Nisenmonogatari Part 2 Page 5

  It wasn’t, but…

  As accustomed as I was to seeing her prostrate herself─it was pretty much an everyday sight─switching out her jersey for a skirt, which she usually detested (I guess she considered it the proper attire for a doting sister) was a first in the history of Karen Araragi.

  Since, out of pride or self-respect or something, she usually hated asking me, her big brother, for help when there was something she needed to do, it had to have taken a lot of resolve on her part to beg this hard.

  Hmm.

  “I’m surprised Tsukihi was willing to lend you her clothes, though… They’re probably going to get all stretched out on you.”

  “Yeah. That’s why I borrowed them without asking.”

  “……”

  She was gonna get chewed out. Tsukihi was even scarier than her.

  “I know you praised me and all,” noted Karen, “but skirts don’t really suit me. I mean, ‘suit’ isn’t even the right word because I’m flashing so much skin. This mini sure makes kicking easy, though.”

  “Well, I don’t think it was designed to be that provocative.”

  You better not walk up any stairs, I cautioned, to which she retorted, I’d never step out of the house in this embarrassing outfit.

  Considering that she’d taken Tsukihi’s clothes without asking, that didn’t seem like a very nice thing to say. But I doubted Tsukihi would be too mad since it didn’t pertain to her kimonos.

  About only Level 2 on her anger scale.

  “By the way, Karen, how did you know that Kanbaru and I are friends?”

  I couldn’t help it when it came to being a quipper and had uttered her name, but I’d been very careful to keep the fact under wraps. In general, I hid my socializing from my sisters because they were bound to make a big fuss. They knew what was up with Hanekawa and Sengoku, but that was pretty much it. I’d been particularly secretive about my relationship with Kanbaru…

  “Oh, right,” Karen explained, “you’re half in-frame in an awful lot of the snapshots that come attached to her unofficial fan club Kanbaru Seule’s online newsletter…”

  “They don’t get her permission for those pics, do they!”

  Unofficial fan club? Kanbaru Seule?!

  Ah, of course, their cell phones! My parents decided to give both my sisters cell phones, at last, starting this summer, in light of the rash behavior that the “defenders of justice” get up to.

  It was a bad idea.

  Forget online newsletters, the amount of info the Fires Sisters got their hands on had increased drastically─the ruckus the other day with the bee was a case in point─and Karen also ended up finding out about me and Kanbaru (the pic attachments on their own probably weren’t enough).

  The information age was terrifying. The world was truly going to hell in a hand basket.

  Maybe I needed to talk to my parents and have my sisters’ cell phones taken away. Karen and Tsukihi were definitely less safe for having them.

  “Whaaat? Koyomi, isn’t that a pretty old-fashioned way of thinking? Adults are always complaining about kids using phones during class, but back when they were kids, didn’t they work on other stuff and pass notes and all that?”

  “Well, true.”

  The tools change, but our behavior doesn’t. People are people.

  While griping that young folks don’t read enough and are therefore ignorant, older generations can be clueless in turn about smartphones and the internet.

  Kids who’re unable to read classical literature and parents who’re unable to read light novels might not be so different─put more extremely, Lady Murasaki may have been a brilliant woman of letters, but transported to the modern era, even a picture book would stump her.

  Comparing a culture vertically is pointless.

  Okay, that last line is Hanekawa’s, verbatim.

  “When I dug a little deeper,” Karen reprised, “I found out that Kanbaru-sensei holds you in high esteem! I don’t know what trick you used, but she looks up to you as some sort of mentor?”

  “Well…that’s not wrong.” It wasn’t wrong, but the way Karen put it sounded so off. I hadn’t tricked Kanbaru or anything, but it was all in her head.

  “And so, Koyomi, you’ve become a real person of interest among middle-school girls. ‘Who’s this short dude bossing Kanbaru-sensei around like some errand girl?’”

  “Junior high kids I’ve never even met have got it out for me…” I wasn’t bossing her around, and if anyone was being inconvenienced by her devotion, it was this guy, right here.

  “No, they’re all your fans. You’re the burning focus of envious middle-school girls.”

  “So much charisma, without my even noticing…” It was unpleasant in its own way. There was such a thing as bad publicity.

  “Obviously, I’ve kept it a secret that we’re related, but this has got to mean something, right? I’m tied to her through you─it’s like fate. Like she and I were meant to meet. So please, couldn’t you introduce me to Kanbaru-sensei?”

  “Fate, eh…”

  “I bet she and I would get along just swell, actually,” Karen muttered as if she were just talking out loud, folding her hands behind her head, whistling, and casting furtive glances at me.

  That was apparently her attempt at nonchalance.

  What a pest. The fact that she was actually a good whistler only made it more aggravating.

  Well, she and Kanbaru probably would get along─they were both jocks and tomboys.

  All the same…

  All the same, I didn’t intend to introduce my sister to Kanbaru.

  Not a chance in hell. I had my reasons.

  Namely─I happened to be aware of the sportswoman and national-level athlete Kanbaru’s little-known sexual proclivities.

  “Karen.”

  “What is it, brother dear?”

  “Give it up.”

  Szukk.

  An unnatural sound emanated from my stomach. It almost sounded like a spade being buried into dirt.

  Sister had resorted to violence against brother, and without a moment’s hesitation.

  A lightning-quick spearhand jab right between the ribs.

  It felt like my liver was gone.

  “Now, now, Koyomi. Let’s talk this over.”

  “……”

  Hold on, it was going to be a second before I could talk again.

  It wasn’t even a matter of pain. I simply couldn’t speak.

  “You’re not ready to oblige your cute little sister? Fine, I’ve got some ideas.”

  “H-Hrk…”

  Karen was sounding like a regular hoodlum. What she had weren’t “ideas”; the gods had granted to someone they absolutely shouldn’t have something they absolutely shouldn’t have.

  They could be a little too capricious.

  If they were going to endow her with that option, equip her with some ideas first!

  “Wh-Who ever heard of going straight from a dogeza to violence… Give me a break!” I was finally able to speak, but I could feel my diaphragm vibrating against my guts, and my voice came out too strained and plaintive to call it quipping. “What d’you mean?”

  Trying to cover up how sorry I sounded, I attempted an allusion, but unfortunately, it sounded even sorrier.

  I did like the first one best; I find it small-minded and limited of viewers to huff that only the initial series is truly Gundam or that they won’t accept the new Kamen Rider, but when I consider the evolution of Pretty Cure, I kind of know how they feel.

  “Give you a break? What am I to do, Koyomi? How else will you see my side of things if we don’t talk this over?”

  “Your idea of talking things over involves fists.”

  As Tsukihi once said to me, in the context of human culture, punching and kicking was actually a means of communication. I think that only applied, though, when the parties were evenly matched. One-sided violence didn’t qualify.

  Can we take a moment to recap?

 
Back in grade school, they taught me to be neat and tidy.

  Let’s try that now.

  Karen Araragi’s goal was to get me to introduce her to Suruga Kanbaru─or more accurately, to get me to introduce Suruga Kanbaru to her.

  That seemed pretty set. Firmly, immovably.

  Karen was the type to balk at nothing to reach her goal.

  She wasn’t above believing that with enough moxie even one plus one could equal three. Once she got going, there was nothing anyone could say to sway her.

  But there was another side to it─Karen rarely pursued goals for her own sake. She was surprisingly selfless in that regard. While she never hesitated to act on someone else’s behalf, her own will could be incredibly weak.

  Even feeble.

  That was one big reason I considered Karen a fake. I’d been telling her that justice for others’ sake was only a flimsy imitation in face of justice for your own sake. That was exactly why…

  When she did have a clear goal of her own like now, she was very insistent, and I, for my part, wanted to do everything I could to help her achieve it.

  However.

  This time─I just couldn’t. I didn’t want to introduce Kanbaru to her.

  I absolutely did not want to introduce Kanbaru to Karen.

  That was my standpoint, Koyomi Araragi’s objective.

  Experiencing the occasional setback built character. I didn’t want Karen and Tsukihi to turn into people who’re squashed by a setback─that was my stance.

  There was no room for compromise between us. We were in total opposition on the matter.

  It was a binary issue, all or nothing, and one of us had to completely give in to the other─and since I had no intention of doing so, my only option was for Karen to. How, though?

  If it came to blows I’d lose.

  No way I could beat Karen in a fight.

  Well, if we’re being precise, with full backup from Shinobu, I couldn’t lose─but per human rules that was probably out of bounds.

  I thought this staring down at my shadow.

  We were indoors, so it was faint.

  “Hrm…”

  In any case, we weren’t going to resolve this by talking things over or punching things out. Getting beaten up wasn’t going to change my mind, if I do say so like it didn’t concern myself.

  I’m large enough to accept any amount of violence my sister can dish out─I’d like to think so, being her older brother and all.

  Maybe not her “dear big brother,” but still her big bro.

  “I guess this calls for a match,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “When we disagree, we have a match. That’s how it’s been between us.”

  It won’t be an even one, though, I added.

  I returned to my desk and closed my drills. I had no choice but to cancel my early-morning study session. I’d make up for it later.

  No English vocabulary word superseded family matters.

  “You’re making a unilateral request, Karen. In gaming terms, it’s not a match between players. You’re playing against the house.”

  “Ah…”

  Glimmer.

  Her tone shifted. She lit up, as they say. She was equipped with a vector-motion sensor that responded automatically to any mention of a serious match.

  “All right, deal,” she assented. “You get it, after all. Set any rules you like. I’ll overcome any and all conditions to be acquainted with Kanbaru-sensei.”

  She was as dense as ever.

  So dense that it sometimes made my skin crawl.

  At this rate, she was going to grow up a catastrophe of a person─setbacks or otherwise, if she didn’t learn better, she was going to be “at risk.” So much so that I’d be worried even if she wasn’t my sister. Seriously at risk, dangerously so.

  Well.

  I was about to teach her a lesson.

  How to go about it? She said I could set any rules I want, but I couldn’t make it too hard of a challenge.

  My sister had a developed sense of distaste for cowardice and opportunism. Her “burning soul of justice” supposedly didn’t tolerate it.

  The line had to be just on this side of feasible rule-wise and just on the other side condition-wise─a seemingly fair and just setup.

  That’s what I needed, but I was drawing a blank.

  While I didn’t want to make it too hard, for Karen not many challenges fit that description to begin with.

  I mean, she’d even undergone a hundred-man kumite─and come out with a winning record. She was a lot gutsier than your average person.

  Once, with a hostage held against her, she was pummeled by a biker gang, but even then she never cried uncle─though, true, I did have to come to her aid on that occasion.

  If I hadn’t made it in time, it would have ended in tragedy…

  How the heck did that happen to you in such a peaceful town?

  In other words, excessive gutsiness was a problem. Too much could be worse than too little.

  Even apart from the whole soul-of-justice issue.

  If I wasn’t careful and made it too hard, she might go overboard trying, and it wouldn’t be just a setback, she might injure herself in some final manner.

  She didn’t know how to back down─so you had to back up. Miss Passionate was the type to confront an enemy even when she was ill.

  In that sense, I was the one in a fix here… It’d have to be hard and great if I was going to force her to admit defeat.

  In fact, just the other day, when I tried to stop Karen from confronting that adversary despite her illness, we got into a huge fight… Would I have to go that far again?

  Pain didn’t pain her, and shame couldn’t shame her.

  Okay, she was kind of incredible… Calling her M cool fell short.

  Was she really my sister?

  Maybe she was adopted?

  Hey, that’d be kinda moé.

  I shouldn’t be getting cold feet even before settling on a match, but maybe it’d be faster if I just gave up now and introduced her to Kanbaru─hm?

  Mmm, right. This was all because of Kanbaru. In which case, what if I followed Kanbaru’s lead?

  “Wait here a second,” I said. “I’ll go get what we need.”

  “What we need? Are you planning on having us play cards? No fair!”

  “What a thing to be calling unfair…”

  How bad did you have to be at games where you used your brains to think that?

  Fear not, Karen, I won’t go that route. You won’t admit defeat if I did.

  It had to be something that seemed possible but wasn’t (though I honestly worried about my sister’s future if a game of cards was too much for her).

  Time to give her a glimpse of hell that rivaled the one I had over spring break!

  I left Karen in my room and went down to the bathroom. I found what I was looking for right away and returned with the items.

  Karen was sprawled out on the bed.

  Talk about making yourself at home. Her legs were spread out audaciously, with her underwear clearly on display.

  Apparently my idiot of a sister had even borrowed Tsukihi’s underwear. I know they were both girls and all, but Karen was going a little too far.

  “Ah, Koyomi. That was fast.”

  “Were you seriously trying to take a nap while I was gone? Are you Nobita or what?”

  “‘No better’? But I am, thanks to my beauty sleep.”

  “That wasn’t even clever.”

  “Be nice or I’ll start sulking ‘Suneo’ later,” she shot back, working in another character from Doraemon.

  “That was annoyingly clever!”

  “Hm? Koyomi, what’s that you’re holding?”

  With that observant remark, Karen sat up. The way she rubbed her eyes, she hadn’t been just lying down but actually napping.

  Was I dealing with a wild animal? Or some sort of grizzled soldier?