by Nisioisin
“The uncanny valley…”
“They also say that once you cross the uncanny valley, the feeling of intimacy grows by leaps and bounds. Though I’ve heard incest and hating your kin are rooted in the same sort of reasons. The point is, your own image, reflected on water, can not look like you─they make mirrors that are rigged so the reflection isn’t flipped left to right, but apparently most people who look in them think: That’s not me. And they say people experience a similar disconnect when they see the reflection of a close friend or relative.”
“…So he didn’t perceive the self he saw reflected in the bathwater as himself because it wasn’t the ‘self’ he took for granted from constantly seeing it in the mirror?”
“Yes. And if he only saw it occasionally, mightn’t that blurry self look like a girl?”
“I mean…that’s possible, I guess, since when you’re a little kid the difference between genders is a lot less obvious─it’s a fine answer if we’re talking about the kind of charms or fortune-telling that girls are into, but once you’re a grownup, or once you’ve reached a certain level of discernment, you’d realize what was going on.”
“And he did. Which is why he stopped seeing her at a certain point.”
“…”
“But it’s another question entirely whether you connect that to recollections of seeing such a thing in the past. Her father must’ve retained his memory of discerning someone’s image in the water.”
“…And thought that it was his ‘soul mate’? That’s a hell of an assumption─though I guess the dad we’re talking about here is Kanbaru’s dad.”
“You’ve got it backwards. He met someone who seemed like his ‘soul mate,’ and she reminded him of the reflection he’d seen in the water all those years ago.”
“Hm? Oh, I get it… Yeah, you must be right, for a third party discussing this in hindsight, the cause and effect are backwards…but that’s not how he felt. As far as he knew, he finally found the answer to a puzzle from his childhood.”
“Love aside, we tend to seek out people like ourselves, so…”
So.
Senjogahara left off there. Instead─
“This is all just my interpretation, of course,” she summed it up.
That summation may have been her way of hiding her embarrassment─or of apologizing for being unable to swallow a romantic story without analyzing it first.
There was no way of knowing the truth.
It was just her interpretation, not the solution─she’d said accordingly.
Kanbaru and her father saw it one way, and she saw it another way, that was all. Senjogahara had decided that Papa Kanbaru’s interpretation was “unlikely,” or even “impossible,” but conversely he might think her quibbling explanation was “unlikely” or “impossible.”
And the fact that Kanbaru’s father had only ever seen “her” in that bath─in that well water, in other words─could lend credence to the idea that there really was something mysterious about the water itself.
Senjogahara would likely dismiss the specificity of the location with an interpretation like a greater chance for tricks of the light. And I have to say I’m with her─I’m also the type who can’t accept romantic notions at face value, who needs to nitpick them all the way down the line. So I wasn’t inclined to say anything uncouth, to use her word, about her take on it.
In that regard.
Maybe Senjogahara and I were a couple of peas in a pod─a couple, and peas in a pod.
“Well, goodbye. Good night. See you at school tomorrow.”
Was not how Senjogahara signed off.
“If you say one wrong word to Kanbaru, I’ll kill you. I’ll never forgive you. Even if it was a slip of the tongue, you’d be better off killing yourself before tomorrow morning.”
Then my girlfriend hung up.
I seriously don’t get her, I thought as I placed a second call, this time to Kanbaru, figuring that it was still probably just early enough.
The pretext for the call was to report that I’d gotten home safely, but the truth was that there was also something I wanted to ask her─believe me, I had no intention of saying one wrong word.
I didn’t particularly feel like killing myself before dawn.
“Hey, Kanbaru. I meant to ask─what about you? When you look into that bathwater, what do you see?”
The reason I asked: If her father’s interpretation was correct, then Kanbaru would see her future mate reflected there. If Senjogahara’s interpretation was correct, however, what my junior saw reflected there might be─
Her mother.
Toé Gaen.
Kanbaru might see her─just like her father had. In the rippling image of herself reflected on the surface, she might well see the mother whose blood ran in her veins. The mother who’d had such an enormous influence on my junior’s life, who affected her even now through that left arm─but then, I have no idea which of her parents she resembles more, so for all I knew it could be her father she saw there. Depending on the movement of the water, she might even see both of them.
Mom and dad.
She might even see─the two of them there together.
And if so─that really was romantic, in its own way. Her departed parents, together, reunited in her eyes…
“Hm? Oh. I see my own boobs, of course. Which are reaaally sexy, if I do say so myself, I spend the entire time I’m in the bath staring at them. The contrast with my abs is reaaally evocative, and I oversoak myself on a nightly basis sitting there captivated by the sight. To be honest, nothing else enters my eyes. But, why do you ask, Araragi-senpai─”
I hung up.
001
What does Nadeko Sengoku, a girl in her second year of middle school, think about roads? Does she even think about them at all? I’m forced to conclude that she probably doesn’t. I’m just making an assumption, of course, and depending on how you look at it, that might be a very rude thing to say. But a girl who always keeps her head down, who goes through life with eyes downcast, doesn’t see the road; the only thing she sees is her own two feet.
She’s a shoegazer.
I’m not saying that’s a bad thing.
Please don’t misunderstand, I’m not trying to be critical─having walked, sometimes even run through life with my eyes completely shut, how could someone like me, with quite literally no foresight, take issue with Sengoku, who has lived with her eyes fixed on her feet by hook or by crook, or rather, head-on without a wayward glance?
As someone who avoids looking at any part of himself, feet included, and who as a result lost sight of himself completely, I should be praising rather than criticizing Sengoku and her perpetually downturned gaze.
Step.
By step.
Always staring down at her feet─at her shoes, regardless of where she’s coming from or where she’s going. In a sense, in every sense, that’s a grueling life.
Life can be like that.
Life is like that.
It’s not for you or me to dismiss─at least, to dismiss out of hand.
Still, while hers may be a life, is she walking the path of humanity? Sengoku, who doesn’t know what path she’s following, who doesn’t even know the name of the road she’s on, has nothing to say about humanity.
The more important, the most important thing I want to point out about the way Nadeko Sengoku goes through life, however, is that if you live your life with your head down─
If you’re always focused on your feet, then you might manage to avoid falling, or tripping, or straying from the path─but you can’t avoid running into things unless you watch where you’re going.
And there’s this, which may not be all that important, but talk of humanity aside─when you take the low road.
The path of the snake, as in a real snake.
There are no feet in sight.
002
“P-Pardon me for intruding, Big Brother Koyomi.”
“Oh, it’s you. Thanks fo
r coming by, Sengoku. C’mon in.”
“I-It is an intrusion, isn’t it, Nadeko’ll just head home.”
“You can’t leave, you just got here!”
“G-G-Goodbye. It’s been fun.”
“Not yet it hasn’t?!”
“It…it was the greatest day ever.”
“You get that much of a kick out of taking off your shoes in our front hall?! Have you found the secret to happiness?!”
One day in early August─during summer break.
A day when a case involving a certain swindler had been settled for the moment, and my little sister’s friend Nadeko Sengoku had come by the house─as promised.
The excuse was that I’d gotten intel on the swindler from Sengoku, and now I was going to give her the rundown on what’d happened along with a proper thank you.
The correct thing probably would’ve been for me to go to her house to express my gratitude─but when I went to hang out over there last month, despite the fact that we had a great time playing The Game of Life, things eventually got weird and I ended up kind of fleeing from Sengoku’s mother, so I didn’t really have a strong inclination to head that way again.
Animal instinct, perhaps.
Or aberrational instinct.
Which is why I called Sengoku up and invited her over to our house─I thought about meeting her on the road and giving her an escort back, but, “That’s, okay,” was the response I got.
I mean, she’d come over to our place with Kanbaru month before last, so she knew where it was─and she used to come over all the time to see my sister when they were in elementary school anyway.
If she could get here on her own, no need to be overbearing─spare the road and spoil the child, as they say.
Nevertheless, Sengoku isn’t the most reliable kid, so I was a little anxious that she wouldn’t show up at the appointed hour, and if she didn’t I had every intention of pulling out all the stops to find her─but the doorbell rang at precisely the appointed time.
She was so punctual that it almost seemed like she’d been waiting outside the gate monitoring the atomic clock or something─she didn’t have a cell phone, though, so that wasn’t possible.
Maybe she’d synchronized her watch with it before she left the house─well, no, I guess no one’s that anal.
Every single one of Sengoku’s phone calls is precisely at the top of the hour in my cell’s log, but that’s obviously just a coincidence too.
“Anyway, come in. It’s fine, I cleaned my room and everything.”
“Ah, o-okay…”
“Everything’s set, so we can party all night!”
“E-Eek.”
I’d meant this as a joke to make her feel more relaxed, since she seemed anxious about being at my house despite knowing me for so long, but she’d taken it literally and shrunk back in terror. She was quaking in her boots.
Hmmm.
Then again, in the six months since our reunion, I’d never really seen Sengoku not panic-stricken.
Sengoku = panic-stricken.
This was her personality, so maybe there was nothing I could do about it─I guess I just needed to keep a close watch over her from here on out.
When I’d been the one darkening her door, she’d had her bangs pulled up with a hair band, but today, perhaps because she’d walked here, she was in her default mode, bangs down over her face.
I couldn’t even get a glimpse of her expression.
So to be perfectly honest, I had no idea what she was really feeling.
From the looks of it, she was being bashful, or maybe reserved, but it was equally possible that she was just repulsed.
If she felt at a loss, like she couldn’t refuse the persistent invitations of her friend’s older brother and ended up somewhere she didn’t want to be, I couldn’t feel worse, that is, what a big misunderstanding…
I want to believe that wasn’t what was going on.
If she’d only be a little more frank, it would make everything okay─seriously, even just one percent as frank as Kanbaru.
Just when Senjogahara’s acid tongue, or dispiritingly acrimonious disposition, was showing signs of mellowing─promising to go into remission after the con-man case, I just couldn’t face being hated by my little sister’s friend.
It would interfere with, impede, my exam prep.
“C’mon, get those shoes off already. Come in already.”
“R-Right. Okay. Off they come. Whatever you say. Anything at all.”
“…”
How so timid…
If she hated me, I suppose there was nothing I could do about it, but could she please not bring undue suspicion on me with her antics?
Anyway, whether she was being bashful, or watchful, or just plain waffling, Sengoku somehow made it across the threshold─and followed me right on up to the second floor.
“Tsukihi was supposed to be here too…but apparently she’s still stuck mopping up.”
“M-Mopping up? After what?”
“That swindler, obviously─not like I know what that actually means. Yeah, I have no idea what Karen or Tsukihi is thinking─”
Nor what Sengoku is.
I just don’t understand how middle school girls think, I guess─though that’s a real can of worms. How can you ever really know what anyone else is thinking?
Even Shinobu, with our link and everything─I can’t say I understand her.
“W-Wow. It’s true. It’s a party, you’re throwing Nadeko a party.”
At long last, after a whole stack of waffling─it took us thirty minutes to go a distance of not even thirty steps─Sengoku finally started to sound happy and excited when she got to my room.
Though it was less about the room and more about the snacks and juice spread out on the floor.
It was pretty modest as parties go, and there wasn’t any surprise element─in fact, the warm welcome I’d received at Sengoku’s house the other day had been a few notches more lavish─but I was just glad that it made her happy.
Though it was actually my sister who’d done all the preparation for this “party,” not me… It was after she’d put the finishing touches on it that she’d gone out to “mop up after that swindler.”
Part of me hated her thoroughness, but maybe it was only to be expected from someone who’d become the boss of all the middle school girls in the area.
Show Nadeko the same good time I would, Tsukihi had directed me─quite the direction, when it came from your own little sister.
“Wh-Whoa, popcorn. Nice! Let’s stuff our faces full of popcorn… Nadeko’s gonna pack it in till she can’t breathe. Then swallow it without chewing.”
“You’ll die.”
“Dreamy.”
Sengoku squatted down, sounding entranced.
I was a little surprised anyone could be so happy about snacks… Maybe she wasn’t allowed to eat sweets at home?
Given how cloyingly sweet her parents were to her…
It was surprising indeed.
Hup, Sengoku plopped down on a cushion and started taking off her socks. Both left and right. Apparently she wanted to be barefoot─and she was, before I could finish the thought.
She carefully folded her socks and laid them next to her.
“…”
She took off her socks almost like people take off their hats indoors, but…huh? Hang on, I dunno. I dunno I dunno. Is there some rule of etiquette that you take off your socks when you’re in someone else’s room?
I had very little experience being in other people’s rooms, so it didn’t help much by way of comparison…
I was always only going to Senjogahara’s or Kanbaru’s room…and in Kanbaru’s case, never mind socks, you could get hurt if you went in there without work boots.
“Y-You said Tsukihi had gone out…” It was clearly taking Sengoku everything she had to restrain an overwhelming urge to go buck wild on the smorgasbord of snacks laid out before her. Somehow managing to set aside her desire to sh
ove her face full of popcorn at the earliest possible opportunity, she asked, “What about Karen?”
“Her too. They’re a set, a package deal.”
True, the difference in size made it hard to bundle them together, so they might not be easy to sell as a set… What to do with them?