by Nisioisin
The new term started tomorrow, a wonderful, ideal situation.
It was so perfect that it was (though I probably shouldn’t say this) amusing─someone who actually slips on a banana peel must feel the same way.
Nothing like the classics.
At any rate.
“Help me, Nobuemon!”
“What an ever-so-plausible name.”
Nobuemon─that is, Shinobu─was smirking down at me, that familiar too-wicked glint in her eye.
Doraemon never loooked so heinous.
“But does not ‘Doraemon’ put thee in mind of that bloated sumo wrestler ‘Dozaemon’? Both are bluish and round… Hmm, mayhap Mr. Fujiko even based the one upon the other.”
“No way a nationally beloved character was modeled on a guy who looked like a drowned corpse.”
“Nay, but when ye truly consider it, does not the famous tale of Doraemon’s creation ring somehow false?”
“The story is famous all right, and it is a little too perfect, but why do you know about that?”
It was a little lowbrow for her.
When was she reading manga, anyway?
“It doesn’t come up as much as it used to,” I said, “but there was a time when the accepted wisdom was that reading too much manga turned you into an idiot. Always seemed like a foolish prejudice to me, but I can’t altogether refute that theory in your case.”
“Whaaat.”
“Weren’t you a little smarter back around spring break?”
“Whaaat.”
Seriously.
You don’t seem pleased to hear it, but during spring break, I’m pretty sure you weren’t the kind of character who went, Whaaat.
I’m pretty sure something has changed.
“And yet the idiot is thee, my master.” Saying thee, my master and calling me an idiot in the same breath─she had a fast and loose way with words. “Thou wert screaming, ‘Who am I, Nobita?’ But gone are such characters who would leave this much summer homework undone. Nothing like the classics, ’tis true, but this is a little too classic.”
“Well, it happened on HeartCatch PreCure! just the other day.”
“Thou art in this predicament precisely because thou dost watch PreCure as a high school student.”
“Oh yeah? If you’ve got a problem with PreCure, let’s hear it.”
“Thou shalt hear it all right, but my problem is with thee.”
Harsh.
But HeartCatch PreCure! is actually really good.
There’s no question that the current series couldn’t exist without the original, but not to put too fine a point on it, I’d call it the best PreCure of all time.
I even get up early to watch the show.
Sunday is the only day I’m grateful to my little sisters.
Even though I also tape it.
“A fine student, indeed.”
“It’s important to take a breather sometimes.”
“Is it not an insult to the creators to watch a program or read a book with such a cockamamie motivation as a breather?”
“We’re not talking about some ramen shop stickler here. No creator would say something so fussy.”
Be nice if there weren’t.
The kind who’d say, Sit up straight while you’re watching this.
“My master, assertions like ‘late-night radio is the friend of exam prep’ have been going unchallenged, but when ye think how seriously the hosts take their work, how canst ye study whilst listening? Listen to music on an iPod while ye work, and the musicians will slaughter thee. Their ire shall be roused: Background music? What’s so ‘back’ about it? When did we become your backing band?!”
“It’s not that I don’t understand where you’re coming from, but I hate thinking about such a savage world.” Or perhaps it meant that all jobs are service-industry jobs. “Putting aside my motivation, though, I definitely should have noticed while I was watching PreCure…that I’d left so much of my summer homework undone. Shit, at this rate Cobraja is coming to town.”
I foolishly thought that since I was thoroughly wrapped up in studying for entrance exams every day, I wasn’t slacking off… Somehow, I had managed to neglect the most fundamental of fundamentals.
“Taking lines from anime so seriously… And thou still fancy thyself a student? Think well, is this even the year that HeartCatch PreCure! is being broadcast?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
If you start to look, there are already contradictions all over the place.
Flagrant ones.
“It’s really tough on Kanbaru, because they keep revising the rules for basketball. I let something like ‘What’s with this quarter system?’ slip recently, and Senjogahara had a big old laugh at my expense.”
“Ye might be saved such heartache if ye knew anything about the rules of basketball beyond what thou hast read in Slam Dunk,” Shinobu refused to console me. “Or can it be that Miss Serious and Miss Tsundere didn’t enlighten you in that regard?”
“I’m not sure how I feel about the sudden note of opprobrium in your new names for my friends, but those two…”
I finally got myself up off the floor as I said this.
I could go on pretending to throw little hissy fits all I wanted, but it was time to face up to reality.
To contend with reality.
I was eighteen now.
An adult.
Adults don’t throw hissy fits.
“Those two are the type,” I said, “to finish their summer homework before summer break has even begun.”
“I am not sure how I feel about that,” sighed Shinobu.
I’m not too sure how I feel about you, Shinobu.
You’re getting a little too human.
I continued, “So they must’ve assumed I’d finished my homework before the beginning of summer break too…”
“Hmm. All right, I have a foolproof plan for thee.”
“Hmm?”
“Hahahah. Didst think I would let thy predicament pass in silence?”
Shinobu─who right up to the very last second knew my homework was sitting piled up and not said anything─who must’ve left it to the last second by design, probably taking delight in her premeditated crime─haughtily puffed out her chest.
Her flat chest only looked flatter when she did that.
“I shall reveal all, once I have feasted on Mister Donut.”
“How long has that been your agenda?”
She drove a hard bargain.
But I had no other recourse.
“Done. It’s settled, so tell me.”
“If thou canst but copy the work of Miss Serious or Miss Tsundere, all shall be well.”
“…”
Her “foolproof plan” was so shallow you could collect clams in it.
The water wasn’t even up to my ankles.
“How now, what is it with that face? Didst thou not say that those two finished their homework long ago?”
“I did, but.”
“Then thou shouldst wield the pure goodwill of those two girls, besotted with you as they are, to thine advantage, and make thy request.”
“What an awful way to put it!”
What kind of inhuman bastard was I supposed to be?
Unthinkable.
“I mean, I reject your proposal.”
“For what reason?”
“Because those two would never let me copy off of them in a million years.”
It goes without saying that Hanekawa is far too serious-minded for that; if I asked her she’d just scold, “Do your own work.” Senjogahara might let me copy off her if I asked, but now that she had turned over a new leaf, I didn’t want to be providing any weird stimuli.
I didn’t know what might trigger a return to her old self.
“I don’t want to have to tell her, ‘Hey, you seem almost like your old self again.’”
“If thou wouldst fain not speak such a hackneyed line, then simply check thyself.”
“Well then,” she suggested, “why not copy from another friend?”
“…”
What a horrible thing to say.
I didn’t recall raising her to be such a cruel child.
“Do you really believe in other friends? How old are you?”
“Five hundred,” Shinobu replied.
Thou speakest about other friends as though they were Santa Claus, she observed.
Santa Claus is based on the Christian Saint Nicholas, so just by uttering that name she was liable to suffer purification, but she had a real laissez-faire attitude about such rules.
“Yeah? But now that you mention it, you’re always saying you’re 500 years old, but are you exactly 500? Not likely.”
“At my age, such fine distinctions lose their meaning. I am 500, loosely speaking.”
“Sure. So precisely how old are you?”
“I am 598 years and eleven months old to be precise.”
“You’ve really been cooking the books!”
You’re 600, loosely speaking!
Don’t try to shave off a hundred years!
That’s no joke!
“If you’re that old, you must know all this stuff. Why don’t you just do my homework for me? Not even all of it, just some. If you do, we’ll go to Mister Donut, and while I can’t promise a feast, if we go when there’s a sale on, I can dish you out a bit of a treat.”
“Alas, Japan’s standardized system of learning is not compatible with my intellectual acumen.”
“You stuck-up…”
Stuck up in the stratosphere.
I really couldn’t tell if her personality was flowering or souring.
“Then,” I demanded to know, “what kind of system of learning is it compatible with?”
“Wrap a green onion around your neck to cure a cold.”
Oh, so an old wives’ tale system?
It wasn’t a comeback I could actually use on Shinobu, who hated being thought of as a crusty senior citizen just as much as being categorized as a nonexistent youth.
A former aristocrat, she sure was proud.
An upper-crusty senior citizen.
“What manner of insolent thoughts are running through thy head?”
“None, ma’am.”
“Anyway, I shall not help thee with thy homework,” Shinobu said.
High-and-mightily.
Stop acting high and mighty.
“What have you been doing for the last 600 years? Haven’t you learned anything at all?”
“Life is itself a lesson.”
“You’re undead.”
Humans can’t live for 600 years.
“Well, I did not mean to offend. Thou dost know other friends. What about Miss Bangs or Monkey Girl?”
“No way, Sengoku, she’s a disaster. That’s totally off the table.”
I’d had plenty of chances to hang out with her over summer break, and we’d even talked about it. At the time, I thought I was on top of things (delusion), so like a snob I asked her, Sengoku, are you doing your homework like you ought to?
“Oh-ho. And her response?”
“Huh? We’ve finally got a nice summer break, Big Brother Koyomi, why ruin it with something terrible like homework?”
“…”
“Yup. Seems like she intended to skip it all along.”
“Big-shot, eh?”
“She said, A scolding after summer break would be the end of it.”
“The lass ought to get scolded, yet dares speak as if she were preparing to stand by someone else?”
“You should only study when you feel like it.”
“To spout such self-indulgent nonsense as though she were dispensing humane advice…”
Thine imitation was surprisingly accurate, added Shinobu. Disagreeably so.
An unexpected repercussion.
“I’ve only realized it recently, but,” I noted, “just because Sengoku is quiet and meek doesn’t mean that she’s diligent or clever, or that she’s a good kid.”
“Hmmm.”
“Her notebooks are laughable. Seems like she used to do calligraphy, so her writing is super neat, like Tomehane!-level. But every single answer is wrong.”
“Laughable indeed.”
“Though we shouldn’t be laughing, and it’s sort of biased to think that people with neat handwriting have to be smart.”
Incidentally, Hanekawa’s handwriting is superb.
Even though she doesn’t do calligraphy.
I teased her that she was like some font software.
Incidentally again, Senjogahara’s handwriting is pretty bad.
Which I find endearing.
“And Monkey Girl?”
“Kanbaru is actually diligent, so I’m sure she’s done her homework, but she’s in a different year.”
“I see. So even if Miss Bangs had completed her assignments, it would have done naught for thee.”
For 500-, or rather coming up on 600-year-old Shinobu, a few years, the difference between middle and high school, actually hadn’t registered.
How broad-minded.
“Let me see, thine other friends─”
“Don’t count them. I don’t want to contend with such a harsh reality.”
“One, two, three.”
“Don’t use your fingers. It’ll only take one hand.”
“Ah, I have it. Thy sisters can lend thee a hand.”
“They’re still in middle school too.”
“But thou surely hast homework with which a middle schooler might aid thee? Like thy picture diary.”
“I wasn’t assigned a picture diary!”
Hmm, but Shinobu had a point.
In terms of whether or not it was a possibility, it was.
Forget about Karen, but Tsukihi might help if I played my cards right. She was precocious and could probably handle some of it quite well.
“But wait. My pride as an older brother won’t let me ask my little sister.”
“If thou art looking to a little girl like me for ideas, thou art well past the point of pride.”
“Save me, Shinobushi Denka!”
“Such forced wordplay is fruitless, for the reference is obscured.”
Guess I ran out of juice.
Obviously, it was a play on Umeboshi Denka.
“His Highness Pickled Plum,” Shinobu muttered. “Only a true Fujiko fan could abide the sensibility. ‘Pickled Plum’…”
“You keep being suspiciously hard on Fujiko-sensei.”
“Stuff and nonsense. I am a true fan.”
“You may well be a true fan, but if you are, then true fans are kinda unpleasant.”
“Even Fujiko-sensei nods from time to time.”
“Take that solicitude and shove it!”
Enough.
Let’s turn our attention back to the mountain of homework atop my desk.
Of course, my academic ability had shown improvement (thanks to excellent tutoring) in its own way─not to toot my own horn, but I’d say by leaps and bounds (don’t toot your own horn). It wasn’t as if I couldn’t handle what you might call the softball assignments they’d thrown at us for summer break.
If I only had the time, it wouldn’t even be a thing─if I only had the time.
I didn’t have the time.
Sunday, August twentieth.
Checking the clock, I saw that it was already 10 p.m. after chatting it up with Shinobu.
Only two hours remaining of summer break.
Where did I go wrong?
Was it bringing Hachikuji over to hang out?
Was it my ice cream date with Ononoki?