by Nisioisin
“Huh… Not one for paring down your selections?”
“Tsk tsk tsk. You ought to know that I love every pairing under the sun.”
“Oh, shut up!”
So Kanbaru had been at this same bookstore after school… It was probably the only one in the neighborhood big enough to have a dedicated boys’ love corner. But that meant our town really was tiny… If my life were a dating simulator, new flags would be popping up all the time.
“In other words, you’re not busy.”
“I guess I couldn’t argue if you put it that way. Thinking about how you and Mister Oshino would work together doesn’t exactly make me busy.”
“That’s what you meant by ‘dirty fantasies’?!”
“So where do you need me to go?”
“Don’t change the topic, no, wait, don’t put us back on topic! You’d better tell me, Kanbaru, who’s on top and who’s on bottom?! I’ll never forgive you if you say I’m on bottom!”
It was a stupid conversation.
Talking to her was always like this.
“Good grief, Kanbaru. It’d be nice to have an intelligent conversation with you someday… You’re supposed to be pretty smart, right?”
“Yeah. My grades are definately good.”
“From the way you spelled that, though…”
Anyway, I said.
Even as we entertained our idiotic conversation, Sengoku was getting farther and farther away from the store… Well, she could go as far away as she wanted─I knew where she would end up.
She was in street clothes.
Her sense of fashion wasn’t refined, but that wasn’t the point.
The point─was her long sleeves and long pants.
As if she was about to head to the mountains.
“The shrine we went to yesterday,” I said. “We’ll meet on the sidewalk by the stairs that lead up there. Um, location-wise─you must be closer, but I should get there first since I’m on a bike. I’ll wait for you there.”
“Really? Do you think I’m going to make you wait on me two days in a row? Your faith in me must be at rock bottom. I have my pride, and I’m not going to let a comment like that go unanswered. I’ll use this opportunity to clear my name and restore my honor. I absolutely will get there first.”
“I don’t even know how to respond to your weird sense of pride…but either way, get there as soon as you can. Oh, and don’t forget. Long sleeves and long pants.”
I was on the way back from school, so I was still in my uniform. We had just changed to our summer attire, which meant I was wearing a short-sleeved button-down, but there was nothing I could do about that now. I was wearing slacks for pants, so good enough. An insect or snake bite wouldn’t be a big deal for me anyway─those vampiric “residual effects,” once again.
“Okay. Your wish is my command.”
“All right, see you,” I said and hung up, circling behind the bookstore to the bike parking and unlocking my bicycle. More than ten minutes had passed since Sengoku left the store… I didn’t know how she was getting there, but the day before, I hadn’t seen any bicycle that might be hers near where those stairs began. She most likely walked… Well, either way, if she was heading to that shrine, I wouldn’t catch up with her.
Now that I thought about it, Kanbaru really didn’t ask me why I was summoning her…
How frighteningly loyal.
Senjogahara was obviously my superior in Kanbaru’s chain of command, but being served so assiduously by someone as high-status as Suruga Kanbaru made me feel, to be honest, more scared than happy…
There didn’t seem to be any way of ruining her image of me, though, which actually made me want to start acting like the ideal senior around her and not betray her overblown expectations.
Well─it didn’t seem like a bad thing.
“I wonder what Senjogahara was like.”
In middle school─during the Valhalla Duo’s honeymoon phase, what had it been like between them?
As I was thinking that, I reached my destination.
The entrance to the shrine on the nameless mountain.
I got there fast. That’s a bike for you.
Or so I thought, but Kanbaru was already there.
“………”
Were there wheels on her feet or something?
There was a limit to being fleet-footed… She might have no trouble passing the average scooter and leaving it in the dust. I doubted that the automobile would have ever been invented if all of mankind could run as fast as her. If she’d gotten ready to go right after I hung up… Well, no, she’d changed into long sleeves and long pants like I’d told her (plus, having learned from the day before, she wore unripped pants and wasn’t showing her navel)…
“Uh-uh,” she said, “it didn’t take much time at all for me to put these clothes on. In the summer, I’m always in my underwear at home.”
“Kanbaru… I’m saying this purely out of concern for you, but you know I can’t make any guarantees about your chastity if you keep fanning the flames of my earthly desires.”
“I’m prepared for that.”
“Well, I’m not, okay?!”
“I trust your sense of reason.”
“I don’t trust it myself!”
“Really? I’m surprised to hear that. Do you find girls only wearing underwear when they’re at home so moé?”
“Not even if you were dressed in cat ears and a maid outfit would I find you moé!”
“I see. So if we turn that around, as long as it’s not me, cat ears and a maid outfit work for you?”
“Ack, it was a trick question!”
I decided to go ahead and park my bike at least.
While I did feel somewhat guilty about parking it illegally, it wouldn’t be for long. I’d beg the law’s forgiveness. If it did get confiscated, I’d just resign myself to my fate. Beggars couldn’t be choosers.
“Even taking that into account,” I remarked, “you really are fast… You could probably make it into the Olympics or something if you really tried.”
“You don’t get to go to the Olympics just because you’re fast… And I’m not cut out for track competitions, anyway.”
“Oh, I guess not.”
Senjogahara was on the track team in middle school, and they’d first met when Senjogahara heard that the basketball ace was quick and went to see Kanbaru─or something along those lines.
“From my point of view,” I said, “your speed doesn’t even seem human.”
“Hm. If it isn’t human, would that make me…amphibian?”
“Try naming an amphibian that’s a fast runner!”
“You got me there.”
“I mean, what do you stand to gain by comparing yourself to an amphibian?”
“It’s not about gain. If you would call me that, I’d present myself as such with great joy.”
“Uh oh, ‘great joy’?”
“Hurry and please call me your ‘lowly, filthy pet’!”
“There are actually two equally important things I have to say to that, and while I’d normally ignore them because it’d be hard to without tripping over my words along the way, I like you so much, Kanbaru, that I’m going ahead and pointing them out anyway! First of all, I wouldn’t keep an amphibian as a pet, and second of all, your great joy has nothing particular to do with amphibians anymore!”
If you’re curious, I’d thought of a cheetah.
Of course, they aren’t animals you’d keep as pets, either.
Agh, and I even admitted to her that I liked her a lot.
Yippee, the feeling was mutual.
“Please, don’t be so cold and just say it,” Kanbaru pleaded. “‘Lowly, filthy pet!’ You have to try it out just once. I’m sure you’ll understand if you do.”
“Why are you acting so desperate?!”
“Urk… Why won’t anyone understand? She told me no, too…”
“Even Senjogahara didn’t want to?!”
Well, actuall
y.
Of course she wouldn’t want to.
Saying it was one thing, but Kanbaru feeling great joy?
“So, what do I need to do?” she asked me.
“Oh, right. This was no time to be amusing ourselves with small talk.”
“Do you need me to strip?”
“Why so eager to take off your clothes?!”
“If you have to take them off for me instead, I wouldn’t mind.”
“We’re not talking about who should perform the action! What are you, the embodiment of my middle school fantasies?!”
“I’m someone who tries to pursue a cheerful sexy.”
“I don’t care about your creed…”
“Okay, then let me put it this way. I’m a fairy who tries to pursue a cheerful eroticism.”
“Oh my god! All you did was change ‘sexy’ to ‘eroticism’ and ‘someone’ to ‘fairy’ and you’ve turned what you were saying into something sublime…in no way whatsoever!”
What would it take to teach this woman that men could be sexually harassed, too? It seemed like an issue I needed to address.
“Then what do you want me to do?” she complained. “Just say it, don’t hold back. I’m not a refined person, so subtlety doesn’t work on me. Whenever people are roundabout, I just get esaxpera… Esapxer… Esapxer…”
“Do you have any idea how exasperating you’re being right now?!”
“I’m sorry. I’m starting to get all beduffled.”
“Yeah, and you’re befuddling me, too!”
“So, what is it?”
“Oh─well, I’m pretty sure that up there,” I pointed at the stairs, “is someone I used to know.”
“Hm?”
“Do you remember that girl who passed by us as we were climbing these yesterday?”
“Yes. She was petite and cute.”
“I don’t know about remembering her that way…”
“To word it like you might, she was a girl with ‘pretty’ hips.”
“I wouldn’t say that!”
Well, whatever.
She was a sapphist, after all.
It made for a smoother conversation than if she didn’t remember her at all.
“I’d thought I’d seen her somewhere before…but I only remembered later. While I wasn’t a hundred percent certain yesterday, after I saw her again today at the bookstore, I knew for sure. She’s an old friend of my youngest sister’s.”
“Really, now?” Kanbaru seemed taken aback. “What a coincidence… I’m shocked.”
“Mm-hm. I was surprised, too.”
“Mm-hm. I haven’t been this surprised since I woke up this morning and saw that my alarm clock had stopped.”
“That’s awfully recent! And that’s not much of a surprise at all! It’s way too commonplace!”
“Hmm. Okay, then allow me to correct myself. Uh, I haven’t been this surprised since the Cambrian explosion.”
“Now you’ve gone too far back, and this isn’t that amazing! Don’t bring up the greatest event in Earth’s history for a coincidence like running into an old acquaintance in a small town! I’m even beginning to feel like it wasn’t such a big surprise after all now that I really think about it!”
“You can be so demanding. So─you’re saying that girl is here again today?”
“Right. Probably.”
Judging by her reaction, even Kanbaru’s quick feet hadn’t managed to get her to the stairs before Sengoku. Of course─while I could be somewhat certain that Sengoku had come straight to where we were after leaving the bookstore, it was ultimately just my guess. If she wasn’t here, she wasn’t here, and that’d be the best outcome of all.
But─the book that Sengoku was reading at the bookstore.
That was the problem.
“The book she was reading?” asked Kanbaru.
“Yeah. Well, I can tell you more about it later. Anyway, about what I wanted to ask you─I may have known this girl in the past, but it’s still awkward for me to speak to her. Actually, I don’t even know if she remembers me, and it might look like I’m using some weird pick-up move on her─the defensive instincts of a freshly pubescent girl can be a scary thing.”
“You say that like you speak from experience.”
“Well, I won’t deny that.”
All sorts of people have told me that I’m kind to everyone, but there was a price: I’d gone through some bad experiences because of it. Not that I felt like my efforts were a waste, but it didn’t feel great when I ended up not being able to help someone I might have otherwise.
“On that note, Kanbaru. You must be good with girls younger than you. You’re the biggest star at our school, after all.”
“That’s not true anymore, and I don’t feel like it ever was, but I see what you’re getting at. You’re an excellent judge of people. I really am good with younger girls.”
“I thought as much. I knew you were the right person to call.”
While not on Hanekawa’s level, Kanbaru did seem to look after others.
She’d been captain of her team in both middle school and high school.
In that sense, she was the complete opposite of the way Senjogahara was now… Or maybe I should say that Kanbaru succeeded the middle-school Senjogahara.
“To be specific, count on me,” Kanbaru boasted, “to seduce any girl younger than me in ten seconds, tops.”
“Bringing you here was the biggest mistake of my life!”
I didn’t need that kind of goodness!
I wasn’t here to ruin a girl’s life!
“Don’t tell me that you saw the basketball team as nothing more than a personal harem…”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“How far would you go?!”
“I’d take out the ‘nothing more than.’”
“That barely changes anything!”
“Hm? So she’s your youngest sister’s friend… Which means that you have a little sister… In fact, two or more…”
“………!”
Oh no!
The sapphist now knew about my little sisters!
“Heheheh… I see, your little sisters… Heh heh heh, heh heh heh. Are they anything like you, I wonder─”
“Don’t get any funny thoughts…and jeez, what is with that awful grin I doubt I’ve ever seen before?! Is that a smile you ought to be pointing at me, the object of that selfless devotion you pride yourself on?!”
If you’re curious.
They do look like me. Both of them.
“Oh, please,” scoffed Kanbaru. “I would never lay a finger on your little sisters. Yes, seducing a younger girl or two might come easier than breathing to me, but there’s no reason for me to ever do such a thing─ as long as you and I stay close.”
“Damn you, that’s a veiled threat…”
“A threat? Oh my, what a grating accusation. Such shocking words from a revered senior might cause a nervous person like me to panic and, well, who knows what I might do? Don’t you think there’s, oh, something else you ought to be saying to me right now?”
“G-Gah…”
It was happening…
She was absolutely being influenced by the present-day Senjogahara!
The very definition of a bad influence.
“Ah, I think my chest is feeling a little stiff from running here. I wonder if I could find someone to give me a massage.”
“How do I not come out ahead in that deal?!”
“Joking aside,” Kanbaru said, switching to a serious tone. “Of course I wouldn’t hesitate to help since you’re asking me─but you’re taking into account what happened yesterday, aren’t you?”
“Well─yes.”
“So─that’s what this is.”
“…Yeah.”
“Sheesh.” Kanbaru shrugged, as if she had no other choice. She raised her bandaged left arm to scratch her head─before stopping and doing so with her right hand instead. “You’re kind to everyone─that’s what she told me,
and it seems like it’s true. Sure, I learned that well enough while I was stalking you─but I get a different impression now that I see it in person.”
