by Nisioisin
“So this is goodbye forever?”
“What do you mean! Wish for it, already! To see me again!”
“I’ll wince for it, maybe,” Hachikuji said disgustedly.
Making no attempt to hide how put off she was that I’d put on airs.
Being loathed by a child can deal massive damage, and when I tried to start riding away, I missed the pedal completely.
Having blown my chance at a smooth exit, I thought─Hmm, gotta turn this into some kind of opportunity. Was there something I wanted to tell Hachikuji?
A-ha.
Got it.
I hadn’t told her about that yet.
“Hey, Hachikuji.”
“What is it, Mister Remainder-of-1.”
“Remainder-of-1? What the hell is that, did you get my name wrong again? Or did you just divide 3 by 2?”
“Oh, don’t worry, this time it wasn’t a slip of the tongue. It’s your new nickname, since you’re the one who’s most likely to be left over anytime people are picking teams.”
“Most likely to be left over…”
Why does everyone and their mother want to give me these horrible nicknames?
“There’s something I have to tell you,” I forged ahead.
“What is it?”
“Oshino,” I said. “Mèmè Oshino─that middle-aged expert, your benefactor. He left town.”
It was just the other day.
He took off as suddenly as he’d shown up, and probably in some other town now, he was collecting tales of aberrations as he’d done here─while also looking after this or that hopeless guy, the kind who exist everywhere, in other words someone like me.
“I see… That was pretty abrupt, huh?”
“Well, yeah, it was definitely abrupt. He was a rootless vagabond to begin with, so from his perspective maybe he stayed here for a long time─oh, right, you never actually met him face to face, maybe you don’t care that much… But it’s not like you guys weren’t connected. I figured I ought to tell you.”
“Please, I do care. You can’t even hold a candle to how much gratitude I feel towards that man.”
“Being grateful is all very well, but do it without snubbing me along the way. I’m immensely grateful to him, too.”
“No matter how much gratitude we express for Mister Moshino, it would never be enough.”
“Moshino? If you’re so grateful to him, don’t make him sound like a phone booth where you can make wishes.”
“If we’re talking Moshimo Boxes, he’s more like Doraemon’s little sister Dorami’s. All decked out.”
“Decked out… Sheesh.”
“Huh, so in any case, Mister Oshino’s gone.” Hachikuji must have said “Moshino” on purpose (not that it isn’t on purpose when she mangles my name) because now she spoke his name normally, and nodded. “That spells trouble, though, doesn’t it, Mister Araragi. How will you ever subsist without him?”
“Um, it’s not like I’ll be sleeping on the street just because Oshino left?!”
He hadn’t been providing for me, or anything.
Sure, I may have leaned a little too hard on him regarding aberration-related matters─from now I was on my own.
We.
We had to walk our own road─standing on our own feet.
“Well, we might not end up homeless, but we’ll miss him. Oh, but Mister Araragi, if he’s gone, what about that issue?”
“That issue? Which issue?”
“Aaalways playing innocent. Aaalways getting up on your high horse. Aaalways keeping me on the edge of my seat. You’re one hell of a teaaase.”
“I can’t even guess what kind of character you’re trying to be…”
She rarely followed up with anything good when she was like this, and was preparing me for it─what was it this time?
“Oh, should I just leave it alone? Did I perhaps bring up a taboo subject? Am I touching on the dirty secrets of the Araragi industry?”
“The Araragi industry? What sort of insular field is that, I don’t form such a thing. Come on, Hachikuji, out with it. This is unlike you.”
“I’m not going to let anyone from the Araragi industry tell me what I’m like.”
“Whether or not I should be defining what you’re like is a fair question, but I’m not someone from the Araragi industry, okay? I’m Araragi, period.”
“Ugh, this is what I’m talking about, this.”
Hachikuji made a loop with her thumb and forefinger.
Good!
A-OK!
If that wasn’t what she meant, she was making the sign for money.
“…?”
Well, I was pretty sure that’s what her sudden gesture meant, but I still couldn’t figure out what she was getting at. I didn’t have any money (in either sense) coming to her…
Or did I need to cough up some dough to get her to talk with me? Did this grade-school girl operate like a hostess bar?
I needed to think twice about initiating a conversation with her?
“Uh oh,” she said, “a flat reaction.”
“No, I really don’t see what you’re getting at…”
“Ah, maybe I should put it this way then.” Hachikuji dropped her candid hand gesture, and assuming the proper posture, spoke with proper etiquette. “Congratulations on skipping out on your five-million-yen bill.”
“I didn’t skip out on it!”
Ah.
Got it─there we go.
I had told Hachikuji before about how I owed Oshino five million yen─told her about it, or consulted her about it.
Maybe it’s not the best idea to consult elementary school kids about your debts, but I wanted my relationship with Hachikuji to be one where I could talk to her about anything─and yet, I hadn’t shared how things had turned out.
In other words, I hadn’t found the chance to tell her that taking over an aberration-handling job from Oshino…or having the whole thing dumped in my lap happily resulted in the cancellation of my debt─I had to admit, having consulted her about it, I was amiss not to have informed her of the outcome.
But, believe it or not, Hachikuji’s take was that Oshino had left town without getting his money from me.
Quite the idiosyncratic interpretation.
And how far-fetched─did she really think I was the kind of guy who’d skip out on a debt?
“Listen good, Hachikuji. I’m a guy who pays his debts.”
“Well… That’s a good attitude, but it’s pretty standard.”
What a normal reaction, after all that.
“I mean, don’t borrow money you can’t repay, right?”
“Wrong, Hachikuji. Debt essentially makes the world go round. Individuals and corporations are all smothered in debt. Credit cards, loans, collateral, all of them involve borrowing money from someone and then working your ass off to pay it back. How much debt do you think Japan carries?”
“When you put it that way, sure… But then the world is a sad place, isn’t it?”
“It’s not sad. Because a debt is basically just a promise. There’s the trust that in the future, sometime in the future, you’ll pay it back from the money you earn. In other words, it’s the future and promises and trust that make the world go round.”
“You make it sound so good…”
“Mm-hmm.”
In between the future and promises and trust are dire straits, filled to the brim with human misery, but that’s a secret.
It had been my lot until the other day.
If you include that, I guess it’s the future and promises and trust and secrets that make the world go round─by the by, Senjogahara also took care of the fee she owed Oshino.
Unlike me, she ultimately paid it off with cash, not work─or out of the pocket money she received for helping her father out with his work, in lieu of a regular part-time gig.
I just kind of let it pass at the time, but exactly what sort of help do you perform to earn a hundred thousand yen in such a short time?
>
“Anyway, I took care of the money I owed Oshino. I’m squeaky clean, totally debt-free.”
“A filthy mind in a squeaky-clean body, huh?”
“Nope, not filthy, my mind is not filthy. I believe in Santa Claus and everything.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. He still brings me presents every year.”
“You still get presents from Santa Claus even though you’re in high school…”
“How do you like that, a squeaky-clean mind in a squeaky-clean body. The only other debt I have left is the three thousand yen I borrowed from my little sister.”
“Three thousand yen? Pay it back already, please.”
“It’s my personal policy not to return something that doesn’t need returning, even if it’s just an email.”
“No wonder you don’t have any friends…”
I thought you were a guy who pays his debts, Hachikuji lamented with an exaggerated sigh.
Now that she mentioned it, I did vaguely recall having said something of the sort, but my conversations with Hachikuji are mostly about the vibe, so please understand that something said on one page is forgotten by the bottom of the next.
“I see,” she said. “Either way, glad to hear the money’s been paid back. Hmm, I’m a little disappointed.”
“Huh? Why? You’re disappointed about me paying Oshino back? Do you want me to be the kind of character who’s always up to his ears in debt? Are you after my land or something?”
“And exactly where is this land, Mister Araragi? No─look, you said it yourself at some point.”
“At some point? When?”
“When you were being stalked by your speedy junior. When you came to consult me─about owing Mister Oshino so much money and what to do about it. And while we were talking, you said something about how if you didn’t have the scratch, you might be able to give him a rare aberration tale or something in place of money─didn’t you?”
“Oh. I said all that?”
Well, I must have.
Back then, I was flustered because that “speedy junior” was stalking me, and to be honest my memory of the period is pretty unclear… But I do remember consulting Hachikuji about my debt, so it wouldn’t be surprising if I’d said all that.
Though I very much doubt I used the word “scratch”…
“In other words,” commented Hachikuji, “it would be like two CCG players exchanging rare cards.”
“Well, that childish analogy may be all very well for an elementary school student, but it’s somewhat divorced from reality…”
If we had to put it in terms of CCGs, it’d be like trading a rare card for cash, so her analogy wasn’t particularly appropriate.
Nor was it something that kids should be doing at home.
“So ever since then, Mister Araragi, your humble servant has been keeping an eye out during her travels for any story that might fit the bill and be of help to you. ‘Tales of aberrations’ or ‘ghost stories’ or what have you.”
“R-Really? Y-You’ve been doing that? For me?”
I was moved.
Moved by the friendship of Mayoi Hachikuji.
Who would have thought this girl in the prime of her cheekiness worried about my debts and tried to help me pay them back?
I had misjudged her.
I’d assumed she was just one more person who couldn’t stand me… This fifth grader was a wonder.
“Such an industrious spouse!”
“That’s a strange way to put it, Mister Araragi.”
“Such an industrial space!”
“I wasn’t planning on getting involved in factory production for your sake, Mister Araragi─but in any event, I’ve been conducting this secret activity on your behalf. Now that it’s come to nothing, though, I’m kind of disappointed.”
“Yeah…stands to reason.”
“My disappointment is on par with the Three Great Disappointing Landmarks of Japan.”
“It can’t be that bad. And what the hell are you even talking about?”
“Famous landmarks that aren’t as disappointing as you thought they would be, which is itself a disappointment.”
Ah well, said Hachikuji.
“I went to all this trouble to find a story, but now my plan to sell it to you for an astronomical sum is ruined.”
“Plan?! Astronomical sum?! Y-You weren’t just going to give it to me?! It wasn’t a present for Mister Araragi?!”
“Not a chance,” she said, sounding vexed. “What ‘present for Mister Araragi’? Stick to getting your presents from Santa Claus, thank you very much. If I were to give you something, it’d be a presentation on how to be a stand-up guy.”
“A harsh one, I bet…”
Wait, this was vaguely terrifying, when I thought about it.
So basically, she’d been trying to sell me an aberration tale… If she’d been roaming the town since then on that mission, the girl’s obsession with money was not to be taken lightly.
On a mission? More like on commission.
No, maybe it wasn’t about the money. Had this girl just been looking forward to driving me even deeper into debt?
What a close call.
Good thing I got a handy job from Oshino before that could happen.
“Ouch,” she said, “seriously, I’m in a pickle here. I laid out a ton of money on spec for this. What am I going to do with this aberration tale I hunted down so I could flip it to you, Mister Araragi?”
“Don’t ask me.”
Here we were feeling the effects of Oshino’s disappearance. If he were still in town, we could probably have gotten at least a little something for the aberration tale Hachikuji had found, even though I’d already paid him back what I owed. But with Oshino’s Aberration Mart closed for business, there was no one in town who’d be interested in doing business around urban legends and the word on the street.
Hmmm.
Market speculation isn’t a game for greenhorns… A cautionary tale.
“Mister Araragiiii, I won’t ask for five million, just buy it pleeease. Go ahead, drive a hard bargaaain. Do you really want to make me feel like I’ve done all that work for nothing? For another obedient child to disappear from this world, replaced by a jaded kid?”
“I don’t care if you’re jaded or not. The second you tried to sell your friend a ghost story, you were already plenty jaded.”
Although.
Her faux-nefarious, or flagrantly nefarious speech aside, it wasn’t an out-and-out lie that Hachikuji had gone to some trouble on my behalf, so maybe I shouldn’t let her feel like it was all a waste of time.
It’d be detrimental to her upbringing, sure, but if she internalized the lesson that “any more work I do on Mister Araragi’s behalf will also be pointless,” my prospects might also be somewhat dimmed.
This kid might come in handy for me somewhere down the line, so going easy on her right now might actually be a good move.
“Uh oh, are you concocting some devious scheme, Mister Araragi?”
“Excuse me? I’m just continuing to be moved by your friendship.”
“You’re certainly being moved for a long time… Got stuck on the moved setting, huh. Are you emotionally unbalanced, Mister Araragi?”
“By the by, how much were you hoping to get for it, Ebenezer Hachikuji?”
“Fifty yen would be plenty.”
“That’s a steal!”
I was sure she’d try to haggle for more.
Maybe I was getting the friend discount?
“No, the story was never worth more than that in the first place.”
“You were trying to pass off a fifty-yen story on your friend for five million?!”
That’s not a friend, not even close!!
That’s a sucker!!
“Gimme a break, Hachikuji… We don’t want people thinking that conning me is as easy as taking candy from a baby.”
“Babies shouldn’t have any in the first place, they might choke.”