by Nisioisin
“Um, is that really a forget about it kind of an it?”
“In any case, I happened to catch that you were planning to investigate the sand at a certain park on your way home, Araragi… You finished with that? I tried to call when you’d be done.”
“…”
Her ears are a little too sharp, and her timing was dead on. And she doesn’t beat around the bush. If it were me, I would’ve waited until tomorrow─we’d see each other at school.
Frankly, I didn’t think it was worth telling Hanekawa─though I was perfectly willing to, if she wanted to hear about it.
I’m not Hachikuji, so I didn’t demand money for the story, of course. Compared to Hanekawa’s free tutoring, it barely amounted to anything.
I reported the findings of my sandbox investigation.
I didn’t embellish the story much, but I did leave out the reawakening of my inner child and my desire to slide down the slide. No harm done by a few small omissions.
Whether or not I left my inner child out of it, Hanekawa treated me very much like a little kid when she scolded:
“Tut!”
Scolded, or reprimanded, maybe.
What’s she think I am?
“No good, Araragi.”
“Huh? Sure, I know I’m no good, but you’d just come out and say so? Sugarcoat it.”
“No, I wasn’t saying ‘no-good Araragi’─what you did was no good…”
Your persecution complex is in overdrive, she accused.
Sure, fair enough.
Though maybe it was more of an inferiority complex than a persecution complex.
“But what do you mean, what I did was no good? What’s bothering you, anyway? You said you had something on your mind…”
“Yeah. I figured you’d take care of things, so I thought I’d settle for an after-action report.”
“After-action report…”
Who the hell was she, receiving reports from Senjogahara, receiving reports from me.
Our commanding officer or something?
“Wait, then what did I do wrong? I’m pretty sure I did just about everything I could. I envisioned the worst-case scenario, and performed a scrupulous investigation, okay?”
“Mm-hmm, you sure did. Playing in the sand, building a mound.”
“…”
I’d left that out of it…
Had something in my “report” tipped her off? Apparently, since she sounded so sure of it.
Once again, talking to her is freaky.
I feel like she sees through me, though from a different angle than Oshino.
“Mm. Mmmm, you’ve overlooked something important, Araragi. You made an erroneous assumption.”
“Assumption?”
“You’re assuming the sandbox case has to be either the work of an aberration─or a man-made phenomenon. Correct?”
“Yeah, now that you mention, I guess I am, but…what, is there another possibility?”
Hanekawa hadn’t even seen the sand arranged in the shape of a demonic face with her own eyes, she’d only heard about it from Senjogahara, so how could she talk like she knew exactly what was going on─and Senjogahara had only heard an incredulous version of Hachikuji’s fifty-yen tale from me, before I’d even seen the real thing. As with the reawakening of my inner child─how could Hanekawa be so sure?
“There is. Another possibility. A third possibility.”
“Damn, there is? You really do know everything, don’t you?”
Ordinarily I say this line with a sense of admiration, but I can’t deny that just this once there was a little bit of irony mixed in there as well.
Despite my shameful pettiness, Hanekawa treated me to her usual response. “I don’t know everything, I just know what I know.”
This left me feeling utterly benign and coolheaded─which is no great feat, I have to admit. Hanekawa had me eating out of her hand.
Maybe it was thanks to the Rehabilitation Program or whatever.
“A third option… Neither the work of an aberration nor the work of a human being, so, um… Let’s see.” I thought it over inside my newly cooled head. It felt somehow like an extension of my exam prep. “Well, a process of elimination just leaves something like a natural phenomenon, I guess… Maybe the air flow in the park and the position of the slide are such that a face could form by happenstance…”
I said this exactly as it occurred to me, but even as I was saying it, I knew it was nonsense.
Or rather, the nature-as-culprit theory was pretty much the first one you’d consider, and just as quickly, dismiss─a crevice between two buildings was one thing, but no way the wind would be uniform in an open, unobstructed space like a park.
Even supposing the shape didn’t form all the time, Hachikuji and I had visited the park on totally random days─hard to believe the parameters just so happened to line up perfectly.
I’d only said it as conversation filler, and I girded my loins for Hanekawa’s cursory dismissal.
Perhaps another Tut!
Was I making a foolish remark on purpose, hoping for another one of those? I want to believe that I’m not that big of a fool─but if I was, my faint hopes were about to be dashed.
“Bingo, sounds like you’re on the right track, Araragi. No need for me to get involved, then.”
“Huh? No, hang on, you can’t just bail on me like that. Don’t back out now. It’s still your job to explain to me what that actually means.”
“Why’s it my job…”
“I mean, a natural phenomenon? The sand just happened to end up that way because of the wind or whatever? Impossible─”
Even as I spoke, I thought: This is what they mean by “better left unsaid.” Hanekawa not picking up on a problem, when I did? Maybe it’s just my inferiority complex talking again, but…
No, putting that aside.
Even if the “demonic form” were the result of a natural phenomenon, the most placid “solution” here, why would Hanekawa want to scold me for dismissing the possibility out of hand and making my assumption?
Could the Rehabilitation Program really be that strict? Was it a Spartan style of education that punished even the slightest moment of carelessness?
That was my fear, but it was misguided.
Because Hanekawa was quite justified in scolding me.
“Come on, Araragi. Wind and rain aren’t the only natural phenomena.”
“Huh?”
005
The epilogue, or maybe, the punch line of this story.
After that I returned to the park to confirm the “solution” Hanekawa suggested─and obviously, I mean this goes without saying, but her deduction was right on the money.
“Listen, Araragi. You keep saying that you checked out the sandbox─but it was just the sand you checked out, wasn’t it?” That’s what she said. “A sandbox─also includes the container the sand is in.”
The container?
Even after she said it, it didn’t click right away─and this usually ends up driven to the periphery of our thoughts on the subject, but of course, in order to keep it from mixing with the soil around it, the “sand” in a “sandbox,” unlike the sand on a beach, is surrounded by a container that is, for lack of a better analogy, like a swimming pool that’s been partially buried in the ground.
If you kept digging down into a sandbox, at some point you would reach the “bottom”─but a sandbox is surprisingly deep, so children sometimes believe that it’s bottomless or that it simply melds into the soil around them.
That’s how sandboxes are generally constructed, anyway, and once it’s pointed out─or once you think about it for a second, it all makes sense.
“So Araragi, if you’re investigating a sandbox but didn’t investigate the box itself, it doesn’t really count as investigating the sandbox. And─” Hanekawa’s tone became somewhat severe. “Sand is heavy.”
Even sand with nothing unusual about it.
That’s what she said─which i
s how I found myself at the sandbox in question, digging a hole with a shovel I’d brought.
Digging hurriedly, but cautiously.
And at last, after an excavation of about two feet, I reached the bottom.
Where─there was an enormous crack.
An enormous.
Crack.
“…”
Now it all made sense.
Because the bottom of the “sandbox” was ruptured, probably from a combination of age and the weight of the sand (as Hanekawa had pointed out), the surface settled into that shape─appeared to be the solution to the mystery.
Just as water conforms to the shape of a vessel, so too does sand─though it takes much longer and the process is less obvious than it is with water.
Which is why the sand didn’t “revert” immediately after children played there, or immediately after I kicked it all over the place in the course of my investigation─but it would “revert” over time.
Almost as if it had a will of its own.
Taking on a shape that reflected the topography of the bottom of its container.
And, as predicted, the demonic form was probably pure happenstance─thanks to the simulacrum phenomenon or what, I don’t know.
But it was just as Hanekawa said─the deterioration of the container, and the weight of the sand, being neither man-made nor aberration-related, were indeed natural phenomena, yet not at all placid ones.
The most placid solution, this was not─far from it.
Natural phenomena, though not wind and rain.
Up to this point, it’s natural phenomena─and it would be natural phenomena from here on out as well.
As of now, those phenomena’s effect was limited to a strange pattern appearing on the surface of the sand, but if the fissure in the container continued to grow, then the sandbox really might become bottomless─sand and earth mingling until they turned into quicksand, or to the point of liquification…not on a scale that would pose a problem for an adult, perhaps, but one that might prove fatal for any children playing in the sandbox.
Who might be swallowed up.
As if by a bottomless swamp.
Even if that was the worst-case scenario, playing in a sandbox whose container was broken was a dangerous thing to do─dangerous enough that at this point, it was a race against time.
Which is why Hanekawa had scolded me.
“So, for now…a call to the management company that oversees the park?”
No, it was probably the town that oversaw the park, not a private company… Well, if I contacted the all-knowing Hanekawa, she could tell me.
Then at last we’d be leaving this case behind.
But seriously… I thought, looking at the hole I had dug. Maybe that whole debate misses the mark. Aberrations are more frightening than human beings, human beings are more frightening than aberrations─that debate entirely missed the mark.
More frightening and less placid than human agency or any aberration…is nature.
As scary as a demon, as scary as people.
001
I bet Suruga Kanbaru thinks of a road as a place for running rather than walking─given that she runs full-tilt down whatever road she’s on, no matter the circumstances, regardless of wind or weather. In fact, this junior of mine seems to have a hard time even slowing down, let alone proceeding at anything like a leisurely pace.
A hard time, yeah.
Hardly her forte.
But even though she’s always hoofing it at top speed, maybe it’s not so much that a fast pace is her specialty, especially, but rather that a slow pace is so difficult for her to maintain that it’s out of her hands─though not so difficult that she’s bound hand and foot.
In fact, Kanbaru, who has no qualms about embarking on a wild goose chase, probably never even considers taking a leisurely stroll─anyway, a road.
Not trod but raced down.
Ever since she became a star, garnering the attention of the entire school─and even now, having lost none of her luster even after quitting the basketball team, Kanbaru has been in possession of a roadmap depicting an altogether different route from my own.
“Hm. A road─isn’t how I think of it, Araragi-senpai.”
This was her response when I broached the subject one time. As always, she looked directly at me when she spoke.
“When running is a part of everyday life like it is for me, the place where you run isn’t a road, it’s a track.”
A track?
Sure, that’s definitely what you’d call the “road” where the runners run in track-and-field─for a guy like me, though, whose everyday life does not involve running, for whom running is a big deal, calling it a “track” didn’t sit well.
How can I put this?
Doesn’t “track” strongly suggest an absolute, fixed route from which you can’t deviate?
“What? I’m surprised at you, Araragi-senpai. Even when it means ‘street,’ a road is still fixed, something you can’t deviate from. If you just up and move into the next lane, you’ll cause an accident. Changing lanes is never a simple matter, no matter what road you’re on.”
True.
“Street” or “track,” it’s merely a question of context, nothing more than semantics.
In practice, whether you’re running or walking.
Whether it’s a street or a track, a road is a road.
People talk about a life where “the roadmap is already laid out for you,” but since everyone is traveling down the road of life, we’re all following some set of rules.
Obeying some set of traffic regulations.
It’s not so easy to drop out of the race─to deviate from the fixed path. Changing lanes is all well and good, but you have to be careful, or you might drive straight off a cliff.
And there’s always the possibility of a head-on collision.
So we have no choice but to keep chugging along down the road.
“Well, that said,” qualified Kanbaru, “dropping out isn’t actually all that hard─the truth is, even if you don’t stray out of your lane, you can still drop out. Going full-tilt down the road, down the track, is certainly ‘chugging along,’ but it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re ‘moving forward’─people can ‘chug along backwards’ too.”
They can and do, she said.
“Because every route comes with an escape route.”
002
“Kanbaru. Hey, jackass, you haven’t been listening to a word I say.”
“What? Araragi-senpai, as your junior it makes my heart go pitter-pat to hear you call me ‘jackass,’ but it’s also upsetting to have such a charge leveled at me. The very idea that I, Suruga Kanbaru, hailed as the world’s greatest devotee of the world’s greatest Araragi-senpai, could possibly not listen to what he has to say is completely out of the question. A total fantasy. Get a grip, Araragi-senpai. Do you have any idea how much consternation you could cause with such careless remarks?”
“No remark of mine could cause the slightest consternation, even if I wanted it to. And no one’s hailing you for that, trust me. Listen, Kanbaru. Out of consideration for you as my junior, I’ll repeat what I said, since you were most definitely not listening. I’m gonna repeat after me.”
One day in July.
I was standing in a hallway of Kanbaru’s house─a Japanese-style home, which I was visiting on my day off. To be precise, I had no choice but to stand in the hallway, like I was being punished for arriving late to school.
Naturally I’d done no such thing; I’d shown up at her house on time, at the appointed hour.
I was forced to stand there because I simply couldn’t enter the room to which she’d led me─so to be precise, I wasn’t standing in the hallway so much as I was standing aghast in the hallway.
“All right, Kanbaru. Listen good.”
“I already am. I never miss a single word that comes from the wise lips of the great orator Araragi-senpai. My only fear is that I’ll become so overcome wi
th emotion at what I hear that I’ll faint.”
“…I asked you to take me to your room.”
Choosing for the moment to ignore her tiresome habit of putting me on a pedestal, I pointed at the room─through the open sliding door, at the interior.