Nekomonogatari (White) Read online

  “I don’t.”

  Hmm, she nodded.

  “This way,” she took my hand.

  She took me aside.

  It seemed like she wanted to break away from the group, as there was a bit of time before homeroom began─and indeed, this was something I hesitated to talk about in front of others in our classroom.

  We went behind the gymnasium.

  Those words have a somewhat frightening feel to them, but the gym’s environs have been under some of the most scrupulous management possible ever since the girls’ basketball team’s run the previous year; the area in fact feels wholesome and open.

  The weather being nice too, this was an optimal situation for girls talking romance, but we were going to make a ghost story bloom.

  Maybe I should say “withering” story.

  “You saw a tiger… Miss Hanekawa, isn’t that something to be very worried about?”

  “I think so. Oh, but no, it wasn’t a real-life tiger. It was probably an aberration. It talked.”

  “What’s the difference? That doesn’t change anything. Even a flesh-and-blood tiger is practically an aberration to a Japanese person.”

  “Ah.”

  She was right.

  Her way of seeing the world was as bold as ever.

  A realistic audacity.

  “If someone told me that pandas are monsters, I’d believe it,” she said.

  “Hmm, I’m not sure about that one.”

  “What about giraffes? Those are rokurokubi right there.”

  “Zoos must seem like haunted houses to you, Miss Senjogahara.”

  That might be true, she nodded.

  How candid.

  “Even so, Miss Hanekawa, what an unexpected thing to encounter─or maybe I should say you’re as amazing as ever. A tiger? A tiger? A tiger! It’s just, how could you be any more stylish than that? A crab. A snail. A monkey. What was it for Karen? A bee, I want to say? Take that lineup, and then what do you add to it but a tiger. It’s like we’ve all been in a foot race, each one of us careful not to stick out so that we can all cross the finish line together, a friendly, flat competition, and then you go and do this? How can anyone be so insensitive? That might even be cooler than Araragi’s demon.”

  “You always have such a unique way of looking at things…”

  “Did it do anything to you?”

  “No, it didn’t do anything─or at least, I don’t think it did. It’s hard to know about these kinds of things for yourself, which is why I wanted to ask you. Is there anything strange about me right now?”

  “Hmm. Well, you being absent from school is one thing, but it isn’t like you to be tardy. That isn’t what you mean, though, is it?”

  “No.”

  “Excuse me.”

  Bringing her face closer, she pored over my skin. Like she was going to lick it. Like she was inspecting my skin, my eyeballs, my nose, my brows, my lips, each individual part. After she was done with my face, she took my hand and examined my nails and the vessels on the back of my hand.

  “What are you doing, Miss Senjogahara?”

  “Checking to see if there’s anything unusual.”

  “Really?”

  “At least, that’s what I was doing at first.”

  “Then what is it you’re doing now?”

  “Indulging my eyes.”

  I shook her off.

  As hard as I could.

  “Ah!” she exclaimed, looking at me with a very disappointed expression─but, well, I’m sure she meant it as a joke.

  You might be surprised to hear this, but Miss Senjogahara loves to joke around.

  …I hope it was a joke.

  Especially because Araragi recently told me about Miss Kanbaru’s preferences.

  “So,” I asked, “what do you think?”

  “You’re fine. You’ll be able to reel them in for another decade with that skin.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “There’s nothing that I can see─it’s not as if you’ve sprouted tiger ears or anything.”

  “Tiger ears…”

  It wasn’t a remark I could take in jest as someone who’d sprouted cat ears in the past, and precisely because the analogy was realistic, I let out an exaggerated laugh while giving my head a sly check.

  I was fine.

  I hadn’t sprouted anything.

  “But,” reminded Miss Senjogahara, “it’s not as if something unusual is bound to happen as soon as you encounter an aberration─considering the time lag, we can’t relax yet.”

  “Right.”

  “We can’t rule out the possibility that you’ll wake up as a bug tomorrow.”

  “I do think that’s too much of a leap.”

  She needed to link it to tigers in some way.

  Even if she loved Kafka.

  “For this stuff,” she advised, “I think you ought to be talking to Araragi instead of me. True, I did meet a crab aberration─and it caused me a whole lot of suffering, but that doesn’t mean I’m equipped with the methods or the know-how for dealing with it any more than other people.”

  “Mm. Mmm. Yes, but…”

  She was right.

  Meeting an aberration doesn’t mean you’re experienced.

  In fact, the more seasoned you become, the further you skid off the career track.

  Discussing this with Miss Senjogahara only served to trouble her. It could even end up reopening old wounds.

  “But it does seem like Araragi’s taking the day off,” I said.

  “What?” Miss Senjogahara tilted her neck in puzzlement. “Wasn’t he lined up there at the beginning-of-term ceremony? His absence going unnoticed says even more about how ignorable he is than his presence going unnoticed.”

  Heheheh, she laughed.

  A shudder ran through me.

  The dregs of what Araragi calls her “acid-tongued era” seep out at times.

  Then again, the venom had been removed over summer break, and now too, she’d spoken in a way that made it clear she was just kidding.

  Humans are able to change.

  You could call her living proof of that.

  “Well, he says he doesn’t need to worry about his attendance record too much anymore, but I do wonder what happened to my beloved darling.”

  “Don’t call him that,” I chastised her. That was too much of a change. How were we supposed to accept her as the same character? “Speaking of, actually, I also ran into Mayoi this morning before meeting the tiger. Judging by what she said, he does seem to be─up to something.”

  “Something, you say.” Miss Senjogahara shook her head with what seemed like resignation. Though a bit exaggerated, the reaction accurately expressed how appalled she was. “Same thing as always, I guess?”

  “It could be. He can only focus on what’s right in front of him.”

  “Did you try calling him? Or sending him an email or something?”

  “Ummm, something stopped me.”

  I really didn’t want to bother him when he was obviously at work. I’d have brought it straight to him if he were at school, of course, but I wasn’t sure about going so far as to call or text him.

  It was less discretion than out of concern for his safety.

  “Right,” Miss Senjogahara nodded. “I think it’d be fine for you to be a little more shameless.”

  “Shameless?”

  “Or maybe I should say unashamed? He’ll never be annoyed by a request from you, no matter what kind of situation he’s in. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Hmm. I’m not sure.” I found Miss Senjogahara’s remark confusing. “Maybe I don’t.”

  “Or is it out of consideration for me?”

  “Oh, no. Of course not.”

  “Just as long as it isn’t.”

  This time, she let out a sigh.

  A deep sigh.

  “Well,” she said, “it’s not like something is bound to happen, so we shouldn’t get too nervous─being worried sick wou
ld defeat the whole purpose. That’d just make us a pathological yandere. Still, since this tiger might attack someone other than you, don’t you think we need to talk to Araragi? Whether it’s a tiger or a lion, it’s not like either of us is capable of fighting an aberration. Aren’t you just like me, knowledgeable but inexperienced and only equipped with secondhand wisdom?”

  “Sure, but…”

  Her phrasing was taking on a certain innuendo.

  It was hard to tell if she was doing it on purpose.

  I’m sure Araragi would have figured it out and replied with the perfect zinger.

  I lack that skill.

  “You’d have to be like Araragi and have a pet vampire in your shadow to fight an aberration─well, Kanbaru seems like she might be able to if she felt like it, but we shouldn’t ask that girl to do anything unreasonable.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed.

  I’d heard about it, vaguely.

  The bandage on her left arm, I assumed.

  That wasn’t an issue of discretion, it was dangerous─as a practical matter. While Miss Kanbaru’s aberration trouble had been solved, it was as though she were living with a bomb strapped to her.

  Or maybe you could say she was the bomb herself.

  But if we did, wasn’t the same true for Araragi? Could that be why I wasn’t able to call him?

  It seemed to be.

  But I knew─it wasn’t why.

  Ultimately, it was exactly as Miss Senjogahara said.

  I wasn’t able to be shameless with Araragi.

  The reason was abundantly clear, no doubt─

  “Miss Hanekawa, have you ever asked Araragi to save you?”

  “What?”

  The sudden question brought me back to my senses.

  She’d surprised me.

  “Huh? ‘Save’? I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like the kind of word you’d use in a regular conversation… Probably not.”

  “Okay. Neither have I,” Miss Senjogahara said, looking heavenward. “He’d probably save us before we ever said it─and he’d do it reciting some phony quote like ‘people just go and get saved on their own.’”

  It wasn’t a phony quote, it was a real one that I’d heard before. Mister Oshino constantly repeated that line.

  “It wasn’t just the crab,” she continued. “There was the time with Kanbaru, there was Kaiki, there have been a lot of times that he’s saved me, both in the open and from the shadows. But I feel like his saving us without us saying anything doesn’t mean we don’t need to be saying anything.”

  “Hm? What?”

  “Just maybe, well, I think you might be expecting him to save you before you ever say anything.”

  “…Ah.”

  Hmm.

  Is that how it looks?

  But now that she said it, the sad fact of the matter was that I couldn’t deny it outright.

  I couldn’t make my approach─and was just waiting for the other party to approach me?

  Was I─well, such a me did exist.

  There was a dark me inside me.

  And being inside me, it was closer to me than anyone else.

  “I think you just ought to rely on him. He’s always hoping that you will. If you’d been able to during Golden Week─”

  So she said─but stopped mid-sentence.

  Maybe she felt she’d gone too far, even though she hadn’t said it all.

  But rather than apologize, she just acted awkward─nor would I have known how to respond if she’d said sorry.

  There was no reason for her to.

  “Why don’t we go back to class?” I said.

  This wasn’t particularly an attempt to bail her out. It really was time for us to be heading back, according to my watch. To the point that we needed to run up the stairs.

  “Let’s,” nodded Miss Senjogahara. “I’m not pressuring you or anything, but you shouldn’t try to handle your problems all by yourself. You still tend to do that─if you’re unwilling to bother Araragi, then get me involved, though I can’t do much. Well, I guess I could die with you at least.”

  Miss Senjogahara casually threw out those outrageous words and began walking toward the school building. Though she may have been rehabilitated, that part of her that you might call her overwhelming strength was still alive and kicking.

  Sure.

  It wasn’t so much getting rehabilitated as getting cuter, to be frank.

  Especially in Araragi’s presence.

  But since Araragi only knows her as she is in his presence, it might take him a little more time to realize that.

  Like I was going to tell him.

  And so on.

  Then, together, we returned to our class─I was afraid we’d missed the start of homeroom, but we hadn’t.

  Well.

  Our teacher, Hoshina-sensei, was already there.

  That normally meant that it had already started─but everyone in class, our teacher included, was stuck to the window facing the athletic field. Not a person was seated, so it wasn’t anything like homeroom.

  What was going on?

  What could they be seeing?

  “Ah,” Miss Senjogahara muttered by my side.

  She’s a good bit taller than me, so she noticed it before I could─to be precise, she took off her shoes and stood on a chair the moment she knew everyone was looking at something. Contrary to appearances, she could be surprisingly proactive.

  Lacking her nerve, I simply weaved through my classmates, approached one of the windows, and gazed out of it.

  I immediately saw what everyone was looking at.

  “…A fire.”

  My mind was blank, in a haze.

  I rarely spoke to myself outside the house─yet there I was, speaking to myself.

  Beholding the roaring flames, so powerful it seemed like their sound might reach us despite looking like a speck from where we stood, far away─I ended up speaking to myself.

  “My house is on fire.”

  That house─I’d gone and called it mine.

  006

  There were two things I didn’t know.

  First, I didn’t know the house I lived in was visible from the window of the classroom where I spent my days studying. I’d had opportunities to stand by the window and gaze outside.

  Why hadn’t I noticed?

  Why wasn’t it visible?

  I guess it had to be, and I just never consciously recognized it─in other words, according to the reverse of the logic of “Meet an aberration and you’ll be drawn by aberrations.”

  I must have been pushing that house out of my consciousness.

  And the other thing I didn’t know was how unexpectedly shocked I’d feel if that house burned down─it left me speechless.

  It was enough to make my mind go blank.

  It was a shock to my system.

  Araragi seems to be mistaken about this point, but I’m not all that mature─I harbor the same kind of destructive impulses as everyone else. He placed an excessive level of trust in my character even after the nightmare of Golden Week─or no, maybe he was just pretending to overlook things─but I’d wished time and time again for that lousy house to disappear.

  But I never thought it really would.

  And I never thought I’d feel such a strong sense of loss.

  It wasn’t as if I’d been attached to it.

  I didn’t even feel like I’d thought of it as my house─I let words to that effect slip out of my mouth, but it must have been a momentary failing.

  But the unwavering fact was that I felt strongly enough about it to have that moment.

  Was that a good thing?

  I felt strongly enough.

  Yes, that was a fact.

  Or was it a bad thing?

  You could probably take it either way, but either way, it was too late.