by Nisioisin
“…Which is why the gossip about you is so all over the place, you seem to have a personality disorder.”
I got it now.
But to go so far… Might I say, not stalking but…reverse-stalking?
“I managed to do that for one year. It wasn’t a gray Sapphic existence, it was a black one. Hard to say whether all of that getting directed into even more enthusiasm for basketball was a good thing or a bad thing… But then, after a year─I learned about you.”
“……”
Considering how much she cared about Senjogahara, you’d think she’d have found out sooner, but maybe it wasn’t simply because we were in different years─wasn’t it because Kanbaru went out of her way to avoid hearing about Senjogahara?
And yet.
She ended up learning about Koyomi Araragi.
“I couldn’t hold back any longer─for the first time in a year, I consciously…visited her. Or tried to. Of course, there’d been a few careless mistakes in the span of a year, but this was my first time intentionally seeing her. And she─was in a classroom that morning, chatting and cooing away with you. There was a happy smile on her face, too, of the kind she never showed me even back in middle school.”
“……”
Which particular pile of abuse was Senjogahara heaping on me then? That’s about the only time a smile comes across her otherwise expressionless face.
“Do you understand?” Kanbaru looked at me straight. “Something I wanted so very much, that I wanted so very much but had to give up on, you did like it was the most natural thing in the world.”
“Kanbaru… No, that─”
“At first, I was jealous,” Kanbaru said, punctuating every word. “I tried not to be,” she went on, her voice holding back a torrent of emotions. “To the end, I was jealous,” she concluded.
“……”
“I wondered why it couldn’t have been me. I was jealous of you, and I was disappointed in her. I wondered if she would have accepted me if I were a man. I wondered if the problem was that I was a woman. She didn’t need friends or juniors but didn’t mind having a lover? In that case…”
In that case─Kanbaru glared at me with an accusatory gaze for the first time.
“In that case, why couldn’t it be me?”
I knew she was my junior, a girl who was younger than me, and that she wasn’t the type to begin putting her hands on me in a frenzy─but her eyes were so irate I was scared she might.
“I was jealous of you and disappointed in her. And─I was appalled at myself. I was going to heal her heart? I was going to step away? It was a lie, all of it. It was all my ego. It meant I didn’t care as long as I was happy. Was I hoping she’d praise me, or what? Ridiculous. You couldn’t be any more hypocritical. But even then─I wanted things to be like before. I wanted her to be kind to me. Even if it was selfish, I wanted to be by her side─which is why.”
Then.
With her right hand─she touched her left.
Touched the beastly left hand.
“Which is why I wished upon this hand.”
006
I’m sure there’s no need to give a synopsis of “The Monkey’s Paw” by William Wymark Jacobs─but not having known about the story before, I thought why, yes, what a well-made ghost or horror story. A textbook tale of dread, tried and true─indeed, once I heard it, I felt as if I’d heard it somewhere before.
It was a classic, in other words.
According to Kanbaru, the monkey’s paw was a pretty well-known item, though it didn’t compare to vampires, and was reused in lots of different media in lots of different ways. Spun off into a bunch of different patterns, splitting from one new version to the next like an evolutionary tree, but with one shared, underlying factor common to them all, the biggest factor that makes the monkey’s paw the Monkey’s Paw─
The Monkey’s Paw grants its owner’s wishes, the story goes.
But not in the way its owner intends, the story goes─
Those two elements.
It was the kind of item you described by appending “the story goes.”
Say that you wished for riches. You might wake up the next day to find that your family has died and that you’ll be receiving their life insurance. Say that you wished for a promotion at work. You might wake up the next day to find that the company has taken a turn for the worse, that the upper management has been fired, and that you’re being promoted at a failing company.
That kind of thing.
It seems the Monkey’s Paw was an item created in India by an old mystic to teach people that they should live according to their fate and that terrible disasters await those who defy it. A reputation that it can grant three wishes for three people, for instance, accompanies its entry into the story.
The first thing I think of when I hear about three wishes being granted is the magic lamp in the Arabian Nights, but how did that story go and end? Similar tales can be found all over the world. Considering how subject humans are to endless, insatiable desires, narratives where some sort of being capable of granting any wish presents itself to people might be a fundamental form of storytelling. The best known of its kind among ghost stories seems to be “The Monkey’s Paw”─
“So─what’s his name again, Mèmè Oshino? Did I hear that right?”
“Yes, but he’s not cute like his name makes him out to be. I already told you this, but he’s some older dude who likes wearing Hawaiian shirts. I don’t want you getting your hopes up or anything. He doesn’t look the part to say the least, so I want you to be prepared for that.”
“No…that’s not what I meant. His name is just so striking, or maybe symbolic… It doesn’t matter, though. Still, ‘Mèmè’ would be hard to turn into a nickname…”
“Huh, yeah… I wonder what people called him when he was a kid. I have to admit, I’m curious… Actually, I can’t even begin to imagine what he was like as a kid.”
Oshino dwelled in an abandoned four-story cram school a little ways away from any residential areas─to put it simply, these were ruins. Ones that children wouldn’t dare each other to enter, that people living in the vicinity might not even register as a building─these ruins existed as scenery. They were so aged that a large earthquake would probably raze the whole thing─well, I say aged, but the cram school went out of business only a few years ago when one of the large chains opened up a branch right in front of the station. The site was like a cadaver meant to teach us what a horrible state buildings ended up in after only a few years of disuse. So while I say Oshino dwelled there, it wasn’t official in any way, and you could call it a grand case of squatting. He’d been living there for the two months since spring break, surrounded by signs that read “Private Property, No Trespassing.” The desks left behind serving as his bed, he roamed around town all day.
Roamed.
Yes, that’s right. It wasn’t as if he stayed put.
So I could come to see him, as I was doing then─but actually finding him there was a matter of chance. He didn’t have a cell phone, or even a PHS, and to be honest, there was a lot of luck involved in meeting him.
It took a little more than an hour to get there on bicycle from Kanbaru’s Japanese estate.
It also took a little more than an hour to dash over, if you were Kanbaru, of course.
The two of us looked up at the abandoned cram school.
“By the way,” she asked me, “you said you were attacked by a vampire, but─was that your first time with an aberration…or whatever you call them?”
“Yeah, probably.”
Maybe I just hadn’t noticed earlier instances.
It was the first case that I was aware of.
“Spring break for you, and then her, and now me… It seems suggestive of something, doesn’t it? Nothing before, and now three in quick succession.”
“Yep.” It was actually five if you counted Hanekawa and Hachikuji, but I decided to be somewhat vague and hide that fact out of respect for
their personal privacy. “Once you experience it, you’re more likely to experience it again─apparently. So maybe it’s always going to be like this for me now.”
“That sounds tough.”
“Not really… It’s not all tough. Experiencing an aberration means having an experience that’s out of the norm, and you probably come away from it having noticed and gained new things.”
Although I said that, it sounded like I was papering over it or covering my tracks to avoid telling her how I felt. Just thinking back to my spring break experience told me that I was beating around the bush by saying that it wasn’t all tough. Partly because I felt awkward, my eyes wandered over to Kanbaru’s left hand─and the rewound white bandage. I couldn’t see what it concealed, but once you knew, you could tell nonetheless that there was something slightly off about the length and shape. Even if she did her best to make it hard to notice by wrapping some areas multiple times…
“My senior Araragi, she and you have been in the same class for three years in a row even though our school shuffles homerooms every year. I assumed that you two were at least a little close from before─but from what I’ve heard, you only spoke to her for the first time three weeks ago.”
“I don’t know if I could say it was the absolute first time, but…I wouldn’t have noticed her secret if she hadn’t gone and slipped, and we probably wouldn’t have started dating. And─if I hadn’t known Oshino, I doubt I could have helped her out… So in that sense, it was luck. I guess it was convenient…or that I was inconvenienced? You knew about the Monkey’s Paw, Kanbaru, and I knew a vampire. That’s all.”
Upon learning Senjogahara’s secret a year ago─Kanbaru was able to believe it so readily, I presumed, thanks to knowing the monkey, just as I’d experienced the demon and the cat by that point. Which meant the only difference between us was that I knew Oshino, a way to fight back.
That’s why I couldn’t help but think.
What if Kanbaru had known Oshino─no, not necessarily him, but some sort of spiritual technocrat who could aid Senjogahara─and solved her secret a year ago? Wouldn’t Kanbaru be in my position then─rather than me? Putting aside differences in age and gender for the time being─
Sheer luck.
You could call it a fated meeting─but it was chance.
“I appreciate how considerate you’re being,” Kanbaru thanked me, “but I wish you wouldn’t say that. She isn’t that kind of person. She wouldn’t confuse gratitude for love. That was just what got the ball rolling.” Kanbaru’s words were tinted with a pale desolation. “And that’s exactly why it’s so frustrating. When she rebuffed me, I stepped away. Meanwhile, you chased after her. If anything made a difference, it wasn’t vampires versus monkeys, nor knowing this Oshino, it was that.”
“……”
I’m sure of it, she muttered.
Talking to her like this made me realize how surprisingly introspective she was…the complete opposite of what you’d expect from her image of an athletic girl full of vim and vigor. But if she was remorseful, I felt like I was, too.
What was it?
This emotion akin to remorse as I chatted with Kanbaru, as if there were pins being pricked into my heart─I knew there was no need but found myself constantly trying to paper over things.
And that made me feel even more remorseful.
“Yes…but,” Kanbaru said, “I am honestly glad that her problem was already gone. It might be strange for me to be thanking you, but that’s what I’d like to do, from the bottom of my heart.”
“Well, like I told you, it wasn’t me, the credit should go to Oshino─actually, no, it wasn’t him either. Senjoghara got saved thanks to Senjogahara. She simply went and saved herself all on our own.”
That’s how it was.
Oshino and I had barely done a thing.
There were no two ways about it, that was it─
“Ah…maybe you’re right. But can I ask you one more thing?”
“What is it?”
“I get why she fell for you. It puts my jealousy and disappointment to shame… Yes, I think I get it. But what is it about her that made you fall for her? You said she was just another classmate for over two years, a classmate you’d never even spoken to.”
“Well…”
It was hard to answer when she put it so bluntly. Part of me was embarrassed, but the bigger issue was being asked for a specific reason… It was just that in that park on that day, on Mother’s Day─
Oh, of course.
It made sense.
That was the source of my remorse.
“…Why do you ask, Kanbaru?”
“Well. What I’m trying to say is that if it’s just her body you’re after, I think I could take her place.”
“………”
An incredible proposal.
With her right hand and her bandaged left, Kanbaru grabbed her own breasts and squished them together and up. She was still wearing her school uniform, and enhanced by the immodest mismatch, her enticing pose exuded an almost unnatural allure.
“I think I’m pretty cute.”
If she did say so herself.
“I think I’d look a little more feminine if I grew my hair out, and I’m not indifferent to skin care. Plus, thanks to having always played sports, my body is nice and toned, with just the right kind of waistline. I’ve been told I have the kind of figure that men savor.”
“Bring over whoever told you that, so I can kill him.”
“It was the basketball team advisor.”
“This world is done for!”
“You can’t kill him. We’d get suspended from matches.”
So what do you think, Kanbaru asked for a second time.
She didn’t seem to be joking or half-joking or jocular, but absolutely serious, and she bore down on me to give her one of two answers: yes or no.
“I’m ready to do this, you know. All you have to do is ask, any time and any place, and I’ll be the bottom for your top.”
“Bottom?! Top?! Why would I ask for that?!”
“Hm? Oh, I see. You don’t have any grounding in BL. That’s surprising.”
“I don’t want to talk about BL with a younger girl!”
“Hm? BL just stands for ‘Boys’ Love.’”
“I know that! It’s not like I got that wrong!”
Yes, I’d noticed.
When I cleaned her room, there’d been so many books scattered around with those kinds of covers!
I’d gone out of my way to avoid the subject!
I’d pretended I hadn’t seen anything!
“Oh, so you weren’t confused. I was sure you were, judging by your reaction. Then what exactly are you so mad about? I didn’t mean to offend you with anything I said. Could it mean you’re a bottom?”
“Not another word about this!”
“I’m more of a sub, so I don’t think I can top.”
“Wha… Um, you lost me.”
A sub-what?
Were we entering forbidden territory here?
I felt like our conversation was treading on thin ice.
“And anyway, Kanbaru, why would a boy and a girl have to do BL anything? There’s zero need for that.”
“But you see, I want to preserve my maidenhood for her─”
“I don’t need to hear it!”
The thin ice had cracked. This conversation was underwater!
Hitagi Senjogahara and Suruga Kanbaru, are the two of you conspiring to smash into dust every illusion I have about women?! I’m sure of it now, the crisis management part of my brain is telling me outright, it’s unmistakable, you’re old acquaintances, the Valhalla Duo!
Tiptoeing and sneaking off, or running away on fleet feet, my chances at happiness were abandoning me in droves. I could feel it with my whole body and heaved a sigh.
Ahh… They were grinding away at my sanity with all this risqué talk about “going after her body” and “supple, carefree limbs, the kind of figure that men sav
or”… Though precocious in her own way, talking with Hachikuji the day before was fun because she never sounded weirdly jaded─or so I thought back fondly to my conversation with a grade school kid.