by Nisioisin
“Does it now.”
Well, she was a cat.
It was the same with Kanbaru’s monkey.
We walked to the bike parking and unlocked my bicycle and got on, me first on the saddle, then her on the back seat.
Hanekawa’s arms wrapped around my torso, then squeezed.
Her body was now stuck to mine.
“………”
Ack…
They were so soft!
And so big!
The two sensations I felt on my back mercilessly assailed my heart, whipping it into a frenzy… I confess, it was such a shock that I’m sure I’d have lost control if she’d been anyone but Tsubasa Hanekawa, the girl I owed my life to, and if I didn’t have a girlfriend, and also if that girlfriend weren’t Hitagi Senjogahara.
Tsubasa Hanekawa was a girl with hidden assets.
Yes, it was hard to see thanks to the utterly plain appearance she put forward, following the school dress code to a T, but she had an incredible body… I’d come to learn that more than well enough over Golden Week. Senjogahara had sat on the very same back seat, but aware as she was, she’d used her innate sense of balance to barely touch me…
And we weren’t even going out then.
Meanwhile, Tsubasa Hanekawa’s morals and ethics stood no chance in the face of her devoted adherence to traffic safety. She entrusted her entire body to me, making the situation, quite frankly, no laughing matter.
Plus, I’d been wearing my high-collared school jacket with Senjogahara. Now that I was wearing my summer uniform, I was in a short-sleeved button-down. This difference was, practically speaking, a pretty big one. But was that all it took for them to feel this soft? As far as summer uniforms went, I was in mine the day before yesterday when Sengoku sat behind me, too… Well, there was the more basic issue of Sengoku’s body not protruding much in any direction, but still.
And then I realized. Oh. Right, just as I wasn’t wearing anything under my button-down, she was only wearing her pajamas under that light sweater… Miss Hanekawa, are you not wearing a bra?
Oh, wow…
So these kinds of things really happen over the course of your life…
“Araragi.”
“Hm?”
“We need to talk once we get off this bike.”
“………”
The words sent a chill down my spine.
She saw straight through me…
I was so shallow.
“Well, uh,” I stammered. “Putting that aside, let’s go. Hold on tight so that you don’t fall off…”
Hey!
I was trying to get myself out of it, why was I digging myself in deeper?!
I couldn’t find my normal footing in this situation!
While I was busy throwing myself to the sharks, Hanekawa stayed quiet.
Too quiet.
She wasn’t saying a word.
“O-Okay, here we go.”
In the end, all I could do was coweringly announce our departure before beginning to turn the pedals. With the weight of two people on my bike, they felt that much heavier. The standard routine here would have been the classic “You’re heavier than I thought” and Hanekawa getting mad, but I’d decided to pass that up, too.
Plus, she wasn’t what I’d call heavy.
It wouldn’t take too long to get to the abandoned cram school where Oshino and Shinobu lived─an hour or less if I went as fast as I could, even with two people… Something incredible happened on my back every time we hit a bump in the road, but I chose to pay as little attention as possible to the fact. I wasn’t going to intentionally steer us over any bumps on the asphalt, I was a gentleman. Well, then again, I wasn’t sure─even if I didn’t intentionally go over any bumps, might I not merely fail to avoid whatever bumps that presented themselves on our way and still call myself a gentleman?
“It must be hard for you,” Hanekawa said to me after a while─after starting to get used to what must have been her first time riding two to a bike, or at least her first time since she was six. “Looking after so many people in so many different ways.”
“So many people? What do you mean?”
“Like Senjogahara, or Mayoi, or Kanbaru, or that junior high girl from yesterday, Sengoku… Haha, they’re all girls.”
“Oh, shut it.”
“And every time─it had to do with aberrations. I remember now.”
By “remember,” I assumed she meant something like “connect the dots.”
“It’s still a little fuzzy, but…yeah. There’s no way Senjogahara would have gotten over her illness so suddenly…”
“…”
“So it started when you were attacked by a vampire over spring break… It all started from there.”
“Aberrations themselves are always there, like a part of nature─it’s not as if they appear out of nowhere one day. Apparently.”
At least according to Mèmè Oshino, the expert.
“Did you know, Araragi?”
“Did I know what?”
“There’s a special trait that vampires have─fascination. They can use it to enthrall humans.”
“Enthrall?”
I didn’t exactly know what she was getting at. Um…was it their ability to suck blood to increase their numbers? Like Shinobu did to me?
When I asked her, she shook her head.
“Uh uh.”
I could tell she was shaking her head no by the way it moved along my back.
“That’s their most famous trait. This is similar, but a little different…It doesn’t involve sucking blood. If anything is like hypnosis, maybe that’s it… Looking into someone else’s eyes allows them to enthrall the opposite sex. Though I’m not sure if ‘the opposite sex’ is the right term here, since vampires and humans belong to different species.”
“Huh. Okay, so what about that?”
“Nothing. I was just thinking.” Hanekawa’s voice was quieter now. “Maybe that’s why you’ve been so popular with girls lately.”
“……”
Fascination.
A special vampire trait.
Ah. I may not have been a vampire anymore, but it was still entirely possible. It wasn’t like I was a dating-sim protagonist like Hachikuji and I had discussed earlier…but that was a realistic justification for what was happening.
That’s Hanekawa for you.
She saw things in a different way.
But─it’d be awful if that’s what it was.
I mean, if that were true, wouldn’t that change everything about my relationship with Hitagi Senjogahara─
And all that fun I had talking to Hachikuji─
And how attached Kanbaru was to me─
And even Sengoku, too─
“…Sorry,” Hanekawa said. “That was mean of me, wasn’t it.”
“Not really─I wouldn’t say so. Actually, it all makes more sense to me now. Of course. Up until last year, I pretty much didn’t have a single friend if you think about it─yeah, I can remember those days when my phone’s contact list didn’t have one entry on it…”
I could memorize every number I needed.
It was a little too hard for that now.
“Huh, fascination,” I grunted. “Okay. You really know everything, don’t you?”
“I don’t know everything,” answered Hanekawa. “I don’t. I don’t know anything.”
“………”
Huh?
That didn’t sound like her normal line?
But before I could voice my doubts, she continued, “You were already a vampire when you met me over spring break─weren’t you.”
“Yeah. I was right in the middle of it. I wasn’t a mockery but an authentic, genuine, full-fledged vampire then. Heh, so I guess you might’ve also been fascinated by me after all─ow!”
Hanekawa had squeezed her arms tighter around my torso.
Wasn’t that a sumo move? A sabaori, I think?!
“No, Araragi. A sabaori, or a forward f
orce down, is done from the front. Also, it’s used to bring an opponent to his knees, not to crush his internal organs.”
“Oh, okay. You’re really well-inform─wait, crush my internal organs?!”
Hanekawa had just said something I’d expect to hear from Senjogahara!
Women are terrifying!
What if Hanekawa realized that her move wasn’t that effective thanks to the two large cushions on my back?!
Well, it was my fault.
I wasn’t paying attention and had said something inappropriate.
Hanekawa must have been in a fairly uneasy state of mind─she’d half-regained her memories, and now she was thinking about all sorts of things she normally wouldn’t to make up for all that was lacking and lost.
I couldn’t blame her if her head wasn’t in the right place.
I’d been impressed a little earlier by how Hanekawa calculated everything out from my attendance to prepping for the culture festival. But when I thought about it some more, if all she wanted was to get to the abandoned cram school where Oshino lived, it could have been handled via texting. She only had to ask me for directions─there was no need to get me to skip school and summon me all the way to that distant park.
Yet she had.
And not because her head wasn’t in the right place.
It must have been because she felt uneasy.
If I’d figured it out with enough time, Hanekawa would have noticed immediately─so it wasn’t as if she hadn’t. She was just too afraid to face an aberration alone.
That made me glad.
I probably wouldn’t be any help to her at all yet again─the only option seemed to be to ask Mèmè Oshino and Shinobu Oshino to deal with this cat aberration. There was nothing I could do for her. I could say I’d do everything for her─but from the start, that was nothing at all.
Even then, I could be by her side.
The simple fact of being there when you’re needed is enough. There’s nothing more you have to do to earn someone’s gratitude─as Daddy Senjogahara put it.
If that was the case, the one person who was there for me when I needed it the most was none other than Tsubasa Hanekawa.
That’s why I’d decided.
Even if there wasn’t a thing I could do, I’d be there for Hanekawa when she needed it, no matter what─
I don’t ever change, after all.
Hanekawa had said that to me yesterday.
But really, I thought, there’s nothing that never changes─and from my point of view, Hanekawa had actually changed, and quite a bit.
She’d changed─ever since getting involved with an aberration.
The biggest example being the post-graduation plans she’d shared with me at the bookstore.
She’d take two years or so─and wander the world.
She was going on a journey.
Hanekawa would never have chosen such a fantastic path for herself, at least not the Hanekawa I knew until the end of last school year─she’d been traveling along the hammered-out, conventional set of rails for a model student like herself.
This isn’t to pass judgment about right or wrong paths─but there was the simple fact that Tsubasa Hanekawa had changed. Whether it was after the end of Golden Week or after spring break─that was something I didn’t know.
But.
From there, Hanekawa and I continued without talking about much else until we arrived at the cram school that had grown derelict a few years ago and was now serving as Oshino and Shinobu’s den. A tattered fence snaked around this building that could only be described as dilapidated. “No Trespassing” signs were scattered all around the structure, making the two squatters. How many times have I come to this place over the last three months, I wondered. I realized that I’d become completely used to visiting it. Aberrations were no longer something out of the ordinary for me─
“Oh? Why, if it isn’t you, Araragi.”
Suddenly.
I heard this voice ahead of me.
“And missy class president…right? I tend to have trouble keeping track of who women are when they change their hairstyle, but from the glasses I’m sure that’s missy class president. Ha hah, it’s been a while, class prez. And Araragi, it’s been a day.”
It was Mèmè Oshino.
There on the other side of the ripped fence stood a middle-aged man in a psychedelic Hawaiian shirt, looking aloof. He looked as shabby as ever, but I also realized it had been the first time in a while I’d seen him doing something outside the building. What was he up to? I thought he was supposed to be a weird kind of shut-in who refused to leave his ruins.
“Hmm…” I mused. “Wait, you always say something like ‘I’ve been waiting for you’ or ‘You kept me waiting for long enough’ when I see you, like you saw it all coming. You’re not going to do that this time?”
“Oh… Huh? Do I?”
Oshino was acting somehow unnatural.
“Missy class president,” he continued as if to dodge the question, switching his attention to Hanekawa who stood behind my bike. “It really has been a while, hasn’t it, class prez. What’s the matter? Isn’t today a weekday? Araragi’s one thing, but I couldn’t imagine you ever playing hooky. Ha hah, I know, it’s one of those School Foundation Days I’ve heard so much about, isn’t it?”
“Oh, um… No, it isn’t.”
“Hm? You look good in a hat─like that one on your head,” Oshino immediately zeroed in on Hanekawa’s headgear.
When it came to this kind of thing─you could tell he was a pro.
“…Thank you.”
Oshino returned his attention to me. “Huh─so that’s how it is, Araragi?”
His expression was lax─the same Oshino as ever.
“You really can’t go three steps without attracting trouble, can you─that’s actually a talent, in a sense. Maybe you ought to cherish it. Ha hah, well come on in for now. So, Araragi─actually, I’m in the middle of something for once. I’m busy and don’t have much time.”
“Oh─really?”
In the middle of something?
Busy?
He didn’t have time?
None of those things sounded natural coming from Oshino’s mouth.
“Were you─in the middle of work?”
“Well, you could call it work if you wanted. But it’s fine. You’re one thing, Araragi, but I can be flexible if it’s something serious with missy president.”
“You’re being really dismissive of me today…”
“What, do you want me to like you? You’re creeping me out, how unpleasant.”
Oshino shooed me away with a cold gesture.
My vampire fascination didn’t seem to work on him, at least… Oh, but if it was the power to enthrall the opposite sex, I guess it only worked on the opposite sex.
“Now stop complaining about nothing and get yourself inside, both of you. Come in through that hole in the fence over there. We’ll talk on the fourth floor, like always.”
“Yeah… Fine,” I said.
I did as told.
In any case, thanks to Oshino being outside, I escaped getting chewed out by Hanekawa the moment we got off my bike. It may have been a godsend, but I was dealing with Hanekawa and her miraculous powers of retention. I couldn’t rejoice over being spared; I’d only delayed my inevitable lecture. In fact, I almost started to feel depressed when I realized I might end up accruing interest on that chewing-out in the meantime.
We entered through the fence and pushed our way into the ruins through the vegetation that now grew everywhere with summer approaching. The mess inside the building was still part of Hanekawa’s memories, so she said nothing about it. It may sound like a nasty joke, but Hanekawa really did look at Oshino with respect, making her excessively lenient when it came to all he did that made him unfit to live in society.
That’s right.
Tsubasa Hanekawa’s post-graduation path that you could barely call a path, the idea of wandering the world, owe
d more than a little to Mèmè Oshino, who tread an unblazed trail. Not that it meant anything in the end since Hanekawa had ultimately made that choice for herself, but─