by Nisioisin
“Well.” To shatter the oppressive mood that was starting to come over us, I spoke in an upbeat tone. “It might be best if you never met Oshino or Shinobu again. It might be hard going back to life as usual when you know about these aberrations, but knowing also means you can work to avoid them.”
“Uh, yes… But I still need to thank Mister Oshino, too…”
“Hmm. I have a feeling he doesn’t really like that kind of thing… But you’re right. Never seeing him again might be for the best, but it does seem like a sad choice. Some tie must have brought you together.”
Not that I knew how to feel about ties wrought by an aberration.
…Then again.
Maybe I shouldn’t say that.
Hanekawa and I, Senjogahara and I, Hachikuji and I, Kanbaru and I─those were all ties brought about by aberrations. I knew how I felt about them.
The same went for my reunion with Sengoku.
“Say,” I added, “we were in a rush yesterday, and the situation being what it was, you were forced to hide, but you should see my little sister again sometime. I asked and she still remembers you.”
“O-Oh, really? Rara does?”
“Yep. So come to our house to play again when you have a chance.”
“Is that okay? I can go to your room and play, Big Brother Koyomi?”
“Yeah.”
Wait, it’d be an issue if she came to my room…
Our house, please, not my room.
“Wh-When? When can I?”
“Hmm. Well, I guess after the culture festival is over─”
Just then.
As I was mentally flipping through my upcoming schedule─
“Oh, Araragi, it’s you,” a voice came from behind me. “What are you doing out here?”
I turned to find Hanekawa.
Tsubasa Hanekawa.
My class’s class president─the model student who’d been hard at work preparing for the culture festival with me until just a while ago. It’d been my turn today to return the classroom key to the teacher’s lounge, and she should have gone home before me, so why was she walking up to me from behind?
Jogging up to me and coming around to my front, Hanekawa discovered Sengoku. Prior to exiting through the school gates, Hanekawa hadn’t seen the girl hiding behind my body.
“Oh… Um?”
“Ah. Hanekawa, this is the girl I told you about yesterday─” I began.
“E, e-e-e-e-excuse me!”
Pardoning herself in an utterly cracked voice, Sengoku turned tail and─while I’d never say it put Kanbaru to shame, the burst of speed did remind me of her─dashed away from the front gates of Naoetsu Private High School.
It was only a few seconds before she vanished from sight.
If anyone ever darted off like a hare, she had.
……
She took her people-phobia a little too far…
Are high schoolers really so frightening, Sengoku?
If this is how she was going to act around Hanekawa, how was I ever going to introduce her to Senjogahara? I’d considered inviting Sengoku to the culture festival depending on how things played out, but it didn’t look like she’d be able to set foot on the premises of a high school…
“Araragi,” Hanekawa said after a moment. “You know, I think that kind of hurt…”
“Yeah…”
No matter how gentle and tolerant Hanekawa was, she’d have to object to someone running off after nothing more than seeing her face─I bore little if any responsibility for the situation, but I still found myself feeling bad about it.
“Didn’t you go home before me?” I asked.
“I got tied up talking to Hoshina in the hall.”
“I see.”
Hoshina, our homeroom teacher.
Hanekawa was widely loved, after all.
“Er,” I began, “sorry I didn’t introduce you sooner, but…” By now it was too late. The person was already gone. “That girl just now is my little sister’s friend that I told you about yesterday. Her name is Nadeko Sengoku, and she’s a second-year middle schooler.”
“Huh… Oh, right. I wanted to ask you, Araragi─about, um, that snake. Whatever happened with that?”
So it was weighing on her after all.
I did leave a lot of things unresolved when I talked to her about it yesterday.
“Well,” I replied, “it got solved─though we ended up having to rely on Oshino yet again.”
“Hm. I don’t really understand, but okay, that was a quick resolution. So all it took was yesterday to close the case.”
“I wouldn’t say the case was solved…but sure, something like that. She was waiting here all this time because she wanted to thank me and Kanbaru. What a chump.”
“That isn’t something you ought to say about a person who went out of their way to thank you, Araragi.”
“Hey, that was just a manner of speaking─” I started to make an excuse for myself.
But then I stopped.
“Well, you’re right. I shouldn’t have been sarcastic.”
“Very good,” Hanekawa said, looking satisfied.
It was almost as if I’d been domesticated by her.
“She was an awfully cute girl, though. Sengoku, you said? Nadeko Sengoku. I want to say that uniform is from the middle school you graduated from.”
“You know everything, don’t you?”
“Not everything. I just know what I know.”
“Uh huh.”
Sure.
I guessed I could see her knowing that.
“I don’t know, though, Sengoku seemed incredibly shy…”
“Yeah… She’s so shy that she’d bring her own bag to the grocery store just because she’s too scared to answer a clerk when she gets asked ‘paper or plastic.’”
If you’re curious, that was entirely my own preconception of her.
I wasn’t saying it to put her down for no reason. I needed us to be able to laugh off her sudden escape, or else I’d feel bad for Hanekawa.
“Ahaha. Araragi, whether it’s Senjogahara or Kanbaru or Mayoi, you’ve been getting along with a whole bunch of cute girls lately.”
“Don’t put it that way, you’re making it sound like there are more than just those three.”
“There aren’t?”
“Nope,” I asserted, but it was a lie.
There was at least one more.
Tsubasa Hanekawa.
There’s you.
“Hm? What?” she asked.
“Nothing…”
I mean, if I called Hanekawa a cute girl to her face, she’d probably treat it as a simple act of sexual harassment… There was no need for me to incriminate myself.
“By the way, Araragi.”
“Yeah?”
“Didn’t you say you had something to do today? I thought that’s why you were in such a rush to go return the classroom key… Don’t tell me that important business of yours was a chat with a cute middle school girl.”
“No.”
“My impression of you as a ladies’ man gets stronger every day, Araragi.”
“No, it’s not that…” This was actually something that caused me distress. Hanekawa, at least, might get it. “I was being vague about it earlier, but I’ll explain because I don’t want you to misunderstand. The ‘something important’ I need to do involves Senjogahara. I didn’t want to tell you because it was embarrassing, that’s all.”
“Senjogahara, huh?”
Hmm, Hanekawa said with a doubtful expression.
As president, Hanekawa had to be frowning on a classmate who, even with the culture festival right around the corner, skipped out on any and all preparations with nothing more than an “I’m going to the hospital.” That was, of course, a big lie coming from Senjogahara, who was nothing close to ill, regardless of what may have been the case before. Then again, this was Hanekawa─just maybe she had figured out that was a falsehood. Actually, I felt like Senjogahara was overplay
ing that perceived trait of hers and it was wearing thin…
“Want to hear an interesting rumor?” Hanekawa asked.
“What is it? Doesn’t sound interesting, but I’ll listen.”
“Senjogahara has been acting weird ever since you became friends with her.”
“Urk.”
“You’re acting as a bad influence on Senjogahara.”
“Urrk.”
“That kind of thing.”
“Urrrk.”
What the hell.
Rumors?
“Hoshina just asked me, ‘Do you know anything, Hanekawa?’”
“Ungh…”
It was an irresponsible rumor─of course it was.
But while it was unpleasant, I couldn’t find it in myself to get upset… I felt like it was partially true, or at least I could understand why people might say that.
“I might’ve also been told that someone did or didn’t witness you walking arm-in-arm with Kanbaru, the second-year, on Sunday.”
“Nkk.”
That one was true.
Still, what a small town I lived in…
One full of snitches, too.
Hanekawa continued, “I don’t know exactly what caused you to become so friendly with Senjogahara─but I do think that more and more people are going to say that kind of thing about you from now on.”
“Yeah─they probably will.”
“So it’s going to be difficult. You’re going to have to prove that none of it is true.”
“……”
“You can’t have people saying unflattering things about Senjogahara─like she’s been no good after she started seeing a guy. I don’t think it’s fine for you to be talking to a cute middle school girl in front of the school gates.”
“…You’re right.”
I couldn’t offer a word in my own defense.
Senjogahara being cast in a poor light because of me was unacceptable. That might sound conceited, but I had to feel at least that much responsible for her.
“Say, Hanekawa. Aren’t there any about you?”
“Hm?”
“Those kinds of rumors. Like acting weird ever since you became friends with me.”
“Who knows. Even if there were, no one’s going to tell me to my face. Though I do doubt it. I haven’t changed, after all.”
“………”
She was right.
If any rumors did exist, they’d be the opposite─Araragi’s behavior improving ever since he became friends with Hanekawa, or something along those lines.
And that one─was also true.
It was hard to express just how much she saved me.
“Anyway, I did deny it,” she informed me. “I said I didn’t think any of that was true.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
“There’s no need to thank me. I spoke my mind, that’s all.”
“Ah. But do you really feel that way?”
“Huh?”
“That─none of it is true.”
“Oh. Yeah, of course. I’ve never lied before in my life.”
“You might be the only person I know who dares to say that and isn’t a liar.”
“Really? There must be plenty. Yes, that’s right─if anything, I think Senjogahara is headed in a good direction.”
Though I don’t think it’s good for her to be skipping out on work─Hanekawa said. So it was obvious to her that Senjogahara was lying. In fact, how would you ever hope to hide something from a class president who knows everything?
“I’m not sure whether it was getting over her illness or thanks to you─but you do need to stand by her to support her as she changes.”
“…That doesn’t sound like anything a high schooler would say, you know that?”
“Really? It’s just normal.”
“Okay.”
One of Tsubasa Hanekawa’s unique traits was her conviction that she was “normal”…but if she was normal, what rank in the world did that put me in?
A thought came to me.
For a while now, and that included the present moment, this class president here had a lot of opinions regarding the subtleties of romance and relations between the sexes, but did she have someone like that to begin with?
She was kind to everyone─but.
Did she have a special someone?
I never even got a hint of that being the case, but maybe serious girls like her did have a proper partner. Or didn’t. Hmm, I hadn’t thought about it…
“Hey, Hanekawa─”
“Yes?” she asked in reply, puzzled.
Agh…
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t ask…
If I may borrow a page from Sengoku and make a Bikkuriman reference, merely mouthing such a question felt impure when Tsubasa Hanekawa was bathing me in the powerful white light of seriousness that she gave off naturally as if she were Arrow Angel.
“What is it, Araragi?” she asked again with her innocuous gaze.
Gah… I didn’t know why, but it was like I’d been cornered. Was this how the culprit felt right before he got pushed into confessing by a famed detective? Damn, an “actually, never mind” wasn’t going to work on her now that I started to ask, not with the way she is. I needed to pose a question. Ack, I was regretting this no less than the time I tried using two different-colored bath bombs.
“Uh, well, those secret gadgets that Doraemon uses─”
Having run out of options, I turned to Doraemon talk as a last resort but was only halfway through when Hanekawa interrupted me with a murmur.
“Ouch.”
Ouch… Was she talking about me? Was she cringing because I, a high school senior, was bringing up Doraemon (and as a desperate measure, at that)? Even though it was fine for middle schoolers?
I was consumed by paranoid thoughts for a moment, but no, Hanekawa had her fingertips to her head. In other words─she probably had a headache. And while much of the previous day had blurred together, what with how messy it had been, she did say something like that then, too…
“Hey─are you okay?”
“Yes… Yes, I am,” Hanekawa assured me.
The smile she pointed in my direction was indeed unclouded─but that would mean her earlier utterance was false.
I’ve never lied before in my life?
Just look, though─that was a lie.
“We could go to the nurse’s room─no, Harukami must have left by now, too. In that case, we could go to a hospital─”
“I said I’m okay. You’re overreacting, Araragi. All I have to do is go home and study a bit for it to go away.”
“You seriously believe that studying cures headaches…”
She was, quite simply, bizarre about these things.
She thought in different ways from the rest of us.
“You said it’s been happening a lot lately, right? What if it’s something terrible?”
“You’re worrying too much. You can be pretty lily-livered sometimes, you know? And forget about that, Araragi. Do you understand what I told you? And understanding me isn’t enough. You need to put it into practice, too.”
“Yeah, I get it.”
Forget about that.
Putting others ahead of yourself.
On that point, too─I thought she was a weirdo.
But.
“Sorry for making you fuss over me so much,” I said.
“It’s not like I mind. But anyway, if you understand what I’m trying to tell you, Araragi…” Hanekawa let out what sounded like a forced cough before continuing, “Why not start by putting away those volleyball shorts and school swimsuit you’re cradling like some kind of treasure?”
003
June thirteenth, a memorable day for me.
It was supposed to become one.
And it had absolutely nothing to do with volleyball shorts, school swimsuits, or the like. It all started with a remark by Hitagi Senjogahara, my girlfriend as of Mother’s Day last month, May fourteenth.
