by Nisioisin
I was a terminal case.
“I’m sorry, but if you’ll allow me to be intrusive,” warned Kanbaru, “I don’t think you’ll be able to make it very far in the adult world if you can’t talk smut with girls younger than you. Be smart and jettison your precious notions about femininity as soon as you can.”
“If there’s anything I don’t want to be scolded about by a girl younger than me, that would be it.”
And her choice of words, “talk smut”…
Not that putting it another way would have made it fine.
“Still,” she insisted, “I don’t want to belabor the point, but expecting me to be chaste thanks to these flimsy illusions of yours presents actual problems that start with saying hello. Don’t blame me, girls are interested in dirty talk, too.”
“Uh huh…”
This whole episode was liable to foment its own set of illusions about women, though… Was I wrong to think that with Senjogahara or her, the context was different?
“All right,” Kanbaru said, “then let’s get back to if you’re a briefs guy or a boxers guy.”
“I don’t think that’s what we were talking about?!”
“Huh? Was it whether or not I wear panties under my bike shorts?”
“Excuse me, but you don’t, Miss Kanbaru?!” I was so shaken I found myself speaking politely. “Th-Then those bike shorts peeking out under your skirt are…!”
“Even if that’s the case, why be shocked? Bike shorts were originally designed as a form of underwear.”
“All the more so then! You mean you’re walking around with your underwear out for the world to see!”
Moreover…that skirt of hers got blown in every direction but down when she ran and jumped!
“Hmph. Yes, I suppose you could say that, but just think of it as the chic dispensation of a sporty girl.”
“No! It’s the perverted behavior of an exhibitionist!”
“Oh, now I remember, that’s not what we were talking about, either. It was whether I could serve as a replacement for─”
“Hold on, don’t rewind the conversation and leave such a question hanging! Tell me right now if you’re wearing anything underneath!”
“Can we gloss over such vulgar matters, please? It’s a triviality.”
“It isn’t a triviality, it’s a watershed moment─is my junior a sporty girl or an exhibitionist?!”
Smuttiness aside, we were going on and on about nothing in particular.
“Okay, then,” conceded Kanbaru, “why don’t you look at it this way. I’m both a sporty girl and an exhibitionist. For those who see me as a sporty girl, I am that; for those who see me as an exhibitionist, I am that too.”
“Stop with these word games! That kind of line stops being cool once you get out of middle school! What are you, my little sister?!”
Our conversation about nothing in particular reached a peak.
It could only be about something now.
“…But listen, Kanbaru. Seriously, no matter how hard you try, you’re not going to take Senjogahara’s place.”
“……”
She wasn’t going to take her place.
I was talking about more than what she’d said.
“You’re not Senjogahara, after all. No one can take someone else’s place, and no one can become someone else, either. Senjogahara is Hitagi Senjogahara, and you are Suruga Kanbaru. No matter how much you love her, no matter how much you idolize her, no matter how much more you do.”
“…You’re right.” Kanbaru nodded after a brief pause. “You’re exactly right.”
“Yeah. So let’s stop wasting time chatting, and get going. And also, can you knock it off with that pose already? You’ve turned me into someone who has an extended conversation with a high school girl who’s groping her own breasts. That’s too surreal a picture for me.”
“Guh. I didn’t notice.”
“Notice.” It went for other stuff, too. “The sun will go down if we don’t hurry─it’s bad news if it gets dark, right? For your left hand.”
“Yes. It also means everything’s fine as long as it’s bright out. I’m completely okay for another few hours at least.”
“Oh… Being active only at night somehow can’t help but remind me of vampires…”
Kanbaru and I walked alongside the chain-link fence that surrounded the building until we found a large hole. Three weeks earlier, Senjogahara had gone through it with me─this time I was with her junior, Kanbaru.
I’d never thought I’d have anything to do with her.
The webs we weave.
Ties that bind.
“Watch your feet.”
“Yes. Thank you kindly.”
I pushed forward through the wall of unkempt grass, trying to make a path for Kanbaru as she followed behind me. Wondering how it was going to be in summertime if it was this way now, I entered the crumbling, or you might say already-crumbled, cram school.
It was still a mess.
The concrete fragments, empty cans, signs, shards of glass, and who knew what else were still a mess, a royal mess. The building was already dim in the late afternoon as it had no power, making it seem even more decayed than otherwise. I thought Oshino could at least tidy up the building if he had so much free time on his hands. Didn’t living in such a place depress him?
I guess it was a little better than Kanbaru’s room…
Senjogahara had scowled at the building’s wretched state and Oshino’s insouciance, but I wouldn’t have to worry with Kanbaru…
“It’s filthy,” she said. “I can’t believe it. If this Oshino person lives here, he ought to clean up.”
“……”
I guess she was tough on others about certain things?
Or maybe it was that she wasn’t self-conscious… I thought her brazen attitude came from her confidence, but perhaps there was another side to it.
That was one way she and Senjogahara were different.
Senjogahara was abnormally self-conscious.
Oshino primarily roosted on the fourth floor.
I walked─in the dim light.
The farther we got from the entrance, the deeper the darkness grew─what an oversight on my part. I’d been to the building so many times, I could have at least brought a flashlight. I’d brought the envelope containing a hundred thousand yen that Senjogahara had entrusted to me─in other words, I’d planned on coming here regardless of how my conversation with Kanbaru panned out. I could have spared the idea some thought.
But, well.
It depended on the time and the place, but for the most part, I was fine with darkness…which is why I found myself forgetting such obvious things.
Mementos from my time as a vampire.
“……”
I turned around when we reached the stairs to notice that Kanbaru’s steps were incredibly timid and wobbly. She must not like the dark, I thought. When you considered that she was normally a fearless sportswoman, her gait appeared all the more precarious and uncertain. In her state, walking up stairs would be an ordeal. Whatever was up with her left arm, it’d be a big problem if she hurt her legs, too… I remembered how I’d led Senjogahara by the hand when we came here together…
That was the first time I had held her hand.
Hmm…what to do? Kanbaru must have declined to ride behind me out of such considerations, and come to think of it, I’d learned only yesterday just how strict Senjogahara could be about cheating…
“Hey, my junior Kanbaru.”
“What is it, my senior Araragi?”
“Hold out your right hand.”
“Like this?”
“All right. It’s docking time.”
I pulled her hand toward me by the tip and had her grip the belt that I wore on my school-issued slacks.
“We’re about to climb up some stairs, so don’t trip. I’ll be sure to walk up slowly, so be careful.”
“……”
No matter how strict Senjo
gahara’s guidelines were, this degree of physical contact couldn’t possibly count as cheating. It was a brilliant idea. It seemed like sophistry, I admit, but I would at least have a proper excuse prepared for Senjogahara.
“Aren’t you kind,” Kanbaru said, tugging on my belt as though she were testing its strength. “You must get told that often. That you’re a good, kind person.”
“Who wants to get told, and often, the kind of thing you tell someone who doesn’t have a personality?”
“Even when it comes to guiding me through the dark, you’re minding both her and me, and I’m grateful from the bottom of my heart. I’m pained by your consideration. I’m envious of your discretion.”
“…Was my thinking that transparent?”
She was a sharp one.
You usually wouldn’t catch on to that.
But since she did, why go and spell it out? I felt so awkward. The jokey way I’d gone about it made it so much worse.
“My senior, there’s something I want to ask you.”
“What is it? Ask whatever you want, as long as it’s not about tops and bottoms.”
“Oh, then I’ll put that bit off until later.”
“It’s on your list of questions?!”
“As are panties and exhibitionism.”
“We already played it out!”
“To be frank, only dirty talk interests me.”
“I won’t have such a character! Just hurry up with your question!”
“Judging by everything you’ve said…it seems like you haven’t talked to her about me at all.”
“Hunh? No, I have. That’s how I learned you two were the Valhalla Duo.”
To be exact, I’d heard that from Hanekawa, but I hadn’t understood their relationship until I checked with Senjogahara. I might have guessed, but guesses were all they were going to be. I wouldn’t have thought to ask Hanekawa.
“That’s not what I meant,” Kanbaru said. “About my left hand. About my left hand attacking you…”
“Oh, that. Yeah, I haven’t had the opportunity… I was in no state to last night, and I didn’t know the truth of the matter anyway, or that your left hand was like that. I wasn’t even close to sure you were behind the attack in the first place. It was just speculation. As far as she knows, I ran into a telephone pole on my bicycle.”
“Will that do, with all the collateral damage?”
“Well, I can’t get the police or a hospital involved thanks to my formerly vampiric body. If things go public, it’ll be just as annoying for me. I don’t plan on keeping what happened with you a secret from Senjogahara forever, of course, but…I just thought it was something you should tell her, not me.”
“I should?”
“See, I’m not a kind person or a good person. It’s just that I have my motives─”
My underhanded calculations.
My scheming persistence.
Something I, myself, could never do─
“…Hm? Whoa there.”
Shinobu was there on the landing between the third and fourth floors.
Shinobu Oshino.
A blond girl who looked to be about eight years old, her skin so white it seemed translucent, wearing a helmet and a pair of goggles─she was there on the landing sitting directly on the floor, legs folded, arms around her knees. You might have mistaken her for the spirit of a dead child from Japanese folklore if not for her golden hair.
I yelled in surprise despite myself.
Shinobu glared intensely at me and Kanbaru as we came climbing up the stairs. It was a loaded gaze full of hate and gravity, of unspoken words and unfulfilled desires.
“……”
I ignored her.
I ignored her, averting my eyes, and walked around her, refusing to pay her notice, to proceed to the fourth floor… But why was she sitting on the landing, of all places? Could she have gotten in a fight with Oshino?
“H-Hey, what was with that girl?” asked Kanbaru in a mildly agitated, flighty voice once we were on the fourth floor. Then again, it would have been weirder for her to pay no mind to a girl like Shinobu mysteriously sitting on the floor of some ruins… Well, part of Kanbaru’s body had turned into an aberration. Could she have sensed something from Shinobu?
“She was super freaking cute!”
“You said that with the biggest smile you’ve shown all day!”
“I want to hold her in my arms… No, I want her to hold me in her arms!”
“You fall for anyone, don’t you?!” I’d thought there was only one girl for her. Plus, this was a child she was talking about. “Just keep that stuff to yourself…”
“I don’t want to keep any secrets from you, though.”
“You still don’t need to put out the naked truth.”
“Naked?”
“Don’t react to just that word! Do I have to watch every single phrase I use now? I’ve never met someone who’s harder to talk to!”
She was a real horn dog, or rather, she wasn’t Sapphic only for Senjogahara… Every one of my illusions, and not just ones about women, was being blown to pieces like it was a carpet bombing. Swearing to myself that I’d never allow her to meet Hachikuji, I gloomily conveyed a warning.
“…Well, you should stay away from─that.”
A vampire.
─husk of.
A vampire.
─dregs of.
That was what Shinobu Oshino, the blond girl, was.
When the devil is away─the mice.
“Hm. I see… Too bad,” Kanbaru lamented.
“And now that you’ve said so with the saddest face you’ve shown all day, here we are. Time to find out whether Oshino’s in or not… We can’t just put this off until tomorrow if he isn’t, though. My life’s in real danger.”
“…Sorry.”
“I’m not trying to be mean or anything. Don’t feel bad about it.”
“Well, I don’t feel good about it, either. I think I need to make it up to you somehow. Ah, right, what’s your favorite color?”
“Huh? My favorite color? Are you giving me a present? I don’t know if I have one, but if I had to say, I guess aqua blue?”
“Okay, got it.” Kanbaru nodded. “Then I promise from now on, whenever I meet you, I’ll do my best to be wearing aqua blue underwear.”
“Don’t drag me in to your dirty talk or make it seem like I’m the reason! It’s all on you and your sexual frustration!”
There were three classrooms on the fourth floor. The doors to all of them were broken. If Oshino was in the building, he would be in one of the three, but─
The first room was a miss.
We checked in the second room─and there he was.
“You’re late, Araragi. I’ve been waiting so long that I nearly fell asleep.”
Mèmè Oshino─lay there on a linoleum floor so cracked and ripped you wouldn’t just trip but get deep cuts if you walked across it with bare feet, a piece of cardboard box so discolored it must have been rotting as his only bedding. And without getting up, he greeted us off the bat with those words in his usual all-knowing tone, despite not knowing the first detail about our situation.
His crumpled, psychedelic Hawaiian shirt, his shaggy hair, and his generally filthy appearance. Words like “clean” or “refreshing” existed on a separate plane from the man. You could say it was an appropriate look for the ruins he lived in, but what he could have ever looked like before coming to them was by now beyond my imagination.
Oshino scratched his head like even that was a bother.
Then, and only then─did he notice Kanbaru, who, out of anxiety or alarmed by the very questionable Oshino, was trying to hide behind me and holding tight to my belt with her right hand though we were already here.
“Oh. So you’re brought yet another girl with you today, Araragi. You’re with a new one every time we meet─why, I’m quite glad for you.”
“Shut up. Don’t keep spouting the same lines.”
“You say t
hat, but what am I supposed to do when it’s the same situation? My repertoire is limited. Hm? And another girl with straight bangs, at that. Judging by her uniform, are you two classmates? Does your high school regulate hairstyles? Interesting, that’s a very antiquated system they’ve kept around.”