by Nisioisin
“I apologize for the mess.”
Suruga Kanbaru said this briskly with an innocent smile on her face, her right hand on her chest. Maybe the words were fitting for the occasion, but I’d always thought of them as a modest disclaimer you uttered upon inviting someone into a room that was at least somewhat tidy.
What’s flooded on top and in blazes on the bottom?
Well said, actually.
Oh god…
There were even some hygiene products…
I reflexively looked down at my feet.
If I didn’t, I might find plenty of things that would be even worse to see. Self-confidence is a good thing, but being shameless is something else, Suruga Kanbaru…
Oh.
That applied to Senjogahara too, didn’t it…
True, there wasn’t a speck of dust to be found in Senjogahara’s room… Still, she’d had a major influence on Kanbaru back in middle school not limited to her personality, and it just seemed to have ruined Kanbaru’s character, if anything.
“There’s no need to be modest,” my hostess urged. “You’re hesitating to enter the room of a girl you don’t know well, which speaks to your delicacy, which I find rather charming, but I don’t think this is the time for that.”
“…Kanbaru.”
“Yes?”
“I’m very aware of the fact that this isn’t the time for it, but…please, I have a request for you.”
“Sure thing. Whatever you want. I’m in no place to turn down any from you.”
“I just want an hour, no, thirty minutes… Just give me some time to clean this room up. Also, give me a big garbage bag.”
I didn’t see myself as a clean freak…and it wasn’t like my room was particularly tidy, either, but this was just awful…cruel, even. Kanbaru seemed confused, as if she didn’t have a clue as to what I was talking about, but that must have also meant that she had no real reason to refuse. With an “Okay, then,” she went to get me a garbage bag.
Fast forward.
Well, actually.
The disaster that was Kanbaru’s room wasn’t, of course, something that could be rectified in thirty short minutes, not to mention that at the end of the day, this was the room of a girl I didn’t know that well, which meant that while I could grab some things, there were others that I couldn’t touch for ethical and moral reasons. So pretty much all I did was gather up the scattered trash and tidy up her books and magazines (or so I say, but with no bookshelves in Kanbaru’s room, I simply stacked them up according to size). It was a halfhearted attempt, like sweeping a circle in her square room, but even so, once I folded up her futon and stored it in her closet and folded up her clothes and put them in a corner (she didn’t have hangers, let alone a dresser), the sight became bearable, or at least, there was enough space for Kanbaru and I to sit facing each other and talk.
“Incredible, my senior Araragi. So that’s the color of my floor mats. I wonder how many years it’s been since I last glimpsed them.”
“You’re counting in years…”
“I’m grateful.”
“…Once this is settled, let’s take a full day…no, I’ll even stay over to spend multiple days cleaning up this room. Next time I’ll bring a full set of serious cleaning supplies, like liquid cleaner and spot remover, okay?”
“Sorry for making you fuss over me. Basketball is about the only thing I’m good at, and cleaning up or tidying up or finishing up or whatever it’s called isn’t my forte.”
“……”
She was wearing such a broad, self-assured smile that I didn’t know what to say… During those thirty minutes, she’d stood idle and absentminded in the hallway and shown no signs of helping out. I didn’t think she was lazy or slovenly, only really that inept at tidying up her room, but still, though it was none of my business, the sight had been one to hide, at all costs, to be withheld, absolutely, from the eyes of students at our school who considered her a star. She hadn’t invited any of her classmates here, had she? Friends were one thing, but if she invited one of her club juniors, she ran the risk of traumatizing them. Among the many things I’d stuffed into the garbage bag were crushed soda cans, candy wrappers, and empty instant noodle cups… What was an athlete on the national level doing eating and drinking that stuff?
I knew that a quirk or two could actually cause a celebrity to be more likable, but this was going too far no matter how you looked at it. Try as you might, you wouldn’t find such a character adorable…
“Okay, then─”
It was tomorrow.
The day after Friday, in other words.
Saturday.
While most of society has long taken the two-day weekend for granted, Naoetsu High, the private prep school of note that we attend, regularly holds classes even on Saturdays. Even after tomorrow turned to today, not having arrived at any kind of conclusion, I used the break between first and second periods to head to the building for second-years. I was going to be talking to a famous star, so there was no need for me to look up her class. Class 2-2. While the other kids were abuzz that a third-year had visited them (a familiar yet fresh feeling for someone like me who no longer had senior schoolmates), Kanbaru─being Suruga Kanbaru─walked up to me with a majestic gait as I waited in the hallway.
“Hello there, my senior Araragi.”
“Hey, Kanbaru. There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“I see. In that case,” Kanbaru replied, no questions asked, as if everything had been worked out in advance, “please come with me to my home after school.”
And─
There I was at her home, the Japanese mansion.
There was no need to go all the way there if all we were going to do was talk. We could have done so in an empty classroom, on the roof, on the athletic grounds, or even at a nearby fast food restaurant if we had to do it off campus, and I’d told her as much, but Kanbaru seemed to want to do it at her home for a reason.
If she had a reason, I’d oblige.
I wasn’t going to ask.
“So,” she said, “where should we begin? Of course, as you can tell, I’m not much of a conversationalist so I’m not sure how this is supposed to go, but first things first.” Kanbaru re-crossed her legs and bowed her head. “I’d like to apologize for what happened last night.”
“Yeah…” I’d recovered in a day’s time─though I might have felt some lingering pain in my stomach, which I rubbed for a moment before nodding. “So that was you, after all.”
The raincoat.
Rubber gloves, rubber boots.
They had been─among the clothes that I’d just finished putting away.
Needless to say.
“‘After all,’ huh,” Kanbaru echoed me. “I don’t know how to feel sometimes when I hear you speak. You’re so humble. You saw straight through it, didn’t you? You wouldn’t have come to me otherwise.”
“Not really…I was just guessing. Based on your build, your outline, your silhouette, that kind of thing. I added filters, like people who were aware that I was paying Senjogahara a visit for a study session, and ran a search, so to speak… And if I went to you and I was wrong, I’d just be wrong. It’s not like there would be an issue.”
“Hmm, I see. How astute of you.” Kanbaru sounded genuinely impressed. “I’ve heard that some boys can identify a girl by the shape of her hips. Was that it?”
“Not even close!” How could I when she was wearing a raincoat?!
“I apologize. I hadn’t meant to do that.”
Kanbaru bowed her head again.
To me─she seemed sincere.
But if she hadn’t meant to…then what had she been up to? It was clearly an attempt on my… Or was that not the case, either?
“Well,” I said, “apologies are great, but what I wanted to hear was your reason. Actually─we can put aside the reason.”
Her reason.
It wasn’t that I had no clue.
I wasn’t going out of my
way to say it now, but it was the very bit, the hint that pointed to Raincoat being none other than Kanbaru.
But─
“In any case, that power, that abnormal power─”
Abnormal power.
Aberration.
It crumpled my bike like paper.
It demolished a concrete-block wall with a single strike.
It took a human and─
“That’s what I want to ask about,” I continued. “What, exactly, did you…”
“Hrmm. I was wondering where to begin, but that would be where, I suppose. Fine… But first, I’d like to ask if you’re the type of person who can accept the absurd.”
“The absurd?”
That must have meant─oh, right. Of course.
Kanbaru didn’t know about my body. About my once-immortal body─while she had dealt me significant damage the night before, I didn’t heal so quickly you could see it taking place, so of course she didn’t know. Thus her preface─but wait, no.
Even if Kanbaru didn’t know about me, she knew about Senjogahara, having learned her absurd secret before me. And─as her boyfriend, I had to know the absurd secret, in Kanbaru’s mind─in other words, maybe she was sounding me out at that very moment.
“Did that not make sense?” she asked me. “My question is whether or not you’re able to believe what you see with your own eyes.”
“I only believe what I see with my own eyes. Which is why I’ve believed everything I’ve seen. Naturally, that goes for Senjogahara, too.”
“…Oh, so you even figured that out.” Without a hint of guilt or shame at my remark, however, Kanbaru continued, “But. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. It’s not like I’ve been following you around recently because I want to learn more about her.”
“Huh? You weren’t?”
I’d been─completely convinced of that.
She was trying to confirm the rumor that Koyomi Araragi and Hitagi Senjogahara were going out─wasn’t she? And then, when she heard that I was going to Senjogahara’s home for a one-on-one study session, she felt certain─didn’t she?
Well, I was probably right about that.
My read wasn’t mistaken, but─was there a separate reason for the stalking?
“You and Senjogahara were called the Valhalla Duo as the basketball star and the track star, I’ve come to understand.”
“Yes, exactly. I’m impressed you know that much, I underestimated you. I thought I’d praised you as much as I could, but it looks like I still fell short. I could never measure your greatness with my own piddling values. The more I get to know you, the further away you feel.”
“…Someone told me, that’s all.”
Despite all her flowery praise, she wasn’t coming across as a sycophant or brownnoser to me, which in a way made her a work of art.
“How it was derived, too,” I added. “It’s a really well thought-out moniker.”
“Isn’t it? I came up with it myself.”
Kanbaru puffed her chest out with pride.
…She’d thought of it herself.
I hadn’t felt so heartsick in a while…
“I thought about it for the longest time before coming up with that one. By the way, I also came up with a personal nickname for myself, ‘Li’l Suruga Can-do,’ but that one didn’t stick, unfortunately.”
“I’m feeling very disappointed, too.”
“Oh, so you sympathize?”
Yes. On account of your poor sensibility.
“You’re such a compassionate senior. Of course, now that I say it out loud, it was a little long to use as a nickname. I can see why it never caught on.”
“If we’re gonna postgame it, that was the least of your errors.”
Kanbaru seemed to have been surrounded by wonderful people in middle school.
Including Senjogahara back in those days…
“Anyway, yes,” she said. “Putting aside the Valhalla Duo, perhaps I’ll only annoy you by spelling things out considering how perceptive you are, but in middle school Senjogahara and I were─no, before I go into that, there’s something I want to show you. That’s why I asked you to spare some of your valuable time to trek all the way here.”
“You want to show me something? Oh, I get it. That something was at home, and that’s why we couldn’t talk at school or just anywhere.”
“No, that’s not it. It’d stand out at school, or maybe you could say I was afraid of people seeing it… I’d prefer it if no one else did.”
Saying so─Kanbaru began to unwind the white bandage on her left hand. She undid the clasp holding it wrapped around her arm, and methodically, starting with her fingers─
It came back to me.
The night before.
It had destroyed my bike, smashed through the concrete-block wall, and ruptured my organs─
It had been the doing of a left hand balled into a fist.
“To be honest, I don’t really want people seeing this. After all, I’m a girl.”
She unwound the entire bandage─and rolled up the sleeve of her uniform. What I saw there was Kanbaru’s girlish, slender, soft-looking upper arm, and connected to it from the elbow down─a bony left hand covered in thick, black hair you’d expect to see on a wild beast.
It had peeked through the holes worn through the rubber glove.
The scent─of a beast.
“Well, this is how it is.”
“………”
Could it have been an odd-looking glove or hand puppet─no, clearly not. It was far too long and thin─and anyway, apart from how it looked, I had witnessed something similar though not quite the same for certain over Golden Week─so I knew.
That it was nothing but an aberration.
An aberration.
I called it a wild beast─but I’d be hard-pressed to say what kind. It felt like it could be any animal, but also like no animal in existence. While it looked like everything, it seemed to belong to nothing. But if I had to say, given the five reasonably long fingers and the shape of the nails extending past them, only if I had to say─
Although I don’t think it’s a very appropriate way to describe a girl’s body part.
“A monkey’s paw.”
Those were my words.
“It looks like─a monkey’s paw.”
An ape─as in the general term to describe any non-human primate.
“Huh.”
For some reason─Kanbaru was looking at me with admiration.
Then, she smacked her knee and said, “I knew it. It is impossible, after all, to measure just how discerning those eyes of yours are. I’m stunned, it’s like they work in a completely different way. You were able to figure out what this is at a single glance. I’m simply amazed. There’s no comparing the knowledge you possess to the resources of a plebeian mind like mine─that must mean there’s no need for me to explain anything else.”
“H-Hey, don’t feel convinced all on your own!”
No way I could let her stop explaining now.
She might as well have hung me out to dry.
I told her, “I just said the first thing that came to mind. I haven’t discerned a thing.”
“Really? That’s the title of a short story by William Wymark Jacobs─‘The Monkey’s Paw.’ The theme of the monkey’s paw has been used so many times in all kinds of media that it’s been spun off into different patterns─”
“Never heard of it,” I confessed.
Oh, Kanbaru said. “That you would utter the truth without knowing makes me wonder if you enjoy some celestial being’s blessing. Intuiting the essence, no logic required!”
“…Well, my intuition does enjoy a little bit of a reputation.”
“I knew it. And now I’m proud of myself. I’m nowhere on your level, of course, but to the extent that I laid store in you, my intuition was spot-on.”
“Oh, really…”
If you asked me, her sights were misaligned.
Um, I said, looking
at Kanbaru’s left hand again. A beast’s hand─a monkey’s paw. “C-Can I touch it?”
“Yup. It’s fine for now.”
“O-Oh…”
With her permission, I brought my hand close to her wrist─and touched it gently.
