Bakemonogatari Part 3

by Nisioisin

  Mayoi Hachikuji.

  Pigtails, her bangs so short her eyebrows showed.

  A girl in fifth grade who wore a backpack.

  “Whoa there.”

  I stopped pedaling.

  She hadn’t noticed me yet. Glancing from side to side, she seemed to be enjoying a morning walk.

  Hmm. It felt like it had been a while since we last met.

  Well, it had been about two weeks since I saw her. It wasn’t what you could objectively call “a while” when I thought about it, but for some reason I felt overjoyed to have run into Hachikuji. It’s even harder to get in touch with a fifth grader than a girl in junior high, after all.

  I had some spare time, unlike before. It couldn’t hurt to have a bit of a discussion with her (I took the liberty of assuming that Hachikuji was free). The question then was how to get her attention… I began by getting off my bike, careful not to make a sound. I put down my kickstand and parked my bike on the side of the road.

  All right, now.

  Then again, this was Hachikuji I was dealing with.

  Under no circumstances did I want her to realize that I was happy. There was the chance she would start getting carried away if I showed her any such hints. I couldn’t aggravate her cheekiness. What did I need? An unconcerned, no, an uncaring “Oh, huh. You’re here? I just so happened to say hi to you because I didn’t have anything better to be doing,” with a little tap on the shoulder? Right, I wasn’t so frivolous that I’d burst into cheer over seeing a friend again. At my age, I wanted to sell myself as someone dry and cool.

  Okay.

  So sneak up to her from behind, then…

  “HA-chikujiii! It’s been ages, you little scamp!”

  I snuck up to her from behind, then latched onto her with a hug.

  “Eeeek?!” the girl shrieked.

  Undeterred, I embraced her with all my strength as if to crush her small body, then rubbed my cheeks against hers over and over again.

  “Hahahaha! Oh, you’re just so cute! Lemme touch you more, lemme hug you more! I’m gonna get a peek at those panties, you lovable little lady!”

  “Eeek! Eeek! Eeep!” Hachikuji continued to loudly shriek, until it turned into a “Grrah!”

  Now she was biting me.

  “Grrah, grrah, grrah!”

  “That hurts! What’re you doing?!”

  The words really should have been directed at myself.

  Both the “hurts” and the “what’re you doing.”

  “Ssshh! Fssshh!”

  I was brought back to my senses at last after being bitten in at least three discrete spots, but now Hachikuji’s hair was standing on end like a Super Saiyan’s as she emitted the kinds of threatening noises you’d expect from a wildcat.

  Well, of course she would.

  “I-It’s okay, it’s okay. I’m not an enemy.”

  “Ssshh! Ssshh!”

  “C’mon, calm down. Deep breaths.”

  “Fssshh… Kuhhh-huhhh… Kuhhh-huhhh…”

  “……”

  Now her breathing sounded like some sort of mechanized villain’s.

  Actually, Hachikuji hadn’t spoken a single word resembling human language since she first appeared in this scene.

  “Hey, look, it’s me. The friendly guy that everyone in the neighborhood knows… The guy who once showed you the way when you were a lost little lamb…”

  “Mm… Ah…”

  Hachikuji’s eyes seemed to recognize me at last. Her bristling hair slowly returned to normal.

  “Oh, if it isn’t Mister Ararandy.”

  “Don’t call me names that make me sound sexually frustrated. It’s Araragi.”

  “I’m sorry. Slip of the tongue.”

  She might have been technically right for once, having been biting me… At least this time around, maybe I was to blame for the nickname as well as for getting bitten.

  I hadn’t been able to control my emotions.

  I’d gone out of control.

  I might’ve still been feeling high from what had happened the day before, too.

  “Oh? So I see you’re wearing your summer uniform, Mister Araragi,” Hachikuji said. She seemed fine now. Maybe she was just stupid. “Hmm, you’re slim despite your muscular build, which means that short sleeves don’t look any good on you at all.”

  “What am I supposed to do in the summer, in that case?”

  Sleeveless shirts and the like weren’t in fashion for boys. It’s not as if they’re remotely cute or anything when guys wear them, either.

  “It could be that the problem isn’t short-sleeve shirts,” she answered, “but that dress shirts don’t look good on you. Oh, and you looked so wonderful in that high-collared jacket. What would you say to wearing that year-round?”

  “I’m not in the male cheerleading squad…”

  Incidentally, Naoetsu High didn’t have one.

  We weren’t that into clubs and sports.

  “And while your sleeves have gotten shorter,” observed Hachikuji, “your hair has gotten longer. Your face is every bit as docile as your personality is savage, so you’re going to end up looking like a girl if you grow it out any more.”

  “I have to grow it out like this. I’ll admit that it’ll feel like too much over the summer, though. Also, I don’t want to hear you calling me savage.”

  “Isn’t having a girly name enough for you?”

  “You’re really milking that one. What about your hair? Those twin tails look like a monster straight out of Ultraman.”

  “That’s just the name, not the appearance.”

  “Okay, true.”

  “Your hair looks like it belongs to an alien from Planet Afro.”

  “Hold on! I’m pretty sure Planet Afro is something you just made up, but whatever aliens come from there, they’re obviously going to have afros! I’m growing my hair out long and straight!”

  “You say that, but your presence is so thin that you’d be a character without sprite art in a dating sim. Whoever claims it first wins. If I say they have afros, they have afros. If I say they have dreads, they have dreads.”

  “Really?! O-Okay, Hachikuji, quick! Say I’m a tall, broad-shouldered, macho dude!”

  “The very fact you listed those qualities proves you’re none of them… But is that your ideal image of yourself? A tall, broad-shouldered, and macho dude?”

  “Hey, why do you look so unamused?”

  “Oh. You seem to be bleeding from your head, Mister Araragi.”

  “Some savage person bit me.”

  “Quick, you ought to tie off your neck and stop the bleeding.”

  “That’d kill me!”

  How could I explain it?

  I loved Senjogahara best and got along with Kanbaru better than anyone else, but for whatever reason, I had the most fun talking to Hachikuji.

  Was it that my heart was being soothed by a grade schooler?

  “It’s fine,” I said. “Something like this will heal in no time.”

  “Oh, that was right. You’re a vampire, aren’t you, Mister Araragi.”

  “Well, a mockery of one.”

  Over spring break─I was attacked by a vampire.

  Just as a cat bewitched Hanekawa, a crab met Senjogahara, a snail led Hachikuji astray, a monkey heard Kanbaru’s wish, and a snake trapped Sengoku─a demon attacked me.

  I grew my hair out to hide the wounds from that day.

  It wasn’t a vampire hunter, Christian special forces, or a kin-slaying vampire, but a frivolous dude in a Hawaiian shirt who was passing by, Mèmè Oshino, who plucked me from my predicament for the time being─but not without aftereffects.

  My body was extraordinarily good at healing itself.

  “Healing…” said Hachikuji. “In that case, there’s something I’d like to try.”

  “Something you’d like to try?”

  “Indeed. If we split you in half down the median line with a chainsaw or something, would we get two Mister Araragis?”


  “That’s some messed-up stuff, grade schooler!”

  I’m not an earthworm!

  Why would she ever think that’d work?!

  “I’m joking,” she assured. “I would never do something like that to you, not after all you’ve done for me.”

  “Oh… Yeah, I guess not. We’re friends, after all.”

  “Yes. Tearing you limb from limb still wouldn’t be enough, so how could I possibly settle for cutting you in half?”

  “………”

  Maybe she wasn’t fine after all.

  I’d incurred a grudge.

  “Just you wait, Mister Araragi. I’m going to open up a ladder when you least expect it and watch as you walk right under.”

  “Wh-What?! How many years would that take off my life expectancy?!”

  “And that’s not all. I’m going to be the one sneaking up behind you next time. I’ll slowly run my finger down along your spine.”

  “Y-You monster! You’re going to make me beg you to run it slowly back up?!”

  “Oh, I’m only getting started. This is what happens when you make me mad, you poor thing. I have a feeling you’re going to learn what true fear is.”

  “Heh,” I snorted at that point. “You’d better watch what you say, Hachikuji.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re going to be the one learning about true fear. Just try and get me to walk under a ladder…because I’ll respond with violence!”

  There he was, a high schooler threatening a kid with violence over fears that he might lose a few years from walking under a ladder.

  Yes, me.

  “It’s not too late to apologize,” I said. “I’ll still forgive you.”

  “Ha…”

  But this was why she’s my eternal rival.

  Hachikuji was now the one laughing fearlessly.

  “Mister Araragi, you’d better dutch what you say.”

  “Dutch?! Am I going to have to apologize to the Netherlands now?! What did I ever do to them?!”

  “If you don’t hurry up and say sorry, you’ll find yourself on the receiving end of the Whirling Dance of Windmills.”

  “What is that, some kind of super move?!”

  “Apologize now, unless you want to meet Don Quixote’s fate.”

  “That was in Spain, though!”

  “So, what now? Are you so eager to earn the name of Don?”

  How had we gotten here?

  But I certainly didn’t want to be called Don.

  “Mister Araragi, I can’t believe you haven’t apologized yet… Either you’re thick-headed, you’re thick-headed, you’re thick-headed, or I ought to rephrase myself.”

  “So we’re talking a three-quarters likelihood that I’m thick-headed… Jeez… Yeah, yeah, I get it. I need to apologize to the Dutch.”

  “When you say yes, one hundred times should be enough.”

  “I don’t even want to try!”

  “It’s your only chance to yescape.”

  “Aren’t you the little comedian!”

  Hold on.

  Did she not want an apology for herself?

  “I’m not as generous as the Dutch,” she said. “You’re sorely mistaken if you think an apology is all you need to earn my forgiveness.”

  “You think highly of the Dutch, don’t you…”

  “If you really seek my forgiveness…I’ll accept a year’s worth of sponge cake.”

  “Well, if that’s all you’re going to demand…”

  “A year’s worth means three a day, though.”

  “That’s a lot of money!”

  It easily came out to over a hundred thousand yen.

  She was fleecing me.

  “Well,” I said anyway, “I am grateful for your forgiveness.”

  “Oh, no. No thanks.”

  “……”

  Could she have thought that “No thanks” means “No need to thank me”?

  Wow.

  “Mister Araragi, you must be on your way to school. What a hard worker you are. I forget, did you say that your attendance record was a concern?”

  “Yeah. I might even have to repeat a year thanks to the hole I got myself in during my first two years. But this is no time for me to be worried about something as basic as that. Now I have my sights set a tier higher.”

  “A tier higher, you say? What an odd choice of words. What could you mean by that?”

  “Up until now, my goal was to graduate, but─”

  Er, wait. Was it okay to tell her?

  Then again, I wouldn’t have to worry about her telling anyone else. In fact, maybe I should have been telling as many people as I could just to put more pressure on myself.

  “I’m going to be focusing on tests now.”

  “Tests? Oh, elementary exit exams?”

  “I’m almost out of high school, why would I be taking those now?!”

  I explained my circumstances just as I had to Hanekawa and Kanbaru. Hachikuji, an excellent listener despite what you may be led to believe, kept me talking as she nodded and said, “Is that so,” “I see,” “Which means,” “I should have expected as much,” “I never knew,” and so on at the right moments. Of course, the words coming easily to me must have also had something to do with the fact that this was my third time saying them.

  ……

  But becoming adept at describing your goals meant that you hadn’t accomplished them… What good was it going to do me if I was all bark?

  Goals need to become results.

  “Mister Araragi, it sounds like much has happened since we last met. It was a wise person who said to pay close attention to any young man you haven’t seen for three days.”

  “Heh… What can I say?”

  “It feels like it went by in a flash,” Hachikuji said, her voice somber.

  Somber, yet somehow nostalgic.

  “So it’s been three years since that day…”

  “No! It hasn’t been that long!”

  Two weeks!

  Don’t make it sound like the series finale!

  “Was it, now? Well, I suppose if it only took you two weeks to come to that decision, you’re just as likely to reverse it in the next couple of weeks. I mustn’t be so quick to take you at your word. A change that takes place over three days takes only three more days to undo. If you don’t see a young man for six days, he’s back where he began.”

  “You say some mean things, you know.”

  But she was right.

  In fact, I hadn’t perused a page of those study aids Hanekawa picked out for me the day before yesterday.

  “Aah,” said Hachikuji, “so you’re one of those people who feel satisfied just buying a reference book. Yes, I know the type. I myself often buy video games but never play them, satisfied with the purchase alone.”

  “I’m worried you’re already doing that as a grade schooler…”

  And it wasn’t as if my determination had wavered and I hadn’t gone through those reference books because it was too much effort… It just so happened that I spotted Sengoku at the exact same bookstore where I bought them, which got me wrapped up dealing with an aberration, sleeping in an abandoned cram school like a canned sardine, going back home to get some more sleep, heading to school only to have to work on the culture festival─and going on a date with Senjogahara.

  When could I have flipped through my study aids?

  “A date? Doesn’t that count as playing?”

  “Urk…”

  She was right.

  Honestly, Hachikuji said, appalled. “‘Busy’ is just an excuse that people who can’t budget their time like to use. If you wanted, you could have checked out those study aids during your breaks at school, for example. You’re being bound by a preconceived notion, a prejudice, that studying is something you only do during classes or at home.”