Bakemonogatari Part 2

by Nisioisin

  The damage─far outpaced my healing abilities.

  It...

  Zlrp, the leg pulled out.

  It felt like my entire digestive tract was being tugged out.

  The whole mess.

  Dragged out─and my body was the deep pit now.

  There was nothing inside the pit.

  “Kanbaru─”

  Uh oh.

  With a large hole gouged in my abdomen─I couldn’t stand straight, and twisting my body even a little threatened to jerk apart my upper and lower halves. Which meant that I couldn’t make any more careless movements. I was still conscious, but one more blow in my state─would end it. It was me who’d gotten overwhelmed. How pathetic. At this rate, Kanbaru’s second wish was going to come true. That was the one thing I had to avoid at all costs…

  Or maybe it was an option?

  It was only her second wish.

  If Kanbaru could…hold out and not make a third wish─wasn’t it fine? Her arm would go back to normal, and since a wish was a wish, she’d be by Senjogahara’s side─because putting aside the manner, the wishes came true.

  I wasn’t ready to cede.

  I wasn’t ready to cede.

  But I was ready to forgive.

  I was supposed to have died during spring break, in the first place…so as Oshino said, it was nice and simple as far as solutions go.

  Yes, I did feel attached to life.

  But it wasn’t like I was in trepidation over the thought of dying.

  “Aa─ah, uh,” I moaned.

  For no reason I simply moaned.

  They were like death throes.

  I wouldn’t be ruining my uniform again.

  “Suruga, Kanbaru─”

  That’s when.

  Raincoat’s combos, which had gone on without a break for dozens of minutes already, ceased.

  Abruptly they ceased.

  It was─the opening I’d been waiting for.

  But I couldn’t carry out my plan to pin down Raincoat. There was of course the fact that the damage from the large hole opened in my abdomen seemed inestimably far from healing, and also the fact that my consciousness, which I needed to execute the move, was already fading, but more than that─I, too, had frozen in place.

  Probably for the same reason as Raincoat.

  I found myself frozen.

  “…You seem to be enjoying yourselves.”

  The door to the classroom opened.

  The door that never would from the inside opened, from the outside.

  Allowing someone to enter.

  Hitagi Senjogahara, in her street clothes.

  “Looks like you’re having fun without me, Araragi. How unpleasant.”

  Her emotionless expression─her flat voice.

  Confronted with this awful spectacle, she merely narrowed her eyes somewhat.

  She always─appeared without warning.

  Wearing a pair of jeans with no belt, a tank top in the same color, and a comfy largish hoodie, her hair tied loosely behind her, as if she’d stepped out of her room without changing, Hitagi Senjogahara stood there in her street clothes.

  “S-Senjogahara…”

  I couldn’t speak well with the wind hole that had been opened in my abdomen─I had been left without a voice, and it was hard even to call out to her.

  Why are you here?

  I wanted to ask her.

  But I already knew the answer without having to ask. Oshino had called her here, of course─what other answer could there be? But how? He had no possible way to contact her─as if Hitagi Senjogahara would give her cell phone number to Mèmè Oshino, whom she disliked. There shouldn’t have been any opportunity to do so, either.

  A cell phone?

  Oh, of course.

  That asshole─not caring one bit about the sanctity of people’s personal info, he’d gone and messed around with my phone in complete violation of my privacy. Yes, that cell phone in the backpack I’d given Oshino to hold on to before entering this classroom… It wasn’t like I used a password to lock the thing, and no matter how bad Oshino was with gadgetry, given enough time he could surely find the contacts list or call history. Plus, Senjogahara would have given him a crash course on how to use a cell phone that time they met on Mother’s Day─

  But why?

  For what purpose did Oshino summon Senjogahara here of all places, to this situation of all situations─

  In a flash.

  Raincoat leapt backwards, and via a few stops each on the ceiling and walls, moved from one corner of the classroom to the other, diagonally across and far away from me.

  Why would it do that?

  One more blow and the fight would have been over.

  The wish granted.

  Was her consciousness as Suruga Kanbaru temporarily suppressing the unconscious she’d provided to Raincoat? Was it thanks to Senjogahara’s entry, and if so, had that been Oshino’s aim? But how would that serve as anything more than a temporary measure? The Rainy Devil fed off of a person’s negative emotions, and until we got rid of them, nothing would change. This wasn’t some old foreign movie, and the power of love wasn’t going to solve everything. Why summon Senjogahara when you could come in yourself, Mèmè Oshino?!

  As if she couldn’t care less about Raincoat’s antics, however, Senjogahara glared at me with cold eyes as I hovered near death’s door. They were the eyes of a bird of prey zeroing in on a kill.

  “So you lied to me, Araragi.”

  “…What?”

  “You duped me saying you ran into a telephone pole and also kept this stuff about Kanbaru secret. Didn’t we promise when we started dating? We said we wouldn’t do that. About aberrations at least, we wouldn’t keep any secrets from each other.”

  “Ah, well…”

  That─was true.

  I hadn’t forgotten or anything.

  “You deserve to die a thousand times over.” A chilling smile spread across Senjogahara’s face.

  An enormous mass of fear like I’d never felt even while Raincoat was beating me senseless shot through my body like a bolt of lightning. Scary… Damn, she was scary. What was she, Medusa? How did she muster such a gaze…against her boyfriend, no less? And wait, really? She was telling me this now, in this situation, with me in the state I was in? Way to read the room, Senjogahara!

  “…But, Araragi, I guess you already did die a thousand times.” With the door still flung open─Senjogahara sprang off her back foot toward the corner where I huddled. “I might let you off the hook this one time...”

  Well.

  A thousand times was probably an exaggeration.

  Raincoat immediately reacted to Senjogahara’s advance─and likewise began dashing toward me. Out of nowhere, Hitagi Senjogahara and Suruga Kanbaru were having a foot race in lieu of the one they never did in middle school. In a straight line, Raincoat was about twice as far from me as Senjogahara, mathematically speaking, but the former track team star had a two-plus-year gap in her resume, while Raincoat was now drawing on Kanbaru’s leg strength─no, was the devil itself. The first one to get to my immobile form was, of course, Kanbaru.

  Raincoat took the opportunity to wind up its left fist, ready to deliver me a final blow─but Senjogahara belatedly arrived to stand between it and me.

  Watch out.

  But I wasn’t even allowed the interval to think that.

  A moment before impact─Raincoat was knocked away. Knocked away? Who could possibly do that, the way Raincoat was now? Not me, and Senjogahara even less. Then the sensible view was that, rather than being knocked away, Raincoat had leapt back of its own accord. Even if it did clumsily end up supine in the process.

  I was dumbfounded.

  That move─what was up with the unnatural move, as if Raincoat feared getting Senjogahara mixed into this, as if it eschewed hurting her above all?

  Suruga Kanbaru’s conscious mind must have─no.

  That would be far too convenient.

  Aberrations
are consistent.

  They are rational to the bitter end.

  It’s just that the rationality doesn’t always make sense to humans.

  But in this case─

  “Araragi. Knowing you, I bet you thought like an idiot that your death would solve everything,” Senjogahara continued to speak to me─her back still turned to me, her eyes not on me, but also paying Raincoat no mind. My wretched condition, covered in blood and wounds─wasn’t why she wouldn’t look at me, of that I was certain. “Don’t kid yourself. Your feeble self-sacrifice is totally uncalled for. If you died, how would I not do anything in my capacity to kill Kanbaru? I told you that once, didn’t I? Are you trying to turn me into a murderer?”

  …She’d seen through me.

  Oh boy, what a devoted woman.

  I couldn’t even go and die cheerfully.

  A wholehearted─twisted love.

  “What infuriates me most of all is that you’d have thrown yourself into this even if your body weren’t that way. If you were being so stupid just because you could ride your immortal body through it, then I might as well tell you to do as you please, but you went with the flow like there was no choice and end up looking like this─I don’t know what to say.”

  “……”

  “But coming from you, I guess I don’t mind unsolicited favors and needless interventions and counterproductive meddling─”

  Without gracing me with another glance to the very end, Senjogahara took a steady step toward Raincoat’s collapsed figure. Still on the floor, Raincoat began to crawl backwards as if it were terrified of her.

  As if terrified…

  As if terrified…why?

  Come to think of it─faced with it now, it had been the same way last night. Raincoat had blasted me away then suddenly disappeared. That was because Senjogahara had shown up with the envelope I’d forgotten… But why should her entry usher Raincoat’s retreat? It seemed so unnatural when you thought about it. A human street slasher or thrill killer might─but an aberration wouldn’t care about witnesses. And anyway, Senjogahara couldn’t have presented an obstacle for Raincoat given its mighty left arm.

  So then why did it run?

  Because the person who came on scene was Senjogahara?

  What did that mean?

  Was it really the power of love?

  Did Suruga Kanbaru’s feelings for Senjogahara outclass the devil, conveniently enough? Could earnest thought brush aside aberrations, the world itself, and open up a circuit to the heavens? No.

  No.

  That wasn’t it… Right. The thought.

  Even after Kanbaru had made her second wish to the Rainy Devil left hand, turning hers into a beast’s─it still took four days for it to activate. That was because she just barely managed to suppress her hateful thoughts toward me. Her stance that you fulfilled wishes on your own suppressed the devil’s violence. The stance that had grown firm roots in her over the seven years since her first wish─Oshino had laughed and called it patently ridiculous, but not in the conventional sense.

  She was by no means wrong─he’d said that, too.

  Her thought.

  Thoughts─Suruga Kanbaru’s wish.

  The Rainy Devil sees through us to find our darkest emotions─it sees and reads what’s on the back. It sees the flip side of our wishes. You want to run faster because you hate your classmates. You desire to be by Senjogahara’s side─because you hate Koyomi Araragi.

  But that was just the flip side.

  Just as the front has a back.

  The back─has a front.

  If the Rainy Devil hurt Hitagi Senjogahara─then whether or not it could kill the target of hatred, Koyomi Araragi, Kanbaru’s obverse wish could no longer be granted… Right, it wasn’t anything moving or sensitive like the power of love but a more sober and primitive matter.

  A contract.

  A deal.

  The Rainy Devil could only grant the flip side of wishes, but that didn’t mean it could neglect the top side. In fact, even when Kanbaru was in grade school─it granted her flipside wish of getting revenge on her classmates, but in the end, her topside wish of wanting to become faster came true as well. It properly came true apart from that whole causality. What was patently ridiculous was that this was exactly what the Rainy Devil intended─it simply interpreted the front as the back, but didn’t pull the latter out of thin air. The reverse couldn’t exist without the obverse. No, going again by what Oshino said, left hands didn’t have intentions. It was all Suruga Kanbaru’s unconscious mind─it established the causality between an obverse and a reverse side that never intersected, as a contradiction.

  A contract with the devil.

  In exchange for your soul.

  A cooling-off period.

  Wishing an impossibility.

  A double bind─between a rock and a hard place.

  Between the obverse and reverse.

  That was why─precisely why the Rainy Devil couldn’t raise its hand against Senjogahara. That was the contract, that was the deal. As long as Senjogahara shielded me─it couldn’t raise a hand even against me, the hated, hated me.

  It couldn’t raise that left hand against us.

  If one method was for me to overwhelm the devil and make it impossible for the flipside wish to be fulfilled─then there was also another, which was to make it impossible for the topside wish to be fulfilled.

  And now, Senjogahara even pledged in front of the devil that she’d kill Kanbaru if I died. Claiming ignorance was not an option. The Rainy Devil’s situation was already locked down.

  Always acting like he saw through everything…

  Like he saw through everything more than any devil.

  Oshino, you… Your badness and callousness make me pale in comparison─!

  “It’s been a while, Kanbaru. I’m glad you seem to be doing well,” Senjogahara said.

  Then, she went over to Raincoat, who tried to slide away on its back─no, to her old acquaintance Suruga Kanbaru─and slowly covered her body with her own, pinning her down.

  Even after getting in a wretched state─

  I hadn’t been able to.

  But finally she did what I could never do.

  Taking that beastly left arm.

  And the human right arm, and holding them, soothingly.

  Senjogahara’s stapler─

  Was no longer on her.

  “…My senior Senjogahara.”

  A mutter from beneath the hood.

  The voice resonating, pleading.

  What lurked under the hood was no deep pit. What lurked there was no face on the verge of crying. Not on the verge─it was crying. Reflected clearly in my eyes was the teary-eyed, crying, and cry-laughing face of a girl.

  I─wracked with sobs, she voiced her thought.

  “I love you.”

  She voiced her wish.

  “Oh. Me, not so much.” Direct, unfiltered, in the same tone as ever. Senjogahara said flatly, “Will you stay by my side anyway?”

  Sorry I made you wait so long, she said, most flatly.

  …What a fool.

  The height of folly!

  Jeez─I’d be lucky to call myself a tomato can here.

  A master class on how to play the comic relief, if I do say so myself, and I’m pretty used to it. My uselessness was almost exemplary.

  A good girl who can say sorry.

  I thought I knew very well how greedy a woman Hitagi Senjogahara was. I thought I knew very well how bad at giving up she was.

  If it really mattered to her.

  Senjogahara would never give it up.

  Unsolicited favors, needless interventions.

  Counterproductive meddling.

  Even so…I don’t know, all of these people around me are really warped─