a miracle, but Kaiki, may I ask you something anyway?”
“What?”
“Having made trouble for me and Araragi in the past, and also to make things up to Nadeko Sengoku, would you consider working pro bono?”
“When hell freezes over.”
“That’s what I figured.”
Senjogahara actually seemed satisfied by my instantaneous response, but since there was still a chance that she had the wrong impression, and was betting on my conscience or humanity even now, I decided to dispel any such illusions. Maybe I am a nice guy after all.
“Totally out of the question, and in fact, for my part, I don’t want anything more to do with you or Araragi. I won’t say that I don’t want to see your faces or hear your voices again, but that just means I’m not saying it. I’m a coward, I don’t have any desire to deal with wackos like you. And I don’t have anything to make up to some kid that I’ve never even heard of.”
“A hundred thousand yen─isn’t enough, then?”
“Well… …it’s not,” I said, tentatively clacking the beads of my mental abacus.
I couldn’t be sure without hearing the particulars, but bamboozling a god would mean operating on a large scale. And the consequences of failure would be huge, too.
Put plainly, it was a job that even a chump like Oshino might turn down─like hell a hard case like me was going to take it on.
A hundred thousand yen didn’t even cut it as down payment, in which case there was nothing further to discuss.
“So…exactly how much do I have to pay for you to con Nadeko Sengoku? Give me a number. We’ll call the hundred thousand a deposit, with the understanding that I’ll get together a less insulting sum as soon as I can.”
“Desperate, aren’t you, with your life on the line. Or is it that your sweetheart’s life is precious? If the absolute maximum you could pay is only enough to save one of you, who’d you choose, I wonder? Yourself or Araragi?”
“Araragi, no question about it.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
She gave the answer I’d expected. Whatever she felt in her heart of hearts, had she given any other, she wouldn’t be Senjogahara. At least not the Senjogahara I knew.
I was relieved─people might turn over new leaves, but their basic character didn’t change so easily.
Yet I was wholeheartedly disappointed by what she said next.
“Indicate a concrete sum please, Kaiki. However much it might be, I’ll pay it. It’s precisely seventy-four days until graduation. With that much time, I can put together a considerable amount of money… I’ll even sell my body if need be.”
My cup was still about half full, and I had no qualms about tossing the remaining coffee in her face.
Maybe it was supposed to be a joke, or a bluff─the latter was more likely, but I didn’t care. It was a good opportunity for her to learn that some people are immune to such strategies. If the table had not been between us, if I had been slightly closer, I would have punched her in the face instead, so in fact she was lucky─not to mention, my coffee had already gotten cold.
“Where’s the bathroom?” I preempted the same waitress, who rushed over to see what was happening this time. Having beat her to the punch again, I went where she indicated─leaving her to ask the high school girl what had happened, but Senjogahara wasn’t going to fill her in.
I went into the bathroom and squared myself up in front of the mirror.
There I would find a cheerful man in sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt─I thought, but I was the only one who’d been under that impression. My reflection in the mirror was in fact distinctly gloomy.
I guess you can’t alter your nature just by changing your appearance.
Koyomi Araragi would still call me “ominous” and be done with it.
I took off the sunglasses and hung them on my shirt like you see all the time on TV.
“Okay, Q&A time,” I said. For me, this was a kind of ritual for getting in the zone, though I’m not sure I’m using the phrase correctly. “Do I have any desire to work pro bono on behalf of Araragi and Senjogahara? Is it unacceptable for me to stand by and watch my former rivals get unceremoniously slaughtered?”
I answered without hesitation.
“NO. Absolutely not. If I’m not careful, I might even enjoy it.”
Probably I’d just feel nothing, and with that last bit I was pretending to be more evil than necessary. It might seem like I was wasting my time with that question, but I wasn’t if I saw it as buresuto.
Just to be clear, I’m not talking about boobs, but about brainstorming.
“In that case, is there anything I can do pro bono on behalf of Nadeko Sengoku, who is evidently in the grips of a mysterious ailment?”
I answered this one, too, without hesitation.
“NO. Who the hell is she, anyway? I don’t care.”
Moving on, I said, “What if it’s a question of atonement toward a naïve young lady named Senjogahara whom I deceived in the past? Not as a former rival, but as an old acquaintance, do I want to do something for her, or her family?”
But the response was still: “NO. No I do not. I have no qualms over it.” I added, “Even if some girl from a family I swindled is forced to sell herself, I won’t change my way of life one bit.”
If that was how I felt, why had I thrown coffee in her face? What to do with me─well, nothing. I’ve learned to live with that much of a contradiction. That’s me, who I am.
“Then what about Araragi? Hmm… I did torment his little sister, didn’t I. And I did sell him out to Kagenui on top of that. Maybe I owe him some change from that transaction. As a change of pace, so to speak, what about saving the guy’s life?” The me in the mirror answered, “NO. Even if he had some change coming to him, it wouldn’t be nearly enough. This little trip’s price tag already more than makes up for anything I might owe him.”
I’d been able to use my pre-paid Premium Pass for the airplane ticket, but the bus fare to the airport and the Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses were out-of-pocket expenses.
“What else… Oh yeah, this Hanekawa girl. Am I touched by her over-the-top gallantry in going overseas for the sake of her friend? Or maybe the little lady is loaded. I might milk her parents. NO.”
I didn’t even have to think about it for a second, didn’t even have to pause.
The name Hanekawa set off alarm bells. Simply hearing it set off the specific alarm bell for a nemesis among nemeses, someone to be avoided at all costs (yes, it sounded the first time I met Gaen-senpai), when I didn’t even know her first name. This Hanekawa character coming up in connection with the job was definitely a negative─or positive, since I didn’t want to take the job in the first place. Wasn’t I being handed a reason to decline with a smile?
No good. Think as I might, there was no reason to take the job. Not only was there nothing to be gained, it could only mean a loss for me.
What to do?
“Ah, right,” I suddenly remembered─pondering Hanekawa had unconsciously put me in mind of Gaen-senpai, which reminded me that there was someone else in th
at town.
Her niece, in other words her older sister Toé’s only daughter, her legacy, you might say─her surname had changed, though. Suruga Kanbaru.
She probably didn’t consider herself a member of the Gaen clan─which didn’t alter the fact that she was Toé Gaen’s daughter.
Yes, and wasn’t Suruga Kanbaru, whom I ended up not seeing, a student at Naoetsu High, and Senjogahara’s buddy prior to that?
I’d heard about it two years ago: in middle school, Senjogahara had only one person she could call a close friend─and they were dubbed the Valhalla Duo, or the Valkyrie Duo… That was when the name Suruga Kanbaru first made it onto my radar. At the time, her left arm was just a left arm, of course, so I had no reason to get involved and was simply glad that she seemed to be doing fine…
Hitagi Senjogahara and Suruga Kanbaru. Did they still hang out together?
I bet they did. It wasn’t a groundless assumption, even if it was a little arbitrary. My first encounter with Araragi had been in front of Kanbaru’s house. If the two were connected, it was only natural to imagine that Senjogahara and Kanbaru were, too─and even if they weren’t, Kanbaru and Araragi definitely were.
Whether it was a friendly relationship, I couldn’t say… Still, Kanbaru was Gaen-senpai’s niece, and Toé Gaen’s daughter, and if she inherited at least some portion of their personality, she would be quite compatible with someone like Araragi.
I’d go ahead and think so.
“Hff…” I took a breath.
A deep breath─and at last posed my final question to the mirror.
“Could I deceive Nadeko Sengoku and save the lives of that detestable twosome if it were for Suruga Kanbaru’s sake?”
I answered my own question with a resounding YES.
010
When I got back to my seat, Senjogahara had removed her Groucho glasses. I assumed she’d taken it off temporarily so she could wipe off the coffee that was all over her face, and once it was off, had come to her senses and said no. She maintained her cool, though, giving no hint of any such inner conflict or the fact that she’d had coffee thrown in her face.
“I’ll do it,” I said, sitting down.
Did my voice sound too high, or odd in any way? I was a little worried, but there was no point in worrying, and it might start sounding even odder if I became self-conscious, so I gave up thinking about it. Lazily.
If I was agitated, then I was agitated, no big deal.
I knew full well this was unlike me.
“You’ll do…” Senjogahara eyed me suspiciously. I understood how she felt, all too well. I was flabbergasted, myself. “…what?”
“The job. What else? The god-conning job, I’m doing it.”
“Are you in your right mind?”
This was rude of her, but again, I understood how she felt. No other word for it. I totally agreed with her on the subject.
“I am in my right mind. Now hand over the hundred thou you said you could pay upfront.”
“…”
Senjogahara removed a manila envelope from her bag and laid it on the table, not even bothering to hide her acute unease.
I checked the contents. Ten 10,000-yen notes, indeed. No newspaper or anything mixed in.
…Like anyone would try that in this day and age.
“Good. This will do.”
“No, that’s just the down payment…a deposit─”
“I’m telling you this is enough,” I said. Forcefully. “If I actually demanded a commensurate sum for this job, you’d come up short even if you sold yourself. However gruelingly you toiled. I’m taking this cash just to cover my expenses. I’m resigned to working for free, but I don’t want to take a loss, either. If my expenses exceed 100,000 yen, I’ll bill you for the rest, all right?”
“But that’s… That’s…”
I surmised that Senjogahara’s apparent hesitation came less from a sense of guilt at using me so cheaply, and more from a deep desire not to be in my debt.
Well, she was right to be wary.
But I had no intention of getting into a debate about it. One conversational misstep and there was a real danger that I would change my mind. Despite what I said or how I may have acted earlier, if things went the wrong way I was liable to tell her to get me the money even if that meant prostituting herself.
That’s how little I trusted in my own humanity.
I trusted myself even less than she did.
In order to convince Senjogahara, or rather, to wrap things up quickly, I considered fudging the whole issue and manipulating her emotions with a little lip service (“I couldn’t bear for you two to die”? Or no, something trendier, like “I’m not doing this for you”), but that strategy seemed doomed to fail, so I abandoned it.
This is just my personal opinion, but women tend to hate lip service even more than men do. Probably because women are in a position to be coerced by it more often.
So they know how ugly pretty words can be.
Instead I decided to put the kibosh on any more talk about money. Take a good look because it’s the first and last time you’ll ever see me doing that. “It’s fine, just drop it. It’s settled, end of discussion. All I will accept from you is this hundred thousand for expenses, and nothing more. Should they be greater, I will bill you separately. In the event that some money remains unused after the job has been brought to a satisfactory conclusion, I will keep the rest and not bother you with any detailed accounting. I will accept the job only under these terms.”
“…Agreed.”
Amidst a heady brew of dissatisfied reluctance, Senjogahara ultimately acquiesced─considered apart from any humanity I may or may not possess, these were unmistakably sweet terms.
Hence her caution, I suppose. There was no question she’d been grasping at straws when she’d gotten in touch with me, she’d had nothing to lose─so she should count herself lucky.
Well, whether she had grasped at straws or drawn the short straw didn’t concern me, and either way, I wasn’t guaranteeing success.
Although this flies in the face of my earlier boast, to be something close to honest about how I really felt, I was saying that I would but not that I could─I’d deceived countless people since the day I first pulled one over on my kindergarten teacher, but I had yet to dupe a god.
“Okay then…if I may explain the situation in detail─”
“I’d rather not hear the details from the horse’s mouth, actually. I don’t work like Oshino, you see─taking personal feelings and circumstances into account makes things too complicated,” I said, taking the sunglasses, which I had completely forgotten about, from where they were hanging on my Hawaiian shirt and putting them on again.
I didn’t go so far as to tell her that her take on this case would be too subjective, but it’s my oft-repeated pet theory that a partisan view of things isn’t any good.
This is perhaps another difference between Oshino and me. I’m not saying he’s partisan, but he does value every individual’s standpoint and avoids taking too objective a stance.
We haven’t seen each other in a while, so I don’t know if that still holds true.
“I’ll investigate the details and the particulars myself. I’ve got a general grasp of the situation from the broad strokes you’ve given me thus far.”
In fact I had no grasp of anything, I was fumbling in the dark, but it was better to leave her with this false impression of confidence. Better to make her think I was reliable─I didn’t need her trust, but if I couldn’t get her to leave things to me to a certain degree, I couldn’t do my job.
Having kids underfoot while you’re working is a real nuisance as it is.
“There are a few things I would like to clarify, though─do you mind?”
“G-Go ahead.”
Senjogahara nodded but seemed to have lost some of her composure─she probably felt apprehensive because things were going so smoothly for her. Basically, just like two years ago, she had an extremely l
ow tolerance for happiness and good fortune.
She was tough in the face of adversity, but that was as far as it went.
Such people are surprisingly common: they can get by in society no problem, but they’ll never become a success.