by Nisioisin
They say the kitchen is the baseline for household mess, and once that starts to go, it’s all over…
“Heh. Or will you try and force your way out? Go ahead, try it. I wonder, though, do you have the agility to best me?”
Kanbaru spread her arms wide and stood on the threshold.
As if she was taking a defensive stance in a basketball game─clueless about proper etiquette in a traditional Japanese home. Didn’t she know it was rude to stand there?
“Come on, come at me. I may be retired, but my defense hasn’t gotten so lax that I’ll let an amateur like you get by me.”
“Um, I’m not coming at anyone, okay?”
And you know, for someone who respects me, she seems a bit too committed to calling me an amateur.
It would’ve been one thing if I were vampiricized from giving Shinobu some of my blood, but since I wasn’t, I didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of breaking through her defense.
Seemed like my only option was to go along quietly.
Well, I wouldn’t be much of a senpai if I brushed off the kindness…or the gratitude of my junior.
To be honest, having consistently refused to participate in clubs or sports since middle school, I was unaccustomed to the very experience of being treated like a senpai and didn’t know how you acted like one in the first place… I couldn’t gauge the distance between us very well.
I guess I’d ask Senjogahara next time I saw her.
Was it okay to spend my entire day off cleaning my junior’s room, and then to get treated to dinner by way of thanks? Or was that a no-go?
That one doted on Kanbaru like a pet cat, though. I might not get a straight answer…
“Okay, okay. You win, Kanbaru, you got me. I give up.”
“You can’t throw in the towel yet. You’ve still got an opening, this is no time to give up.”
“Just what exactly do you want me to do?”
“Grapple with me.”
“I thought you were on the basketball team, not the sumo team…”
If I lost a sumo bout to a girl, and to my junior no less, my name really would be mud. So taking her pep talk, with due respect, as just that, talk─
“I’ll stay for dinner, then,” I relented. “I just need to call my folks.”
“Hm, if that’s how you feel, I suppose I have no objection,” answered Kanbaru, sounding strangely magnanimous.
She hadn’t gotten to grapple with me but seemed pleased that everything had, on the whole, gone according to her wishes─and if my junior’s day off had been a satisfying one, well then I couldn’t be happier.
Let’s leave it at that.
“Now then, Araragi-senpai. Before you take your seat at the supper table.”
“Hm?”
“Go take a bath. You can’t show up to our dining room like that, you look filthy.”
004
Even I know that you don’t call the place where you eat in a traditional Japanese home a “dining room,” but since I have no earthly idea what you do call it, I decided to refrain from pointing that out.
And, regardless of the nature of our relationship, Kanbaru was absolutely right that it would be bad manners to show up at dinner completely covered in dust from a day of intensive cleaning, so I was actually grateful that she’d said something.
I had very nearly behaved most indelicately in someone else’s home─but at the same time, I would never have conceived of using the bath at that someone’s home, so you can imagine my consternation as I sat there in the tub.
Consternation, or…
A feeling of immorality, maybe?
I felt like I was transgressing some deep-seated taboo… It was a cypress bath, I think, a splendid bath commensurate with their splendid home. The bathroom was big enough that it wouldn’t have been out of place in a modest inn, and getting to take a bath in there felt like more than ample repayment for the day’s hard work.
“…”
But it still felt odd.
Submerged up to my neck, enjoying a relaxing soak at the home of a junior I didn’t know that well…
Even Senjogahara, whose sensibilities were a little off, would opt for “not” if I asked her whether or not this was okay.
Though if I actually brought it up she’d probably kill me.
Death by office supply.
Rubbed out by an erasable ballpoint pen─though I wasn’t sure exactly how that would work.
I took a look at the waterproof clock, which was somewhat incongruous with the cypress bath─or conversely, which served as a reminder that this was a private home and not an inn. I wasn’t so much worried about the hour as I was pondering how long I had until this “supper.”
It seemed like Kanbaru hadn’t planned to host a dinner party for me, she’d just hit on the idea in the moment and gotten her grandmother’s permission after the fact.
It must’ve been a real hassle for her grandmother to suddenly be making dinner for me as well─I’m sure she thought I was an overweening senpai─but she must be a kindhearted woman because she apparently gave the okay.
I’m very grateful. That is, terribly sorry.
“…Dammit, I can’t relax.”
There was plenty of room to stretch out, the water was the perfect temperature, that was all great. I have no intention of retracting my earlier statement that this was more than ample repayment for my hard work. When it comes to someone else’s shampoo and conditioner and soap, however, I can’t relax.
Man, am I uptight.
Well.
I’ll get out as soon as I’m all warmed up, I told myself, but that was when a sound came from the changing room.
A sound, by which I mean a voice.
“Hm?! What’s this?! The door won’t open?! It’s locked?! What’s going on, Araragi-senpai, are you all right?! I’ll save you!!”
“…”
Someone was frantically rattling the door handle─a hoodlum was attempting to break into the changing room.
“Open this door! Come out with your hands up! This is your last warning!”
“…”
Or maybe it was the police?
“I am Suruga Kanbaru, Araragi-senpai’s sex slave! My signature move is the triangle jump!”
“…”
Nope, a hoodlum.
“Why won’t this open? I guess I’ve got no choice, I’ll be back in a sec with that stick the S.W.A.T. team uses for breaking down doors!”
“Enough already! And don’t bring something if you don’t even know what it’s called!”
Though.
It’s not like I know either.
“Oh, what’s this, you’re unharmed, Araragi-senpai…”
After my retort the violent banging finally ceased. She sounded sincerely concerned for my wellbeing─though that doesn’t excuse her initial attempt to break into the changing room.
I’d shouted from inside the bath; my voice as it echoed off the walls was kind of unsettling, but I needed to talk loud enough for my voice to reach her through two doors, across the changing room.
For her part, Kanbaru always spoke in a voice that was plenty loud enough to carry that far.
“You gave me quite a scare, Araragi-senpai… I was really worried you were being held captive in there.”
“You’re pretty much the only person in the world who’d hold me captive.”
“I don’t think so. There’s always Senjogahara-senpai.”
“Hahaha, not a chance. Whatever else she might do, Senjogahara wouldn’t go that far.”
“But, how come the door won’t open?”
“Because I locked it, obviously.”
She acted surprised, or maybe she really was surprised, but Kanbaru barging in while you were in the bath was a probable scenario for anyone who knew her.
Locking the door was a natural precaution.
“Locked… There’s a lock on the changing-room door?”
Kanbaru seemed genuinely taken aback.
<
br /> It’s your house, how can you not know that?
“I mean, when I take baths, I just leave the changing-room door open…”
“That’s leaving yourself a little too open, don’t you think? Though it’s fundamentally up to you how you want to behave in your own home.”
That is.
I was the one who was buck-naked in someone else’s home, even if I was in the bath.
“There seems to be some sort of misunderstanding here, Araragi-senpai, so allow me to clear it up. I only came because I wanted to get into the bath with you.”
“Nope, no misunderstanding. Nothing to clear up.”
“I misspoke. I only wanted to wash your clothes for you while you were in the bath, Araragi-senpai. My conscience is clean.”
“…”
Her conscience could use a bath.
And even if she was telling the truth, I had a hard time believing that the person who was responsible for the room that had made my clothes so filthy was any good at doing laundry… She could very well be even worse at it than cooking.
“What? I’m a jock, I’ve been playing sports my whole life, so I’ve always done tons of laundry. You might even call it my forte.”
“Mm…that’s a fair point. Still, if you wash my clothes I won’t have anything to wear.”
“Just come out naked then, it’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. I don’t have that much confidence in my body.”
“If you like, in addition to your clothes, I can wash your body for you. From in front and behind!”
“…”
The sound-only aspect really amplified this girl’s perviness. And the fact that I was buck-naked only served to double my, what would you call it, visceral sense of impending danger.
“I’m saying that in return for cleaning my room, I want to clean your body, Araragi-senpai!”
“You should worry about getting your mind clean first. How can it be so filthy when you’re using such a great bath every day?”
“Heheh. Well, I can’t deny that it’s a great bath. I’m sure it’d just be off-putting if I pretended to be humble about it.”
She only hears the positive parts.
I could see her proud smile in my mind’s eye.
Then again, it was definitely a bath to be proud of…
“It’s not just the bath, though, the water itself is great too, isn’t it? We pass the water up from the well in the garden and then heat it. It may not be from a natural hot spring, but it’s deepsomething water full of somethingium.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean… If you’re so proud of it, at least learn the proper terms.”
Was it like mineral water or something?
Well water isn’t necessarily mineral water─but oddly enough, once she’d said that, I started to feel like the water filling the cypress tub really was special.
Hmmm.
Well water, huh?
“Oh, speaking of which, Araragi-senpai.”
“What is it, Kanbaru-kohai?”
“That water has something of a past, you know?”
“Something overcast? Listen, you’re the only thing around here that’s dreary.”
“Not something overcast, something of a past.”
“Oh yeah?”
Well, either way, she really was something─but well water with “something of a past”? What was that supposed to mean? Sure, it passes up the well, but what past?
“What kind of a past are we talking about?”
“My, my, interested are we?”
“I don’t know about interested…”
When someone brings up something like that, how else do you respond? Though if there was a story behind the water I was currently immersed in, I certainly wanted to hear it.
Purely out of curiosity.
“Okay, fine, I’m interested in this so-called past. Why not? And by the way, right now you’re being something of a pest.”
“It’s a story about my father.”
“Wow, your fath…”
Er.
Kanbaru threw it into the conversation so naturally that I almost didn’t think anything of it, but her father, yeah, passed away many years ago─not just her father, but her mother too, together.
In a─car accident.
Which is why Kanbaru lives with her grandparents. Their only son was Kanbaru’s father.
“…”
“Naturally, my father bathed in that bath─not just the bath, but the well water too─daily.”
Not knowing how to respond to this, I fell silent, but Kanbaru just went on telling me this story about her father from the far side of two intervening doors.
She must’ve accepted his passing as a fact of life by now─in which case handling the subject with kid gloves might be rude, or from Kanbaru’s perspective, vexing.
Which is why I responded, “Hmm… Daily, huh?”
“Yup. Since he used it all the time, I guess my father didn’t treat the water as anything to be particularly grateful for…”
“Well, stands to reason…”
As someone who lives in a regular house, I was jealous that they had a well at all─or at least, I thought it was cool. But if you had one in your yard your whole life, of course you wouldn’t be grateful. It’s just there.
“But from the time he was a little kid─once in a blue moon, something caught his attention while he was taking a bath.”
“Caught his attention?”
“A certain phenomenon─might be a better way to put it.”
Not quite aberration-related, but a mysterious phenomenon, Kanbaru elaborated.
“Not quite aberration-level─but mysterious? That’s awfully, or very, specific.”
I tensed up somewhat in the tub.
I mean, if the well water involved an aberration in some way, that could spell big trouble─even apart from the fact that I was personally submerged in it at that very moment, using water with that kind of a past on a daily basis didn’t seem like a great idea.
“I’m telling you, Araragi-senpai─it’s not aberration-related. It doesn’t involve aberrations.”
“Right…”
Non-aberration-related, aberration-unrelated?
A mysterious phenomenon that doesn’t involve aberrations? Actually, I guess they’re a dime a dozen.
Man-made phenomena.
Or natural phenomena.
Such things were eminently possible─the question was how dangerous they might be.
In other words, just because it wasn’t aberration-related didn’t guarantee that this thing Kanbaru was telling me about was safe.
“Sure, but the monkey aberration that you wished on was left to you by your parents, so─no, was it just your mother?”
“Yup, it was my mother. Your memory is remarkable, Araragi-senpai, not that I’m surprised.”
“Being complimented after I had to correct myself just makes me feel shitty, actually…”
“Back in the day, I thought ‘remark’ meant ‘mark again.’”
“Truly remarkable.”
Toé Gaen.
I think that was it, or that’s how my decidedly unremarkable memory remembers it─Suruga Kanbaru’s deceased mother’s name.
I don’t think she ever told me her father’s name…and now seemed like an awkward time to be asking her.
“So, what was this mysterious phenomenon that didn’t involve any aberration? What are we dealing with here, Kanbaru? Depending on your answer, I might need to get out of this bath sooner rather than later…”
“No need to be on edge, Araragi-senpai. Don’t worry, it’s not a scary story. It’s not a ghost story or anything.”
“Not a ghost story─”
Hearing that didn’t put my mind at ease.
I still had the lingering influence of an aberration in my body, after all─supposing, and I know this might seem like a wild thought, but supposing the well was filled with holy water or something, my body might just
melt.
