by Nisioisin
What a simpleton I was.
“…You know, you’re letting Senjogahara influence you a little too much,” I scolded her. “The sun or a street lamp or whatever you made this vow to, you don’t have to see me in such a positive light just because I’m Senjogahara’s boyfriend. You don’t need to like someone just because she does─”
“No. That’s not what it is,” Kanbaru said awfully bluntly.
I felt a little cowed by her forceful gaze.
If something needed to be said, she said it, juniors and seniors be damned.
“Then,” I asked her, “could you still be carrying around baggage from last month? I don’t mind at all, really… You know what they say, hate the sin, what’s for dinner─”
“It’s not that─either,” Kanbaru stated, seemingly overlooking my gaffe. “I’m fortunate that you’re able to forget and forget, but that isn’t what it is.”
“Forget and forget…”
She made me sound so feebleminded.
I had a feeling she wasn’t wrong, though.
And it certainly was simpler that way.
“Please, listen to me,” she said. “I was stalking you, okay?”
“……”
What a thing to say so unabashedly to my face.
Like I was the one who needed a talking-to.
“So─” she continued, “I think I have a very good idea about the kind of person you are. I really believe that you deserve no less. Even if you weren’t her boyfriend, even if last month never happened, no matter how we’d met─I would have seen you as someone worthy of my respect. I swear, upon my legs.”
“…Oh.”
Well, in that case.
It was foolish even to contemplate other scenarios where Kanbaru and I could have met…
However.
“If it’s upon your legs─what can I say.”
“Right… I respect you so much that even if you’re bringing me to some lonely mountain on the pretext that Mister Oshino has a job for us, only to force upon me every single lustful desire that your heart cradles, I can forgive you with a smile.”
“I don’t want that kind of respect!”
And “pretext”?
She didn’t trust me at all!
“Huh? Hold on,” she said. “Are we really not proceeding to it?”
“Don’t act so genuinely surprised!”
“Wait, are you having the girl make the first move? A-ha… Your plan is to insist to your lover that it wasn’t cheating because you’d been tempted.”
“Now I get it, Kanbaru, that’s what you’re trying to do! You’re plotting to wreck my relationship with Senjogahara through this! You’re using your body, no less!”
“Oops…”
“Don’t stick your tongue out at me! You look so damn adorable, moron!”
So scheming.
Well, I knew it had to be a joke, of course.
…It was a joke, right?
“But speaking of birthdays,” she said, “it seemed a little suggestive to me when I heard that a crab had possessed her.”
“I don’t know if ‘possessed’ is the right word, but…pardon me? Suggestive? What’s suggestive about a crab? And what does it have to do with her birthday?”
“Well, she’s a Cancer, isn’t she?”
“Huh?” July seventh, right? “What are you talking about? July seventh would be Gemini.”
“Huh? No…um, I don’t think that’s correct.”
“Really? Am I the one who has it wrong? When I heard she was born on July seventh, I assumed that she was a Gemini…” I remembered it well because I’d thought then that Senjogahara having an identical twin with the same personality would suck to high heaven. “Well, it’s not like I know the exact dates of the zodiac or anything… No, but wait. I want to say Cancer starts on July twenty-third?”
“Oh.” Kanbaru seemed to have realized something. “…A quick pop quiz.”
“Why?”
“What sign is someone who’s born on December first?”
“Huh?” Come on, that didn’t even count as a quiz. “I know the answer to that one, at least. Ophiuchus, right?”
“Pfft!” Suruga Kanbaru burst out laughing. “Ha…haha, ahaha!”
It seemed to hit her so hard that her knees shook and she couldn’t stay standing, and she was even clinging to my arm. She went from pushing her chest against my elbow to trapping my upper arm in her cleavage, but her irritating laughter made it extremely hard for me to register my good fortune.
“Wh-What’s so funny… Did I make that bad of a mistake?”
“O-Ophiuchus… Pff, pffahaha! Ophiuchus… Ahaha, in this day and age, y-you’re using the thirteen-sign zodiac…”
“………”
Oh.
So that’s what it was.
Right, I understood now. July seventh was Cancer in the twelve-sign zodiac…
“Ah, that was a good laugh. Five years’ worth.”
Kanbaru finally raised her head. There were tears in her eyes. I understood why she might have found it so funny, but she’d laughed at me way too much.
“Okay, let’s go, li’l Ragiko.”
“You’re openly treating me worse! All of that respect you had for me as your senior, gone! This actually hurts pretty bad!”
“O-Oh. My mistake, dear senior Araragi.”
“Cover for me as thanks for making you laugh that much.”
“Cover? How, when you sounded so sure? To begin with, why are you even using the thirteen-sign zodiac?”
“I mean, what can I say? Didn’t we switch from a twelve- to a thirteen-sign zodiac a while ago?”
“We tried, but it didn’t spread and people gave up on it. How could my esteemed senior Araragi not know that?”
“Hmm…maybe that was right around the time I stopped caring about astrology…”
Okay…
So it never caught on…
“I guess aberrations are the same,” I mused. “You could have the most terrifying ghoul or ghost imaginable, but it never existed if it didn’t catch on.”
“No, I don’t think it’s anything so deep…”
“I wonder what Ophiuchus is, anyway.”
“It’s a summer constellation with the alpha star Ras Alhague. It’s well known for containing Bernard’s Star, which has the largest proper motion of any fixed star.”
“No, I’m not talking about the stars themselves… I’m wondering why it has that name. Does it have to do with snakes or something?”
“I want to say that it represents the master physician Asclepius from Greek mythology. He’s grasping a snake in the constellation, which is why it’s known as Ophiuchus, or the ‘serpent-bearer.’”
“Huh.” I nodded. I’d had no idea. “Kanbaru, I’m surprised you know all that, both about the stars themselves and the constellation. Do you actually know a lot about stars or something?”
“Does it seem unlike me?”
“To be honest.”
“Hm. Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say I know a lot about them, but I do like looking up at the night sky. It’s a simple one, but I also own a telescope. Twice a year, I go to a stargazing event they hold at an observatory in another prefecture.”
“Huh. So not just a planetarium. Experience over knowledge, huh?”
“I like planetariums too, but those places don’t have shooting stars, do they? Fixed stars and constellations are nice, but I prefer fleeting shooting stars.”
“I see. How romantic.”
“Yes. I hope that someday soon, Earth becomes a shooting star, too.”
“Is humanity going to be all right?!”
I couldn’t believe her.
Where was the romance in that?
That was a disaster movie.
“…And it looks like we’ve arrived after all of that talk,” I told her. “There should be stairs around here, according to Oshino─oh, there they are…Well, more like a game trail…”
A roadside
mountain.
I didn’t know its name.
Oshino didn’t, either.
I should say the road had been paved to bypass the mountain, but branching off from the sidewalk, toward the peak, were steps─or at least their traces. Well, actually, you could still call them steps. I’d heard that our athletic teams came jogging all the way here, as Kanbaru mentioned too, but I doubted any of them took these stairs up the mountain. It was overgrown with foliage, and if I hadn’t known in advance, I probably wouldn’t have noticed or recognized them as such.
A game trail.
Mm, no─I saw signs of trampled grass when I looked closer. Footsteps. So the stairs weren’t totally unused, but then, whose tracks could they be? If I remembered correctly, Oshino hadn’t even approached the shrine, so they couldn’t be his. He also said the shrine was already out of use, so it couldn’t be anyone who worked there…
Was it overrun with weirdoes?
Unlikely.
“……”
I looked at the girl attached to my left arm.
Her guard was always so low, just like now, but she was such a cute girl… Would she be okay? If there were weirdoes who were textbook cases of weirdoes up there…I could protect her only so well alone. Some vampire blood still coursed through me, but that merely improved my metabolism and healing, anyway.
“Balkan, my junior.”
“What is it, Ragiko?”
“Your left arm─how’s it feeling?”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“Well, I was just wondering if anything was new or unusual about it.”
“Not in particular.”
Not in particular─she said.
True, she’d been holding that heavy-looking bundle in her left hand without switching the whole time, like it was nothing…
Maybe there was no need to worry…if having the power of that monkey left arm on top of her base stamina was the new normal for Kanbaru…
“Yup,” she assured, “it’s still strong enough that I can shove you down onto a bed with my left arm alone.”
“I’m not really seeing why it has to be onto a bed.”
“Then, strong enough that I could bridal-carry you with my left arm alone.”
“It’s not a bridal-carry if you do it with one arm, it’s more like a bandit making off with a village lass… But I guess I’m fine with that one.”
“Heheheh,” Kanbaru let out a vaguely obscene laugh in reply. She seemed to be enjoying herself. “You really are kind…worrying yourself over me, of all people. Ahh, I could feel safe entrusting my body and soul to you…”
“Why are you blushing and saying that like you’re deeply moved? What are you, a mind reader? Stop digging up every little thing that I’m thinking or I’ll have to get out my tinfoil hat.”
“I may not look it now, but I was once our basketball ace. I can figure out most of what people are thinking by looking into their eyes. And we’re talking about the thoughts of a senior I respect very much! As your faithful subordinate, I practically have you wrapped around my little finger.”
“Don’t have me wrapped around your little finger, then. What are you, a femme fatale? Hmph… All it takes is a look into my eyes? Yikes. I mean, that really does sound like telepathy… Okay, Kanbaru, what am I thinking right now?”
“Probably something like, ‘Would this woman take off her bra if I asked her to?’”
“Is that how you see me, Kanbaru?!”
“Want me to take it off?”
“Um, nkk… No, of course not!”
I’d hesitated for a moment despite myself.
Kanbaru only gave me a brisk nod along with an “Oh, then,” and continued to cling to my arm… Her complete non-reaction to my hesitation seemed to be intended as a show of tolerance, almost maternally broad in scope, for the ulterior motives of men, and it honestly got under my skin…
She was the one who’d gone in that direction.
Where did she get off acting like I was her younger husband?
“Let’s go,” I urged. “We haven’t even climbed up this mountain and I’m already tired…”
“Mm.”
“Do be careful where you step, though. Aside from bug bites, it sounds like there’s a ton of snakes around here.”
“Did you say ‘snake’?”
Pfft, laughed Kanbaru.
I must have reminded her of our earlier conversation about Ophiuchus.
I continued, unperturbed, “Well, apparently they aren’t poisonous. Snakes have long fangs, though, and you wouldn’t want to get a bite wound out here.”
“…Yours is on your neck, right?”
“Yeah. It’s from a demon, though, not a snake.”
We spoke as we climbed the mountain’s stairs. Our coordinates hadn’t changed much, but the humidity seemed to shoot up the moment we entered the mountain, and it was sweltering. The stairs led to this shrine according to Oshino, but I hadn’t asked how high up it was. I didn’t imagine it was actually on the summit, but…that would be okay. It wasn’t that tall of a mountain.
“My left arm,” Kanbaru said. “Mister Oshino told me it should heal by the time I’m twenty.”
“What? Really?”
“Yes. Well, only if I don’t do it again.”
“That’s good to hear. So it means you can play basketball again after you’re twenty.”
“Right. Of course, that hope will be crushed if I slack off, so I need to keep working out on my own.” After saying that, she asked me, “What about you?”
“Huh? Me?”
“Are you going to be─a vampire for the rest of your life?”
“…I.”
The rest of my life.
A vampire─for the rest of my life.
A mock human.
Something other than human.
“I’m fine with it. In any case─unlike your left arm, it’s not that much of an issue. The sun, crosses, garlic, and all that stuff doesn’t bother me at all. Ha ha─and I heal right away if I get hurt, so I got a good deal, you know?”
“I don’t want to hear you acting tough. What Mister Oshino told me─is that you resigned yourself to being a vampire to save that girl Shinobu.”
Shinobu.
That was what the vampire who’d attacked me was called now.
That blonde vampire.
She was now─living in the ruins of that cram school together with Oshino.
“……”
That bastard really was loose-lipped.
I hoped he hadn’t told Senjogahara. I assumed it was on account of the left arm that he provided Kanbaru with an example she could reference, so I probably didn’t need to worry…
“That’s not true,” I maintained. “They’re just residual effects. As far as Shinobu─well, she’s my responsibility. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it saving her. We have an understanding, and I’m sticking to it. It’s fine… I’m no basketball star so I can’t tell just by looking into your eyes, but you’re worried about me, aren’t you, Kanbaru?”
“…Well.”
“I’m fine. Your worries are misplaced─just like with the deed you kept bringing up.”
I cut the topic short with a little joke at the end. Kanbaru seemed to want to say more, but probably realizing it was better left unsaid, fell silent. If something needed to be said, she said it─but if she only wanted to say it, she could hold her tongue. She was too good of a woman to be wrapped around my left arm, honestly.
“Ah.”
“Oh.”
Just as our conversation ended, someone came down the stairs. Perfect timing. The person was jogging down the treacherous steps a bit precariously.
A girl, probably in middle school.
She was fully protected in her long sleeves and long pants.
There was a bag around her waist.
A hat, pulled far down on her head.
I was very unsure if she could see in front of her, and even if she could, she was running down the
stairs looking only at her feet, so a couple of false moves and she might have collided with us head-on. It was a good thing that Kanbaru and I had just hit a pause in our conversation; we noticed her quicker than we normally would have and shifted to one side of the stairs to dodge her.