Bakemonogatari Part 1

by Nisioisin

  “…”

  No, as far as which party, I would be right on.

  “Understand?” she said. “I have five thousand of my rowdiest pals ready to attack your family if they don’t hear from me at least once every minute.”

  “It’s fine… Stop worrying.”

  “You mean you won’t even need a whole minute?!”

  “I am not that boxer.”

  And hold on. She didn’t think twice about targeting my family.

  I couldn’t believe her.

  On top of that, five thousand pals? What a lie.

  A bold lie for someone who had no friends.

  “Say, I hear your two little sisters are still in middle school.”

  “………”

  She knew my family’s makeup.

  She might’ve lied, but she wasn’t joking.

  In any case, displaying a modicum of my “immortality” hadn’t made her trust me one bit. Oshino always said that relationships of trust were important in these things, and my current situation wasn’t a good one from that perspective.

  But what can you do.

  From here, the problem was Senjogahara’s alone.

  I was merely a guide.

  We passed through a tear in the chain-link fence onto the grounds, and into the building. It was still evening, but it was fairly dark inside. There was a lot of clutter on the floor after days and months of neglect, and you could trip on something if you weren’t careful.

  That’s when I realized.

  An empty can lying around was nothing more than an empty can to me, but it had ten times the mass for Senjogahara.

  Relatively speaking, that was the case.

  It wasn’t like in old comics where you spoke of “ten times the gravity” or “a tenth of the gravity” and left it there. The simple take that “lighter equals more athletic” didn’t work. Worse, it was this dark, in a place she didn’t know. Maybe Senjogahara couldn’t be blamed for parading a wild animal’s level of caution.

  Even if she were ten times faster.

  She’d only be a tenth as strong.

  Her reluctance to surrender her stationery also began to make sense in that regard.

  And─why she didn’t carry a bag.

  Why she couldn’t carry one, either.

  “…This way.”

  Clasping Senjogahara’s wrist, I led her forward from the entrance where she’d been standing uncertainly. She was taken aback because I was a bit sudden, but while she gave me a “What?” she followed without resisting.

  “Don’t expect any thanks,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “In fact, you should be thanking me.”

  “I don’t understand?!”

  “I put that stapler around your mouth so that it’d hit the inside of your cheek, not the outside. I didn’t want to leave a visible wound.”

  “……”

  I couldn’t hear that as anything other than an abuser’s “It’ll show on the face, so punch in the belly” thinking.

  “It wouldn’t have mattered if it had penetrated,” I pointed out.

  “I judged that you’d quite likely be fine, going by how thick-skinned your face looks.”

  “If you’re trying to comfort me, it’s not working. And ‘quite likely’?”

  “My intuition is right about a tenth of the time.”

  “That’s all?!”

  “Well─” Senjogahara paused before continuing, “it was all wasted consideration in the end.”

  “…Seems that way.”

  “If I said that immortality seems convenient, would you feel hurt?” she followed up with a question.

  I answered, “Not so much, now.”

  Not so much─now.

  But during spring break?

  If someone had said that to me then─the words may have killed me. May have dealt a fatal wound.

  “You could say it’s convenient─but you could also say it’s inconvenient. That’s about it.”

  “How wishy-washy. I don’t get it.” Senjogahara shrugged. “Is it like when people talk about a ‘devil may care’ attitude? Satan probably doesn’t, but just might?”

  “Nothing wishy-washy there. He absolutely doesn’t.”

  “Oh.”

  “And anyway, I’m not immortal anymore. I just heal a tad faster than normal. Otherwise I’m a regular human.”

  “Huh, I see,” Senjogahara muttered, sounding disappointed. “I was planning on trying all sorts of things on you if I got the chance. Too bad.”

  “From the sound of it, some very grotesque planning was going on behind my back…”

  “How rude. I was only going to &% your /- before *^ing it.”

  “What do those symbols mean?!”

  “And I wanted to do this and that to you, too.”

  “What is that underlining supposed to suggest?!”

  Oshino tended to be on the fourth floor.

  The building had an elevator, but it was of course out of service. That meant our options were busting through the elevator’s roof and using the cables to climb to the fourth floor, or taking the stairs. I think it’d be fair to say that anyone would pick the latter option.

  I started up the stairs, still tugging Senjogahara by the hand.

  “Let me tell you one last thing, Araragi.”

  “What is it?”

  “I might not look it with my clothes on, but actually, my body might not be worth breaking the law to make yours.”

  “……”

  It seemed that Miss Hitagi Senjogahara hewed to the highest notions of chastity.

  “Was that too roundabout for you? Then let me say it flat-out. If you lay bare your base instincts and rape me, I will do anything and everything in my power to pay you back slash-fiction style.”

  “……”

  As for shame and modesty, she had none at all.

  Actually, she was just plain scary.

  “You know, this isn’t only about what you said just now, but looking at everything you do, Senjogahara, you seem a little, I guess, too self-conscious? Like maybe you should dial down your persecution complex?”

  “Ugh. Don’t you know that some things are best left unsaid, even if they’re true?”

  “You were aware of it?!”

  “Anyway, this building looks like it’s about to collapse. I can’t believe this─Oshino person lives here.”

  “Yeah…well, he’s a pretty weird guy.”

  Though if you asked me how he compared to Senjogahara, at that point I’d have had to think it over.

  “Shouldn’t we have contacted him in advance?” she fretted. “It’s a little late now, but we’re the ones who’re seeking advice…”

  “Putting aside my shock at your apparent display of common sense, he unfortunately doesn’t carry a cell phone.”

  “How enigmatic. Almost a suspicious character. What exactly does he do?”

  “I don’t know the details, but─he says he specializes in cases like mine and yours.”

  “Hmph.”

  It was far from a proper explanation, but Senjogahara didn’t try to dig any deeper. Perhaps she thought that she was about to meet him anyway, or that there was no point in asking. She was right either way.

  “Hey. You wear your watch on your right arm, Araragi.”

  “Huh? Oh, yeah.”

  “Are you a contrarian or something?”

  “Start by asking if I’m left-handed!”

  “Uh huh. Well, are you?”

  “……”

  I was a contrarian.

  The fourth floor.

  As the building was originally a cram school, it had three class-like rooms─but with the doors to all three broken, they and the hallway connecting them were now a single area. When I peeked inside the closest one first, wondering where Oshino was:

  “Oh, Araragi. So you finally came.”

  Mèmè Oshino was right there.

  Sitting cross-legged atop his makeshift bed (if you cou
ld call it that) of a number of rotting desks pushed together and bound with plastic string, he was facing me.

  As if he’d been expecting me.

  Like always─like he saw it all coming.

  As for Senjogahara─she was visibly creeped out.

  While I did tell her in advance, Oshino’s filthy demeanor significantly deviated, no doubt, from a modern-day high school girl’s aesthetic standards. Anyone would look as ragged as him living in these ruins, but even I, a boy, could say that Oshino’s appearance was not a hygienic one. If we’re to be entirely honest. But most of all, his psychedelic Hawaiian shirt was the fatal blow.

  I think this every time I see him, but really, the fact that such a person is my savior can be a downer… Though I’m sure someone as mature as Hanekawa isn’t bothered one bit.

  “Oh, so you’ve brought yet another girl with you today, Araragi? You’re with a new one every time we meet. Why, I’m quite glad for you.”

  “Stop making me out to be some sort of sleazebag.”

  “Hah─hm?”

  Oshino cast a distant gaze in Senjogahara’s direction.

  As if he was looking at something behind her.

  “…Nice to meet you, missy. I’m Oshino.”

  “Nice to meet you─I’m Hitagi Senjogahara.”

  She’d managed to give him a proper greeting.

  So she was discriminating with her acid tongue. At least, it looked like she could be polite to her elders.

  “Araragi is my classmate, and he told me about you.”

  “Huh. Is that so.”

  Oshino nodded meaningfully.

  He looked down, pulled out a cigarette, and put it in his mouth. But instead of lighting it, he kept it there and used it to indicate the windows, or rather, the scenery beyond the random fragments of glass that had long ceased to function as windows.

  Then, after waiting for more than long enough, he turned to me.

  “So, Araragi. You got a thing for girls with straight bangs?”

  “What was it I just told you not to do? And girls with straight bangs? Isn’t that what you’d call a plain-old pedophile? Don’t lump me in with your generation who had Full House airing on TV when you were going through puberty.”

  “Right.” Oshino laughed.

  Senjogahara scowled in response.

  The word “pedophile” might’ve been what did it.

  “Um─anyway,” I said, “get the details from her directly, but Oshino─about two years ago, this girl over here─”

  “Don’t call me that,” Senjogahara commanded me.

  “Then what do you want me to call you?”

  “Miss Senjogahara.”

  “……”

  Was she in her right mind?

  “…Miss-Sen-Joe-Guh-Hara.”

  “I won’t have you saying it like a machine. Say it normally.”

  “Missy Senjogahara.”

  She poked me in the eyes.

  “You nearly blinded me!”

  “An eye for an eye,” she said.

  “How do you get an eye out of hurt feelings? Where’s the equivalence in that?!”

  “My inappropriate remarks are an alloy of 40 grams copper, 25 grams zinc, 15 grams nickel, 5 grams bashfulness, and 97 kilograms malice.”

  “That’s almost all malice!”

  “Also, I was lying about the bashfulness.”

  “And now you got rid of the saving grace!”

  “Oh, be quiet. I’m going to nickname you ‘menstrual cramps’ if you don’t knock it off.”

  “That’s the kind of bullying people kill themselves over!”

  “What do you mean? It’s literally a natural phenomenon, nothing to be embarrassed of.”

  “Then don’t be malicious about it!”

  Senjogahara seemed to have gotten her fill and finally turned back to Oshino. “Now, before we proceed, allow me one question.”

  Her tone suggested that she wasn’t asking just Oshino, but both me and him, as she pointed to a corner of the classroom. There, holding her knees, crouched a little girl who seemed out of place even in a cram school because she was too little at about eight years old, a pale, blonde girl who wore a helmet and goggles.

  “What, exactly, is that child?”

  Judging by her phrasing, she recognized that the girl wasn’t fully a who. In fact, a prickly glare that surpassed even Senjogahara’s and that focused on a single point, Oshino, and didn’t waver would have tipped off anyone attuned to such things.

  “Oh, you don’t have to worry about that,” I explained to her before Oshino got a chance. “It’s not like she can do anything, she just sits there─it’s nothing. A kid who’s neither a shadow nor a trace. Not even a name or a presence.”

  “Hold on a sec, Araragi,” Oshino cut in. “You’re right to say that she has no shadow, trace, or even a presence, but I gave her a name yesterday. She worked hard over Golden Week, plus it’s a huge pain to have nothing to call her by. And without a name, she’ll never stop being heinous.”

  “A name, huh? What is it?” I knew I was abandoning Senjogahara with the question, but I was interested so I asked.

  “I named her Shinobu Oshino.”

  “Shinobu─huh.”

  A decisively Japanese name. It was also an alternative reading for the “Oshi” in Oshino.

  Not that it mattered.

  “Written with the character for ‘heart’ under the one for ‘blade.’ A fitting name for her, don’t you think? I let her reuse my last name as-is, which by luck uses the same character. Double it up for triple the meaning. I’m pretty impressed with my sensibility, if I do say so myself.”

  “Well, why not.”

  It really didn’t matter.

  “After giving it some thought,” my savior continued, “it came down to Shinobu Oshino or Oshino Oshino, with an Edo period-style ‘o’ in the given name, but I decided to prioritize how it sounds over linguistic uniformity. I’m also a fan of the way it resembles missy class president on paper, with two characters for the last name but just one for the first.”

  “Why not.”

  It absolutely didn’t matter.

  Though, well, “Oshino Oshino” did seem out of the question.

  “So,” Senjogahara said, as if her patience had run out long ago, “what is that child?”

  “Like I said─it’s nothing,” I told her.

  A husk of a vampire.

  The dregs of a beautiful demon.

  You might say so, but what else could I have done? This had nothing to do with Senjogahara anyway. It was my problem. Just my karma, which I merely ought to face for the rest of my life.

  “It’s nothing? Okay, then.”

  “……”

  What an indifferent woman.

  “It’s like my grandmother on my father’s side always said,” she added. “The opposite of hate is not love, but indifference.”

  “Hold on, what?”

  That was somehow so messed up.

  Where did that one come from, the bath-pissed church?

  “But anyway.” Hitagi Senjogahara shifted her gaze from the pale, blonde former vampire, now known as Shinobu Oshino, to Mèmè Oshino. “I heard that you would save me.”

  “Save you? Now that I can’t do,” Oshino said in his usual teasing tone. “You’re just going to get saved on your own, missy.”

  “……”

  Whoa.

  Senjogahara’s eyes narrowed by half.

  She was manifestly doubtful.

  “So far,” she said, “five people have spouted similar lines to me. All of them were frauds. Are you one as well, Mister Oshino?”

  “Ha hah. You’re a spirited one, missy. Something good happen to you?”