by Nisioisin
“……”
Bear it…
A retort would only cause the knife to dig in deeper…
“Why not just let it go and drop dead?” Senjogahara continued. “Even a grasshopper becomes useful as a carcass when the ant deigns to feed on its nutrients.”
“Next time we meet, it’ll be in court!”
I couldn’t bear it.
I lacked the necessary mental fortitude.
“You say so, Senjogahara, but doing different things after graduation doesn’t have to mean not walking down the same path, yeah?”
“True. You’re absolutely right. But if I have a sudden change of heart in college because I’m going to co-ed mixers all the time, what will I do?”
“Ready to make the most of campus life, are you?!”
“In that case, should we live together after graduation?” she suggested all too casually. “That way, even if we’re doing different things, we might spend even more time together than we do now.”
“Well…that’s not a bad idea.”
“Not a bad idea? I don’t like your tone.”
“…Yes, I’d like to. Please, let’s do that.”
“You think?”
With that, she cast her eyes back down on her textbook in the most unassuming manner. She was acting nonchalant, and the timing of her remark had made it sound almost frivolous, but even someone as unobservant as me saw by now that she wasn’t the type to jest at such a moment.
This was Hitagi Senjogahara I was dealing with.
…Anyway, she seemed to be thinking two steps ahead.
Or instead of taking it that way─maybe I should receive it as a sign of Senjogahara’s earnest interest in our relationship. Not many high school couples took going out as seriously as she did.
Going out, though. What did that mean?
It was a verbal promise not backed up by anything.
Sigh.
It was no good. I’d never gone out with a girl before, so I didn’t just not know how to take the initiative, I had no idea how to react in my situation.
Not even the first clue.
May I ought to have played some dating sims.
They’d have served as reference, at least.
Then again, beating a game was one thing, while you could never “clear” reality.
“You’re sighing a lot, Araragi. Did you know that a small happiness slips away every time you sigh?”
“If that’s true, I’d have to measure my loss in K’s…”
“How many you’ve let away doesn’t concern me at all, but I wish you wouldn’t sigh around me. It makes me sick.”
“You’re horrible.”
“What I meant is lovesick.”
“…Er, as the straight man, I don’t even know how to respond to that one.”
I was even feeling a little happy.
A clever trap for the straight man.
“By the way, Araragi,” Senjogahara said, “I’ve never broken up with a boy before.”
“………”
No, this was an example of why wordings mattered.
She made it sound like she was a smooth gal with many suitors, but wasn’t she simply announcing that she had no prior experience whatsoever with men?
“So,” she continued at any rate, “I don’t intend to break up with you, either.”
Her expression remained placid. It didn’t shift even a little, not an eyebrow moving. It made me wonder if she had any emotions at all. But─she still had to be thinking about it.
Two years.
Since the time between middle school and high school, when she’d been neither a middle schooler nor a high schooler nor even on break, Hitagi Senjogahara had shunned all contact with other people. If she had forgotten how to interact with human beings, if she’d grown extraordinarily passive or unnecessarily timid─you couldn’t blame her for it. It was like dealing with a cautious stray cat─though Hanekawa fit the bill better as far as cats go.
Maybe neither of us knew how to take the initiative.
“…Hey, Senjogahara?”
“What is it.”
“Are you still carrying staplers and stuff?”
“Now that you mention it…not lately.”
“Ah.”
“I must have gotten careless.”
“Careless, huh?”
Well─you could still call that progress.
It wasn’t big enough of a change to make her a tsundere, but if that was her personality─
…Hm, by the way. Speaking of Senjogahara two years ago─
“Hey, weren’t you the star of the track team when you were in middle school?” I asked.
“Correct.”
“You don’t do that anymore?”
“Correct. Because there’s no reason to,” she answered pretty much instantly. “I have no desire to go back to that time in my life.”
“Hmph…”
Apparently, Senjogahara had been a nice, sociable person, kind to everyone, a hard worker, not at all stuck-up, the respected star of the track team in middle school─cheerful and full of energy. It was no more than a rumor, but I found it pretty credible.
That all changed right before high school.
Then, two years later.
What had changed about her was back to normal.
Back─but not everything, of course.
Certainly not if she lacked the desire.
“I don’t see the need or necessity, and above all, the good it would do me at this point, Araragi─there’s a lot more I have to carry with me now. I’m already a third-year, anyway. But why do you ask?”
“Oh, I was just interested in what you were like back when you played sports… And yeah, given the hiatus, I see why you might not bother.”
Just as cats meant Tsubasa Hanekawa, sports were now synonymous with Suruga Kanbaru for me, and I’d asked with her in the back of my mind, but…that’s what you called a brusque response.
You could say Senjogahara was facing forward─but.
Was refusing to look back the same as facing forward?
Senjogahara, I began to think, was still…
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I don’t need to play sports to maintain my figure.”
“…Hey, that’s not why I was asking.”
“You were drawn to these supple, carefree limbs that have never known a breakup, weren’t you?”
“Stop assuming that I’m after your body!”
And that phrase “carefree limbs”…
It was a bit much.
“Oh. So it wasn’t my body?” she inquired innocently. “I guess that means you can wait for a while.”
That’s what she wanted to say?
If so, it was so roundabout─and awfully devious, quite unlike her trademark straightforward approach.
Chastity, eh?
But it had to be about more than that.
“Araragi, I know you aren’t a shameless, stingy bastard who pays for an all-you-can-eat buffet only to wonder if you’ve ‘eaten your money’s worth’ and rushes to ‘try a little more so it won’t be a waste’ when it’s going to be the same price anyway.”
“……”
I wasn’t quite sure what her analogy was trying to imply, but it had to be some sort of pickoff move…
She was timid with people.
Prudent in her relationship with me.
Well, I was willing to go along with that.
I still didn’t get what going “out” with her was about, but if that’s what I was doing, then I was going along with all of her.
“…Oh, right,” I remembered─and decided that I needed to tell Senjogahara about Suruga Kanbaru. I’d kept mum not so much because Senjogahara might get worried over nothing, but rather simply to avoid annoying her, but interpreting Suruga Kanbaru’s motives in light of Hachikuji’s eminently grade-school take and the remote possibility that she was right, it didn’t feel all that fair, given my position, to withhold the fact from my (ostensibl
e) girlfriend.
And I did have Kanbaru in the back of my mind just a moment ago.
There was something I was curious about, too.
“Hey, Senjogahara.”
“What is it.”
“Do you know Suruga Kanbaru?”
“………”
She replied with silence.
Or I should say, made no reply.
In terms of what was and wasn’t fair, my question itself probably wasn’t fair at all─I mean, who didn’t know about the school star, Suruga Kanbaru? The fact that she was stalking me would circulate as a rumor by the beginning of next week at the latest, if it wasn’t out already. I could rest assured that it would be treated as a false one─but that was precisely why my question took on an odd significance. I was suffering the silence I’d brought about and restraining myself from following up, when─
“Yes,” Senjogahara said, “Suruga Kanbaru. That name takes me back.”
“…Oh.”
So─they were acquainted after all.
I’d thought they might be.
When I mentioned my study session, Kanbaru had immediately named Senjogahara and not Hanekawa, who has the best grades in our year─and that wasn’t all. I’d picked up the same suggestion from various remarks that she’d made. The possibility that Hachikuji raised had eluded me thanks to my vague, no, clear sense that Kanbaru wasn’t after me, but some other goal─
“Is that why you asked me about middle school just now?” added Senjogahara. “Yes, she used to be my junior, in middle school.”
“Well, she still is. You go to the same school, don’t you? Or wait, do you mean that girl was on the track team in middle school?”
“No, she was on the basketball team from the time she was in middle school. ‘That girl’… You sound awfully close with her.”
In an instant, the look in Senjogahara’s eyes turned hostile. Normally free of any emotions at all, they now gleamed with danger. Not waiting even a second to see if I’d offer some sort of explanation, she took the mechanical pencil in her right hand and thrust it forward, the tip homing in on my left eye at an alarming velocity. My first instinct was to get out of its way, but even as she moved her right hand, she climbed over the low table on her knees, indifferent to all the notes she sent flying in the process, and used her left hand to cradle the back of my head, preventing me.
The tip of the mechanical pencil─was so close to my eyeball it seems absurd to say she stopped short of anything. It was so close I couldn’t blink, freezing me in place. In fact, I had to wonder if the left hand cradling my head was a considerate gesture meant to hinder extraneous movements on my part that might spoil her precision, that’s how perfectly orchestrated it was.
…H-Hitagi Senjogahara.
You might not be carrying a stapler now, but you haven’t changed one bit!
“What about that girl, Araragi?”
“……!”
Hold on!
Was she this jealous?!
It was almost laughable how committed she felt… And how did that even sound like we were close? I’d referred to a junior as “that girl,” no more. This was my punishment for merely knowing another girl without Senjogahara’s knowledge? What in heaven’s name was she going to do to me if I actually cheated on her?
While I did find myself in a ghastly situation, I was also relieved that I’d decided to tell her early.
Thank goodness─I’d learned about this side of Senjogahara through a case where I had plenty of excuses to give!
“You heal from injuries incredibly fast, right? So a single eyeball can’t be that bad, can it?”
“Stop, no! No, an eyeball would still be bad! There’s nothing here I ought to feel guilty about, I don’t see us as close at all, you’re the only girl for me, Senjogahara!”
“Oh, am I? I like how those words make me feel.”
And then─she pulled back the mechanical pencil. She spun it around a couple of times in her palm, placed it on top of the low table, and rearranged the scattered notes and textbooks. I tried to calm my still-pounding heart as I watched her.
“I might have gotten a little excited there. Did I surprise you, Araragi?”
“…You know you’re going to kill someone one of these days.”
“And when I do, I’ll make sure it’s you. You’re going to be my first guy. I wouldn’t choose anyone else. I promise.”
“Don’t spout scary stuff like they’re sweet lines! Listen, I love you, but not enough to be killed by you!”
“To be loved to death, to be killed by the one you love. Could there be any better way to die?”
“I’d rather take a pass on that kind of twisted love!”
“Really? That’s too bad. And I can’t believe you’d say that. If it was by your hands, Araragi─”
“You wouldn’t mind being killed?”
“…Hm? Oh, uh, well, I guess.”
“What a vague answer!”
“Well, um, I suppose I would?”
“Followed by a vague refusal!”
“What’s the big problem? Just accept it for what it is. If I were to kill you, Araragi, I would be the one by your side during your final moments. Isn’t that romantic?”
“No. If I’m going to get killed, you’re my last choice for the killer. No matter who kills me in what way, for me, it’s better than getting killed by you.”
“What? I won’t have that. If someone else ever kills you, Araragi, I’m going to kill whoever did it. Aren’t promises made to be broken?”
“……”
Her love was already pretty twisted.
I did feel loved, nevertheless…
“In any case, we were talking about Kanbaru,” Senjogahara tossed aside our frightening line of discussion and put the conversation back on track with her usual aplomb. “While we played different sports, I was the star of the track team while she was the star of the basketball team. Even though we weren’t in the same year, we did associate─and also.”
“And also?”
“Well, it’s not really worth mentioning now, but in our private lives away from sports, you could say that I caused her a bit of trouble, or maybe that I troubled myself over her… Wait, Araragi.” Senjogahara turned the subject to me. “What we should be talking about right now is why you brought up that kid. If you’re not guilty of anything, you shouldn’t mind explaining.”
“S-Sure.”
“Of course, if you were guilty, I’d have you explain anyway.”
“………”
Senjogahara might actually kill me if I tried keeping secrets from her, so I told her that Suruga Kanbaru had been stalking me for the past three days. A second-year who dashed up to me with a quick and rhythmical tup, tup, tup, tup, tup, tup, who rambled for a while, and who left without hinting at any objective at all─Suruga Kanbaru. She had to have one, but I didn’t know what it was.
As I explained this, I began to think.
Kanbaru was probably choosing moments when Senjogahara wasn’t around and coming up to me then. With the exception of today, when she dashed over my way even though I was with Hachikuji, she was basically lying in wait for me to be alone. In other words, it wasn’t by chance that Senjogahara hadn’t known about the stalking until now.
And there was something else I started to think about.
Wasn’t Senjogahara the one referring to Kanbaru in a familiar way? Calling her “that kid” even if she’d been a year behind in middle school sounded more than a little─no, maybe it was just a manner of speaking, too.
Just as Senjogahara’s emotions didn’t show on her face, they didn’t seep into her voice. No matter what she said, it was almost all in the same flat tone. You shuddered to fathom the strength of will she was exerting to control herself.
But─that kid.
“I see,” Senjogahara finally nodded after hearing most of the story. And yes, she still had the same expression and flat tone. “Um, Araragi?”
“What
is it.”
