by Nisioisin
“You know, I used to be a really good kid,” I said.
“It isn’t good to lie.”
“I’m not lying…”
“I see. Then let’s say that it isn’t. A little lie never hurt anyone.”
“So you’re from the village of liars.”
“I’m from the village of truth-tellers.”
“Is that so. Anyway, while I never spoke in the annoyingly polite way you do, I was a pretty good student and a pretty good athlete, and never got in too much trouble. Also, I never rebelled against my parents for no good reason like the other boys around me. I felt grateful that they were raising me.”
“Ahh, how praiseworthy.”
“I have two little sisters, too, and they’re basically the same. Things were great at home, but then I overdid it when I was trying to get into high school.”
“Overdid it?”
“……”
I was impressed by how easily she made our conversation flow.
Was this what they called being a good listener?
“I went and applied to a school for way better students than me─and I managed to get in.”
“But that’s a wonderful thing. Congratulations.”
“No, it wasn’t. If I applied for a school that wasn’t for me and didn’t get in, and that was all, it would have been fine─but as a result, I wasn’t able to keep up. You wouldn’t believe how bad it gets when you’re a washout at a school for smart kids. Not only that, everyone else around me is super serious… People like Senjogahara and I are the exception, not the rule.”
As for Tsubasa Hanekawa, that embodiment of seriousness, she was an exception just for bothering to deal with a student like me. She had what it took to compensate for it, quite simply.
“And when that happened, I went from being a good kid to the other way around, and just as hard. It’s not like there was anything specific that happened to me, though. My father and my mother are the same as ever, and I’m acting the same at home, or at least I feel like I am─but there’s just this awkward feeling I can’t describe. It comes out no matter what I do, and it lingers. So we all end up worrying too much about each other, and─”
My little sisters.
My two sisters.
─You know, Koyomi, that’s why─
“That’s why I─never grow up, I’ve been told. I’m going to stay a child and never become an adult─I’ve been told.”
“So you’re a child?” Hachikuji asked. “Then you’re the same as me.”
“…I don’t think so. What they mean is just your frame growing bigger, without getting filled out properly.”
“What a rude thing to say to a lady, Mister Araragi. I’ll have you know that I’m one of the better-developed students in my class.”
“True, your chest was pretty impressive.”
“What?! You touched it?! When?!”
Hachikuji’s eyes turned to saucers on her astonished face.
“Um…when we were scuffling?”
“That’s even more of a shock than the fact you punched me!”
Hachikuji held her head.
She really did seem shocked.
“Wait…it’s not like I did it on purpose, and it was only for a split second anyway.”
“A split second?! Really? Honestly?!”
“Yeah. I only touched it about three times.”
“Not only is that more than a split second, any time past the first has to have been intentional!”
“You’re accusing me of something I didn’t do. It was an unfortunate accident.”
“I’ve had my first touch stolen from me!”
“Your first touch?”
That’s what kids these days talked about?
Grade schoolers really are maturing fast.
“To think that my first touch came before my first kiss… What a naughty girl Mayoi Hachikuji has become!”
“Oh yeah, Hachikuji. Now that you mention it, I realize I forgot to give you the allowance I promised you.”
“Please, what a moment to pick to bring that up!”
Next, with her head still in her hands, Hachikuji began to writhe all over as if a wasp had gotten inside her clothes.
The poor thing.
“Come on, don’t get yourself so down. It’s better than your father taking your first kiss, you know?”
“That sounds like a very normal event!”
“Okay, then it’s better than your reflection in a mirror being your first kiss, okay?”
“No girl in our world has had that happen to them!”
Yeah.
You could probably include girls in the next world.
“Grrah!”
Just as I thought Hachikuji was taking her hands off her head, she immediately moved to try to bite my throat. It was where a vampire had bitten me over summer break, so a chill ran down my spine. I somehow managed to get my hands on Hachikuji’s shoulders and to push her back, averting any trouble. “Grrarrrarrrarrr!” she gnashed her teeth menacingly. I recalled there being an enemy in some old video game like her (it looked like an iron ball with a chain) as I soothed her.
“N-Now, now. Who’s a good girl.”
“Please don’t treat me like a dog! Or is this your roundabout way of comparing me to a rutting female canine?!”
“Well, if I had to compare you to something, I’d honestly say you’re acting more like a rabid one…”
She did have a nice set of teeth, though. She’d bitten into my hand down to the bone, but she hadn’t chipped or lost a single one of her teeth, baby or adult. Not only were they perfectly lined, they were unfathomably durable.
“You know, Mister Araragi, you’ve been acting very brazen for some time now! I don’t see a hint of regret on your face! Isn’t there something you ought to say after having touched a young girl’s delicate chest?!”
“…Thank you?”
“No! I’m demanding an apology from you!”
“You say that, but it happened in the middle of us fighting. How could that be anything short of an act of God? I almost think you should be glad it was just your chest. And like Hanekawa said earlier, you’re the one in the wrong for biting someone as ridiculously hard as you did.”
“This isn’t about who’s at fault! Even if I am, I’m in an incredible state of shock! You can’t call yourself a grown man if you don’t apologize to a girl in shock, even if it’s not your fault!”
“Grown men don’t apologize,” I said in a deep voice. “It cheapens his soul.”
“How cool?!”
“Or are you saying you’ll never forgive me unless I apologize to you? Saying that you’ll forgive someone if they apologize to you…is like admitting you can’t be magnanimous toward people who haven’t abased themselves.”
“Why have I become the one being criticized here? Only a thief could be so bold, as they say… Now you’ve really gotten me mad… I may be tolerant, but this is like turning both my cheeks inside out!”
“That’d be incredibly tolerant of you…”
“In fact, I won’t forgive you even if you apologize!”
“What’s the big problem anyway? It’s only going to go to waste otherwise.”
“And now you’re downright defiant, Mister Araragi?! That’s not the issue here! And I’ve only begun puberty, so it’s not going to waste!”
“You know, people say they get bigger if you massage them.”
“Only men believe that superstition!”
“It’s become a sad, boring world out there…”
“Have you been using that superstition as an excuse to squish ladies’ breasts all the time? You’re disgusting!”
“I’ve never had the chance, unfortunately.”
“So you’re a lousy virgin!”
“……”
This elementary school kid knew that expression?
Grade schoolers weren’t just maturing fast. They were finished.
I wasn’t living in a boring world, but i
n an awful one…
Then again, I could pretend to lament what was going on in the world today all I wanted, but come to think of it, I’d soaked up that much by the time I was in fifth grade, too. That’s how anxiety about younger generations tends to work.
“Grrah! Grarrr! Grarrarrarrr!”
“Ah-wh-h-hey, watch it! Seriously, that’s dangerous!”
“A virgin touched me! I’m sullied!”
“How does that part change anything?!”
“I wanted my first to be a smooth operator! But I got you instead, Mister Araragi! My dreams have been crushed!”
“What kind of overblown fantasy is that?! You’re making whatever budding feelings of guilt I had disappear, you know!”
“Graarrh! Grrah, graaah, grr!!”
“Oh, just quiet down! You really are a rabid dog! You high-banged, play-biting, no-good woman! Fine, then! I’m gonna squish them so much you’ll forget all about your firsts and all about kisses!”
“Eeeek?!”
There he was, a high school boy who was losing it in the face of an elementary school girl, who was threatening to harass her by force, who I’d like to believe wasn’t me.
It was me, though…
Fortunately, Mayoi Hachikuji put up far more resistance than I ever could have expected, so this exchange came to an end without having run its course, but rather with my entire body covered in Hachikuji’s tooth and scratch marks. After five minutes, an elementary schooler and a high schooler sat silently there on a bench, completely out of breath, drenched in sweat, exhausted.
I was thirsty, but there were no vending machines in the area…
“I’m very sorry…” she said.
“No… I’m the one who should be apologizing.”
Mutual apologies were made.
It was a pathetic settlement.
“…Still, Hachikuji. You’re used to fights.”
“I get into them quite often at school.”
“Scuffles like that? Oh, right. You don’t pay that much attention to who’s a boy and who’s a girl when you’re in elementary school. But you really know how to get yourself in trouble…”
In spite of her intelligent features.
“You seem to be used to fighting too, Mister Araragi. I suppose battles like that are common once you become a juvenile delinquent?”
“I’m not a delinquent. I’m a washout.”
It was the kind of correction that hurt to make.
I was practically wounding myself.
“I’m going to a prep school, so just because I’m a washout doesn’t mean I’m a juvenile delinquent. We don’t even have a group of delinquents at my school in the first place.”
“But in manga, it’s standard for student councils of elite high schools to be doing quite wicked things behind the scenes. The smarter someone is, the more malicious of a delinquent they become.”
“You can ignore that theory in real life. But anyway, yeah, I do get in a lot of fights with my little sisters.”
“Your little sisters, you say. I believe you mentioned earlier that you have two. So are they about my age?”
“No, they’re both in middle school. But they might be around your age at heart─both of them act so young.”
Though neither of them ever goes so far as to bite me.
One of them practices karate, so there’s not much messing around against her.
“You know, they might just get along with you. They’re good with kids, or rather, they practically are kids. I’ll introduce you to them next time I get a chance.”
“Oh… Thank you, but I’ll have to pass.”
“Okay, then. You know, you’re pretty shy for all your good manners. Not that it’s important. Well…I guess scuffles, at least, end when one side apologizes to the other.”
But today─was a battle of wills.
Still, I thought, it should end with me apologizing.
I knew I should. But still.
“Is something the matter, Mister Ararragi?”
“You added an extra ‘r’ this time.”
“I’m sorry. A slip of the tongue.”
“No, I think you did that on purpose.”
“A flip by the flung.”
“Or maybe not?!”
“I’m sorry, but everyone stumbles over their words from time to time. Or are you trying to say that you’ve never once had a slip of the tongue?”
“I won’t go that far, but I’ve never messed up saying someone’s name before.”
“Fine, then say ‘She shells she-shells on the she-shore’ three times in a row.”
“You botched it yourself.”
“What do you mean, ‘she-shells’?! Are women all you ever think about?”
“You’re the one who said that, not me.”
“What do you mean, ‘she-shore’?! Are women all you ever think about?”
“I don’t even understand what that’s supposed to mean…”
It was a fun conversation.
“Now that I think about it,” I observed, “that’s actually pretty hard to say on purpose. She shells, she-shells…”
“Onsha she-shore!”
“…”
Between all the slipping and nipping, her mouth was getting a workout today.
“So. Is something the matter, Mister Araragi?” she asked.
“Nothing’s the matter. I’m just feeling a little depressed wondering how I should apologize to my sister.”
“Are you going to apologize to her because you squished her chest?”
“I’d never squish my little sister’s chest.”
“Ah, so you’d squish an elementary school girl’s chest, but not your little sister’s. I see, so that’s where you draw the line.”
“Not to be underestimated, eh? That’s some sarcasm. What a great illustration of the fact that any situation can be twisted into casting a perfectly innocent man as the villain.”
“I don’t think I’ve twisted anything about the situation.”
She was right; she’d only explained what had happened. In fact, I was the one who needed to wrestle and twist the context in a quasi-heroic manner to excuse my actions.
“Fine, then I’ll put it another way,” she offered. “You’d squish an elementary school girl’s chest, Mister Araragi, but not a middle school girl’s chest.”
“Whoever this Mister Araragi you’re talking about is, he sounds like one hell of a pedophile. Not someone I’d want to count as a friend.”
“You seem to be trying to deny that you’re a pedophile.”
“You bet.”
“I understand that true pedophiles refuse to label themselves as such under any circumstances. They consider innocent young girls to be grownup women and proper peers.”
“Thanks for the unwanted factoid…”
Learning useless trivia is nothing more than a waste of brain space.
But more importantly, that wasn’t something I wanted to be learning from a grade schooler.
“Either way,” she added, “I do think it’s dismissible as an act of God in a fight, even if it’s your little sister.”
“Dammit, don’t drag out this topic. Your little sister’s chest counts even less as a woman’s chest than a grade schooler’s. You need to understand that.”
“The way of chests. It’s very enlightening.”
“Don’t follow it or anything, I’m begging you. Be that as it may─I got in a little argument when I was leaving home today. Not a scuffle, an argument. And not to rehash what you said earlier, but I feel like I need to apologize even if it’s not my fault. If it’ll smooth things out. I do─know that. It’s what I’m supposed to do.”
“Yes, it is,” Hachikuji nodded with a solemn expression. “My father and my mother were always fighting. Not scuffles, mind you, but arguments.”
“And then─they got divorced.”
“It may not be my place to say as their only daughter, but I understand they got along very well─at first.
I’ve heard they were madly in love with each other before they married. But─I never once saw them getting along. The two were always fighting.”
