by Nisioisin
“Uh huh… Anyway.”
Naturally, it wouldn’t be too hard to prove that the tree was just a plain old tree─we could verify it by taking a cell sample. No exaggeration, we could end the whole business with a little trip to the school science lab.
But I didn’t think that was what Karen was after─and I didn’t think it’d make the “chickens” back down.
Scientific inquiry doesn’t necessarily do anything to dispel a visceral doubt─saying the tree had been falsely accused might be putting it a little forcefully, but establishing its innocence was a bit of a Devil’s Proof…
I knew.
I knew that this was just a plain old tree and not an aberration─but there was absolutely no way for me to get that across to someone else…
And when you get right down to it, even my sense of things isn’t always correct. It’d be the Vampire’s Proof, not the Devil’s Proof─still, if push came to shove, I could get Shinobu to confirm it.
“Karen. Can you think of a reason why no one noticed this tree all those years? Doesn’t it seem a little much to ascribe it entirely to the greenness of some karate students?”
“Not at all.”
“I see…”
If that was how she felt then so be it, but if we could only “cook up” some kind of reason, something that made sense, it seemed like we might be able to convince the other students.
I say “cook up” like I’m some sort of swindler because when you really think about it, we could probably chalk up the fact that no one ever spotted this tree to simple negligence─if not greenness.
No, maybe negligence was overstating the case, too.
But it’s only natural for there to be trees in a certain type of courtyard─Kanbaru’s house has them, for instance, and since it’s a pretty standard scenic option for a house with this kind of vibe, you don’t end up really paying it any mind.
It was neither negligence nor greenness.
It’s just that nobody paid any attention to the presence of the tree─until Karen “pointed it out,” and then it was suddenly thrust into the forefront of everyone’s mind.
Which is probably…precisely why Karen felt responsible for an old tree growing in somebody else’s courtyard, even if that person is her sensei.
“So, what did Tsukihi say about it?”
“Hm?”
“Don’t play dumb with me. There’s no way you consulted me without consulting Tsukihi first─what did the Fire Sisters’ strategist have to say?”
“Oh. She told me about Washington.”
“…The city?”
“The president.”
“…”
I assumed she meant the story about how George Washington, first president of the United States of America, cut down a cherry tree…
“D-Dare I ask why she brought up that story?”
“She said, Can’t you just break it and apologize?”
“…”
Sounds like Tsukihi when she has no interest in what you’re saying…
My littler little sister Tsukihi loves to stick her nose into other people’s troubles, but is the flipside of that her utter lack of interest in her own family’s troubles?
“I’m afraid she wasn’t actually listening to anything you had to say. What would you be apologizing for? What misdeed?”
“She was saying that regardless of what you have or haven’t done, whether you’re in the wrong or not, if something happens, just apologize.”
“Tsukihi’s entire life philosophy laid bare…”
Though in this case, Karen would probably be a hero if she broke it─seeing as that’s what everyone including her sensei was hoping for.
I was reminded afresh of Karen’s inner strength─sticking to her own opinion even when everyone around her, her erstwhile comrades no less, all saw it differently.
I, at least, wasn’t possessed of the mental fortitude to brave friction and conflict when victory promised no concrete advantage or benefit.
That alone.
That alone was enough to make me want to help her out, just this once─oops, that makes it sound like I care about my little sister.
Let’s call it an opportunity for me to put Karen in my debt.
“Heheheh.”
“What’s with the evil look?”
“Karen. How much time have we got to play with?”
“Almost none. Even tomorrow might be too late. We’re up against the possibility that someone’ll try and knock it over sometime today.”
“Gosh, at least use a saw.”
Anyway, not much time.
Almost none, or none.
Even if we did have some time, it would be of the essence─I had to assume that all the other disciples came and went as freely as Karen, so it was entirely possible one of them might go rogue. And seemingly every last one of them could topple the tree without using any tools─
“Then I know what to do. Karen, you can rely on your reliable brother.”
“Really? Then as thanks I’ll let you do whatever you please with my boobies.”
“I don’t want you to think that I was motivated by that reward, so I will not do whatever I please.”
“Playing hard to get, huh. Why, you…”
“How about I do whatever I displease.”
“Whatever you displease?! What are you planning to do to my boobies?! Anyway, big brother, what are you going to do?”
“Heh. Trust me.”
005
“Please, Hanekawa!”
“You’re just unloading it on me?”
That night, I called Hanekawa. I’d decided to give her a full rundown on the old tree and Karen’s dojo, and to ask for the benefit of her wisdom.
“I did everything I could, but I hit a wall. Please, do something for Karen. Help me, Hanekawa, you’re my only hope.”
“Aren’t you giving up a little too easily?”
I heard her sigh.
Lately Hanekawa had stopped even trying to hide her disappointment in me.
“Please. I’ll do whatever I please with your boobies if you do.”
“My boobies are my own, thank you very much…but fine. For Karen’s sake, not yours, Araragi. If I think of it that way, I can find the motivation.”
“So, what do you think?”
“Hm? Hmm? About what?”
“I mean, first off I’d like to hear your thoughts on the matter─who are you with, Karen or everybody else?”
“Karen, of course. You can’t just dispose of a living tree for no good reason. You don’t agree, Araragi?”
“Let’s see…that’s my gut feeling, but if I were actually involved, who knows─I probably would’ve gone along with everyone else’s opinion, whatever my own feeling might’ve been.”
“And there you go.”
“Hnh?”
“That’s how everyone besides Karen must have felt─what I mean is, I don’t think the majority of them actually want to dispose of the tree like you and your sister think they do. If you can just get the opinion leaders to change their minds, everything’ll be taken care of.”
“Hmm…”
Hanekawa’s done it again.
My faith in her is not misplaced.
“And I think you were exactly right about the reason no one noticed that tree up until now, Araragi─it wasn’t a question of noticing or not noticing, it was just that nobody was really aware of it. But once it’s on your mind, it’s really on your mind─it ends up catching your eye more than it would otherwise. Like your bed head, Araragi.”
“Like my bed head, huh…”
If it’s catching your eye, say something.
At the time, I mean.
“When you learn a new word, it starts cropping up everywhere─that sort of thing?”
“Yeah, I suppose so,” Hanekawa said. “Or like how nobody remembers every single shop on a street even if it’s one they walk down all the time.”
“Except for you.”
“Ahaha, as if,” Hanekawa laughed.
To cover up the truth, probably.
“This goes back to what we were talking about earlier, but I wonder if some of the disciples at the dojo actually had noticed the tree before. But once everyone started talking about the ‘tree no one had noticed,’ they felt like they couldn’t speak up. Doesn’t that seem possible?”
“Like they didn’t want to spoil the mood? Definitely seems possible.”
“But even if that explains the phenomenon itself, we still need to figure out how to spin it. It’s only natural for people to see it as a mysterious phenomenon, as a mysterious tree.”
“I mean, this confluence of coincidences might get passed down to future generations as the tale of an aberration. Who knows what kinds of stories get popular, or how…”
We can theorize about it.
But a theory is just that.
It can never be anything more.
“Just to be clear, Araragi, there’s a pandemic of panic sweeping the dojo now, right?”
“Panic is kind of an exaggeration…but yeah, there’s something of an outbreak.”
“So we just need to bring that to an end.”
“Hm? Well, sure. But countermeasures are ineffective against pandemics, aren’t they? That’s the whole problem.”
“No, that’s not necessarily true. There is a way to stop a pandemic.”
“Huh?”
“A way to stop one, or a way for one to stop─”
I guess this time there’s nothing for it.
Hanekawa made it sound like she’d prefer it to be otherwise─and once I’d heard the “wisdom” she was about to share, I understood why.
This time, even I couldn’t bring myself to say─you know everything, don’t you.
006
The epilogue, or maybe, the punch line of this story.
Well, the fact that I didn’t set Hanekawa up for her usual catchphrase is already a hell of a twist ending, but anyway, here’s what happened. Cutting straight to the conclusion, the old tree Karen wanted to protect didn’t get chopped down.
And naturally I don’t mean that it got punched or kicked over, either─it’s alive and well even as we speak. I can’t guarantee it’ll be there forever─but for now, it does seem to have weathered the storm.
As for what we did:
“A pandemic or a panic will come to an end─when it gets to where it’s going.”
It’ll stop when it reaches its goal.
Basically, when any kind of virus has spread so widely that it can’t spread any further, there’s nothing else for it to infect, so the outbreak ends of its own accord.
That’s how the food chain remains stable─though in this case, of course, we couldn’t actually let it get to where it was going since “the end of the line” for this particular pandemic was the old tree’s disposal.
“So what we have to do is move the goal posts─at this stage, everyone thinks the tree is ‘freaky,’ right? Or one step up, ‘scary’─that’s where the general awareness level is at, right? ‘Freaked out,’ ‘terrified’─we just have to move them one stage further up the ladder. That’s where we need to put the goal.”
“One stage further…”
“Which would be awe, I guess?”
Awe. Not just fear.
Fearful─reverence.
The next day, this is what Karen told her fellow disciples.
That aged tree was like the ones used in the construction of our sacred dojo─and apparently it was planted in the rear courtyard as the dojo’s guardian deity.
Which explains─the mysterious phenomenon we all experienced.
That was how she explained it to them.
That was how she spun it to them.
“Having watched unseen over the disciples of this dojo for many decades, a god of the martial arts finally revealed itself, its energy expended. To cut it down would be unthinkable─”
She adopted Hanekawa’s fairy tale pretty much as-is─Karen, of course, isn’t the kind of person who’d lie to anyone except her big brother, so first I had to dupe her.
She also isn’t the type to believe in aberrations, but a few months previously she’d experienced some weird shit, and apparently the spiritual frame story of an “invisible martial arts guardian deity” was relatively easy for her, as a martial artist, to accept.
As for the other students of the dojo, including the ones who’d only been swept along─“the truth of the matter” had been brought to light without negating their opinions and feelings, it even extrapolated from them, so that was the end of the line for the panic, or to put it another way, nothing more happened.
And─
If that was the truth, they’d never dream of harming the tree.
This fiction was not going to fool Karen’s sensei, the master of the dojo, of course. It stands to reason, though there’s no way of knowing for sure, that the lumber used to build the dojo didn’t come from the same kind of tree as our aged friend.
“But I somehow doubt that’ll come up─their sensei won’t want to spoil the mood. After all, Karen will have convinced everyone like she promised.”
Apparently, that was indeed how it went.
I guess Hanekawa’s view that the sensei, who had a dojo to run, wasn’t foolish enough to rekindle a panic that had finally abated, was on point─and so.
For the moment, the tree’s life has been prolonged─Karen, taking responsibility, protected this tree she had “found.”
“I do feel bad about lying, though…”
Having leaned on Hanekawa’s wisdom, I was in no position to bolster her spirits when she said this, but I couldn’t help trying to console her.
“It wasn’t necessarily a lie.”
“Hunh?”
“For all we know, that tree might be an aberration. I don’t know if it’s a guardian deity, but…maybe it was an aberration that no one was aware of because it was hiding its presence all along. And the dojo being built from the same kind of wood isn’t out of the question. It’s statistically possible.”
“Haha. Sure, a statistically negligible possibility.”
“Statistically negligible possibilities are still possible. And…”
Well.
Even if I meant it by way of consolation, the next thing I said might’ve gone too far.
“Thanks to the way we spun it, that tree might actually have become an aberration. One to watch over the disciples as they train.”