by Nisioisin
“…”
This wasn’t like passersby leaving offerings of cheap sweets at some flimsy shrine. It felt formal…
I climbed up the ladder of the water tower on the roof, and from there I was able to confirm that the roofs of all the other school buildings─were also just as Senjogahara said.
A single bouquet of flowers lay on each and every roof. It was hard to say for sure at that distance, but as far as I could tell, the flowers seemed to be the same kind.
“…”
Hanekawa.
She’d wanted to repay Oshino with some “school ghost story,” but despite her research, this had escaped her notice─probably because she only investigated the legal areas of the school, unlike Senjogahara.
So Hanekawa didn’t know everything, after all…though in this case what was funny, or scary, was that Senjogahara did know.
“No one’s ever committed suicide by jumping off a building at our school, but bouquets of flowers continue to be lain on all the roofs, quietly, anonymously, unbeknownst to anyone─might this story interest Mister Oshino?” said Senjogahara, as expressionlessly as ever. In the same level tone she speculated, “Should be worth around, say, a hundred and twenty thousand yen?”
“…”
She was angling for a twenty thousand-yen kickback.
Man, she was weird…
She was warped due to her illness, or aberration, or so I had assumed, and of course she was, but it seemed like she’d been weird even before any warping.
Senjogahara said she was called the Cloistered Princess thanks to an act she put on, but if she hadn’t put on that act, I wonder what people would’ve called her…
Whatever.
I’d confirmed her story─my next move should be to report the whole thing to Oshino.
That sounds a little indifferent, like I wasn’t particularly interested in this case, but in fact I was curious how Oshino might interpret it.
Floral memorials to non-existent suicides.
Bouquets.
Was there some clear objective, some design, behind them or─
“More importantly,” I muttered.
From atop the water tower.
“How do I get back into the building…”
004
“Going up is easy, but coming back down is hard─ha hah. Just like life. So, Araragi, how did you actually get back down?”
Whether collecting tales of aberrations was his hobby or his job, Oshino seemed to love hearing tales of my blunders, and he listened to this one with glee.
I’d hurried over to the ruins of the abandoned cram school as soon as classes ended that day, not expecting my own foolishness to be the first thing on the agenda.
A little blond girl watched me sullenly from the corner─she didn’t seem to think much of my stories, whether they were about aberrations or blunders.
I suppose no story involving me was pleasant for her to hear.
“Well, um, like anyone would, hanging in there like anyone would. I climbed over the fence and used my arms and legs to crawl down the wall and back in through the top-floor window I’d left open.”
“Ha hah. Sounds like you definitely hung in there, Araragi. Feeling nostalgic for your vampiric power? With that you could’ve just jumped off the roof, easy breezy.”
“Sure, but…nostalgic? Not a chance. Even the power of a pseudo-vampire is way too much for me.”
“Hmm. Speaking of the power of a pseudo,” Oshino said, indicating the girl in the corner, “come by sometime this weekend and give li’l Shinobu some blood, okay? If you don’t, the kid’ll croak.”
“…Got it.”
Right.
He’d given the little blond girl a name─Shinobu Oshino. Honestly, I still wasn’t used to it─but I couldn’t call her by her true name, so I just needed to adapt whether I liked it or not.
“Give, Shinobu, some blood,” I recited.
Be that as it may, I’d been coming to these ruins a little too often since Golden Week─why was I wasting the precious, one-and-only springtime of my high school years hanging out with some tacky old geezer in an abandoned building?
He’d been staying here long enough to transition from a tacky old geezer into more of a grubby one…
“…”
That said.
I don’t actually think of my high school years as a precious, one-and-only springtime─sure, it only happens once, and it is the springtime of my life, but precious?
One gust of wind and it’s gone─one moment of uncertainty and poof, that’s how light it seems to me.
The springtime of my life?
After spring─comes summer, that’s all.
“So, what do you think, Oshino? Is that story worth a hundred and twenty─I mean a hundred thousand yen?”
“Mmmm…”
“Hey.”
He was falling into his silent pondering routine, leaving me no choice but to press him for an answer.
“I mean, it doesn’t have to be the full amount. If a hundred thousand is too much, how about eighty thousand, or fifty thousand, or─”
“…”
“T-Twenty thousand.”
Damn, this ain’t working, I thought as I haggled.
Oshino wasn’t the kind of guy who gave much away in his face, but my intuition was telling me that, how do I put this, he wasn’t biting.
He’d shown at least some interest in Hanekawa’s story about the shrine─and might even have paid her for it if she’d asked─but this time around things seemed different.
“Do you have that missy’s phone number or email address, Araragi?”
“No, I haven’t asked for them,” I answered his abrupt question honestly.
“Should’ve the other day. So you have no way of contacting her, then?”
“Uh…I meant to ask her sooner rather than later…”
No need to make me look stupid.
I’m just not used to stuff like exchanging phone numbers.
“Why do I need to contact her?”
“I wanted you to deliver this message: ‘I regret to inform you that I cannot comply with your wishes, so please find another avenue for paying my fee’─”
“…”
Well, I had prepared myself for that, so it’s not like I was surprised.
And that wasn’t worth contacting her about─Senjogahara was already planning to get a part-time job to pay off the whole hundred thousand.
This was only ever the back-up plan…
I’d promised to let her know within the day if her long shot was worth anything. In other words, if she didn’t hear from me, she wouldn’t think anything of it and just start checking the help wanted listings for a part-time gig.
But, and I hadn’t realized this until Oshino pointed it out, on the off chance that he was willing to pay for Senjogahara’s story, not having her phone number meant having to go all the way to her apartment…
Which was crazy.
How mobile was I, unlike your typical high schooler these days─not that I’m claiming to be a typical high schooler by any means.
“Hmph. Well, the next time you see her at school, could you tell her formally?”
“Sure, but she’ll be visiting the hospital for day treatment for a while, so I don’t think she’ll be at school… And when I do end up reporting back to her, she’ll murder me if I don’t give her a reason… Can’t you tell me why this story isn’t worth even a single yen?”
“I never said that. It’s just that since I don’t keep a ledger, I have to round off the small change or my accounting gets messed up.”
“Small change…”
What did he consider small change?
Personally, I wouldn’t call even a five hundred-yen coin change, but even if you did, getting rounded off felt harsher than simply being dismissed as worthless.
Totally inconsiderate…exactly the sort of thing the jerk would say. I was really glad Senjogahara wasn’t there to hear it.
It might’ve turned into a battle to rival spring break and Golden Week.
Got to avoid that at all costs…
“Ha hah. You’re spirited today, Araragi. Something good happen to you?”
“No, I dunno, I just want to be ready for anything, I guess…”
My response to Oshino’s catchphrase couldn’t but be sluggish as I mulled over what the future might hold. While he callously laughed off tales of my blunders, I guess he wasn’t so inhuman as to laugh off my anxieties because he said, “Yeah? Yeah, makes sense. Ordinarily I would charge a consultation fee for this, but it’s not like we’re perfect strangers, you and me, so just this once I’ll tell you something for nothing.”
“…Thanks, you’re a real life-saver.”
I was trying to help him with his work, even if I had ulterior motives, so I wanted to object that I shouldn’t be paying him in any case, but if it was going to be for free, we were all set.
However─“I’m not saving you. People just go and get saved on their own,” was how Oshino responded. “First off, as for the site of that traffic accident you two happened upon─there was a fatality there last month. A pedestrian who was crossing the street got hit by a kei truck.”
“Wow…okay. You’re really well informed.”
“It’s close by is all, and Araragi, it’s to collect tales of aberrations, with or without your help, that I’ve been poking around here and there─of course I’m informed.”
“I see…”
That “with or without your help” felt pretty alienating, but I guess it was true. And Oshino made a point of talking in a style that pushed people away.
Even though I’d figured as much, the fact that someone had been killed in an accident was grievously tragic─but since I had no idea who they were or where they’d lived, there was a limit to how much I could grieve for their tragedy.
My thoughts could never measure up to those of the bereaved family that I assume placed the bouquet of flowers there, but I offered up a silent prayer for the deceased.
“Well, I’m not a traffic accident investigator, so I didn’t look into it all that carefully…but that spot’s layout seems almost designed to cause accidents,” Oshino continued his exposition. “Though, apparently, the pedestrian’s own recklessness was at fault this time…”
I had to wonder if he ever showed any respect for the dead, but if we’re addressing the humanity of it, maybe I just came off as a hypocrite.
“Even if that isn’t the case, and even if we’re not talking about fatalities, there’ve been a whole mess of single-vehicle accidents and minor collisions─supposedly.”
“Hmm, Senjogahara nearly leapt out into the street right there herself.” She told me she’d made sure it was safe, but most people said so in that situation. And probably even after getting in an accident. “Oh, but I guess in her case, she was distracted by the bouquet of flowers─and it wasn’t the layout.”
“Uh huh. That can happen too. I’m concerned in that regard, but we don’t want to ignore the feelings of the bereaved family. Next time I go out, I’ll just change the placement of the bouquet.”
“Yeah, please do.”
In fact, I should’ve done that myself the day before─in which case, what was I thinking, telling someone “please do” like that… Nothing at all, I have to admit.
Oshino was insensitive towards me, but he could be so attentive to these concerns…
“All that aside, let’s get back to the matter at hand, Oshino.”
“There’s no matter to get back to. We haven’t gotten off topic at all. Now then, the issue is that even though no one’s committed suicide by jumping off of one of the school buildings─or accidentally fallen to their death, someone has nevertheless left a bouquet of flowers on the roof of every building at your school─yes?”
“Um… Y-Yeah. That’s about the size of it.”
That Johnny Suicide nickname Senjogahara tried to foist on me must’ve colored my thinking on the matter, because it had never occurred to me that someone could’ve fallen off the roof accidentally.
I could’ve fallen during my climb that morning, for instance…
“Well, whether or not anyone actually falls off of it, a roof is an accident waiting to happen, isn’t it, Araragi? That’s why it was off limits.”
“Sure… At schools where it isn’t, there’s usually a ridiculously high fence. At Naoetsu High, though, it’s low enough that I could climb over it from the outside.”
“Indeed… Streets and schools are both prone to accidents and incidents─to put it plainly, I guess they’re like the opposite of power spots?”
“You mean spiritually poor places? Let’s see, I’ve heard about that stuff. Like how the northeast is called the demon’s gate─”
I hustled, once again, to trot out half-remembered lore, but Oshino shut me down with a simple, “Nope, that’s different.”
He had no interest in cultivating my mind, did he?
What if I was filled with astounding potential?
For what, I’m not sure…
“There are, of course, spiritually poor places─I’m doing a little research on that subject even as we speak.”
“?”
“No, forget it. It’s still too early to talk to you about that, I shouldn’t have said anything. Now let’s get back to the matter at hand. We’re losing precious time because you keep derailing the conversation.”
“Come on, what’s the rush…”
I sort of felt like he was giving me the runaround, but…fine. I wasn’t interested in knowing the particulars of Oshino’s work.
Though he definitely seemed to be settling in for a long stay in a town that he’d originally only come to because of a vampire.
“We’re losing precious Times Square.”
“…If you’ve got time to make terrible jokes, I think you can make time for my little digressions.”
“That street isn’t so bad, but as a drifter, I’ve found accident-prone setups all over the country. This footbridge blocks line of sight, that construction will make it impossible to see someone coming the other way─and then there are spots that are obvious choices for suicides. What they call suicide hotspots… But that has everything to do with the terrain or the surroundings, and spiritual factors are irrelevant.”
“Huh, I guess I agree. Not what I’d expect an expert on aberrations to say, though.”
“Well, I’m trying to counteract people’s tendency to chalk up anything negative to aberrations. Ha hah,” laughed Oshino.
Sounded commendable enough, but since taking on the negative aspects of society was part of their function, that threatened to turn into a chicken-or-egg argument…
“It’s not like I think this particular case has anything to do with aberrations, Oshino. It’s not a ‘scary story,’ or even a ‘creepy story’ like the one about that little shrine. Senjogahara herself had forgotten about it until yesterday, so it’s no more than a slightly niggling…‘mysterious story,’ I guess.”
“Are you saying it’s Slightly Mysterious?”
“I mean, I wasn’t trying to bring up Fujio Fujiko here.”
But something like that, yeah.
On the level of what the fuck?
The ol’ WTF.
“And like you said, the accident on that road probably wasn’t the work of any aberration─nor was Senjogahara’s attempt to leap out into it. That was just a question of the placement of the bouquet of flowers.”
“Indeed,” Oshino concurred. “The terrain or surroundings was the issue there, too, most likely─which is why I’m going to go change the position of that bouquet soon. Because, Araragi, if an offering of flowers can invite accidents─don’t you think the reverse might also be true?”
005
The epilogue, or maybe, the punch line of this story.
Though this time around, the punch line didn’t actually come until much later─the reason being that “satisfied” by what Oshino s
aid, the sense of “mysteriousness” cleanly swept away, I never ended up reporting back to Senjogahara about it.
And Senjogahara, never hearing back from me, left it alone─I’d figured I could give her the full report next time I saw her, but the next time I saw her, namely Sunday, May fourteenth, things got pretty hairy and this business just kind of, if I may, got lost in the shuffle.