by Nisioisin
I felt like getting on all fours and begging for her forgiveness.
“All right,” I said, “enough joking around─what happened, Hanekawa? You didn’t tell me what the actual problem was in your message, but…is it those headaches?”
“Yeah─the headaches…” Hanekawa said slowly, “are gone now.”
“Oh? They are?”
“I guess you could say they’ve ended…”
Hanekawa was choosing her words carefully.
Choosing─or rather, she couldn’t express herself without coining new ones, such seemed to be her situation.
I had an idea what it was, to be honest.
I did.
“Um─Araragi? About Golden Week. I…remembered.”
“Oh─you did.”
Her headache.
That─was the significance of her headaches.
“Well, maybe not,” she continued. “It’s more like I remembered that I’m forgetting something…but no matter how hard I try, I can only recall a hazy image.”
“Oh─yeah, I’d imagine as much. It shouldn’t be possible for you to remember it all to the end.”
Actually, remembering that she’d ever forgotten should have been impossible for her in the first place. Hanekawa was never supposed to recall those nine nightmarish days─
And yet.
“Until now…I’d vaguely known that you and Mister Oshino saved me, but…it’s so strange. Not only could I not remember how, but from what─it’s like I was under some weird hypnosis.”
“Hypnosis, huh…”
Well, it was something else entirely.
But I could see where she was coming from.
She said, “I still don’t feel a hundred percent about this─but I’m glad I remembered. At last, I can give you and Mister Oshino my proper thanks.”
“Oh─but we didn’t save you. As Oshino says─”
“I just went and got saved on my own─right?”
“Right.”
Absolutely right.
Especially when it came to me. I hadn’t done a thing.
When it came to the case of Hanekawa’s cat, Shinobu had done the most. If there was anyone whom Hanekawa needed to thank, it wasn’t me or Mèmè Oshino, but Shinobu Oshino, the little blonde.
“A cat,” Hanekawa said. “A cat─right?”
“…”
“I recalled that part─the cat from back then, right? The one you and I buried together─that cat. Yeah…I recalled that part.”
“Well─you were still you back then.”
“Huh?”
“Er, nothing─but Hanekawa. You didn’t summon me here just because you remembered─did you?”
No matter how much my attendance record wasn’t going to be an issue, she wasn’t going to make me play hooky over something like that.
Not only had she remembered, there was something after that─the recollection had to be secondary.
“That’s right,” Hanekawa affirmed.
She was still resolute despite her situation─people with her kind of mental fortitude really were different. This was in a different league from my conversation with Sengoku the day before yesterday.
“An aberration…”
An aberration.
There was a reason for an aberration.
“Yes…which is why,” Hanekawa said, looking at me, “I was hoping you could take me to Mister Oshino’s place… He still lives in that abandoned cram school, doesn’t he? I know that much, but I just couldn’t figure out how to get there─”
“……”
It wasn’t that she didn’t know.
She’d forgotten.
The place had gone under, so a map could only help so much… Maybe it wasn’t impossible if she unearthed an old map, but it would take too long, and time was of the essence here. She must have decided that sending me an SOS was faster.
“Could you show me the way?” she requested.
“Yeah, of course─”
I had no reason to say no.
Although Oshino was probably asleep at this hour of the morning and we’d be interrupting his slumber, that wasn’t something I needed to be bringing up. He tended to wake up on the wrong side of bed, maybe because of low blood pressure or something…but we had to do this anyway.
“─Of course,” I said, “but could I ask you a few questions first?”
“Um…sure, but why?”
“I’m constantly relying on Oshino when it comes to every little thing relating to aberrations. We need to keep on trying to do as much as we can by ourselves. Even if we end up dumping the whole thing onto him, we should at least get the story straight before we do.”
“Oh… Yes, you’re right.” Hanekawa sounded convinced. “Okay, ask me anything you want.”
“You had headaches, right? You said you’ve been having a lot of them lately, but when exactly did they start?”
“When exactly…”
“You would remember.”
“…About a month ago, I guess? Hm, but while they weren’t so bad at first…yesterday and the day before─I was with you both times, at the bookstore and in front of school─they were actually pretty bad.”
“You should’ve told me.”
“Sorry. I didn’t want you to worry.”
“Whatever, it’s fine. Okay, then… Did you have any episodes involving cats after Golden Week?”
“Episodes involving cats?”
“Even something like a black cat crossing your path.”
“……”
Hanekawa closed her eyes and made a show of sifting through her memories.
Frankly, I wasn’t sure if it was the kind of thing you could remember if you tried…but then again, she was “the real deal” who lived in a different world, even according to Senjogahara…
Try to apply common sense to her and you’d end up hurt.
Which is precisely why─she was visited by an aberration.
“On the night of May twenty-seventh, I was listening to a radio program when a message by one ‘Bearcat Lover’ was read on the air. Could that have something to do with it?”
“…No, I don’t think so.”
Oh my god.
I knew, but oh my god.
“By the way, the letter went, ‘While maids are shown leading fun and carefree lives in manga and anime, being a maid is a surprisingly difficult job. It’s not all about being cute and saying ‘moé moé!’ From what I understand, they barely have any time to themselves. I’m sure of it, because that’s what I was told the other day at a mixer.’”
“Really, you don’t have to explain all that!”
“What do you think is so interesting about that letter, Araragi? I had a hard time understanding.”
“Um, it’s supposed to be funny because the maid says there’s barely any time she has to herself when she’s off at a fun and carefree mixer, meeting guys─and why do I have to fill in the gaps that this ‘Bearcat Lover’ left in the story for you?!”
“Oh, so when it said ‘told the other day at a mixer,’ it means told by a maid. I see, it might be amusing if you interpret it that way. But I do think it’s a bit hard to understand if you only get to hear it once.”
“And now that I think about it, bearcats aren’t cats, they’re more like civets.”
“Yes, I guess you’re right.”
“Anything else?”
“Hm? Anything else? Well, there was one ‘Oracle’s Auricle’ on the same program. ‘A little while back, I was playing cards with two friends and we decided to play President. After we dealt out the cards, one of my friends said something. ‘So at my middle school, we played with a rule where 4’s were the highest card.’ This was a listener’s corner so I imagine it was a true story, but what’s so funny about it?”
“No, when I asked you if you had anything else, I didn’t mean other listener letters that you couldn’t find the humor in! But well, you have to listen to that story knowing that President has a lot of local v
ariants, whether that means 8’s are played as the highest card or that if Presidents fail to keep their position they automatically become the asshole. You’re supposed to laugh because the friend used the existence of all these variants as an excuse to make up a rule that would make his hand better!”
“Oh, I see. I can always count on you, Araragi.”
“You can be as impressed as you want, but I’m not going to take it as a compliment… Oh, and I guess the handle ‘Oracle’s Auricle’ is also a little joke in that it might actually be ‘Oracle’s Oracle’ or even ‘Auricle’s Oracle’ but you wouldn’t know for sure.”
“Oh, but it’s not as if every letter they read on that program is hard to understand. Some of them are regular, funny letters. There was another true story during that same listener’s corner from ‘Ain’t Nothin’ Like a Found Dog.’ ‘I went to a video rental store the other day with my friend. I wanted to borrow the DVDs for this drama series that aired about three years ago, but someone else had rented volume eight of a set of thirteen, so I could only get up to volume seven. I was disappointed because I’d heard the end of the series is its best part. It was only that eighth volume that they didn’t have, while nine through thirteen were all there on the shelf. When I told my friend, “It’s like I’m playing Sevens and I’ve been cut off at the eights,” my friend replied, “I bet whoever has volume eight is chuckling right now.”’ Haha, get it? Because whoever has volume eight doesn’t see it as playing Sevens at all!”
“I’ll admit that might be funny, but enough about the radio!”
But we digressed.
Anyway.
If that was all she could come up with as far as memories relating to cats, maybe we should consider the current case to be last time’s leftovers?
We probably should.
“All right, Hanekawa. Next question.”
“Okay.”
“That hat,” I said. “Would you take it off for me?”
“…That’s─” Hanekawa’s expression changed. “That’s not a question, Araragi.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“I know it’s not.”
“Miss Hanekawa. Allow me to take your hat for you.”
“Araragi.”
“Yes?”
“You’re going to make me mad.”
“Then be mad,” I said, not faltering despite Hanekawa’s threatening glare. “If you want to get mad, get mad. You can even hate me if you want, I don’t care. Paying back what I owe you is a lot more important to me than our friendship.”
“Paying me back? What…” Hanekawa’s voice grew a bit softer, as if my words had made her feel awkward. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about spring break.”
“That’s─but that was just… That, if anything, was a case of just going and getting saved on your own─no?”
“No. Oshino might say so, but I think you saved me. You saved my life.”
It felt like I’d finally been able to say it.
Right.
If either of us needed to properly thank the other─then I did.
“I don’t think I can ever pay you back in full,” I told her. “But I want you to let me do something for you. I’ll do anything, everything for you. And if you get mad or hate me in the process, so be it.”
“So be it, huh?” Hanekawa laughed─just a little.
No, perhaps she cried.
I couldn’t tell.
“Oh, get over yourself,” she said.
“Really?”
“This is you we’re talking about, Araragi. Do you really think you’re so great?”
“…That line belongs to some neighborhood bully.”
And not to a model student.
Yes, you’re right, Hanekawa said, and then─“Don’t laugh.”
She took off her hat.
“………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………”
She had cat ears.
A pair of cute cat ears protruded from Hanekawa’s little head.
I bit my lip in silence.
So hard that blood began to ooze from it.
…Don’t laugh…
I’d just acted serious in getting her to do this. I mustn’t laugh… I’d finally gotten her to agree after crafting the most serious and solemn excuse I could come up with. It’d be a textbook manga gag if I burst into laughter and ridiculed her, but I swore that I wouldn’t…
Still, the cat ears went well on her. It was as if they were tailor-made to go along with her neat and straight bangs. A thought I first had during Golden Week came back to me: she’d been born to wear a pair of cat ears on her head someday…
That said.
During the Golden Week nightmare, it was never Hanekawa as herself with cat ears─so she was blowing me away now. I see, I thought, so the color of the fur on her ears in this case was black, the same as her hair…
It still was no excuse to laugh.
She really would hate me then.
I’d said I wouldn’t mind if she did, but I preferred to avoid that outcome at the end of the day. It’s depressing to be hated by a decent person who even saved your life.
“A-Are we done?”
Hanekawa sounded embarrassed.
It was rare to see her cheeks so tinged with color.
And she had cat ears!
“Oh, yeah…sure. Thanks.”
“Why are you thanking me?” she said, putting her hat back on. She wore it deep and avoided my eyes. It was similar to when Kanbaru showed me her left arm or when Sengoku showed us her body…but Hanekawa’s cat ears were on a different plane.
To the point where I wanted to thank her.
Thank you so much.
“Well…okay, I think I get it,” I said. “It really is like we’re picking up where Golden Week left off. So I guess it wasn’t all over…”
The headaches must have been from the ears growing on her head.
Easy enough to understand if you thought of it that way.
Like wisdom teeth growing in.
“Picking up where Golden Week left off?” asked Hanekawa. “So you mean─the stuff I forgot.”
“You’re better off forgetting.”
“Yes, I’m sure…but I don’t know, it just feels so unpleasant to have a hole in my memory. Like I’m lacking whatever ought to be there.”
It wasn’t a lack that she was feeling.
It was probably─loss.
“Don’t take it the wrong way, but I’m a little relieved,” I said. “If that’s the problem─there’s a way to deal with it. You might not remember, but I went through this once already. All we have to do is repeat what we did, and this will be settled. Only this time, we’ll be thorough, through and through.”
“Oh─is that so.”
Hanekawa was visibly less tense now that she heard this.
Well, of course she’d panic. Who wouldn’t if they woke up with cat ears sprouting out of their head─even if she recovered some of her memories in the process? You couldn’t blame her for leaping out of the house still in her pajamas.
In such situations─
Hanekawa couldn’t stay cooped up at home.
“Okay,” I said. “Now that we’ve sorted things out, why don’t we head to Oshino’s place… You’re not gonna tell me that riding two to a bicycle is against traffic laws, are you?”
“As much as I’d like to,” Hanekawa replied standing up from the bench, “I’ll overlook it. But we’re even for me getting you to skip school.”
Wait, how did that make it even?
Both of them were her call. She could be surprisingly cunning at times…
Actually, it must have been her idea of a joke.
Or maybe you could call it her way of hiding her embarrassment.
“Shall I lend you my shoulder? You seem tired.”
“I’m fine. Remember, I said my headache’s gone.
I’m emotionally exhausted right now, but that’s all. My body feels better than usual, if anything.”