by Nisioisin
“I never thought of that, but yeah, you’re right… I want to tell you good job for noticing, but does it have anything at all to do with Hanekawa’s case?”
“Ah, uh, mmm…”
He was trying to dodge the subject…
He definitely was…
“Hey, Oshino. Cut it out and─”
“Kupipo!”
“Is that any way for a grown, experienced adult to dodge the subject?!”
“Ehh, that’s most grownups for you.”
“I don’t ever want to grow up!”
But putting aside resorting to another Dr. Slump allusion, what exactly was he trying to distract me from?
I couldn’t figure it out. And if I couldn’t, there was no point in continuing to think about it. I had no choice but to keep the conversation going, even if I was half dragging it along.
“Anyway, Oshino─hurry up and bring Shinobu in. If we’re up against a cat monster, our only option is to have her deal with it, right? I’m sure Shinobu is going to be reluctant, but if I offer to trade my blood for her help─”
“Hmmm. Yes, maybe. But don’t you know it, disasters always strike at the worst times─misery always travels with company.”
“………”
He was getting to be too evasive for me. I wished he would take this seriously. I was panicking.
This was about Hanekawa.
I wasn’t needed last time, but she specifically asked for me this time around─so I had to be there for her.
I’d be there when she needed me.
“…Huh?”
And then.
That’s when I remembered again─right, I’d been meaning to ask Oshino. About what Hachikuji had told me about Shinobu in the morning─though I now had a sinking feeling about it.
Not that I ever had a soaring feeling about any of this!
“Hey, Oshino… There’s something I wanted to ask you.”
“What a coincidence. There’s something I wanted you to ask me.”
“What’s going on with Shinobu?”
“Yep, that’s the one,” Oshino answered, a refreshed smile on his face, like he’d gotten something off of his chest at last, as if he were a criminal finally allowed to confess to his crimes.
“Our Shinobu has gone off on a journey of self-discovery.”
007
It was night before I knew it.
I ran around town on my bike─going everywhere I could think of, but that wasn’t enough. I did a second lap of the same route, this time literally running around town, but still came up almost empty-handed─before at last realizing how tired I was.
I hadn’t eaten, and I hadn’t drank.
I hadn’t rested, just pedaling my bicycle─for nine hours.
Honestly, I was surprised. This was how much I had to do before my body got tired─and while I had fed my blood to Shinobu a day earlier, most of the effects of that should have been spent healing my arms and legs─
A human mockery of a vampire.
A vampire mockery of a human.
I didn’t know which I was anymore.
Shinobu Oshino.
A vampire who’d run away from home─could it get any more ridiculous? What’s more, she’d disappeared with only the clothes on her back and not a penny to her name─she’d practically absconded. What kind of vampire was she?
Disasters always strike at the worst times.
Misery always travels with company.
That was exactly what had happened here.
Oshino hadn’t noticed that Shinobu wasn’t around until that morning─but when he thought back, he realized he hadn’t seen her since the afternoon of the previous day.
According to Hachikuji’s testimony, a blond girl had been sighted near the Mister Donut by the highway at five in the afternoon a day earlier─which would mean Shinobu Oshino was already busy absconding then.
She was a child. She couldn’t go that far.
Only a day had passed─and Shinobu wasn’t even a legendary vampire now, or anything of the sort. She was, for the most part, a simple child, one with a far weaker body than mine. A simple child─no, she’d be even weaker than that without me. The few faculties she had left would be close to cut off.
With exhaustion came hunger.
…Wait, hold on.
That was right─she could’ve been walking by a Mister Donut, but she didn’t have a penny to her name.
Did that mean she was getting hungry?
Alone─somewhere in this town?
“………………”
While I was speeding around on my bicycle, I nearly smashed into Mayoi Hachikuji as she walked on the street─a little past noon, maybe. It was our second encounter that day. As much as I wanted to chew on my good fortune of running into Hachikuji twice in one day by chance, the only way I could meet her, there was no time. Though unlike the first time, this second meeting wasn’t pure chance, strictly speaking─I was running around town with reckless abandon, so of course I’d run into her sooner or later.
“Miste rAraragi.”
“Now you’re just typoing my name…”
“Excuse me. Slip of the tongue.”
After exchanging our greetings, I asked Hachikuji to give me a more detailed account of what she saw the day before.
“Now that you mention it,” she said, “she did seem lonely, somehow.”
“Lonely?”
“Yes,” she affirmed with a serious expression. “Almost as if she were a lost child.”
A lost child.
The words were particularly convincing coming from Hachikuji, a girl who’d been lost on the street for ages.
“All right,” she nodded, “I’ll do what I can to look for this girl too.”
“Would you? I’d appreciate it.”
“Yes. You see, Mister Araragi, looking for a lost child requires careful attention and manpower. Try to do it all by yourself and the hunter is sure to become the woods.”
“The woods?! I’d be huge!”
“I understand you’re often nonplussed, Mister Araragi, but stay strong. You can’t allow yourself to get too minused.”
“I know you get words wrong a lot, but you’re crossing a line right now!”
“You must stay calm. When you search for a lost child, time is obsolescence.”
“I agreed with you until the end there! But come on, time is of the essence!”
“I won’t be able to approach her if I do find her, but I’ll contact your cellular phone if I do, from a pay phone or the like.”
“…Do you know how to use a pay phone?”
“Of course I do. I’m very good with mechanical devices.”
“That’s not what you said this morning…”
“What are you talking about? I have all the tools you need to watch television even after 2011.”
“Oh, so by ‘good’ you mean you figured out digital broadcasting…”
“A ‘1seg’ is something you have for breakfast, correct?”
“She’s an idiot!”
All joking aside.
However good or bad she was with tech, she must be able to use a pay phone, right? I was in the one situation where I felt glad I lived in the countryside, where pay phones were still alive and kicking. Yes, this was the town I lived in, a place where every convenience store that dotted its map had a parking lot and even pachinko parlors failed to flourish.
Anyway, Hachikuji and I split up.
Just as I began to feel more positive, sure that if I met Hachikuji, I’d meet Shinobu too, I thought of something.
While I appreciated her offer to help, Hachikuji was almost the same age as Shinobu (as she appeared now). I couldn’t allow myself to expect too much from her. Yes, there were some places that only children would think to search or hide in or enter into, and she could help in that respect. But while her field of activity might have been far broader than the average child’s, it was still limited. She could only do so much and go so far as a
child.
Meanwhile─I needed manpower.
Hachikuji was right about that, at least.
And so.
I called Sengoku’s home when it was close to four. She was going to my old middle school, so I knew she’d have returned already unless she’d taken a detour on her way back. Yes, and I think she told me she was in the no-extracurriculars club─
My chances weren’t all that great, but luckily she was home.
“Oh, Big Brother.”
Sengoku’s voice sounded lively to me. She seemed more energetic when she was talking on the phone, where you didn’t have to be face to face with another person. I thought she ought to get a cell phone soon.
“You’re calling me already?” she said. “I’m so happy.”
“Yeah…sorry for calling you so soon. Umm…”
Uhh, where should I be starting?
Unlike when I talked to Hachikuji, I needed to explain everything from the beginning with Sengoku…
“…? What’s the matter, Big Brother?”
“Oh, er…well.”
“Calm down. What happened?” Sengoku asked, sounding concerned about how unclear I was being.
“Well, you see, I guess what happened is─”
“J-Just calm down for now. Calm down. O-Oh! I know. I’ll tell you a funny story.”
“………”
I couldn’t believe she said that.
How much confidence did it take to say to someone that the story you’re about to tell is funny?
“While maids might be shown as living fun and carefree lives in manga and anime, being a maid is a surprisingly difficult job, you see.”
“So you’re the Bearcat Lover!”
No wonder the story was so hard to understand!
There’s no way she’d ever been to a mixer, either!
She’d taken on a different persona in her listener’s letter!
“D-Did that calm you down?”
“Yeah… I actually looped back around to being calm.”
Not that I wasn’t calm from the beginning.
You couldn’t blame me for being careful about what I said, though.
“So,” she ushered, “you wanted to tell me something?”
“Yeah… Sengoku, I wanted to ask you a favor.”
“A favor… What is it?”
“I want you to find Shinobu,” I said rather directly. “You’re one of the few people who’ve seen her with your own eyes─so to be frank, you could really help by pitching in.”
“Find her? Does that mean…she, er…Shinobu disappeared?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you sure…she’s not out on errands?”
“She never came home last night.”
“O-Oh, is that so…”
From across the receiver─
I thought I could feel her hesitate.
That was right, I’d carelessly forgotten. Shinobu had glared at her persistently, according to Sengoku─she was scared of Shinobu on an instinctual level.
I made up my mind.
Sengoku shouldn’t have anything to do with aberrations again, no matter how indirectly─hadn’t that already been my decision? Regardless of the circumstances, what was I doing pulling her into this…
“Sorry, Sengoku. I should be taking care of this myself─”
“N-No. It’s not like that.”
“It’s not like what?”
“I just thought it might sound false if I answered you immediately… Let me help. Please.”
“Oh… Are you sure about that, though?”
“Yeah,” Sengoku said with conviction─for a change.
Could it really be because we were on the phone?
Because we weren’t face to face?
“If I can pay you back that way─then I’ll do it. You’re searching for Shinobu─just like you helped me, right?”
“…Well, yeah.”
“Then how could I not help you?”
So she was going to put it that way for me.
How could she not help me.
“I don’t think anything wild is going to happen,” I assured, “but I can’t guarantee your safety no matter what. She might have lost most of her power, but she is a vampire…”
“It’s okay.” Sengoku, that reserved girl, said it with true conviction. “It’s fine. Let me do it.”
Now I was almost starting to feel awkward despite being the one to ask her in the first place─but Sengoku left to search for Shinobu moments later.
I felt like breathing a sigh of relief. I found myself quite glad to have the help of someone who’d met Shinobu─but I wasn’t ready to breathe that sigh yet.
Sengoku couldn’t ride a bike.
Well, she didn’t even have one.
That was why Sengoku never touched a bicycle in traveling to that abandoned shrine the other day. She’d be searching on foot, making her only as mobile and dependable as Hachikuji.
Mobility, huh…
Yeah. Mobility.
I felt bad about asking her time and time again, case after case, but I had to now if I wanted to save Hanekawa. To begin with, there were only six people who’d seen Shinobu in her current form, and that included me─as for two more of the six, Tsubasa Hanekawa was tied up as Black Hanekawa, while Mèmè Oshino was busy standing guard over her.
That left four. Subtract me and Sengoku, and you had two.
I decided to start with the easier one to deal with, Suruga Kanbaru.
I selected her name on my phone’s contact list. Her cell should have been on by now, with school already over─or maybe not. She’d only gotten one a few days earlier, so it was hard to say how familiar she was with the precise wording of the school rules, yet─
“Suruga Kanbaru here.”
As always, she answered the phone with her full name.
I’d gotten myself worked up over nothing.
“Suruga Kanbaru. My special move is holding B to dash.”
“……”
So that’s how she saw it.
Not takkyudo or a flash step.
Well, I couldn’t exactly call her a liar over that.
“Suruga Kanbaru. Employed as my senior Araragi’s perverted slave.”
“I’m absolutely going to call you a liar over that!”
“Hm? Judging by that voice and that retort, I’d say I’m talking to you.”
“Did you really say that without even knowing you were talking to me?!”
“Oh, did the sexy slave part displease you? Well, I do understand. I was thinking of a different, more appropriate title for myself, but I decided to self-censor because it was a little too extreme.”
“If you found it too extreme, I shudder to imagine it!”
And hold on.
She needed to hurry up and learn how to use a contacts list.
“Are you at school right now, Kanbaru?”
“No, I already left.”
“What? Really? What about preparing for the culture festival?”
“It wasn’t my turn today.”
“Oh. So your class takes turns… I’m jealous, you guys sound really well-organized.”
Right.
Her phone wouldn’t have been on if she was at school.
“Uh, so does that mean you’re at home right now, Kanbaru?”
“No, not that either. It’s not like you to guess wrong twice in a row, is something the matter? So it’s true, even the mightiest can fall. Right now I’m amusing myself by playing Fashionable Witches: Love and Berry in the neighborhood supermarket’s game room.”