Koyomimonogatari Part 2

by Nisioisin

  “Feh! I know not! Fie on thy stepwise consumption tax increases, I would have them raise it to ten percent directly!”

  “Getting a little ahead of yourself there.”

  Sure, it would be a lot easier to calculate.

  But I’d be the one paying it, not you.

  Taking responsibility for Shinobu, practically speaking, meant providing for a whole other person for the rest of my life, I was beginning to realize.

  “Anyway! Without tax ’tis but a single coin! Wherefore would she not pay! Wherefore would she try to pass off these self-serving donuts as our snack!”

  Now she was just thinking about it minus my tax burden.

  The consumption tax… Well, just because I’ve started not to ignore social studies doesn’t mean I know enough about politics to comment, but that’s one tax that seems inexplicable to me. A tax on consuming things… So then, living, just living, has to cost you?

  “But when there isn’t a special offer, one coin wouldn’t be enough even without the tax.”

  “Yet do they not have special offers throughout most all the year? I have noted that ’tis in fact the periods without a special offer that seem few and far between.”

  “I mean, I don’t think that’s actually true, but…”

  But it does seem like that donuttery, that famous chain, is having a hundred-yen sale every time I turn around. I’d be curious to tabulate the actual numbers.

  “Speaking of, they were just having a half-off sale, weren’t they…”

  Hm.

  Speaking of that speaking of, it used to be that every single time they’d have a hundred-yen sale, this vampire would whine take me, take me (to the point that we once had a chance encounter with the swindler), but she didn’t say much of anything about this most recent half-off sale, did she?

  “If they were half off,” I went on, “a rough estimate would be, a little less than three hundred yen for five donuts?”

  “Methinks a half-off sale is beyond the pale. I would that they cease selling themselves so cheaply,” Shinobu said with heartfelt emotion.

  So that’s why she didn’t press me to take her to the Mister Donut Shinobu Branch during the sale─it wasn’t out of consideration for my studying needs or anything.

  “Perhaps ’tis the way of Japan in this day and age to raise the tax while making things cheaper, but behold, I envision the day when that shall make its end. ’Tis needful that the people of this nation come to appreciate that ‘the finer things are costly.’”

  “Don’t talk politics. And don’t lament the state of the nation.”

  You’re a little blond girl.

  And a vampire.

  “We must make the people realize that for such things to cost a pittance, so too must someone labor for a pittance.”

  “And what I’m saying is, forget a pittance, Senjogahara made these donuts for me for nothing.”

  “Eh? My lord, thou hast not paid her?”

  “Who’s ever heard of a girlfriend who demands money for bringing her boyfriend a treat?”

  “Balderdash… That miser?”

  “…”

  Senjogahara didn’t exactly have a great reputation.

  Considering what happened last month, though, at this point Shinobu Oshino owed Senjogahara her life same as I did…not that this little girl seemed to feel any gratitude for it.

  “Have a care, my lord. She may have put something in these donuts.”

  “Come on, what kind of a girlfriend do you think I have… If she did put something into them, it was most likely love.”

  “Last month thou didst experience firsthand the fact that cooked just so, even love may be transformed to poison, my lord.”

  Shinobu cautiously plucked one of the donuts off the plate with a dubious hmm.

  Exactly the way you’d handle hazardous material.

  I bridled at Senjogahara’s home cooking being treated like that, but since I was well aware of the special place donuts occupied in Shinobu’s heart, I had no choice but to overlook her behavior.

  She felt about donuts the way Doraemon feels about dorayaki─I wonder when they first introduced that into the comic?

  “Hrrm. Nothing abnormal about the texture. Though like as not that toxic wench’s artifice would not reveal itself to the touch…”

  “Toxic wench… She retired her acid tongue a while ago.”

  “Hath it not reemerged of late?”

  With another hmmmm, Shinobu brought the donut right up to her face and inspected it. She seemed to be using her former-vampire eyesight to visually confirm that there were no abnormalities on its surface. The only thing she’d be able to see would be the sugar it was coated with…

  “No, in fact she’s been nothing but sweet lately, up to and including bringing me donuts like this.”

  “’Tis only to be expected. All are kind to those whose death draws near.”

  “Nobody’s death is drawing near. I’ll take care of it. Somehow. I’d stake my life on it.”

  “’Tis that very tendency to stake thy life so readily that hath brought thee to this pass. My master hath not a whit of introspection within him─hm.”

  Something in Shinobu’s attitude changed.

  That is, she maintained the same severe expression, but the intensity stepped up a notch.

  “What of this hole?”

  “The hole?”

  “’Tis suspect. Like as not she hath used it to inject something into the donut.”

  So saying, Shinobu glared up at me─through the hole in the donut.

  “…Come on, leave out the tired set-ups. Donuts have holes, that’s the whole point.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Huh?”

  “Aye, till now I have accepted that such is their design, ne’er pondering deeply ’pon the matter, but…wherefore do donuts have holes? Is it not merely a waste of potential donut?”

  This time she stuck her finger through the hole and started spinning the donut like a hula hoop.

  Treating it so cavalierly just because it wasn’t from Mister Donut─I wanted to tell her not to play with her food.

  I may not be well-educated enough to know when Doraemon’s love of dorayaki was introduced, but happily I did know why donuts have holes.

  That is, I just found out today. Mere moments ago, in fact.

  It was Senjogahara who told me, when she came to drop off the donuts─she was kind enough to lay it out for me when I displayed my ignorance by saying, Man, you must be a real perfectionist to put the holes in them like this.

  Just to be clear, when I say she was kind enough, I don’t mean that sarcastically. She really did explain it in a generous manner that was easy to understand.

  “Shinobu. Donuts with holes in the middle like that are called torus donuts. The hole allows the heat to pass easily and evenly through the whole donut while it’s frying.”

  “Thermal efficiency? Is that of what you speak?”

  “Yeah, something like that. If there was no hole in the middle, the center wouldn’t fry well. Which is why they remove it.”

  Remove might be the wrong word in terms of how they’re prepared, but I was putting comprehensibility above all else.

  “Ah…is that so?”

  “Well? Are you impressed by my erudition?”

  “So they call this shape a torus.”

  “That’s the part you’re impressed by?”

  “What difference be there twixt a ring and a torus?”

  “That’s a question of volume… A three-dimensional form like a donut or a bagel is called a torus, whereas a ring just means a circle, I think, or…uh…”

  “How now, my master. If canst not unravel such a trifling question, how wilt thou penetrate the exam put forth by the National Center?”

  Nope.

  This kind of question ain’t gonna be on the national exam.

  “I wonder, is the same true of the hole in a Baumkuchen?”

  “No, when they co
ok a Baumkuchen they stick a pole through the center─Baumkuchen and donuts are made totally differently…”

  “And what of donuts that have no holes? How are they fried? Hast said that the heat would not reach to the center. Even Mister Donut maketh many such donuts, yet ’tis not as if they remain uncooked. Thus is the hole not superfluous?”

  “I think you’re getting a little too deep into their structure… Don’t lose sight of your original goal. Which was to inspect these particular donuts.”

  I looked at the clock. It was already 3:30.

  My break was only supposed to be thirty minutes, so I’d already used up my allotment─it’s not as if I didn’t have some stoppage time factored in, but sadly my plan to enjoy a refined snack of donuts, replenish my blood sugar levels, and rest my mind seemed to have ended in failure.

  Well.

  Eating five donuts all by myself already seemed like a bit much in any case─so while it did change their purpose somewhat, I’d bring this scene to a close by providing Shinobu with enough donut to shut her up and stop her endless bellyaching.

  “Shinobu. Enough with investigating the texture, it’s driving me crazy, move on to the flavor already.”

  “Hm? Eh?”

  “I’m saying the only way to find out if it’s poisoned is to taste it for poison.”

  “Art thou telling me to serve as thy poison taster? How cruel my master is, to treat me as the canary in his coalmine! I am speechless!”

  Even as she said this, Shinobu’s expression relaxed.

  In an instant she was all a-sparkle.

  To put it in anime terms, the marks on her cheeks got more pronounced─her eyes were glittering.

  “Being thus treated by thee suffuses me with warmth, my lord! Aye, like a well-fried donut!”

  “Trying to make it clever just makes it more complicated… Now eat up. Eat up and shut up.”

  Hopefully she’d keep quiet at least while she was chewing the damn things─as her guardian I had no intention of teaching her that it’s okay to talk with your mouth full.

  I mean, even supposing Senjogahara had poisoned these donuts, these provisions for the troops, that wouldn’t be an issue for Shinobu─sea bream even when it’s gone bad, as the expression goes, likewise for a drained vampire.

  Someone who could gobble up a pair of iron handcuffs without batting an eyelash wasn’t going to die from a little thing like a poisoned donut.

  “Now now, be not hasty, my lord. I warn thee, assume not that I shall eat anything so long as it may be called a donut. If thou thinkest one donut made by some nameless peasant can placate me, thou art gravely mistaken. If dost wish to slip the net of my investigation, wouldst do well to hie thee straightaway to yon Mister Donut Shinobu Branch and procure for me the new Pon de Ring Rare Choco Golden. Canst even believe it? The Pon de Ring Rare alone would be revolutionary, yet also have they made it in the form of a golden chocolate donut. How high might they fly, will they continue to heap glory upon glory? I have yet to taste the thing, but even as I envision it, ’tis as though the flavor fills my mouth. Aye, before all and sundry, surely I shall cry out at this donut of Japan for reals?!”

  Cry out, she did.

  Her cry cut off her discourse, so despite her earlier lamentations on the state of our economy, it came out sounding like a triumphant shout extolling our nation.

  003

  I should note at this point that my sweetheart Hitagi Senjogahara is anything but a good cook─or more accurately, she has somehow managed to live thus far without utilizing kitchens for the most part.

  Her sickly elementary school years, her middle school years of relentless study, and her high school years spent in the clutches of an aberration─make no mistake, she was a model student throughout all of it, but she never seems to have gotten around to working on her cooking─though that said, or maybe nevertheless, now that her aberration problem has been dealt with for the moment, she seems to have carved out the space to pursue “everything else”─those fields that she had seen as extraneous; so while her progress may be baby steps, her skill in that regard does seem to be on an upward trajectory.

  To be honest, the five donuts lined up on the plate were of wildly varying size and shape, diverse you might say, or uneven, or mismatched, a real motley crew. From their outward appearance it wasn’t surprising that Shinobu might be wary of them, but when it came to their flavor, they apparently received a passing grade from the famous donut critic Shinobu Oshino.

  After all, she did cry out for reals?!

  Cutting off her discourse.

  If Mister Donut’s “Pon de Ring Rare Choco Golden” (whose nature remains unfathomable to me, never having seen one) gets three Michelin stars, maybe this garnered at least one?

  “The lass hath done it! I had ever thought that one day she might do something, but to think that today is that day!”

  “I’m pretty sure that day was the second of last month, when she saved both our lives…”

  “Hmm! I have yet to truly sink my teeth into the study of the donut, yet I know enough to hail this as a great achievement!”

  “Seems like sinking your teeth into it would be the only way to go about it…”

  Then again, she had sunk her teeth into no small number of donuts.

  So it really had to be something special.

  “’Tis well done! Summon Miss Tsundere! I would praise her in person!”

  “Come on…‘my compliments to the chef’?”

  Since we were talking about donuts, strictly speaking maybe it was her compliments to the pastry chef.

  Hmmm.

  Well, naturally they weren’t poisoned, but I’d accepted them to savor the sentiment more than the flavor, so I was genuinely pleased to see Shinobu, cream smeared all around her mouth, praising them to the skies like that.

  Not that I’d done anything myself, of course.

  “But, after having basically avoided contact with Senjogahara this whole time, you can’t possibly feel compelled to face her because of some donuts.”

  “I wish to apologize to her for having called her Miss Tsundere heretofore. Even if I cannot yet call her Mister Donut, I think it meet to dub her Master Donut.”

  “That’s a hell of a thing to dub someone…”

  Isn’t that a little over the top?

  That’s not just high praise, it feels like it’s shading into sarcasm─given that Senjogahara was still at the “The adventure begins!” stage with cooking in general, it seemed frankly dubious for this deep-fried pastry alone to receive such a high evaluation.

  People say that pastries are harder to make than anything on the menu of our so-called three square meals… You can’t wing it with pastries, where the measurements and timing demand a level of precision far surpassing other kinds of cooking. Oh, hmm, could that be it?

  I think I get it.

  A convincing theory formed in my mind─knowing Senjogahara, something that demands precision might actually be easier for her. Relying on instructions and instruments instead of her own palate, she would be less likely to make a careless mistake. Maybe that was the logic here.

  And with fried pastries you can’t even taste them until they’re basically done… Only the shape rested on the sensibilities of the chef, which explained the chaos in that department.

  “…”

  That was just according to logic.

  Maybe the truth is that Senjogahara’s distinctive palate and Shinobu’s unique one just happened to line up.

  Now I needed to taste my sweetheart’s homemade donuts for myself─I thought, reaching out to take one.

  But Shinobu snatched away the donut I had my eye on, along with the whole plate.

  “…Hunh? What’re you doing?”

  “What art thou doing, my lord? The poison tasting is not yet complete.”

  “No, it is. You already went ahead and ate one, and you said it tasted good.”

  “’Tis yet too early to say. It could be a slow-actin
g poison. A slow-acting but mortal poison,” Shinobu warned.

  Her mouth was slathered with cream and sugar, but the words emanating from it were vigilant.

  I thought about cleaning off those messy lips with a kiss.

  Not that I actually did, mind you.