Tsukimonogatari

by Nisioisin

  Just spinning her wheels.

  It was only thanks to managing the unmanageable mayhem of the Fire Sisters’ brawn, that is, the over-engineered weapon of mass destruction known as Karen Araragi, that Tsukihi Araragi paradoxically, or passably, functioned as the Fire Sisters’ brains… But with the impending increase in her level of independence, I couldn’t imagine what kind of schemes she’d concoct─or rather I didn’t want to think about it.

  Sure, how she lives her life is her own business, but it’s also human nature for me to want to avoid any kind of situation where I would end up mobbed by reporters.

  Yes.

  Taking all of these things into consideration, my first priority as I faced the prospect of graduation was, it goes without saying, completing my exam prep, but the second was rehabilitating my little sisters, particularly Tsukihi.

  I hadn’t discussed it yet with my parents, but if I got into college I’d probably be leaving home─and if I did, I couldn’t bear to leave behind two little sisters like them.

  It’d be irresponsible of their big brother, wouldn’t it?

  Maybe of any human being.

  To repeat, I could care less what happens to those two. They can go ahead and live whatever kind of life they please, but I’m going to do what I need to do to avoid any sort of blame down the line.

  So, for the time being, I began that day by running a morning bath for Karen, who would inevitably return home drenched in sweat.

  I felt triumphant at the prospect of being able to say: No way, I’m not irresponsible, I never shirked my responsibilities, I mean look, I drew a bath for her and everything.

  Keheheh.

  A hot bath, just the way she likes it, how about that.

  But my pseudo-villainous attempt at kindness backfired because the scalding temperature Karen prefers is how I like it too. As I cleaned the room and prepared all the amenities, I got the urge to take a bath myself.

  Some of you might wonder what’s up with a guy who takes a bath in the morning even when he hasn’t gone for a run, but they say a person releases a full cup of sweat during the night. Jogger or not, there’s nothing wrong with taking a bath in the morning. And it wasn’t just that particular day; while I was studying for exams I often took a shower in the morning to clear my head after I woke (was woken) up.

  “…”

  Consider this.

  The warlords of the Warring States period employed cadres of poison tasters. As a result, the food was all cold by the time it reached the warlord’s mouth, but this serves to illustrate how precious his life was. Our anecdote might be apt to elicit laughter at the expense of the poor warlords, whose overabundance of caution meant they never had tasty meals, but that’s totally wrongheaded, that’s merely the condescending attitude of a peaceful age. Some poison tasters must have made the ultimate sacrifice, which goes to show just how many more lives were riding on the shoulders of the soldiers’ commander, on his wellbeing.

  Upon reflection, didn’t this mean that if I really wanted to look out for Karen, if I really cared about her welfare and her future, I shouldn’t let her take a bath without getting in first and ensuring that there was no danger?

  From what I’ve heard, the bathroom is where the most fatal accidents occur in the supposed safety of our homes, so before letting my sister enter that danger zone when she was back from her run, I needed to confirm its security. I had to taste the bath for poison, so to speak. I had no choice.

  And so I decided to get into the bath.

  I decided to take a nice, hot bath.

  Damn, it’s hard being a big brother, forced to take baths against my will for my little sister’s sake─but as I quickly began to shed my clothes in the changing room.

  “Oh.”

  Tsukihi appeared.

  And she was only half-dressed. In other words, she was half-naked. She must have shed her yukata in the hall before coming into the changing room. Which she did all the time. Just disrobed wherever she pleased. The easy-on-easy-off aspect of traditional Japanese clothing was to blame. And naturally, she never picked up after herself (I did, mostly).

  Fixing me with her severest glare, the half-naked Tsukihi accused, “You’re the first! I mean, the worst! You said you were getting a bath ready for Karen but want to get in ahead of her! You’re the worst, the worst, the worst, the worst!”

  “Um, given your state of undress, I can only surmise that you had exactly the same intention…”

  In fact, since she was hoping to hijack a bath that she hadn’t even prepared, that I had prepared for Karen, who was the real villain here? Trying to scold me about it on top of that─I was seriously concerned about her future.

  How had she made it through fourteen years unscathed with her sorry excuse for a personality?

  In any case, Tsukihi had a strong metabolism, which meant she sweated easily. She took a bath every chance she got, kind of like Shizuka, to put it in Doraemon terms.

  She wasn’t about to let this opportunity pass her by.

  How shrewd of her.

  How shrewd and rude.

  “Just stand aside, big brother. I’m getting into that bath, and no one’s going to get in my way, brother or not.”

  “What a line. You’re willing to fracture our family over who takes the first bath, and a morning bath at that…”

  Frightening.

  My sister lived entirely in the moment, didn’t she?

  “But I’ve already gotten completely into the bath-time mindset,” she said. “My body may be out here, but my spirit is already in there.”

  “Oh, shut up. The tub’s still only half full.”

  “Don’t forget to add my volume to it.”

  “Like that’s something to brag about.”

  Yet I, myself, was too deep into the bath-time mindset at that point to yield my turn. Well, my heart may not have been in the tub like Tsukihi’s, my body and spirit were still there in that changing room, but surrendering the bath without a fight just because my little sister told me to would be a stain upon the honor of big brothers everywhere.

  Shoving her out of the way so I could be first might in fact be appropriate, but the alternative was unacceptable. It could only be described as a dereliction of my duty as a big brother.

  So I puffed out my chest (I was shirtless by then, incidentally. It was a half-naked sibling standoff) and gave Tsukihi an ultimatum.

  “Little sister, if you’re determined to get into that bathroom, you’ll have to take me down firwatchit!”

  I barely managed to dodge the shampoo bottle that she unhesitatingly hurled at me. The cheeky little middle schooler apparently brought her own shampoo. She was at least classier than Karen, who’d happily wash her hair with a bar of soap, but a truly classy person doesn’t throw (with a spin, no less) shampoo bottles at other people’s faces.

  “Tsk.”

  And classy people don’t click their tongues.

  But man, was she a frightening little sister.

  What was she thinking? Or was she not thinking at all?

  “What the hell?! Someone could get hurt!”

  “You told me to take you down.”

  “No, no, I meant mentally. Physically, you don’t take me down, you respect me and kneel before me.”

  “You’re a pain in the ass,” Tsukihi said, closing the door behind her. She didn’t actually lock it, but her meaning was clear: I’m not budging from this spot no matter what. And she started forward to reclaim her personal bottle of shampoo, which had landed behind me.

  And what’s more, that motion flowed naturally into a nonchalant attempt to slip past me into the bathroom, so I rushed to block her.

  Putting my body on the line, like a real man. Protecting the door to the bathroom as if it hid a gaggle of wounded children.

  “You shall not palookout!”

  This time she went for the eye-gouge.

  An attack the old Senjogahara would have gone for (and did).

  At lea
st in Senjogahara’s case she was so stubbornly combative because of all the issues she was dealing with. Tsukihi just wanted to get into the bathroom.

  “Enough already, big brother, don’t get heated. Heating up the bath was enough, your work here is done.”

  “That’s an unspeakable line.”

  “Move.”

  “No.”

  There was no point in being so stubborn, but what kept me standing there was my pride as an older brother, my not wanting to bow before or fall behind my little sister.

  Or you could say I was frozen with terror.

  I mean, Tsukihi was glaring at me for real.

  She wasn’t a yandere, but still over yonder in the psycho ward.

  When you take away the sweet dere part, all you’re left with is the pathology.

  “I’m the one who heated up this water, so the first bath is mine by right.”

  “I allowed you to heat it up for me, and you should be satisfied with your lot.”

  Our arguments ran perfectly parallel, never intersecting.

  Which is to say it didn’t even constitute an argument.

  We weren’t engaging with each other at all; if anything, the first engagement was yet to come, as in a battle.

  Somewhere along the line, the premise that I’d prepared the bath for Karen had gotten lost.

  In fact, the very existence of Karen, off happily running along somewhere, had vanished from our minds.

  While she was enjoying the refreshing morning breeze, an internecine family struggle was unfolding, a sordid sibling rivalry that perhaps rendered her the real winner among the three Araragi children.

  Sooner or later, that very Karen would come home from her run and appear in that changing room, ready to cleanse the sweat from her body─she would waltz in there drenched in sweat, dripping with perspiration.

  And in that three-way contest, the winner would undoubtedly be her. Circumstantially speaking, she would obviously arrive plenty sweaty enough to warrant a bath by anyone’s standards, and if it came to blows, Tsukihi and I combined couldn’t beat her even if she had one hand tied behind her back.

  Indeed, Tsukihi and I were at this impasse because our combat levels were more or less evenly matched. Naturally, I was a boy and had a boy’s strength, but Tsukihi had a crazy streak that I lacked. The craziness to unhesitatingly go for the vitals.

  In other words, it was a stalemate.

  I couldn’t but envision a future where Karen came in and snatched the prize out from under us while we maintained that equilibrium─and I’m sure Tsukihi saw it too.

  My little sister wasn’t so oblivious to her actions’ consequences that she’d overlook that eventuality─okay, she was oblivious, but her wheels turned quickly. I bet she arrived at that conclusion well before I did. It’s just that her emotional brakes were shot, by virtue of which she was only able to deal with the situation on a par with me, who had only just realized the danger.

  “All right then, big brother. We’ll meet in the middle.”

  “Meet in the middle?”

  A compromise?

  Ah ha.

  A proposal worthy of a strategist.

  They say war is customarily conducted with a middle ground in mind.

  But in this case, what middle ground─what point of compromise could exist between us? The right to take the first bath was a one-of-a-kind item, so to speak, and the competition for it a zero-sum game. One person wins, the other loses. So I didn’t see any room for compromise, anything to compromise on.

  But I underestimated Tsukihi.

  Not for nothing had she managed to become the idol of every middle schooler in town despite her boundlessly irritating personality. The Fire Sisters’ brains proposed a plan that no ordinary strategist could have conceived of.

  “Let’s meet in the middle and go in together.”

  004

  We met in the middle.

  Somehow I ended up going into the bathroom with Tsukihi.

  “Why…”

  How come?

  How did it come to this?

  You could say it was thanks to our mutual stubbornness.

  You could. I don’t want to, but you could.

  “Whaaat? You don’t want to? Why, does your little sister’s naked body make you think dirty thoughts? No waaay! Baths are for getting clean, big brother.”

  Maybe it’s because I was bamboozled by those words. But in the first place, Tsukihi must have offered her compromise on the assumption that I’d lose my nerve and slink out of the changing room with my tail between my legs.

  And precisely because I knew she made that assumption, there was no way I was going to slink out of that changing room. Instead I threw down the gauntlet and said, “What, are you all talk, you little brat? Time to put your money where your mouth is. Or don’t you have the guts to go into the bathroom with me, you chickenshit.”

  And now here we were.

  All in and going all the way.

  Me and Tsukihi, brother and sister, seated side by side in the bathroom washing our long hair. I took this rare opportunity to try out Tsukihi’s shampoo, and what do you know, the lather really did feel different.

  “…”

  “…”

  The thing is.

  Here’s the thing.

  Getting two, more or less grown-up siblings into the bathroom together was ten times tougher than I imagined… The room isn’t as big as it is in the anime, I mean, it’s just the regular size of a bathroom in a normal family home, so with two teenagers in there, it was pretty cramped.

  Like, while we were washing our hair we kept banging elbows.

  “Big brother.”

  “What is it, little sister?”

  “Say something. This is more awkward than I thought it’d be.”

  “Yeah…”

  You’re not wrong, but you don’t have to come right out and say it.

  Though it takes a certain burden off me if you’re the one to bring it up.

  It wasn’t going to do much for the narrative either if that silence went on forever.

  Every once in a while you hear some media personality tell a funny story on television or the radio about being in the bathroom with their parents as a grown woman, but you don’t hear much about siblings doing it, it just doesn’t happen.

  In that sense, Tsukihi and I were delivering a rare piece of reportage in the present progressive, but did anyone ask for rare?

  More like well-done.

  If it was so awkward, you’d think I might say, “I’m going to get out first, take your time,” or that she would say, “I’m about done. Excuse me, big brother,” but then this was me and Tsukihi.

  On the contrary, I tragically blurted out, “If it’s so awkward then get the hell out, Tsukihi. You’re just fronting anyway. If you’re pissed off at yourself for saying what you said, you shouldn’t have said it to begin with.”

  “You’re the one who’s pissing in the wind, big brother. All I meant was that it’s awkward looking at your scrawny body. I’m cool as a cucumber about being in the bathroom with you. So cool I’m positively frigid.”

  That was our lamentable exchange.

  Someone, please, put us out of our misery.

  “Scrawny? I resent that, I’m a lean, mean beefcake machine.”

  “A lean, mean beefcake machine? Did you mean to say a teeny-weeny beanpole machine?”

  “Hey, that’s out of order. But listen, Tsukihi, I might consider getting out if you tell me that’s what you really want.”

  “I really, really, really, really want you not to get out,” Tsukihi brushed off the concession I had finally forced myself to offer.

  What the hell was wrong with her?

  She lived just to be stubborn.

  “Are you already clean, big brother? Or do you want to get out so soon because you’re still feeling dirty?”

  “Again? You’re going to recycle that joke? When you’re the one who’s so fascinated by my body? Wha
t you really want is to touch these washboard abs, I bet.”

  “No I don’t, why would I want to touch abs divided into eight like that?”

  “You counted them! You counted my abdominal muscles. You’re giving them the eye, aren’t you?”