KOIMONOGATARI
021
The next morning, I waited for opening time, then headed first to a bookstore in the shopping district. Not because it was the day a magazine I read regularly comes out. I don’t do that in the first place. Magazines? Do they hold bullets?
Consulting the store map just inside the automatic door and seeing that the “Children’s Corner” was on the seventh floor, I got into the elevator.
I found what I was looking for right away.
A Cat’s Cradle Compendium─it was a relatively large bookstore, so there was very likely a more serious, adult-oriented guide on a shelf somewhere, but it’d be too complicated.
Not for me. For Nadeko Sengoku. Mm-hmm, this one seemed to be at the right level for her intellect.
I hate when they put a generic dust jacket on the book at the register, but the clerk put one on without asking me. I was slightly irritated, but only slightly. It wasn’t something a grownup should get upset about.
Naturally, I didn’t intend to take the book to Kita-Shirahebi Shrine as is, that would ruin everything. If I made an offering of it, Nadeko Sengoku might thank me, but her admiration would be for the book and not for me.
Instead I would memorize the book, adding it to my store of knowledge, and display my mastery to Nadeko Sengoku. Then my stock was sure to appreciate.
Trying to impress a naïve middle school girl seemed petty and vain, and I hated myself a little bit for it, but a job’s a job. Nah, I didn’t hate myself at all.
It’s only natural to go all out to achieve success.
I left the bookstore and went into a nearby Starbucks. I ordered a grande and drank it black.
Reading around at random in A Cat’s Cradle Compendium, I began memorizing techniques along with their respective names─until I realized that it was kind of pointless to learn the moves when I didn’t actually have a cat’s cradle on me.
It would have been nice if I’d had some string to hand, but no, no such luck. I considered for a moment, stood up, and came back with a bunch of paper napkins.
On them I drew diagrams of the techniques in pen─I was just copying out the contents of the book, but as with the visualization maps I draw before beginning a job, the image gets burned into my brain once I’ve drawn it with my own hand. As for whether I could actually perform the techniques, we’d find out when the time came…
“Okay. Got it,” I said experimentally. Trying the words on for size. Naturally there was no need to memorize the entire book in one day; for the moment I just needed to pick up a few techniques that a kid might find interesting.
Feeling like I had reached a good stopping point, I closed A Cat’s Cradle Compendium─and when I did, naturally my field of vision expanded. As a result, I discovered that someone was sitting across the table from me.
It wasn’t so crowded that people needed to share tables, and even if it had been, I didn’t think anyone would be so bold as to sit with me. I wasn’t wearing what Senjogahara refers to as my “funeral suit,” so maybe this occasion was different, plus the interloper was an acquaintance of mine: the shikigami Yotsugi Ononoki.
Puzzle solved.
“Yaaay. Peace peace, Big Brother.” Holding the sugary concoction she had apparently ordered for herself in one hand, with the other Ononoki made a sideways peace sign and held it up to her eye.
“…”
Her character traits had changed again.
Seemed like she’d fallen in with the wrong crowd.