by Nisioisin
“I do. And.”
All of a sudden I became concerned about my cell phone’s battery. I hadn’t charged it since the new year began, so it could die during our conversation. Where was my charger… Had I thrown it away again?
“She’s not the type of person to give the same warning twice.”
“…”
“That’s why it’s weird. Then who the hell was the Cat’s Eye who broke into my hotel room and left me a letter with the identical message?”
“I don’t know, but it wouldn’t take a Cat’s Eye to leave a letter in your room while you were away.”
“Hnh?” Not taking her meaning, I let my honest reaction slip past my defenses. “What are you getting at? Are you saying the security at my hotel is too lax?”
No, Senjogahara didn’t even know the name of the hotel where I was staying. I didn’t think so, anyway… I hadn’t told her, had I?
“It’s not like hotel security is all that great to begin with,” she said. “The guests are free to come and go as they please…”
Fair point.
In luxury hotels you need a key card to operate the elevator, and it’s specifically keyed to your floor, but even then you can get around it easily. You just need to piggyback on someone else, the same way you’d get past an apartment building’s auto-lock.
“But even if it’s easy to get into the hotel itself, entering into somebody’s room is a different story. My hotel uses contactless key cards, so no chance of a duplicate key. If you wanted to get into someone’s room, you’d need an inside man on the hotel staff, or someone to access the computer system from outside─”
“Take it down a notch. I could do it, and I’m no Cat’s Eye, nor do I have some organization backing me up.”
“What’re you saying?”
“If it’s just an envelope, you could slide it under the door.”
“…”
I digested Senjogahara’s matter-of-fact words, added them up over and over again, and found no room for objection.
Upon consideration, it was definitely strange that the envelope had been lying in front of the bathroom. If someone had broken into the room, they’d have left it on the coffee table or something. In which case, the fact that the envelope was on the floor appeared to be proof positive that Senjogahara’s deduction was right on the money.
“How do you like that. It’s a conclusion worthy of consideration.”
It was more than that, it was almost definitely correct, but I maintained some outward diffidence. Or maybe I was just bluffing. No, forget maybe, I was just bluffing. What a pitiful adult, puffing himself up in front of a child.
Or maybe pitiless.
Miserable either way.
Senjogahara was so off-handed about it, and maybe I was blowing the whole thing out of proportion, but wouldn’t most people suspect an intruder if they came back to their hotel room to find a mysterious letter lying on the floor?
It’d be one thing if it was right inside, but if the letter were thrust in forcefully enough to make it halfway across the room, who would connect it to the crack under the door?
It was at least a passable bluff.
“Which hotel you’re staying at isn’t that hard for anyone to figure out, either,” Senjogahara let my bluff pass entirely.
What a saint.
“At least, it’d be worth the hassle for whoever wants you to give up on this job. That person tailing you is a concern…”
“The tail might have nothing to do with this, it could be connected to another matter.”
“True, you’ve had your share of adventures in this town…though I’d be more concerned if it weren’t related.”
“Same old same old, I’m used to it. Don’t give it a second thought.” Naturally, I’m not tailed often enough to say same old same old, but I figured I could give Senjogahara a little peace of mind.
Coming to me with this job was already anxiety inducing for her, and I just didn’t have the heart to give her more to worry about.
“In fact I’d be grateful if it was the ‘same old.’ I don’t want this nice, clean job to get complicated at this stage, which is why I called you. I thought you might have some idea who it might be.”
“Unfortunately, no.”
After all that build-up, Senjogahara’s answer to my question was disproportionately plain. Even bland. So plain that if we were classmates, I’d be worried that she hated me. Well, she did hate me, of course.
“I haven’t even told anyone that I hired you in the first place.”
“Just because you haven’t told anyone doesn’t mean they couldn’t find out. Maybe someone was listening in while you were talking to me in the hall at Araragi’s house.”
“No chance. But…I suppose Araragi could have figured it out if he secretly checked my cell phone?”
“Hey, hey. He’s not the kind of guy who’d do that.”
I surprised myself by saying this. So I had some esteem for Koyomi Araragi, which was unexpected. Though I doubt hearing that would please him one bit.
“No, he’s not. You’re absolutely right. And even if he caught on from the way I’ve been behaving, he wouldn’t hide behind something as roundabout as an anonymous letter. He’d confront you face to face.”
“Sure,” I agreed readily. What the hell was going on? Was I an Araragi sympathizer or something? But even if I was, I could be mistaken. “Senjogahara. How would he actually react if he found out not just that I’m involved, but that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel? You’ve been totally preoccupied with keeping it secret, but what would he say if he did confront me face to face? Would he tell me to ‘withdraw’ too?”
“I guess so. Or no, I wonder…”
“You don’t know?”
“Even I don’t understand him completely.”
That was like admitting defeat as his girlfriend, I thought, but then, women who claim to know everything there is to know about their boyfriends are infinitely more frightening, so Senjogahara was honestly in the right.
Well, I don’t know, but at least she was honest.
I like honest people.
They’re easier to con.
“Well, I’ll look into it,” I said, “just to be on the safe side… After all, unlike Gaen-senpai, whoever wrote that letter might try to interfere with my plan.”
“Uh huh… It was handwritten, right? The letter?”
“Yeah, it was. It seemed as though any notable characteristics of the handwriting had been intentionally obscured.”
“I see… But I might be able to glean something from it. It’s already too late tonight, but maybe you could show it to me tomorrow?”
“Didn’t you say you had no idea?”
“Just to be on the safe side.”
“Your vigilance is appreciated, but…” I considered concealing the truth somehow but abandoned the idea because I knew Senjogahara wouldn’t buy it. I opted to give it to her straight instead. “It’s impossible. I already tore up the letter.”
“Wha…”
“I flushed it down the toilet, so there’s no chance of piecing it back together.”
“Why would you do that? It was important evidence.”
“Evidence? I’m not the police. And you know perfectly well that I immediately dump anything that’s annoying or unnecessary.”
“Indeed I do. Given how you dumped me.”
“How’s that? I dumped you?”
“Slip of the tongue…” Senjogahara loudly clicked the tongue in question, then added, “I got confused for a second and thought I was talking to Araragi.” I wasn’t sure if her correction even worked as an excuse. If it was meant to hurt me, it was a catastrophic, nay, cataclysmic failure.
But I’d let it go.
Why torment a kid.
Evidence and police work aside, disposing of the letter had definitely been a bit hasty. Now Senjogahara must be wondering if there’d been any letter to begin with. She was entitled to a bit of sarcasm.
“Well, the letter was in my room, in other words it was meant for me. I’ll take care of it as part of the job, so don’t concern yourself about it or feel like you need to do something. Just go be with Araragi.”
“No can do. Sure, I want you to do your job, and I’ll leave that entirely up to you, but I still have to do my best.”
Hmm.
That was more than just dedication, she was probably envisioning a situation where I “withdrew,” or betrayed her and ran away─most prudent.
Well, I wasn’t going to ask what she had cooking. And if she had other irons in the fire for resolving the situation, maybe I ought to dial back the frequency of my phone calls.
“By the way, Kaiki.”
“What?”
“Do you actually intend to make a hundred-day pilgrimage? That’s not a lie?”
“Nope. Okay, it’s not exactly true either. I don’t intend to climb those steps a hundred times. I’m no spring chicken. But I’m planning on going every day until the end of January.”
“Every day…”
“Which means my outlay will be around 300,000 yen. It’s a necessary expense, but the severance package I received from Gaen-senpai will more than cover it.”
The rest would go into my pocket. A hefty payout.
“Ten thousand yen a visit… That’s kind of like going to a hostess bar, isn’t it?” remarked Senjogahara, as if that were somehow disquieting, though her tone was perfectly level.
A hostess bar. For my part, I had likened Nadeko Sengoku to a gimmicky piggy bank─what a difference in sensibility. I was the over-thirty middle-aged man, and Senjogahara the current high school girl, so it was as if we’d traded our metaphors.
“To be honest, I’m kind of anxious about that,” she continued. “If you go every day, you might be seduced by Nadeko Sengoku. She might win you over to her side.”
“What, are you jealous, Senjogahara?”
I heard a click. Apparently that joke had been over the line.
It was probably a good thing we’d been speaking on the phone and not in person─if we had been at Mister Donut, I might have gotten a merciless dousing.
I thought about waiting for her to call back, but as the adult, I’d yield on this one. To top it off, the first words out of my mouth when I called her back were: “I’m sorry.” What a guy, if I do say so myself. Though there are few things in the world as unreliable as an apology from me.
“It’s no laughing matter.” Senjogahara didn’t explicitly accept my apology, but she let it go and restarted the conversation. “She’s a devilish one, that girl.”
“…Did you know Nadeko Sengoku before all this?”
“No, I think I told you, she was Araragi’s acquaintance, his friend. I’d never even heard of her until she became a god.”
“So how can you say she’s devilish? I got the sense that she was just a fool.”
A crazy fool, but still.
“Right, you mentioned that. But I think it’s precisely because I’ve never met her that I can make that judgment─I wasn’t sure what to think when you said you were going to see her once every three days, but I feel compelled to warn you. Think twice about visiting her every single day.”
“…”
Being warned to withdraw, being warned about visiting Nadeko Sengoku every day. It was a hell of a day for warnings.
Just to be clear─and this is a very important point─I cannot stand being warned, by anyone.
“Duly noted. I’ll take your kind warning into consideration. Perhaps you’re right, perhaps it’d be best not to go every day.”
“I just hope the snake’s venom isn’t addictive,” sighed Senjogahara, sounding like she knew it all.
Naturally I let it go in one ear and out the other.
We hung up without so much as a good night, and this time I plugged my cell phone into the charger, which I apparently hadn’t gotten rid of. Then, as a nightcap, I began to update my notes.
Day number three.
It had been a busy day.
Yotsugi Ononoki and Izuko Gaen. Nadeko Sengoku using a snake for cat’s cradle. My mysterious tail. Breaking and entering at the Sengoku residence, the closet thrown open to reveal its contents. And the letter dropped─no, slipped into my room. The phone call with Senjogahara.
I added illustrated versions of these events to my notebook, which took about an hour.
Then, turning the page, I decided to make my to-do list. The plan was in place, and with all the worrisome elements lined up neatly before me, now if ever was the time to do so.
☆ Hundred-day pilgrimage to Kita-Shirahebi Shrine (until the end of January)
☆ Vigilance re: the person tailing me (Vigilance Level 2)
☆ Investigation into the identity of the letter-sender (Necessity Level 4)
☆ Explore Gaen-senpai’s motives (Low Priority)
☆ Avoid Koyomi Araragi (Top Priority)
☆ Avoid the Araragi sisters (Best Effort)
That about covered it, broadly speaking, I thought, before hastily adding:
☆ Buy cat’s cradle
One day of using an ouroboros for cat’s cradle was enough to last a lifetime.
028
The next few days passed in a humdrum routine of trips to Kita-Shirahebi Shrine, where dwelt the ophidian deity Nadeko Sengoku─it’d be nice if I could say so at this point, but unfortunately, reality isn’t that generous. Before I could begin my slow and steady progress, there was one more hurdle to overcome.
If it was even a hurdle.
The following day, January fourth. The New Year’s holiday was over, and the world had more or less returned to business as usual. The first thing I did that day was go get some breakfast.
Come to think of it, I hadn’t eaten anything since the trip to Mister Donut two nights prior. If I’m not careful, I forget to eat. Something is definitely wrong with how my brain processes hunger. Though maybe it’s just that my appetite for money outweighs my appetite for food.
After enjoying the breakfast buffet at the restaurant on the first floor of the hotel (I love the atmosphere of the all-you-can-eat experience. Or maybe the all-you-can behavior itself), I returned to my room. Then I took my morning shower, and when the time was right, I set out. I thought about trying to seal the crack under the door with tape, but if I started getting worked up over every little thing there’d be no end to it, so I gave up on the idea.
At the front desk, I asked, “Excuse me, is there anywhere around here that would sell a cat’s cradle?” I figured somewhere like Tokyu Hands or Loft would have them, but despite the fact that those places sell literally everything, they have a mysterious tendency to lack exactly the things I happen to be looking for (given that they’re big chains, maybe it’s some kind of fraud-prevention effort). So I was being cautious.
But the concierge just said, “Hunh?” and cocked his head in confusion. It was no way to react to a guest, but I understood how he felt, so I said, “Never mind.” I ended up making for Tokyu Hands after all. Even if they didn’t have an actual cat’s cradle, surely they’d have some string in the arts and crafts section.
I strolled down the main drag, keeping an eye on my surroundings just in case─in case someone was following me or watching me─but I simply couldn’t tell. Perhaps someone was tailing me, perhaps nobody was.
Gaen-senpai wouldn’t give the same warning twice, but there was a one-in-a-million chance that Ononoki might be lying in wait for me. Yet that didn’t seem to be the case either.
Maybe she was off playing with Araragi at the moment. It hadn’t been true when we met in the past, but nowadays she seemed to have become quite the liberated shikigami.
Good for her.
I guess we owe our thanks to Araragi for that.
I decided to do a little shopping. As long as I put another 10,000-yen note into the offertory box, I was pretty sure Her Snakeliness would rush out excitedly, saying, “Here’s Nadeko!” But I think it w
as bothering me that Senjogahara had compared what I was doing to visiting a hostess bar. I was buying some kind of offering just to emphasize that my trips to the shrine were devotional in nature.
Some kind of offering.
Fruit or flowers, the usual choice for a shrine, would only exacerbate the hostess-bar image, so I nixed that idea.
Was I being too uptight?
