Then, an hour later, Senjougahara, Hachikuji, and I got there the place where, ten or so years ago (I don't know exactly how many but around there), the living human girl Hachikuji Mayoi tried to go on Mother's Day─to the precise address written on the note.
It took some time.
Still─it was easy.
"…But, this─"
Yet there was no sense of accomplishment.
Absolutely no sense of accomplishment given the sight in front of us.
"Senjougahara─are you sure this is the place?"
"Yes. I'm sure of it."
There seemed to be no room to argue with her statement of fact.
Hachikuji's mother's home─the Tsunade family home.
It was a clean, flat─plot of land.
Surrounded by a fence, with a sign thrust into its bare earth─private property, no trespassing.
Judging by the rust on the edges of the sign, it seemed to have been in that state for a long time now.
Residential development.
Town planning.
It wasn't quite a road, like Senjougahara's home had become─but like hers, not a trace of it had been left behind.
"…Is this seriously happening?"
The one-time trick that homebody Mèmè Oshino had proposed was so utterly plain and simple that hearing it made you think, Oh, of course. The Lost Cow may have existed as a snail, but if it was a ghostly aberration, then it couldn't accumulate essential new information as memories─supposedly.
Basically, these kinds of aberrations don't exist.
Existences who don't exist as existences.
If there is no one to see it, it isn't there.
To apply that to what transpired that day, the exact moment I happened to sit down on the bench and glance at the map─was when Hachikuji presented herself, came into existence─supposedly.
Likewise, as far as Hanekawa was concerned, the exact moment she happened to pass through the park and glance at the spot next to where I was sitting─was when Hachikuji presented herself, logically speaking. Presenting itself the very moment it's witnessed, rather than leading a sustained existence as an aberration─in that sense, with the Lost Cow, "encounter" is only half-accurate a term.
Being there only when it's seen the observer and the observed. I'm sure Hanekawa would have displayed her scientific knowledge unabashedly with an appropriate metaphor, but I couldn't come up with a good simile, and while Senjougahara must have known one, she wasn't going out of her way to tell me.
Anyway.
Information stored as memories─in other words, knowledge.
Not to mention me, who didn't know the area, the snail was able to cause Senjougahara, who was only accompanying me and who didn't even see it, to lose her way─and it was also able to block cell phone signals. As a result─the target would continue to be lost forever.
But.
What it didn't know it didn't know.
In fact, even if it did know, it couldn't react accordingly.
Take, for example, town planning.
The neighborhood looked nothing like it did a year ago, let alone ten years ago─so if you didn't take a shortcut, didn't make any detours, and of course, didn't head straight there─
If you used a route made up of only new roads─a modest aberration like the Lost Cow couldn't do anything about it.
An aberration is unlikely to gain in years─a girl aberration always stays a girl─supposedly.
It will never become an adult─
Just like me.
Hachikuji was in fifth grade ten years ago…so rearranging the timeline would make Hachikuji Mayoi older than both me and Senjougahara. Yet she spoke of getting up to no good at school like it was only yesterday, and incremental memories in the usual sense didn't exist for her.
Didn't─
Exist.
And so-and-so.
New wine in an old wine skin that's what he'd said, apparently.
Oshino, that damned annoying fellow, truly sees through things─even though he hasn't beheld Hachikuji in person or heard her circumstances in detail─barely knowing anything about this town, at that, he goes off and acts like he knows it all.
But in terms of results, it was a success.
Picking streets with dark, black asphalt that had to be new, like we were following a treasure map, avoiding old or merely repaved streets as much as possible along the way, taking that street, too, where Senjougahara's home used to stand─after an hour of this.
Under normal circumstances, it was less than a ten-minute walk from the park, probably less than a third of a mile as the bird flies, but after over an hour─
We reached our destination.
We reached it, but.
What we found was a clean plot of land.
"Guess you can't expect everything to fall into place…" I muttered.
Right.
How could it─given how much the town and its streets had changed, our destination couldn't be the one thing that hadn't. In less than a year, even Senjougahara's home had become a road. We wouldn't have been able to put the stratagem into practice in the first place if there hadn't been new roads around our destination. There was a strong chance that the destination had changed, too; it was implicit from the start─still, not even that much falling into place would spoil everything, wouldn't it? That would make it all pointless, no? If that part was a bust, for goodness' sake, so was the whole plan.
Is the world such a hard place?
Do dreams just not come true?
If the very place the Lost Cow was trying to go was gone─then she really was a lost snail, forever lost, forever drifting, spiraling around and around with no end in sight─no?
What a calamity.
Oshino.
Had that psychedelic Hawaiian shirt-wearing asshole seen through this conclusion─this ending, too? Was that why─in fact, precisely why he deliberately…
As frivolous, flippant, and talkative as Mèmè Oshino was─he never said goodbye, and he never answered a question that he wasn't asked. He didn't act unless he was requested to, and even then, there was no guarantee he'd agree to it.
He was totally fine not saying what needed to be said.
"Wa-ah─"
I could hear Hachikuji wailing next to me.
I'd been so busy feeling mugged by the reality that I wasn't attending to Hachikuji, the heart of this matter, and now belatedly turned to her─
She was crying.
But she wasn't looking down─her face was turned forward.
Looking toward the plot of land where her home must have been.
"Wa-a-a-ah─"
And then.
She dashed past me and ran.
"─I'm back! I'm home!"
Oshino.
Naturally, he must have seen this conclusion coming─seen through to this ending, as a matter of course.
He was a man who didn't say what needed to be said.
I really wished he'd told me from the beginning.
What Hachikuji would see once she was there.
What kind of scenery this place─a mere plot of land to my eyes and Senjougahara's and no doubt nothing like it used to look─would show the Lost Cow, Hachikuji Mayoi.
How it might present itself.
Neither development nor planning was─relevant.
Not even time.
Soon, the figure of the girl carrying the large backpack began to─grow dim, blurry, and slight…and before I knew it, I couldn't see her.
Gone from my sight.
Gone.
But the girl had said, "I'm back." It was the home of the family of her divorced mother, and in no way, the girl's now, just a destination that she was destined for─yet the kid had said, "I'm back."
Like she'd come home.
And to me.
That sounded wonderful.
Nothing short of wonderful.
"…Good work, Araragi. You looked halfway cool there," Senjougahara said after a while.
In a voice rather devoid of emotion.
"I didn't do anything, really," I pointed out. "If anything, you were the one who did all the work this time around, not me. Even that trick wouldn't have stood muster as a method without someone like you who knows the area."
"That's true─that may be true, but it's not what I'm talking about, okay? I will say that I was surprised that it was an empty plot, though. Her only daughter got into a traffic accident on the way to visit her─and the fact was so unbearable the whole family moved, I assume. Of course, I'm sure you could come up with lots of other reasons if you wanted to."
"Sure─I mean, if you're going to go there, we don't even know whether Hachikuji's mother is still alive."
Moreover─the same went for her father.
Maybe, I wondered─Hanekawa actually knew. She seemed to have some idea when I asked her about the Tsunade family. If particular circumstances had made them move away─and she knew what they were, she'd definitely keep mum. That was the kind of person Hanekawa was. To say the least─she wasn't actually a stickler for the rules.
She was just fair.
Either way, the case was closed, then…
Now that it was over, it felt so sudden. And I noticed that the sun was already setting on this Sunday. It was mid-May, and the days were still short…which meant I needed to be going back home.
Just like Hachikuji.
Right. It was my turn to make dinner, too.
"Okay, then, Senjougahara… Let's go back to get my bike."
Senjougahara had attempted to lead me and Hachikuji while riding my mountain bike, but it didn't take long for her to see, without being told, that a mountain bike was pointless when she had to keep pace with walkers and worthless once it turned into a piece of rolling luggage. We ended up leaving it back in the parking lot.
"Oh. By the way, Araragi."
Senjougahara stood still─and continued to face the plot as she spoke.
"You still haven't given me your reply."
"..."
My reply…
I was pretty sure what she was talking about.
"Um. Senjougahara. About that─"
"I should tell you this upfront, Araragi. You know those romantic comedies where it's obvious the two characters are going to get together at the end, but instead they drag out the story with a bunch of lukewarm twists and turns while they're more than friends but not quite lovers? I hate those."
"…Do you."
"If you want me to elaborate, I also hate sports manga that spends roughly a year on every match when you know they're going to win the championship anyway, and I also hate action manga where they spend forever fighting underlings when it's clear they're going to beat the last boss and bring peace to the world."
"You've just crossed out every single manga written for anyone under sixteen."
"What're you going to do, then?"
She was pressing me for an answer without giving me any time to think.
Giving an evasive reply was not an option, at all. If a girl brought all of her friends to confess her love to a boy, he wouldn't feel nearly as suffocated.
"No, Senjougahara, I think you've gotten something mixed up. Or it's a little hasty. Yes, I did contribute in no small way to solving your problem last Monday, but um, if you don't separate your indebtedness, for lack of a better word, from those other feelings, then─"
"Could you be thinking of the idiotic law that people fall prey to love more readily in a crisis, which makes complete light of human reason and utterly fails to take into account the thorny situation two friends are put in when their true natures are thereby revealed?"
"Idiotic─well, yes, I guess? I do think you'd be stupid to confess your love on a shaky suspension bridge, but…see, you were talking about wanting to pay me back. I felt the same way then, too─please don't feel more indebted to me than…or actually, whatever the situation or background, I don't want to be calling in a debt and taking advantage of someone."
"That was just an excuse on my part. I only acted that way because I wanted to hand you the initiative and allow you to be the one to confess to me. You let a valuable opportunity get away from you, you foolish man. You've wasted the one and only time I'm ever propping up another human being."
"...…"
What a way to put it.
So that's what she was going for, after all…
It was an invitation…
"Don't worry, Araragi. I don't really feel that indebted to you."
"…Is that so."
Whaaat.
I didn't know about that, either.
"Because, Araragi, you'd save anyone."
Though I wasn't completely certain of that this morning, she continued on an even keel.
"It wasn't because I'm me─but I prefer it that way. Even if it wasn't me whom you were saving─if I'd watched you saving Hanekawa, for example, I think I'd still find you special. I wasn't special, but becoming special for someone like you would be thrilling. Well…I think I'm exaggerating a bit, but I guess I could admit that I just have fun talking with you, Araragi."
"…But it's not as if─we've talked that much."
That was an understatement.
It was easy to overlook the fact because of just how much concentrated time we'd spent together last Monday, Tuesday, and today, but the only times she and I had ever spoken to each other this much─were that Monday, that Tuesday, and today.
Three days, no more.
We might've been in the same class for three years, but─
We were practically strangers.
"Right," Senjougahara nodded in full agreement. "Which is why I want us to talk more."
To spend more time together.
To get to know.
To get to love.
"I don't think it's anything as cheap as love at first sight," she said. "But I'm not so patient a person as to want to spend time lining everything up. How do I put it─yes, maybe it's that I want to make the effort and get to love you."
"…I see."
When she put it that way it sounded right.
There was nothing I could say in reply.
You had to work hard to stay in love─because the feeling we call love is a very conscious thing. In that case─maybe what Senjougahara was saying was fine.
"Anyway," she noted, "I think these things are a question of timing, to begin with. I would've been fine with us staying friends, but at the end of the day, I'm greedy. I settle for nothing but extremes."
Just think of it as having gotten mixed up with a foul woman.
Those were her words.
"You've ended up in this situation because you're kind to everyone you meet, Araragi. Take it to heart, you reap what you sow. But don't worry, even I can tell the difference between feeling indebted and those other emotions. After all, this past week─I've been able to come up with all kinds of fantasies involving you."
"Fantasies…"
"What a satisfying week it was."
Really─she was so direct about this stuff.
What did I do in those fantasies, I wondered, and what was done to me?
"You know, just think of it this way," she added. "In a dismal turn, you caught the eye of a love-starved psycho virgin who falls for anyone who shows her the slightest bit of kindness."
"…Okay, then."
"It wasn't your day. Curse the way you've led your life."
So─she was even prepared to degrade herself.
And there I was, forcing her to go that far.
That far.
…God, I was being lame.
I was so small.
"So, Araragi. I know I've said a lot, but."
"What is it."
"If you turn me down, I'm going to kill you and go on the run."
"That's just murder! At least make it a lovers' suicide!"
"That's just how serious I am about this."
"…Phew. Is that a fact."
I let out a contemplative sigh from somewhere deep inside me.
Oh boy.
What an interesting woman.
In the same class for three years, and yet only three days─what a waste. What an absurd, extravagant amount of time Araragi Koyomi had frittered away.
When I caught her that day.
What a good thing it was me.
What a good thing it was─that Senjougahara Hitagi had been caught by Araragi Koyomi.
"If you sputter feeble words like needing some time to think about it, Araragi, I'm going to look down on you. You can embarrass a woman only so much, you know."
"I know… I already think I'm being pretty pathetic right now. But can I give you just one condition, Senjougahara?"
"What might it be? Do you want to watch me shave my body hair for a week or something?"
"Out of all the things that have come out of your mouth until now, that is unmistakably one of the worst!"
Unmistakably, both in terms of content and timing.
I paused for a few seconds, then faced Senjougahara. "I guess you could call it more of a promise than a condition─"
"A promise… What might it be?"
"Senjougahara, you've acted like you can see things that you can't see, and like you can't see things that you can see and I don't want you doing any more of that. No more, okay? If you think something is strange, come out and say that it's strange. Stop trying to be considerate about it. We've experienced what we've experienced, we know what we know, and I'm sure the both of us are going to bear that burden for the rest of our lives because we've learned that these things exist. So if our opinions ever clash, I want us to talk about it. Promise me."
"No problem."
Senjougahara's expression was cool─unchanging as always, but in her seemingly rash, even thoughtless, yet absolutely instant reply, my heart found something, however small it was, to latch onto.
So, you reap what you sow.
Usually, the way you've led your life.
"Okay, let's go," I said. "It's already gotten dark out, and, uhm…I'll give you a ride home? Is that what you'd say here?"
"There's no way two people can ride on that bicycle."
"Three might not be able to, but two can. It's got one of those rods."
"Rods?"
"To put your feet on. I don't know their official name, but…you put it on your back wheel, and you can stand on it. You just have to hold onto the shoulders of whoever's riding. We can play rock-paper-scissors to figure out who's in front. That snail isn't here anymore, so we can just go home like normal. Not that I remember the complicated route we followed to get here, anyway… Okay, Senjougahara, let's─"
��Wait, Araragi."
Senjougahara still stood there.
She stood still and grabbed my wrist.
Senjougahara Hitagi, who had denied herself physical contact for so long─naturally, it was the first time she'd ever touched me like that.
Touching.
Seeing.
It meant that we're here.
To each other.
"Do you think you could say it out loud for me?"
"Out loud?"
"I don't like silent partnerships."
"Ah─got it."
I gave it some thought.
It seemed unrefined to reply in kind with English, not to this woman who wanted nothing but extremes. Then again, I had only a surface knowledge of other languages, which in any case wouldn't be any more original.
Which left─
"I hope it catches on."
"Excuse me?"
"My heart smelts for you, Senjougahara."
So by the by, and all in all.
Hanekawa's single-minded delusion had come true to a tee.
She really did know everything after all.