by Nisioisin
“No, why would I? Even I wouldn’t be that rude.”
“Hmm. I suppose.”
“Why did you ask me that out of nowhere?”
“Because─I think Nadeko Sengoku was the kind of person who took her handbag with her in that situation─or that’s my first impression after meeting her today.”
“You met her? Today? Earlier? Just like that?” Senjogahara’s eyes went wide as if all her drowsiness had suddenly dissipated. It seemed to be a genuine shock to her. “Was it really that easy? Meeting a god, even one like her? That’s… Does this mean you’re the real deal as a─”
“I’m a fake. You know that.”
“…”
Senjogahara shut her mouth and didn’t try to ask again. Maybe she thought it was a trade secret that I wouldn’t divulge under any circumstances, that my lips were sealed. Actually, if she had just asked, I would have told her that a 10,000-yen note in the offertory box was all it took to make Nadeko Sengoku show her face.
But Senjogahara was too discreet to press me, so I moved the discussion along.
“Seemed to me like she’s lived these past thirteen or fourteen years without ever trusting anyone, without ever being able to confide in anyone.”
“I doubt it… At least, from what I’ve heard it seems like she trusted Araragi fully.”
“If that were true, we wouldn’t be where we are now. Araragi is definitely in the wrong on this one. No room for excuses there.”
I was just being honest, but I guess Senjogahara thought I was slandering her boyfriend unfairly.
“You have her back, don’t you,” she said, her voice tinged with rage. “Don’t tell me you were taken in by her ‘cuteness’ when you met her in the flesh.”
“What? Me?” I threw back, puzzled. First she gets angry, then this nonsense─I wasn’t about to ride along on some childish emotional rollercoaster. Senjogahara herself seemed embarrassed once she realized how off-base her words were.
“Right…of course not. I’m sorry. I see how wrong I was.”
“I have to say that such an earnest apology for such a trivial thing is actually kind of off-putting, but─Senjogahara. Nadeko Sengoku was definitely brought up in an environment that merits some sympathy.”
“Sympathy─”
“And I sympathize with her. But that’s all in the past, and now she seems to be enjoying herself, more or less. Anyway, what does it matter? It was a long time ago, even by her reckoning. Just like our relationship was a long time ago. Water under the bridge.”
“Our relationship is not water under the bridge, nor was it all that long ago─or rather, I’m taking issue with the wrong thing. Kaiki, whatever water might be flowing under whatever bridge, you and I have no relationship.”
“Fair enough.”
No argument there. No relationship. Exactly. Even at that moment we just happened to be sitting at the same table. I wasn’t trying to provoke her, but the conversation was starting to go off the rails. I must’ve been tired.
Time to get things back on track─no, better to just skip straight to the conclusion.
“Senjogahara. You can relax.”
“Hunh?”
“Duping that girl is going to be a piece of cake.”
019
“A piece of cake… What do you mean? Pulling one over on someone that dangerous─a serpent god who’s not even human anymore─”
Senjogahara seemed to think it was another mean-spirited joke, and there was a note of harsh reproach in her voice. At the same time, she seemed to be struggling to keep a stiff upper lip, and I realized just how frightened of Nadeko Sengoku she was.
Fighting on month after month, defying her fate, she must have felt only the more powerless for it.
But she hadn’t given up; of course Hitagi Senjogahara hadn’t. But as a result of her struggles, she couldn’t accept my words at face value. Well, these were my words, so she probably couldn’t ever.
Fine by me.
“If it were that simple, I wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of hiring you.”
“For you, it wouldn’t be that simple. Same goes for Araragi. Nothing in the world could be more difficult for either of you. But it ought to be possible for me, or just about anyone else.”
Since skipping straight to the conclusion had clearly been a mistake, I backed up and explained everything from the beginning like I had meant to in the first place.
“Nadeko Sengoku is stupid.”
“…”
“Not in the sense that she gets bad grades─though they must’ve been bad. Her foolishness and childish ineptitude seem to have been constantly overlooked, and she’s immature for her age.”
“Constantly overlooked…” Senjogahara repeated my words back to me. “Because she’s ‘cute’?”
I decided the clarification didn’t require a response and ignored it. “Deceiving her will be easier for me than deceiving a ladybug. Conversely, teaching a ladybug the multiplication tables would be easier than teaching them to that girl.”
“Don’t you think you’re overstating the case?”
Senjogahara, sticking up for that girl? Who would’ve thought. Or more likely, she was still having trouble accepting my words.
No surprise there.
She didn’t want to imagine that her and Araragi’s lives were under threat from someone who was a step below a ladybug on the IQ scale, whether it was true or not.
It was true. As far as I knew.
Disregarding Senjogahara’s psychological resistance, I began to go over my plan. It was late, and I had to keep moving things along.
“It might take a while, though… I’ll go up to the shrine once every three days or so and build a rapport with Nadeko Sengoku, slowly deepening our relationship and winning her trust, then next month, maybe? I’ll tell her you and Araragi died in a car accident. And that’ll be the end of it.”
“The end of it? With that pathetic excuse for a lie? The truth will come out in no time. A car accident of all things, what is this, amateur hour? The second she comes down from the mountain, bam. We’re done for.”
“If she comes down from the mountain. But she isn’t going to. Killing you two would be the only reason for her, and if she hears that you’re already dead, that reason vanishes into thin air.”
“I’m sure you’re just simplifying things and are actually planning to talk her out of killing us with some artful deception… Normally, though, if she heard that, wouldn’t she want to confirm our deaths for herself?”
Senjogahara’s suspicion, or rather anxiety, that Nadeko Sengoku would descend from the shrine for that purpose was right on the money.
Indeed.
Under ordinary circumstances.
If the mark were anyone else, then yes, the job would call for all manner of precautions: preparing fake corpses, altering family registers, manipulating the media─and 100,000 yen wouldn’t be nearly enough. But with Nadeko Sengoku, there was no need to worry.
Such preparations were unnecessary.
“She won’t confirm it. Not a chance. She’ll swallow it without a second thought. She’ll be disappointed that she didn’t get to kill you with her own hands─or her own hair─but I very much doubt she’d bother to come down the mountain to see for herself.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“We chatted. You never really had a conversation with her─if you had, you’d understand. Basically, she’s too spoiled, too much of a baby, to imagine that someone would lie to her or deceive her─she’s unable to trust anyone but has no use for suspicion either. That’s the kind of environment she grew up in.”
In short, she was a princess who had no idea how harsh the world is. To put it another way, it was the result of years of abuse in the form of “pampering.”
“She may be the indirect victim of the con I was running six months back─but I’m not so sure she sees it that way. She might actually think it was all just some big mistake that she ended up the object of
that charm, that curse.”
“So she’s slow on the uptake when it comes to malice,” Senjogahara gave her own interpretation. At the tender age of eighteen, life had already taught her to distinguish the sweet from the bitter. It was a pretty accurate interpretation.
…Eighteen, wasn’t she?
Her birthday is July seventh, I think. I celebrated it with her two years ago. I bought her a cake, which she seemed to enjoy in her own impassive way.
That was before my deception came to light, of course, and she hadn’t been consumed by suspicion yet. Still, she’d been wary of the self-proclaimed ghostbuster who had come into her life.
Getting her to open up to me had been a struggle─in comparison to that, deceiving Nadeko Sengoku was almost too easy.
“All that being said, the risk is steep if I do fail, so maybe this job isn’t such a walk in the park after all. If, by some miracle, she sees through me, my life won’t be worth a plug nickel. Precisely because she’s slow to pick up on malice, I doubt she could handle even the kind of insignificant ill will that most people brush off without a second thought.”
“And because she couldn’t and didn’t brush it off, she’s trying to kill me and Araragi.”
“Yeah. I don’t know what he did to the girl─” Actually, a lot of things, it seemed, none of which I’d wanted to hear, but I wouldn’t be a man if I ratted him out to Senjogahara. That stuff didn’t seem to be the real issue anyway. “But the reason Nadeko Sengoku isn’t cutting you guys any slack doesn’t go any deeper than that. I mean, she’s in her second year of middle school, she’s still a child to begin with…and her apotheosis just seems to have infantilized her further. She’s been reincarnated, so to speak.”
“…”
“Naturally, I never feel guilty about lying to people or deceiving them─but even if that weren’t the case, this job wouldn’t bother me. Because in all probability, hearing that you two are dead will make her feel even more liberated. She might even become a pretty decent god. Of course, she needs to settle down a bit if she’s going to achieve the proper degree of majesty─”
I called Nadeko Sengoku to mind. Her carefree smile. Her happy chatter. Her open attitude, which must have been unthinkable while she was still human.
I called to mind the girl who said she was lonely because no worshippers came to her shrine.
“So relax… You guys are as good as saved. Happy day, you don’t have to die. Come spring you and Araragi will both blossom into college students, and you can be together all you want. You can give yourselves over to the flames of passion. Provided Araragi gets into college─let’s hope he keeps at it. Though there may be one other problem: how to tell him that the matter is resolved. Considering his misconception, you can’t tell him straight out that I hoodwinked Nadeko Sengoku for you.”
Remembering at that point that I hadn’t touched the donuts, I picked up a Pon de Ring. I really love its crazy texture.
“…”
She must have been waiting for me to take one, because as soon as I did, Senjogahara reached out and plucked one of the donuts (a Flocky Chou) from the tray in front of me. Then, loosening her scarf a little, she shoved it into her mouth.
Munch munch munch.
“What’s this? I thought you couldn’t stand the idea of accepting my generosity.”
“Stolen booty is fair game.”
“A hell of a standard,” I said, but I understood the sentiment. I even respected it.
“With Araragi… I’ll take care of it somehow. Don’t trouble yourself about it.”
“That’s how I’d prefer it, naturally… But are you sure you can handle it? He’ll ruin everything if he waltzes up to Kita-Shirahebi Shrine after I’ve worked my magic on Nadeko Sengoku.”
“Sure, he’s liable to head up there if I leave him to his own devices. Even now, what he’s doing is more about rescuing Nadeko Sengoku than saving himself.”
“Rescuing…”
“That’s the kind of guy he is.”
“…”
How was he going to rescue her?
He probably equated it with turning her back into a human. But did a half-vampire who was making no attempt to reclaim his own status, who seemed to have no intention of doing so, have the right?
How did he balance the books in that regard? I had to wonder─nah, not really. I couldn’t possibly care less.
I could care less, however, about my beautiful handiwork being ruined by his folly. Six months ago, all I had to do was beat a retreat, but this time my life was on the line.
I prize money more than life itself, but I’m well aware that unlike money, life isn’t something you just recoup.
There’s no recovering from that loss.
No exceptions.
“Are you sure you can take care of it?” I asked Senjogahara. “If you’re just being bullheaded…if you’re just saying so to keep me and Araragi apart, then you’d better tell me now.”
“That’s partly it…well, more than partly, but tricking him isn’t your job, it’s mine. That’s one thing I can’t let you help me with. If I did, how could I go on calling myself his lover?”
“That’s a bunch of narcissistic bullshit,” I ruled. Because I really thought so. No other reason. But since she insisted, I might as well let her handle it. I was just as reluctant to see Araragi as she was to let me see him.
“I have no choice but to somehow convince him to give up on Nadeko Sengoku…though not giving up on her is exactly what makes him who he is…the man I love.”
My my my, the proudest little hen in the henhouse.
It really made me want to say something mean.
“Shouldn’t be too hard. All you have to do is give him an ultimatum: ‘either she goes, or I go.’ He’ll have to give up on her if you get all shrewish on him.”
“…’Scuse me.”
Senjogahara stood up without responding to my little jest. I thought maybe she was leaving in anger─the trains had likely stopped running, though, and I couldn’t let her go on her own─but that wasn’t the case. She was just going to the powder room.
She did take her handbag with her.
Very prudent.
She impressed me at every turn.
My little jest, and how she might convince Araragi, aside─there was probably no need to be particularly anxious on that front.
Because upon reflection, Senjogahara had been like my apprentice, even if only for a little while, when it came to b.s. She probably felt too loyal to her boyfriend to flat-out dupe him, but she’d learned enough from me to sweet-talk him into it.
Araragi might let himself be sweet-talked, despite having some inkling of what was going on, just for her sake. It would likely be a tough choice for him, but also a good opportunity to learn that the world doesn’t always make things easy on us. Otherwise, Koyomi Araragi could eventually end up as the next Nadeko Sengoku.
But this was their affair. Their love affair.
I was staying out of it.
It wasn’t for me, a third party, an unrelated outsider, to stick my nose into─they could play at love, enjoy their lovers’ game, forever for all I cared.
Although the job wasn’t over yet─which is to say, the preparations were complete, but I had barely begun─a certain weight had been lifted from my shoulders.
Did I feel like it was in the bag?
Yet being the irredeemably suspicious person that I am, I still managed to find some cause for concern. Yup, it wasn’t as if there was nothing to worry about.
Forget what Koyomi Araragi might do, what I really needed to be worried about was, you guessed it─
“Sorry ’bout that,” said Senjogahara, returning to the table.
Intending to make a pro-forma apology for my earlier jibe, I looked over at her. But I was shocked into silence, completely taken off guard─her eyes were bright red.
Anyone, no matter how poor their powers of observation, could tell at a glance that they were puffy from c
rying.
We’re not just talking about a few stray tears here, she seemed to have been crying her eyes out─why else would they be swollen up like some ruffian had punched her? And upon closer inspection, they were still moist.
“Kaiki,” she said.
Her voice, too, was tearful.
“Thank you. I’m grateful.”