Mayoi Snail (Part 6)

"So ─ what kind of spirit, specter, ghoul, or goblin is this Lost Cow, anyway? What do we need to do to defeat it?"

"Really, Araragi, all you ever think about is violence. Something good happened to you lately?"

It seemed as though Senjougahara had woken Oshino up while he was sleeping. He grumbled something about how awful she was to interrupt his lazy Sunday morning but even putting aside the fact that it was already the afternoon, every day for Oshino was a summer break Sunday. He had no constitutionally guaranteed right to speak those words, so I didn't bother dignifying them with a response.

Oshino had no cell phone, which meant he had to borrow Senjougahara's for us to communicate. However, due to reasons both dogmatic and monetary, he also seemed to be quite bad with technology. When I heard him start saying things as idiotic as, "Hey, tsundere girl. Which button do I press when I'm talking?" I felt an urge to press the button that'd cut the call.

What did he think he was using, a walkie-talkie?

"But…I do wonder what's going on here. This isn't so uncommon as abnormal. I can't believe you've managed to run into this many aberrations in such a short period of time, Araragi. How funny. Getting attacked by a vampire would be enough for most people, but look at you. First, you get yourself mixed up with missy class president's cat, then missy tsundere's crab, and now you've gone and stumbled upon a snail?"

"I'm not the one who did the stumbling."

"Hm? Really?"

"How much did Senjougahara tell you?"

"Well… She did tell me everything, but I was also half-asleep. It's all a bit vague, and I might be misremembering some of it… Oh, but you know, I've always dreamed about how great it would be if a cute high school girl came and woke me up. Thanks to you, Araragi, a dream I've had since middle school has come true at last."

"…And how does it feel?"

"Hmm, I'm not sure. I'm still only half-awake."

Maybe that's how fulfilled dreams are.

Not just for him, but for everyone.

"Hey, she's glaring at me, hard. Yeesh, now I'm scared. I wonder if something good happened to her."

"Who knows."

"Not you, huh? After all, you don't seem like you understand women very well, Araragi ─ but forget about that. Hm. Well, it is true that it's easier to find yourself back in the world after you've gotten involved in it once, but… It does feel a bit too concentrated. Missy class president and missy tsundere are both your classmates, too ─ and, from what I understand, they're both from the area you're in, right?"

"Senjougahara doesn't live here anymore, though. But that doesn't have anything to do with this. Hachikuji wouldn't have ever lived here before."

"Hachikuji?"

"Oh, did she not tell you? The name of the girl who came across the snail. Hachikuji Mayoi."

"Ah…"

There was a pause.

It didn't seem to be because he was sleepy, either.

"Hachikuji Mayoi, you say… Ha hah, of course. I'm starting to get the picture. My memories are coming together. Of course. It's a nice little connection, actually. Almost like a play on words."

"A play on words? Oh, because 'mayoi' can mean 'lost'? 'Lost' as in 'Lost Cow' and 'lost child'… You know, Oshino, you come up with some pretty boring ideas for someone who always has such a dumb smile on his face."

"You wouldn't catch me dead making jokes that simple. I don't smile as I do just for show. Nothing conceals a weapon better than a smiling face, you know. I'm talking about both of her names together. Mayoi and Hachikuji. You know, Hachikuji. Like in the fifth verse of Shinonome Monogatari?"

"What?"

Hadn't Hanekawa said something similar?

Not that it meant anything to me.

"You don't know anything, Araragi, do you? I'm glad you're giving me a good excuse to explain it all. But we don't have time for that right now, do we? Besides, I'm sleepy. Hm? What's that, missy tsundere?"

Our conversation stopped for a moment as Senjougahara seemed to say something to Oshino. Even my hearing couldn't pick it up ─ or rather, she was intentionally speaking to him so that I couldn't hear her.

Was she sharing a secret? No ─ that couldn't be it.

What could she be saying?

"Hmm… Okay."

Oshino nodding along was all I could catch. And─

"…Ahh."

A heavy sigh.

"You really are useless, Araragi. You know that?"

"Huh? What did I do to deserve that from you? I haven't even told you that I'm just passing the time."

"You've made missy tsundere fuss over you so much… She even feels responsible for you. How pathetic. She practically has to hold your hand and dress you, Araragi. It's her who should be wearing the pants here."

"Hold on… I do feel bad about dragging Senjougahara into this. I really do. Not just bad, I feel responsible. It was only last week she finished up taking care of her own problems, but I've already gotten her into another strange─"

"Ugh, that's not what I mean. You know, Araragi, I'm starting to think you're getting a big head after having solved problems with three aberrations in a row. Just to make sure you know, what you, yourself, see and feel isn't the whole truth."

"…I wasn't trying to dispute that."

They were stern words ─ withering. It felt like he'd hit me where it hurt most because that did ring a bell.

"Well, you probably don't mean to be doing it, Araragi. I already understand what kind of person you are. I just think it wouldn't hurt if you were a little more considerate, that's all. If you're not acting conceited, then I think something might have you boxed in. Listen carefully.

Seeing shouldn't necessarily be believing ─ and on the flip side, not seeing isn't necessarily counterfactual, Araragi. I want to say I told you something similar the first time we met. I hope you haven't forgotten already."

"…We're not talking about me right now, Oshino. Can you just tell me how to deal with this… Lost Cow? This snail? What do we do to defeat it?"

"Again with the violent talk. Don't say that kind of stuff. You really don't understand a thing, do you? You'll come to regret it if you keep going on like that, and I hope you'll be taking responsibility then. Got that? And also ─ the Lost Cow is… Oh, er."

Oshino hesitated for a moment.

"Ha hah. I don't know, this is just too simple. It feels like no matter what I say, I'm going to be saving you here. That's no good… I need you to get saved on your own."

"It's simple? Really?"

"We're not dealing with a vampire here. That really, truly was a rare case, Araragi. I guess you can't help but get a lot of wrong ideas if that was your first experience, but… Okay, we could say that this Lost Cow is more like the crab that missy tsundere encountered."

"Hm."

The crab.

That crab.

"Oh, right. About her, too…" Oshino said. "I don't know if I like this. I'm only here to connect humans with the other side. Connecting humans with other humans isn't my specialty, you see… Ha hah. Well then. Now what? I may have let myself get a little too friendly with you, Araragi. It's like we're colluding. I never imagined that it'd be this simple for you to ask me for help, let alone that you'd get me to solve a case for you over the phone."

"…Well, I do think it was too facile of me."

It was easier ─ and I'd been reluctant about the option.

Still ─ it was also true that it was the only option.

"I wish you wouldn't treat me in such a casual way. You normally wouldn't have someone like me around when you encounter an aberration. And, though this is such a plain and commonsense thing to say that it's out of character for me to be saying it, I don't think it's very admirable of you to be sending a fine young woman into a more-or-less-abandoned building where a suspicious man is camped out."

"Oh, so you do realize that you're suspicious and that you live in a more-or-less-abandoned building…"

But ─ I had to admit, he was right. Absolutely right. Senjougahara had agreed to go so readily ─ she pretty much volunteered ─ that I failed to be considerate in that regard.

"It's not like you're going to do anything to her."

"While I appreciate the trust you put in me, you do have to draw lines. That's why we have rules. Let them slip out of your hands and soon you'll find yourself in a sloppy situation. Got that? You need to establish boundaries that say no matter the circumstances, this is off-limits. Because if you don't, you'll find yourself slowly ceding your ground. You hear people say that rules are made to be broken, but they're not supposed to be. They're rules. Not only that, but you also won't have anything to break if you don't have rules in the first place. Ha hah, I'm starting to sound like li'l missy class president."

"Mmgh…"

Well─he was right.

Absolutely right.

I'd apologize to Senjougahara later.

"Araragi, it's not as if she trusts me as much as you trust me. All she has is a provisional trust based on the fact that you trust me ─ so remember, that means if something happens to her, the responsibility falls directly on you. Not that I'd do anything, of course. No, really, I won't! Whoa, please, put down that stapler!"

"..."

So she still carried one of those around.

Then again, that wasn't the kind of habit you got rid of overnight.

"Phew… What a surprise. I guess missy tsundere is a scary missy tsundere, huh? What a case we have here. Well, okay… Eh, you know, I don't like phones after all. It's so hard to talk on them."

"Hard? Seriously? I know some people are bad with technology, but Oshino, that's pushing it."

"Sure, that's a part of it, but it's just that while I'm over here being all serious, you might be lying down, drinking a soda, and reading manga over there. Everything feels so empty when I think about that."

"Wow…I never knew you were that sensitive."

Apparently, people who minded such things really minded them.

"All right, Araragi, then this is what I'll do. I'll tell her how to deal with the Lost Cow, and you can stay right there."

"How to deal with it? So secondhand knowledge is all we're going to need here?"

"If you're going to put it that way, the Lost Cow itself is an oral tradition."

"That's not what I'm trying to get at ─ um, we don't need some kind of ceremony as we did for Senjougahara?"

"Nope. The pattern here is the same, but this snail isn't as tough to deal with as that crab. It's not a god, after all. It's just a monster, so to speak. And not as in a ghoul or a goblin. It's sort of like a ghost."

"A ghost?"

In this case, I didn't see much of a difference between gods, ghouls, goblins, and ghosts. But this was Oshino I was talking to. I knew that the differences between each were important.

Still─a ghost.

"Ghosts are a kind of yokai, too. The Lost Cow itself isn't unique to any one region, it appears all across Japan. An aberration that's been handed down in every corner of the country. It's not a well-known one, and its name changes here and there, but it started out like a snail. Umm, and one more thing, Araragi. Hachikuji is actually a term that originally referred to temples that stand in bamboo groves. The 'ji' means temple, of course, but the 'hachi-ku' isn't the numbers eight and nine that we tend to write that with. Correctly, it derives from the word for black bamboo. You know that there are two major types in Japan, don't you? Black bamboo and tortoise-shell bamboo. Anyway, this got changed to the characters for 'eight' and 'nine' as, well, just a play on words. Do you know about the eighty-eight-temple pilgrimage in Shikoku or the thirty-three-temple pilgrimage in the western region?"

"Oh… Well sure, even I've heard of that."

You hear about those all the time.

"Okay, so that's the kind of thing that even you've heard of ─ sure, I guess it would be. Well, there are a lot of similar pilgrimages, just not all as famous. And one of them is a 'Hachikuji' pilgrimage ─ with a list of eighty-nine temples. It also has to do with bamboo groves as I said, but in terms of things getting tacked on, they wanted a pilgrimage with one more temple than Shikoku's eighty-eight."

"Huh…"

So it had something to do with Shikoku, the smallest of Japan's four major islands?

But Hanekawa had said something about the western Kansai region of the main island.

"Yep," Oshino said, "because these eighty-nine temples are mostly in Kansai ─ in that sense, you could say it's closer to the thirty-three- temple pilgrimage than the eighty-eight. But ─ and here we get to the crux of the story, to where the tragedy begins ─ you can also easily read the characters for 'eight' and 'nine' together not as 'hachiku' but as 'yaku,' misfortune. Slap that title on your temple and you've added a negative prefix. It wasn't a good idea."

"…? Now that you mention it, I wasn't able to read that part of her name at first and thought it might be 'yaku,' but…it's not as if they meant it that way, right?"

"No, but without meaning to, they gave it that sense. Words are scary things. Without any intention involved at all, things can turn out a certain way. Language is alive, though people say that too casually these days. In any case, the interpretation spread, and it wasn't long until the eighty-nine temples stopped being grouped together. Most of them shut down during the anti-Buddhist movement in the 1800s, anyway, and only about a quarter still exist today ─ in addition, nearly all of them hide the fact they were ever a part of those eighty-nine temples, to begin with."

"..."

His explanations were so offhanded, which made them easy to follow, but I also got the feeling that repeating them to anyone ran the risk of getting mud on my face.

pilgrimage ─ with a list of eighty-nine temples. It also has to do with bamboo groves as I said, but in terms of things getting tacked on, they wanted a pilgrimage with one more temple than Shikoku's eighty-eight."

"Huh…"

So it had something to do with Shikoku, the smallest of Japan's four major islands?

But Hanekawa had said something about the western Kansai region of the main island.

"Yep," Oshino said, "because these eighty-nine temples are mostly in Kansai ─ in that sense, you could say it's closer to the thirty-three- temple pilgrimage than the eighty-eight. But ─ and here we get to the crux of the story, to where the tragedy begins ─ you can also easily read the characters for 'eight' and 'nine' together not as 'hachiku' but as 'yaku,' misfortune. Slap that title on your temple and you've added a negative prefix. It wasn't a good idea."

"…? Now that you mention it, I wasn't able to read that part of her name at first and thought it might be 'yaku,' but…it's not as if they meant it that way, right?"

"No, but without meaning to, they gave it that sense. Words are scary things. Without any intention involved at all, things can turn out a certain way. Language is alive, though people say that too casually these days. In any case, the interpretation spread, and it wasn't long until the eighty-nine temples stopped being grouped together. Most of them shut down during the anti-Buddhist movement in the 1800s, anyway, and only about a quarter still exist today ─ in addition, nearly all of them hide the fact they were ever a part of those eighty-nine temples, to begin with."

"..."

His explanations were so offhanded, which made them easy to follow, but I also got the feeling that repeating them to anyone ran the risk of getting mud on my face.

This was the kind of knowledge that didn't turn up a single hit when you searched it online, and I had trouble deciding how much of it I should swallow in the first place.

It called for a grain of salt.

"And so, if you look at the name Hachikuji Mayoi against that background ─ that history ─ it seems, well, a little too meaningful for comfort. The names are connected ─ you see? You find that sort of thing in classical literature, like in The Great Mirror, which must have come up in class. Still, I'm not sure about her given name. Mayoi ─ 'lost'? It seems too obvious. If anything here is facile or simplistic, that'd be it. Whoever came up with it doesn't seem to have a knack for names. Hm, it'd have been good if you sensed this from the beginning, Araragi."

"Good? What? And also─"

Hachikuji was sitting on the bench, waiting patiently for me to finish the call. It didn't look like she was listening in on me ─ but she had to be. The conversation was about her, how could she not?

"It wasn't until recently that her last name became Hachikuji. It was Tsunade before that."

"Tsunade? Huh, really now… Throw that kink into the mix ─ and the thread starts to get tangled. Frayed, you could say. That's a little too much, even for fate. Like there's a man behind the curtains pulling the strings so that all the dominoes can fall. Hachikuji and Tsunade… I see, and then Mayoi. So that was the important one here. Ma-yoi─'true twilight.' Phew ─ gimme a break."

How ridiculous, Oshino muttered.

He said it as though to himself ─ but it was intended for me.

"You know what, Araragi, it doesn't matter. This is a really interesting town, I have to say. A motley crucible. I get the feeling I won't be able to leave for a while… Well, I'll tell missy tsundere the details, so you get them from her."

"Hm? O-Okay."

"That is─" Oshino wrapped up in a tone so sarcastic I could practically see his smirk, "if you're lucky enough for her to come out and tell you."

And then the call ended.

Oshino had a rule about never saying goodbyes.

"…So, Hachikuji. Looks like there's a way."

"It didn't sound like there is, going by your conversation."

So she'd been listening.

Well, she couldn't have figured out the important parts if she'd only heard my side of it.

"At any rate, Mister Araragi."

"What is it?"

"You do realize that I'm hungry, right?"

"...…"

Okay, so what?

Don't say that, I thought like you're gently trying to let me know I've forgotten to fulfill an important obligation.

But now that she mentioned it, I'd forgotten thanks to this snail business that I hadn't seen to Hachikuji's lunch. Senjougahara, too… In her case, though, she may have gone off to eat somewhere on her own before heading to Oshino's place.

Huh, it hadn't occurred to me.

Because my body no longer required me to eat much.

"Okay, then let's go somewhere to eat once Senjougahara gets back. Actually, there are only homes around here─but you can go to places as long as they're not your mom's house, right?"

"Yes. I can."

"Okay, we'll ask Senjougahara ─ she should know the closest restaurant. So, is there any kind of food you like?"

"I like anything as long as it's food."

"Hunh."

"Your hand was delicious too, Mister Araragi."

"My hand isn't food."

"Oh, you don't need to be so modest. It really was delicious."

"...…"

She'd probably ingested more than a little of my flesh and blood, so it was no joke.

The cannibal girl.

"By the way, Hachikuji. It's true that you've gone to your mom's home before?"

"It is. I don't tell lies."

"I see…"

But she got lost on her way ─ and not because it'd been so long. She'd come across the snail, so even if she'd been before ─ but wait, why did Hachikuji come across that snail in the first place?

A reason.

There was a reason I was attacked by a vampire.

There was one for Hanekawa and Senjougahara, too.

So ─ there had to be a reason for Hachikuji as well.

"…Hey. I know this is a simple-minded way to look at it, but it's not like your goal is to get to where you're going, it's just to meet your mom, right?"

"It's very insensitive of you to say 'just,' but yes."

"In that case, can't she come and meet you? Even if you can't go to Miss Tsunade's home, it's not as if your mom is locked inside. I'm sure parents have the right to meet their children even after they get divorced─" I was no expert in the field. "Or so I've heard."

"That's impossible. Actually, it's pointless," Hachikuji replied at once. "I would have done that from the beginning if I could. But I can't. I can't even call my mom."

"Hmph…"

"The only thing I can do is visit her like this. Even if I know I'll never get there."

She was saying it in a roundabout way, but did that mean it had something to do with her family situation? It seemed complicated. Then again, I should have guessed as much from the fact that even on Mother's Day, she was having to come all the way to an unfamiliar town by herself. But there had to be a more logical method… For example, Senjougahara could go ahead of us and get to Miss Tsunade's home first… No, a direct strategy like that wouldn't work on an aberration. It wouldn't let us get to where Hachikuji was trying to go, just as it caused Senjougahara's phone to go out of service when she tried to use its GPS. I was able to talk to Oshino on my phone because he and I speaking was fine.

Aberrations ─ are the world itself.

Unlike living things ─ they're connected to the world.

Science alone can't shine a light on aberrations. Just as people will never stop being attacked by vampires.

There may be no darkness in the world that cannot be illuminated.

But darkness itself will never disappear.

That meant our only option was to wait for Senjougahara to arrive.

"An aberration…" I said. "Though I'm not very clear on the details, to be honest. What about you, Hachikuji? Do you know much about yokai and monsters and that kind of stuff?"

"…Hm?" she paused weirdly before replying, "Oh, no, not at all. Just the noppera-bo, I guess."

"Oh, Lafcadio Hearn's faceless monster…"

"Yes, I could really sink my teeth into that story."

"Good for you."

I was sure she could.

Then again, just about anyone in Japan has heard that one.

"Scary, yeah?"

"Yes. But ─ I don't know any others."

"Right, makes sense."

A yokai, it may have been.

But my case, the vampire ─ no, it didn't matter.

They were all similar to humans.

It was a conceptual problem.

The deeper part of the problem was─

"Hachikuji ─ I don't know the details here, but are you really that desperate to see your mom? I honestly don't get why you're willing to go this far."

"I think it's normal for a child to want to see her mother… Am I wrong?"

"No, of course, that's true, but…"

Of course that's true. But.

If there was some reason involved that wasn't normal ─ then I thought we might be able to figure out why Hachikuji had come across the snail. But there didn't seem to be anything definite enough to be called a reason. It was simple, impulsive ─ a principle akin to nonlinguistic instinct in the edifice of desire.

"Mister Araragi, you live in the same home as both of your parents, don't you? That's why you don't understand. You don't think about what it's like to be lacking something while you're fulfilled. People want what they lack. If you had to live apart from your parents, I'm sure that you'd want to go see them, too."

"Is that how it is?"

That's how it is ─ I suppose.

A nice problem to have.

─ You know, Araragi, that's why.

"If you don't mind me saying so, Mister Araragi, from where I stand, I'm jealous of the simple fact that you have both of your parents."

"Oh…"

"Jealous as a blue-eyed goblin."

"Oh… You know you got both sides of that kind of wrong."

What would Senjougahara have said in the situation? If she'd heard about Hachikuji's issues, then ─ no, she probably wouldn't have said a thing. She probably wouldn't have even compared herself to Hachikuji like I was doing. Even if she was in a much closer position to her than I was.

A crab and a snail.

Organisms that lived by the water's edge ─ was it?

"Judging by your words, Mister Araragi, I get the impression that you aren't very fond of your parents. Is that really the case?"

"Oh, no, it's not like that. It's just─"

Before I continued, the thought crossed my mind that maybe it wasn't something I should be telling a child. Then again, I'd already pried into Hachikuji's circumstances, so even if she was a child, it didn't seem right for me to just trail off.

"You know, I used to be a really good kid," I said.

"It isn't good to lie."

"I'm not lying…"

"I see. Then let's say that it isn't. A little lie never hurt anyone."

"So you're from the village of liars."

"I'm from the village of truth-tellers."

"Is that so. Anyway, while I never spoke in the annoyingly polite way you do, I was a pretty good student and a pretty good athlete, and never got in too much trouble. Also, I never rebelled against my parents for no good reason like the other boys around me. I felt grateful that they were raising me."

"Ahh, how praiseworthy."

"I have two little sisters, too, and they're basically the same. Things were great at home, but then I overdid it when I was trying to get into high school."

"Overdid it?"

"..."

I was impressed by how easily she made our conversation flow.

Was this what they called being a good listener?

"I went and applied to a school for way better students than me ─ and I managed to get in."

"But that's a wonderful thing. Congratulations."

"No, it wasn't. If I applied for a school that wasn't for me and didn't get in, and that was all, it would have been fine but as a result, I wasn't able to keep up. You wouldn't believe how bad it gets when you're a washout at a school for smart kids. Not only that, everyone else around me is super serious… People like Senjougahara and I are the exceptions, not the rule."

As for Hanekawa Tsubasa, that embodiment of seriousness, she was an exception just for bothering to deal with a student like me. She had what it took to compensate for it, quite simply.

"And when that happened, I went from being a good kid to the other way around, and just as hard. It's not like there was anything specific that happened to me, though. My father and my mother are the same as ever, and I'm acting the same at home, or at least I feel like I am but there's just this awkward feeling I can't describe. It comes out no matter what I do, and it lingers. So we all end up worrying too much about each other, and─"

My little sisters.

My two sisters.

─You know, Araragi, that's why─

"That's why I never grow up, I've been told. I'm going to stay a child and never become an adult I've been told."

"So you're a child?" Hachikuji asked. "Then you're the same as me."

"…I don't think so. What they mean is just your frame growing bigger, without getting filled out properly."

"What a rude thing to say to a lady, Mister Araragi. I'll have you know that I'm one of the better-developed students in my class."

"True, your chest was pretty impressive."

"What?! You touched it?! When?!"

Hachikuji's eyes turned to saucers on her astonished face.

"Um…when we were scuffling?"

"That's even more of a shock than the fact you punched me!"

Hachikuji held her head.

She really did seem shocked.

"Wait…it's not like I did it on purpose, and it was only for a split second anyway."

"A split second?! Really? Honestly?!"

"Yeah. I only touched it about three times."

"Not only is that more than a split second, but any time past the first also has to have been intentional!"

"You're accusing me of something I didn't do. It was an unfortunate accident."

"I've had my first touch stolen from me!"

"Your first touch?"

That's what kids these days talked about?

Grade schoolers really are maturing fast.

"To think that my first touch came before my first kiss… What a naughty girl Hachikuji Mayoi has become!"

"Oh yeah, Hachikuji. Now that you mention it, I realize I forgot to give you the allowance I promised you."

"Please, what a moment to pick to bring that up!"

Next, with her head still in her hands, Hachikuji began to writhe all over as if a wasp had gotten inside her clothes.

The poor thing.

"Come on, don't get yourself so down. It's better than your father taking your first kiss, you know?"

"That sounds like a very normal event!"

"Okay, then it's better than your reflection in a mirror being your first kiss, okay?"

"No girl in our world has had that happen to them!"

Yeah.

You could probably include girls in the next world.

"Grrah!"

Just as I thought Hachikuji was taking her hands off her head, she immediately moved to try to bite my throat. It was where a vampire had bitten me over summer break, so a chill ran down my spine. I somehow managed to get my hands on Hachikuji's shoulders and to push her back, averting any trouble. "Grrarrrarrrarrr!" she gnashed her teeth menacingly. I recalled there being an enemy in some old video game like her (it looked like an iron ball with a chain) as I soothed her.

"N-Now, now. Who's a good girl."

"Please don't treat me like a dog! Or is this your roundabout way of comparing me to a rutting female canine?!"

"Well, if I had to compare you to something, I'd honestly say you're acting more like a rabid one…"

She did have a nice set of teeth, though. She'd bitten into my hand down to the bone, but she hadn't chipped or lost a single one of her teeth, baby or adult. Not only were they perfectly lined, they were unfathomably durable.

"You know, Mister Araragi, you've been acting very brazen for some time now! I don't see a hint of regret on your face! Isn't there something you ought to say after having touched a young girl's delicate chest?!"

"…Thank you?"

"No! I'm demanding an apology from you!"

"You say that, but it happened in the middle of us fighting. How could that be anything short of an act of God? I almost think you should be glad it was just your chest. And like Hanekawa said earlier, you're the one in the wrong for biting someone as ridiculously hard as you did."

"This isn't about who's at fault! Even if I am, I'm in an incredible state of shock! You can't call yourself a grown man if you don't apologize to a girl in shock, even if it's not your fault!"

"Grown men don't apologize," I said in a deep voice. "It cheapens his soul."

"How cool?!"

"Or are you saying you'll never forgive me unless I apologize to you? Saying that you'll forgive someone if they apologize to you…is like admitting you can't be magnanimous toward people who haven't abased themselves."

"Why have I become the one being criticized here? Only a thief could be so bold, as they say… Now you've really gotten me mad… I may be tolerant, but this is like turning both my cheeks inside out!"

"That'd be incredibly tolerant of you…"

"In fact, I won't forgive you even if you apologize!"

"What's the big problem anyway? It's only going to go to waste otherwise."

"And now you're downright defiant, Mister Araragi?! That's not the issue here! And I've only begun puberty, so it's not going to waste!"

"You know, people say they get bigger if you massage them."

"Only men believe that superstition!"

"It's become a sad, boring world out there…"

"Have you been using that superstition as an excuse to squish ladies' breasts all the time? You're disgusting!"

"I've never had the chance, unfortunately."

"So you're a lousy virgin!"

"..."

This elementary school kid knew that expression?

Grade schoolers weren't just maturing fast. They were finished.

I wasn't living in a boring world but in an awful one…

Then again, I could pretend to lament what was going on in the world today all I wanted, but come to think of it, I'd soaked up that much by the time I was in fifth grade, too. That's how anxiety about younger generations tends to work.

"Grrah! Grarrr! Grarrarrarrr!"

"Ah-wh-h-hey, watch it! Seriously, that's dangerous!"

"A virgin touched me! I'm sullied!"

"How does that part change anything?!"

"I wanted my first to be a smooth operator! But I got you instead, Mister Araragi! My dreams have been crushed!"

"What kind of overblown fantasy is that?! You're making whatever budding feelings of guilt I had disappear, you know!"

"Graarrh! Grrah, graaah, grr!!"

"Oh, just quiet down! You really are a rabid dog! You high-banged, play-biting, no-good woman! Fine, then! I'm gonna squish them so much you'll forget all about your firsts and all about kisses!"

"Eeeek?!"

There he was, a high school boy who was losing it in the face of an elementary school girl, who was threatening to harass her by force, who I'd like to believe wasn't me.

It was me, though…

Fortunately, Hachikuji Mayoi put up far more resistance than I ever could have expected, so this exchange came to an end without having run its course, but rather with my entire body covered in Hachikuji's tooth and scratch marks. After five minutes, an elementary schooler and a high schooler sat silently there on a bench, completely out of breath, drenched in sweat, exhausted.

I was thirsty, but there were no vending machines in the area…

"I'm very sorry…" she said.

"No… I'm the one who should be apologizing."

Mutual apologies were made.

It was a pathetic settlement.

"…Still, Hachikuji. You're used to fights."

"I get into them quite often at school."

"Scuffles like that? Oh, right. You don't pay that much attention to who's a boy and who's a girl when you're in elementary school. But you really know how to get yourself in trouble…"

In spite of her intelligent features.

"You seem to be used to fighting too, Mister Araragi. I suppose battles like that are common once you become a juvenile delinquent?"

"I'm not a delinquent. I'm a washout."

It was the kind of correction that hurt to make.

I was practically wounding myself.

"I'm going to a prep school, so just because I'm a washout doesn't mean I'm a juvenile delinquent. We don't even have a group of delinquents at my school in the first place."

"But in manga, it's standard for student councils of elite high schools to be doing quite wicked things behind the scenes. The smarter someone is, the more malicious of a delinquent they become."

"You can ignore that theory in real life. But anyway, yeah, I do get in a lot of fights with my little sisters."

"Your little sisters, you say. I believe you mentioned earlier that you have two. So are they about my age?"

"No, they're both in middle school. But they might be around your age at heart─both of them act so young."

Though neither of them ever goes so far as to bite me.

One of them practices karate, so there's not much messing around against her.

"You know, they might just get along with you. They're good with kids, or rather, they practically are kids. I'll introduce you to them the next time I get a chance."

"Oh… Thank you, but I'll have to pass."

"Okay, then. You know, you're pretty shy about all your good manners. Not that it's important. Well…I guess scuffles, at least, end when one side apologizes to the other."

But today was a battle of wills.

Still, I thought, it should end with me apologizing.

I knew I should. But still.

"Is something the matter, Mister Ararragi?"

"You added an extra 'r' this time."

"I'm sorry. A slip of the tongue."

"No, I think you did that on purpose."

"A flip by the flung."

"Or maybe not?!"

"I'm sorry, but everyone stumbles over their words from time to time. Or are you trying to say that you've never once had a slip of the tongue?"

"I won't go that far, but I've never messed up saying someone's name before."

"Fine, then say 'She shells she-shells on the she-shore' three times in a row."

"You botched it yourself."

"What do you mean, 'she-shells'?! Are women all you ever think about?"

"You're the one who said that, not me."

"What do you mean, 'she-shore'?! Are women all you ever think about?"

"I don't even understand what that's supposed to mean…"

It was a fun conversation.

"Now that I think about it," I observed, "that's actually pretty hard to say on purpose. She shells, she-shells…"

"Onsha she-shore!"

"…"

Between all the slipping and nipping, her mouth was getting a workout today.

"So. Is something the matter, Mister Araragi?" she asked.

"Nothing's the matter. I'm just feeling a little depressed wondering how I should apologize to my sister."

"Are you going to apologize to her because you squished her chest?"

"I'd never squish my little sister's chest."

"Ah, so you'd squish an elementary school girl's chest, but not your little sister's. I see so that's where you draw the line."

"Not to be underestimated, eh? That's some sarcasm. What a great illustration of the fact that any situation can be twisted into casting a perfectly innocent man as the villain."

"I don't think I've twisted anything about the situation."

She was right; she'd only explained what had happened. In fact, I was the one who needed to wrestle and twist the context in a quasi-heroic manner to excuse my actions.

"Fine, then I'll put it another way," she offered. "You'd squish an elementary school girl's chest, Mister Araragi, but not a middle school girl's chest."

"Whoever this Mister Araragi you're talking about is, he sounds like one hell of a pedophile. Not someone I'd want to count as a friend."

"You seem to be trying to deny that you're a pedophile."

"You bet."

"I understand that true pedophiles refuse to label themselves as such under any circumstances. They consider innocent young girls to be grownup women and proper peers."

"Thanks for the unwanted factoid…"

Learning useless trivia is nothing more than a waste of brain space.

But more importantly, that wasn't something I wanted to be learning from a grade-schooler.

"Either way," she added, "I do think it's dismissible as an act of God in a fight, even if it's your little sister."

"Dammit, don't drag out this topic. Your little sister's chest counts even less as a woman's chest than a grade schooler's. You need to understand that."

"The way of chests. It's very enlightening."

"Don't follow it or anything, I'm begging you. Be that as it may ─ I got in a little argument when I was leaving home today. Not a scuffle, an argument. And not to rehash what you said earlier, but I feel like I need to apologize even if it's not my fault. If it'll smooth things out. I do ─ know that. It's what I'm supposed to do."

"Yes, it is," Hachikuji nodded with a solemn expression. "My father and my mother were always fighting. No scuffles, mind you, but arguments."

"And then they got divorced."

"It may not be my place to say as their only daughter, but I understand they got along very well at first. I've heard they were madly in love with each other before they married. But ─ I never once saw them getting along. The two were always fighting."

Even so.

She didn't think they were going to get divorced, she said.

In fact, the idea that they even could had been foreign to Hachikuji ─ she'd believed that families always stayed together. She must not have known that a practice called divorce existed.

She must not have known.

That her father and her mother could part ways.

"But in terms of what's natural," she said, "that's certainly more natural. They're human, so of course, they'd argue and fight. You bite, you're bitten, you love, you hate, that's what comes naturally to us. And so what they really needed was to work harder if they wanted to stay in love."

"You have to work hard to stay in love? I don't know I wouldn't call that insincere, but it doesn't feel very sincere to me either. Having to work hard to love something ─ it's like you're making a conscious effort to make it happen."

"But, Mister Araragi," Hachikuji insisted, "isn't the feeling that we call love a very conscious thing?"

"…Yeah, I guess."

She was right.

Maybe it was ─ something deserving of work, of effort.

"It's painful to grow bored with something you love, to hate something you love isn't it? It's dreary, isn't it? If you loved someone ten times over, it's as if you're hating them twenty times over just to hate them as much as you used to love them. That's so ─ overwhelming."

"Hachikuji," I said, "you do love your mom, don't you."

"Yes, I do. And of course, I love my father, too. And I understand how he felt, and I understand that he never wanted things to turn out the way they did. It was difficult for him for a lot of reasons. He was already the breadmaker of the family."

"So your dad baked, too…"

What a guy.

No wonder he had so much on his plate.

"My father and my mother fought, and they split up as a result but I still love both of them," Hachikuji said.

"Huh… Okay."

"But that's exactly why I feel so uneasy." The way she looked at the ground, I believed her. "My father seems to really hate my mother now─and doesn't seem to have any interest in letting me meet with her. He won't let me call her, and he said I should never see her again."

"...…"

"I wonder if I won't forget her some day─if I won't stop loving her someday if we're kept apart like this and it makes me so uneasy."

That's why.

That's why she came here all alone.

She didn't have a reason.

She just wanted to see her mother.

"…A snail, huh."

Man.

Why couldn't she be granted her modest wish?

She wasn't asking for much.

Aberration or whatever it was, Lost Cow or whatever it was ─hy was it getting in Hachikuji's way? Time and time again, at that.

She could never get there.

She was always lost.

…Hm?

Hold on a second, I thought ─ Oshino had said that this Lost Cow was like what happened with Senjougahara and the crab. The same pattern…what did he mean by that? True, that crab never brought any calamity upon Senjougahara. The results of what it brought upon her were calamitous, but those were just results. In a sense, an essential sense ─ Senjougahara had only gotten what she wanted.

The crab had granted Senjougahara's wish.

And this was the same pattern… If this were the same formula, only with different variables, what did that mean? What exactly were the implications? If the snail Hachikuji encountered actually wasn't trying to hinder her─

If we were to say it was trying to grant her wish.

What exactly ─ was the snail doing?

What did Hachikuji Mayoi want?

If I were to look at it that way…didn't it even seems as though Hachikuji had no interest in having this Lost Cow exorcised?

"...…"

"Oh? Is something the matter, Mister Araragi? You suddenly started staring at me. Don't you know you're going to make me blush?"

"Um…how do I say this."

"Fall in love with me and you'll get burned."

"…What's, that, supposed, to mean?"

She was making my commas proliferate for no good reason.

"What do you find so confusing? I'm a friend Fatale, it's only fitting for me to use cool lines like that."

"Okay, Hachikuji, so it's obvious to me that you meant femme fatale just now, but I don't even know where to take the joke from there. Also, isn't it weird for you to be calling a line about getting burned a 'cool' one?"

"Hmph. You're right. Okay, then." Hachikuji struggled for a moment before rephrasing herself. "Fall in love with me and you'll get a low-temperature burn."

"..."

"That's just lame!"

"And it's still not what you'd call cool."

So she was warm like an electric blanket?

She sounded like a wonderful person.

"Oh, I know what we should do," she said. "We just have to shift our ground. We can keep the line and find a different description for me. While I do wish I could hold on to the cool label, I have no choice but to give it up. As they say, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs."

"Makes sense. Actually, that might be a pretty standard move, shifting your ground to make your killer line work. Like calling a series 'already popular' on the cover when it's just the second installment. Well, let's try it out. We'll never know otherwise. Okay, so instead of saying you're cool─"

"We'll call me hot."

"Hot-pot Mayoi."

"I still sound like a wonderful person!" Hachikuji lamented exaggeratedly. But as if she'd realized something, she paused and said, "You're trying to change the subject, Mister Araragi!"

So she'd caught on to it.

"We were talking about how you were staring at me, Mister Araragi. What's the matter? Could you have fallen in love with me?"

"..."

She hadn't caught on to it at all.

"While I don't really appreciate being leered at, I will admit that I have very attractive upper arms."

"That would be a unique proclivity."

"Oh? You're saying you don't feel a thing for my upper arms? You do see them, don't you? Their functionary beauty?"

"What, did some bureaucrat decide that they're beautiful?"

Functional, maybe.

"Are you being bashful, Mister Araragi? So you do have a cute side. All right, then, I'll try to understand. I can wait. Please hand out the rainchecks."

"Sorry, but I don't have any interest in pipsqueaks."

"Pipsqueak!" Hachikuji looked at me with such shock I thought her eyes might pop out of their sockets. Next, her head started to sway back and forth, like she was having a dizzy spell. "What a terrible insult… That word is so awful I wouldn't be surprised if it were banned from the airwaves someday…"

"I guess it was pretty mean."

"You've wounded me, gravely! I'm developing quite well, I really am! For goodness' sake, Mister Beast Alike!"

"Hey, don't act like it's okay to bring that one up again. That's just as terrible of a thing to call someone, if not worse."

"Fine, then. I'll call you Mister Man Alike instead."

"Now it's like I'm not actually human!"

In fact, calling me that was no laughing matter when I'd been attacked by a vampire and was semi-immortal. The insult stung because it hit way too close to home.

"Oh, that's it. I know what we can do. We just have to look at it in a different way, Mister Araragi. We'll come up with neologisms. Society will always try to police what words can and can't be used since people do take offense to them, but there's always the chance that neologisms might be accepted."

"Makes sense. Yeah, you're right. Introducing a new word lets you start off with a fresh slate, so it might not sound as offensive. Like how 'lolicon' doesn't sound quite as bad as 'pedophilia.' All right, let's give it a shot. So we need to come up with brand-new words for pipsqueak you and man-alike me─"

"Urchine and Beasts."

"Whoa, now we sound like a crime-fighting duo!"

"We do! The scales are being peeled from my eyes!"

That sounded painful.

Well, not as painful as listening to us talk, I bet.

"Anyway, I'll take back what I said. But you know, Hachikuji, for a fifth-grader, you're pretty well, uh…"

"You're talking about my chest? You're talking about my chest, aren't you?!"

"Just in general. But even so, you still are on a grade-school level. I don't think I'd call you super-elementary."

"Oh. So to your high school eyes, my elementary-school body cuts a slider figure."

"Can't touch them when they break off the plate."

She didn't exactly have curves, either.

Even if she was developing fine, as she said.

She'd meant "slender," by the way.

"…So then, Mister Araragi, why were you looking at me with all that passion in your eyes?"

"Well, you see… Wait, passion?"

"That look you were giving me made my diaphragm go pitter-patter."

"That's called hiccupping."

It was getting hard to keep up with her.

This was turning out to be a test of my stamina as the designated quipper.

"Oh, it's nothing worth worrying about," I said.

"Really. Are you sure?"

"Yeah…I guess."

Was it another way around?

Could it be that deep in her heart, contrary to what she was saying she didn't really want to see her mother? Or perhaps she wanted to but was afraid that her mother would reject her? There was even the possibility that her mother had told her not to come to see her ─ and it seemed like a very real one given what I'd heard so far about Hachikuji's family environment.

If that were the case…things weren't going to be easy.

You wouldn't even have to look at Senjougahara's example to─

"…It smells like another woman here."

Senjougahara Hitagi appeared, completely unannounced.

She'd entered the park still on my mountain bike, displaying her full mastery over it. She was pretty versatile.

"O-Oh… That was quick, Senjougahara."

Her trip back had taken her less than half the time she'd spent to get to Oshino's.

Her entrance was so sudden I didn't have the time to be so much as surprised.

"I made a few wrong turns on my way there," she said.

"Oh, yeah. That cram school can be pretty hard to find. Guess I should've drawn you a map or something."

"And after all of that boasting, I did. I feel ashamed."

"I guess you were bragging about your memory or something, weren't you…"

"I've been humiliated at your hands, Araragi… I can't believe you'd get your jollies by disgracing me like this."

"Hold on, I didn't do anything? You only have yourself to blame!"

"So that's what you're into, Araragi. Forcing girls into humiliation roleplay is what excites you. I'll forgive you, though. I can't blame a healthy young man for having those kinds of interests."

"No, that's a pretty unhealthy young man!"

Listening to her, I recalled that Oshino had spoken of a spiritual boundary ─ a barrier or something─around the cram school. Maybe I really should have been the one to go instead.

But whatever the case, Senjougahara Hitagi was acting awfully brazen for a disgraced woman. Or rather, there was no way she was embarrassed. If anyone was being subjected to humiliation roleplay, it was starting to feel like me…

"I don't mind…" she said. "I can take anything, so long as it's you doing it to me, Araragi…"

"Listen, you need to stick to one personality! You're not adding any more breadth to your character by breaking it entirely! And if you really do care about me, Senjougahara, you need to be warning me as soon as I exhibit such unhealthy traits!"

"Well, I don't actually care about you, Araragi."

"I didn't think so!"

"If it amuses me, then whatever."

"You're being refreshingly honest right now, in fact!"

"And also, Araragi. If we're being honest, then yes, getting lost was part of why it took me so long to get there, but it was also because I had to eat lunch."

"So you did… You always live up to my expectations. Not that it bothers me, that's your own choice, plus it's who you are."

"I ate lunch for you, too."

"Did you, now… Well, I hope you enjoyed it."

"I did, thank you. It smells like another woman here."

Senjougahara rushed through our pleasantries so that she could drag our conversation back to her very first line.

"Was someone here?" she asked.

"Umm…"

"This scent ─ Hanekawa?"

"Huh? How are you able to figure that out?" I was honestly astonished. I'd assumed Senjougahara had asked on a lark. "When you say 'scent,' do you mean…like her makeup? But I don't think Hanekawa wears any makeup…"

She was wearing her school uniform, after all. I wouldn't be surprised if you told me chapsticks were off-limits in her mind. When she was in those clothes, at least, she was like a soldier in uniform. Hanekawa would never stray from the school rules in such a flagrant manner, not even by accident.

"I'm talking about the scent of the shampoo she uses. I want to say the only girl in our class who uses that brand is Hanekawa."

"Wait, really? Women can figure that out?"

"To some degree," Senjougahara said in an explanatory tone. "Think of it as your ability to identify a girl by her hips, Araragi."

"I don't remember ever displaying that special ability!"

"Oh? Wait, you can't do that?"

"Stop acting surprised!"

"But you were kind enough to tell me the other day, 'Ah, that nice, seated pelvis and those motherly hips of yours. I bet you'll give birth to a bouncing baby boy, geh heh heh heh!'"

"That's what a dirty old man would say!"

Also, it would take a lot more than that to make me go, "Geh heh heh heh!" And while I'm at it, I thought, I wouldn't describe your hips as motherly.

"So, Hanekawa. She was here."

"..."

Did she realize how much she was scaring me?

I almost wanted to run away.

"I guess she was here," I said. "She already left, though."

"Did you call her here, Araragi? Though now that you mention it, she does live in this area, doesn't she? She'd be good to have around as a guide."

"No, I didn't. She just happened to be passing by. Same as you."

"Hmph. Same as me," Senjougahara repeated. "I guess that's how coincidences are. You never know when they might come in pairs. Did Hanekawa say anything?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"Anything."

"…No, not really. We talked a little…and then she patted Hachikuji on the head and went to the library…no, not the library. But she went somewhere."

"Patted her on the head. Hm ─ okay… Well, I could see Hanekawa doing that ─ I suppose?"

"Huh? You mean she likes kids, unlike you?"

"Yes, Hanekawa and I are certainly unlike each other. Yes, we're not the same. We're not the same so if you'll excuse me for a moment, Araragi," Senjougahara said, before moving her face close to mine. I wondered what she was trying to do at first until I realized she seemed to be checking what I smelled like. No, it probably wasn't me she was trying to smell it was probably…

"Hm." She pulled away. "So it looks like there was no love scene between you two."

"…Excuse me? Were you checking if Hanekawa and I were in each other's arms? So you can even detect exactly how strong her scent is… You're incredible, you know that?"

"That wasn't all. Now I know what you smell like, too. I'll at least give you a prior warning that from now on, you should act under the assumption that I'm observing your every move."

"I don't know what to say to that, other than I wish you wouldn't…"

But still, what Senjougahara had done was no trivial feat for the average person, so her sense of smell must have been excellent. But hold on, I thought… I'd fought with Hachikuji not once but twice while Senjougahara was gone. Could her scent really have not rubbed off on me? Maybe Senjougahara wasn't bothering to mention it. Maybe the first fight the two of us had in full view of her was throwing her off. Or Hachikuji could have been using an unscented shampoo. Whatever. It didn't seem to matter.

"So, Oshino told you what was going on, right? Hurry up and tell me, Senjougahara. What do we need to do to get her to where she's trying to go?"

To be honest, Oshino's words had stuck with me all this time ─ I mean the bit about whether or not I'd be lucky enough for missy tsundere (a.k.a. Senjougahara) to come out and tell me.

That is ─ he'd prefaced.

Which is why I found myself coaxing Senjougahara to give me the full story ─ Hachikuji was looking up at Senjougahara worriedly, too.

"It's apparently the other way around," Senjougahara divulged. "Araragi. It seems I need to apologize to you ─ that's what Mister Oshino told me."

"Huh? Oh, wait, have you changed the subject? You really are good at getting off one and onto another. The other way around? You need to apologize to me?"

"To borrow Mister Oshino's words," Senjougahara continued, ignoring my questions. "Say we take a certain fact ─ and two people to observe it according to their points of view and reach different conclusions. In such a case, there's no true way to determine which point of view is the right one there is no way to prove yourself right in this world."

"..."

"But it's equally wrong to determine that you must be mistaken in that case according to him. He really does talk like he sees through everything, doesn't he?"

I hate it, she said.

"Wait… What are you talking about, Senjougahara? Well, not you, but Oshino? How does that apply to our situation here─"

"He says it's very simple to be freed of the snail─the Lost Cow. Explaining it in words would be very simple. This is what Mister Oshino told me ─ you'll be lost as long as you follow the snail, and you won't be lost if you distance yourself from it."

"You follow it ─ and that's why you get lost?"

What was that supposed to mean? It was so simple it didn't make sense. Like he had left some words out. In fact, they seemed somewhat off the mark for him. I looked at Hachikuji, but she wasn't reacting. Senjougahara's words did seem to be having some sort of effect on her, though ─ her lips were shut.

She said nothing.

"In other words, there's no need for an exorcism or for prayer. No one's been possessed, and no one's being harmed─apparently. That much is the same as what happened with me and that crab. And what's more ─ with the snail, the targeted person is actually approaching the aberration. Not unconsciously or subconsciously, either. Entirely of their own volition. They're just going along with the snail. They're choosing to follow after it because that's what they want. And that's why they get lost. Which is why you need to distance yourself from the snail, Araragi ─ that's all that needs to happen."

"Hold on, we're not talking about me here. We're talking about Hachikuji. Anyway, in that case ─ how does that make any sense? It's not like Hachikuji wants to follow this snail around ─ how could that possibly be what she's trying to do?"

"That's what I'm trying to say. Apparently ─ it's the other way around."

The tone of Senjougahara's voice was no different than usual, her same old flat one. You couldn't read any emotions at all from it.

She was no actor.

But ─she seemed to be in a bad mood.

A very bad mood.

"Apparently," she continued, "the aberration known as the Lost Cow doesn't make you lose your way to your destination. You lose it on the way back."

"O-On the way back?"

"It doesn't keep you from getting there, it keeps you from returning ─ according to him."

It wasn't about going ─ but about coming back?

Coming back… Come back to where?

To your own home?

Visiting and ─ arriving?

"Okay, fine," I said. "But ─ so what? I get what you're trying to say. S-Still─Hachikuji's home… It's not as if she's trying to return there, is it? She's clearly trying to get to her destination, Miss Tsunade's home─"

"That's why I need to apologize to you, Araragi. I do, I know I do, but please, let me explain. I wasn't doing it out of malice…or even intentionally. I was sure that I was the one who was mistaken."

"..."

I didn't understand what she was trying to say but.

I could tell─it felt pregnant with meaning.

"How could I not be? There was something strange about me for more than two years. It was only last week that I finally became normal again. So if something happened I couldn't help but think that I was the one who was mistaken."

"Hey…Senjougahara."

"It was like me and the crab ─ the Lost Cow can only be seen by someone who has a reason to. Which is why it presented itself to you, Araragi."

"…No, like I've been saying, the snail didn't present itself to me, but Hachikuji─"

"Yes. Hachikuji."

"..."

"Araragi, this is what I'm trying to say. You felt awkward because it was Mother's Day, you fought with your little sisters, and you don't want to go home. So that girl over there, Hachikuji?"

Senjougahara pointed at Hachikuji.

Or at least, she must have meant to─

Her direction was totally off.

"I can't see her."

I was startled ─ and my eyes hurried over to get a look at Hachikuji.

The little girl with intelligent features.

With bangs so short her eyebrows were showing, with her hair in pigtails.

Seeing her, carrying that large backpack─

She somehow resembled a snail.