by Nisioisin
If it were raining, the outfit would provide perfect protection from the weather…but though I opened my palm, I didn’t feel a single drop after all.
The stars were in the sky.
We were in a rural town some ways from a provincial city─so other than a few shreds of clouds, nothing in the night sky was so boorish as to challenge the starlight.
“…Um.”
Oh…
I knew… I knew what was going on here… I knew it well, very well. It was what had played out during spring break, what I had experienced more than enough of…
Yet I couldn’t wipe the smirk, a completely inappropriate expression for the occasion, off of my face. The sensation was so familiar that I nearly felt a pang of nostalgia, oddly enough. I recalled my experience with Hanekawa during Golden Week as well.
If there was an issue here…it was that unlike during spring break, my body was no longer immortal and that I wasn’t a vampire.
It was no time for me to be keeping my cool…but cool was exactly what I needed to be to discern it and its nature. You could say that over the past few months, I had become a little accustomed, inured─
To dealing with aberrations.
…I hoped it was a physically harmless aberration like the one on Mother’s Day, Hachikuji’s snail…but my instincts told me that I had to flee. No, not my instincts, but the vestigial instincts of a legendary vampire that surely nested somewhere inside my body─
I tried to turn my bicycle back around─but in the heat of the moment, decided to dive off it and tumble to the ground.
It was the correct decision─in exchange, however, I lost my oh-so-precious mountain bike for good. Raincoat leaped in my direction too fast for my eyes to follow and punched, with its left fist, the center of my mountain bike’s handlebars just as I jumped out of the way─crushing and denting my bike and sending it flying like a weightless scrap of paper caught in a raging tornado. By the time it slammed into a telephone pole and fell to the ground, the object formerly known as a mountain bike had lost any traces of its original form.
If I hadn’t dodged─it would have been me.
I bet?
The wind pressure generated by the fist was enough to tear my clothes. My Boston bag’s straps snapped, too, and it fell from my shoulder to thud at my feet.
“…I-It’s on a different level.”
Even my smirk─vanished from my face.
I’d only been on the periphery of its attack, and I couldn’t believe its intimidating presence… It may not have rivaled a legendary vampire but was impressive enough to bear comparison…an aberration that brought bodily terror in its wake.
Forget about Mother’s Day.
This was, without question, spring break.
I’d lost my bike.
Could I still run away, on foot?
At least from what I’d seen of Raincoat’s moves… Well, I didn’t actually see them, but judging by its invisibly quick moves, getting away on foot was impossible.
Plus.
Even if it was to run away, I didn’t want to turn my back on this aberration─nothing felt scarier than turning my back on Raincoat, taking my eyes off of it. My fear was irrevocable, primordial.
So I take back what I just said.
You never become accustomed to such a sensation.
You don’t get inured no matter how many times you undergo such an experience.
You don’t even want to remember.
Raincoat twirled around towards me. Its hooded face made it difficult to read its expression─in fact, rather than an expression, what was there was akin to a deep pit. It was dark─so dark that I couldn’t see a thing.
Like it had been chipped out from this world.
Like it had been left out of this world.
Then, Raincoat stepped towards me.
Its left fist.
It came too fast for my reflexes alone to dodge─but it described a perfectly straight line like the blow that had destroyed my mountain bike, so I was prepared to react at the first sign of motion and was able to evade it again, by an inch─and the left fist that I’d evaded penetrated the concrete-block wall behind me like it was nothing. It was almost like a catapult launch.
While stunned by its hilarious destructive potential, I thought I’d be able to use the time lag to regain my stance as Raincoat pulled its left hand out of the wall, since it was like a monkey with its closed hand stuck inside a jar, but no, of course not, things weren’t going to be that convenient, and Raincoat wasn’t giving me a few seconds. As if a dam were collapsing around a leak, a dozen feet of the concrete-block wall crumbled and fell with a tremendous clatter.
That took me back.
So, no time lag.
Raincoat seemed to twist its entire body around as its left fist came right at me─this time there was no sign, no initial motion, only a determined attempt to punch me from its current position.
A catapult.
Forget about evading it, I couldn’t even defend against it.
I didn’t even know where it hit me.
A moment later, my world began to spin, then again, three times, four, and as if my thought processes were being scrambled, intense G’s assaulted me every which way, up and down, left and right, and the world began to warp and bend before I was slammed prone against the asphalt.
I learned what it might feel like for my entire body to be grated.
I felt like a block of cheese getting turned to curly shreds.
Yet─it hurt.
And if it hurt, I was still alive.
My body hurt from head to toe, but my abdomen most of all─I must have been punched in the gut. I tried to stand up in a panic, but my legs trembled and shook so much it was all I could do to go from prone to supine.
Raincoat was awfully far away. It looked that way. I thought it was some optical illusion─but no, it really was far away. That one blow seemed to have sent me flying an incredible distance. It truly was a catapult.
My innards─felt yucky.
The pain I was feeling…I’d felt before.
It wasn’t my bones.
A number of my organs had ruptured.
While they may have been destroyed, the shape of my body was, you could say, fine. Right, bicycles and humans were made different, so even if they took the same punch, one of them didn’t turn into a crumpled piece of paper. Nice one, joints. Viva muscles.
Having said that…
I couldn’t move thanks to the damage I’d taken.
And Raincoat was approaching me─this time at a relaxed pace, slow enough for me to see it clearly and for its figure to be burned into my brain. Perhaps one more shot, and if not, two or three more and it would all be over─in other words, there was no need for it to feel hurried or impatient now.
That did make sense. It was a reasonable decision.
But…what was going on?
This aberration was practically a thrill killer… It was clear by now that, no matter how humanoid in shape, it wasn’t “human” given its power to crush a bicycle and smash through a concrete-block wall─but why was this aberration attacking me?
For every aberration, there was a reason.
They weren’t just cryptic.
They were rational─grounded in reason.
That was the most valuable thing I’d learned from Oshino, and from my time with the gorgeous vampiress─thus, the logical conclusion was that there was a reason for this aberration, too, yet I couldn’t think of anything─
What was the cause?
I thought back to the day’s events.
I thought back to whom I’d seen.
Mayoi Hachikuji.
Hitagi Senjogahara.
Tsubasa Hanekawa─
My two little sisters, my homeroom teacher, my classmates whose faces were fuzzy, and…
As I was coming up with names in no particular order─
I remembered Suruga Kanbaru’s at the tail end.
“………!�
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Just then─Raincoat turned around.
Its humanoid body turned a perfect 180 degrees.
No sooner than it did, it took off in a dash─
And vanished.
It was so sudden that I found myself at a loss for words.
“Wh…Whaa?”
Why would it do that all of a sudden?
I looked up at the sky as the pain that reigned over my body turned from dull to sharp─and the starlight was still beautiful. It was such a discordant sight given the faint smell of blood wafting in the air from all over my body.
My mouth was filled with the thick taste of blood.
Yes, my organs were definitely wounded. My guts had been vigorously churned. But it shouldn’t be enough to kill me… And I wouldn’t even need to go to the hospital. Though my body may no longer be immortal, I still retain a modicum of regen capabilities. A night’s rest would have me back up and running. So I’d managed to escape with my life barely intact…
But…
Suddenly, and for no particular reason, I recalled the moment before I was hit. Raincoat’s left fist was aimed in my direction─I had a flashback focused on that fist, and that fist alone. Maybe it was when it punched my bike, or maybe when its fist went through the wall, but the friction of the blow must have destroyed the rubber glove, opening up a line of four holes at the base of its fingers─and just like the inside of Raincoat’s hood, they seemed somehow chipped out, left out, hollow, but.
The contents of that gloved fist.
It belonged to some kind of beast─
“Araragi,” I heard a voice call from above me.
A flat voice, so cold it was below freezing.
When I looked toward it, I met an equally cold, emotionless gaze─it was Hitagi Senjogahara.
“…Hey, long time no see,” I said.
“Yes, it’s been a while.”
It had been less than an hour.
“I’m here to give you something you forgot.” With those words, she shoved the envelope in her right hand in front of my eyes. She didn’t have to bring it so close, I could see that it was the envelope containing the hundred thousand yen fee she was paying Oshino. “Brazenly forgetting something I handed to you is a capital crime, Araragi,” she scolded me.
“Yeah…sorry.”
“Apologize all you want, I’m not forgiving you. I came here so that I could bully you to my heart’s content, but it looks like you’ve already punished yourself. Quite an admirable show of loyalty, Araragi.”
“Listen, I’m not one of those guys into punishing myself…”
“You don’t have to hide it. In light of your loyalty, I’ll half-forgive you.”
“……”
She was lessening my sentence but not absolving me.
The Senjogahara Court seemed to be tough on crime.
“Joking aside,” she said, “what happened, did you get hit by a car? I see that precious thing you called your bicycle over there, and it looks like it’s been heavily damaged. Or rather, it’s sticking out from a telephone pole. A convoy would have had to run over you for it to end up like that.”
“Umm…”
“You remember its license-plate number, I hope? I’ll go and avenge you. I’ll start by turning the car into scrap metal, and then I’ll put the driver through so much pain he’ll be begging for me to finish him by running him over and over with a bicycle.”
Hitagi Senjogahara never hesitated to say the most alarming things.
I was relieved that she was the same as always. I had to admit, though, it felt both weird and amusing that Senjogahara’s acid tongue was making me feel alive…
“…No, I just tripped and fell. I need to watch where I’m going… I was pedaling my bike while I was on the phone…and slammed into a telephone pole…”
“Did you, now. Okay then, would you like me to destroy that pole at the very least?”
She just wanted to vent her anger.
It wasn’t even a misbegotten grudge.
“Please don’t. I’m sure the neighbors around here would be annoyed if you did…”
“Okay, then… But you know, Araragi, you have a very flexible body if you were able to slam into that concrete-block wall hard enough to break it and only come away with a few cuts and scrapes. I’m impressed. Maybe someday you’ll actually be able to make good use of that flexibility. Oh, I could call an ambulance, but…I guess you don’t need one?”
“Nah…”
Had Senjogahara gone through the trouble of bringing that envelope because, like me, she wanted us to meet as often as possible? Maybe she’d meant to take the bus to bring the letter to my house. If so, it still wasn’t enough to make her a real tsundere, but I could almost feel elated…
Also, she’d saved me.
However unexpectedly.
Because Raincoat must have noticed Senjogahara─and vanished as a result.
“If I just rest a little longer,” I said, “I’ll be able to move.”
“Oh. Okay, I’ll reward you with a very special something.”
Stride─
Senjogahara stepped one foot over and across my face-up head. I’d like to reiterate, her outfit that day featured a long skirt. She had stockingless, smooth, slender, bare legs─and now, from where I was lying, the length of her skirt didn’t matter so much.
“Enjoy it until you can move again.”
“……”
To be honest, I could have gotten up already─but I decided to take the opportunity to think some things through. Not that thinking was a productive activity for me…but for the time being.
For the time being, I thought about Senjogahara.
And about tomorrow.
005
Suruga Kanbaru’s home was about thirty minutes away by bike from the front gates of our school. It was also about thirty minutes away on foot if you dashed the whole way. At first I tried telling Kanbaru to get on the back of my bike so we could ride together, but she demurred. It’s dangerous for two people to ride on one bicycle, and it’s against the law to begin with, she said. Well, I couldn’t argue with that, and perhaps she was reluctant because getting on the back meant holding on to me the whole way. In that case, I thought, I could push my bike and walk alongside her or leave it at school, but Kanbaru told me not to worry about her and to ride. Then what’s she gonna do, I wondered, until she told me, like it was the most natural thing, “Okay, let me show you the way,” and dashed off on her two feet. This was just as true now as when she stalked me, but for Suruga Kanbaru, “dashing” seemed to be a mode of transportation just like “by foot, bike, car, or train.” This seemed unusual to me, even for jocks. Tup, tup, tup, tup, tup, tup, Kanbaru’s sharp and lively rhythm went as she guided my bike─with the white bandage on her left hand. When we arrived at our destination, her breathing completely unperturbed, she had somehow only worked up a small sweat.
It was an impressive Japanese home.
I could practically feel the history coming from it.
I knew that it must have been her home from the nameplate reading “Kanbaru” on the gate, but the premises had an air of solemnity about them that gave me pause nevertheless.
Still, I was going to go inside.
I intruded on the premises with the same indescribable feeling that overcame me when I visited a shrine or a temple on a school field trip, and after we walked down a hallway that faced a traditional courtyard, bamboo-pipe fountain and all, I was shown into Kanbaru’s room beyond a sliding paper-screen door.
…As I looked around, I wondered how she could have allowed in a senior whom she didn’t even know that well.
Her futon hadn’t been folded up; her clothes were strewn across the floor (including her underwear); many books, be it textbooks, novels, or manga, lay open face-down on the floor; a mountain of cardboard boxes that belonged in a warehouse stood in one corner; and worst of all, her trash didn’t sit inside a waste basket but was left carelessly all over the tatami ma
ts, packed into plastic bags from her neighborhood supermarket or just as-is. In fact, the room seemed to lack any container burdened with the quaint notion of holding trash.
It should have felt spacious, at over two hundred square feet.
But there was nowhere to take even a first step.