by Nisioisin
“………”
No.
Her efforts didn’t have much to do with it.
She did force me to become class vice president in a rehabilitation attempt, having mistaken me for a delinquent…
She could be off, or more like a runaway train.
“Er, I’m not sure if I’m taking school seriously,” I disabused her. “It’s just that I should start thinking about what to do after graduation.”
“After graduation?”
“Maybe I should say college? Senjogahara and I were talking about it the other day. And I heard what school she was trying to get into…”
“Ah. Senjogahara wanted to get into the local national university, right? She’ll be admitted on a recommendation.”
“…You know everything, don’t you.”
“Not everything. I just know what I know.”
It was the same back-and-forth as always.
Actually, Hanekawa had taken an interest in Senjogahara before I ever did, so maybe, as the class president, it was natural for her to know that much. Come to think of it, Senjogahara didn’t seem to hate Hanekawa too badly for her excessive fussing. Inviting Hanekawa to the birthday party I was currently planning for Senjogahara probably wouldn’t earn her full wrath.
But, having a girlfriend who might get angry that I planned a birthday party for her…
“So, Araragi. Are you actually trying to get into the same university as her?”
“Don’t tell her yet, okay? I don’t want to get her hopes up in some weird way.” I hid my embarrassment─or not exactly, but still flipped through a random study-aid within my reach. “Actually, I feel like she’d say something standoffish to me.”
“Brutal… Aren’t you two boyfriend and girlfriend?”
“Well yes, but. It’s like she believes that good fences make good strangers…”
“Huh? Oh, I get it. A gag based on ‘good fences make good neighbors’? Ahaha, you’re funny, Araragi.”
“Don’t go around explaining people’s jokes!”
And don’t call it a gag.
And don’t call me funny.
“Ahaha, Araragi! You must have been thinking that one up from the moment you said, ‘I feel like she’d say something standoffish to me’! It would’ve been easy to tell that I’d reply, ‘Aren’t you two boyfriend and girlfriend?’ Oh, you can be so elaborate!”
“Please, stop stripping down how I talk!”
I felt buck naked.
I put us back on track.
“It’s not like I have a specific goal, but I did better on the skills test the other day than I expected. I was just trying to avoid a failing grade… It of course pales in comparison to you or Senjogahara, but I did all right thanks to studying seriously for the first time in a while.”
“I forget, did you study one-on-one with her?”
“Yeah.”
In case you were wondering, Senjogahara effortlessly got the seventh highest overall score while watching over this washout as he studied. It was impressive, or maybe brilliant. She was at the level where my only possible reaction was admiration.
One more fact, in case you were wondering. Tsubasa Hanekawa got the top overall score.
It went without saying.
She took first place in every subject.
Close to a perfect score, apparently.
Putting that aside, while my scores weren’t worthy of being posted and ranked in any subject aside from math, they had still dramatically improved compared to all the skills tests I had taken up to that point.
They’d improved to the point that I was starting to have a little dream.
It was now June.
So if I hunkered down and studied for the next half-year─
It was enough to make me think along those lines.
“With Senjogahara tutoring me, I felt like I understood how to study for the first time in a while… It reminded me of how it used to feel in middle school. I’d given up on that kind of thing at some point during my first year here.”
“Huh… I think that’s a good thing. I do think that wanting to go to the same university as your girlfriend is a bit impure as far as motives go, but the doors to scholarship are always open. Yes, in that case, I think I’ll do everything I can to help you, too.”
“………”
Being educated by Senjogahara was scary, but education-by-Hanekawa was a pretty frightening thought, too…
Not that I told her that.
In fact, no matter how I looked at it, I needed Tsubasa Hanekawa’s help if I wanted to get into college.
“So,” I asked her, “if I can get a good idea of where I stand, I might start going to a test-prep school starting summer break. Do you know of any good ones?”
“Hmm. I can’t say that I do. I’ve never gone to a cram school or anything.”
“I see…”
Damned genius.
“But I’ll ask my friends.”
“You really know how to look out for people, you know that? I appreciate it. Of course, while I may not be able to get in this year, if I plan my studies with the understanding that I’ll take a year off after high school, I think I can do it.”
“Why are you setting your sights so low before you’ve even started? If you’re going to do this, try getting in on your first attempt… And when are you thinking of telling Senjogahara?”
“Again, once I have a good idea of where I stand…I guess? I know I’ll need her help, too. It sounds like the national university Senjogahara is trying to get into offers various exam types, so I could choose a set that focuses as much as possible on math…”
“Makes sense.” Hanekawa handed another study-aid to me. “Okay. That’s ten thousand yen on the dot.”
“…What? No way. You found a combination that costs exactly that much? You can really pull off a trick like that?”
“It’s just addition, you know.”
“………”
It was just addition, sure… But these were mostly four-digit numbers, in her head, while having a conversation… I’d thought math was my strong suit… It seemed I couldn’t hope to compare to Hanekawa even when it came to arithmetic.
The thought sapped my motivation a little, or put a dent in me…
I was feeling discouraged from the very start.
In other words, I’d have to spend half a year busting my ass and in the throes of an immeasurable inferiority complex toward Hitagi Senjogahara and Tsubasa Hanekawa…
Well.
I just had to bust my ass.
“Incidentally, Araragi.”
“Why so formal all of a sudden?”
“Tell me more about what you said earlier. You found the corpse of a snake cut into five at the overgrown ruins of a shrine─what happened then?”
“Huh? Oh, that.”
I’d told her about it after school while we were getting ready for the culture festival. I’d only meant to update her on Oshino, but it had happened only yesterday. I couldn’t stop myself from talking about it given how fresh it was in my mind. I didn’t go into any detail because hearing about the cruel deaths of small animals could only be unpleasant, but it seemed to have grabbed Hanekawa’s attention.
“Nothing, really. Kanbaru and I did at least dig a hole for the snake and bury it…but when we wandered around the area after that, there were dead snakes all over the place.”
“Dead─all over the place?”
“Yeah. Chopped-up snakes all over the place.”
Several of them.
And then I stopped counting.
I gave up─on burying them, too.
Kanbaru had looked legitimately sick.
“So we ended up going straight down the mountain… And then we ate the lunch that Kanbaru made at a nearby park. I was surprised at just how good it was, but when I asked, she told me that her grandma helped her make them. Actually, the other way around. It was more like she helped her grandma make them. When I asked her what exa
ctly she did, it was ‘I got the knives ready’ and ‘I boiled some water’ and ‘I watched to make sure the pot didn’t boil over, but it did.’ Wanting to be a good cook when she’s already so athletic is a bit greedy, huh?”
“That might be true. But it’s too bad about Kanbaru. She’d be right in the middle of a tournament right now if not for her arm injury.”
“……”
Oh, right.
I was keeping that part a secret.
I’d nearly slipped up and run my mouth.
The only people at Naoetsu High who knew the truth behind Suruga Kanbaru’s retirement were me and Senjogahara. No one would be added to that list, and that seemed perfectly fine.
The funny thing was that once we ate lunch, Kanbaru really did feel better again. In typical born-athlete form, her body seemed to be unusually efficient at absorbing energy.
“Well, Araragi… That must have been a handful.”
“Yeah. Killing snakes that way seemed like a ritual or something and made me think. Kind of gave me the chills, it’s a very uncool thing to do. Plus the place is an abandoned shrine, you know? Oh, by the way, did you know there was a shrine there?”
“Yup.” Hanekawa nodded briskly, as if to say, of course she did. “Kita-Shirahebi Shrine, right?”
“Kita-Shirahebi?” North Whitesnake Shrine─
“Yes, I guess they must have worshiped a snake god there. I’m not that familiar with it, though. I just happen to know as a local.”
“I feel like it’s precisely the kind of place you don’t know as a local… Plus, you already seem plenty familiar with it, but huh… Killing snakes in a spot where they were once worshiped… It really does seem like a kind of ritual to me. Maybe I should…report it to Oshino?”
An aberration.
I hoped I was making too much of it.
But─there was the bit about Sengoku, too.
Nadeko Sengoku.
“………”
…I didn’t want the conversation going in this direction.
Hanekawa had forgotten her involvement with an aberration. She remembers being helped by Oshino, at least, but the part where she was charmed by a cat and everything else that followed─she has no memory of it. That isn’t the only reason, but I don’t want Hanekawa to have much to do with aberrations. She doesn’t need to know about what happened with Senjogahara, or Kanbaru, or Hachikuji─not now, not later.
That’s how I see it.
Because she’s a cool person.
My concerns turned out to be extraneous here, though.
“But you know, Araragi, that’s not what I wanted to talk about. I meant that dealing with Kanbaru must have been a handful.”
“……”
If anything.
It seemed like I needed to be worrying about myself.
“Dealing. With. Kanbaru,” she punctuated her words. “Must have been a handful, I’m asking.”
She was grinning.
Her smiling face was actually scarier than anything…
“O-Oh… Yeah, she did suddenly start feeling unwell. I wondered what it could be, but…it was nothing, fortunately.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Hanekawa said in a serious tone. Well, she said just about everything in a serious tone, but especially this time. “Don’t you think it’s a problem being a little too friendly with your girlfriend’s junior? I think it’s fine for you to be somewhat friendly with her since you were the one who helped them make up, but you shouldn’t be linking arms, should you?”
“What was I supposed to do? She’s a friendly girl.”
“Do you think that passes as an excuse?”
“Well…”
It didn’t, did it.
No matter how you looked at it.
“Part of me can understand,” she said. “I suppose this must be the first time you have a junior who looks up to you. You didn’t have any extracurriculars in middle school either and went straight home then, too, right? It’s nice to have a cute little junior. Or could it have simply been that you enjoyed how Kanbaru’s breast felt? You perv.”
“Ngkk…”
I found it vaguely difficult to argue.
She was wrong, but even if I told her that, there was no way to keep it from sounding like a lie.
Hanekawa continued, “I’m sure Kanbaru is feeling insecure to some degree because of her retirement, but isn’t that where you should jump in and set the record straight?”
“Uhhm…”
“Wouldn’t it be a shame if the Valhalla Duo split up over you when you helped bring them back together?”
“Yeah, that’s true.”
Weak-willed.
Feeble me.
“But in that sense,” observed Hanekawa, “I guess Kanbaru doesn’t have much experience with men, either. This is an odd way to put it, but maybe being treated like a star for so long deprived her of those kinds of opportunities.”
“Probably.”
Plus, she was a sapphist.
Plus, she was in love with Senjogahara.
Those were secrets, too.
“And you don’t seem too good at communicating about this stuff, either,” the class president went on. “While that’s sometimes a valid excuse, it isn’t always.”
“I dunno. Senjogahara keeps telling me to take good care of Kanbaru. ‘I won’t overlook any rudeness toward my junior,’ and that kind of thing. It makes me wonder who really has the power here. Like, if this is a love triangle, it’s one hell of an isosceles. It even sounds like Kanbaru was told by Senjogahara to have me pamper her.”
Right.
What didn’t make sense here was Senjogahara’s psychology.
What on earth was she thinking?
“Well, okay. Couldn’t it be like this?” Hanekawa gently reached for my head with both of her hands. They sandwiched it and stayed there. My own hands were full carrying a pile of study-aids so I couldn’t swat hers away.
“Huh? Wait, what?”
“Okay, go ahead.”
Hanekawa used her hands to adjust the angle of my head and pointed it directly toward her own upturned face. Our eyes met. Or so I thought, but Hanekawa’s were shut. Behind her glasses were two closed eyes, and her eyelashes seemed to be trembling. Her lips, sealed too, naturally appeared to convey a message─
“Huh? Huh? Huh?”
Wh-What was going on here?
Or rather, where was this going?
Hanekawa was the class president and someone I was indebted to, just as much as, no, even more than I was to Oshino─
B-But did I need to do something here?
She did tell me to go ahead…
Those glasses would get in the way a little, but…wait.
Wasn’t the right move here to not do anything?!
“…Like that, I guess?”
Her eyes blinked open.
Hanekawa let go.
A mischievous grin spread across her face.
“Araragi, were you about a second away?”
“N-No… What’re you saying?”
I admit, my voice was obviously cracking.
What was I saying?
“See. Weak-willed, feeble you.”
“………”
Coming from someone else, those words really struck me.
Not only that, I couldn’t deny it.
I wouldn’t say a second away, but it was the undeniable truth that I’d wavered.
“You’re kind to everyone, right, Araragi? I think that when Senjogahara sees that side of you, it makes her pretty insecure. You’re the only one for her─but to take it to an extreme, it’s like you’d be fine with anyone.”
“…Insecure?”
Was she that sentimental of a person?
Then again, it was to help get rid of that part of her that I’d acted as a mediator between her and Kanbaru. So was Senjogahara, in turn, trying to help get rid of that part of me? No, it didn’t make sense. I didn’t see how that could possibly follow
.
