"A Lost Cow," Mèmè Oshino said in the low growl of a man who had been forced awake from a thousand years of sealed, peaceful slumber, as unbelievably grumpy as he was groggy. He wasn't anemic, as far as I knew, but he still seemed to have an awful time waking up. The difference between the way he was speaking to us at that moment and his usual banter was striking.
"That'd be a Lost Cow there."
"A cow? No, I said a snail."
"You know how 'snail' is written in characters. There's a cow in there, right? Don't tell me you write it phonetically. You have such a low IQ, Araragi. Take the character for 'whirlpool' and substitute the left-hand 'water' with 'insect.' Then add 'cow' as a second character."
"Oh, I think I get it now."
"That first character is barely ever used in any word other than 'snail.' A snail's shell forms a spiral, doesn't it? That must be it. It's also close to one of the characters used in 'calamity,' though…and maybe that one is the more symbolic? There are a countless number of aberrations out there that cause humans to lose their way. In terms of Japanese yokai that block your path, you must have heard of the nurikabe… If it's one of those and it's a snail, it has to be the Lost Cow. You see, its name describes its nature, not its form. Whether it's a cow or a snail, it's all the same. As for the form, you can even find some paintings of the thing looking like a human… Araragi, the person who comes up with a name for an aberration and the person who comes up with what that aberration looks like are rarely the same. You could even say never─in most cases, the name comes first. More the concept than the name, actually. Think of it as the illustrations in a light novel. The concept exists before it's visualized─they say that names give shape to nature, but 'nature' in this instance doesn't mean physical, outward appearance. It means essence, so…gaah."
He seemed very sleepy.
Then again, that sleepiness had rid him of his normal frivolity to the point that I found it easier to talk to him. Talking to Oshino is, if anything, tiring.
A snail.
A shelled pulmonate, classified under Mollusca Gastropoda.
You see slugs more often than snails, but those are really just shell-less snails.
Pour salt on them─and they melt.
After that.
I, Koyomi Araragi, and Senjougahara Hitagi, along with Hachikuji Mayoi, retried and used a total of five continues. We tried shortcuts that skirted the edges of the law, we tried demoralizingly long detours, we tried everything we could think of, but, to cut to the chase, everything ended up being a spectacular waste of time. We knew we had to be near our destination but we couldn't reach it, for whatever reason. In the end, we even tried using brute force, checking every home one by one, but that too got us nowhere.
So as a last resort, Senjougahara booted up a special navigation system feature on her phone (don't ask me about the details) that used GPS or whatever─
But she lost signal moments before the data loaded.
At that point, I finally─or maybe unwillingly─had a perfect grasp on what was up. Senjougahara seemed to have noticed fairly early on, without saying so─and Hachikuji most likely understood the situation better than either of us but putting that aside.
A demon for me.
A cat for Hanekawa.
A crab for Senjougahara.
It seemed for Hachikuji, it was a snail.
That meant─I was no longer in a position to give up on the matter. With an ordinary lost child, if I couldn't help her myself, I'd hand her over to a neighborhood police station and smugly consider the case closed. But if it involved that world─
Senjougahara was also against handing Hachikuji off to the police.
Senjougahara─who had been steeped in that world for a few years.
If Senjougahara said so─there was no mistaking it.
Of course, it wasn't a problem that Senjougahara and I could attend to on our own─it wasn't as if either of us had any apropos special abilities. It was just a case of us knowing that there was another side, one that wasn't ours.
You can say knowledge is power.
But you're powerless if knowledge is all you have.
This is why ─ Senjougahara and I went with the safe, easy choice, not our first, but after some discussion, our final choice, of asking Oshino what to do.
Mèmè Oshino.
My─our savior.
If not for that, he's certainly the kind of man I wouldn't want to associate with. Past thirty but still lacking a fixed address, he was sleeping for over a month now in a bankrupt cram school. That description alone would be enough to drive away any normal person.
─I'm interested in this town for the time being.
That was his excuse.
So there's no telling when he might disappear. He's a rolling stone, the real deal, but Senjougahara and I had gone to him just last Monday about her problem─as well as on Tuesday, to deal with loose ends. I, myself, had seen him the day before, too. Considering all that, I was sure he would still be in that abandoned building.
That meant the only problem was getting in touch with him.
He doesn't own a cell phone.
Our only choice was to go and see him in person.
I wouldn't say Senjougahara has much of a relationship with him since they only met the week before. Being more familiar with Oshino, it felt like I should be the one to go see him, but Senjougahara spoke up, saying, "I'll go."
"Let me borrow your mountain bike," she said.
"If you want, sure…but do you know how to get there? I can draw you a map if you want─"
"It doesn't make me glad in the slightest to have someone with memory as poor as yours worrying over me. If anything, it's making me feel sad."
"…Is that so."
I started to feel sad.
Really, actually, sad.
"To be honest," she told me, "I wanted to try riding this mountain bike from the moment I saw it in the parking lot."
"So you weren't kidding when you were talking about how incredible mountain bikes are… I was convinced you didn't mean it. You're not very good at sounding honest, you know."
"Or rather," Senjougahara said, then practically whispered in my ear, "don't leave me alone with her."
"...…"
"I wouldn't know what to do with her."
Yeah, that did seem true.
True for Hachikuji, too.
I handed the key to my mountain bike over to Senjougahara. I remembered hearing that she didn't own a bike, so it did seem dangerous to be lending my oh-so-beloved ride─but since it was Senjougahara, I figured why not.
So.
I now found myself waiting for Senjougahara to contact us.
I was back in the park with ambiguous pronunciation and sitting on a bench.
Next to me was Hachikuji Mayoi.
Where she sat, another person could have fit in between us.
It was as if she wanted to be able to make a break for it.
In fact, she seemed ready to.
I'd already told Hachikuji a bit about my own and Senjougahara's past and continuing, circumstances─but this only seemed to heighten her guard. I'd made a poor decision that backfired on me after everything I'd done to get her to open up and now all I could do was start over from the beginning.
Trust is a very important thing, after all.
Sigh…
I'd try talking to her.
There was something I was wondering about, anyway.
"Hey, a little earlier─I want to say you were talking about your mother? What did you mean by that? Wasn't this Miss Tsunade a relative of yours?"
"…"
She didn't reply.
She was exercising her right to remain silent.
What I'd tried before might not work this time… It only did as a joke anyway, and if I repeated it too often, people might think I meant it─and by people, I mean myself.
And so.
"Hey, Hachikuji. I'll get you some ice cream, so will you come a little closer?"
"I'm coming!"
Hachikuji sidled up to me right away.
…It seemed like she didn't mind taking me at my word and waiting until later for her payment.
Speaking of which, I hadn't given her a single yen of allowance yet, either… What an easy girl to control.
"So, what I was talking about," I resumed.
"What was that again?"
"About─your mother."
"..."
She exercised her right to remain silent.
I continued on, unfazed. "Were you lying when you said you were going to a relative's?"
"…I wasn't lying," Hachikuji said, pouting. "Your mother counts as a relative, doesn't she?"
Sure, technically, but…"
It felt like splitting hairs.
And in any case─a girl carrying a backpack to head to her mother's home alone on a Sunday was something of an odd situation…
"Also," she continued, still pouting, "while I call her my mother, sadly she isn't my mother anymore."
"…Oh."
A divorce.
She lived with her father.
It was a story I'd heard─just the other day.
I'd heard it from Senjougahara.
"My last name was Tsunade until I was in third grade. But it changed to Hachikuji when my father started looking after me."
"Huh? Hold on."
It was getting complicated, and I decided to take a moment to sort it out. Hachikuji was currently in fifth grade, and her last name until third grade was Tsunade (which must be why she cared enough about the name to yell at me), but it changed to Hachikuji once her father took her in. That meant… A-ha, so when her parents married, they decided to take her mother's last name. In Japan, a couple had to have the same surname once they got married, but it could be the man's or the woman's. Which meant… When her parents got divorced, her mother─Miss Tsunade─left their home and moved to this neighborhood…or more likely moved back in with her own parents. And that's why─Hachikuji was here on a Sunday.
She was taking advantage of Mother's Day.
To visit her mother─was that it?
Her name was─a precious gift from her father and mother.
"Yikes…and I'd tried to lecture you as your senior about being a better daughter…"
No wonder she didn't want to be told.
Talk about being an annoyance.
"No, it doesn't have anything to do with today being Mother's Day. Her home is a place I'd visit anytime if I had the opportunity."
"…I see."
"But I never get there."
"...…"
After the divorce, her mother left home.
She couldn't meet her mother.
But Hachikuji wanted to.
So she came to see her.
Attempted to.
Carrying her backpack─and then.
And then─a snail came along.
"And that was when you encountered it," I said.
"I don't know what I did."
"Huh."
Ever since then no matter how many times she tried to visit her mother.
Hachikuji couldn't get there, not once.
I knew it'd be insensitive to ask how many times she'd tried and if she'd really failed every time─and the fact that she hadn't given up was impressive.
It was impressive─but.
"..."
It's not the best way to put it─nor should I be comparing it to other people's experiences, I thought, but this feels much less dangerous than the problems that Hanekawa, Senjougahara, and I went through. It was neither a physical nor a psychological issue, but a phenomenological one where she couldn't do something that she should be able to. The problem didn't reside in her.
It was external.
It didn't endanger her existence.
Her day-to-day life wasn't severely impacted.
Which is why I felt the way I did.
But then again, even if that was true, I shouldn't lord it over Hachikuji─no matter what. I had no right to say anything of the sort to her, regardless of what I'd gone through over spring break.
So all I told her was, "You know─sounds like you've been through a lot, too."
The words came from the bottom of my heart.
I nearly wanted to pat her on the head.
So I did.
"Grrah!"
She bit my hand.
"Ow! What the hell are you doing, you little brat?!"
"Grrrrrrrgh!"
"Ow! Ow, ow, oww!"
Sh-She wasn't joking, she wasn't playing around, she wasn't covering up her embarrassment, she was honestly biting down on my hand as hard as she could… I didn't have to look at my hand to know that her teeth had pierced my skin and entered into my flesh, or that I was gushing blood! This was no laughing matter. Why had she suddenly─or had I unwittingly triggered some sort of event without knowing it?
Did that mean a battle had begun?!
I balled my unbitten hand into a fist. As if I was crushing the air out of it. Then, I took that fist and drove it directly into the pit of Hachikuji's stomach. The solar plexus is a major weak spot on any human body. Amazingly, Hachikuji kept her teeth firmly inside my hand, but she couldn't help easing up for a moment. I used this opening to swing the arm that hand was connected to in every direction with all my might. Hachikuji had all but bitten off a chunk of my hand, but this had left the rest of her body open─and sure enough, it was hoisted off the bench.
I opened my fist and attempted to hold her defenseless torso in my hand─for a fifth-grader, she felt surprisingly plump in my palm, but this fact had little to no influence on me as I was not a pedophile, which meant that I was able to use that momentum to flip her over. She was still biting my hand, causing her body to get wrenched at her neck. But that wasn't a problem; so long as her teeth were inside my hand, there was a risk that any attacks to her head would deal damage to me as well. What was important was that this exposed Hachikuji's torso as if she were a set of carefully stacked tiles at a karate demonstration. I aimed, of course, at the target of my previous strike, her solar plexus!
"Ghhak─"
It was over.
Hachikuji finally dislodged her teeth from my hand.
As she did, something resembling stomach acid came pouring out of her mouth.
And then─she passed right out.
"Heh─wait, that wasn't funny."
I shook my bitten hand as if to loosen it up.
"What an empty thing victories are after the first…"
There he sat, a high school boy acting like a dispassionate nihilist, having just knocked out an elementary school girl by punching her twice in a human's vital spot, along the median line.
Hold on, that was me too.
...
Sure, I could understand smacking her, grabbing her, and tossing her, but hitting a girl with a balled fist? Seriously?
There was no need for Koyomi Araragi to have Senjougahara Hitagi apologize to him on all fours while naked. He already had what it took to be an awful human being.
"Agh… Still, I didn't know she was one to chomp on people out of nowhere."
I decided to take a look at the bite wound.
Wow, yikes… I could see my bones… I never knew that could happen when a human being bit another hard enough.
Of course, this was me we were talking about.
The wound might have hurt, but it wasn't so serious that it wouldn���t heal immediately─without any special care at all.
It crawled and oozed shut─at a speed visible to the eye, almost as if it were taking place in fast forward, or rewind, and when I saw that it made me realize all over again how much of a wrong turn my life had taken. I began to feel down─even gloomy, all over again.
Honestly─how small I was.
An awful person, in my state? I made myself laugh.
I actually thought I'd turned back into a human?
"…Ooh, what a scary look that is on your face, Araragi," a voice abruptly called out to me.
I thought it was Senjougahara for a moment but it couldn't be. Her words would never sound so sunny.
There stood the class president.
Hanekawa Tsubasa.
The fact that she was wearing the exact uniform she wore to school despite it being a Sunday must have been natural for her, part of her charm as a model student─her hair and her glasses were the same as well, and the only difference in her appearance I could detect compared to when she was at school was a handbag she carried.
"H-Hanekawa."
"You look surprised. Well, I guess that's preferable."
Heh heh heh─Hanekawa showed a smile.
Yes, just like the one I'd seen on Hachikuji's face a moment earlier─
"What's going on?" Hanekawa asked. "Why are you here, of all places?"
"W-Well─I should be asking you the same question."
There was no way I could hide how shaken I was.
The only question remaining was how long she'd been watching.
If Hanekawa Tsubasa the embodiment of decency, the breathing textbook of moral behavior, the living exemplar of purity, had witnessed me inflicting violence upon a grade school girl, that spelled trouble, but in a completely different way than if Senjougahara had seen me do the same…
I didn't want to get expelled during my last year of high school…
"What do you mean, asking me? I'm from this area. If anyone deserves the question, it's you, Araragi. Do you sometimes come over here?"
���Um."
Oh, right.
Senjougahara and Hanekawa had gone to the same middle school.
And it was a public school, which meant─of course. Considering how school districts were drawn, it wasn't odd at all for Senjougahara's old home turf and Hanekawa's habitat to overlap. Though they must not have matched perfectly, because it sounded like they'd gone to separate elementary schools…
"Not really, but, well, I didn't have anything to do, so I was just passing the time here─"
Oops.
I'd said I was "just passing the time."
"Ha hah. Just passing the time? Sounds nice. It's nice to not have anything to do. It means you're free. I guess you could say I'm just passing the time, too."
"..."
She and Senjougahara were fundamentally dissimilar organisms.
Or maybe it was the difference between someone who was smart and someone who was the smartest?
"You know, Araragi. It's hard for me to be at home. And the library isn't open on Sundays, so I walk around all day instead. It's good for my health, too."
"…You don't have to try so hard to be considerate."
Hanekawa Tsubasa.
The girl with a pair of mismatched wings.
At school she's an embodiment of decency, a breathing textbook of moral behavior, a living exemplar of purity, a class president among class presidents, a flawless girl─but her home is a troubled one.
Troubled, as well as warped.
Which is why─she was bewitched by a cat.
It found its way through the smallest crack in her heart.
Perhaps it was an instance of the fact that nobody is totally perfect, but─while the problem was solved and she was freed from the cat, while her memories had vanished, the troubledness and warpedness of her home had not.
It was still troubled, still warped.
"It's kind of embarrassing to have your local library closed on Sundays, though, isn't it? It's like a symbol of how uncultured your area is."
"I don't even know where my local library is."
"That's no good, you shouldn't sound so resigned. You still have time to study for entrance exams, Araragi. You can do it if you try."
"You know, Hanekawa, groundless encouragement can sometimes hurt worse than having insults yelled at you."
"But aren't you good at math, Araragi? Normally, people who can do math do well in other subjects, too."
"You don't have to memorize all that much for math. It's easier for me."
"Boy, are you difficult. Oh, whatever. We'll just take this step by step. By the way, Araragi. Is that girl your little sister?"
Hanekawa's lips grew pointy, and with them, she indicated Hachikuji, who was laid out near the bench.
"…My little sisters aren't this tiny."
"They aren't?"
"They're in middle school."
"Huh."
"Um, she's lost. Her name's Hachikuji Mayoi."
"Mayoi?"
"Like the character for 'truth' and the character for 'dusk.' As far as her last name─"
"I know her last name. 'Hachikuji' is a pretty common term in the Kansai region, anyway. Yeah, I think there's a temple in Shinonome Monogatari that─oh, actually, it might have been written in a different way there."
"…You know everything, don't you?"
"Not everything. I just know what I know."
"Is that so."
"Hm. 'Mayoi' and 'Hachikuji'─what a poetic name. Hnn? Oh, she's up."
This made me look at Hachikuji, who was slowly blinking her eyes. She seemed to take a muddled yet meticulous look at her surroundings before finally sitting up.
"Hello there, Mayoi. My name's Hanekawa Tsubasa, and I'm friends with this nice guy over here!"
Wow. The public TV children's show voice came naturally to her.
Hanekawa must be the kind of person who uses baby talk with dogs and cats and thinks nothing of it…
Hachikuji replied, "Please don't speak to me. I don't like you."
…So she used that line on everyone.
"Hmm? Did I do something to make you hate me? You shouldn't say such things to people you're meeting for the first time, Mayoi. There, there."
Hanekawa seemed completely unfazed.
Unlike me, she was even patting Hachikuji's head like it was no big deal.
"So you like kids, Hanekawa?"
"Hmm? Is there anyone who doesn't?"
"Hey, I'm not saying I don't."
"Ah. Yes, I do like them. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy to think that this is how I used to be."
There there─Hanekawa continued to pat Hachikuji's head.
Hachikuji tried to resist.
But resistance was futile.
"Ur, urrr…"
"You're such a cutie, Mayoi! I could just eat you right up. Look at your fluffy little cheeks. Ooh! But you know…"
Hanekawa's tone shifted.
To one that she occasionally used with me at school.
"You shouldn't bite his hand for no reason at all. He's going to be just fine, but if he were a normal person, that would have really hurt! Bad girl!"
Whack.
She hit her. With her fist. And not as a joke.
"Urr…ur, urr?"
Having been coddled, then smacked, Hachikuji seemed to be in a state of delirium, and Hanekawa turned her around to make her face me.
"Now say you're sorry."
"…I-I'm sorry for what I did, Mister Araragi."
She apologized.
Hachikuji, who spoke politely but was an obnoxious brat.
It shocked me.
Still, Hanekawa had been watching me for a while… Right, of course, if you thought about it, you had a right to defend yourself when someone bit you hard enough to gouge your flesh. In fact, our first fight, too, had started with her kicking me…
Hanekawa wasn't one to bend the rules, but she wasn't such a stickler for them, either.
She was just fair.
I had to hand it to Hanekawa, though. She knew how to deal with kids. Her performance was impressive, especially because I was sure she didn't have any siblings.
Watching this also made me realize that Hanekawa treated me like a kid when we were at school, but we could put that fact aside for now.
"And you too, Araragi! You've been a bad boy."
She was using the same tone on me.
Maybe we couldn't put the fact aside.
Having noticed what she'd done, Hanekawa cleared her throat and tried again.
Anyway, don't do that."
"Don't do… Don't be violent, I suppose?"
"No. You need to scold her properly."
"Hm? Oh."
"Violence is bad too, of course. But if you hit a child, or if you hit anyone for that matter, you need to give them a sensible reason."
"..."
"What I'm trying to say is talk, because they'll understand."
"…You know, I learn a lot talking to you."
Wow.
She's such an antidote.
Good people exist in the world.
It lifts me up just to think that.
"So she's lost? Where's she trying to go? Somewhere around here? In that case, I should be able to show her the way."
"Er─no, it's fine. Senjougahara just went to ask someone for help."
While Hanekawa had coped with the other side too, she had no memories of it─if she did, they were also forgotten. There was no need for me to poke at them like I was picking at a scab.
Though her offer was much appreciated, and all.
"She's been taking her sweet time, but she should be back soon," I said.
"What? Senjougahara? You were with Senjougahara, Araragi? Hmm? Senjougahara hasn't been coming to school lately, but─hmm? Oh, now that you mention it, you were asking me all about Senjougahara the other day, weren't you─hmm."
Uh oh.
She was getting suspicious. Real suspicious.
Hanekawa's single-minded-delusion power was bursting at the seams.
"Oh! I see what's going on!" she exclaimed.
"No, I don't think you do…"
A fool like me shooting down an answer that a brilliant person like her came up with felt so wrong, but…
"You know, your fantasizing skills outclass even yaoi fangirls."
"Yaoi? What's that?" Hanekawa asked, head tilted.
The model student didn't know our native term for slash fiction.
"It's short for 'no climax, no denouement, profound meaning,'" I told her wrong on purpose.
"I think you're lying. Fine. I'll look it up later."
"As serious as ever, I see."
...…
I began to worry. What if I had just sent Hanekawa down a dark path?
Would it be my fault?
"Well, I don't want to be a nuisance, so I'll be on my way," she announced. "Sorry for the bother, and say hello to Senjougahara for me. Though I won't get on your case too much about it because it's a Sunday, don't slack off too much. Plus, don't forget that there's a history quiz tomorrow. Plus, we're going to have to start getting serious about preparing for the culture festival, so get yourself ready, okay? Plus─"
Hanekawa continued with nine more of those.
She was like the most positive person ever.
"Oh, that's right, Hanekawa. Just in case, do you mind if I ask you something before you go? Do you know of a Miss Tsunade's home around here?"
"Miss Tsunade? Hmm, well─"
Hanekawa made a show of trying to remember. She did such a good job I started to get my hopes up that she really knew, but then─
"…No, I don't," she said.
"So there are some things you don't know."
"Like I told you. I just know what I know. Outside of that, I'm clueless."
"Is that so."
True, she didn't know what yaoi was either.
It wasn't going to be that easy.
"I'm sorry I couldn't live up to your expectations."
"No, no."
"All right. Bye-bye, and I mean it this time," Hanekawa Tsubasa said and left the park.
I wondered. Did she know how to read the park's name?
If there was anything I should've asked her, a part of me thought, that was it.
And then I received a call on my phone.
An eleven-digit number appeared on its liquid-crystal screen.
"...…"
Sunday, May fourteenth, 14:15:30 p.m.
That was the moment I acquired Senjougahara's cell phone number.