Nekomonogatari (White)

by Nisioisin

  When I asked him after we became friends for details about what he did when he was skipping school and not caring about classes and tests, which is to say when I casually dug deeper into the matter, it all sounded close to the same as what happened during spring break and Golden Week.

  All in all, it wasn’t as if turning into a vampire over spring break or becoming involved with aberrations had transformed his life; at the root, that had been Koyomi Araragi all along.

  While his face turns sour and he begins to grumble whenever Karen and Tsukihi’s activities as the Fire Sisters come up, what they’re doing, likewise, is nothing more than a rehash of Araragi’s middle-school days.

  No, according to his sisters, Araragi’s time in middle school was far more precarious. Extracurricular activities that barely toed the line of legality─nay, fighting on the opposite side of the law wouldn’t be too great of an exaggeration. Beyond being taken aback, I’m impressed by the fact that he managed to make it to high school alive.

  Of course, while he might be doing the same thing in high school that he was in middle school, there does seem to be a major difference in his motivation.

  He adamantly refuses to talk about it, even more than about spring break, and none of his current friends, myself included, know the details, but he appears to have experienced some psychological turning point around the time he was a freshman.

  I guess it was why he became a “washout,” to use his word?

  …I’m making it sound like a big deal, but maybe he couldn’t keep up academically, and that’s all it was. There’s no rule stating that changes in a person’s mindset have to be the outcome of some huge incident.

  And either way, whether he changes or not, Araragi is Araragi.

  He’s still him, even though he’s changed completely from the cool person he was when we first met.

  No matter how much he changes, he’s Koyomi Araragi.

  So these are nothing more than memories of his middle-school days, when his disposition was more hi-tension, upper, hotblooded─memories that Araragi, himself, has forgotten. In that sense, it could be a very normal event called settling down once you start high school.

  Normal.

  Mundane.

  This event of his.

  Or.

  Spring break. And Golden Week too.

  And maybe everything with Miss Senjogahara, with Hachikuji, with Miss Kanbaru, with Sengoku, and with Karen, too, was no match for all the things he experienced in middle school.

  As for today, he was on the move again for some reason.

  At some point down the line, I fell in love with him─but I’ll talk about when that happened a little later.

  014

  …?

  Did we skip another section number?

  What’s going on here?

  We couldn’t have skipped 13 just because it’s an unlucky number. Once, Araragi complained that while it made a certain amount of sense to skip over 13, whoever first thought to skip 4 in parts of Asia because it sounds like the word for “death” had to have been incredibly influential to spread a pun so far (that perspective is very him), but it’s not like we need to skip 13 just because it makes a certain amount of sense.

  ???

  Well, it doesn’t inconvenience me in any particular way, so I’ll keep going─I got up after noon.

  No one woke me up.

  Miss Senjogahara had been right. Unable to get a good night’s sleep in those ruins after all, I’d fallen into a deep slumber that cleanly removed the dull fatigue entangled somewhere inside my body.

  I was a bit on the surprised end to find Miss Senjogahara’s sleeping face in front of me when I woke up, though.

  No, not a bit. I was pretty seriously shocked.

  I can only describe it as a feast for the eyes.

  What a handsome face it was─something about a beauty with her eyes shut offers up a different flavor from when she’s awake.

  Miss Senjogahara’s sleeping face, in particular, was so well formed it almost appeared crafted. So smooth like it was made of porcelain, it also had an undeniable sensuality that only nature offered. I found my heart racing before I realized it.

  Thump thump thump.

  I wasn’t tired anymore, and there was no way I could stay half-asleep anyway with my blood pressure rocketing the moment I woke up.

  So Araragi was getting to hog her sleeping face these days?

  I blushed at myself for my own adult-themed thought.

  I felt like an idiot.

  Actually, I was obviously an idiot.

  …No, maybe not.

  Even Araragi couldn’t hog her sleeping face yet─because she was living with her dad.

  Her father.

  He’d seen more of his daughter’s sleeping face than anyone else.

  And watched over it.

  “…Oh.”

  Miss Senjogahara opened her eyes all of a sudden.

  She seemed to be less waking up than coming back to life.

  Like maybe she was having her switch flipped on.

  Booted up.

  Apparently she wasn’t the type to be very “still asleep” either─even though she came across as hypotensive.

  There’s actually no casual relationship between low blood pressure and rising and shining, they say.

  If anything, it has more to do with low blood sugar?

  “Good morning, Miss Hanekawa.”

  “Good morning, Miss Senjogahara.”

  “Though I doubt it’s the time of day to be using that expression.”

  “You’re right. Not at this hour.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Um.” I turned my neck to check the clock on top of the dresser again. “One-thirty.”

  “AM? PM?”

  “PM, of course.”

  How long did she think she’d slept?

  Time for a flashback─after that.

  After that, the two of us really did take a shower─it was my first time ever doing so with anyone else, so I’ll let you know that many embarrassing, clumsy moments were had.

  Hence Miss Senjogahara took the lead entirely and ended up washing me all over. She had practiced hands and a veteran’s moves.

  She was used to flirting with other girls!

  Or that’s the impression I got.

  I couldn’t take it in silence, however, and washed her all over right back.

  There we were, in the not-too-big shower, quite literally naked, and I’m not sure exactly how to put this, but I feel like we crossed some line.

  I, who always set boundaries, crossed a line.

  You might call it a turning point.

  At least, maybe there was no longer any reason to act too reserved around Miss Senjogahara. While she’d forced me to come along with her, to tell the truth I’d still been reluctant about staying over at someone else’s house.

  Now I could think: I’d be a bother to her for just one day.

  I was able to.

  I honestly felt that way.

  For a very long time, I hadn’t done such a simple thing.

  What do we mean by “honest”?

  What do we mean by “feel”?

  There was no end to it when you thought about it too deeply.

  Come to think of it, Miss Senjogahara was also someone who’d built firm walls in her heart.

  Back when she was called the “cloistered princess,” she’d never have let me stay over or shower with her, let alone spent all night running around town searching for me.

  Considering the weight of all she’d overcome in the past few months, I felt pathetic for having just as many experiences but not overcoming a thing.

  Right.

  I haven’t overcome─a thing.

  Not even after the commotion over Golden Week, not even after that day before the culture festival.

  I haven’t grown.

  I haven’t changed.

  Which is why, I thought, I’m so jealous of Miss Senjogahara�
��and love her so much and can’t bring myself to hate her.

  I honestly felt that way.

  Having frolicked in the shower for about thirty minutes (no one was around to stop us), we then exited into the bathroom, refreshed.

  We wiped each other’s bodies and put on underwear.

  “I can understand having reservations about putting on my underwear, but could you at least borrow my pajamas?” begged Miss Senjogahara. “I’ll throw out those sweats that I fear you bought at some kind of discount store. Their design would stupefy a stupa.”

  “Huh? You don’t like them?”

  “They’re awful.” As Miss Senjogahara shook her head, she seemed annoyed by her wet hair. It was also a blunt comment. “Those clothes weren’t made with any human wearers in mind…and are exclusively for mannequins. Or maybe I should call them mock-ups created to test clothes hangers.”

  “……”

  She was going to go that far?

  With no mirrors in the abandoned cram school, I was never able to check how I looked in them, but…was Miss Senjogahara crying when she woke me from my sleep on my handmade bed because of what I was wearing?

  Hmm.

  Well gosh.

  “Really?” I asked. “I can borrow your pajamas?”

  “Go ahead. I’m well-stocked when it comes to clothes.”

  “Then I think I will.”

  For my underwear, I’d broken out what I’d bought at the hundred-yen shop.

  I put my arms through the sleeves of the pajamas that Miss Senjogahara went to get from the dresser.

  It was a strange feeling, wearing another person’s clothes─despite being clothed, I felt incredibly liberated.

  Like I’d allowed something.

  Miss Senjogahara was tall, which meant she wore larger-sized clothing than me, so they did feel unnecessarily baggy.

  “And yet it looks tight around your chest,” she noted. “It’s wonderful, you never let me down.”

  “Um, it doesn’t feel tight…”

  They felt normal for pajamas.

  And when had I gotten her hopes up in the first place?

  I waited for her to get into her pajamas, and then we took turns blow-drying each other’s hair. It didn’t take much time at all─both of us had worn our hair pretty long during first term but basically had short bobs now.

  Soon they were dry.

  I felt a bit dissatisfied by the fact.

  “Say, Miss Hanekawa, you’ve been growing your hair out ever since you cut it after the culture festival, haven’t you?”

  “Hm? Oh, I guess. I might not have gone to a hairdresser yet.”

  “Are you going to wear it long again?”

  “Huh─I’m not sure. I only noticed once it was short, but long hair can actually take less work to keep up in some ways─don’t you think?”

  “Hmm. Perhaps I don’t entirely disagree.”

  “Right?”

  “Like getting bedhead.”

  “Right…” She was really dragging that one out. “So maybe I should just grow it out again, considering what I’ll be doing after graduation─you know?”

  “Ah. After graduation,” Miss Senjogahara repeated my words as if to imply something. “To be honest, I don’t know about it. I certainly don’t think you’re in any need of a university education, of course, but college isn’t just a place to study. The way I see it, traveling around the world and going to college are like the same thing.”

  “……”

  The topic was one that had come up many times before, but the reason I liked her so much was that she was willing to say these kinds of things out loud.

  That’s right, I’m not going to college.

  It was why I didn’t have to worry about my attendance record or my report card.

  I intend to spend two years or so traveling the world after I graduate─and my plans for it are close to finished. Of course, they’re pretty slapdash since scheduling every little thing out would make it feel like I’m on a package tour or something.

  At this moment in time, the only people who know about my post-graduation wishes are Araragi and Miss Senjogahara.

  Araragi, being the person that he is, didn’t try to stop me.

  Miss Senjogahara, being the person that she is, gently opposed it unequivocally.

  “And I only feel more against it given how careless you must be to stay over in those ruins like there was nothing wrong with it. You could even say my position has hardened. Not every country in the world is as safe as Japan, right? If something terrible happens, it’ll be too late, okay? You should act under the assumption that every boy in the world is after that skin of yours.”

  “Specifically my skin?”

  “Picturing it getting burned as you walk through the tropics is enough to make me despair,” she said, her face really betraying despair. How much did she care about my skin? “Maybe it’d be best if I put a collar on you and locked you up in a cage…”

  “Miss Senjogahara, Miss Senjogahara, you’re trying to do something awful to me here in a country as safe as Japan.”

  “Don’t you think you’re just being difficult?” she asked, ignoring my repartee. It reminded me of Araragi’s complaint that she ignored his quips all the time. Maybe hers wasn’t a funny-woman routine, and she was just funny. “Though I don’t know if it’s toward Araragi, or toward Mister Oshino, or toward me─or maybe someone else, like those parents of yours.”

  “……”

  She made me fall silent for a minute.

  She made me think.

  Maybe she was right─no.

  “I’m not being difficult. I wouldn’t decide on a path just to be difficult.”

  “I see. I hope not.”

  “I just want to make up for what I’m lacking, that’s all─oh, I know what you’d call it these days. A journey of self-discovery.”

  “Self-discovery.”

  “Though I did already meet my ‘self’ over Golden Week─so maybe it’d be more accurate to say I’m going on a new journey of self-creation.”

  “Hm. Well, I doubt I could overturn any firmly sworn resolve of yours anyway. If I’m being hard about this, then you’re a rock. But,” she said.

  Quietly.

  “If you start to feel like you don’t want to, you don’t have to. You can even turn back mid-trip. We won’t find that embarrassing. Yes, we. Down deep, Araragi must want to stop you, too.”

  “He must?”

  “Like a wall of steel,” she swore.

  But I wondered.

  I still wasn’t quite sure how Araragi felt about me─but in any case, that was the kind of girl talk about not very girl-talky subjects we had as we finished drying each other’s hair.

  Miss Senjogahara proceeded to take a futon set out of the closet.

  “There’s another pair, my dad’s, but I don’t know about making a high school girl sleep in bedding that a middle-aged man past forty is always using. All right, I guess there’s no way around it. Miss Hanekawa, let’s sleep together in mine.”

  “……”

  That conclusion didn’t take long to come to.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay! Don’t worry! I won’t do anything to you! We’ll just be sleeping on the same futon! I won’t lay a finger on you!”

  She was pulling off an impressive feat, losing my trust by emphasizing how trustworthy she was.

  “I won’t use you as a hug pillow, Miss Hanekawa!”

  “I feel like I’m learning why you’re able to go out with Araragi.”

  The possibility that it wasn’t me but Miss Senjogahara who’d made him that way was rapidly rearing its head, too.

  And when I really thought about it, I recalled that he was already pretty bad by the time we met during spring break.

  Okay, so it wasn’t my fault.

  “All right, sure, sure. No need to say all that, I wasn’t even worried.”