by Nisioisin
The desks and chairs in the classroom were in the way and had been removed─so now only Kanbaru and I stood there. The Rainy Devil’s left arm and a mock-vampire nonhuman.
Two beings that were not quite. It seemed like an even fight.
No─actually, I couldn’t let it be an even fight.
I had to overwhelm the devil.
Just like the night before, beneath the raincoat’s hood lurked a deep pit, and I couldn’t make out what was in there, let alone any expression─
“………”
The most standard measure against an aberration that grants wishes, like Rainy Devils and Monkey’s Paws, is to wish for something it cannot grant.
A wish that’s too grand.
Or a contradictory wish.
A wish that is completely impossible.
A wish that would put it in a double bind, between a rock and a hard place.
Like a bucket with no bottom, as Oshino put it. That lets you drive off the aberration, see beyond the aberration─or so he said.
But Kanbaru had already made her wish in this case─she wanted to be by Senjogahara’s side. And for that─Koyomi Araragi was in the way. She hated Koyomi Araragi, and she wanted to kill Koyomi Araragi, she ended up wishing unconsciously. The Rainy Devil was trying to answer to that wish as stated.
A wish can’t be canceled.
Since she did think it, even for a moment, it was too late.
In which case, the logic needed to be turned on its head.
The very same wish should be made impossible.
Koyomi Araragi should be an entity that no mere Rainy Devil could kill─
“I guess this is a case of being able to argue your way out of anything─a little on the sophistic side if you ask me, like we’re monkeying around with the rules, but hey, if it works… Oops!”
I don’t know what triggered it─but Raincoat suddenly leapt toward me. Suruga Kanbaru’s jumping chops─amplified by the intensity of her hatred. Normally, the speed would have defied my eyes like the night before─but things were different now.
I could see just fine.
And also react─
“Wait, wh-whoa!”
With a centrifugal twist of my torso, I dodged Raincoat’s left fist─a very close call. Completing the spin, I moved away─it was lame, but I needed to regain my footing.
What was going on?
I wanted to say it was even faster than the night before─no, my eyes were still adjusting, that was all. Anyway, if I evaded Raincoat’s left hand’s attacks and waited for my opening, then targeted the “dead weight” that was Kanbaru’s body, caught it, and pinned it down─
“………kk!”
It was already─on me.
Ridiculous, I didn’t expect to overwhelm Raincoat when it came to speed, but mine ought to have been enhanced far beyond last night thanks to Shinobu, and yet, as easily as this─Raincoat brandished its left fist at me. I couldn’t dodge to the left, I needed to get on its right somehow, outside─
The bared, dark and hairy arm grazed my cheek and missed. I felt like the gusts in its wake were ripping my body apart─but kicked at Raincoat’s exposed flank.
…I’m sorry, Kanbaru!
I apologized to her in my heart.
As expected, apart from its left hand Raincoat was fairly normal─its body flew straight in the direction of my kick, lost its balance, and fell on all fours to the linoleum floor.
Indeed, controlling just the left arm posed a disadvantage for Raincoat. It was horribly imbalanced and obvious that the rest of the package couldn’t keep up.
But then, what was up with its speed? Had Raincoat not been serious the night before? Did it get faster in response to my enhanced abilities? But what need was there for an aberration to hold back?
I didn’t get it.
I still didn’t─as Raincoat got up.
Hmm… Even ignoring the fact that the body was Kanbaru’s, I couldn’t bring myself to kick an opponent who was down…
I knew I had to, but I was reluctant, even though I couldn’t afford to be in this case.
A good and kind person.
Ugh, I hated that label.
How nice that your lack of personality was getting smoothed over.
In a beeline, Raincoat’s left fist smashed into my right shoulder this time─that catapult of a fist. It must have aimed for my median line, but I was able to avoid that…not completely, though. I couldn’t fully acquire it─it was too fast. I hurtled back about ten feet… With my sense of equilibrium, I flipped midair and landed on my feet. Raincoat’s left hand had turned my bicycle into a crumpled piece of paper and demolished a concrete wall, but unlike yesterday, my body neither flew an absurd distance nor got wrecked. I suffered some damage, of course, but not to the extent that I couldn’t move. My shoulder was dislocated and probably also fractured, but it was nothing that my vampiric regeneration couldn’t heal right away. The sharp pain went away in an instant, too. If anything felt nostalgic, this was it. Oh, I couldn’t wait for sunrise… Just how badly was I gonna get burnt?
But I didn’t have time to be thinking about that. Because Raincoat followed up where I landed─and follow up, it did. Raincoat knew no doubt. Its left fist now went for my head. The punch caught me right in my face with its eyes that had yet to adjust. I was treated to the sound of my nose snapping. That was in my current state, which meant a normal human head would have been blown to smithereens; the destructive force was that terrifying even to imagine. I pathetically crawled away to get some distance from Raincoat, and as I did, my broken nose healed. I loathed the feeling. It was as if I’d become an amoeba or something. And this was at a tenth─my spring break had been hell.
I was able to dodge the next punch.
But the one after that nicked me.
“……Dammit!”
Why?
Why couldn’t I dodge them altogether?
Though the strikes themselves described efficient straight lines, Raincoat’s overall attacking motion, merely thrusting out its left fist with such brute force I half-expected it to go flying off its shoulder like an anime robot’s rocket-propelled punch, was crude─it didn’t telegraph its movements, but that was all, and I should have been able to track it, so why couldn’t I? Why couldn’t I get out of its way? It was clearly several notches faster than the day before. Not so much its power…I could take one or two, no, a few dozen clean shots and still be in the fight with my current build, so why was just its speed so out of sight?
Something wasn’t like yesterday…
Raincoat…
The bared left arm, the beastly hand.
…Its right arm was bare too, but like whatever lurked under the hood, it had the air of some deep pit that you could and could not see─wait, no. That was what had changed. Raincoat had been wearing rubber gloves the day before─neither of its arms had been exposed. But what of it? Wearing rubber gloves shouldn’t have slowed it down.
And then I realized.
I realized my mistake.
Not the rubber gloves─the rubber boots!
Kanbaru had only bought a raincoat at the general store… She hadn’t gotten rubber gloves or rubber boots─not because we decided that setting the mood didn’t require the whole getup, but simply because we didn’t think of it. I didn’t know how the original Rainy Devil was depicted, but the raincoat had been enough of a hint to tip off Oshino. If just a raincoat did a good enough job of expressing the aberration and its character, then Kanbaru and I weren’t exactly amiss.
But─if Raincoat wasn’t wearing rubber boots, then that meant it was wearing sneakers. One glance was all I needed to confirm the fact. Its feet weren’t bare just because its hands were. Raincoat was still wearing the shoes that Kanbaru had on.
The unmistakably expensive sneakers.
Compared to rubber boots─they let you move at a different definition of speed.
Especially if you were an athlete of Suruga Kanbaru’s caliber.
“…Yikes.”
Openly shackling or binding Kanbaru’s feet or attaching any kind of weight to her body would have been out given our strategy, or objective─but a simple pair of rubber boots was certainly a feasible handicap… Why had we gone and created conditions where Raincoat could make full and unfettered use of its powers? Suruga Kanbaru’s body was supposed to serve as dead weight, to drag not her feet but her left hand down, but instead she was acting as a nimble attachment to that arm!
Urk…
I couldn’t believe how bad I was at closing the deal…
Just evading was no longer an option. Since my body wasn’t going to accumulate any damage, I wouldn’t be chipped to death like in a fighting game as long as I barely managed to avoid half of its attacks, but that wouldn’t complete my assignment of pulling off an overwhelming victory. It didn’t seem like an issue of my eyes adjusting. I needed to face Raincoat’s attacks head-on even if both of us might go down as a result. I lowered my hips and held my hands out like a goalie preparing for a penalty kick─or was a man-to-man basketball defense the more appropriate analogy?
However, another catapult strike, a clear violation of the rules of basketball (what would that violation be called?), shot toward the base of my neck, and I tried to stop it with both of my hands, my right hand meeting Raincoat’s fist, my left hand grabbing its wrist, and the rest of my body wrapping around its left arm─but didn’t make it in time. No, in fact, my right and left hands did make it in time, but I couldn’t stop the catapult. I felt a number of my finger bones breaking, then the left fist striking my collarbone immediately after. My body lurched backwards, but I somehow stood firm on my back foot─I hadn’t stopped the blow but at least reduced its force before it reached my torso.
Before Raincoat could pull back its fist, I used both of my hands, their fingers already healed, to grab its left arm─finally accomplishing my initial goal of halting its movements. At last, I had gotten ahold of Raincoat. All right, and now─
“I’m sorry, Kanbaru!”
Apologizing out loud this time, and pinning the left arm with both of my hands as Raincoat struggled to shake free, I attacked its legs, stomach, and chest with three successive sidekicks. It was an impossible attack for a normal human body to perform given the way we’re built. Unlike Raincoat, who could only attack with its left fist, I could use all four of my limbs and had to make full use of my advantage.
Raincoat’s left arm flailed like mad.
It was vulnerable.
Oshino was right. I probably didn’t stand a chance against a fully formed Rainy Devil as I was, but I could overwhelm it if I denied it its left arm─the fist’s damage, I could heal instantly as long as I didn’t take multiple hits in a row, which meant the bigger threat was Kanbaru’s boosted leg strength, and the bit about her sneakers was indeed unexpected, but having trapped it like this─all I had to do was kick the Rainy Devil into submission. If it wouldn’t cry uncle, then until it was no more. It was nearly like torture, the right equivalent of Suruga-toi, so it didn’t feel great, but we weren’t going to tear off Kanbaru’s left arm, and we certainly weren’t going to end her life, so my only choice was to continue attacking and inflicting pain until the devil left her─
Raincoat’s legs buckled.
My constant low kicks were finally paying off─or so I thought, but it wasn’t the case. The leg that I─no, that it threw off balance came arcing at my jaw along the shortest and quickest possible route. Not its left arm, but its left leg─Kanbaru’s long leg threaded its way past the rest of my body to land a high roundhouse kick right on my temple. The force of the blow was of course nothing compared to the left arm’s, but this was still Kanbaru’s dash burst converted into attack power, plus I had been caught completely off guard.
My brain was rattled and my vision blurred for a moment. Damaging the sensory organs of a (mock) vampire was definitely effective─an important lesson I had learned over spring break.
I had to let go of Raincoat’s left arm.
To defend against the kick that followed.
I held my arms out like a cross and took it, and while inferior to the left-arm catapult─the impact scrambled my thoughts due to its sheer inexplicability.
It could use more than its left arm?
But hadn’t Oshino said “dead weight”?
“…Does this mean what I think it does?”
I could only come up with one possible answer.
If the Rainy Devil’s source of energy was human negativity, then it was feeding off of Suruga Kanbaru’s jealousy toward me─if the left fist was a catapult, then Kanbaru’s body was the aircraft carrier itself. Her heated passions, her inflamed emotions created the high-pressure steam channeled into her muscles. That’s why her body wasn’t dragging the left arm down as dead weight─well, perhaps it did under normal circumstances but wasn’t loath to mount a defense when the Rainy Devil was in a pinch?
No, that was sophistry.
If I was going to say that I forgave Kanbaru, I mustn’t resort to arguments that circumvented the truth─it wasn’t fair to describe it as some spinal reflex, like an electrical current jolting a frog’s leg.
In other words.
Kanbaru’s legs moved of her own will.
Suruga Kanbaru’s will had a part in this.
Unconsciously, Kanbaru was─refusing.
To lose her Rainy Devil left arm.
To let her second wish go unfulfilled.
To let me live.
She wasn’t giving up─Senjogahara.
“…Scheming persistence.”
I understand how you feel.
So much that it hurts.
So much that I hurt.
Because─I lost, threw something away, too.
Because I’ll never get it back.
For some reason, Raincoat stood still. Having sent its left fist after me so tenaciously in simple straight lines, like a simple magnet being drawn toward an object, now it stood unmoving─almost as if it were puzzling over something.
Or maybe.
As if it were doubtful.
Raincoat’s unhesitant movements─had stopped.
…Suruga Kanbaru.
Hitagi Senjogahara’s junior.
The basketball star.
Please, just cut it off─she’d said.
Right after Oshino had revealed the truth, that her left arm wasn’t a Monkey’s Paw but a Devil’s Hand, that her wishes had been granted as she’d made them, after the awful truth that didn’t need to be exposed had been…she’d cast her eyes down for a few seconds, faced up bravely, and looked at Oshino and me in turn to say so.
“I don’t need this left hand.”
For once, without that smile of hers.
In a flat, plain, unemotional tone─oddly enough, the current-day personality of the senior she admired so.
“Please, just cut it off. I want you to sever it. I beg you. I know it’s a hassle, but I beg you. I can’t cut off my own arm…”
“S-Stop it.”
I hastened to push her outstretched arm back toward her. The hair felt disgusting as it brushed against my hand. It was creepy.
It was scary.
“Stop being ridiculous─I couldn’t ever. What about basketball?” I asked.
“It’s like Mister Oshino just said. I tried to kill another human being. I think it’s only fair.”
“N-No─really, Kanbaru, I don’t mind at all─”
Laughable. Clownish.
How far from the point could I get?
It wasn’t about whether I minded or not.
What’s more, whether I forgave her or not had nothing to do with it, either─the question was whether Suruga Kanbaru could forgive Suruga Kanbaru.
The girl who didn’t want to injure her classmates and so kept running.
Who suppressed and overwhelmed all negative emotions.
She who had sealed them away.
That strength of will─also bound he
r.
Castigated her.
“A-Anyway,” I said, “there’s no way we’re going to cut it off. Don’t be ridiculous. What are you thinking? You’re an idiot, a real idiot. Way to be simplistic about things. How can you take such an idea seriously?”