by Nisioisin
“Kanbaru…”
“It feels so pointless to be indebted to you─that’s how she put it.”
“……”
“It’s fine. I’m talking to myself. No, I’m talking out of turn. Okay, let’s go. If we don’t hurry, this girl might finish her business.”
Her business.
Her business at a deserted shrine.
“Yeah…you’re right.”
Side by side, the two of us took the first step up the same stairs we had climbed the day before.
Today─Kanbaru wasn’t holding my hand.
“Hey, Kanbaru.”
“What is it?”
“Any plans post-graduation?”
“Post-graduation… Before my arm turned out like this, I thought college on a sports scholarship, but that’s not going to happen now. My plan is to take entrance exams and get into a school fair and square.”
“I see.”
While her left arm would heal, it wouldn’t until she turned twenty. Now seventeen, those three years had to seem long and gloomy to Kanbaru.
“I haven’t decided on a specific school,” she said, “but I’d like to go to one with a strong basketball program─so I guess a Phys Ed school.”
“You’re not thinking of going to the same university as Senjogahara?”
“What, is that what you’re planning?”
“Actually, yeah.”
But keep it a secret from Senjogahara, I said.
Yes, Kanbaru nodded.
When it came to heeding my wishes, she was my cute junior. I hated to admit it, but Hanekawa was right about this… Just having a cute junior made me happy.
“With your grades,” I asked, “couldn’t you try to chase after Senjogahara?”
“I don’t know about that. I’m a striver, which also means my current scores are already the best I can do.”
“Ah, right. But─”
“Also,” added Kanbaru, “what would come of spending all my time tracing her footsteps?”
“……”
That seemed─like a real change in her mindset.
It wasn’t like Kanbaru to say that…or maybe I had misjudged and underestimated her on this point. Still, wasn’t the woman I met a month ago dedicated to tracing Senjogahara’s footsteps?
Did something change?
Thanks to the aberration?
Aberrations─weren’t all bad.
Good or bad wasn’t the question to begin with.
“Well, I say that,” Kanbaru continued, “but no matter what path I choose, I’d like to stay involved with both you and her even after we graduate. It’d be nice if the three of us could get together and take a commemorative photo for the final episode.”
“Final episode…”
“Or maybe I gaze up at the twilight sky to see the two of you reflected there in the final episode…”
“Did you just kill off me and Senjogahara?!”
What a crappy ending.
To what sounded like a crappy story.
“So there’s this girl named Hanekawa in my class.”
“Hm.”
“Do you know her?”
“No─I’m not aware of her.”
“I guess you are in different years… But she’s famous among us. She has the best grades of our whole year, after all. She hasn’t given up her seat at the top a single time since she started at our school and is the very picture of a model student. Sounds like a joke character or something, doesn’t she? I heard the other day that she didn’t do the best just here but nationwide on a practice test once. I’m pretty sure she went to the same middle school as you and Senjogahara.”
“Is that so. There are some incredible people out there…”
“But that incredible person says she’s not going to college.”
“…Is that so.”
“She wants to go on a journey because there are a lot of things she wants to see. I don’t even know what to make of that, but it did make me think, you know? Oh, and I guess this also needs to stay secret. It’d be a huge deal if the school found out.”
“I understand… But yes, it does make you think. You could say that Naoetsu High, being what it is, doesn’t even offer any paths apart from college─so setting out on an uncharted road without qualms is something.”
“Without qualms─or with them, I don’t know. But it sounded like she’d made up her mind.”
It was probably because we already knew the way, having taken it once, but Kanbaru and I climbed up the stairs and reached the shrine sooner than we had the day before.
It goes without saying, but the shrine was just as desolate as yesterday.
Out in the distance─I could see the talisman I’d placed on the shrine’s main hall. My eyesight was enhanced after letting Shinobu drink my blood on Saturday, and I could see everything down to the individual characters written with a red-ink brush.
It was the only difference from yesterday.
“………”
I glanced over─and Kanbaru was pale. She wasn’t just moments ago, we’d been carrying on a regular conversation, but now she was visibly tired.
That was also the same as yesterday.
No─she looked worse.
It─wasn’t from climbing the stairs.
She wasn’t feeling ill.
It happened the moment we entered the grounds─the moment we passed through the gate.
“…Hey, Kanbaru.”
“I’m fine. Let’s─just hurry.”
Despite her state, Kanbaru replied firmly, encouraging me to move forward and not stand idle. She was obviously forcing herself to keep going. I started to say something but ended up doing as she said. Right now, our top priority was to attend to what we were here for.
This shrine.
It had something.
A something that messed with Kanbaru’s body.
It was originally─a job from Oshino.
And Oshino─would never give us a simple job.
“…Sengoku!”
As soon as I spotted a girl─long sleeves, long pants, hat pulled far down, bag around her waist─crouching in front of a large rock across the grounds, my reaction was to shout her name. So much for bringing Kanbaru all the way here.
But I couldn’t stop myself from shouting.
In Sengoku’s left hand, fingers pinched around the neck, was a snake.
In Sengoku’s right hand, a chisel.
Pressed against the rock─
The snake was still alive.
However─it was about to get killed any moment now.
“Stop it, Sengoku!”
“Ah…”
Sengoku─looked at me.
Using the chisel to push the brim of her cap, worn low over her eyes, back up.
Nadeko Sengoku─slowly looked at me.
“Big Brother Koyomi…”
You.
You’d still call me that─
The thought ran through my head as if I were some dark hero who once walked the line until a lapse in judgment derailed him, who, after battling through trials and hardships that you do not relate or sit through without tears, now sat among the top echelons of a shadowy organization and committed an endless chain of unspeakable, unwatchable atrocities, in the midst of which a comrade from bygone days while he was still on the side of justice appears and calls him, by his old name.
004
“A Jagirinawa.”
After pondering for a while, so began Oshino─in a frightfully weighty voice, almost as if he detested the name. He tended to speak in a flippant, or even snide way, and this wasn’t a tone you often heard him take.
“The only thing it could be is a Jagirinawa. That’s all it could be, and I can state that for a fact. Though it’s sometimes called a jakiri, a janawa, a hebikiri-nawa─snake cutting, snake rope, snake-cutting rope─or even just kuchi-nawa.”
“A ‘mouth rope’? So just one way to say ‘snake’?”
“Right. Snake,” Oshino rep
eated.
Snake.
The general term for reptiles in Class Reptilia, Order Squamata, Suborder Serpentes.
Noted for their long, thin, cylindrical bodies covered in scales.
They have hundreds of vertebrae and are able to squirm about freely.
So it went demon, cat, crab, snail, monkey─and now snake.
Putting aside the demon as a special case─snakes felt like they had the worst reputation of the bunch. They felt like such an ominous symbol. Cats, crabs, snails, and monkeys had nothing on them when it came to spookiness.
Ha hah, Oshino laughed as always in his falsely carefree way, forcing himself to ditch the gloomy tone.
“Well─you’re not wrong to have that impression, Araragi. Since long ago, snakes have been seen as that sort of thing. There are a ton of snake-related aberrations, after all. They’re carnivores, I guess, and we do have sayings like ‘a snake in the grass.’ Plus, some of them have lethal poisons…so I suppose you can’t blame people for feeling that way. In the way of venomous snakes, here in Japan we have pit vipers, tiger keelbacks, habus. But then on the other hand, some see snakes as holy, or at least there’s a tradition of worshiping serpent gods─it’s common to nearly every region in the world. A symbol both holy and wicked─that’s the snake.”
“And that shrine─it was for worshiping a snake god too, wasn’t it?”
“Huh? Wait, why do you know that? I kept it a secret from you. Oh, I see. Missy class president told you.”
“…How’d you figure that out?”
“Well, she’s the only one around you who’d know─ha hah, maybe I should have given the talisman job to her? You manage to reel in trouble no matter where you go. Missy class president seems like she has a better head on her shoulders.”
“She─already finished repaying you, remember?”
“Did she now,” Oshino played dumb. It was the kind of reaction I’d come to expect from him.
“Still,” I said, “snakes just feel evil to me. I don’t really get people worshiping some serpent god. The only snake I can think of that doesn’t seem evil is maybe the tsuchinoko.”
“Ah, yes. Now that takes me back. I once did everything I could to find one of those damned things hoping to collect a reward. Never caught any, though.”
“I don’t know about an expert going for that. Plus, you couldn’t even find any… Oh, how about that thing, isn’t it an aberration? The ouroboros or whatever? The circular one that’s eating its own tail…”
“Oh, that. If you’re going to bring that up, it’s not quite a snake eating its own tail, but some snakes eat other snakes. The king cobra, I think? It’s quite a sight to see photos of a snake swallowing its own kind.”
“Huh… Well, personally, I find snakes scary, not on some rational but instinctual level. Just looking at one stops me in my tracks.”
“Land-based creatures shaped like that are rare, I suppose. It’s like watching a fish swim on land. That certainly qualifies as unique, so I guess it’s only natural for people to see them as bizarre. Like, don’t you respect the first person who ever ate a sea cucumber? Ha hah. And on top of that, snakes have extraordinary vitality. You can try and try, but it takes a lot to kill one─you know? You hear about ‘half-dead’ snakes, but what that really tells you is just how many hit points those things have. For something of that size, it’s off the charts, huh? It’s important to know that snakes aren’t considered pests to humans, though. You must’ve heard of snake wine, right?”
“I’ve never had any, of course.”
“Then what about eating one? I’ve had sea snake paired with snake wine in Okinawa. They say eating snake is good for longevity.”
“I don’t really see myself ever eating snake… But I suppose it doesn’t seem as bad as a sea cucumber.”
“You’re so narrow-minded. Or rather, you’re so gutless, balking at a mere snake. Over on the mainland, there are regions where they eat woofy-woofs, okay?”
“I don’t have any intention of repudiating anyone’s food culture, but could you at least not say ‘woofy-woof’ when you’re talking about eating them?”
Another one of these conversations with Oshino.
It was that, yes.
However─his expression was still vaguely dark─or so it seemed. Maybe it was just my imagination.
The abandoned ruins of a defunct cram school.
The fourth floor.
There I stood facing an eccentric man with an unlit cigarette in his mouth, a frivolous Hawaiian-shirted bastard to whom I owed my gratitude─Mèmè Oshino.
I was alone.
I’d asked Suruga Kanbaru and Nadeko Sengoku to stand by and wait. If you’re wondering where─they were in the Araragi family home, sitting in my room. Putting aside my parents, my two little sisters were definitely inclined to enter my room without asking, but with the door locked, it was most likely fine for a few hours… I had to admit that some part of me did feel it was dangerous to leave Suruga Kanbaru, with her personality, not to mention her Sapphic bent, under the same roof as Sengoku and my little sisters without any supervision, but well, I just had to trust my junior.
And.
Above all─I had a reason to avoid bringing Kanbaru and Sengoku here. A reason I didn’t want to bring them along to meet Oshino─
Afterwards.
Kanbaru and I brought Sengoku along with us─and headed to my home. I had Sengoku sit on the back seat of my bike. Kanbaru ran alongside us without breaking a sweat. As I’d half-expected, Kanbaru’s condition returned to normal as soon as we climbed down the mountain. That bit the day before about her feeling better after eating lunch seemed to be a misunderstanding on my part.
Luckily, no one was home.
Both of my little sisters looked to be out (there were signs that they had come home once). Since deceiving their eyes would have been the trickiest part of slipping into my home, for which I hadn’t devised any concrete plan coming back, my reaction was one of honest relief. My youngest sister, in particular… If she didn’t remember her friend from grade school offhand, seeing her in person would do it. My sister would certainly wonder what was going on if her brother came home with an old pal of hers.
We went straight to my room.
“Big Brother Koyomi…” muttered Sengoku in a vanishing voice. Her face was cast down, and I barely heard her. “You…changed rooms.”
“Yeah. I’m in my own room now. Both of my little sisters are still in that room, though… I think they’ll come back after a while. Do you want to see them?”
No, Sengoku shook her head listlessly.
Her voice was muted─and so were her reactions.
It made her body seem somehow smaller.
She should have had six years of growth and development─yet she seemed far smaller than when we’d played before, relatively speaking, of course. Maybe it was only because I’d also seen six years of growth─
For some reason, I fell silent.
Then─
“Huh. So this is my senior’s room,” Kanbaru said in her plucky voice, smashing through the mood before it could grow awkward. She took a look around. “It’s a lot tidier than I expected.”
“Sure, compared to your room…”
“Heheheh. This is my first time in a boy’s room.”
“Oh…”
I realized as soon as she said it.
Come to think of it, this was also my first time having a girl who wasn’t family in my room. Even Senjogahara had yet to visit my house. Gauchely inviting a girl into your room was a standard rite of passage for a teenager, but I’d let in my girlfriend’s junior prior to my girlfriend… Was this okay? First a date, and now this… But fine, my little sister’s old friend was with us too─and it was an emergency.
Sengoku had told us at the shrine.
In her tiny little voice.
I’ll tell you why─so take me somewhere indoors where people won’t see us.
Why.
W
hy what?
Why─she killed those snakes.
Why she sliced them up.