by Nisioisin
Timidly, fearfully.
The texture, the flesh…the heat, the pulse.
It was alive.
So this aberration─was a living aberration after all.
…So even Suruga Kanbaru, who had no issue with me seeing her room in that state, did mind showing people this left arm of hers… What she’d said about spraining it while doing solo workouts was nothing more than talk. The bandage wasn’t to protect her injury but a way to hide her arm… And yes, I’d found it a little strange that she didn’t disfavor the left side of her body despite the sprain…but I guess it’s not very convincing of me to say that after the fact.
Then again.
It made sense she wasn’t able to play basketball with that left hand.
Without thinking.
Squeeze─I tightened my hand around her wrist.
“Mm, ahh, no,” she moaned.
“Stop with that weird voice!”
Without thinking, I let go.
“But you were touching me in a weird way,” she objected.
“I wasn’t touching you in any weird way.”
“I’m ticklish.”
“Okay, but that’s no reason for you to moan in a way that contradicts your character so far…”
When I thought about it, Senjogahara had pulled the same trick a few times. It had to be in a diametrically opposite way from her current self, but if Kanbaru had it down too, then Senjogahara’s repertoire included it since middle school…
“Kanbaru, just in case you’ve forgotten, this is your home and your room, okay? What do you think is going to happen to me if your parents heard you moaning like that?”
“Oh, that’s okay,” she replied jovially. “You don’t need to worry about them, at all.”
“…Fine, then.”
Huh?
Why was she saying that like she didn’t want me to bring up the topic, like she was openly refusing to pursue it any further? While her tone was as upbeat as ever, it really did seem out of character.
So anyway, Kanbaru rushed to get us back on track, opening and closing her left hand. “As you can see, it moves like I want it to right now─but there are also times when it won’t. No, I guess you might say there are times it moves like I don’t want it to─”
“Like you don’t want it to?”
“Want, or hope─hmm, what’s the right word. It’s hard to say. I guess it would be when I’m trying to explain something that I don’t understand very well myself… However. It was me who attacked you last night, it was definitely me─yet I barely remember a thing. It was like a waking dream, or maybe a reverie─it’s not like I don’t remember anything at all, but it felt like I was watching something on television, like I couldn’t step in─”
“A trance,” I interrupted her explanation. “You were in a trance─that’s what it’s called. I know all about it… Aberrations that possess humans come in and have their way with your mind and body.”
That wasn’t the case with me─but it was in Hanekawa’s, the occurrence with Tsubasa Hanekawa’s cat. That’s why she remembered practically nothing about what happened over Golden Week, when she came into contact with an aberration. As a case, this one seemed close─there’d been a similar type of phenomenon where Hanekawa’s body transformed, too─
“You know a lot,” Kanbaru admired. “So that’s what this is called, an aberration─”
“I’m not particularly well-informed, though. It’s just that I’ve had a lot of experiences with them lately for whatever reason, and there’s someone who is well-informed about them─”
Oshino.
This─was right up his alley.
It was Oshino’s domain.
“─that I met.”
“Okay. Well, I’m fortunate you’re so broadminded. We wouldn’t be able to talk if you ran away the moment I showed you this arm. And I would feel hurt. More than a little.”
“Luckily, you see, I’ve gotten used to dealing with the absurd, so don’t worry. The absurd…meaning Senjogahara, too─of course.”
At this rate, I should tell her later about how I got involved with an aberration myself and temporarily turned into a vampire… From an accountability standpoint, maybe I needed to tell her now, but there were still too many unknowns about the aberration that was Kanbaru’s left hand for that.
“Still, I was a little surprised,” I shared. “You made me hiccup, as my fifth-grade friend would say. But since you’ve started with the most surprising part, I’m confident that nothing else you tell me will shock me.”
“Ah. Of course, that’s why I had you look at my arm first. We’ve cleared the biggest hurdle from the get-go. All right, to business, then.”
With a smile Kanbaru went on.
“I’m a lesbian.”
“……”
I fell over in shock.
Like in a Fujiko Fujio comic.
“Oh, I see,” Kanbaru mumbled at my reaction. “Maybe I was a little too blunt, given that you’re a man. Umm…” She cocked her head. “Allow me to correct myself. I’m a sapphist.”
“It’s the same thing!”
I had yelled, in an attempt to keep myself grounded.
Huh? What? So, what did that mean?
Is that why she and Senjogahara were the Valhalla Duo back in middle school? A year apart, were they? Senjogahara calling her “that kid”? Hunh? Is that what she meant the day before when she said she’d never broken up with a boy?
“Oh, it’s not like that. I only had a crush on her, there was nothing the other way around. To me, she was purely perfect, a senior I could look up to. I was content just to bask in her presence.”
“Content just to bask in her presence…”
That sounded nice.
That really did sound nice. But.
An unrequited crush, she’d gone ahead and told me…
Hachikuji, I thought, the woman in you led you in a completely wrong direction… No, I needed to calm down. I couldn’t reject stuff out of prejudice… Right… Maybe this is how girls were these days. Maybe my worldview was dated. Maybe I needed to be less serious and more liberal.
“I see, a sapphist… All right, then.”
“Yes, a sapphist.”
Kanbaru looked happy for whatever reason.
Be that as it may…
Whether it was vampires, cats, crabs, or snails, class presidents, always-ill girls, or grade schoolers, cat ears or tsunderes or lost children, or even sapphists, the world was, how should I put it, full of new challenges, or maybe insatiable.
It was a free-for-all.
Did Senjogahara know that about her? Probably not, given the way Kanbaru had said it. But whether she did or not, I doubted it concerned a middle-school Senjogahara very much.
The star of the track team and the star of the basketball team.
The Valhalla Duo.
“She was popular with everyone,” Kanbaru related, “but I’m pretty sure my feelings for her went beyond that. I’m certain of it, in fact. I was even ready to die for her sake. Yes, you could say I wanted her, dead or in love.”
“……”
Uh…what?
I wasn’t sure if that was clever or not.
“Mm,” she hummed. “That came off better than I expected. Pretty inspired of me to play on ‘alive’ and ‘in love,’ if I do say so myself. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Uh huh. I wasn’t sure at first, but now that you’ve explained it to me, I’ve made up my mind.”
It was a bad pun.
Anyway.
I told Kanbaru to go on.
“Go on? I don’t know, it’s not like we’re discussing the past. To speak of continuing, it’s of a piece with the present. I chose Naoetsu High in the first place to chase after her.”
“Yeah… That’s what I assumed after hearing your story. If anything, it all makes better sense.”
I ran the risk of insulting Kanbaru’s teammates all over again depending on how she took it so I kept the words
to myself, but a basketball star in middle school should have been able to play in a better environment via an athletic recommendation or something. Yet, for whatever reason, Kanbaru had decided on Naoetsu High, a school that put as good as zero focus on extracurriculars, basketball included. Why? What could have been her motivation?
Her devotion.
Well, even then, it was all too straightforward.
“I was so taken with her that I would’ve licked a candy that came out of her mouth.”
“……”
Was that an image she ought to be putting into words in front of other people?
“My third year,” she lamented, “the whole year after she graduated, was colored gray.”
“Gray, you say.”
“Yes. A gray Sapphic existence.”
“……”
She really liked that term.
Sure, if that’s what she wanted.
“My gray matter’s gray Sapphic existence,” she said.
“That’s not even remotely clever.”
She was trying too hard to insert jokes into our conversation.
This could stay a tad more serious.
“How strict of you,” she complained. “You’re setting too high a bar for me with your tough standards. It’s strange, though. Knowing that you’re doing it for my own good eases me into accepting them.”
“Uhh… What happened to your gray Sapphic existence next?”
“Yes. That year drove home just how important she’d been for me. That year we were apart may have weighed more on me than the two years we were together. That’s why my plan was to tell her how I felt if I got into Naoetsu High and could meet her again. With that goal, I spent all of my time studying for entrance exams.”
So said Kanbaru.
She was as full of confidence as ever, but it seemed like her cheeks were flushed. She must have been embarrassed, plain and simple. Uh oh…it was kind of cute. I was busy being confused and bewildered when she was stalking me, but now for the first time I was starting to feel fond of Suruga Kanbaru, my junior. Gosh, a whole new Sapphic-moé territory was opening up inside of me…
I found myself barely caring about Kanbaru’s beastly left hand…but no, I knew that was where the meat of this story lay…
“Forget about candy. Gum,” she averred. “I was so taken with her that I would have chewed a piece of gum that came from her mouth.”
“Your standards are a mystery to me…”
There had to be a nicer image.
“But,” Kanbaru said, her tone sagging exaggeratedly, “she had changed from the senior I knew.”
“Ah…”
“She had changed completely.”
A crab.
Hitagi Senjogahara had encountered─a crab. She’d lost much, thrown away much, and rid herself of much─and she rejected everything. It must have seemed like Hitagi Senjogahara had transformed into a different person altogether for those who’d known her in middle school, like Hanekawa. And for Kanbaru, who had worshiped Senjogahara─the transformation must have been too thorough to take.
So thorough it made her doubt what she saw with her own eyes.
“I had heard that she became seriously ill after entering high school─and that she had quit running because of how protracted it was. I knew that much coming in. But I never imagined she could have changed─that much. I thought it was all a bunch of nasty rumors.”
Seriously ill, eh…
Well, she wasn’t wrong to look at it that way… Ultimately, Senjogahara had a chronic condition that still dogged her.
“But─I was wrong. Those rumors were so off the mark that they didn’t even scratch the surface. Something far worse had happened to her body. I noticed─and I thought I had to do something. I had to save my senior. How could I not? She was really good to me when I was in middle school, and I’ve never forgotten it. We may have been in different years and on different teams, but she was extremely generous.”
“That generosity…”
That generosity─what had it meant to Senjogahara? But this wasn’t the time to speak or inquire about it, was it?
“And that’s why I tried to save her─I wanted to. But I couldn’t even begin to approach her. She refused.”
“Ah…”
It seemed like too much to expect her to tell me exactly how. She was probably covering for Senjogahara… Kanbaru would never speak a single bad word about her, no matter what.
Yes, it wasn’t hard to guess that she’d had something just as bad, if not worse, done to her… Frankly speaking, I didn’t care to know.
For my sake, and for Kanbaru’s.
For Senjogahara’s sake, too.
Stapler.
“I thought I could do something.” Despite an air of chagrin, of regretting it from the bottom of her heart─Kanbaru was forcing herself to sound calm and collected. “I thought I could do something about whatever she was burdened with. Even if I couldn’t get rid of the cause, even if I couldn’t relieve her symptoms, I could be by her side─and heal her heart.”
“……”
“What a joke that was. I was such a foolish girl. Looking back on it, it’s nothing short of comical.”
Because Senjogahara didn’t want anything like that at all─
So said Kanbaru, with downcast eyes.
“She told me, ‘I don’t think of you as a friend or even as my junior─not now, nor did I ever.’ To my face.”
“Well…”
That did seem like something she would say back then. If there was any weapon she carried deadlier than her stationery, then it was her acid tongue and bitter abuse.
“At first I thought that meant she thought of me as her lover, but it wasn’t the case.”
“That was quite positive of you.”
“Yes. So she was even more blunt the next time. Being friends with a talented junior like me would boost her own reputation, and that was the only reason she was nice to me, the only reason she acted like a caring senior─she said that.”
“…That’s awful.”
Senjogahara’s goal was to hurt her─
Her goal was to make her go away, so─
Yet, only yesterday, Senjogahara had called Kanbaru “that kid” and her junior in middle school, and confirmed that while it was no longer true, they were friends back then. Perhaps I was interpreting her words to hear only what I wanted to hear─but still.
“I was happy that she called me a talented junior, though.”
That was positive of her.
Through and through.
“But─that’s when I learned how powerless I was. I was so conceited to think that I could heal her with my presence. If anything─she didn’t want anyone at all near her.”
There are some people in the world─who aren’t lonely when they’re alone.
It wasn’t hard to pin Senjogahara down as one of them─at the very least, she probably hadn’t ever appreciated herding for its own sake. Even as her middle-school sociable self, she must have thought so quietly─but.
Not being lonely when you’re alone.
That’s different from wanting to be alone.
Just as not liking to deal with people and not liking people aren’t the same.
“That’s why I never accosted Senjogahara after that day. It was the only thing she wanted from me, after all. Of course, I could never forget her─but if stepping away and not doing a thing, if not being by her side could save her─I could agree to that.”
“…Kanbaru.”
I didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t simply her gallant attitude that moved me, but her choice of words: the decision wasn’t helpless or inevitable, but one she could agree to. According to Senjogahara, Kanbaru never came back─but that wasn’t it. Kanbaru had stepped away of her own will.
She was so─serious.
About Senjogahara.
From middle school until a year ago, Kanbaru’s feelings for her only grew stronger─and.
Even
now.
“I was careful not to run into her. I made sure that my field of activity wouldn’t overlap with hers, whether that meant meeting her by accident in a hallway, catching a glimpse of her at morning assemblies, or crossing paths with her at the cafeteria. I made arrangements, not just so that I wouldn’t have to worry, but so that she wouldn’t have to worry about me, either. Of course, I couldn’t help people talking about me when I did well in basketball games, so I manipulated the rumors myself to make sure they were a mix of fact and fiction.”
