by Nisioisin
“But aren’t you good at math, Araragi? Normally, people who can do math do well in other subjects, too.”
“You don’t have to memorize all that much for math. It’s easier on me.”
“Boy, are you difficult. Oh, whatever. We’ll just take this step by step. By the way, Araragi. Is that girl your little sister?”
Hanekawa’s lips grew pointy, and with them she indicated Hachikuji, who was laid out near the bench.
“…My little sisters aren’t this tiny.”
“They aren’t?”
“They’re in middle school.”
“Huh.”
“Um, she’s lost. Her name’s Mayoi Hachikuji.”
“Mayoi?”
“Like the character for ‘truth’ and the character for ‘dusk.’ As far as her last name─”
“I know her last name. ‘Hachikuji’ is a pretty common term in the Kansai region, anyway. Yeah, I think there’s a temple in Shinonome Monogatari that─oh, actually, it might have been written in a different way there.”
“…You know everything, don’t you?”
“Not everything. I just know what I know.”
“Is that so.”
“Hm. ‘Mayoi’ and ‘Hachikuji’─what a poetic name. Hnn? Oh, she’s up.”
This made me look at Hachikuji, who was slowly blinking her eyes. She seemed to take a muddled yet meticulous look at her surroundings before finally sitting up.
“Hello there, Mayoi. My name’s Tsubasa Hanekawa, and I’m friends with this nice guy over here!”
Wow. The public TV children’s show voice came natural to her.
Hanekawa must be the kind of person who uses baby talk with dogs and cats and thinks nothing of it…
Hachikuji replied, “Please don’t speak to me. I don’t like you.”
…So she used that line on everyone.
“Hmm? Did I do something to make you hate me? You shouldn’t say such things to people you’re meeting for the first time, Mayoi. There, there.”
Hanekawa seemed completely unfazed.
Unlike me, she was even patting Hachikuji’s head like it was no big deal.
“So you like kids, Hanekawa?”
“Hmm? Is there anyone who doesn’t?”
“Hey, I’m not saying I don’t.”
“Ah. Yes, I do like them. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy to think that this is how I used to be.”
There there─Hanekawa continued to pat Hachikuji’s head.
Hachikuji tried to resist.
But resistance was futile.
“Ur, urrr…”
“You’re such a cutie, Mayoi! I could just eat you right up. Look at your fluffy little cheeks. Ooh! But you know…”
Hanekawa’s tone shifted.
To one that she occasionally used with me at school.
“You shouldn’t bite his hand for no reason at all. He’s going to be just fine, but if he were a normal person, that would have really hurt! Bad girl!”
Whack.
She hit her. With her fist. And not as a joke.
“Urr…ur, urr?”
Having been coddled, then smacked, Hachikuji seemed to be in a state of delirium, and Hanekawa turned her around to make her face me.
“Now say you’re sorry.”
“…I-I’m sorry for what I did, Mister Araragi.”
She apologized.
Hachikuji, who spoke politely but was an obnoxious brat.
It shocked me.
Still, Hanekawa had been watching me for a while… Right, of course, if you thought about it, you had a right to defend yourself when someone bit you hard enough to gouge your flesh. In fact, our first fight, too, had started with her kicking me…
Hanekawa wasn’t one to bend the rules, but she wasn’t such a stickler for them, either.
She was just fair.
I had to hand it to Hanekawa, though. She knew how to deal with kids. Her performance was impressive, especially because I was sure she didn’t have any siblings.
Watching this also made me realize that Hanekawa treated me like a kid when we were at school, but we could put that fact aside for now.
“And you too, Araragi! You’ve been a bad boy.”
She was using the same tone on me.
Maybe we couldn’t put the fact aside.
Having noticed what she’d done, Hanekawa cleared her throat and tried again.
“Anyway, don’t do that.”
“Don’t do… Don’t be violent, I suppose?”
“No. You need to scold her properly.”
“Hm? Oh.”
“Violence is bad too, of course. But if you hit a child, or if you hit anyone for that matter, you need to give them a sensible reason.”
“……”
“What I’m trying to say is talk, because they’ll understand.”
“…You know, I learn a lot talking to you.”
Wow.
She’s such an antidote.
Good people exist in the world.
It lifts me up just to think that.
“So she’s lost? Where’s she trying to go? Somewhere around here? In that case, I should be able to show her the way.”
“Er─no, it’s fine. Senjogahara just went to ask someone for help.”
While Hanekawa had coped with the other side too, she had no memories of it─if she did, they were also forgotten. There was no need for me to poke at them like I was picking at a scab.
Though her offer was much appreciated, and all.
“She’s been taking her sweet time, but she should be back soon,” I said.
“What? Senjogahara? You were with Senjogahara, Araragi? Hmm? Senjogahara hasn’t been coming to school lately, but─hmm? Oh, now that you mention it, you were asking me all about Senjogahara the other day, weren’t you─hmm.”
Uh oh.
She was getting suspicious. Real suspicious.
Hanekawa’s single-minded-delusion power was bursting at the seams.
“Oh! I see what’s going on!” she exclaimed.
“No, I don’t think you do…”
A fool like me shooting down an answer that a brilliant person like her came up with felt so wrong, but…
“You know, your fantasizing skills outclass even yaoi fangirls.”
“Yaoi? What’s that?” Hanekawa asked, head tilted.
The model student didn’t know our native term for slash fiction.
“It’s short for ‘no climax, no denouement, profound meaning,’” I told her wrong on purpose.
“I think you’re lying. Fine. I’ll look it up later.”
“As serious as ever, I see.”
………
I began to worry. What if I had just sent Hanekawa down a dark path?
Would it be my fault?
“Well, I don’t want to be a nuisance, so I’ll be on my way,” she announced. “Sorry for the bother, and say hello to Senjogahara for me. Though I won’t get on your case too much about it because it’s a Sunday, don’t slack off too much. Plus, don’t forget that there’s a history quiz tomorrow. Plus, we’re going to have to start getting serious about preparing for the culture festival, so get yourself ready, okay? Plus─”
Hanekawa continued with nine more of those.
She was like the most positive person ever.
“Oh, that’s right, Hanekawa. Just in case, do you mind if I ask you something before you go? Do you know of a Miss Tsunade’s home around here?”
“Miss Tsunade? Hmm, well─”
Hanekawa made a show of trying to remember. She did such a good job I started to get my hopes up that she really knew, but then─
“…No, I don’t,” she said.
“So there are some things you don’t know.”
“Like I told you. I just know what I know. Outside of that, I’m clueless.”
“Is that so.”
True, she didn’t know what yaoi was either.
It wasn’t going to be that easy.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t live up to your expectations.”
“No, no.”
“All right. Bye-bye, and I mean it this time,” Tsubasa Hanekawa said and left the park.
I wondered. Did she know how to read the park’s name?
If there was anything I should’ve asked her, a part of me thought, that was it.
And then─I received a call on my phone.
An eleven-digit number appeared on its liquid-crystal screen.
“………”
Sunday, May fourteenth, 14:15:30 p.m.
That was the moment I acquired Senjogahara’s cell phone number.
006
“So─what kind of spirit, specter, ghoul, or goblin is this Lost Cow, anyway? What do we need to do to defeat it?”
“Really, Araragi, all you ever think about is violence. Something good happen to you lately?”
It seemed as though Senjogahara had woken Oshino up while he was sleeping. He grumbled something about how awful she was to interrupt his lazy Sunday morning, but even putting aside the fact that it was already the afternoon, every day for Oshino was a summer break Sunday. He had no constitutionally guaranteed right to speak those words, so I didn’t bother dignifying them with a response.
Oshino had no cell phone, which meant he had to borrow Senjogahara’s for us to communicate. However, due to reasons both dogmatic and monetary, he also seemed to be quite bad with technology. When I heard him start saying things as idiotic as, “Hey, tsundere girl. Which button do I press when I’m talking?” I felt an urge to press the button that’d cut the call.
What did he think he was using, a walkie-talkie?
“But…I do wonder what’s going on here. This isn’t so much uncommon as abnormal. I can’t believe you’ve managed to run into this many aberrations in such a short period of time, Araragi. How funny. Getting attacked by a vampire would be enough for most people, but look at you. First you get yourself mixed up with missy class president’s cat, then missy tsundere’s crab, and now you’ve gone and stumbled upon a snail?”
“I’m not the one who did the stumbling.”
“Hm? Really?”
“How much did Senjogahara tell you?”
“Well…she did tell me everything, but I was also half-asleep. It’s all a bit vague, and I might be misremembering some of it… Oh, but you know, I’ve always dreamed about how great it would be if a cute high school girl came and woke me up. Thanks to you, Araragi, a dream I’ve had since middle school has come true at last.”
“…And how does it feel?”
“Hmm, I’m not sure. I’m still only half-awake.”
Maybe that’s how fulfilled dreams are.
Not just for him, but for everyone.
“Hey, she’s glaring at me, hard. Yeesh, now I’m scared. I wonder if something good happened to her.”
“Who knows.”
“Not you, huh? After all, you don’t seem like you understand women very well, Araragi─but forget about that. Hm. Well, it is true that it’s easier to find yourself back in the world after you’ve gotten involved in it once, but…it does feel a bit too concentrated. Missy class president and missy tsundere are both your classmates, too─and, from what I understand, they’re both from the area you’re in, right?”
“Senjogahara doesn’t live here anymore, though. But that doesn’t have anything to do with this. Hachikuji wouldn’t have ever lived here before.”
“Hachikuji?”
“Oh, did she not tell you? The name of the girl who came across the snail. Mayoi Hachikuji.”
“Ah…”
There was a pause.
It didn’t seem to be because he was sleepy, either.
“Mayoi Hachikuji, you say… Ha hah, of course. I’m starting to get the picture. My memories are coming together. Of course. It’s a nice little connection, actually. Almost like a play on words.”
“A play on words? Oh, because ‘mayoi’ can mean ‘lost’? ‘Lost’ as in ‘Lost Cow’ and ‘lost child’… You know, Oshino, you come up with some pretty boring ideas for someone who always has such a dumb smile on his face.”
“You wouldn’t catch me dead making jokes that simple. I don’t smile like I do just for show. Nothing conceals a weapon better than a smiling face, you know. I’m talking about both of her names together. Mayoi and Hachikuji. You know, Hachikuji. Like in the fifth verse of Shinonome Monogatari?”
“What?”
Hadn’t Hanekawa said something similar?
Not that it meant anything to me.
“You don’t know anything, Araragi, do you? I’m glad you’re giving me a good excuse to explain it all. But we don’t have time for that right now, do we? Besides, I’m sleepy. Hm? What’s that, missy tsundere?”
Our conversation stopped for a moment as Senjogahara seemed to say something to Oshino. Even my hearing couldn’t pick it up─or rather, she was intentionally speaking to him so that I couldn’t hear her.
Was she sharing a secret? No─that couldn’t be it.
What could she be saying?
“Hmm… Okay.”
Oshino nodding along was all I could catch. And─
“…Ahh.”
A heavy sigh.
“You really are useless, Araragi. You know that?”
“Huh? What did I do to deserve that from you? I haven’t even told you that I’m just passing the time.”
“You’ve made missy tsundere fuss over you so much…she even feels responsible for you. How pathetic. She practically has to hold your hand and dress you, Araragi. It’s her who should be wearing the pants here.”
“Hold on… I do feel bad about dragging Senjogahara into this. I really do. Not just bad, I feel responsible. It was only last week she finished up taking care of her own problems, but I’ve already gotten her into another strange─”
“Ugh, that’s not what I mean. You know, Araragi, I’m starting to think you’re getting a big head after having solved problems with three aberrations in a row. Just to make sure you know, what you, yourself, see and feel isn’t the whole truth.”
“…I wasn’t trying to dispute that.”
They were stern words─withering. It felt like he’d hit me where it hurt most, because that did ring a bell.
“Well, you probably don’t mean to be doing it, Araragi. I already understand what kind of person you are. I just think it wouldn’t hurt if you were a little more considerate, that’s all. If you’re not acting conceited, then I think something might have you boxed in. Listen carefully. Seeing shouldn’t necessarily be believing─and on the flip side, not seeing isn’t necessarily counterfactual, Araragi. I want to say I told you something similar the first time we met. I hope you haven’t forgotten already.”
“…We’re not talking about me right now, Oshino. Can you just tell me how to deal with this…Lost Cow? This snail? What do we do to defeat it?”
“Again with the violent talk. Don’t say that kind of stuff. You really don’t understand a thing, do you? You’ll come to regret it if you keep going on like that, and I hope you’ll be taking responsibility then. Got that? And also─the Lost Cow is…oh, er.”
Oshino hesitated for a moment.
“Ha hah. I don’t know, this is just too simple. It feels like no matter what I say, I’m going to be saving you here. That’s no good… I need you to get saved on your own.”
“It’s simple? Really?”
“We’re not dealing with a vampire here. That really, truly was a rare case, Araragi. I guess you can’t help but get a lot of wrong ideas if that was your first experience, but…okay, we could say that this Lost Cow is more like the crab that missy tsundere encountered.”
“Hm.”
The crab.
That crab.
“Oh, right. About her, too…” Oshino said. “I don’t know if I like this. I’m only here to connect humans with the other side. Connecting humans with other humans isn’t my specialty, you see… Ha hah. Well then. Now what? I may have l
et myself get a little too friendly with you, Araragi. It’s like we’re colluding. I never imagined that it’d be this simple for you to ask me for help, let alone that you’d get me to solve a case for you over the phone.”