by Nisioisin
This wasn’t Hanekawa─Tsukihi with her hair all wet and slick left me cold.
“Ah, Koyomi. Are you heading out again?”
“Yup, again.”
“What happened to studying?”
“God has other plans for me today.”
Well, not God but a certain demon.
Uh huh, Tsukihi nodded as if she didn’t quite understand.
Hmph, she looked so laidback and carefree as she stood inclining her head.
Her droopy eyes, slack expression, sloping shoulders, and hunched posture reminded me of a certain lazy-panda mascot.
But appearances were deceiving. Tsukihi Araragi, who had tried to make shish kabobs out of Karen and me with an awl this morning, was anything but laidback, carefree, or lazy.
She was a non-lazy panda. In other words, she was a bear.
Tsukihi didn’t have Karen’s fighting skills and was the Fire Sisters’ strategist, but her hysterical, moody aggressiveness was almost freakish, even if I shouldn’t say that about my own sibling.
My honest-to-goodness view was that Karen, the hotheaded type of moron, was at least manageable, while Tsukihi, a twisted and devious sort of stupid, was beyond me.
If Karen was a red flame, Tsukihi was a blue flame. If you drew too close, you might get burned, and it wouldn’t just be your skin.
Now that we had smoothed over the sharp edges of the fierce tiger, Hitagi Senjogahara, the biggest task on my plate was how best to civilize my middle-school sister.
I’d have to discuss it with Hanekawa next time.
An even more extensive therapy course might be necessary.
“Koyomi, do you think Karen will be late coming home today?”
“Maybe. Dunno.”
I’d told her to be back by dinner, but she was so elated to meet the great Kanbaru-sensei that she might not have heard me. Worst case, she might even stay the night.
Hey, maybe she was becoming a woman tonight─or at least, a young lady. In which case, I washed my hands of the whole thing.
I didn’t know and I didn’t care.
“Huh, I see,” Tsukihi said. “When Karen gets worked up about something, she loses sight of everything else.”
“Like you’re one to talk,” I quipped.
Tsukihi puffed her cheeks out as if that was uncalled for.
She had no self-awareness. That was what made her so scary. The fact that puffing her cheeks out made her even more like a lazy panda was also scary.
“What,” I asked, “did you need something from Karen? I thought you were done for now with your Fire Sisters defenders of justice make-believe, including the follow-up.”
“No. I don’t need anything. It’s just that…” The expression on her face was complicated─like she didn’t really want to finish her sentence. “It seems Karen’s been doing a lot more stuff without me.”
“Hm?”
Was she? As far as I could tell, they were together around the clock like always. Joined at the hip. Fellow pilgrims.
Well, they were my family and all, but maybe that was just the view from outside. Maybe Karen and Tsukihi felt some disconnect─some harbinger of change.
“Are you two fighting? Have things been awkward?”
“Nah, not at all, not at all,” my sister replied. “I’ve no better friend, or Ribbon.”
“Ciao?”
“Chu Chu!”
The secret language of siblings.
Anyone overhearing us would have no idea what the heck we were talking about. The fact that we were able to communicate like this proved just how scary siblinghood is─unless, well, we didn’t know what the heck we were saying, either.
A total communication breakdown.
“Still, I guess I’m starting to think we can’t go around calling ourselves the Fire Sisters forever.”
“Hah,” a laugh half-escaped my lips. I’m not surprised, part of me wanted to say, but the other part was pretty surprised to hear her say that.
“When you think about it, you used to be BFFs with me and Karen, too. We even called you Homie Koyomi, remember?”
“Never once.”
We did all play together, though, with Sengoku in the mix, for example.
We might not have been on best terms as siblings, but we weren’t born with bad blood between us─I guess we’d started to grow apart around the time I began middle school?
I think my sisters suddenly felt like little kids to me. Looking back on that time now, it seems pretty selfish and egotistical of me.
I wasn’t the best older brother, and Karen and Tsukihi were fairly unorthodox little sisters, so maybe I shouldn’t generalize about brothers and sisters.
“Well, when all’s said and done, Karen will be starting high school soon,” I reminded. “I know you guys go to an escalator school, but the high school is on a different campus, right? You’ll be on different schedules, too…”
I glanced down at my own shadow as I spoke─it was vague and indistinct since we were in the hallway and the lights were off. Although Karen wasn’t going to start staying up all night and sleeping all day, I thought about the vampire playing with a Nintendo DS in there.
“Your lives will branch apart in various ways. That’s probably not something you’re real happy about, nor Karen for that matter.”
“Yeah. And once we hit our late teens, the police will probably stop overlooking stuff.”
“……”
She appeared to lack even a moment’s compunction over using her gender and age as a weapon.
Scary girl.
If you asked me, it was just make-believe, but the Fire Sisters playing at defenders of justice was probably helpful according to society. That said, I doubted Karen’s and Tsukihi’s idea of justice were even the same.
Working tirelessly for the sake of others without expecting anything in return─if that qualified as justice, then in Karen’s case, justice was her goal.
It was an extremely straightforward conception─straightforward and juvenile. Obvious, upright, no one could ever misinterpret her intentions. That was Karen Araragi.
However, in Tsukihi’s case─justice was her hobby.
Something to do.
It was harder to brand as juvenile─because plenty of adults out there were like that, too.
Both versions of justice reeked of fakeness, but their natures were actually diametrically opposed.
There was diversity in fakeness.
Though they accommodated each other well, Karen believed that the end justified the means, while Tsukihi believed that the means justified the end.
If Karen was a masochist─then Tsukihi was a sadist.
If Tsukihi was true south─then Karen was true north.
They weren’t identical like twins.
They were compatible only when all their bumps and sockets fit together.
An older sister always eager to go on a rampage and a younger sister always able to ferret out a reason to do so─the Fire Sisters of Tsuganoki Second Middle School.
Red flame, blue flame.
“Koyomi, you’ve probably figured this out already…” I doubted she’d read the flow of my argument, but Tsukihi turned to exactly what I was thinking about. “I don’t think I’m as passionate a believer in justice as Karen is.”
“Okay…” Another surprising remark. That was pretty clear to me, but Tsukihi’s self-awareness left me totally flabbergasted.
“I love justice, I think it’s great and all, but I don’t think there’s any firm core of justice in me. Karen’s always saying that the justice coursing through her veins won’t allow it or that the spirit of justice flares up in her.”
“She is.” Such embarrassing words, and with a straight face.
“But I’ve never felt like that. There’s justice in Karen, but not in me. The justice that I believe in─is Karen’s justice, and yours.”
“Mine?” Huh, what was that supposed to mean?
“I might be the strategist of
the Fire Sisters, but in the end the Fire Sisters is all about Karen. I’m just support, a helping hand. If she didn’t believe so strongly in justice, I probably wouldn’t believe in such a shaky thing,” Tsukihi stated impassively. “In that sense you’re right, Koyomi. When it comes to me, at least─my justice is a fake. I’m too easily swayed by other people’s views to be able to claim that mantle.”
“……”
Hrrm. When she said it outright like that, I wasn’t sure how to respond─I felt like she’d chosen me as her audience for a guilt-free admission.
It was so contrary to the stuff she usually spouted. If this was what she thought about when she was alone, that really was surprising to me.
Whenever the Fire Sisters disagreed, Karen’s opinion took precedence─I’d always assumed that was because Karen was older, but I guess there’d been another reason.
And here I thought I knew everything there was to know about my sisters. Even as I struggled to mask my confusion, Tsukihi spoke again.
“If Karen is someone who carries out justice for others, then I’m someone who does it influenced by others. We were facing in different directions from the start─so you see, I’ve started to suspect, more and more these days, that the Fire Sisters might be past its prime. Just look at what happened last time, when you put yourself on the line to stop her. Karen acted alone, didn’t she?”
“Yeah, now that you mention it…”
Karen had pretty much acted alone. I’d seen it as yet another one of her trademark rampages, but now that Tsukihi said so─maybe it was a clear and present indication of coming change.
A sign that Karen Araragi─was graduating from the Fire Sisters.
“But so what? It’s no big deal,” I commented. “Look at it this way instead... Up until now, you guys were just way too close.”
When I began middle school, my attitude toward my sisters changed. When Karen entered middle school, however, for better or for worse, her attitude toward Tsukihi remained the same.
That probably owed to Karen’s clear-cut and simple personality─but even she couldn’t stay a kid forever.
She couldn’t.
She couldn’t!
Please tell me she couldn’t!
Ahem… I just want that to be true so bad that I got carried away─but anyway.
Once Karen entered high school, her world would expand again. Sure, she might change─and in an entirely different manner from how I became a loser in high school.
She might end up changing. Growing.
She was still only fifteen─there was plenty of room for her to mature.
“I understand that’s just how things are,” Tsukihi said. “But still. Once she’s in high school, is she going to start teasing me the way you do?” She let out an exaggerated sigh. “Two against one would hardly be fair. A one-sided match, a power play! The game balance we managed to preserve for so long would come tumbling down. I’ll be crying into my pillow every night before I go to sleep.”
“You’re making me sound bad. I see myself as your dependable big brother, always taking care of you guys.”
“Taking care. What, you mean by brushing our teeth while you grab our tits?”
“Ahahaha,” the dependable big brother tried to laugh that scene away.
Tsukihi was being open with me, but unfortunately she hadn’t forgotten about this morning─that was asking for too much. Stumbling upon your older brother and sister making out in bed was generally the kind of trauma that lasted a lifetime.
“All right, I’ve decided.” Tsukihi balled her hand into a tight fist as if to indicate some inner resolve. “When Karen comes home today, I’ll have a talk with her. A serious conversation about the future of the Fire Sisters.”
“Really? You mean you might split up?”
“It’s possible! Her music and mine just don’t mesh! If Karen wants to go solo, I won’t hold her back! I’ll swallow my tears and send her off with a smile!”
I was partly (okay, totally) teasing her when I mentioned splitting, but as she spoke, Tsukihi pointed her finger at me as if I’d hit the nail on the head.
She looked like an idiot.
I was hopeful about the likelihood of Karen growing up once she began high school, but I couldn’t help thinking that the day Tsukihi finally grows up was still a long, long way off.
You’d think she was smarter from the way she’d been talking.
“Koyomi, you have to come to the wrap-up party! There’ll be lots of middle-school girls!”
“If you insist. I’ll free up enough time and show my face, at least,” I answered indifferently.
The bit about lots of middle-school girls had nothing to do with it, of course.
Well, regardless of her resolve, I doubted my little sisters would actually be having that discussion tonight. Tsukihi was going to be sidetracked by a most infuriating surprise: the loss of Karen’s precious ponytail.
That awl was going to be wielded against me once more, that was guaranteed.
Hmm. Just to be safe, maybe I should have Shinobu drink a little of my blood in advance.
Ah, I almost forgot. Having brought up Karen’s ponytail, I need to tell you about Tsukihi’s hairstyle.
This morning I was so busy trying to dodge an awl that I lacked the peace of mind to go into any detail, but she, too, had changed her hair at the start of August.
Unlike Hanekawa, Senjogahara, or Karen, however, Tsukihi changed her hairstyle as easily as you changed clothes, so it wasn’t surprising. But the Dutch bob must have not pleased her because she kept it for less than a month, a particularly brief cycle.
As of today, August fourteenth, Tsukihi Araragi had her hair in a refined, single-length shoulder cut. It was hard to tell since she’d just come out of the shower, but I noticed a slight inward curl. Whatever it was that she did, it was a glossy styling that made her cuticles sparkle even though there was barely any light in the hallway.
If I could stop being her brother for a moment and give an objective appraisal, the cut made her look somewhat grown up in contrast to what she was really like on the inside.
Still, long and straight, Dutch bob─her hairstyle was all over the place… Were cornrows next?
Now that was where I put my foot down.
Anyway, new hair, new girl, I suppose. Although I said “in contrast,” I felt like Tsukihi was acting a little less childish after switching to this new single-length style. Maybe I was just imagining things, but the possibility filled me with hope─take this morning, for instance. Looking back on it now, an awl might actually signify moderation. Back when she still had the bob, she could easily have grabbed an electric drill from the shed instead.
Not that any of this really matters. I just thought you might like to know.
By the way, since I’d been growing my hair out to hide the kiss mark Shinobu had left at the base of my neck during spring break and missed my chance to get it trimmed up, I was sporting quite the mop by this point.
Less like Kitaro, and more like Misery from Outer Zone.
Okay, that was an exaggeration.
“Well, dependable big brother? Weren’t you headed out somewhere?”
“Ah, that’s right.”
I’d gotten wrapped up in our conversation. I may not have been able to feel what Shinobu was feeling, but she was probably starting to lose her patience inside my shadow. For all I knew, there were tears of bitterness streaming down her face as she played with her DS.
“Well then, mind the fort,” I said. “I should be back soon. I’ll head to the store while I’m out, too. Do you need anything?”
“I’m fine. Have funs.”
“Funs I will have. Now hurry up and get back to your room. I can’t open the front door while you’re standing half-naked in the hallway.”
“Hrn?”
“I’m telling you not to walk around in such a loose getup. No being provocative unprovoked.”
Japanese clothing was all fine and dandy, but
she had to do it right. What an amateur. Her obi was wrapped around her waist in slapdash fashion, so her tits and legs were practically on display… She had the body of a kid, so it wasn’t even sexy.