Hitagi Crab (Part 3)

Exiting the classroom and closing the door behind me, I took a step forward, when I heard a voice at my back.

"What were you discussing with Hanekawa?"

I turned to face it.

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

"Don't move."

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

The blade of a box cutter.

Pressed snugly against the inside of my left cheek.

"…ck!"

"Actually, no. I should have said, 'You can move, but it would be very risky.'"

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

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

Scary, I thought.

Not about the box cutter's blade.

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

So she─

She was someone with such a hazardous gaze.

I was convinced.

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

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

"H-Hey…"

"What's the matter? Is the right side feeling lonely? Why didn't you say so?"

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

Senjougahara held a stapler in her left hand.

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

Then, gently ─ it clamped.

As though to staple.

"K…ha…"

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

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

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

Talk about the rug getting pulled out from under me.

I blink my eyes ─ and this happens.

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

Hanekawa…

Senjougahara's family name "might make her seem fraught with danger at first"? She lived up to her name perfectly…

Hanekawa was a worse judge of character than I thought!

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

"...…"

I couldn't speak.

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

"...…"

Even though I was in a fix, hearing a fair teenage maiden utter the word "fart" felt wrong to me. Maybe I'm a sweet guy after all.

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

"...…"

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

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

"You've noticed, haven't you," Senjougahara asked me.

Her gaze was still hazardous.

A cloistered princess? Yeah, right.

"That's right ─ I don't weigh a thing."

She weighed nothing.

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

So fifty kilograms.

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

"...gh!"

"No funny thoughts. You were imagining me in the nude just now, weren't you?"

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

"An average body weight in the high forties, in kilograms," Senjougahara insisted.

She wasn't going to budge on that one.

"But my actual body weight is five kilograms."

Five kilograms.

Not much more than a newborn baby.

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

Catching her would be a piece of cake.

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

Did that mean…

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

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

So it couldn't have been that.

A question of numbers, it wasn't.

"I know what you're thinking," she said.

"..."

"Staring at my boobs like that. Disgusting."

"...ck!"

I wasn't thinking about that, I promise!

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

"This is why I can't stand superficial people."

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

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

"..."

"It happened after ─ I met a crab."

C-Crab?

Did she just say "a crab"?

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

Those arthropods, classified under Crustacea Decapoda?

"It took my weight away ─ all of it."

"..."

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

Senjougahara spoke my name, and repeated it.

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

"..."

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

"..."

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

A box cutter.

A stapler.

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

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

"...…"

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

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

Arriving late, leaving early, simply not showing up.

And ─ the health teacher.

I tried putting myself in Senjougahara's shoes.

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

What did she resign herself to?

What did she give up on?

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

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

"..."

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

And then.

Senjougahara smiled.

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

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

Having no choice, I nodded.

I nodded to her twice.

"There."

Upon seeing this ─ Senjougahara seemed to relax.

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

"Thank you," she said.

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

She retracted the box cutter's blade.

Click-click-click-click.

Next, the stapler.

"…Ngeek?!"

Ka-chunk.

I couldn't believe it.

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

I crumpled into a ball on the spot.

Cradling my cheek, from outside.

"Gh…urrk…"

"You're not going to scream? Impressive," Senjougahara said above me, as if she hadn't done a thing.

Looking down on me.

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

"…Y-You─"

Ka-chunk.

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

A deformed staple fell before my eyes.

I couldn't help but flinch.

A reflex, if you will.

I'd been classically conditioned in a single go.

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

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

"Sh-She's like some devil."

Our brains were structured in ─ fundamentally different ways.

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

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

"...…"

Good.

I was okay, it hadn't punched through.

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

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

But it was fine.

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

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

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

I seemed to be spurting blood.

"Kh…ahh…"

I was fine.

This much ─ I could take fine.

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

"Hm? You're still here, Araragi?"

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

She seemed to be done.

Why couldn't she have come sooner?

Or maybe her timing was right.

"Don't you need to hurry to Mister Oshino's?" Hanekawa asked suspiciously.

She hadn't noticed a thing, it seemed.

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

"Hey, Hanekawa… Do you like bananas?"

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

"Even if you love them, don't ever have them at school!"

"E-Excuse me?"

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

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

Of course she did.

"Anyway, Araragi, what about Mister─"

"I'm going to Oshino's ─ as we speak."

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

I ran.

I just ran.

I turned the corner to reach the stairs.

I was on the fourth floor.

She couldn't have gone that far yet.

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

I could feel the impact in my legs.

An impact commensurate to my weight.

Then this impact, too─

Senjogahara had to be lacking.

She weighed nothing.

She had no weight.

Which meant ─ her footing wasn't secure.

A crab.

A crab, she'd said.

"Not this way ─ this way."

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

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

Senjougahara was there.

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

With a cold look.

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

"A first…"

She'd done it to others, too?

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

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

And she'd said "so far," hadn't she?

Maybe she really was some devil.

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

She was speaking from experience.

Too scary.

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

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

"Let's have ourselves a war."

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

...

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

I personally saw the super glue as the most dangerous.

"W-Wait, wait, no. We're not having a war," I said.

"We're not? Oh, well."

She sounded a bit disappointed.

But her arms were still outstretched.

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

"Then what do you want?"

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

"Help me out?"

From the bottom of her heart, it seemed─

She sneered like I was a fool.

No, maybe she was angry.

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

"..."

"Generosity, too ─ I will deem as hostile behavior."

With those words, she climbed one step.

She had to be serious.

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

And that's why.

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

My right cheek, with my right hand.

Naturally, this exposed the inside of my mouth.

"Wha-"

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

"You ─ how did…"

I could tell even before she'd asked.

Yes.

The taste of blood was already gone.

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