by Nisioisin
“Yes? Is this concerning her unfortunate fate?”
“Why would I discuss that?!”
“Well said. If she’s going to meet an unfortunate fate, you want to decide all the details on your own from A to Z.”
“I’m not going to let Kanbaru meet an unfortunate fate at anyone’s hands! Even if those hands are yours! That’s not what I’m talking about!”
“Then what is it?”
“Kanbaru and I were talking about constellations the other day. Two days ago, I think?”
Ophiuchus.
Going too far into it would touch on Senjogahara’s birthday, so I had to keep it simple.
“Kanbaru told me something then,” I went on. “She attends these events at an observatory in another prefecture two times a year. Could this be where?”
Senjogahara had influenced Suruga Kanbaru down to their perviness, so it was entirely possible.
“Must be,” Senjoghara replied sure enough. “But it’s been a while since my last visit… I do remember telling that kid. Hm… So Kanbaru does that.”
“She asked if it seemed out of character for her, come to think of it. So that’s what she meant. Man, what an adorable little junior she is.”
“Yes. So much so that I wanna do her.”
“In what sense?!”
Oh… Now I recalled one more thing. That day I first visited Senjogahara’s home and told her the whopper about knowing a lot about astronomy…something about what the moon looks like. I remembered sharing my half-assed expertise and Senjogahara turning the tables on me.
Agh, how embarrassing.
I wished the memory had stayed forgotten.
Of course she’d turn the tables on me.
This was the first time I’d ever been to an observatory.
“Looks like there’s no one around, though,” I said.
“This isn’t a particularly good time for observing stars. Plus it’s a weekday. Anyone that is here is probably inside that observatory over there.”
“Over where?”
I tried to raise my head, to no avail.
Or rather, I felt nails digging into my scalp.
“Hey, Senjogahara… Are you aware that you’re definitely doing something a lot meaner than you think right now?”
“Really?” My kind admonition was greeted with total indifference by Hitagi Senjogahara. “If anything, you should feel fortunate to have one of my delicate hands on your head.”
“I’ll give you that, if you mean delicate like glass…whole shards of it.”
“What a wonderful thing to hear. Am I so clear and sharp? You really know how to compliment a girl. I feel like rewarding you.”
Her nails dug deeper into my scalp.
It was a simple yet effective way of delivering pain.
Was she actually made of the stuff? Senjogahara’s hollow, emotionless eyes were nothing if not glassy, in fact.
I see, so that’s what my girlfriend was…
Hitagi Shard.
“Anyway,” I asked her, “there’s an observatory around here?”
“Yes. With a large reflecting telescope.”
“Huh. I don’t quite get what’s so amazing about that, but…we’re going in there?”
“Nope,” Senjogahara shook her head right away. “It costs money to enter.”
“……”
“I’m poor, I’ll have you know.”
I didn’t see the point in saying it with such pride, but…
I guess it was the truth.
“I don’t mind paying,” I said, “since an observatory probably doesn’t charge too much. I’m sure I have the money on me.”
“I applaud your readiness to take the bill, but I’ll have to turn down your offer for today. I have a spot I recommend over looking through a telescope in a building─ah. This way.”
Senjogahara left the path to begin climbing a hill. She stepped through the cropped grass, and I followed in her footsteps.
She stopped about halfway up the hill.
A plastic sheet had been placed on the ground there.
Ah, her preparations.
“Close your eyes and lie down.”
I didn’t feel like opposing or defying her when I’d come so far. Senjogahara’s intentions were clear to me now. I did as she said, closing my eyes and lying down on the sheet. Her hand left my head, and I could sense someone lying down next to me. I say “someone,” but that’d be some incredible magic trick if it weren’t Senjogahara.
“You can open your eyes now.”
I did as she said.
And then, the heavens were full of stars.
“……………………………………………………Whoa.”
To be honest.
I was surprised less by the beautiful starry sky than by myself for still being able to find a starry sky beautiful at my age.
Humans could feel this moved?
The stars seemed to rain down on us.
If I may be so unrefined, it could have been in part because I was lying down… But it was simply fantastic to have stars covering every inch of my vision. Trying to somehow maintain my self-consciousness by searching for the reason that I was moved was already dishonest, but I at least understood why Senjogahara had gone so far as was to stick her nails in my head to keep me from taking a sneak peek. She’d wanted me to see this sky from this perspective first.
Somewhere really nice.
She was right. There was nowhere nicer.
Ah… Somehow I felt like I’d been fully repaid.
Like all of the pain and trouble so far was being washed away.
“So, Araragi─what do you think?” Senjogahara asked by my side.
She─must have been looking at the same sky.
“Wow─honestly, I don’t have the words for it.”
“So your vocabulary is lacking,” she said, putting a damper on my emotions with her acid tongue.
But─that was the extent of it.
Even her venom was tempered under this sky.
“There’s Deneb. Altair. Vega. The famous Summer Triangle. Go aaaall the way to the side from there, and we get to Ophiuchus. Which means Serpens is those stars in that area.”
Senjogahara gave me an eloquent explanation as she pointed at the night sky.
Running commentary, though she had neither a flashlight nor a planisphere.
Even so, it was somehow easy to understand.
“That conspicuously bright star is Spica…which means Virgo is around there. Cancer is over there… Oh, maybe it’s a bit hard to make out.”
“I guess I know the Big Dipper.”
“Yes, and the Big Dipper is part of Ursa Major─right next to it is Lynx.”
“Like the cat?”
“Yes.”
Senjogahara continued to name every constellation we could see and to tell me about each one. It was as if I was listening to a fairy tale, and her words seeped into me soothingly.
If she’d let me.
I wanted to drift off to sleep.
“You can’t fall asleep,” she said.
What a clear no.
What a sharp girl.
She continued, “Or as I’d say if we were mountain climbers stranded in a blizzard─’You can’t fall sleep! I’ll kill you if you do!’”
“You’re doing the killing?!”
“Well, in any case,” Senjogahara spoke in a flat voice─having wrapped up her commentary on the constellations. “That’s everything.”
“Huh? What is?”
“Everything I have,” she said, still looking at the stars. “Being able to help you study. My cute little junior and my curt father. And─these stars. That’s all I have, really. That’s about everything I can give you. That’s it, everything.”
“Everything…”
Oh…was that the deal?
The thing with Kanbaru the day before yesterday… No, since we first started dating a month ago on Mother’s Day, was that what Senjogahara was th
inking the whole time? Never betraying any interest when I asked her out on a date… Making up with Kanbaru might have been unplanned, but had she been waiting for our skills test to be over and for her father’s schedule to open up?
I remembered something Hanekawa had said─
Senjogahara is a tough one.
“Well, technically speaking,” she corrected herself, “I do also have my acid tongue and verbal abuse.”
“I don’t need that!”
“And I guess I do have this body of mine.”
“……”
This body of mine…
Her euphemisms were so naked.
“Do you not need that, either?”
“Er, well… Um.”
I─couldn’t say no, could I?
But something about the scene made saying yes feel off, too…
“But you know, don’t you?” she said. “That a long time ago─a filthy man tried to assault me.”
“Oh…yeah.”
The crab.
It was─the reason for that aberration.
One reason, at least.
There were reasons for aberrations.
“And frankly, I’m scared of doing with you what that filth tried to do to me. No─I don’t intend on using fancy words like ‘trauma.’ I don’t think I’m such a wuss. I’m simply…scared. It wasn’t that bad before we started going out─but now, I’m scared of hating you, Araragi.”
She was scared.
Not of the act, but of the result.
“Now I’m scared of losing you,” Senjogahara said matter-of-factly.
I couldn’t read any emotions into her voice.
Her face was probably expressionless, too.
“It’s funny, isn’t it? Being scared of hating the person you’re dating, being scared of losing the person you’re dating… It’s like which comes first, the egg or the sunny-side up.”
“The egg, I think.”
“To tell you the truth, I’m afraid I’ve become a stupid woman. I was supposed to be a tragic, beautiful maiden who suffered from a mysterious, unknown illness─but now I’m a lovestruck, beautiful maiden who’s always thinking about some guy.”
“So you’re a beautiful maiden in either case…”
“Anyway, I even resent you for turning me into such an uninteresting, dime-a-dozen woman.”
“Uh huh…”
Nah…you’re plenty interesting.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.
“As you’re aware, though, Araragi─I haven’t led the happiest life up until now… But I think I could call it all even if I see it as what let me meet you.”
“……”
“If it was my unhappiness that caught your attention─then I’m glad it happened that way. That’s how taken I am with you. So no matter how small the chance, I don’t want to see you in the same light I see that filth. Of course, I don’t plan on being this selfish forever… I do feel like I’m being childish. Like I’m being a baby. A naive widdle baby…”
Why repeat it in a lamer way, Senjogahara?
“If you’ll allow me a shallow line, losing you would be like losing half of my own body. So I want you to wait, just a little.”
“Just a little─”
“Yes. Until next week.”
“So soon?!”
“Please satisfy yourself with Kanbaru’s body until then.”
“Did you really just say that to me?!”
“And while you do that, I’ll use Kanbaru to rehab, too.”
“Kanbaru is getting the best of it! Only she gets all of her dreams to come true?”
“Well, next week isn’t realistic─but I swear I’ll make it work some day. So please, I want you to wait, just a little. As far as what this lovestruck woman can give you─these stars are it for now… When I was younger, we used to come here often. My dad, my mom─and me.”
With her dad and her mom─the three of them together.
I thought about what I knew of her family situation─and realized that must have been quite a while ago. Even so─Senjogahara remembered.
No.
She recalled it.
She’d recalled something she’d forgotten.
“This is it. My treasure.”
It was a pretty cliché turn of phrase for Senjogahara─but that only added to the sense she was sharing her unadorned, true feelings with me.
This starry summer sky.
This sky she once saw with her family.
This was it─everything.
“…………………”
At the very least.
I could say I was now sure of one thing.
Hitagi Senjogahara…was quite smart, and extraordinarily calculating, but she had zero combat ability when it came to romance. It was obvious enough on Mother’s Day during the events that led to us going out, but this woman was, how to put it, foolhardy, like an RPG hero who charges into a cave without a torch. She thought showing me all her cards and leaving the decision in my hands, her diplomatic blackmail of a methodology, was a good approach to take to something as subtle as falling in love? Where was the sentiment in that? That come-on was bound to give pause to ninety-nine out of a hundred people. Talk about feeling scared. Even someone as devoid of romantic experience as me knew that much.
Well.
If she was adopting the strategy fully aware that I was the one remaining person in a hundred─then dammit, I had to take my hat off to her.
Uh oh.
So adorable.
So moé, it wasn’t funny.
I actually felt like riding the momentum and hugging Senjogahara─but didn’t want to lose her, either, over such a thing. Not that I had any cards to show her… But I was okay with our relationship being this way for now.
It’s not as if I didn’t need it, though.
We could lie on our backs and look up at the stars.
We were fine as that sort of couple.
A Platonic relationship.
“Hey, Araragi,” Senjogahara deadpanned. “Do you love me?”
“I do.”
“I do, too. I love you, Araragi.”
“Thank you.”
“What about me do you love?”
“Everything. There’s nothing about you that I don’t love.”
“Oh. I’m happy to hear that.”
“And what do you love about me?”
“You’re kind. You’re cute. You’re like my prince who comes dashing in to save me when I’m in trouble.”
“I’m happy to hear that.”
“By the way,” Senjogahara said as if she’d just realized, “that filth was only after my body─he didn’t even try to steal my lips.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“I’m saying that filth showed no interest at all in them… And so, Araragi.”
Then─utterly free of abashment or affectation, Senjogahara spoke the words.
“I’m kissing you.”
“………”
Scary.
You’re being scary, Miss Hitagi.
“No, that’s not it,” she told herself. “Could I… bother you… for a kiss? What would… think to… about… a kiss…”
“……………”
“Let’s kiss, Araragi.”
“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.
And so─today became a memorable day.
For us.
004
Now on to Wednesday, June fourteenth, or the day after I woke from my dreams─and by that, I of course mean that our romantic astronomical observations ended without incident, Daddy Senjogahara drove us another two hours back to the town where we lived, I got to bed at around one a.m., had some trivial dream of the kind you mostly forget, woke from that dream, and got out of bed─rather than that my first date with Senjogahara the previous night was all a dream. I was pedaling
my way to school, sleepily, when I found Hachikuji.