by Nisioisin
“…You really weren’t listening to a word I said, were you?”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re about to go up into the mountains.”
“The mountains? So we’re performing the deed in the mountains?”
“There’ll be no deed.”
“Hm, pretty wild. I think I like it. That’s quite manly of you. I’m into being treated rough now and then.”
“I said no deed! Listen to me!”
I was certain I’d told her to wear long sleeves and long pants to protect herself from bugs, snakes, and the like in the mountains, yet she’d showed up in clothes with plenty of openings… It didn’t seem like they’d do her much good…
“Fine,” she said. “Wherever you go, I’m willing to come along with you. Even if you try to tell me not to. Neither rain nor snow nor heat nor overcast skies will stop me.”
“Overcast skies don’t sound like much of a deterrent…”
In fact, I could have used some clouds with all the sun we were getting.
But even the day before, when I called Kanbaru’s home, she wouldn’t listen to a word I was saying and made the same kind of distracted replies (“You don’t even need to tell me where we’re going. The needle of my compass is always pointing in whatever direction you’re headed,” and so on)… It was actually impressive in a way how prone to making assumptions she was. She went about it in a different way than Hanekawa, like she had tunnel vision and could only see straight ahead.
“In any case, this isn’t a date,” I clarified.
“Oh, so it’s not… I was so sure that it was. I’d gotten myself fired up for it.”
“Fired up?”
“Yup. I mean, this is my first-ever heterosexual date.”
I decided not to comment on the “heterosexual” part.
I wasn’t confident I could make a good quip about it.
“I was so fired up,” she continued, “that I broke my solemn vow to myself and bought a cell phone just for today, the first one I’ve ever owned in my seventeen years alive.”
“……”
…Please let’s keep this light!
“It’d be awful if I somehow got separated from you and couldn’t get in contact,” she explained. “We live in an age where pay phones have all but disappeared, so a cell phone is an essential dating tool.”
“W-Well…you’re right. Heh, heheh. But there still are a good number of pay phones left out here in the countryside…”
“That’s not all. I woke up at four to make us lunches. One for me and one for you. Since we were going to meet at eleven, I assumed I’d get to eat lunch with you.”
As she said this, Kanbaru presented me with a bundle her bandaged left arm held… Yes, I’d noticed from the beginning, but judging by its tall rectangular shape, it was one of those multiple-box affairs…
Could we keep this light, please?
I mean, literally now…
I certainly knew we’d be together for lunch, so my plan had been to take her out to a fast food place once we were done, like a good senior. But it seemed that this junior of mine operated on a more deadly plane.
So that was her move. Homemade lunches…
It was a surprise attack.
“I was so happy and excited about getting to go on a date with my revered senior that I could barely get any sleep and also woke up early, so it was a nice diversion.”
“A diversion, huh? Is all of that for lunch, though? It’s a lot of food… I should let you know up front that I can’t eat that much.”
“I made it for us to split half and half, but I can just eat whatever you don’t finish. I hate wasting food, so I did take that into account.”
“Okay…”
I took a look at Kanbaru’s fully exposed navel.
Maybe around ten percent body fat, at the most?
She basically had an hourglass figure.
Fit Sugaru’s hourglass figure.
It almost seemed like a palindrome…
It wasn’t, though.
“Hold on, Kanbaru. Are you one of those people who don’t get fat no matter how much you eat?”
“Uhm, it’s more like I’m one of those people who lose tons of weight unless they eat like crazy.”
“People like that exist?!” That would make girls envious of her… In fact, even as a boy I was envious of her! “How exactly do you get your body to do that?”
“Simple. First, start off with two sets of ten-mile sprints every morning.”
“Okay, never mind.”
So that was it.
What she considered a normal amount of exercise was on a different level.
It seemed that Suruga Kanbaru was still making sure to work out every day, even after her retirement from the basketball team. Impressive. It made perfect sense, though. She might have claimed she quit because of an injury to her left arm, but the truth lay elsewhere.
“Ah…” she let out an exaggerated sigh. “But it looks like it was all a waste… So it wasn’t a date after all. I was really looking forward to it, too. I feel like an idiot, the way I went off and got myself excited for nothing. I’m red with embarrassment. My dreams were too big for reality. It seems so obvious that a noble senior such as yourself would never bother dating a fool like me. I couldn’t have been any more conceited… I’m sorry to have troubled you with my wild assumptions. Well, this cell phone and these lunch boxes are pointless now. They’re just going to weigh us down, so I’ll toss them somewhere. Wait here just a minute, I’ll change into a tracksuit real fast.”
“Actually, this is a date!”
I lost.
Such a weak man…
“Today was a date after all, Kanbaru! Yeah, I just remembered I was, um, really looking forward to today, too! Hooray, I finally get to go on a date with Miss Kanbaru! Okay? So hold onto your phone and those lunches! You don’t need to change your clothes, either!”
“Really?” Kanbaru’s expression started to glow.
Uh oh. She looked super cute.
“I’m glad. You’re very kind,” she said.
“Yeah…though I have the feeling my kindness is going to be my downfall one of these days…”
………
I was going on a date with Kanbaru, Senjogahara’s junior, before I ever went on a date with Senjogahara herself, my girlfriend. I doubted she’d count this as cheating, given how unusually lenient that tsundere girl was with Kanbaru, but it was still undeniable proof of how weak-willed I was…
Also, we were still holding hands the entire time we were having this conversation, our fingers still entwined. I made a sly effort to disentangle them, but we were locked tight as if our hands were in a rugby scrum. It felt like my hand was a piece in a wire puzzle or the victim of a submission hold.
Like a snake had wrapped itself around it.
“Still, Kanbaru. Button up that shirt you’re wearing on top. You have to agree that baring your navel is a bad idea when we’re going into the mountains. As far as those distressed jeans─well, I guess you’ll be fine with those as long as you’re careful.”
“Hmm. Okay, as you wish.”
Kanbaru followed my instructions and buttoned up her long-sleeved shirt, hiding her curved waist from sight. I had to admit that a small part of me regretted it, but I knew I shouldn’t be having such wicked thoughts about my girlfriend’s junior.
“Now let’s get going,” I said.
“Oh, now that you mention it. Are you going to be walking today?”
“Yeah. We’re heading to a mountain. I don’t know where I’d be able to park a bike, plus I can’t afford to have my only bike stolen.” The mountain bike I’d used for trips had been smashed to smithereens, after all, thanks to a certain someone’s left arm. Not that I’d say that to her since it could only come out sarcastic. “It’s not like this is much of a trip. Look, you can even see where we’re going from here. That mountain over there…”
As I said this, I suddenly remembered something. Wh
en I’d first started to speak to Kanbaru a month ago, she was so averse to touching the body of the boy dating her idol Senjogahara that she declined to ride on the back of my bicycle, opting against all common sense to run alongside me as I pedaled… And now that same girl was holding my hand, wrapping her fingers around mine, and shoving her chest into my body…
“Heheheh.” Kanbaru wore an innocent and bashful grin and nearly skipped down the street. “My senior, Araragi, my senior, Araragi, my senior, Araragi, my senior, Araragi~~~”
“………”
Well, hasn’t she grown attached!
She’s even humming to herself!
“By the way, Kanbaru… I’ve always meant to tell you this, but could you stop calling me your senior?”
“Huh?” She seemed puzzled, like she hadn’t expected to hear that. “Why? I call you my senior because you are my senior. I couldn’t imagine calling my senior anything but my senior.”
“Well, there’s a lot of other things you could call me.”
“Like ‘my senior, Kesennuma’?”
“Don’t change my name.”
No, the other part.
Plus “Kesennuma” was a place name.
“I’m talking about the ‘my senior’ part. It’s so stiff and formal.”
“Please don’t say that. Stiff and formal is exactly what I want to be.”
“O…kay. Well, sure, I suppose I am your senior, but it just sounds too serious. And ‘my senior, Araragi’ is a mouthful like my full name.”
My full name is Koyomi Araragi.
Seven syllables.
The same as “my senior, Araragi.”
“Hmm. Should I call you ‘Mister Araragi’ in that case?”
“I guess that’s one solution? But I’m only a year older, so I don’t think there’s any need for you to be so proper and uptight with me. And I feel kind of weird about being called ‘Mister’ in the first place. There’s a grade school kid I know who always calls me that, but in her case, she speaks in this weirdly polite manner.”
Her personality couldn’t be any worse, though.
That reminded me. I hadn’t seen Hachikuji lately.
……
That made me feel kind of lonely.
“Kanbaru, I know a lot happened between us over Senjogahara, but I’d like us to treat each other more like equals.”
“I see. I’m glad to hear that.”
“Then again, I’m not sure I’m on even ground with our school’s biggest star.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Nothing could ever make me happier than being with you like this. Getting to know you makes me nearly as happy as reconciling with my other esteemed senior Senjogahara. If there’s anything about you that I’m dissatisfied about, it’s that I didn’t meet you sooner in life.”
“…Uh huh.”
She really did have low self-esteem.
I could understand why, though, considering what I’d learned a month ago.
She had a lot going on, too.
“So,” she confirmed with me, “I’m getting the sense that it would be okay for me to refer to you in a more intimate way than ‘my senior’?”
“Yeah. You can call me whatever you want.”
“All right, Koyomi.”
“………”
……
Only my family calls me that!
“And Koyomi, you can call me Suruga.”
“You’re going on again like we’re an item! And why do these milestone events keep on happening between me and my girlfriend’s junior?! Even Senjogahara still calls me ‘Araragi’! Do you have any idea how much of a leap you just made?!”
“Please don’t get so worked up. You know that was supposed to be a joke, Koyomi.”
“Why are you still calling me that then, Suruga?!”
“The ‘Dashing Knight of Lightning’ Koyomi.”
“And now you’re sticking some weird slogan on my name? My grandfather gave me my name, stop messing around with it! There’s nothing dashing or lightning-like about me, and I’m not a knight, either! And that’s like, twice as long as my full name, anyway! You’re losing sight of our initial goal here!”
“The ‘Last Hero of Our Century’ Koyomi.”
“The last one this century?! Isn’t that a little premature?!”
“Well, in any case, I can’t bring myself to address my senior casually. So ‘Koyomi’ is out. I don’t feel comfortable not using a title. But if a slogan is too much, can we try a nickname?”
“A nickname…” Her sensibility could be a little off the mark…or more like off target. I couldn’t imagine her giving me a proper nickname, but then again, you never know. “Fine, then try coming up with something,” I told her.
“Yup.” Kanbaru closed her eyes for a bit as if she were deliberating. A few seconds later, her head popped up. “I thought of one,” she said.
“Wow, that was fast. Hit me with it.”
“Ragi.”
“That’s a lot cooler than I thought it’d be! Too cool, in fact!”
Like she was purposely using a nickname that was too cool for me just to make fun of me… It sounded too edgy to be the nickname of a Japanese high school kid…
“I took the bottom half of ‘Araragi’ to come up with it.”
“So I gathered… But shouldn’t nicknames be a little softer and more charming?”
“You have a point. In that case, we can take a bit from ‘Araragi’ and a bit from ‘Koyomi’ to get…”
“To get?”
“Ragiko.”
“Now you’re obviously making fun of me!”
“Don’t be shy, li’l Ragiko.”
“Go home! I don’t need you after all!”
“Ragiko is being mean to me… But I actually don’t mind, heheheh…”
“Agh! I forgot, yelling doesn’t work on a masochist! Are you the strongest opponent I’ve faced yet?!”
I was having fun talking to her.
Maybe a little too much fun.
I was nearly losing sight of what we were setting out to do.
“I know it’s probably inappropriate to say this, but…Kanbaru. Not to seize on what you said earlier, but if I’d met you before I started going out with Senjogahara, I wonder if we’d be going out instead…”
“Yes. I was actually thinking the same thing. What if I’d met you before becoming drawn to her. It’s so rare for me to feel this way about someone of the opposite sex.”
I sighed.
Of course, I wouldn’t have come to know Kanbaru if it wasn’t for Senjogahara, and the same went for Kanbaru, making this hypothetical no more than that.
“What do you say,” she offered, “to the two of us killing and burying that nuisance of a woman?”
“You’re scaring me!”
We’ve talked enough, but I still can’t pin down your character! I can’t fathom your depths! Just how much is there to you, Suruga Kanbaru?!
“I know that you respect Senjogahara as your senior, but…you’re surprisingly wicked.”
“Don’t shower me with praise. You’ll make me blush.”
“That wasn’t praise.”
“I’m happy to be called anything by you.”
“I can’t believe you, you little masochist…”
“Ooh, little masochist. I like that. Keep going.”
“……”
While I’d harbored fears that Kanbaru might find herself lost after coming into contact with the true nature of her middle school idol Senjogahara, it seemed that thanks to such a proclivity I didn’t need to worry.
In any case, about Suruga Kanbaru.
She was actually a sapphist.
As you could probably tell from our conversation up to this point, she not only worshiped Hitagi Senjogahara as a senior but also loved her from the bottom of her heart. You could even say that yes, Kanbaru and I were rivals in love─and yet we were walking arm in arm. It was hard to say what was going on. Then again, it was probably that s
he felt indebted to me for what happened at the end of last month, or maybe that she felt grateful, or something along those lines…
It didn’t feel bad having one of my juniors get attached to me, but it didn’t feel great that the attraction was due to a misunderstanding.