“Senjogahara?” Hanekawa tilted her head in response to my question, “Is something the matter with Senjogahara?”
“Nothing like that...” I answered vaguely. “I was just kind of wondering about her.”
“Huh.”
“I mean, you know, isn’t that a weird and interesting name? Hitagi Senjogahara?”
“...You do realize that Senjogahara is the name of a place.”
“Er, no, not that part. I was talking about, um, her given name.”
“Senjogahara’s? You mean Hitagi? Is it that strange? I want to say it’s a term related to construction.”
“You know everything, don’t you?”
“Not everything. I just know what I know.” While Hanekawa didn’t seem fully satisfied with my explanation, instead of pressing me any further, she said, “You’re interested in someone other than yourself, Araragi? "That’s unusual.”
Mind your own business, I told her.
Tsubasa Hanekawa.
The president of our class.
More than that, she’s a girl who embodies what a class president should be. Her prim and proper braids, her glasses, her good manners and good behavior, how incredibly serious and loved by the teachers she is, puts her on the endangered species list in this day and age even if you count manga and anime. The way she holds herself makes you wonder if she’s been a class president her entire life and is going to be one in some capacity even after graduating. In other words, a class president among class presidents. Possibly a class president chosen by the gods. As one person has been rumoring like it’s the unvarnished truth (that would be me).
We were in different classes our first and second years, but for our third year, we were placed together. Though I had heard of her before that, of course I had. If Senjogahara’s grades are among the top in our year, Tsubasa Hanekawa’s are at the very top. She regularly pulls off unbelievable stunts like scoring a perfect 600 across six courses in five core subjects, and yes, I still remember her utterly monstrous results for the first semester finals our second year like it was yesterday, when across every single subject, including P.E. and Art, she missed only one question, a Japanese History fill-in-the-blank. You hear about celebrities like that whether you want to or not.
And.
The nastiest part-okay, I know it’s a good thing, but either way, most annoyingly, Hanekawa is a very caring and decent person. What is actually nasty about her is that she’s very single-minded. As is often the case with too-serious people, once she decides on something, no lever will ever budge her. I already had a brief encounter with Hanekawa during spring break, and afterwards, as soon as our new classes were announced and we found out we’d be together, she declared to me, “I'm gonna make sure you turn your life around.”
I’m no juvenile delinquent, nor really a problem child. I was a mere class ornament, according to my own assessment, so her proclamation struck me like a bolt from the blue. But no amount of convincing could halt her single-minded delusion, and before I knew it, I was appointed class vice president, which is why, at that moment, after school on the eighth of May, I was still in my classroom alone with Hanekawa hashing out what to do for the mid-June culture festival.
“Culture festival or not, we’re third-years now,” Hanekawa said. “We won’t be doing much. Studying for college exams is more important.” Prioritizing exam prep over the culture festival, without batting an eye. Indeed made her a class president among class presidents. “With a vague survey of the suggestions would be all over the board and just a waste of time. We could go ahead and narrow down the options between us and have anyone vote on those. Are you good with that?”
“Why not? It has a nice democratic veneer.”
“You always make things sound so awful, Araragi. Such cynicism.”
“That’s not cynicism. Hey, you’re making me feel like a cartoon sidekick. Tongari, to be exact.”
“For reference, Araragi, what did your class do for the culture festival last year and the year before?”
“A haunted house and a cafe.”
“How standard too standard. You could go so far as to say commonplace.”
“I guess.”
“You could go so far as to say vulgar.”
“Don’t go that far.”
“Ahaha,” she laughed.
“And anyway, wouldn’t it be a good idea to do something commonplace this time around? It’s not all about our visitors, we need to enjoy our day, too... Oh. Come to think of it-Senjogahara didn’t participate in the culture festival either."
Neither last year, nor the year before.
Well, it isn’t just the culture festival. Anything you could call an event, anything other than regular classes, Senjogahara basically skips. Sports day, of course, but also school trips, field trips, educational Visits, the whole bunch of them. Her doctor forbids her from partaking in any strenuous activity-or something. It seemed strange now that I thought about it. Strenuous exercise, I could understand, but the weird nuance of “strenuous activity”—
But if—
If that wasn’t some illusion on my part.
If Senjogahara does not weigh anything.
That ban would definitely apply to any activity at all outside of the classroom, including P.E, where she was liable to come in contact with a large, unspecified number of people. “Are you that interested in Senjogahara?” Hanekawa asked.
“Not really, but-"
“Well, boys do like girls who’re prone to illness. Ugh, yuck. Filthy, filthy,” she teased me. She sounded more sincere than usual, though.
“Prone to illness, huh?”
Sure, she was prone to it.
But was that really an illness?
Was illness it?
Her body being weak, and her being light as a result, made sense-but that went beyond such an explanation.
Thin girl or not, a human being had fallen from close to the top of the stairs to the landing. Normally, it was a situation where even the person catching her could get hurt pretty badly.
And yet—there had been barely any impact.