by Nisioisin
Oh no…
That wasn’t a skill I needed, not when I was only in high school…
Though to take a cooler-headed approach, it was rude for me to look at my classmates in that kind of way, plain and simple. I started to feel intense shame.
“By the way, Araragi. What exactly are you doing here in the first place? Could you have gotten yourself expelled from school during my time away? And now you’re pretending to go to school while really killing time at the park because you can’t bring yourself to tell your family… That would mean my worst fears have come true.”
“You’re making me sound like some dad who got laid off.”
And today was Sunday, anyway.
Mother’s Day, remember?
Just as I was on the verge of telling her this, I stopped. Senjogahara lived alone with her father due to her circumstances. Her relationship with her mother was a bit of a complicated one. It wouldn’t be good to be overly sensitive to that fact, either, but it still wasn’t a topic I should be bringing up for no good reason. I decided to mark the phrase “Mother’s Day” as off-limits while Senjogahara was around.
And me too─
I didn’t want to be talking about that either.
“Nothing, really. Just passing the time,” I said.
“I once heard it said any man who answers ‘just passing the time’ when asked what he’s doing is as good as useless. I do hope that’s not true for you, though, Araragi.”
“…I’m doing a little bit of bike touring.”
And I mean on a bicycle, not a motorcycle, I added.
Senjogahara replied to this with a “Huh” and a nod before looking back around to the entrance of the park. Yes, where the bike parking was.
“So that bicycle was yours, Araragi?”
“Mm? Yeah.”
“It was so rusted I was wondering if you had an iron oxide-plated frame, its chain had snapped and fallen, and the seat and front tire were missing. I never knew that bicycles could move in that kind of condition.”
“Not that one!”
Those were the abandoned bikes.
“Didn’t you notice the cool one right next to those two?! The red one! That’s mine!”
“Hm… Oh. That mountain bike.”
“Exactly.”
“MTB.”
“Uhh…I guess.”
“MIB.”
“That’s something different.”
“Hmph. So that was yours. That’s odd, though. It doesn’t look anything like the one you took me around on earlier.”
“That’s what I use to get to school. You think I’d ride a granny bike on the weekends?”
“I see, of course. You’re in high school, after all, Araragi.”
Senjogahara nodded. I hoped she knew that applied to her as well.
“High schooler, mountain bike,” she said.
“I don’t know if I like that tone of voice…”
“High schooler, mountain bike. Middle schooler, butterfly knife. Grade schooler, flipping skirts.”
“And what exactly is that ominous list supposed to mean?!”
“How do you know if it’s ominous or not? It was just a simple list, not any sort of sentence. You shouldn’t yell at a girl based on your own assumptions, Araragi. Intimidation is like a form of assault, you know?”
In that case, so were her insults.
But there wouldn’t be any point in telling her that…
“Fine, then turn that list into full sentences,” I demanded.
“A high schooler with a mountain bike is like a middle schooler with a butterfly knife or a grade schooler who enjoys flipping skirts. Only more juvenile.”
“So I was right after all!”
“Really, Araragi? That’s not the quip you’re supposed to make here, you’re supposed to say that I’d used a sentence and a sentence fragment instead of full sentences like you’d told me.”
“Do you really expect me to figure that out on the spot?!”
She didn’t have some of the best grades in class for nothing.
Or maybe I was the only one in my class who wouldn’t have noticed that immediately…
Language arts wasn’t my strong suit.
“Hey, forget about me,” I told her. “I don’t even like mountain bikes that much. And I’ve managed to build up a bit of a tolerance to all your verbal abuse after all this time, or maybe you could say I’ve learned to accommodate it, but anyway, there’s like, a million high schoolers around the world who ride mountain bikes. Do you really want to make enemies out of all of them?”
“Mountain bikes are incredible, aren’t they? Fine articles that any high school student would naturally desire,” Hitagi Senjogahara said, flip-flopping in the blink of an eye.
It seemed she was more interested in self-preservation than I’d originally thought.
“So incredible that the degree to which they don’t suit you, Araragi, caused words that I in no way intended to slip out of my mouth.”
“And now you’re blaming me…”
“Stop nitpicking every little thing. If you’re so desperate to rush to your death, I’d be happy to bring you halfway there whenever you want.”
“That’s as cruel as it gets!”
“Do you come around here often, Araragi?”
“You don’t even hesitate to change the subject, do you? No, this is probably my first time here. I was riding around at random and happened to find a park, so I figured I’d take a break here, that’s all.”
To be honest, I thought I had made it much farther─maybe to the tip of Okinawa or so, but if I was running into Senjogahara, that (obviously) meant my bike hadn’t even managed to get me out of town. It was like I was an animal on a farm.
Aw, dammit.
Getting a drivers license started to seem appealing.
Nah, probably after I graduate.
“What about you, Senjogahara? You said something about today being a test drive? So, what, does that mean you’re walking around for physical therapy?”
“The test drive remark was referring to my clothes. Do you not do that kind of thing, Araragi, being a boy? You must at least with your shoes, don’t you? But to put it simply, yes, I’m walking around.”
“Huh.”
“This part of town used to be my home turf.”
“………”
Did she just say “turf”?
“Oh, that’s right,” I recalled. “You moved when you were a junior, didn’t you. So you lived in this area until then or something?”
“Yes, you could say that.”
So that was it.
Now it made sense─in other words, this wasn’t simply about taking a walk or trying on clothes. Essentially, this was also about her feeling nostalgic for the past now that her issue had been resolved. Even Senjogahara acted like a human being now and then.
“It’s been a while, but this area─” she began.
“What? It hasn’t changed at all?”
“No, the opposite. It’s completely different,” she shot back. She must have already done a good bit of exploring. “It’s not like this place is going to get me sentimental, but─it’s hard to explain, it drains your motivation when you see that a town you grew up in has changed.”
“It’s not like you can expect it to stay the same.”
I’ve lived in the same place ever since I was born, so to be honest, I didn’t understand the feeling Senjogahara described at all. I didn’t have a place I could call my country home, either…
“You’re right. You can’t.”
Senjogahara didn’t argue with me, to my surprise. It was rare for her to not come back with one opinion or another. Or maybe she thought she had nothing to gain from discussing the topic with me.
“Hey. Araragi? Do you mind if I sit next to you, then?”
“Next to me?”
“I want to talk to you.”
“……”
She was always so direct about things like thi
s.
If there was something she wanted to say or do, she stated it outright.
Right there, out in the open.
“Sure,” I said. “I was just starting to feel a little guilty about monopolizing this four-person bench.”
“Oh? Then I think I’ll take a seat,” Senjogahara said before sitting next to me.
She sat right next to me, so close our shoulders nearly touched.
“……………”
Um… Why was she sitting on this four-person bench like it was made for two? Aren’t you a little close, Miss Senjogahara? She was so close that while, sure, our bodies weren’t actually in contact, they would be with the slightest fidget. It was impressive how close she was cutting it to that line, and it seemed a little much for two classmates, or even two friends. Still, if I tried to put some distance between us, it might give the impression that I was fleeing from her. I found it hard to move when I thought about the persecution that would be brought upon me if Senjogahara happened to see it that way, even if I didn’t mean it that way. The result? I froze.
“About the other day.”
In this situation, in our relative positions.
Senjogahara continued to speak in a calm tone.
“I wanted to thank you for everything one more time.”
“…Oh. Don’t worry, there’s no need to thank me, really. I didn’t do a thing when you think about it.”
“You’re right. A piece of trash would’ve been more useful.”
“……”
Her sentence meant the same thing as mine, but it was the meaner.
What an awful woman.
“Then you should thank Oshino,” I told her. “That’s all you need to do.”
“Mister Oshino is a separate matter. And anyway, we agreed that I’d be paying him a set fee. A hundred thousand yen, I think?”
“Yeah. So you’re going to start working part-time?”
“Yes. But someone with my personality isn’t fit for labor, so I’m still coming up with a plan.”
“Well, at least you realize that.”
“There must be some way I can skip out on this bill…”
“So what’s what you meant by a plan.”
“I’m joking. I’ll pay my fair share. But like I said─Mister Oshino is a separate matter. I wanted to thank you in a different sense, Araragi.”
“If that’s the case, then you’ve already said enough. Even words of gratitude start to feel hollow once they’re repeated too many times.”
“What do you mean? They were empty from the beginning.”
“They were?!”
“I’m joking. They weren’t empty.”
“Joking all the time, aren’t you?”
I was just appalled.
Senjogahara let out a small cough.
“I’m sorry. For some reason, I always want to deny or contradict every little thing you say.”
“………”
As far as apologies went, that was a hard one to accept…
It was like she was telling me that she couldn’t bring herself to get along with me.
“I think I know what it is,” she mused. “It’s probably the same attitude that little children have of wanting to bully someone they like.”
“Are you sure it isn’t more like the attitude that big grownups have of wanting to torment someone they see as weak?”
Wait.
Did she just say she liked me?
No, she was just making a comparison.
It seemed pointless to adopt the middle-school mindset that every girl who smiles at you is in love with you (Smiles Are Free!), so I brought our conversation back on track.
“Really, though, I don’t feel like I did anything deserving of your gratitude, and to borrow a phrase from Oshino, ‘You just get saved on your own.’ You don’t need to bother with gratitude and that kind of thing. It’ll only make it harder for us to get along from here on out.”
“To get along,” Senjogahara echoed without changing her tone one bit. “I─Araragi? Is it all right for me to think of us as close?”
“Of course it is.”
Each of us had revealed our own problems. We weren’t strangers any longer, nor simple classmates.
“Yes…yes, you’re right,” she said. “Each of us has the other’s weakness in our hands.”
“What? Is our relationship that tense?” She made it sound like it’d be strained. “It’s not about weaknesses or anything, think of it as feeling close and being able to take it for granted. If you can look at it that way, I will too.”
“But you’re not really the type to make friends, are you, Araragi?”
“Until last year, yeah. And it wasn’t my ‘type’ as much as it was my rule. But I had a bit of a paradigm shift over spring break, and, well… What about you, Senjogahara?”
“That was me until last Monday,” she said. “To elaborate, it was until I met you, Araragi.”
“………”
What was with this girl…
Actually, what was with this situation…
It practically felt like she was confessing her love to me. The air felt heavy, even stifling…like I hadn’t had time to prepare myself emotionally for the moment. I would’ve paid more attention to my clothes and my hair if I knew this would be coming, and…
Wait, no!
I was feeling embarrassed for putting honest thought into how I should react if she started telling me she loved me! And why were my eyes getting drawn to Senjogahara’s chest as soon as I started thinking about that?! Was I that trite of a person?! Was Koyomi Araragi the kind of classless, vulgar man who judged a girl on the basis of her (chest’s) appearance─
“What’s wrong, Araragi?”
“Oh, um…I’m sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing?”
“I’m starting to think my very existence is a crime…”
“Uh huh. You ought to be illegal.”
“………”
Hold on.
Again, she was repeating what I said but with a completely different nuance.
“Anyway, Araragi,” she said. “Regardless of what you say, I want to pay you back. Because if I don’t, I’ll always feel like you have something on me. If we want to become friends, I think we only can after I pay you back first. That way we can be friends on an equal footing.”
“Friends…”
Friends.
What could it have been?
I knew it was supposed to be an emotional, touching word, but it felt like a part of me was disappointed to hear it, like I was feeling despondent after putting too many expectations on it…
No, that wasn’t it…
That wasn’t it at all…
“What’s the matter, Araragi? I thought that was a pretty good speech just now, but you look let down for some reason.”
“No, no, I’m not. It just looks that way because I’m doing everything I can to hide how I really feel. Hearing you say that makes me so excited I could do the can-can.”
“I see.”
She gave one of those unconvinced nods.
She might have even thought that I had some kind of ulterior motive.
“Well, in any case─Araragi. Is there anything you want me to do for you? Whatever you want, just this one time.”
“…A-Anything?”
“Anything.”
“Oh…”
A girl in my class had just told me that she’d do anything I asked her to do…