Bakemonogatari Part 3

by Nisioisin

  “I’ll go on a date.”

  It happened that afternoon during our lunch break.

  The words came from nowhere as we sat on the courtyard benches side by side and ate our lunches in what must have looked like a friendly arrangement. I was so astonished that I dropped the rolled omelet that I was picking up with my chopsticks.

  Excuse me?

  What did this woman just say?

  I looked at Senjogahara.

  She wore her summer uniform.

  A fad was quietly beginning to take off among the girls at my school where they took the already short sleeves of their uniforms, folded them back even further, and pinned them there to make it look like they were wearing sleeveless tops. I’d assumed that Senjogahara was the kind of girl who disapproved of following such trends, but that didn’t seem to be the case. She was apolitical about it. This was a new discovery for me. Incidentally, while Hanekawa didn’t complain about those kinds of crazes, she didn’t partake in them either. Maybe model students differed among themselves depending on whether they were dyed in the wool or not. As far as her skirt went, however, Senjogahara’s was still the same length as ever.

  She was eating, which meant that her hair in the back and the bangs that she seemed to be growing out lately were tied up with red rubber bands. Some might have found it a stupid-looking hairstyle, but I really enjoyed the way she showed off her neat, pretty forehead, plus it felt good to be able to see her with “her guard down.” It was as if she was opening up to me somehow.

  “Umm… Huh?” I said, at a loss as to how to react.

  “Hmm.” Senjogahara used her chopsticks to scoop a bit of white rice out of her lunch box and held it out toward me. “Say ahh.”

  “………”

  Ack!

  What…was going on here?!

  This was a well-worn scene in manga and the like, something I knew lovey-dovey lovebirds did, but I wasn’t happy about it at all! I wanted it to stop, no, I was straight-up scared!

  Meanwhile, Senjogahara had on the same flat, expressionless face… I would have been happy to oblige if she’d done it with a bashful, awkward look, but this was one situation where both parties really needed to know how the other felt…

  I couldn’t help but wonder what she might be planning.

  She had to have an ulterior motive.

  Maybe ulterior was all there was.

  A record with two B-sides.

  It might be a feint. Was she planning to laugh at me if I opened my mouth like an idiot?

  “What’s the matter, Araragi? C’mon, say ahh.”

  “……”

  No…

  Why be so mistrustful of your girlfriend?

  Senjogahara could be mean, but she’d never do something that horrible. We’d been going out for a month, not what you’d call a long period of time, but long enough to get each other. We’d formed a relationship of trust. What was I thinking, almost destroying it?

  I was Senjogahara’s boyfriend.

  “Ah, aahh,” I opened my mouth.

  “Take that.”

  Senjogahara smooshed the rice against my cheek, just right of my opened mouth.

  “………”

  Hold on, hold on.

  True, it was an obvious punch line.

  “Heh, heheheh,” Senjogahara laughed.

  It was a quiet, irritating laugh.

  “Heheheh… Ahaha. Haha.”

  “…I’m delighted to see your smile.”

  She used to barely ever laugh.

  She still only laughed at times like these.

  In general, she was just expressionless.

  “Araragi, you have rice on your cheek.”

  “You put it there.”

  “I’ll get it for you,” she said, putting down her chopsticks and reaching toward me with her hand. One by one, she carefully picked the grains of rice off from my cheek after having smeared them there herself.

  Hmm.

  This wasn’t bad…

  “Okay, it’s gone,” she said before tossing the clump of rice into a nearby trashcan.

  She’d just throw it away? As I watched, too…

  Well, not like I thought she’d eat it, of course.

  “All right,” Senjogahara briskly started over again.

  Like she was pretending that nothing had happened.

  “I’ll go on a date,” she repeated.

  But then, for some reason, she started to look worried. Ehh, she tilted her head as she considered something.

  “No, that’s not it. A date…”

  “…?”

  “Could I…bother you for a date?”

  “………”

  “What would you…think to…about a…date…”

  “……………”

  Wait a second!

  Did she really not know how to make a request?!

  I was shocked.

  Well, something else was an even bigger shock─Senjogahara had been the one to propose a date, and she’d been so decisive and sudden about it.

  Speaking of having gone out with her for a month.

  Over that time, I’d openly, and at times even boldly asked her on dates, and she never so much as lifted a finger. And yet… Hitagi Senjogahara, she as still as dawn, still as midmorning, still as afternoon, and still as night…was asking about a date?

  We had been firm, as if we had signed a pact of silence, in keeping our relationship a “Platonic” one, as my junior Suruga Kanbaru would say. Now we were finally going to go on a date?

  What change of mind was this?

  As with the “Say ahh” just now, could it be some sort of trap? It was pretty questionable of me to be feeling so paranoid about an offer to go on a date, when she was my girlfriend according to both of us, but that was how shocking it was.

  “What,” Senjogahara said flatly. “Do you not want to?”

  “No, I do, but…”

  “By the way, I heard.” Senjogahara turned on me a dauntless look that usually isn’t meant for your boyfriend. “It sounds like you had quite a bit of fun on your date with Kanbaru. I hear the two of you got intimate and ended up spending last night together?”

  “Oh…so you mean you heard from Kanbaru?”

  “Yes…though she was quite tight-lipped.”

  “………”

  Why go acting like she had something to hide?!

  Flap your lips, because we didn’t do anything at all! Keeping it a secret made it seem like something did! Man, people with semi-tight lips were the worst troublemakers!

  “She begged me not to blame you.”

  “Why’s she covering for me?! We didn’t do anything!”

  I’m innocent!

  Not guilty!

  Falsely accused!

  “In any case,” Senjogahara said. “I’m glad the two of you seem to be getting along.”

  “……”

  What─was that supposed to mean?

  Sure.

  Senjogahara probably felt indebted or bad toward Kanbaru─and also knew that Kanbaru and I were rivals in love over none other than Senjogahara herself. So it wasn’t exactly incomprehensible that she might feel that way about Kanbaru and me getting along─but there seemed to be some other nuance to her words.

  It reminded me of what Hanekawa had told me the day before.

  I think that when Senjogahara sees that side of you, it makes her pretty insecure─

  The other nuance to her words─

  This woman.

  What could she be thinking?

  “So now,” she said, “Kanbaru is worth something to you if she were taken hostage.”

  “She was thinking of something heinous!”

  Hostage?!

  Did she just use the word “hostage” in a regular conversation?!

  “Kanbaru is so cute, isn’t she…” she continued. “And, you know, that cute girl is more than happy to obey my every word. How does that make you feel? Completely as a side note, wouldn’t you love to se
e such a cute girl walking around school on all fours, naked only from the waist down?”

  Senjogahara let the hostile line loose with a sigh and an air of forced gloom. Having been born and raised in a peaceful country, I’d never imagined that a threat could wrap itself in such still and nonviolent mannerisms…

  Hitagi Senjogahara.

  You’ve just proved that you’re no tsundere, you’re an awful person, that’s all…

  “How rude, Araragi. That’s the first time anyone ever said that about me.”

  “Really?”

  “If anything, people often tell me the opposite. ‘What a lovely personality…’”

  “They’re being sarcastic!”

  Hell, if she was okay with it, I’d gladly say it!

  What a lovely personality you’ve got!

  “Excuse me? Are you saying those people were being dishonest with me? I won’t stand for anyone, even you, Araragi, casting doubts on their words!”

  “You’re sticking up for people who’re insulting you, dammit!”

  And so on.

  We were just kidding with these conversations.

  We were testing each other’s wit.

  “All right,” Senjogahara started over yet again, though the lead-in wasn’t remotely all right. “You’ll go on a date. With me.”

  “So that’s what you’re going to settle on…”

  It wasn’t too inappropriate a way to phrase it.

  In fact, no way to phrase it could be more her.

  “Any complaints…I mean, questions?” she followed up.

  “No, ma’am…”

  Then I’ll give whatever excuse and head home early after school, so come pick me up once you’re done preparing for the culture festival, please─Senjogahara summarized before returning to her meal as though nothing had happened.

  It was very much like her to prioritize our date and skip the culture festival prep as a matter of course, but I certainly wasn’t unhappy about getting to go on a date with her. What’s more, it would be a nighttime date, a detail with profound implications. As far as where we would go and what we would do, Senjogahara said to leave all the planning to her. I didn’t see any particular reason to object, so I simply decided to look forward to what was to come as I mentally pumped my fist.

  What a long journey it had been…

  Getting my girlfriend to go on a date requiring so much effort was unexpected… I’d overshot and gone on one with her junior Kanbaru beforehand, but all’s well that ends well.

  In any case.

  June thirteenth was going to be a memorable day for me, that of my first date.

  However.

  A few hours later.

  As I made to head home after school once the culture festival prep was done, I found Nadeko Sengoku, my younger sister’s old friend, waiting for me outside and was handed volleyball shorts and a school swimsuit; spotted by Hanekawa, I earnestly pled to her, “Please! I’ll pay you fifty thousand yen, so don’t tell anyone about this!” (Of course, she gave me a serious talking-to in response: “People are endowed with dignity, and you should be ashamed of trying to buy one off.” There I stood, holding volleyball shorts and a school swimsuit in my hands, scolded by a classmate by the front gates) before pedaling a little faster than usual on my bicycle to get home, where I changed from my uniform into something more appropriate and doubled back toward Senjogahara’s place with nothing more than my wallet and cell phone with me.

  It was past 7:30 when I arrived.

  I wondered if I was a little late, but Senjogahara greeted me with a “You got here faster than I expected,” followed by a “That’s fine, though.” It seemed like getting there too early could have been a problem.

  Senjogahara had changed out of her school uniform, too.

  She had her hair in two bunches in the back. It was a personal rule for her to wear her hair straight down when she was at school, aside from when she ate and during P.E. (which she’d recently started not to skip), and to tie up her hair when she wasn’t. Wearing it in two bunches, she took on a vague similarity to Class President Hanekawa, but it added up to a movement-friendly and stylish choice.

  I thought her clothes made it look like we were going to go somewhere, and just as I expected, she said, “Okay, let’s go. Follow along now.”

  But that was as far as my expectations took me.

  Some unexpected twists and turns were in store.

  Hitagi Senjogahara led me to a jeep parked outside of the Tamikura Apartments, where she lived.

  We traveled by car.

  That much was fine.

  I lived in a motorized society. I had no questions or complaints about that.

  The issue was that both Senjogahara and I were strictly forbidden by our school rules to acquire a driver’s license. We weren’t allowed so much as a scooter, to say nothing of cars. So it followed that both Senjogahara and I got into the jeep’s back seats.

  So then, who was driving?

  Hitagi Senjogahara’s father.

  “……………”

  My girlfriend’s father was chaperoning us on our first date?

  A date that was more like torture…

  Memorable, but how…

  The mood in the car, no matter how you spun it, was awkward. We exchanged hurried greetings before the jeep departed. Even then, I couldn’t bring myself to ask where we were headed. Actually, our destination didn’t even matter to me anymore.

  This was, of course, my first time meeting Daddy Senjogahara.

  It would be one thing if he were open and sociable, but I had the hardest time dealing with his type, which you might guess, even if I didn’t bring up Sengoku, is the silent sort. It was one thing to face a taciturn girl who was younger than me, but a man who was my elder? Daddy Senjogahara was dressed sharply like he’d just come back from work─no, as if he was still on the clock, and quietly operated the steering wheel. He worked at a foreign-owned company or something…

  He looked like a stern man. My paranoia was acting up like never before, but it felt like he might get angry at me for just about any reason.

  Still…if you put all that aside, while he did look to be on the older side for a father of someone around my age, he cut a pretty cool figure with his full head of salt-and-pepper hair. Like he was an actor. He was “aging gracefully.” At the risk of sounding like a doting lover, Hitagi Senjogahara was enough of a beauty that some called her a cloistered princess. But it made sense now, girls like her had fathers like him.

  Hmm.

  Your father cutting a cool figure netted more points than doing so yourself…

  “What’s the matter, Araragi?” Senjogahara, who was sitting next to me, asked after we’d driven for a while. “You’re awfully quiet.”

  “Hey… Do you not understand the predicament I’m in right now?”

  “I sure don’t. When is ‘now’? How do you spell ‘predicament’?”

  “You don’t even understand that?!”

  Look at her, playing stupid like that.

  Did she have no compassion?

  “Araragi,” she said, “I don’t blame you for feeling nervous on our first date, but you need to relax. The night is long.”

  “Yeah…”

  It wasn’t because this was our first date…

  I truly missed that epoch in my life when I believed a nighttime date had profound implications. I was happy back then. The fact that the night is long was quite simply terrifying. Why did the night have to be long? All I wanted was for it to end as soon as possible…

  “Hey, Araragi,” Senjogahara said in her flat tone.

  She didn’t sound nervous at all…

  “Do you love me?”

  “……!”

  What a way to harass someone!

  So not only did she have an acid tongue, she was capable of this, too?!