by Nisioisin
“Why would ya need to pin anything down? I nyow what it is.”
“…Oh, right.”
I’d carelessly overlooked that fact.
If she was the avatar of Hanekawa’s stress, then she’d know the nature of that stress and what the stressor was better than anyone, even Hanekawa herself. That was exactly why she’d attacked Hanekawa’s parents first─
“Wait, but that still leaves us with an issue, cat. Even if we do learn what the stressor is, we don’t have any way to get rid of it. It’d become Hanekawa’s issue at that point, so─”
You can’t resolve another person’s distress.
Just like with Hanekawa’s parents─there was nothing I could do.
It was the same with everything else that caused her distress.
“So it doesn’t matter what the stressor is…though I admit I’m curious to know. Is it about what she’s doing after graduation, given the timing? Come to think of it, it seems like she had a headache when we were talking about post-graduation plans at the bookstore, too─it sounded like she knew what she wanted to do, but maybe in her heart she actually─”
“It’s nyot about graduation.”
“It isn’t?”
“Anyway─I think you in purrticular could easily resolve her distress, and all this stress.”
“Easily?”
“Mice and easy.”
“Would Hanekawa get distressed over something that’s so easy to resolve? Or I guess its simplicity could be what’s giving her such a hard time… Hm? Hold on, cat. What do you mean, me in particular?”
If I could do it─couldn’t anyone?
But in that case, once again, would she really get distressed over─something that anyone could fix? If there was something I could do, Hanekawa herself would be able to as well─
I suddenly glanced at the watch on my right wrist.
More time had passed.
Senjogahara would have to be back home by now─but she did say she planned to bring work home with her, so the real struggle was only getting started. Now that I thought about it, Senjogahara was probably the only one in our class who could handle what Hanekawa had been dealing with… It seemed like Hanekawa’s eye for people was spot on even when she had cat ears growing out of her head.
An eye for people, eh.
But if that was true, her eyes must have been shut when she installed me as class vice president… Doing that had essentially doubled her workload. Then again, you could increase her workload tenfold, and she’d probably handle it with ease─
“Well, ya see, human. My myaster,” Black Hanekawa said, sounding a bit cagey, “she’s in love with ya.”
“…Huh?”
“So if ya love my myaster back, I should be able to get out of the way, but─meow? What’s the myatter?”
“……Um.”
My feet halted.
Actually─my brain did, too.
What was that supposed to mean?
“Are you trying to be funny or something? I can’t come up with a quip for every stupid setup, you know… And if that’s a joke, it’s really too nasty. You need to know there are some things you can lie about and some things that you shouldn’t─”
“You’re such a fool, human. Is this the face of someone who can tell a lie?”
“………”
It wasn’t.
To be honest, I hated the old line, “If I was going to lie to you, I’d tell a more believable lie” (some lies anticipated you’d assume so), but in this case, the Hindering Cat didn’t have the ability to lie to begin with. I’ve never lied before in my life─Hanekawa told me once, but this was the diametric opposite.
The Hindering Cat couldn’t lie.
Which meant.
“B-But…” I stammered. “If you’re not lying, cat, then you must be mistaken. There’s no way that could be true.”
“What makes ya think that? How could I ever misunderstand my myaster. She’s my one and only myaster.”
“But Hanekawa…”
She was kind to everyone.
The worse someone was as a person, the more sympathy she showed.
That’s why─she picked me, of all people.
And that’s why─during spring break, too.
“You only understand things that have to do with her stress,” I argued. “I know you might share her knowledge, but there must be some things you can’t access. It’s impossible. Why would Hanekawa─”
No.
Then again, Senjogahara had once tried to trick me into telling her how I felt about Hanekawa─back when Senjogahara was like a mass of self-defensiveness and caution. If that Senjogahara tested a hunch, wasn’t there some basis to it?
“Yesss, and that’s what I’m saying,” Black Hanekawa stated as though she were teaching a slow student how to use a calculator. “That’s what the stress was─my myaster is in love with ya, but you’re dating someone else. And ya’ve been─flaunting it.”
“………”
Headaches─starting about a month ago.
So she said.
A month ago from now would be─right, Mother’s Day. The day Senjogahara and I started going out─and Hanekawa knew about us from that very day─
The class president─there was nothing she didn’t know.
She knew everything.
“But Hanekawa never acted that way─if anything, it was like she was cheering us on, giving me advice and stuff─”
“That’s exactly why the stress kept building up. Do ya really think my myaster would ever be able to snyatch away a taken man? She’s fair and just, clean and pure, she values harmony over everything─she thinks it’s nyatural to sacrifice herself for the sake of others. She wouldn’t ever breathe a word.”
Love means never having to say sorry─
But.
Not everyone could do that.
So I was asking someone like that for advice and having her cheer me on? It was the same when I had to deal with Kanbaru, too, and even when we were at the bookstore, it wasn’t just graduation we were talking about, but Senjogahara─I was choosing what to do next with her in mind─
Hanekawa’s headaches didn’t abate─
They only got worse and worse.
“………”
I felt─sick.
What had I done?
But how could I have noticed… I mean, Hanekawa? If that woman made a serious attempt to hide her own feelings, even Senjogahara wouldn’t be able to suss them out.
But.
Dense─huh.
So her plans after graduation, too… Oshino must have had some influence on her, but you could also look at it as Tsubasa Hanekawa’s grand heartbreak journey─and she started showing signs of a headache right after we talked about post-graduation plans.
Plus.
There was the time she closed her eyes, her lips turned up to me─
“When─did it start?”
“Around spring break. I dunno exactly what her heart was going through then, since it was before I ever appeared, but my myaster was living in an environment that put her under constant stress. Your story of humans and vampires was so purrposterous that ya must have seemed to have the power to break her out of her predicament.”
“Break her out?”
How could I?
My hands were so full then that─
“Though I don’t think you could say there were nyo signs at all. My myaster was close to perfect when it came to that─but she must have let her guard down here and there since it was a myatter of love. Ya never found it odd that a dead-serious class president would choose a vice president like you? Any nyormal person would realize that was a wrong pick.”
“Oh… Well.”
Yes, she had picked the wrong person for the job.
There’d been a reason.
“Assuming you were a delinquent and trying to rehabilitate ya sounds like a reason that’s not much of a reason at all.”
“That’s─”
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Back then─in early April, when Hanekawa appointed me as her vice president after half-pushing her recommendation through a decent amount of opposition─her pick generated a fair amount of backlash. I was so intimately involved in the affair that I didn’t see it that way then, and I’d unreservedly bought Hanekawa’s line that people mature when they’re put in positions of responsibility. But actually, didn’t she hate that kind of push by way of authority more than anything?
“Then why?”
“Why else? Because she wanted to be with ya as much as possible. Third-year class presidents and vice presidents get to work together to prepare for the last culture festival of their high school lives, meowfter all… But she stopped trying that on ya a month ago. The romyance my myaster slowly built up and up, one piece at a time─ended there. Myaa-haha, no, should I say that’s when it really got started?”
“………”
When it happened, Hanekawa─was happy for me.
Or so I thought.
But─that was another lie?
She’d never lied before in her life? Uh-uh.
If this was true, Tsubasa Hanekawa, you’ve been lying through your teeth!
“To be honyest, I think my myaster was careless. She all but nyever thought a rival would ever appear. If only my myaster had known that you’re kind to everyone the same way ya were to her during Golden Week─if only she’d considered that someone else might get saved by you just like she was, I know my myaster is smart enough to have acted sooner. The woman you’re dating didn’t waste a meowment in comparison, right?”
“Yeah, that’s true…”
Senjogahara─didn’t hesitate.
She went in for the kill as soon as she made up her mind.
To the point that the normal reaction was to feel creeped out.
“A girl raised in a cold and loveless home,” narrated Black Hanekawa. “During spring break, she encountered something shocking and unusual, and that something also happened to be her classmate. It felt almost like fate. Feelings of love started to bud. And then her own life was saved by that classmate─turning that love into something certain. Or something. Nyaa-hahahaha, ya know, my myaster would obviously be the purrtagonist if it were a girls’ myanga─but the way it all got snyatched away from her, I don’t know if I should call it purrfect or pathetic.”
“No one strikes faster than Senjogahara─she could start later than everyone else and not even think of it as a handicap.”
Or─
She moved with almost hasty speed on Mother’s Day because she was sensitive enough to Hanekawa’s intentions even to be testing a hunch. That might also explain the strange distance she maintained vis-à-vis Hanekawa─but.
That wasn’t Senjogahara’s fault.
That kind of thing isn’t a competition to begin with.
“Whatever the case, it’s all too late nyow. My myaster isn’t the kind of person who could ever steal from anyother, but how pure. It was supposed to be the kind of love you read about in girls’ myanga, but it turned into longing for a taken man in nyo time flat, ending up as an illicit, and unrequited, love…and she felt guilty about it, meow.”
“Well, she’s─a serious person.”
She couldn’t be open about how head over heels she was about someone, unlike Sengoku’s tormentor. But that didn’t mean coming to a neat compromise with her feelings, either. She wasn’t the kind of person who could bargain and settle with herself.
“She must have had her regrets, too─if only she’d confessed her feelings sooner…” observed Black Hanekawa. “But it’s nyot an early cat gets the bird kind of thing, and humans who think that way are petty, ridiculous, and boring─”
But.
She never breathed a word about it.
She cheered me on─and humored me when I needed advice.
Is that what had been going on?
All the time she was cheering me on and giving me advice, she was talking about her own feelings─
Of course she would have opinions regarding the subtleties of romance and relations between the sexes.
A girl in love would─she’d have understood how Senjogahara felt better than anyone else.
“That’s also why you triggered my myaster’s stress during Golden Week. You might have been the one person she didn’t want knowing─meow.”
“Then─”
Be there when she needed me? Far from it.
At that moment, I was the last person she needed, the greatest hindrance.
“You’re so dense that you didn’t show any signs of nyoticing my myaster’s affection or her turmoil, and her stress just continued to build─if you ask me, I’m impressed she lasted a month.”
“Wait, cat. Hold on. Are you sure─that’s right? Even if you’re right and I was the cause of her stress─”
If I wasn’t merely the trigger during Golden Week, but also the very bullet that tore through her guts─
“That wouldn’t be enough to make you appear, would it? I was only part of it at most, and there must have been some other powerful stressor that─”
“Nyope. It was all you,” Black Hanekawa declared. “As far as her parents go─my myaster considers that somewhat settled after Golden Week. Ya might not understand, though.”
“But that doesn’t make sense. You’re the incarnation of the stress that kept building up inside of her because of her family. If it was only over a couple of months of romance, why would you─”
“Only?” The cat’s eyes─shone forebodingly. She made no effort to hide her irritation. “Is there some reason a few months of exacerbated heartbreak shouldn’t be allowed to surpass ten-odd years of family strife?”
I haven’t led the happiest life up until now… But I think I could call it all even if I see it as what let me meet you.
If it was my unhappiness that caught your attention─then I’m glad it happened that way.
Those were Senjogahara’s words.
But─then again.
Did such things really happen?
“You look like ya don’t get it, human… Could it actually be that you’ve never really fallen in love with anybody?”
“Wha…”
“Are ya sure you’re not just going out with that girl because that’s what she insisted on? If so, you oughta break up right away and go out with my myaster instead. That would make me disappear, too. You’d be just as happy dating anyone, wouldn’t ya?”
“……”
Maybe I should have gotten angry here─maybe I shouldn’t have stayed silent after being so blatantly provoked. And really, if I hadn’t been talking to someone who looked like Tsubasa Hanekawa─I think I would have.
But─it was Hanekawa saying this.
I felt like I had no right to get angry.
“…I can’t do that, cat.”
“Hrrm? Why nyot? You think of my myaster as your savior─so shouldn’t you be repaying the favor? At the end of the day, are your feelings of love more important than your feelings of gratitude?”
“If I let that happen─Hanekawa would be taking advantage of my gratitude. I’m not going to put her in that position… No, that’s not it. That’s just a convenient excuse. It’s simpler than that, I can’t lie about my feelings for Senjogahara. And even if I did, wouldn’t Hanekawa see right through it?”
I’m bad at telling lies, and I’m bad at hiding things.
I’m flimsy and weak.
I couldn’t deceive Hanekawa even if I wanted─I didn’t want to, of course, and while a part of me might have wanted to if I could, just to do it, I couldn’t.
“It’s not an issue of me accepting it and sticking it out,” I said. “There really isn’t a thing I can do it about it─right? It’s not like Hanekawa would want to go out with me if I was doing that, either…”
“Is that so? Actually, I felt myself fading a teeny bit just now when I told ya how my myaster feels─it’s clearly relieving her of her stress. No one’s beautiful through and thr
ough, nyot even my myaster. See how I lurk beneath her. You myight be surprised, maybe she’d love it and wouldn’t mind at all. It could be painful at first, but completely fine once she’s used to it.”
“Once she’s used to it─are you really saying that? If it were that simple, Hanekawa wouldn’t have worried you all the way into existence. She’s not the kind of person who could push someone else aside for her own sake. She couldn’t put herself ahead of another. It’s that fact about her─that makes me feel so indebted. I probably would have said yes before Mother’s Day. Yes, I cared for her then, as a friend. But I can’t do it now. My feelings are frozen in place for only one person now, and it’s Senjogahara. You asked me if love is more important to me than gratitude, but─I can’t put either one ahead of the other. It’s a double bind. That’s why I can’t choose Hanekawa.”
