Tsukimonogatari

by Nisioisin

  Karen has impressive powers of self-affirmation.

  “’Kay then, I’m gonna go running. I’m going ’na run. Make sure a bath is ready for me. A scalding one. Wanna come with me, big brother?”

  “You know I can’t keep up with you. Running means a hundred-meter dash to you─and for the length of a marathon, 42.195 kilometers. Get Kanbaru to go with you.”

  “I actually cross paths with her sometimes this time of day.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  Come to think of it, my dearly beloved junior does two ten-kilometer dashes every morning, doesn’t she? Not quite a marathon, but almost half of one. So statistically, it would make sense for her to cross paths with Karen… They’re different types so maybe it’s like comparing apples and oranges, but which of them wins out in the stamina department?

  “So long, big brother. I’m sure you’ll be terribly lonely while I’m gone, but see you again at the breakfast table. If I don’t, you’re going to be tried in absentia.”

  “What the hell for?”

  Well.

  A few things did come to mind.

  I’d be lucky if I end up dressed like an inmate rather than some bagged game.

  “Bye now, Pops big bro!”

  With this parting line, which I could at least tell was an impression, though the resemblance to Lupin the Third was so faint it could have just been a coincidence, Karen left at a run. Whether it’s jogging or a hundred-meter dash or a marathon, I’m pretty sure she’s the only person who gets up a head of steam while she’s still inside the house.

  She’s the jersey girl, after all, so she doesn’t even need to change.

  I considered coining a term, jerl, but doubted it’d catch on.

  “Her hair’s gotten long,” Tsukihi said, watching Karen depart, and now alone with me in my room. “Super long, really. I was pretty surprised when she severed her ponytail over the summer. But it’s pretty much grown back now. Super back, really. When kids grow fast, I guess their hair grows fast too?”

  “Yeah, seems like it…”

  Severed made it sound like it was a lizard’s tail or something, which was a little scary but not inaccurate, and either way, Karen’s ponytail had recovered well enough. Even if it wasn’t exactly the same, it was long enough to be pulled into a short tail.

  “Though it doesn’t grow as fast as yours, kiddo.”

  “Or yours, kiddo,” countered Tsukihi.

  “Don’t call me kiddo, kiddo.”

  It was immature of me to invoke my authority as a big brother, but in any case, Tsukihi’s hair and my own were bizarrely long now.

  She’d always been fickle about her hairstyle, but whatever she was thinking or feeling, for a while now she’d been letting her hair grow and grow─it was almost long enough to reach down to her ankles because she wore it straight.

  Combined with her taste for traditional Japanese clothes, she looked like some lady ninja who used her hair as a weapon. Kunoichi Tsukihi.

  Tsukikage.

  As for me myself, I’d originally grown out my hair to hide my “neck,” but approximately a year after the events of that hellish spring break, it was pretty damn long even if it wasn’t down to my ankles. The tips brushed the middle of my back, and I could probably sport a ponytail that rivaled Karen’s old one.

  After putting off the matter over and over again─I’ll cut it next time, I’ll cut it tomorrow, I’ll cut it at some point so no need to do it today─it had gotten pretty crazy.

  Batshit.

  “Never mind me, big brother, don’t you think you should cut your hair before exam time? It won’t make a great impression in interviews.”

  “What interviews? There aren’t any for college entrance exams. It’s not a part-time job. Though I guess there is the impression you make on the examiner. Dammit, yeah, there’s that. I’m not even growing it out because I want to. In fact I’d like to cut it, but this is how I look in the photo I submitted with my application form, and if I cut it now they might not recognize me,” I said, touching my relatively bedhead-free hair. “I’ll cut it off after exams. The whole mop of it.”

  “Makes me feel hot just looking at it, even though it’s winter.”

  “Look who’s talking. Yours isn’t hair, it’s a trench coat…hmm.”

  I reached out and mussed her hair for no particular reason. So much hair. It’s no good blaming things on other people, but I dunno, Tsukihi’s being that long must have numbed my senses. It’s like that thing, that optical illusion where you put two lines next to each other and try to tell which one’s longer.

  Okay, her hair was easily twice as long…

  “All right…guess I’ll go get the bath ready for Karen,” I said. “Up with the sun, giving up my precious time, I’ll spur on these old bones to go prepare her bath.”

  “I’m sure she’s grateful, but not as full of greatness as you are, big brother.”

  “While she’s been tempering her body like it’s a katana, I keenly observe that she doesn’t seem to have joined any school clubs.”

  Karen Araragi is a karate girl.

  Nowadays they’re called karate dames (nowadays?).

  So you’d think she’d be a member of the karate club, or some other athletic club… As someone who’d never had a lick of interest in what my little sisters did, I’d hardly wondered or even conceived of the question, but now all of a sudden it was on my mind.

  “Karen can’t join any clubs. Geez, big brother, you really don’t know anything, do you? Do you?”

  Tsukihi looked smug.

  She was a kind person insofar as she liked to tell you things you didn’t know, but despite that caveat, her attitude was unpleasant.

  Well, she always rubbed me the wrong way, and afterwards I would beat her black and blue, but first I wanted to know why Karen couldn’t join any clubs. What was the deal?

  “Why can’t Karen join any clubs? This is totally the first I’ve heard of it. That’s no good, I need to know everything about my sisters. Has she been blacklisted? It couldn’t possibly be because she’s too busy with the Fire Sisters.”

  If that was it, I’d have to put the kibosh on their activities right away. It’d be a splendid excuse.

  “No, no. It’s a rule at her dojo. The students there are forbidden from participating in clubs. Because they’re a combat-oriented school. Because they’re an ultra combat-oriented school. Because they’re a school. Because.”

  “…? I don’t really get it?” I cocked my head. “You’re my little sister too, so explain it in a way your big brother can understand, fool. You Le Fou.”

  “That’s a hell of an attitude… My attitude is horrible too, but yours is the worst. It’s horribly horrible. Unreal. Just listen for once, okay? If you’ve attained a belt in a martial art or have a pro boxing license, don’t they say it’s like you’re carrying a deadly weapon? This is the same.”

  “Ah… I guess they do say that.”

  Hmmm.

  I’ve also heard that’s just a rumor, but I understood why Karen couldn’t join any clubs. Basically it was against the rules of her dojo.

  A combat-oriented school.

  An ultra combat-oriented school.

  It wasn’t at all clear to me what that all-too-vague expression really meant, but having personally experienced the karate techniques at our sister’s disposal, I was prepared to agree. If Karen employed them in society at large, the whole power balance was liable to crumble.

  For my part, at least, I didn’t want to face an opponent who could pierce a magazine with her fingertips─the only people who would were probably those with the same skill, in other words her dojo mates.

  “But now that you mention it, I did hear something about that. I forgot because I don’t give a shit about my little sisters.”

  “Really? After all that?”

  “And now I remember…I’ve been wanting to meet her sensei. Got to tie up those loose plot threads. I’m pretty sure that’s the last of them
, too.”

  “I’m pretty sure you’re dead wrong…”

  “But it kind of feels like a waste, doesn’t it? It’s kind of, what, a shame for Karen’s strength, the power of that body, her physical might, not to be shared openly and to stay buried amidst the Fire Sisters’ illegal activities.”

  “Our activities aren’t illegal,” Tsukihi insisted, but I ignored her.

  They weren’t treated as crimes only because the two of them were still in middle school. The activities themselves by and large exceeded the bounds of anything that could be called lawful.

  They were out of bounds.

  Not to mention, what they exacted wasn’t even justice in my view, but there was no exhausting that argument with my sisters; even if I exhausted my strength the argument wouldn’t be, so I decided to let it go at that.

  But even if I benevolently let them ramble on about justice and the significance of their work and blah blah blah, the Fire Sisters business got me in a complaining mood.

  “You don’t think it’s a shame, Tsukihi? For Karen’s abilities to remain hidden?”

  “Nya?”

  “That girl’s got talent coming out of her ears, no question, even if she’s not up to my level. Look, don’t you think that deserves to be in the spotlight? I don’t want her to be held back by her dojo or the Fire Sisters, she should be going for Olympic owwww!”

  Tsukihi had stepped on my foot.

  And not in a cute way, she’d crushed the nail of my little toe with her heel. A surgical strike, dead on target. “Crushed” is neither excessive nor exaggerated, but the truth─she split my toenail, for crying out loud.

  “What the hell?!”

  “Huh? You were being annoying, big brother…” She looked at me blankly, her sudden flare of emotion seemingly already cooled. She wasn’t regretting her own behavior one bit. “No one, not even our big brother, can be allowed to annul the bond of the Fire Sisters.”

  “Wha… You were considering disbanding the Fire Sisters yourself, weren’t you? Didn’t you say you’d invite me to a farewell party chock full of middle school girls?”

  “Hearing someone else say it makes me angry.” At least she was honest, this hazardous, dangerous little sister of mine. “The Olympics? They make me sick. The same stale thing over and over again, every time.”

  “Tradition isn’t stale. Don’t call a festival held once every four years stale. Don’t be giving it a thumbs-down. Who do you think you are, anyway?”

  “Anyway, Karen will retire from the Fire Sisters someday, but I don’t need my big brother to tell me that,” Tsukihi said, this time with total composure. A tough nut to crack, how vexing. “All kinds of stuff will happen when she goes to high school. All kinks of kinds. Her environment will change. I still don’t think she’ll give up the dojo. She’s so besotted with her sensei, and all.”

  “Huh…”

  Funny.

  Hearing that my little sister was besotted with a stranger I didn’t know anything about was sort of unsettling. Tying up loose plot threads aside, I needed to check out this sensei. For my own peace of mind.

  “And I bet they won’t let Karen go that easily, either,” Tsukihi predicted. “Her sensei has an even higher estimation of our sister’s physical abilities than you do.”

  “Pardon me? An even higher estimation, you say? Bullshit, this so-called sensei doesn’t know a damn thing about the delicate softness of Karen’s tongue.”

  “Um, probably not… And how do you know how soft her tongue is?” Tsukihi glared at me. “Why are you even familiar with the charms of Karen’s oral cavity?”

  “Mrgh.”

  Yikes, time to retreat.

  She had me there.

  Either way, it was all just idle chatter, and I had no illusions about settling Karen’s future in the course of a morning’s trifling chat. Just learning that Tsukihi was still ready and willing to disband the Fire Sisters, that she hadn’t forgotten that conversation, was more than enough to satisfy me.

  Well, I didn’t know how my exams would fall out, or maybe fall flat, but either way, there was no question that before too long my environment was going to change even more than Karen’s.

  But before that happened.

  I was, in fact, not totally devoid of a brotherly desire to set Karen and Tsukihi on something like the right path─because yes, it was about time.

  For the Fire Sisters to wake up.

  For me to.

  003

  Whether out of kindness or out of habit, or maybe a desire to harass and feel superior to their older brother, or for no reason at all, my two wretched little sisters Karen and Tsukihi Araragi, known to the world as the Tsuganoki Second Middle Fire Sisters, wake me up every morning. They wake me up in the morning like I walk the night. They wake me up regardless of whether it’s a weekday or a Sunday or a holiday, almost like it’s their occupation, like their life depends on it.

  Sure, there have been times when I lashed out at them in annoyance (mostly when I was a freshman, I think), but on this one point they remained undaunted. Whatever horrid miseries I might treat them to, whatever silent treatment, still they woke me up. It bordered on obsession.

  Lately, though, by which I mean for a while now, I’d been studying for my college entrance exams, which sometimes kept me up late into the night, and on such occasions I was grateful for their morning “wake-up call”─honestly I’m grateful even now. In fact, when I think back, I should always have been grateful.

  And now I’m even grown up enough to admit it.

  It’s just that as a high school senior in my last term, I didn’t really need to show up at school anymore, which meant that there was no need for me to wake up so early… A consistent amount of sleep was necessary to maintain both my performance and my health, but no need to be so hung up on waking up early per se. Considering that I’d been receiving their constant blessing for the past six months or so, however, I couldn’t really tell them to get lost. I mean, even if I did tell them to get lost they definitely wouldn’t, and it’s not just about exam prep. Since it was the Fire Sisters whom I have to thank for rescuing me from the peril of potentially not graduating due to the number of absences, tardies, and early departures I racked up during the second half of my first year and the beginning of my second, I really couldn’t tell them to get lost. Leaving aside justice and all that, their unswerving dedication to waking me up constituted a meritorious service I could not ignore.

  Without question, I owe Tsubasa Hanekawa and Hitagi Senjogahara for my scholastic improvement on the road to entrance exams, but equally indisputably, Karen and Tsukihi Araragi are to thank for supporting me on the road to graduation─and it’s only human nature to want to repay that debt in some small way.

  Only human.

  Just to be clear, it has nothing to do with me being into my little sisters.

  That kind of thing only exists in manga (how many times now have I said that?).

  In fact it’s what they call “the reciprocity principle” in psychology─that’s definitely what it is. Apparently, human beings have this “quirk” of wanting to repay a person from whom they’ve received some kind of favor.

  Take this fact in isolation, and you might get the impression that human beings are a fair species, that they possess a spirit of fairness, but reality isn’t so pretty. Basically, people just “feel shitty when they owe somebody something.”

  People want that free and clear feeling of paying back a debt, or of feeling superior by paying it back and then some─that seems to be the gist of it.

  Which is exactly why I felt it was about time I repaid my debt to Karen and Tsukihi after six months─no, six years of being woken up by them.

  As an older brother.

  Out of consideration for their futures─

  “Karen’s got her strength and her looks, though, so even if I don’t give it too much attention, she’ll make something of herself… I can leave her alone and she’ll be somebody, but…�
�� I grumbled as I went downstairs.

  The walls have ears, the doors have eyes, and the shadows have vampires in them.

  I couldn’t be sure no one was eavesdropping on me so I didn’t finish my thought, but yeah, I was worried about Tsukihi.

  Tsukihi Araragi.

  I’m genuinely worried about her future.

  I have to care.

  I have to be careful.

  I can’t even imagine what she’ll be up to this time next year… The wheels are always turning in that head of hers, but she’s always turning them for the wrong reasons.