by Nisioisin
“You do?”
That was indeed something I was hearing for the first time.
Araragi always emphasized how they were “defenders of justice,” so I’d assumed that was their main field of activity. Now that I thought about it, they were something like the faces of our local girls’ middle school (which really is an impressive feat), and it actually seemed to make more sense for that to be their focus.
“M-hm. We’ve even given our big brother advice about his love life.”
“What? Araragi?”
Had they, now.
Araragi was asking his little sisters for romantic advice…
That was creepy.
“Oh. Yeah, I guess we did. Was it around May?” chimed in Karen, searching through her memories. “I want to say he asked us something naïve like what it meant to be in love.”
“Huh… So I guess that means he went to you two for advice about Miss Senjogahara?”
Putting aside how reliable Karen’s memory was, that’s what it had to be if it was in May.
Those two first decided to go out on Mother’s Day in the park I’d just visited─though, at the time, I’d mistakenly thought they were going out from before then.
…Hm?
What was this unnatural feeling?
Like I’d forgotten something─or rather, an easy feeling, like my thoughts had forcefully shut down and I’d leapt straight to the most convenient conclusion I could find.
Had I─looked away again?
“Hmm, I wonder. It was a while ago, and I forgot what he was talking about. I don’t even remember what we told him,” Tsukihi said dryly.
But her tone also made it feel more like she was glossing over something.
In fact, unlike Karen, Tsukihi seemed somehow suspicious about my line of questioning─or mystified by it.
Like she couldn’t get a read.
That made sense, of course─if someone who’d been left without a place to stay after a house fire started asking about what you associated with the word “fire,” you didn’t have to be the strategist to find it unnatural.
“Anger also seems like a ‘fire’ word, but that connects to what Karen said about justice. For her, justice is anger.”
“That’s right!” Karen declared again.
So vigorously that her house of cards crumbled (though she was only up to a second floor).
Talk about flushing your progress down the drain.
“In other words, anger equals flames, and flames equal justice!”
“I guess in either case, you could say that Karen and I are thinking about heated emotions.”
“Heated emotions…”
Hmm.
Then again, phrases like “frozen justice” and “cold feelings of romance” almost felt like you were talking about a sewing machine on an operating table, so Tsukihi’s words made at least more sense than Karen’s─
But were there any “heated emotions” in me?
Heated…hot…heat…no.
It felt off in some way.
“Actually, wait, Tsukihi. What do you mean? If anything equals justice, it’s heated emotions,” Karen clung to her sister’s remark.
The older sister seemed to have the stronger attachment of the two to justice─I understood that it was Tsukihi, the younger sister, who was normally more passionate about their work, but to me it looked like she was just going along with what Karen did.
It was an easy arrangement to understand, though, the big sister having an influence on her little sister─but having no siblings, it was also difficult for me to understand the easily understood relationship.
“Mm, yes, you’re right.” And possibly for this reason, Tsukihi seconded her sister before continuing, “Still, Karen, your feelings for Mizudori aren’t justice, but they’re still heated, aren’t they?”
“Hmm. I guess. Sorry, I was wrong.”
Karen apologized.
How abnormally straightforward.
She was so amenable that I could understand Araragi’s concern─of course someone like her would be deceived at will by someone like Mister Kaiki.
Wait, but who was Mizudori?
“Karen’s boyfriend,” Tsukihi replied openly when I asked. “By the way, my boyfriend’s name is Rosokuzawa.”
“Huh? What? Both of you have boyfriends?” Well, that was something I was hearing for the first time. Mark me surprised. “Araragi never told me.”
“Oh, yeah. That’s because he likes to act like they don’t exist,” Karen said.
Ah. Concise and easy to understand.
Too easy, in fact.
If you wanted to say it was something Araragi would do, it was─because at the end of the day, he doted on his little sisters.
I could feel it in every word he spoke about them, and there was also his explosive rage when Mister Kaiki duped Karen.
Really, what a big brother.
“So, out of curiosity. What’s he like?”
Although it didn’t feel like digging into the subject would help with my current problem, I asked anyway, simply interested in the Fire Sisters’ boyfriends.
But then came their answers.
“Guy’s like my big brother.”
“Someone similar to my big brother.”
I regretted having asked.
These siblings…
However, if what they were saying was true, maybe I couldn’t blame Araragi for wanting to pretend they didn’t exist─he’d be tormented by his hatred for people who were like him.
The same had to be true for his dim view of the Fire Sisters’ activities, and you could even call it self-hatred.
Yes.
He fought while lost, while feeling regret.
“I don’t know what to do with him.” Karen shook her head like she really didn’t know what to do. “I want to get his seal of approval somehow, but he won’t even meet Mizudori or Rosokuzawa. He can be small when it comes to that kind of thing.”
“You’re right. But then he has the nerve to introduce us to Miss Senjogahara. The nerve!”
“Ahaha. That’s cute, though.” I felt bad, but Karen and Tsukihi sitting there looking legitimately troubled was a bit amusing. I even forgot the situation I was in and laughed. “At the end of the day, it’s just that Araragi feels like his two cute little sisters were taken from him, and that’s making him envy those guys, right? Like he’s burning up inside, with jealousy─”
Gulp.
My own words─made me gulp in shock.
Burning up─with jealousy?
Burning?
Envy.
Ah, yes.
That was another one─another keyword so clearly related to fire that it should have been one of the first things to come to mind.
Burning─envy.
Even if Araragi was doing it as a joke, the fact that their boyfriends didn’t exist to him was equivalent to looking away from the truth─just like with me.
It was the one way we were the same.
Looking away.
Turning away from reality.
And the cause was one of the most powerful human emotions, one of the seven deadly sins, even─envy.
Heated emotions─consuming envy.
Thus I was burning─with jealousy.
My hands, shaking from the truth thrust before me so abruptly that I didn’t have the time to turn away─brought my fresh house of cards crashing down.
060
I’m sure there isn’t a single person in modern-day society who hasn’t thought of how great it would be if the human brain worked like a hard drive.
When I say that, I mean the ability to immediately erase any memories (records) that we want to forget as if they never happened, to overwrite any elements of reality that we want to avert our eyes from, and to never have to be brought down after suddenly recalling our traumas and fears─how wonderful would it be if you had such a brain?
And howsoever it came to be─that wonder seemed to be mine.
&n
bsp; Cutting a memory loose, from the mind.
To take the most recent example, my morning conversation with Episode on the way to school was a good illustration─I, being me, in my own way recalled what happened over spring break and felt like I was speaking to him in fear, but any observer would have seen my actions as utterly bizarre.
I was having a nice chat with someone who had tried to kill me.
How abnormal can you get?
I was merely taken aback by how much of a normal conversation we were having? No, it might be one thing if we were characters in a manga or drama─but how could I do something that frighteningly eccentric as an actual human being?
There was something clearly abnormal about it.
The only person who didn’t notice was the person doing it.
So─I’d forgotten.
While I naturally had forgotten the moment that my organs were sent flying (I thought the shock had caused those memories to disappear, but that wasn’t it)─I’d also forgotten the fear, the terror I must have felt for him.
My body remembered.
But my mind had forgotten.
No, I’d go so far as to say that even my body had forgotten.
Which is why I was able to carry on with a healthy life even after that happened to me─I didn’t live each day tormented by regret like Araragi.
I didn’t know when it started.
I didn’t know when I first learned to act like some kind of computer.
Judging from my current state, though, it was from before I became Tsubasa Hanekawa─it only made sense if I could do so unconsciously even before I was old enough to be myself.
I had no idea why I was able to acquire this supremely convenient ability that put an aberration to shame, this thing you could call a kind of skill.
I had a feeling─that the memory of whatever caused it was the very first thing I cut loose from myself.
So then─I’d been something of an aberration prior to my encounter with the aberration known as the Afflicting Cat. More than anyone else, I was close to being a monster, and at long last I began to feel the weight of Mister Oshino’s remark that aberrations are nothing more than triggers.
No, maybe there was no Afflicting Cat at all.
Maybe Black Hanekawa─was always inside me.
And, or possibly.
The Tyrannical Tiger, too.
Just like the way the past always follows our lives─no matter how much we feel like we forgot it, how much we pretend it never happened.
Maybe it haunts us.
Maybe it never ends.
Mister Oshino had set a bar at twenty years old, but even that seemed unreliable to me─at least, so long as I wanted it that way.
So long as I continued to be me.
Forever─
Maybe I could continue to be me forever.
Just as Sherlock Holmes was forced to take the stage after he retired, not even allowed to die─like he continued.
Maybe I would continue.
I probably would continue.
…But this was it.
I was going to end it.
I had to end it─I was at my limit.
If anything, having been able to do it for all this time, fifteen years, maybe eighteen years, was bizarre.
Fooling myself so I could go on.
What was truly bizarre was being able to make such an absurd thing work for all this time─the only possible endpoint was bankruptcy.
I couldn’t paper over it any longer.
I hadn’t reached a limit─this was a terminus.
I continued to work on making a house of cards with the Araragi sisters (Tsukihi was the winner all the way. I’d make it pretty far but could never finish my tower. So, Miss Hanekawa, there are things you can’t do, Tsukihi remarked), had dinner, together with Araragi’s parents, after they got back from work, and shut myself in Araragi’s second-floor room, alone.
It was only day two, but I already felt oddly used to the room. It must have been because it was Araragi’s.
So first, in a show of bad manners, I collapsed on the bed with my uniform on and buried my face in a pillow.
“Phew…” I let out a lethargic voice.
Exhausted─I was not.
If anything, I felt on edge.
“We may never be able to meet again─Araragi.”
But there was nothing I could do about that.
Because if my reasoning was correct─and it was correct─the Tyrannical Tiger presented itself in this town precisely because Araragi was absent.
I continued to roll around on the bed for another five minutes or so.
Not for no reason. There was a reason.
In animal terms, this was marking behavior─me leaving behind traces of myself on Araragi’s bed.
The traces I didn’t want to leave behind at the Hanekawa residence.
I was trying to leave them behind here─in Araragi’s room.
Knowing him, he would notice.
Even if we never met again, some small part of him would probably remember me whenever he slept in this bed.
And I would content myself with that.
I’d be satisfied. Self-satisfied.
If my reasoning was correct, and if everything I was about to do went well─then no, I didn’t think I would ever be able to meet Araragi again.
If he got back safely and I was able to be there, waiting for his return─that me would no longer be the me that he knew.
Episode had said the current me and the spring break me seemed like different people, and this would be even more dramatic─Araragi would meet a me that was practically a different person.
Because confronting my past.
Because defeating this tiger─meant that.
“Okay. That’s enough.”
By the end, I wasn’t sure if I was leaving behind my scent or smelling Araragi’s, but I finally decided to make my move around half past seven.
“Uh oh. I need to hurry a bit.”
I had rolled around too much.
Of course, since the Hanekawa residence had burned down in the afternoon, there didn’t seem to be much proof that the tiger was nocturnal like the cat─but it was still a point of reference.
I started by taking off my uniform and putting it on hangers.
After that, rummaging through a clothes case for some of Araragi’s casual wear that looked relatively easy to move around in, I wore those.
Pajamas were one thing, but I did have a few qualms about borrowing regular clothes without permission. Araragi, however, was the one who always wanted to see me in something other than my school uniform, so I hoped this would in fact be a dream come true.
A mischievous thought even popped into my head, and I considered taking a picture of myself and sending it to Araragi─though I still had no idea what kind of situation he was in.
It might annoy him, so I decided not to contact him─but when I thought about it, that was a convenient excuse. Me acting like I was being a sensible person. I’d have immediately tried to get in touch with him like Miss Senjogahara if I was really worried─wasn’t that the human thing to do?
In that case, I’d be shameless. I’d send him a pic to cheer him on. I felt like I was still able to encourage him.
I took my cell phone out of the pocket of my now-hanging uniform─then held out my arm and snapped a photo of myself. I am a high school girl, so I’d been using a cell phone for a decently long amount of time, but it was my first time taking a selfie.
I messed up a few times but quickly got the hang of it and managed to take a pretty good picture, if I do say so myself. I attached the image to an email and sent it to Araragi without adding a word of text─then turned my phone off.
The next time it was on.
I’d no longer be of this world.
So it was closer to harassment than an innocent prank.
It was like I’d sent him a funeral portrait.
It was like bullying by a girl who’d
always been called a model student.