CHAPTER ONE HITAGI CRAB

001

Though “always ill,” she is by no means sickly. She’s graceful, like her thin lines could snap at a touch, and has this evanescent air, which must be why some of the boys refer to her as “the cloistered princess” half-jokingly, half-seriously. You could say earnestly. That phrase and its connotations aptly describe Senjogahara, I agree.

Senjogahara is always alone reading a book in one corner of the classroom. At times that book is an imposing hardcover, and at others it’s a comic that could permanently damage your intellect to judge from its cover design. She seems to be one of those voracious readers. Maybe she doesn’t care as long as there are words in it, maybe she has some sort of clear standard.

Apparently quite smart, she’s among the top in our year.

Whenever test results are posted, Hitagi Senjogahara’s name is one of the first ten on the list. Whatever the subject. It’s presumptuous of me, who can’t pass a non-math test, even to compare myself to her, but our brains must be structured in fundamentally different ways.

She doesn’t seem to have any friends.

Not a single one.

I have yet to witness Senjogahara exchanging words with someone─the shrewd take might be that her constant reading is a behavior intended to tell you not to speak to her because she is reading, a way of building walls around herself. In fact, I’ve sat in the same classroom as her for two years and change, and can state with certainty that I’ve never spoken a word to her in that time. I can and do. Senjogahara’s voice is synonymous, for me, with the reedy “I don’t know” that she utters like a catchphrase whenever a teacher calls on her in class (whether or not it’s a question she clearly knows the answer to, she only ever replies, “I don’t know”). Schools are strange places where people without friends routinely form a sort of community (or a colony) of people without friends (myself included, until last year), but Senjogahara seems to be exempt from this rule too. Of course, it’s not like she’s getting bullied, either. She isn’t being persecuted or avoided in any deep, or light, way as far as I can tell. Like that’s her natural place to be, with a cool face, Senjogahara goes on reading in one corner of the classroom. She goes on building walls around herself.

Like it’s natural for her to be there.

Like it’s natural not to be here.

Not that it’s any big deal. At our three-year high school, with two hundred students in each grade, you end up sharing a living space with about a thousand people in all during your stay if you include the graduating and incoming classes and the faculty. Start wondering how many of those people mean anything to you, and the answer is going to be bleak for just about anyone.

Even if I meet the odd fortune of sharing a class with someone for three years, and still don’t exchange a single word with that person, I don’t find it sad. I’d simply look back on it someday and think: Oh, yes, I guess that’s how things were. I have no idea what I’ll be doing a year down the line, after graduating from high school, but I certainly wouldn’t be conjuring up Senjogahara’s face─I probably wouldn’t be able to.

And that’s fine. Senjogahara must be fine with that, too. Not just her, but everyone at my school has to be fine with it. Actually, it’s feeling gloomy about the matter that’s fundamentally misguided.

That’s what I thought.

But.

One such day.

To be precise, the eighth of May, after my hellish joke of a spring break came to an end, I became a third year, and my nightmarish fantasy of a Golden Week wrapped up.

I was dashing up the school stairs, latish as usual, and just reached a landing, when a girl came falling down from the sky.

That girl was Hitagi Senjogahara.

Again, to be precise, she wasn’t so much falling down from the sky as simply falling backwards after having missed a step─and I’m sure I could’ve dodged her, but instead I reflexively caught Senjogahara’s body.

It was probably the right decision over dodging her.

No, maybe it was the wrong one.

Why?

Because Senjogahara’s body, which I reflexively caught, was so─incredibly light. Unfunnily, bizarrely, eerily light.

As if she wasn’t here.

That’s right.

Senjogahara weighed so little that she nearly didn’t at all.

002

Hanekawa tilted her head in response to my question. “Is something the matter with Senjogahara?”

“Nothing like that…” I answered vaguely. “I was just kind of wondering about her.”

“Huh.”

“I mean, you know, isn’t that a weird and interesting name? Hitagi Senjogahara?”

“…You do realize that Senjogahara is the name of a place.”

“Er, no, not that part. I was talking about, um, her given name.”

“Senjogahara’s? You mean Hitagi? Is it that strange? I want to say it’s a term related to construction.”

“You know everything, don’t you?”

“Not everything. I just know what I know.” While Hanekawa didn’t seem fully satisfied with my explanation, instead of pressing me any further, she said, “You’re interested in someone other than yourself, Araragi? That’s unusual.”

Mind your own business, I told her.

Tsubasa Hanekawa.

The president of our class.

More than that, she’s a girl who embodies what a class president should be. Her prim and proper braids, her glasses, her good manners and good behavior, how incredibly serious and loved by the teachers she is, puts her on the endangered species list in this day and age even if you count manga and anime. The way she holds herself makes you wonder if she’s been a class president her entire life and is going to be one in some capacity even after graduating. In other words, a class president among class presidents. Possibly a class president chosen by the gods, as one person has been rumoring like it’s the unvarnished truth (that would be me).

We were in different classes our first and second years, but for our third year, we were placed together. Though I had heard of her before that, of course I had. If Senjogahara’s grades are among the top in our year, Tsubasa Hanekawa’s are at the very top. She regularly pulls off unbelievable stunts like scoring a perfect 600 across six courses in five core subjects, and yes, I still remember her utterly monstrous results for the first semester finals our second year like it was yesterday, when across every single subject, including P.E. and Art, she missed only one question, a Japanese History fill-in-the-blank. You hear about celebrities like that whether you want to or not.

And.

The nastiest part─okay, I know it’s a good thing, but either way, most annoyingly, Hanekawa is a very caring and decent person. What is actually nasty about her is that she’s very single-minded. As is often the case with too-serious people, once she decides on something, no lever will ever budge her. I already had a brief encounter with Hanekawa during spring break, and afterwards, as soon as our new classes were announced and we found out we’d be together, she declared to me, “I’m gonna make sure you turn your life around.”

I’m no juvenile delinquent, nor really a problem child. I was a mere class ornament, according to my own assessment, so her proclamation struck me like a bolt from the blue. But no amount of convincing could halt her single-minded delusion, and before I knew it, I was appointed class vice president, which is why, at that moment, after school on the eighth of May, I was still in my classroom alone with Hanekawa hashing out what to do for the mid-June culture festival.

“Culture festival or not, we’re third-years now,” Hanekawa said. “We won’t be doing much. Studying for college exams is more important.” Prioritizing exam prep over the culture festival, without batting an eye, indeed made her a class president among class presidents. “With a vague survey, the suggestions would be all over the board and just a waste of time. We could go ahead and narrow down the options between us and have everyone vote on those. Are you good with that?”

“Why not? It has a nice democratic veneer.”

“You always make things sound so awful, Araragi. Such cynicism.”

“That’s not cynicism. Hey, you’re making me feel like a cartoon sidekick. Tongari, to be exact.”

“For reference, Araragi, what did your class do for the culture festival last year and the year before?”

“A haunted house and a cafe.”

“How standard. Too standard. You could go so far as to say commonplace.”

“I guess.”

“You could go so far as to say vulgar.”

“Don’t go that far.”

“Ahaha,” she laughed.

“And anyway, wouldn’t it be a good idea to do something commonplace this time around? It’s not all about our visitors, we need to enjoy our day, too… Oh. Come to think of it─Senjogahara didn’t participate in the culture festival either.”

Neither last year, nor the year before.

Well, it isn’t just the culture festival. Anything you could call an event, anything other than regular classes, Senjogahara basically skips. Sports day, of course, but also school trips, field trips, educational visits, the whole bunch of them. Her doctor forbids her from partaking in any strenuous activity─or something. It seemed strange now that I thought about it. Strenuous exercise, I could understand, but the weird nuance of “strenuous activity”─

But if─

If that wasn’t some illusion on my part.

If Senjogahara does not weigh anything.

That ban would definitely apply to any activity at all outside of the classroom, including P.E., where she was liable to come in contact with a large, unspecified number of people.

“Are you that interested in Senjogahara?” Hanekawa asked.

“Not really, but─”

“Well, boys do like girls who’re prone to illness. Ugh, yuck. Filthy, filthy,” she teased me. She sounded more sincere than usual, though.

“Prone to illness, huh?”

Sure, she was prone to it.

But was that really an illness?

Was illness it?

Her body being weak, and her being light as a result, made sense─but that went beyond such an explanation.

Thin girl or not, a human being had fallen from close to the top of the stairs to the landing. Normally, it was a situation where even the person catching her could get hurt pretty badly.

And yet─there had been barely any impact.

“But don’t you know Senjogahara better than I do, Araragi? Why ask me? I mean, you’ve been in the same class three years in a row, haven’t you?”

“If you put it that way, yes─but I thought a girl might know another girl’s circumstances a bit better.”

“Circumstances…” Hanekawa chuckled drily. “If a girl had any, wouldn’t that be the last thing I should go around telling a boy?”

“True,” I said. Of course it was. “So, um, think of this as the class vice president asking the class president a question, as the class vice president. What kind of person is Senjogahara?”

“So that’s your move.”

Hanekawa stopped scribbling out the list she had been making as we conversed (endlessly jotting down and erasing candidates since “haunted house” and “cafe”) and crossed her arms in thought. “Because her family name means ‘battlefield,’ it might make her seem fraught with danger at first, but she’s actually a problem-free model student. She’s smart, and she takes, say, her cleaning duty seriously.”

“I’m sure. Even I can tell that much. I want to know something I can’t figure out on my own.”

“But we’ve only been in the same class for about a month. I guess I really don’t know her. We had Golden Week off in there, too.”

“Yeah, Golden Week.”

“Hm? Did something happen then?”

“Nope. Keep going.”

“Ah…all right. Senjogahara doesn’t talk much─and it seems like she doesn’t have any friends. I’ve tried talking to her a number of times, but it’s like she’s put up these walls around her.”

“……….”

What could I say, Hanekawa lived up to her caring reputation. Of course, that was why I was asking her.

“It’s─a tough case,” she said. In a grave tone. “Maybe it’s because of her illness. She was so much more cheerful and energetic in middle school.”

“In middle school? Wait, Hanekawa, you and Senjogahara went to the same middle school?”

“What? Isn’t that why you’re asking me?” Hanekawa made a face like she was the one who never saw it coming. “Yes, we’re from the same middle school. Kiyokaze Public Middle School. We used to be in different classes back then, too, but─Senjogahara was famous.”

More famous than you? I almost said that, but I caught myself in time. Hanekawa hated being treated as famous more than anything. Personally, I thought she needed to be more self-aware, but she seemed to think of herself as “a regular girl who had nothing to recommend her but being on the serious side.” She wholeheartedly bought the cant that anyone who tried hard enough did well in school.

“She was pretty, and she was a good athlete, too,” Hanekawa said.

“An athlete…”

“She was the star of the track team. Some of her records should still be standing.”

“The track team, huh?”

In other words.

She wasn’t like that in middle school. Cheerful and energetic─two more qualities I couldn’t imagine from the Senjogahara I knew, to be honest.

“So I did hear a lot about her,” Hanekawa told me.

“Like what?”

“How nice and sociable she is. How kind she is to everyone alike, all this almost excessive talk about her being a good, hardworking person. Like how her father is some big shot at a foreign-owned company, but her not being stuck-up one bit despite living in an amazing mansion and being amazingly rich. How despite her greatness, she still reaches for greater heights.”

“She sounds like some kind of superwoman.”

Those stories must have been only half-serious.

Rumors are rumors.

“That was all back then, of course,” Hanekawa noted.

“…Back then.”

“I did hear after starting high school that she’d fallen ill─still, to be frank, when we became classmates this year I was shocked. She wasn’t someone who would sit in the corner of the classroom like that, even by accident.”

Though it had been just my image of her, Hanekawa added.

It certainly had been just her image.

People change.

Your middle school days and high school life are worlds apart. That went for me, and for Hanekawa, too. It had to be the same for Senjogahara. She must have gone through a lot, and maybe it was true that she was simply ill. Maybe she’d lost her radiant personality for no other reason. Maybe she’d lost a lot of her fill of cheer. When your body weakened, your spirit tended to sag too, especially if you used to be active. So Hanekawa’s speculation was probably on the mark.

If not for that morning.

“But─and I probably shouldn’t be saying this─Senjogahara…” resumed Hanekawa.

“What?”

“Compared to then, she’s so much prettier now.”

“………”

“Her presence is so─evanescent.”

The words were enough to silence me.

That…

Evanescent presence.

As if─she had none.

Like a ghost?

Hitagi Senjogahara.

The girl who is always ill.

She─with no weight.

Rumors are─rumors.

Urban legends.

Street gossip.

Tall tales.

Only half-serious, as it were.

“Oh, yeah. I just remembered,” I said.

“Hm?”

“Oshino wanted to talk to me.”

“Mister Oshino? Why?”

“Well─to help with his work.”

“O…kay?” Hanekawa reacted uncertainly.

She seemed suspicious at my sudden change of topic─or rather, blatant curtailment of it. My uncertain phrasing, “to help with his work,” could only have deepened her suspicion. This, I thought, is why I don’t like dealing with smart people.

Couldn’t she just play along?

Standing up from my chair, I continued a bit forcedly, “So me, I need to leave. Can you take care of the rest, Hanekawa?”

“You can for today if you promise to make up for it. There isn’t any important work left, so I’ll let you go this time. We wouldn’t want to keep Mister Oshino waiting,” Hanekawa was kind enough to say anyway.

Oshino’s name seemed to have worked on her. He had saved her ass, just as he had saved mine, so being ungrateful must have been out of the question. Well, naturally, I’d taken that into account, but it wasn’t a complete lie.

“Then can I pick all of the options for our activity? I’ll have you confirm them later, though.”

“Yeah, I’ll let you handle it,” I said.

“Send my regards to Mister Oshino.”

“I will.”

With that, I stepped out of the classroom.

003

“What were you discussing with Hanekawa?”

I turned to face it.

As I did, I had yet to grasp who it was─the voice was unfamiliar. But I’d heard it somewhere before. Yes, that reedy “I don’t know” that she uttered like some catchphrase whenever a teacher called on her during class─

“Don’t move.”

With her second line, I realized that I was dealing with Senjogahara. I also realized that the moment I turned, Senjogahara, as if aiming through a narrow gap, had stuck a box cutter, blade amply extended, right into my oral cavity.

The blade of a box cutter.

Pressed snugly against the inside of my left cheek.

“…ck!”

“Actually, no. I should have said, ‘You can move, but it would be very risky.’”

Neither held back, nor in a rough manner, but with just the right amount of strength─the blade stretched the flesh of my cheek.

All I could do was open my mouth wide like an idiot and unflinchingly follow Senjogahara’s warning─and stand there immobile.

Scary, I thought.

Not about the box cutter’s blade.

Hitagi Senjogahara, who could do such a thing and glare at me with perfectly unwavering, shudderingly cold eyes─was scary.

So she─

She was someone with such a hazardous gaze.

I was convinced.

Seeing that gaze of hers, I was convinced that the edge of the box cutter nestled inside my left cheek was neither dull from use, nor by any means the spine.

“Curiosity is such a cockroach, isn’t it? Flocking to precisely the secrets that people want untouched. How insufferable. You dare get on my nerves, the trifling insect that you are.”

“H-Hey…”

“What’s the matter? Is the right side feeling lonely? Why didn’t you say so?”

Instead of her right hand which held the box cutter, her left hand rose. It moved so fast I half-expected a slap and braced myself against gritting my teeth, but I was wrong. That wasn’t it.

Senjogahara held a stapler in her left hand.

Before I could make it out clearly, she inserted it into my mouth. Not the entire thing, of course, which would have been preferable─Senjogahara had inserted it as if to clamp my right cheek, ready to staple.

Then, gently─it clamped.

As though to staple.

“K…ha…”

It was the larger side loaded with staples that had been stuck in. My mouth was now a standing-room-only affair, and naturally I couldn’t form any words. With just the box cutter, while moving was out, I might have been able to talk─but I didn’t even want to try now. I didn’t want to think about it.

Inserting a thin and sharp box cutter first to make me open my mouth wide, then immediately following up with a stapler─it was a meticulously planned and dreadfully well-executed feat.

The last time various things had been thrust in my mouth was in seventh grade when I had a cavity on an adult tooth treated, dammit! Ever since, I’ve brushed after every breakfast, lunch, and dinner and chewed xylitol gum tirelessly, just so I’d never have to go through that again, but look where I was.

Talk about the rug getting pulled out from under me.

I blink my eyes─and this happens.

It was difficult to believe that Hanekawa was picking out candidates for the culture festival on the other side of a measly wall when an otherwise nondescript private school hallway formed such a bizarre space.

Hanekawa…

Senjogahara’s family name “might make her seem fraught with danger at first”? She lived up to her name perfectly…

Hanekawa was a worse judge of character than I thought!

“Now that you asked Hanekawa about what I was like in middle school, who’s next? Our teacher, Hoshina? Or would you like to cut straight to the chase and go to our health teacher, Harukami?”

“………”

I couldn’t speak.

However she took that, Senjogahara let out a huge exasperated sigh. “I can’t believe how careless I was. I try to be twice as careful as the average person when I climb stairs, but where did that get me? They’re not kidding when they say a single fart can ruin a hundred days of sermons.”

“………”

Even though I was in a fix, hearing a fair teenaged maiden utter the word “fart” felt wrong to me. Maybe I’m a sweet guy after all.

“An actual banana peel on the floor right then and there. Who would have imagined?”

“………”

My life was now in the hands of a girl who had slipped on a banana peel.

Wait, why was it even lying on a school staircase?

“You’ve noticed, haven’t you,” Senjogahara asked me.

Her gaze was still hazardous.

A cloistered princess? Yeah, right.

“That’s right─I don’t weigh a thing.”

She weighed nothing.

“Well, it’s not as if I don’t at all─a girl my height and body type would have an average body weight in the high forties, in kilograms─”

So fifty kilograms.

My left cheek was pushed outward, and my right cheek was compressed.

“……gh!”

“No funny thoughts. You were imagining me in the nude just now, weren’t you?”

That was completely off the mark, but she was sure sharp.

“An average body weight in the high forties, in kilograms,” Senjogahara insisted.

She wasn’t going to budge on that one.

“But my actual body weight is five kilograms.”

Five kilograms.

Not much more than a newborn baby.

If you think of a dozen-pound dumbbell, that number isn’t quite close to zero, but considering that the mass is distributed across the size of an entire person, in terms of density─of how it realistically feels, it was as good as having no weight.

Catching her would be a piece of cake.

“Now, if you want to be completely accurate, it’s only that a scale displays my weight as five kilos─I personally don’t notice it. Nothing has changed for me from my high-forties days.”

Did that mean…

Gravity affected her less than a normal person? Not just mass, but volume─if I remembered correctly, the specific gravity of water is 1, and since the human body consists mostly of water, its specific gravity and density is also about 1─in which case, simply put, Senjogahara was only a tenth as dense.

If that was her bone density, she’d get osteoporosis in no time at all. Her heart and her brain wouldn’t function correctly either.

So it couldn’t have been that.

A question of numbers, it wasn’t.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said.

“……”

“Staring at my breasts like that. Disgusting.”

“……ck!”

I wasn’t thinking about that, I promise!

It seemed that Senjogahara was a pretty self-conscious high school girl. Who could blame her, with how pretty she looked? I wished the class president working a wall away from us would take a cue.

“This is why I can’t stand superficial people.”

Clearing up that misunderstanding seemed impossible at the moment─in any case, what I was thinking was that far from being always ill, Senjogahara found herself in a body that completely belied the package description. Weighing five kilos should have made her more than ill, and downright feeble, but not here. On the contrary, if I may, she was like an alien who had come to Earth from a star with ten times the gravity. You’d expect her to have excellent athletic skills, especially if she used to be on the track team. Sure, collisions weren’t her strong suit, but…

“It happened after I graduated middle school and before I came to this high school,” Senjogahara said. “During that fuzzy, in-between period when you’re neither a middle schooler nor a high schooler, nor even on spring recess─I turned into this.”

“……”

“It happened after─I met a crab.”

C-Crab?

Did she just say “a crab”?

A crab, like the ones you eat in the winter?

Those arthropods, classified under Crustacea Decapoda?

“It took my weight away─all of it.”

“……”

“It’s fine, you don’t have to understand. I’m only telling you this because it’d be a huge annoyance if you kept sniffing around. Araragi─listen, Koyomi Araragi.”

Senjogahara spoke my name, and repeated it.

“I weigh nothing─I have no weight. Nothing at all you could call weight. What a fiasco. It’s like I’m a character from a supernatural manga series. Do you like Yosuke Takahashi?”

“……”

“The only person at school who knows about this is our health teacher, Harukami. Just our health teacher Harukami, so far. Not Principal Yoshiki, not Vice Principal Shima, not Irinaka in charge of our year, not Hoshina, our homeroom teacher. Only Harukami─and you, Araragi.”

“……”

“So, what should I do to make you keep my secret to yourself? What should I do, for my own sake? What kind of deal are we going to have to cut to staple your mouth shut?”

A box cutter.

A stapler.

Was she in her right mind? What a way to corner a classmate. Did she still call herself a human being? Knowing that I’d sat in the same room with such a terrifying person for over two years sent a real shiver down my spine.

“The doctor at the hospital says that the cause is unknown─or rather, that there might not be a cause. Such a lame conclusion to come to after fiddling around for ages with a stranger’s body in humiliating ways. You know what he said? ‘It is as it was, as it is now.’ How ridiculous,” Senjogahara said, self-mockingly. “Until middle school, I was a normal, cute girl.”

“………”

Putting aside for now the fact that she called herself cute.

It was true that she made regular visits to the hospital.

Arriving late, leaving early, simply not showing up.

And─the health teacher.

I tried putting myself in Senjogahara’s shoes.

Unlike me, who just coped with it for two brief weeks over spring break, ever since she entered high school, it had stayed that way.

What did she resign herself to?

What did she give up on?

She’d had more than enough time to do so.

“Are you feeling sorry for me? Oh, how generous of you,” Senjogahara spat as if she’d read my mind. Disgusting, I could all but hear her add. “But it’s not generosity that I want.”

“……”

“I want your silence and your indifference, nothing more. If you have those, could you give them to me? You value your cheeks, as free of pimples as they are, don’t you?”

And then.

Senjogahara smiled.

“If you promise me your silence and your indifference, Araragi, then nod twice. I’ll consider any other action, even freezing, as hostile behavior and promptly move to attack.”

There wasn’t a shred of reluctance in her words.

Having no choice, I nodded.

I nodded to her twice.

“There.”

Upon seeing this─Senjogahara seemed to relax.

Despite the fact that I had no choice, that it was neither a transaction nor an agreement and I could only consent to her demand, she seemed to relax when I went ahead and complied.

“Thank you,” she said.

Then she detached the box cutter from the inside of my left cheek and withdrew it slowly, more languidly than cautiously. I did sense from the movement of her hand that she was taking care not to scar me inside my mouth by mistake.

She retracted the box cutter’s blade.

Click-click-click-click.

Next, the stapler.

“…Ngeek?!”

Ka-chunk.

I couldn’t believe it.

The stapler─had clamped down hard. Then, before I could react to the immense pain, she handily popped it out of my mouth.

I crumpled into a ball on the spot.

Cradling my cheek, from outside.

“Gh…urrk…”

“You’re not going to scream? Impressive,” Senjogahara said above me, as if she hadn’t done a thing.

Looking down on me.

“I’ll let you off at that for today. I hate being so lenient, but you did promise, so I ought to show you some good will.”

“…Y-You─”

Ka-chunk.

As if to talk over me, Senjogahara made an overlapping sound with the stapler, clamping it in the air.

A deformed staple fell before my eyes.

I couldn’t help but flinch.

A reflex, if you will.

I’d been classically conditioned in a single go.

“Okay, Araragi. Be sure to ignore me starting tomorrow. Fare thee well!”

With that, uninterested in my response, Senjogahara turned her heels and began walking down the hall. Before I could even get up from my balled position, she turned a corner and vanished from sight.

“Sh-She’s like some devil.”

Our brains were structured in─fundamentally different ways.

Despite the situation and despite her words, some part of me had assumed that she wouldn’t really. In which case, maybe I should be blessing my good fortune that she had chosen the stapler and not the box cutter.

I gently brushed my cheek again, not to ease the pain this time, but to check on it.

“………”

Good.

I was okay, it hadn’t punched through.

Next, I stuck my own finger in my mouth. Using my left hand, since this was my right cheek. It didn’t take long to come upon what I was looking for.

Although I could guess from the sharp pain, which neither vanished nor receded, this did away with my peaceful line of thinking that maybe the first staple actually hadn’t been loaded, that it had been no more than a threat designed to threaten… To be honest, I’d gotten my hopes up for that one.

But it was fine.

If the staple hadn’t punched through, that meant it was not overly deformed…and close to its original shape, a rectangle with a missing side. It wasn’t hooked in, so to speak, which meant I’d be able to rip it out without meeting too much resistance.

I pinched it between my thumb and index finger, and yanked.

The sharp pain was joined by a dull, metallic taste.

I seemed to be spurting blood.

“Kh…ahh…”

I was fine.

This much─I could take fine.

Licking the two puncture wounds that had formed on the inside of my cheek, I bent the staple I’d taken out and placed it in the pocket of my school-issued jacket. I also picked up the staple Senjogahara had dropped and did the same. It’d be dangerous if someone stepped on it with bare feet. Staples looked like magnum ammo to me now.

“Hm? You’re still here, Araragi?”

As I was doing this, Hanekawa emerged from the classroom.

She seemed to be done.

Why couldn’t she have come sooner?

Or maybe her timing was right.

“Don’t you need to hurry to Mister Oshino’s?” Hanekawa asked suspiciously.

She hadn’t noticed a thing, it seemed.

Just a wall in between─right, she’d been beyond a mere, thin wall. Hitagi Senjogahara, who nevertheless pulled off an act of derring-do without Hanekawa noticing a thing─was indeed someone to be reckoned with.

“Hey, Hanekawa… Do you like bananas?”

“Hm? Uh, I don’t particularly dislike them. They’re nutritious, too, so if I had to choose between like and dislike, then sure, I like them.”

“Even if you love them, don’t ever have them at school!”

“E-Excuse me?”

“Just eating them wouldn’t be all that terrible, but if I ever catch you tossing a leftover peel on the stairs, I’ll never forgive you!”

“What are you talking about, Araragi?!” Hanekawa said with a puzzled expression and a hand to her mouth.

Of course she did.

“Anyway, Araragi, what about Mister─”

“I’m going to Oshino’s─as we speak.”

With that, I rushed off, blowing past Hanekawa. “Yikes! Hey, Araragi, don’t run in the halls! Don’t make me tell on you!” her voice came from behind, but naturally I ignored it.

I ran.

I just ran.

I turned the corner to reach the stairs.

I was on the fourth floor.

She couldn’t have gone that far yet.

With a hop, step, and a jump, I skipped two, three, then four stairs at a time─and arrived on the landing.

I could feel the impact in my legs.

An impact commensurate to my weight.

Then this impact, too─

Senjogahara had to be lacking.

She weighed nothing.

She had no weight.

Which meant─her footing wasn’t secure.

A crab.

A crab, she’d said.

“Not this way─this way.”

She couldn’t have gone off sideways at that point. Never thinking that I’d come chasing after her, she would have proceeded straight ahead, toward the school gates. She had to be a member of the no-extracurriculars club, but even if she were affiliated with an actual something-or-other, no activity would kick off at such a late hour. With that assumption, I descended the stairs from the third floor to the second, not hesitating for a moment. I leapt down them.

Then from the second floor to the landing of the first.

Senjogahara was there.

I was practically rolling down the stairs in pursuit and creating a ruckus, so she must have caught on, because she still had her back to me but had already turned her head.

With a cold look.

“…I can’t believe you,” she said. “Or rather, I’m honestly surprised. As far as I can remember, being able to feel rebellious so soon after having that much done to you is a first, Araragi.”

“A first…”

She’d done it to others, too?

What was that about “a hundred days of sermons,” then?

Come to think of it, though, it made sense that keeping a secret like “not having any weight,” which the slightest contact could divulge, was impossible realistically speaking…

And she’d said “so far,” hadn’t she?

Maybe she really was some devil.

“Also,” she added, “pain in your oral cavity shouldn’t be so easy to recover from. Normally, you can’t budge from the spot for a good ten minutes.”

She was speaking from experience.

Too scary.

“All right, I get it. I get it, Araragi. Your ‘eye for an eye’ attitude agrees with my own sense of justice. If you’re down for it…”

Senjogahara fanned her arms out to both sides as she spoke.

“Let’s have ourselves a war.”

In her hands were─stationery tools of every kind, the box cutter, the stapler, and more: sharpened HB pencil, compass, tricolor ballpoint pen, mechanical pencil, super glue, rubber band, paper clip, bulldog clip, power clipper, permanent marker, safety pin, fountain pen, correction fluid, scissors, cellophane tape, sewing kit, letter opener, plastic isosceles triangle, thirty-centimeter ruler, protractor, rubber cement, an assortment of chisels, paint, paperweight, ink.

……

I began to feel that some day in the future, I’d be groundlessly persecuted by society for the mere act of having shared a class with her.

I personally saw the super glue as the most dangerous.

“W-Wait, wait, no. We’re not having a war,” I said.

“We’re not? Oh, well.”

She sounded a bit disappointed.

But her arms were still outstretched.

Her deadly weapons, otherwise known as stationery, still gleamed.

“Then what do you want?”

“I was thinking, just maybe,” I replied, “I might be able to help you out.”

“Help me out?”

From the bottom of her heart, it seemed─

She sneered like I was a fool.

No, maybe she was angry.

“Give me a break. Didn’t I tell you I don’t need any cheap sympathy? You can’t do a thing for me. Keep mum and pay no attention to me, that’s all I want.”

“……”

“Generosity, too─I will deem as hostile behavior.”

With those words, she climbed one step.

She had to be serious.

Our earlier interaction had taught me all too well that she wasn’t the hesitant type. Damn well.

And that’s why.

That’s why, without saying a word, I stuck a finger against the edge of my lips and tugged to show her my cheek.

My right cheek, with my right hand.

Naturally, this exposed the inside of my mouth.

“Wha-”

The sight couldn’t but shock even Senjogahara. The deadly weapons otherwise known as stationery spilled and fell from both of her hands.

“You─how did…”

I could tell even before she’d asked.

Yes.

The taste of blood was already gone.

The wound Senjogahara had dealt to my mouth with her stapler had healed without a trace.

004

I was attacked by a vampire.

In this day and age of real, working maglev trains, where overseas school trips are nothing unusual, it’s embarrassing enough to make me want to go into hiding, but regardless, I was attacked by a vampire.

She was blood-chillingly gorgeous.

A beautiful demon.

She was─such a beautiful demon.

Though they’re concealed behind the collar of my uniform’s jacket, the traces of her deep bite still remain on my neck. I’m hoping that my hair will grow out before it gets hot out, but putting that aside─usually, when regular people get attacked by a vampire, the story goes that they’re saved by an expert vampire hunter, by Christianity’s special forces, or perhaps even by a vampire-slaying vampire who hunts its own kind, but in my case, I was saved by a shabby old dude who happened to be passing by.

Thanks to him, I was somehow able to turn back into a human─fine again with sunlight, crosses, garlic, and such, but the effect, or rather, the aftereffect the experience had on me was a remarkable improvement in my physical abilities. Not my athletic abilities, mind you, but like my metabolism, in the way of recuperating. While I don’t know how I would’ve ended up if the box cutter had ripped my cheek apart, it takes less than thirty seconds to heal something like a simple staple stabbed through my flesh. At any rate, to begin with, wounds in the oral cavity tend to heal quickly for any organism.

“Oshino─a Mister Oshino?”

“Right. Mèmè Oshino.”

“Mèmè Oshino, huh─quite an adorable-sounding name, I have to say.”

“You shouldn’t get your hopes up on that count. He’s a weathered, middle-aged, thirty-something.”

“I see. But as a kid, he must have been quite a moé character.”

“Don’t look at flesh-and-blood people like that. And wait, do you even know what that word means?”

“It’s a part of common learning these days,” Senjogahara said blithely. “And you call characters like me tsundere, right? Cold and mean at first, but loving once you get to know me?”

“………”

With how cold she was, “tundra” suited her better.

But I digress.

About twenty minutes by bicycle from Naoetsu Private High School, which Hanekawa, Senjogahara, and I attended, stands a cram school slightly separated from any homes.

Stood.

Apparently, a few years ago, it took the full brunt of a big cram school chain setting up shop in front of the station, ran into financial troubles, and went out of business. By the time I learned of the four-story building’s existence, though, it was an abandoned ruin through and through, so all this is second-hand info.

Danger.

Private Property.

No Trespassing.

Despite a plethora of such signs and the Safety First fence surrounding it, access is as good as unrestricted thanks to all the gaps.

In these ruins─lives Oshino.

He’s taken up residence, without permission.

For an entire month now, starting during spring break.

“God, my bottom hurts. It’s numb. And my skirt got wrinkled,” Senjogahara said.

“Not my fault.”

“Stop trying to talk your way out of this, or I’ll lop it off.”

“Which body part?!”

“This is my first time riding on a bicycle with someone else. Can’t you be a little more generous?”

Wasn’t generosity hostile behavior for her?

Everything this girl said and did was beyond the pale.

“So, how exactly might I have tried?” I asked.

“Well, as a small suggestion, couldn’t you have given me your bag to use as a cushion?”

“Do you not give a crap about anyone other than yourself?”

“Please, don’t use such rude language with me. I said it was only a small suggestion.”

How did repeating that make it any better?

It was most questionable.

“You know, I bet even Marie Antoinette was a little more modest and humble than you,” I said.

“She’s something like my disciple,” Senjogahara replied.

“In what timeline?!”

“I wish you’d stop casually riffing off of everything I say. You’re acting like we’re buddies or something. Listening to you, a stranger might even think that we’re classmates.”

“We are classmates!”

How much was she going to disavow me?

That was just too cold.

“Jeez…” I lamented. “I guess dealing with you requires an unbelievable amount of patience.”

“Araragi. The way you put that, it almost sounds like I’m the one who’s hard to get along with, not you.”

That’s exactly what I wanted to say.

“Actually, where’s your own bag?” I asked her. “You’re empty-handed. Do you not carry one?” In fact, I couldn’t remember ever seeing Senjogahara carrying anything with her.

“I have all my textbooks stored inside my head. So I just leave them in my school locker. If I hide all my stationery around my body, there’s no need for a bag. And in my case, gym clothes are out.”

“Ah, I see.”

“If both of my hands aren’t free, it’s harder to fight when the time comes.”

“……”

Her entire body was a weapon.

She was a human weapon.

“The only issue I have is with hygiene products because it bothers me to keep them at school. With no friends, I can’t borrow them from anyone, either.”

“…You’re being awfully open about this, you know.”

“Why not? Menses is Latin for month. It’s a natural phenomenon, nothing to be embarrassed of. I’d say it’s more indecent to be furtive about it.”

I wasn’t so sure about not being at least a little furtive.

No, it was a matter of personal choice.

Not my place to say.

Maybe what I ought to be making a note of instead was her even more open admission─that she didn’t have any friends.

“Oh, that’s right,” I said, turning to face her after reaching an “entrance.”

Though it was all the same to me, I’d searched for a particularly large one because, to judge from her earlier comment about her skirt, Senjogahara, being a girl after all, might not want her uniform to fray.

“Let me hold on to your stationery or whatever.”

“Huh?”

“Take it out. I’ll hold on to it.”

“Huh? Huh?”

From her expression, you might think that I’d made an outrageous demand. It seemed to ask if something was wrong with my head.

“Oshino is, well, he’s a weird dude, but he did technically save my life─”

Not only that.

He’d saved Hanekawa’s, too.

“─and I can’t have the man who did face a dangerous person. So I’ll hold on to your stationery.”

“You only tell me after we’ve come this far?” Senjogahara glared at me. “It seems I’ve stepped into a trap.”

“……”

Nah, that was way overboard.

But Senjogahara struggled silently with the matter for a while. She scowled at me now and then or stared at a point by her feet.

I wondered if she was going to turn around and leave, but at last, like someone prepared for the worst, she said, “Understood. Take them.”

Then, taking out a myriad of stationery from across her body like it was some magic show, she began handing them to me. What I’d seen earlier on the landing was only the tip of her badness and madness. You could’ve told me her pockets stretched into the fourth dimension; it could’ve been twenty-second-century science. I’d told her I’d hold on to it, but she was producing so much materiel I was starting to doubt if my bag was up to it.

…Someone like her strolling around in public unrestricted surely amounted to negligence on the part of the authorities…

“Don’t get me wrong,” Senjogahara warned after she’d finished giving everything to me. “It’s not like I’m letting my guard down around you.”

“You might as well…”

“If you’re trying to get back at me for stabbing you with a staple by tricking me into entering these desolate ruins, you’ll be making the wrong party pay.”

“…”

No, as far as which party, I would be right on.

“Understand?” she said. “I have five thousand of my rowdiest pals ready to attack your family if they don’t hear from me at least once every minute.”

“It’s fine… Stop worrying.”

“You mean you won’t even need a whole minute?!”

“I am not that boxer.”

And hold on. She didn’t think twice about targeting my family.

I couldn’t believe her.

On top of that, five thousand pals? What a lie.

A bold lie for someone who had no friends.

“Say, I hear your two little sisters are still in middle school.”

“………”

She knew my family’s makeup.

She might’ve lied, but she wasn’t joking.

In any case, displaying a modicum of my “immortality” hadn’t made her trust me one bit. Oshino always said that relationships of trust were important in these things, and my current situation wasn’t a good one from that perspective.

But what can you do.

From here, the problem was Senjogahara’s alone.

I was merely a guide.

We passed through a tear in the chain-link fence onto the grounds, and into the building. It was still evening, but it was fairly dark inside. There was a lot of clutter on the floor after days and months of neglect, and you could trip on something if you weren’t careful.

That’s when I realized.

An empty can lying around was nothing more than an empty can to me, but it had ten times the mass for Senjogahara.

Relatively speaking, that was the case.

It wasn’t like in old comics where you spoke of “ten times the gravity” or “a tenth of the gravity” and left it there. The simple take that “lighter equals more athletic” didn’t work. Worse, it was this dark, in a place she didn’t know. Maybe Senjogahara couldn’t be blamed for parading a wild animal’s level of caution.

Even if she were ten times faster.

She’d only be a tenth as strong.

Her reluctance to surrender her stationery also began to make sense in that regard.

And─why she didn’t carry a bag.

Why she couldn’t carry one, either.

“…This way.”

Clasping Senjogahara’s wrist, I led her forward from the entrance where she’d been standing uncertainly. She was taken aback because I was a bit sudden, but while she gave me a “What?” she followed without resisting.

“Don’t expect any thanks,” she said.

“I know.”

“In fact, you should be thanking me.”

“I don’t understand?!”

“I put that stapler around your mouth so that it’d hit the inside of your cheek, not the outside. I didn’t want to leave a visible wound.”

“……”

I couldn’t hear that as anything other than an abuser’s “It’ll show on the face, so punch in the belly” thinking.

“It wouldn’t have mattered if it had penetrated,” I pointed out.

“I judged that you’d quite likely be fine, going by how thick-skinned your face looks.”

“If you’re trying to comfort me, it’s not working. And ‘quite likely’?”

“My intuition is right about a tenth of the time.”

“That’s all?!”

“Well─” Senjogahara paused before continuing, “it was all wasted consideration in the end.”

“…Seems that way.”

“If I said that immortality seems convenient, would you feel hurt?” she followed up with a question.

I answered, “Not so much, now.”

Not so much─now.

But during spring break?

If someone had said that to me then─the words may have killed me. May have dealt a fatal wound.

“You could say it’s convenient─but you could also say it’s inconvenient. That’s about it.”

“How wishy-washy. I don’t get it.” Senjogahara shrugged. “Is it like when people talk about a ‘devil may care’ attitude? Satan probably doesn’t, but just might?”

“Nothing wishy-washy there. He absolutely doesn’t.”

“Oh.”

“And anyway, I’m not immortal anymore. I just heal a tad faster than normal. Otherwise I’m a regular human.”

“Huh, I see,” Senjogahara muttered, sounding disappointed. “I was planning on trying all sorts of things on you if I got the chance. Too bad.”

“From the sound of it, some very grotesque planning was going on behind my back…”

“How rude. I was only going to &% your /- before *^ing it.”

“What do those symbols mean?!”

“And I wanted to do this and that to you, too.”

“What is that underlining supposed to suggest?!”

Oshino tended to be on the fourth floor.

The building had an elevator, but it was of course out of service. That meant our options were busting through the elevator’s roof and using the cables to climb to the fourth floor, or taking the stairs. I think it’d be fair to say that anyone would pick the latter option.

I started up the stairs, still tugging Senjogahara by the hand.

“Let me tell you one last thing, Araragi.”

“What is it?”

“I might not look it with my clothes on, but actually, my body might not be worth breaking the law to make yours.”

“……”

It seemed that Miss Hitagi Senjogahara hewed to the highest notions of chastity.

“Was that too roundabout for you? Then let me say it flat-out. If you lay bare your base instincts and rape me, I will do anything and everything in my power to pay you back slash-fiction style.”

“……”

As for shame and modesty, she had none at all.

Actually, she was just plain scary.

“You know, this isn’t only about what you said just now, but looking at everything you do, Senjogahara, you seem a little, I guess, too self-conscious? Like maybe you should dial down your persecution complex?”

“Ugh. Don’t you know that some things are best left unsaid, even if they’re true?”

“You were aware of it?!”

“Anyway, this building looks like it’s about to collapse. I can’t believe this─Oshino person lives here.”

“Yeah…well, he’s a pretty weird guy.”

Though if you asked me how he compared to Senjogahara, at that point I’d have had to think it over.

“Shouldn’t we have contacted him in advance?” she fretted. “It’s a little late now, but we’re the ones who’re seeking advice…”

“Putting aside my shock at your apparent display of common sense, he unfortunately doesn’t carry a cell phone.”

“How enigmatic. Almost a suspicious character. What exactly does he do?”

“I don’t know the details, but─he says he specializes in cases like mine and yours.”

“Hmph.”

It was far from a proper explanation, but Senjogahara didn’t try to dig any deeper. Perhaps she thought that she was about to meet him anyway, or that there was no point in asking. She was right either way.

“Hey. You wear your watch on your right arm, Araragi.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah.”

“Are you a contrarian or something?”

“Start by asking if I’m left-handed!”

“Uh huh. Well, are you?”

“……”

I was a contrarian.

The fourth floor.

As the building was originally a cram school, it had three class-like rooms─but with the doors to all three broken, they and the hallway connecting them were now a single area. When I peeked inside the closest one first, wondering where Oshino was:

“Oh, Araragi. So you finally came.”

Mèmè Oshino was right there.

Sitting cross-legged atop his makeshift bed (if you could call it that) of a number of rotting desks pushed together and bound with plastic string, he was facing me.

As if he’d been expecting me.

Like always─like he saw it all coming.

As for Senjogahara─she was visibly creeped out.

While I did tell her in advance, Oshino’s filthy demeanor significantly deviated, no doubt, from a modern-day high school girl’s aesthetic standards. Anyone would look as ragged as him living in these ruins, but even I, a boy, could say that Oshino’s appearance was not a hygienic one. If we’re to be entirely honest. But most of all, his psychedelic Hawaiian shirt was the fatal blow.

I think this every time I see him, but really, the fact that such a person is my savior can be a downer… Though I’m sure someone as mature as Hanekawa isn’t bothered one bit.

“Oh, so you’ve brought yet another girl with you today, Araragi? You’re with a new one every time we meet. Why, I’m quite glad for you.”

“Stop making me out to be some sort of sleazebag.”

“Hah─hm?”

Oshino cast a distant gaze in Senjogahara’s direction.

As if he was looking at something behind her.

“…Nice to meet you, missy. I’m Oshino.”

“Nice to meet you─I’m Hitagi Senjogahara.”

She’d managed to give him a proper greeting.

So she was discriminating with her acid tongue. At least, it looked like she could be polite to her elders.

“Araragi is my classmate, and he told me about you.”

“Huh. Is that so.”

Oshino nodded meaningfully.

He looked down, pulled out a cigarette, and put it in his mouth. But instead of lighting it, he kept it there and used it to indicate the windows, or rather, the scenery beyond the random fragments of glass that had long ceased to function as windows.

Then, after waiting for more than long enough, he turned to me.

“So, Araragi. You got a thing for girls with straight bangs?”

“What was it I just told you not to do? And girls with straight bangs? Isn’t that what you’d call a plain-old pedophile? Don’t lump me in with your generation who had Full House airing on TV when you were going through puberty.”

“Right.” Oshino laughed.

Senjogahara scowled in response.

The word “pedophile” might’ve been what did it.

“Um─anyway,” I said, “get the details from her directly, but Oshino─about two years ago, this girl over here─”

“Don’t call me that,” Senjogahara commanded me.

“Then what do you want me to call you?”

“Miss Senjogahara.”

“……”

Was she in her right mind?

“…Miss-Sen-Joe-Guh-Hara.”

“I won’t have you saying it like a machine. Say it normally.”

“Missy Senjogahara.”

She poked me in the eyes.

“You nearly blinded me!”

“An eye for an eye,” she said.

“How do you get an eye out of hurt feelings? Where’s the equivalence in that?!”

“My inappropriate remarks are an alloy of 40 grams copper, 25 grams zinc, 15 grams nickel, 5 grams bashfulness, and 97 kilograms malice.”

“That’s almost all malice!”

“Also, I was lying about the bashfulness.”

“And now you got rid of the saving grace!”

“Oh, be quiet. I’m going to nickname you ‘menstrual cramps’ if you don’t knock it off.”

“That’s the kind of bullying people kill themselves over!”

“What do you mean? It’s literally a natural phenomenon, nothing to be embarrassed of.”

“Then don’t be malicious about it!”

Senjogahara seemed to have gotten her fill and finally turned back to Oshino. “Now, before we proceed, allow me one question.”

Her tone suggested that she wasn’t asking just Oshino, but both me and him, as she pointed to a corner of the classroom. There, holding her knees, crouched a little girl who seemed out of place even in a cram school because she was too little at about eight years old, a pale, blonde girl who wore a helmet and goggles.

“What, exactly, is that child?”

Judging by her phrasing, she recognized that the girl wasn’t fully a who. In fact, a prickly glare that surpassed even Senjogahara’s and that focused on a single point, Oshino, and didn’t waver would have tipped off anyone attuned to such things.

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that,” I explained to her before Oshino got a chance. “It’s not like she can do anything, she just sits there─it’s nothing. A kid who’s neither a shadow nor a trace. Not even a name or a presence.”

“Hold on a sec, Araragi,” Oshino cut in. “You’re right to say that she has no shadow, trace, or even a presence, but I gave her a name yesterday. She worked hard over Golden Week, plus it’s a huge pain to have nothing to call her by. And without a name, she’ll never stop being heinous.”

“A name, huh? What is it?” I knew I was abandoning Senjogahara with the question, but I was interested so I asked.

“I named her Shinobu Oshino.”

“Shinobu─huh.”

A decisively Japanese name. It was also an alternative reading for the “Oshi” in Oshino.

Not that it mattered.

“Written with the character for ‘heart’ under the one for ‘blade.’ A fitting name for her, don’t you think? I let her reuse my last name as-is, which by luck uses the same character. Double it up for triple the meaning. I’m pretty impressed with my sensibility, if I do say so myself.”

“Well, why not.”

It really didn’t matter.

“After giving it some thought,” my savior continued, “it came down to Shinobu Oshino or Oshino Oshino, with an Edo period-style ‘o’ in the given name, but I decided to prioritize how it sounds over linguistic uniformity. I’m also a fan of the way it resembles missy class president on paper, with two characters for the last name but just one for the first.”

“Why not.”

It absolutely didn’t matter.

Though, well, “Oshino Oshino” did seem out of the question.

“So,” Senjogahara said, as if her patience had run out long ago, “what is that child?”

“Like I said─it’s nothing,” I told her.

A husk of a vampire.

The dregs of a beautiful demon.

You might say so, but what else could I have done? This had nothing to do with Senjogahara anyway. It was my problem. Just my karma, which I merely ought to face for the rest of my life.

“It’s nothing? Okay, then.”

“……”

What an indifferent woman.

“It’s like my grandmother on my father’s side always said,” she added. “The opposite of hate is not love, but indifference.”

“Hold on, what?”

That was somehow so messed up.

Where did that one come from, the bath-pissed church?

“But anyway.” Hitagi Senjogahara shifted her gaze from the pale, blonde former vampire, now known as Shinobu Oshino, to Mèmè Oshino. “I heard that you would save me.”

“Save you? Now that I can’t do,” Oshino said in his usual teasing tone. “You’re just going to get saved on your own, missy.”

“……”

Whoa.

Senjogahara’s eyes narrowed by half.

She was manifestly doubtful.

“So far,” she said, “five people have spouted similar lines to me. All of them were frauds. Are you one as well, Mister Oshino?”

“Ha hah. You’re a spirited one, missy. Something good happen to you?”

Why do you keep provoking her right back, I wondered. It worked on some people, like Hanekawa, but Senjogahara was the last person to try it on.

She was the type to respond to provocation with a preemptive strike.

“N-Now, now,” I was forced to step in and mediate.

As if to wedge myself in between the two.

“Keep your nose out of this. I’ll kill you.”

“……”

So casual a death threat, Senjogahara.

Why should the sparks fall on me?

She was like a firebomb.

She was going to outpace my vocabulary, wasn’t she?

“Well, in any case.” Oshino’s carefree manner offered such a contrast with hers. “We’re not going to get anywhere unless you start talking. I’m no good at reading minds. And more importantly, I like dialogue. I’m a talker at heart. But I do keep secrets, so don’t you worry.”

Senjogahara didn’t respond.

“U-Uhm, so to start with a simple explanation─” I began.

“It’s fine, Araragi,” she interrupted again before I could go over the gist of it. “I’ll do it myself.”

“Senjogahara─”

“I can do it myself,” she said.

005

I had left the former cram school where Oshino and the vampire now known as Shinobu lived and was at Senjogahara’s home.

The Senjogahara residence.

The Tamikura Apartments.

A two-story wooden building built thirty years ago, with a sheet metal communal mailbox out front. It did have a shower and a flush toilet, at least. A so-called one-room apartment measuring barely more than a hundred square feet, with a small sink. Twenty minutes walking to the closest bus stop (not train station, mind you). The rent, including the maintenance fee, neighborhood dues, and utility, estimated at thirty to forty thousand yen a month.

It was very different from what I’d heard from Hanekawa.

It must have shown on my face because Senjogahara explained, “My mother fell for religion, a sketchy one.”

Unprompted, like she was making an excuse.

Like she was trying to paper this over.

“She not only gave them everything we owned but took on a huge amount of debt. A believer and her money are soon parted.”

“Religion? You mean…”

She was into some money-grubbing cult.

And we all knew what that led to.

“My father took custody of me after my parents filed for an uncontested divorce at the end of last year, and now we live here together. Well, I say that, but I rarely see him because the debts are in his name and he’s still working himself to the bone to pay them off. I’m living alone for all intents and purposes and love the freedom.”

“……”

“But the school still has my old address on file, so you can’t fault Hanekawa for not knowing.”

Hey.

Were you allowed to do that?

“I’d rather not announce my whereabouts to people who might become my enemies one day.”

“Enemies…”

It sounded overblown, but perhaps such cautiousness wasn’t improbable in folks with secrets to keep.

“Senjogahara. When you say your mom fell for religion─could it have been for your sake?”

“What an unpleasant question.” Senjogahara laughed. “Who can tell? Beats me. Maybe that wasn’t it.”

It was─an unpleasant answer.

But perhaps the natural one to an unpleasant question.

My question really had been unpleasant, so much so that I look back and loathe myself for it. I shouldn’t have asked, and this was the moment when Senjogahara should have dispensed a lashing with her trusty acid tongue.

Having lived under the same roof, her family couldn’t not have noticed that their daughter no longer had any weight─especially her mother. This wasn’t school where you could just sit there and take the same classes. An incredible anomaly afflicting the body of their dear only daughter would have come to light right away. Once the doctors had all but thrown in the towel and resorted to an everyday routine of exams, no one could blame you for seeking solace.

Or maybe you weren’t free of blame.

I didn’t know.

What point was there in acting like I knew?

In any case.

In any case, I was─sitting on a cushion at a low table and staring with glazed eyes at a teacup that had been filled for me in Room 201, Tamikura Apartments, Senjogahara’s home.

This was her, so I’d expected to be told, “You wait outside,” but she’d invited me right in. She’d even made me tea. It was a bit of a shock.

“I’m going to break your every bone,” she said.

“What?”

“I’m sorry. Make yourself at home, I mean.”

“………”

“Well, maybe I was right the first time…”

“You nailed it your second try! You couldn’t have done better! That’s really impressive of you, Senjogahara, not everyone can correct their own mistakes like that!”

…But that was the extent of our conversation, so I was flummoxed. It wasn’t like I could utter some naive line about barging into the home of a girl I’d just gotten to know. All I could do was stare at my tea.

Senjogahara was taking a shower right then.

As a rite to cleanse herself, or something.

She was to wash her body with cold water and change into a clean set of clothes, new or old would do─according to Oshino.

Essentially, she had taken me along for this. Well, she almost had to because we’d gone from school to Oshino’s place on my bike, and he’d advised as much.

Having glanced around the spartan hundred-odd square feet that looked nothing like a young woman’s room, I leaned back on the small clothes drawer behind me─and thought back to what Oshino had said.

“The omoshi-kani. A Crab of Weight.”

After Senjogahara had conveyed her circumstances─not her life’s story exactly, but still, her situation from start to finish─Oshino nodded with an “I see,” looked up at the ceiling for a bit, and spoke those words as if they’d just come to him.

“A Crab of Weight?” echoed Senjogahara.

“It’s a piece of folklore from the mountainous areas of Kyushu. Depending on the locale, it might be called the weight crab, the heavy crab, the stone-weight crab, or even the omoishi-gami. That last instance is playing on kani, ‘crab,’ and kami, ‘god.’ The details vary, but what the stories have in common is people being deprived of weight. Encountering it─encountering it in the wrong way apparently makes your presence fade, too.”

“Your presence…”

Evanescent.

So─evanescent.

And─so much prettier now.

“Not just your presence,” Oshino elaborated. “In some nasty cases, your entire existence. They’ve got something in the Chubu region called the ‘stone-weight stone,’ but I think that’s something totally different. I mean, that’s a stone, and this is a crab.”

“A crab? Is it really a crab?”

“Don’t be silly, Araragi. They don’t catch too many in the mountains of Miyazaki and Oita. We’re talking about a legend.” Oshino sounded thoroughly appalled. “Sometimes being absent better lends itself to talk. Don’t delusions and backbiting tend to get people going?”

“Are crabs Japanese to begin with?”

“Araragi, are you thinking of crawfish? From America? Are you not familiar with Japanese folktales? The Crab and the Monkey. I believe there’s a famous crab aberration in Russia, and a good number of them in China, too, but Japan can hold its own.”

“Oh, yeah. The Crab and the Monkey. I guess, now that you mention it. But Miyazaki and─why something from those parts?”

“Don’t be asking me when you were attacked by a vampire in a backwater in Japan. It’s not as if the location means anything, really. Given the right situation─it arises there, that’s all.”

Of course, geography and climate were important factors, Oshino supplemented.

“In this case, it doesn’t even have to be a crab. Some say it’s a rabbit or a beautiful woman─not to bring up little Shinobu.”

“Huh, it’s like the face of the Moon.”

And hold on. He just called her “little Shinobu.”

I felt a pang of sympathy for her, despite myself.

She was a legendary vampire, and yet…

How poignant.

“But since the young lady says she came across a crab, we must be dealing with a crab. That’s standard, at the end of the day.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Senjogahara asked Oshino unshrinkingly. “What it’s called is all the same to me, but─”

“I wouldn’t say so. Names are important. As I just told Araragi, there aren’t any crabs in the mountains of Kyushu. It might be different up north, but they’d be rare down south.”

“You can probably find freshwater crabs, though,” I noted.

“Maybe. But that’s not the real issue here.”

“Then what is?” demanded Senjogahara.

“It’s that it may have originally been a god, not a crab. That omoshi-kani derives from omoishi-gami─but this is my personal theory. Most people think it’s a crab first and the god bit is an afterthought. True, the straightforward view would be that they emerged simultaneously at the latest.”

“‘Most people’? ‘Straightforward view’? I don’t know of any such monster,” Senjogahara objected.

“You wouldn’t not know. After all,” Oshino said, “you’ve encountered it.”

“……”

“And─it’s still right there.”

“Are you saying you─see something?”

“I don’t. Not a thing,” Oshino replied with an all too cheerful and lighthearted laugh that seemed, indeed, to bother Senjogahara.

As it did me.

Anyone would think he was mocking her.

“It’s quite irresponsible of you to admit that you don’t,” Senjogahara said.

“Is that so? Spirits and such are basically invisible to the human eye. No one can see them or in any way touch them. That’s the norm.”

“That is─the norm.”

“They say that ghosts don’t have legs or that vampires don’t show in mirrors, but that’s not the point. Basically, things of their kind aren’t identifiable in the first place. But I have a question for you, missy. Do things that no one can see or in any way touch really exist in this world?”

“You’re asking me? You said yourself that it’s right there.”

“Why yes, I did. But isn’t something that no one can see or in any way touch as good as nonexistent, scientifically speaking? Its being there and not being there are exactly the same.”

That’s what I mean, Oshino said.

Senjogahara hardly looked convinced.

It certainly wasn’t a convincing line of reasoning.

Not from her standpoint.

“But, missy, consider yourself as being on the luckier side of misfortune. Araragi over there didn’t just encounter something, he was attacked. By a vampire, at that. What a disgrace for a modern-day human being.”

Get off my case, man.

As far off as you can.

“You’re in fine shape compared to that, missy.”

“And why is that?” Senjogahara asked.

“Because the gods are everywhere. They’re everywhere, and they’re nowhere. It was around you before you became the way you are─and we could just as well argue that it wasn’t.”

“That almost sounds like a Zen koan.”

“It’s Shinto. Maybe Shugendo,” Oshino said. “You’d be wrong, missy, to think that you became the way you are because of something you did─it’s just that your perspective shifted.”

It was so from the beginning.

That─but that was barely any different from what the doctors who’d thrown in the towel maintained.

“My perspective? What are you trying to tell me?”

“I’m saying that I can’t stand you playing the victim, missy,” Oshino abruptly unleashed some harsh words.

Just like he’d done with me.

Or like he’d done with Hanekawa.

I was concerned about how Senjogahara would react─but she didn’t reply.

It almost seemed like she was meekly accepting it.

“Huh.” Oshino sounded impressed as he took in her state. “Not bad. I was sure you were some stuck-up princess.”

“Why─did you think so?” Senjogahara asked.

“Because most people who encounter the Crab of Weight are like that. You don’t come across it by choice, and it’s normally not a harmful god. It’s not like a vampire.”

Not harmful?

It’s not harmful─and doesn’t attack?

“Nor does it actually possess people. It’s there, that’s all. Unless you, missy, have some wish, it doesn’t manifest. Mind you, I’m not gonna dig that far into your circumstances. It’s not as if I want to save you.”

“……”

She was─going to get saved all on her own.

Oshino always said that.

“Stop me if you’ve heard this story, missy. It’s a fairy tale from another country. There was once a youth. A virtuous lad. In town one day, he comes across a strange old woman, and she asks him to sell her his shadow.”

“His shadow?”

“That’s right. The very shadow that grows from your feet when you’re in the sun. Sell it to me for ten pieces of gold, she said. The lad agreed without a moment’s hesitation. For ten pieces of gold.”

“…Then what happened?”

“What would you have done, missy?”

“Who knows─it’s hard to say without being in that situation. I might sell it, and I might not. It would depend on the price, too.”

“That’s the right answer. People sometimes ask which is more valuable, your money or your life, but that’s a flawed question. ‘Money’ could mean one yen, or it could mean a trillion, while on the other side, not all lives are equal across individuals. I utterly detest the vulgar dictum that all life is equal. But putting that aside─the lad couldn’t imagine that his shadow was more valuable than ten pieces of gold. Why would he? In what way does not having a shadow inconvenience you? It wouldn’t handicap you in any way.”

Oshino continued, gesticulating. “But here’s what happened as a result. The lad is persecuted by the townspeople and his own family. It creates discord with those around him who say─it’s creepy not to have a shadow. Of course they would, because it really is. People talk about a creepy shadow, but not having any is much creepier. Something that ought to be there not being there─right? In other words, the lad sold what ought to be for ten pieces of gold.”

“……”

“He searched for the old lady to get his shadow back but couldn’t find her no matter how long or hard he tried─so tells the tale, flourish of music.”

“And─” Senjogahara responded, her expression unchanged, “and what’s your point?”

“Eh, there’s no point. I just thought that, well, maybe it would strike a chord with you. The lad who sold his shadow and the lass deprived of her weight, you see?”

“It’s not─as if I sold it.”

“That’s right. You didn’t sell it. It was a barter. Losing your weight might be more inconvenient than losing your shadow, but in terms of not fitting in, it’s the same. Still─is that all?”

“What do you mean?”

“Is that all, is what I mean.” Oshino clapped his hands before his chest as if to say he was done with the topic. “Okay. Understood. You want to recover your weight, and I’ll help. You obtained Araragi’s introduction, after all.”

“…You’re going to─save me?”

“I’m not saving you. But I can help.”

Let’s see, Oshino said, checking the wristwatch on his left arm.

“The sun is still up, so go back home for now. Once you’re there, cleanse your body with cold water and change into a clean set of clothes, okay? I’ll make my own preparations in the meantime. Since you’re classmates with Araragi, you must attend that buttoned-down school, but will you be able to leave home in the middle of the night?”

“I can do that much.”

“Then can we say to meet here again at midnight?”

“Fine─but a clean set of clothes?”

“They don’t have to be new, but your school uniform won’t do. You wear it every day.”

“…And your fee?”

“Huh?”

“Please don’t play dumb. You’re not saving me as an act of charity, are you?”

“Hm. Hrm.” Oshino turned to look at me, appraisingly. “I guess I’ll take one, missy, if that would make you feel better. All right, then, a hundred thousand yen.”

“…A hundred thousand yen,” Senjogahara parroted the sum. “A hundred thousand yen─huh.”

“You can make that kind of money in a month or two working part-time at a fast food place. I think it’s reasonable.”

“…This is nothing like the treatment I got,” I remarked.

“Was it not? I want to say that it was a hundred thousand yen for missy class president, too,” Oshino countered.

“I’m saying that you charged me five million yen!”

“What do you expect? That was a vampire.”

“Stop chalking everything up to vampirism! I hate when people rely on fads like that!”

Brushing away my complaints, Oshino asked Senjogahara, “Can you pay it?”

“Of course,” she replied. “Of course, without fail.”

And so─

And so now, two hours later, here we were.

At Senjogahara’s home.

I took a look around─another one.

A hundred thousand yen isn’t a small sum by normal standards, but her single-room abode made me think it was a particularly large one for Senjogahara.

There was nothing there other than the dresser, the low table, and a small bookshelf. Considering how voracious a reader she made herself out to be, her collection was meager, which meant she probably relied heavily on used bookstores and libraries.

Like the struggling student of yore.

Well, I guessed, that’s actually what she was.

She said she was even on financial aid.

According to Oshino, Senjogahara got off easy compared to me─but I wasn’t so sure.

Yes, being attacked by a vampire is no joke for the threat to your life and the trouble you end up causing. More than once I thought things would be easier if I were dead, and even now, after a single misstep, I find myself feeling that way.

So.

Maybe Senjogahara was on the luckier side of misfortune. But─given what Hanekawa had told me about Senjogahara the middle schooler, it felt wrong to box it up so tidily and see it that way.

The two weren’t equal, to say the least.

Then a thought came to me.

Hanekawa─what about Hanekawa?

Tsubasa Hanekawa’s case.

A woman whose first name meant “wing,” and whose last name started with another character for the same, a pair of mismatched appendages.

Just as I was attacked by a demon and Senjogahara encountered a crab, Hanekawa was bewitched by a cat. That’s what happened during Golden Week. It was so intense that it felt like the distant past as soon as it was over, but it had been just a few days.

Hanekawa, though, barely had any memories of Golden Week and seemed only to know that it was thanks to Oshino that she was fine, or maybe she knew nothing at all, but at any rate─I remembered everything.

It really was an awful case.

And that’s coming from me, who had dealt with a demon at that point. I’d never imagined that a cat might be scarier than a demon.

So from the perspective of being life-threatening and all, you could simply say that Senjogahara’s case was less dire than Hanekawa’s─but considering what Senjogahara must have felt to get to where she was now…

Considering her current predicament.

If I did consider it.

What sort of life had gotten her to a place where generosity was deemed hostile behavior?

The lad who sold his shadow.

She who was deprived of her weight.

It was beyond me.

It wasn’t for me to─understand.

“I’m done with my shower.”

Senjogahara came out of the bathroom.

As naked as the day she was born.

“Gaaahhh!”

“Move out of the way. I can’t get my clothes with you there.” Coolly, annoyed with her wet hair, Senjogahara pointed to the drawer behind me.

“Clothes, put some clothes on!”

“That’s what I’m trying to do.”

“Why now?!”

“Are you saying I shouldn’t?”

“I’m saying you should have already!”

“I forgot to bring them in with me.”

“Then wear a towel or something!”

“No way, how classless,” she pronounced with a serene expression.

It was clear as day that arguing with her would be futile, so I crawled out of the way of the dresser, toward the bookshelf, and focused my vision and my mind there as if to take inventory.

Urrgh.

I’d seen a fully nude woman for the first time…

B-But─something was wrong, it wasn’t as I’d pictured it. While I don’t think I harbored any illusions, what I’d wanted, what I’d dreamed of, wasn’t this childlike streaking, this letting it all hang out…

“Clean clothes,” she said. “Do you think white would be better?”

“Don’t ask me…”

“I only own patterned underwear.”

“Don’t ask me!”

“I don’t understand, why are you screaming like that when all I’m doing is asking you for advice? Are you going through menopause?”

The sound of a drawer being opened.

The rustling of clothes.

Ahh, too late.

The image was burned into my mind and wasn’t going away.

“Araragi. Don’t tell me you were sexually aroused at the sight of my nude body.”

“Even if I was, it’s not my fault!”

“Just try to lay a finger on me. I know that biting off your tongue will end the ordeal.”

“Well, aren’t you a chaste one!”

“I’m talking about your tongue, not mine.”

“Okay, now you have me scared!”

I was starting to suspect that trying to understand this woman from my perspective was a fool’s errand.

It’s beyond humans to understand humans.

That should have been obvious.

“Okay. You can look now.”

“Oh yeah? Sheesh…”

I turned away from the bookshelf and toward her.

She was still in her underwear.

She wasn’t even wearing socks.

And she’d assumed a terribly provocative pose.

“What’s your goal here?!” I yelled.

“Come on. This is my special thanks for helping me out today, so act at least a little happy.”

“………”

It was her way of thanking me.

I didn’t get it.

If anything, I wanted an apology more than any thanks.

“Act at least a little happy!”

“Now you’re getting mad at me?!”

“It’d only be polite to provide some feedback.”

“F-Feedback…!”

That would be polite?

What should I tell her?

Uhh…

“Like,” I ventured, “Th-That’s a nice body you’ve got there?”

“…I can’t believe you,” she spat with the kind of disgust reserved for piles of rotting garbage.

Actually, there was a bit of pity mixed in there, too.

“This is why you’re a life-long virgin.”

“Life-long?! Are you a time traveler or something?!”

“Could you please not spray your spittle? I might catch your virginity.”

“Virginity is not something a woman can catch!”

Well, not that a man could, either.

“Hold on, we’ve been talking like it’s a given that I’m a virgin!”

“Well, isn’t it? No grade schooler would ever give you the time of day.”

“I have two objections to that one! First, I’m not a pedophile, and second, some grade schooler somewhere would!”

“Why state the second point if the first is true?”

“……”

Why indeed.

“But you’re right,” she conceded. “I was jumping to conclusions.”

“As long as you understand.”

“Stop with the spittle. I might catch your except-for-pros virginity.”

“In that case I admit that I’m a total cherry boy!”

Having cornered me into making a shameful confession, Senjogahara gave a satisfied nod. “You should’ve come out and said so from the start. This moment of happiness is easily worth half of your remaining lifespan, so just appreciate it.”

“Are you the Grim Reaper or what…”

A deal to see a woman in the nude?

A new sort of evil eye.

“I wouldn’t worry,” Senjogahara assured as she took out and wore a white shirt over her aqua-blue bra. It seemed ridiculous to do another count of her books, so I just stared at her instead. “I wasn’t going to tell Hanekawa, you know?”

“Hanekawa?” I asked.

“Don’t you have a crush on her?”

“Not true.”

“Oh. I see you two talking all the time, so I was under that impression and thought I’d try a leading question.”

“Keep leading questions out of everyday conversations.”

“Shut up. Do you want to be disposed of?”

“Just what kind of authority are you purporting to be?”

Still, it seemed that Senjogahara was observing her classmates more than she let on. I’d wondered if she even knew that I was class vice president. No, actually, was this just another instance of her never knowing who might become her enemies one day?

“We talk all the time because she starts conversations with me,” I explained.

“It sounds like you’re forgetting your place. Are you trying to say that it’s Hanekawa who has a crush on you?”

“Absolutely not,” I said. “Hanekawa only does it because she’s caring. Simply and overly caring. She has this funny, misguided notion that the worst loser in class is most in need of her sympathy. She thinks losers don’t get enough of a break or something.”

“You’re right, how funny and misguided.” Senjogahara nodded. “The worst loser is just the worst simpleton.”

“…Hold on, I didn’t go that far.”

“It’s written on your face.”

“It isn’t!”

“I knew you’d deny it, so I wrote that there a moment ago.”

“You can’t be that good at setting me up!”

In the first place─

Even without my clarifications, Senjogahara had to be familiar with Hanekawa’s personality. When I spoke to Hanekawa after class, she sounded quite─concerned for Senjogahara.

Or maybe that was precisely the issue here.

“So─Mister Oshino helped Hanekawa out too?”

“Mm. I guess.”

Senjogahara finished buttoning her shirt and was going for a white cardigan. She seemed to be figuring out the top half of her outfit before starting on the bottom. I see, I thought, so we all have our own way of dressing ourselves. Maybe my gaze didn’t bother her one bit; she was facing toward me, if anything, as she continued to get dressed.

“Hmph,” she said.

“So─I think it’s all right to trust him. I know he doesn’t act serious, and he’s a happy-go-lucky, flippant, and frivolous guy, but one thing I can say about him is that he’s good at what he does. You can relax. It’s not just my testimonial, Hanekawa agrees, so there’s no mistake.”

“I see. But you know, Araragi, I’m sorry but I don’t even half-trust Mister Oshino yet. I’ve been tricked far too many times to believe him just like that.”

“……”

Five people─had tried similar lines on her.

All were frauds.

And─that probably wasn’t the full extent of it.

“I visit the hospital out of habit, at this point. To be honest, I’ve all but resigned myself over the way my body is.”

“Resigned…”

What did she resign herself─to?

What did she give up on?

“I can’t expect to find any Van Helsings or Lord Darcys out there in our peculiar world.”

I had no reply.

“Though you might find a useless, bumbling sidekick or two,” she said in her most sarcastic tone. “Which is why, Araragi, I─couldn’t possibly be so optimistic as to think that a classmate who happened to catch me when I happened to slip on the stairs happened to be attacked by a vampire over spring break, and that the man who happened to save you happens also to have been involved with the class president─and moreover happens to be willing to help me.”

And then─

Senjogahara started taking off the cardigan.

“You finally put that thing on, so why are you taking it off now?”

“I forgot to dry my hair.”

“Wait, could it be that you’re just an idiot?”

“Please watch your mouth, Araragi? What if you hurt my feelings?”

Her hair dryer looked absurdly expensive.

It seemed she did pay a lot of attention to her getup.

Viewed from that angle, Senjogahara also seemed to be wearing fairly fashionable underwear, but that target of my adulation, so enchanting an overlord of the better part of my life until a day ago, somehow looked like no more than a scrap of cloth now. It felt as though a terrible trauma were being planted in me in the present participle tense.

“Optimistic, huh,” I said.

“Don’t you think?”

“Maybe. On the other hand, why not be optimistic?”

“……”

“It’s not like you’re doing anything wrong or cheating, so be unapologetic about it. Just like now.”

“Like now?” Senjogahara looked puzzled. The lady didn’t seem to realize how unflappable she was. “Hm─not doing anything wrong.”

“Right?”

“I suppose.”

Senjogahara wasn’t done.

“But,” she continued. “But─I might be cheating.”

“Huh?”

“It’s nothing.”

She finished tending to her hair, put away her dryer, and turned to getting dressed again. She searched her drawer for new clothes, having placed on hangers the now-damp shirt and cardigan she’d worn with her hair still wet.

“If I’m reincarnated,” Senjogahara said, “I’d like to be Sergeant Major Kululu.”

“……”

Not only was this unprompted, but I felt her sadistic and self-centered behavior already put her halfway there…

“I know what you want to say,” she accused. “Not only was that unprompted, but I could never in a million years?”

“Well, you got it half right.”

“I knew it.”

“…Couldn’t you have at least said Lance Corporal Dororo?”

“For me, the words ‘trauma switch’ are too close for comfort.”

“I see… But you know─”

“No ifs or bts.”

“What the hell is a ‘bts’?”

You couldn’t even guess the word she’d maybe misspoken.

Naturally, I had no idea what she was trying to say, but even as I thought so, Senjogahara changed the subject.

“Hey, Araragi. Can I ask you something? Not that it really matters.”

“Yeah.”

“What did you mean by ‘like the face of the Moon’?”

“Huh? What’re you talking about?”

“You said it earlier, to Mister Oshino.”

“Umm…”

Ah.

Right, I remembered.

“About the crab,” I explained, “that guy Oshino said it can also be a rabbit or a beautiful woman. That’s what I was talking about. People in Japan see rabbits in the moon, while in other countries they say it’s a crab or a person’s face.”

Well, it’s not that I see anything of the sort, but that’s how the story goes.

“Got it.” Senjogahara nodded along, perking up. “I’m surprised you know such a lame fact. You’ve managed to impress me for the first time ever.”

She said lame.

She said the first time ever.

So I decided to double down.

“Well, I know a thing or two when it comes to astronomy and cosmology. I was really into it for a while.”

“It’s okay, you don’t need to try to act smart with me. I already have you figured out. That’s about the only thing you know, right?”

“You must think ‘verbal abuse’ is just a cute expression.”

“Fine then, go ahead and call the verbal police.”

“……”

I had a feeling that the real police wouldn’t know what to do with her.

“Look,” I insisted, “I’m not that clueless. Um, for example, in Japan it’s a rabbit on the face of the Moon, but do you know why?”

“There aren’t any rabbits on the Moon, Araragi. You’re in high school and you still believe that?”

“Hypothetically speaking.”

Wait. Hypothetically?

Did I mean figuratively?

This wasn’t going so well…

“Once upon a time there was a god, or maybe it was the Buddha, but forget which, let’s just say there was a god. For this god’s sake, a rabbit chose to hop into a fire and to cook itself as a divine offering. Moved by its self-sacrifice, the god pinned its form up on the Moon in the sky so people would never forget the rabbit.”

I was going off of some shaky knowledge salvaged from vague memories of a TV show I’d seen as a child, but I was sure those were the details.

“That was a cruel thing for the god to do,” remarked Senjogahara. “It’s like the rabbit got pilloried.”

“No, it’s not that kind of story.”

“I don’t know about that rabbit, either. Its transparent calculation that a display of self-sacrifice would win the god’s recognition is almost grasping.”

“It absolutely isn’t that kind of story.”

“In any case, it’s not for the likes of me.”

Having said this.

She started taking her top off again, her new one.

“…Are you just proud of your body and trying to show off or what?”

“I’m not so conceited as to be proud of my body. It was just inside out, and backwards, too.”

“That’s almost skilled.”

“I will admit, wearing clothes isn’t my forte.”

“So you’re like a kid.”

“No, they’re heavy.”

“Ack.”

That was thoughtless.

Right, if a bag felt heavy, clothes would too.

If everything had ten times the weight, your clothes were nothing to sneeze at.

I regretted it.

It was an insensitive─a careless thing to say.

“This,” she said, “I might get tired of but never get used to─but you’re actually quite erudite, Araragi. You’ve surprised me. There just might be some brain in that head of yours.”

“Of course there is.”

“Don’t take things for granted… The cranium of an organism like you containing brain matter would be an event bordering on a miracle, all right?”

“Wow, that’s a really mean thing to say.”

“Don’t let it bother you. I’m only stating facts here.”

“I’d say someone in this room deserves to die…”

“What? Hoshina isn’t here, though.”

“Could you possibly have just claimed that a mentor to be respected, our homeroom teacher, deserves to die?!”

“Did the crab, too?”

“Huh?”

“Did it choose to hop into a fire, like the rabbit?”

“O-Oh… Well, I haven’t come across anything about the crab. I wonder if there’s a backstory. I never thought about it… Probably because the Moon has seas on it?”

“There aren’t any seas on the Moon. How could you say that so smugly?”

“What? There aren’t? Weren’t there…”

“So much for your astronomy. They’re not real seas, they’re only called that.”

“Oh…”

Hmmm.

I certainly couldn’t hope to keep up with an actual smart person.

“Oh dear, Araragi, it seems you’ve shown your true colors. How rash of me to posit even for a moment that you possess any knowledge.”

“You must think I’m really stupid.”

“How did you figure that out?!”

“You look genuinely shocked!”

So she thought she was hiding it.

Really?

She lamented, “Because of me, Araragi, you’ve noticed how pitiful your mind is… I feel responsible.”

“Hey, hold on, am I really that severely stupid?”

“Relax. Discriminating against people on account of their grades is something I’d never do.”

“The way you phrased that is already setting off alarm bells!”

“Could you not spray your spittle? I might catch your truncated schooling.”

“We go to the same high school!”

“Yes, but what about after that?”

“Urk…” She had me there.

“A graduate degree for me, while you’re going to drop out of high school.”

“I’ve made it to my senior year and I’m not quitting now!”

“Soon enough, you’ll be crying and begging to be let off.”

“A villain’s line that I only ever hear in comics just rolls off your tongue?!”

“Let’s compare test percentiles. Ninety-ninth for me.”

“Guh…” She beat me to the punch. “Th-Thirty-fifth for me…”

“So zero, if you round.”

“What?! Liar, a five gets… Wait, are you rounding by the tens?! How dare you do that to my percentile!”

She had more than sixty percentage points on me, she was beating a dead horse!

“I don’t feel victorious until I’m up by a hundred points.”

“You’d round yours by the tens, too…”

Merciless.

“So from now on, I don’t want you coming within a 20,000-kilometer radius of me.”

“Did you just order me off the face of the Earth?!”

“By the way, did the god do the rabbit the favor and actually feast on it?”

“Huh? Oh, you’re back to that. Did he feast on it… If you pursued it that far, it would become a tale of the bizarre, okay?”

“It already is, pursued or not.”

“Oh yeah? Why would I know, I’m stupid.”

“Don’t pout. You’re gonna wreck my mood.”

“Are you ever going to start feeling bad for me?”

“Pitying you alone won’t rid the world of war.”

“Don’t be theorizing about the world when you can’t even save a single human being! Start by helping the sad little life in front of you! I know you’re up to it!”

“Hmph. All right, I’ve made up my mind,” Senjogahara said, having dressed herself at last in a white tank top, a white jacket, and a white flared skirt. “If this all goes well, it’s going to be crabs in Hokkaido.”

“I’m pretty sure you can eat crabs without going all the way up to Hokkaido, and I don’t think they’re in season now, but sure, if that’s what you want to do, be my guest.”

“You’re coming with me.”

“Why?!”

“Oh, you didn’t know?” Senjogahara smiled. “Crabs, Araragi, are delicious.”

006

It gets incredibly dark at night. Pitch blackness. The contrast with daytime is such that the interior and exterior of an abandoned building becomes nearly indistinguishable.

For me, having lived here my entire life, that hardly feels off or strange, and really, that’s how nature is supposed to work, but according to someone like Oshino, a drifter─the contrast tends to be entangled with the root of the problem more often than not.

It made the root easier to discern and comprehend─he told me that, too.

Either way.

It was now a little after midnight.

Senjogahara and I biked back to the cram school ruins. We used an actual cushion from Senjogahara’s home for the rear seat.

I was mildly hungry, as I hadn’t eaten anything.

When I parked my bike in the same spot I’d used in the evening and entered the grounds through the same hole in the fence, Oshino was there waiting for us at the entrance.

As if he’d been there for ages.

“Wha…” Senjogahara voiced surprise at his attire.

Oshino was wrapped in a white robe─a Shinto priest’s. His scruffy hair was set neatly in place, and he at least looked tidier and was barely recognizable from the evening.

The robes make the man.

That he somehow looked the part was, actually, offensive.

“You were─a Shinto priest, Mister Oshino?” asked Senjogahara.

“What? Um, no?” he casually denied. “I’m no chief holy or ritualist. It’s what I studied in school, but I never went to work for a shrine. I had too many objections.”

“Objections…”

“Personal reasons. Maybe the truth is that it all started to seem silly to me. These clothes are just a way of dressing up for the occasion. I didn’t have any other clean ones, that’s all. We’re going to meet a god, missy, so I have to look my best too. Didn’t I tell you? Setting the mood. For Araragi, it was holding crosses, dangling garlic, and fighting with holy water. The situation is what matters. Don’t worry, I might be lacking in manners, but I know what the deal is. I won’t wave around a rod offhand or toss salt all over your head.”

“O-Okay…”

Senjogahara seemed a bit daunted.

True, his outfit was striking, but coming from her, it seemed like a bit of an overreaction. It made me wonder.

“Yup, missy, you look clean and pure. Well done. Just to make sure, are you wearing any makeup?”

“No, I thought it would be better not to.”

“I see. Well, for now, that was the right choice. And you, Araragi, you did take a shower?”

“Yeah, don’t worry.”

I hadn’t had a choice since I was going to be present for this, and the little incident that ensued when Senjogahara tried to sneak a peek as I showered could stay a secret.

“Hmph. You, though, look your same old self.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” I retorted.

I mean, even if I was going to be present, I was an outsider. Not having changed clothes too, unlike Senjogahara, of course I looked my same old self.

“Then let’s get this over with. I’ve prepared a space on the third floor.”

“A space?”

“Yep,” Oshino said and disappeared into the darkness of the building. Despite his glaringly white robes, he was soon invisible. I took Senjogahara’s hand just as I’d done in the evening and followed after him.

“You know, Oshino, you say ‘over with’ and are acting awfully laid back, but are you sure?”

“Sure? About what? I’ve summoned a boy and a girl of a tender age out here in the middle of the night. Any adult would want to finish up as quickly as possible.”

“What I’m asking is if it’ll be that easy to beat back this crab, or whatever it is.”

“What a violent line of thought, Araragi. Something good happen to you?” Oshino shrugged without so much as turning around. “This time isn’t like little Shinobu in your case or that lust-besotted cat in missy class president’s. And don’t forget, Araragi, I’m a pacifist. My basic policy is non-violent total obedience. You and missy class president were assaulted with malice and hostility. This crab is different.”

“That’s not true─” It’d done harm, in fact, so why not judge that it bore malice or hostility?

“Didn’t I tell you? We’re dealing with a god. It’s just there and hasn’t done anything. As a matter of course─it’s just there. Araragi, once school is over for the day, you go home too, don’t you? It’s like that. Missy’s been wavering all on her own.”

It doesn’t harm, it doesn’t attack.

It doesn’t possess.

“All on her own” sounded kind of mean, but Senjogahara said nothing. Did she simply have no thoughts pertaining to that, or was she, given what was to follow, trying not to react too much to his words?

“So Araragi,” counseled Oshino, “whether it’s beating back or up or down, lose those dangerous ideas. We’re about to ask a god for a favor. Be humble.”

“A favor, huh?”

“Right. A favor.”

“And if we ask nicely, it’s going to say here, and give it back? Senjogahara’s─weight. Her body weight.”

“I won’t say definitely, but probably. This isn’t like spending New Year’s Eve at a shrine. Well, they usually aren’t so hard-headed as to turn down a sincere request. The gods are a fairly undiscerning bunch. Especially Japanese ones. Putting aside humans taken as a cluster, they couldn’t care less about us on an individual basis. They really don’t, okay? In fact, in face of a god, you, me, and missy over there are indistinguishable. Age, gender, weight, none of that matters, and all three of us are the same to them, humans.”

We were─

Not just similar, but the same to them.

“Huh… So this is fundamentally different from a curse.”

“Hey,” Senjogahara said, her voice full of resolve, “is that crab─still near me?”

“It is. It’s there, and it’s everywhere. But if we seek its advent here─then certain steps will be necessary.”

We arrived at the third floor.

We entered one of the classrooms.

A straw warding rope had been hung around the walls. The chairs and tables had been taken elsewhere, and an altar sat in front of the blackboard. Considering that the space was complete with stands filled with offerings, it couldn’t have been slapped together after our earlier talk. Small lamps stood in each of the room’s four corners and filled it with a dim light.

“Think of it as a spiritual field,” Oshino explained. “The realm of divinity, as they say. It’s nothing to get worked up about. You don’t need to be so nervous, missy.”

“I’m─not nervous.”

“Is that so? Fantastic,” Oshino said, proceeding into the classroom. “Could the two of you please lower your heads and cast down your eyes?”

“What?”

“We’re already standing before a god.”

Then─the three of us lined up in front of the altar.

These were nothing like the measures he took for me or Hanekawa ─speaking of nervous, I was the one feeling nervous. Such a stuffy mood─just this mood was making me feel funny.

My body shrank.

I couldn’t help but be on guard.

I, myself, am one of those young, nonreligious kids nowadays who can’t distinguish between Shintoism and Buddhism. And yet my heart was home to some instinct or other that reacted to this very situation.

Situation.

Space.

“Hey─Oshino.”

“What is it, Araragi?”

“I was just thinking, if this is about the situation and space, should I even be here? However you think of it, I’m an intruder.”

“You aren’t exactly intruding. Everything should be fine, but you never know, stuff happens. Stuff can always happen. And if it does, Araragi, you’re going to act as a wall for missy.”

“I am?”

“What else is that immortal body of yours good for?”

“……”

Well, that certainly was a cool line, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t to act as a wall for Senjogahara.

To begin with, I wasn’t immortal anymore.

“Araragi,” Senjogahara pleaded without missing a beat, “promise you’ll protect me.”

“Why a princess character all of a sudden?!”

“What’s the big issue? You must be planning to off your worthless self as soon as tomorrow anyway.”

“Out of character in nothing flat!”

Moreover, words that were hardly whispered behind your back in your lifetime had been spoken straight to my face like normal. Being on the receiving end of her acid tongue made me wonder if I needed to give serious thought to the evils I’d wrought in a past life.

“Of course, I’m not asking you to do this for free,” she said.

“You gonna gimme something?” I asked.

“How shallow of you to seek a material reward. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that your entire humanity is summarized by that sad little response.”

“……Then whacha gonna do for me?”

“Hmm… You’re scum who tried to equip the slave outfit to Nera in Dragon Quest V, but I’m going to halt my plans to spread the word.”

“I’ve never even heard of anyone doing that!”

Plus, spreading the word was her premise.

What a horrible woman.

“It should have been obvious that you can’t equip it to her… That’s just so harebrained, or should I say ‘dogbrained’?”

“Hold on a second! You’re looking triumphant like that was a witty insult, but have I once been compared to a dog in any way?!”

“Right,” Senjogahara snickered. “How unfair of me. To dogs.”

“………rk!!”

Weaving in, at that moment, an old standby that would otherwise sound hackneyed… This woman had complete mastery over all things insulting.

“Fine, then, forget it,” she said. “A coward like you can run home with your tail between your legs and play lonely games with a taser like you do every night.”

“What sort of perverted play is that?!”

Or rather, stop spreading one insidious rumor after another about me.

“When you’re on my level, Araragi, it’s easy to see through a flimsy little thing like you. I know all of your dorkest secrets.”

“How did you manage to misspeak and come up with an even worse insult?! What the hell are you the beloved of?!”

She was unfathomable in that respect.

She must have meant to say “darkest.”

“Anyway, Oshino,” I reprised. “Why ask me? Won’t that vam─Shinobu do? Like that time with Hanekawa.”

He simply replied, “It’s past her bedtime.”

“………”

A vampire sleeping at night?

It really was poignant.

Oshino took a vessel of sake from the offerings and handed it to Senjogahara.

“Hm? What now?” she asked, confused.

“Drinking alcohol can bring you closer to the gods─apparently. Go ahead, in the way of loosening up.”

“…I’m a minor.”

“You don’t have to go so far as to get drunk. Just a teeny sip.”

“……”

After a moment of hesitation, Senjogahara did gulp down a mouthful as he watched. She handed back the vessel to Oshino, who returned it to its original location.

“Okay. Let’s calm down,” Oshino said, still facing forward─his back to Senjogahara. “We’ll start by calming down. The situation is what matters. As long as we create a space, manners don’t─it’s all up to your frame of mind in the end, missy.”

“My frame of mind…”

“Relax. Start by letting your guard down. This place is yours. It’s natural for you to be here. Keeping your head lowered and closing your eyes─let’s count. One, two, three…”

Really─

There was no need for me to, but I found myself following along, closing my eyes and counting. As I did, it came to me.

Setting the mood.

In that sense, not just Oshino’s attire, but the straw warding rope, the altar, and even the trip home to bathe were all requirements for setting the mood─or, to take it further, setting up Senjogahara’s mental condition.

It was close to suggestion.

Hypnotic suggestion.

Begin by wiping away her self-consciousness, get her to lower her guard, bring about a relationship of trust with him─although he was going about it in a completely different way, it had been no less necessary for me and Hanekawa. They say believe and you shall be saved, and getting Senjogahara to accept, in a nutshell─was crucial.

Senjogahara had said it herself.

She didn’t even half-trust Oshino yet.

But─

That wouldn’t cut it.

That wouldn’t be enough.

Because─a relationship of trust was required.

Oshino couldn’t save Senjogahara, she was getting saved on her own─that was the true meaning of his words.

I slowly opened my eyes.

I looked around.

Lamps.

The lamp flames in the corners─wavered.

A wind blew in from the windows.

Shaky flames─that could be snuffed out at any moment.

Yet their light was certain.

“Do you feel calm?”

“─Yes.”

“All right─then let’s answer some questions. You’ve decided to answer my questions. Missy, what’s your name?”

“Hitagi Senjogahara.”

“What school do you go to?”

“Naoetsu Private High School.”

“What’s your birthday?”

“July seventh.”

A Q&A whose meaning wasn’t clear, that in fact seemed totally meaningless, unfolded.

Flatly.

At a steady pace.

Oshino still had his back to Senjogahara.

She, too, hid her face, her eyes closed.

Her head lowered, downcast.

It felt quiet enough for breaths and heartbeats to make themselves heard.

“Who’s your favorite author?”

“Kyusaku Yumeno.”

“How about an embarrassing story from when you were a kid?”

“I don’t want to tell.”

“What kind of classical music do you like?”

“I’m not very well-versed in music.”

“How did you feel when you graduated elementary school?”

“Only that I would be attending middle school next. Because I was just going from one public school to another.”

“What was the boy who was your first love like?”

“I don’t want to tell.”

“In your life so far,” Oshino said in the same steady tone, “what experience hurt the most?”

“………”

Here─Senjogahara drew a blank.

Not even an “I don’t want to tell”─but silence.

I realized then that Oshino had imbued just this question with meaning.

“What’s the matter? The most hurtful experience in your life. I’m asking you about your memories.”

“…M.”

The mood─wasn’t one where she could remain silent.

She couldn’t refuse with an “I don’t want to tell.”

That─was the situation.

The space that had been formed.

According to plan─things moved forward.

“My mother─”

“Your mother…”

“Falling for a bad religion.”

She’d fallen for some sketchy new religion.

Senjogahara had told me.

That her mother gave them everything they owned and even took on debt, until their family fell apart. That even after the divorce, her father still worked around the clock to pay off the loans.

Was that─the experience that hurt her the most?

More than─being deprived of her weight?

Of course it was.

How could it not hurt worse.

But─that…

That…

“That’s all?” Oshino asked.

“…What do you mean?”

“If that’s all, it’s no big deal. Freedom of faith is recognized by the laws of Japan. No, freedom of faith is recognized as an authentic human right. What your mother reveres or prays to is merely an issue of methodology.”

“………”

“So─that’s not all,” Oshino asserted forcefully. “Try and tell. What happened?”

“Like I said─m-my mother─because of me she fell for such a religion─she got duped─”

“Your mother was duped by a cult─then what.”

Then what.

Senjogahara bit down hard on her lower lip.

“A-An executive member of the religious group came to our house with my mother.”

“An executive member. This person came, and then?”

“H-He said it would be purifying.”

“Purifying? It’d be purifying? He said it’d be purifying─and then?”

“He said it was a ritual─he took─me and,” Senjogahara said, pain mixing into her voice, “a-assaulted me.”

“Assault─in the sense of getting violent? Or─in a sexual sense?”

“In the sexual─sense. Yes, that man─” Senjogahara continued as if she were enduring a variety of things, “tried to rape me.”

“…I see.”

Oshino nodded─quietly.

Senjogahara’s─

Fixation on chastity that took an unnatural form, her─

Cautiousness.

The highly defensive mentality and acutely aggressive mindset.

It felt like they made sense now.

So did her excessive reaction to Oshino’s ritual garb.

For a non-pro like Senjogahara, the fact was that Shintoism, too, was a religion.

“That─hypocritical lecher─”

“That’s the Buddhist perspective. A religion can even endorse killing one of your own. It won’t do to generalize. But you said tried to rape─so it ended at an attempt?”

“I hit him with my cleats which were nearby.”

“…That was brave.”

“He bled from his forehead─and was writhing on the floor.”

“And that saved you?”

“It saved me.”

“Good for you.”

“But─my mother didn’t try to save me.”

Even though she was there the entire time, watching─Senjogahara said flatly.

Flatly she continued with her answer.

“In fact─she scolded me.”

“That’s─all?”

“No─because I injured that leader, my mother─”

“Your mother was penalized?” Oshino finished Senjogahara’s line for her.

The consequences of such a scene didn’t take an Oshino to predict─but this seemed to have an effect on her.

“Yes,” she affirmed─solemnly.

“Naturally─since her daughter injured one of the leaders.”

“Yes. And so─everything we had. The house, the land─even going into debt─my family broke. Completely broke─it completely broke, and yet, it continues to fall apart. It continues to, sir.”

“How is your mother doing now?”

“I don’t know.”

“There’s no way that you don’t.”

“She’s probably─still practicing her faith.”

“Still.”

“Not having learned a thing─unashamed.”

“Does that hurt, too?”

“It does─hurt.”

“Why does it hurt? She has nothing to do with you anymore.”

“Sometimes I wonder. What if, at the time, I─hadn’t resisted, then at least─it might not have gotten to this.”

It might not have broken.

It might not have broken.

“You think so?” asked Oshino.

“I do─think so.”

“You really think so.”

“…I do.”

“Then that, missy─is your thought and burden,” Oshino said. “No matter how weighty, it’s what you need to shoulder. Leaving it to someone else─isn’t the way to go.”

“Leaving it to someone else─isn’t─”

“Don’t avert your eyes─open them and take a look.”

Then─

Oshino opened his eyes.

Senjogahara also opened her eyes─gently.

The lamps in the corners.

Their light wavered.

The shadows, too.

All three of our shadows also─wavered.

They swayed back and forth.

Back─and forth.

“Ah. Ahhhhh!”

Senjogahara─yelled.

She was still managing to keep her head lowered─but her expression was filled to overflowing with shock. Her body was trembling, and began to gush sweat.

She was losing it.

Her─Senjogahara.

“Do you─see something?” questioned Oshino.

“I-I do. It’s like that time─like that time, a huge crab, a crab─I see it.”

“Do you, now. Well, I don’t see a thing.”

It was then that Oshino turned for the first time, toward me.

“Do you see anything, Araragi?”

“I─don’t.”

There was nothing to see.

Only the wavering light.

And wavering shadow.

That was─the same as not seeing.

I couldn’t identify it.

“I don’t see─a thing.”

“You heard him.” Oshino turned toward Senjogahara. “I bet you don’t see any crab, actually?”

“N-No─it’s visible. Clearly. To me.”

“It’s not an illusion?”

“It isn’t an illusion─I mean it.”

“I see. Then─”

Oshino traced Senjogahara’s line of sight.

As if something─were there.

As if some thing─were there.

“Then, what do you need to say to it?”

“Need to─say.”

That’s when it happened.

I doubt she had any reason at all, but.

She couldn’t have meant anything by it, but.

Senjogahara─raised her head.

It was probably the situation.

The space had become too much for her.

That must have been all.

But circumstances didn’t matter.

Paltry, human circumstance didn’t matter.

The very same moment─Senjogahara leapt backward.

She flew.

Like she had no weight to speak of, her feet not once touching or dragging across the floor, she sped to the very back of the classroom, opposite from the altar, and was slammed into the bulletin board.

Slammed into it─

She stayed there and didn’t drop.

She didn’t drop.

As if she’d been pinned up, she stayed there.

As if it were a crucifixion.

“S-Senjogahara!”

“Oh boy,” Oshino said, dismayed. “I thought I told you to act as her wall, Araragi. Once again, you’re useless when it counts the most. Spacing out like a literal wall can’t be all you’re good for.”

Dismaying or not, I couldn’t help it because her velocity had outpaced my eyes.

As if gravity were functioning in that vector, Senjogahara seemed to be pressed, shoved against the bulletin board.

Her body─began to burrow into the wall.

It looked ready to crack and fall apart.

Or Senjogahara was about to be crushed.

“Uh… U-Ugh…”

It wasn’t a scream─but a groan.

She was in pain.

Yet─I still didn’t see a thing.

All I saw was Senjogahara pinning herself, seemingly, to the wall. However. However, though─she must have been seeing it.

A crab.

A large─crab.

The Crab of Weight.

“So much for that. Sheesh, what an impatient god, couldn’t even wait for us to start praying. How so game of it. Wonder if something good happened to it.”

“H-Hey, Oshino─”

“Yeah, I know. Change of plans. Too bad, but this is quite standard. Either way was fine for me from the beginning.”

Saying so with a sigh, but with a sure gait, Oshino approached Senjogahara’s crucified body.

Approached her without ado.

Then, his hand reached out casually.

It took hold slightly in front of Senjogahara’s face.

Easily─peeled away.

“Hup.”

In one motion, as if he were performing a judo throw─Oshino took the thing he had in his hand and forcefully, with all his might─ slammed it against the floor. There was no sound, no swirl of dust. But he slammed it just as Senjogahara had been, only stronger. Then swiftly, in the very same breath, he stepped on this slammed it.

He was stepping on a god.

In a consummately violent manner.

Irreverently, without an ounce of deference or piety.

The pacifist made light of a god.

“……gk.”

To me, it only looked as if Oshino had mimed everything─performed an incredibly expert pantomime, as he still was now, seemingly balancing himself on one leg with aplomb. Meanwhile, for Senjogahara, who could see it very well─

It was apparently the sort of sight that made her eyes grow wide.

It’s apparently that sort of sight.

But a second later, no doubt having lost her support, she went from being pinned to the wall to splatting onto the floor. Since she wasn’t too high up and had no weight, the impact of the fall couldn’t have been too severe, but she couldn’t brace for it, having dropped completely by surprise. It looked like she’d hit her leg hard.

“You okay?” Oshino called to check up on Senjogahara before looking down at his own feet. Indeed─purely appraisingly.

Evaluating, with narrowed eyes.

“No matter how big a crab gets, in fact the bigger it is, turn it upside down, and there you go. Whatever the creature, if it has a flat body, I can’t help but think that it exists to be stepped on, looking at it sideways or any other way─that said, Araragi, what do you think?” Oshino abruptly addressed me. “We certainly could redo this from the beginning, but it’d be such a hassle. Personally, it’d be neatest for me to go on and squish and squash it.”

“Neatest? A-And ‘squish and squash’ is awfully vivid… She only raised her head for a moment. Just that─”

“I wouldn’t call it just that. Or rather, just that is enough. In the end, this stuff is about your frame of mind─if we can’t be nice and ask a favor, then we have to resort to dangerous ideas. Like when we dealt with the demon or the cat. If we can’t talk, then there’s only war─okay? In a sense it’s just like politics. Well, simply crushing it would solve missy’s problems on a surface level. It’d be only on the surface, a palliative treatment that doesn’t touch the root, just mowing the weeds, so to speak, a method I’m not eager to take, but maybe on this occasion I should just go for it.”

“G-Go for it?”

“You see, Araragi,” Oshino said with a disquieting grin, “I absolutely despise crabs.”

They’re hard to eat, he explained.

And with those words─

With those words, his leg─flexed.

“Wait.”

The voice came from behind Oshino.

Needless to say, it was Senjogahara.

Rubbing her skinned knee, she sat up.

“Wait─please. Mister Oshino.”

“Wait for─” Oshino shifted his gaze from me to Senjogahara, the malicious smile still on his face. “Wait for what, missy?”

“I was just─surprised earlier,” Senjogahara said. “I can do this. On my own.”

“…Hunh.”

Oshino wasn’t pulling back his leg.

He kept stepping on it.

But not squashing it either, he told Senjogahara, “Fine, give it a try.”

Told this─

Utterly unbelievably, from my point of view, Senjogahara knelt, righted her posture, placed her hands on the floor─towards it at Oshino’s feet, and slowly─properly bowed her head.

She was─prostrating herself.

Hitagi Senjogahara─was performing a dogeza of her own will.

Assuming the pose freely, unbidden.

“─I’m sorry.”

She began with words of apology.

“And─thank you very much.”

She followed up with words of gratitude.

“But─it’s all right now. They’re─my feelings, my thoughts─and my memories, so I will shoulder them. It wasn’t right of me to lose them.”

And then, finally─

“Please. I beg of you to grant me this favor. Please, give me back my weight.”

Finally, words of supplication, as if she were praying.

“Please give me back─my mother.”

Wham.

It was the sound of Oshino’s foot─hitting the floor.

Not from squashing the thing, I presumed.

No, it had vanished.

Just as it simply was─it must have returned from being there as a matter of course back to not being there as a matter of course.

Sent back.

“Ah─”

At Mèmè Oshino, who stood unspeaking, unmoving.

At Hitagi Senjogahara, who maintained her posture despite knowing it was over and who began sobbing, wailing out loud.

Standing apart and gazing at them, Koyomi Araragi vacantly, vacuously wondered: Ah, maybe Senjogahara is a tsundere through and through and through.

007

I had misconstrued the timeline.

I was sure that Senjogahara encountering the crab and losing her weight had eaten away at her mother, who then fell for the money-grubbing sect─but I was told that in reality, her mother had fallen for it long before Senjogahara ever encountered the crab and lost her weight.

I should’ve been able to figure that out with some thought.

Unlike stationery tools like box cutters and staplers, cleats aren’t something you just happen to reach out and find nearby. That word coming up should have tipped me off then and there that Senjogahara had been on the track team at the time─that she’d been in middle school. There was no way she could have been in high school when even gym classes were off limits and she belonged to the no-extracurriculars club.

Apparently, the exact point at which her mother fell for the religion─started to believe in it─was when Senjogahara was in fifth grade. Back in elementary school, before even Hanekawa knew her.

And according to Senjogahara.

In those days─she was a girl who was always ill.

Not as her positioning, but as a matter of fact.

Then, at a certain point, she was stricken with a terrible sickness that everyone has heard of. Her condition was such that she had only one chance out of ten of surviving and doctors indeed wanted to throw in the towel.

That’s when─

Senjogahara’s mother began looking for solace.

Or should we say, was taken advantage of.

Probably totally unrelated to that─though “No one can know for sure whether or not it was unrelated,” Oshino opined─Senjogahara underwent major surgery and managed to be that one out of ten. The faint surgery scar that supposedly remained on her back was another thing I might have noticed, had I observed her nude body in detail at her home, but demanding that of me would border on cruel.

I do admit that accusing her of just trying to show off her body when she started dressing herself from the top down, facing me head-on, was indeed cruel.

Some feedback at least, she’d said.

In any case, thanks to Senjogahara’s recovery, her mother─only became more absorbed with the religion’s teachings.

Because of her piety─her daughter had been saved.

She’d fallen for a classic trap.

It’s what you might call a symptomatic case.

Still, the household itself─somehow persisted. I have no way of knowing what kind of creed of what group this was, but not bleeding its believers dry─had to be their basic policy at least. Senjogahara’s father’s ample income and their family starting out affluent certainly helped─but as the years went on, her mother’s piety, her absorption, only worsened in degree.

The household was merely persisting.

Senjogahara’s relationship with her mother began to sour.

It was one thing up through the time she graduated from elementary school─but after she began middle school, they barely spoke. Looking back, with that in mind, at what I learned from Hanekawa about Senjogahara’s middle-school persona is to understand just how warped it was.

Really, it was like─an attempt at vindication.

Superhuman.

In middle school, Senjogahara was almost superhuman.

And─maybe it was to assure her mother: I can do this, we don’t need any religion.

As much as their relationship had soured.

She probably never was an active girl, at heart.

If she was always ill in grade school, then even more so.

She must have been forcing it.

But it was, more likely than not, counterproductive.

A vicious circle.

The better she did, and the more exemplary she became─the more her mother must have thanked the religion’s teachings.

The counterproductive, vicious circle wound on─

Her third year of middle school.

It happened when graduation was around the corner.

Originally having joined for her daughter’s sake, somewhere along the way Senjogahara’s mother’s logic got flipped around to the point that she was offering her daughter to one of the cult’s executive members. No, maybe that, too, was for her daughter’s sake─the thought is too much to bear.

Senjogahara resisted.

With her cleats she wounded the leader badly enough that he bled from his forehead.

As a result─

Their family fell apart.

It was in ruins.

Robbed wholesale.

Losing everything they owned, their home, their land─and even taking on debt.

They were all but literally bled dry.

Although the divorce was only finalized last year according to Senjogahara, and it must have been as a high school student that she started to live in the Tamikura Apartments, it was already all over when she was in middle school.

All over.

That’s why.

That’s why Senjogahara─during that halfway period between being a middle schooler and a high schooler─came across it.

A crab.

“You see, Araragi. The omoshi-kani is an omoishi-gami,” Oshino said. “Do you understand? Omoishi as in ‘thinking upon,’ and omoi and shigami as in ‘thoughts’ and ‘clinging’─it has to do with inextricable bonds, shigarami. Doesn’t interpreting it that way explain why being deprived of weight also deprives people of their presences? People sealing away a memory when they’ve gone through too much is common fare in dramas and movies. If you want an analogy, that would be it. It’s a god that carries people’s thoughts in our place.”

In other words, when she met the crab…

Senjogahara─cut off her mother.

She had offered Senjogahara to the leader like some sacrifice and not even tried to save her daughter, causing their family to fall apart, except maybe that wouldn’t have happened if the daughter hadn’t resisted at the time─Senjogahara had tormented herself. Then she quit.

She stopped thinking about it.

She rid herself of that weight.

Freely, on her own.

She had─cheated.

She had sought─solace.

“It’s a barter. A trade, equivalent exchange. Crabs are clad in armor and look durable, don’t they? That’s probably the idea here. Put a shell around your exterior. Preserve what’s dear, enveloping it with an exoskeleton. All the while bubbling foam that vanishes right away. I won’t have them.”

He wasn’t kidding about not fancying crab.

Although he seemed flippant, Oshino was actually─kind of gauche.

“The character for ‘crab’ is made up of the ones for ‘solving’ and ‘insect,’ isn’t it? It’s a critter that breaks things down. Organisms that crisscross edges of water tend to fall under that rubric. What’s more, those guys are─equipped with scissors, two pairs at that.”

As a result.

Senjogahara was deprived of her weight─losing it, losing her thoughts, she was liberated from her suffering. Free of torment─she was able to give it all up.

And when she did?

She said things got─much easier.

That was her honest feeling.

In and of itself, being deprived of her weight wasn’t a big deal for Senjogahara. Yet─even so, like the lad who sold his shadow for ten pieces of gold, there wasn’t a day that it, things being easier, didn’t gnaw at her.

But not because of any discord with others.

Not because of any inconvenience in going about her life.

Not because she can’t make any friends.

Not because she lost everything.

Simply because─she lost her thoughts, her burden.

The five frauds.

None of them seems to have anything to do with her mother’s religion─but even as Senjogahara only half-trusts the bunch, Oshino included, she lends them close to half of her trust─and you can say, that, there, is her expression of regret. Not to mention visiting the hospital out of sheer habit─

There’s nothing to it.

I got it all wrong, from the very start to the very end.

All this time after being deprived of her weight, Senjogahara─

Hasn’t resigned herself.

Hasn’t given up on anything.

“It’s not necessarily bad, you know,” Oshino argued. “Confronting a painful experience isn’t a must. It’s not like you’re great just ’cause you do. If you don’t feel like it, it’s totally fine to run away. Even if it’s ditching your daughter or taking refuge in religion, that’s your own choice. Especially in this case, getting back your thought and burden at this late stage won’t do a thing, right? Missy, who stopped feeling tormented, will torment herself again, but that won’t bring back her mother or restore her wrecked family.”

Won’t do a thing.

Oshino seemed to intend that as neither ridicule nor sarcasm.

“The omoshi-kani robs you of your weight, your thinking, your presence. But it’s not like our little vampire Shinobu or that lust-besotted cat. Missy hoped for it, so it in fact dispensed. A barter─the god was always there. Missy actually hadn’t lost a thing. In spite of that…”

In spite of that.

Regardless of that.

Because of that.

Hitagi Senjogahara─wanted it returned.

She wanted it returned.

Her thinking of her mother, after the fact.

The memory and the torment.

I don’t know what that means, and I doubt I ever will, and just as Oshino pointed out, it’s neither here nor there and won’t bring her mother or her family back, and it will only steep Senjogahara in tormented thoughts, but─

It’s not like anything is going to change, but.

“It’s not like nothing is going to change,” Senjogahara said at the end.

To me, her eyes red and swollen from crying.

“And this definitely wasn’t pointless. Because I’ve made a very dear friend, at least.”

“Who would that be?”

“I’m talking about you.”

I’d reflexively played dumb, but Senjogahara’s response was neither bashful nor roundabout, but forward─and proud.

“Thank you, Araragi. I’m very grateful for what you’ve done. I apologize for everything until now. I hope you don’t find this brazen of me, but I’d be very happy if we could continue to be friends.”

How careless of me─

This surprise attack by Senjogahara seeped deep into my heart, deep.

Our promise to go eat crabs, though?

It’s going to have to wait until winter.

008

The next day, when I was roused from bed as usual by my little sisters Karen and Tsukihi, my body felt horribly sluggish. It was an ordeal just forcing myself to sit up, then stand. My joints ached heavily like when you have a high fever. Since there hadn’t been any tussle or brawl unlike my time or Hanekawa’s, it couldn’t be muscle pain, but at any rate, every step hurt. Walking down the stairs, too, I was afraid I might tumble down them if I didn’t pay attention. My mind was clear, and it wasn’t flu season, either, so what was going on?

I thought for a bit before an improbable thought crossed my mind.

I made a detour to the bathroom on my way to the kitchen.

In it is a scale.

I got on.

I weigh fifty-five kilograms, by the way.

The scale read a hundred.

“…Hey, hey.”

So it’s true.

The gods surely are an undiscerning bunch.