“Optimistic, huh,” I said.
“Don’t you think?”
“Maybe. On the other hand, why not be optimistic?”
“……”
“It’s not like you’re doing anything wrong or cheating, so be unapologetic about it. Just like now.”
“Like now?” Senjogahara looked puzzled. The lady didn’t seem to realize how unflappable she was. “Hm─not doing anything wrong.”
“Right?”
“I suppose.”
Senjogahara wasn’t done.
“But,” she continued. “But─I might be cheating.”
“Huh?”
“It’s nothing.”
She finished tending to her hair, put away her dryer, and turned to getting dressed again. She searched her drawer for new clothes, having placed on hangers the now-damp shirt and cardigan she’d worn with her hair still wet.
“If I’m reincarnated,” Senjogahara said, “I’d like to be Sergeant Major Kululu.”
“……”
Not only was this unprompted, but I felt her sadistic and self-centered behavior already put her halfway there…
“I know what you want to say,” she accused. “Not only was that unprompted, but I could never in a million years?”
“Well, you got it half right.”
“I knew it.”
“…Couldn’t you have at least said Lance Corporal Dororo?”
“For me, the words ‘trauma switch’ are too close for comfort.”
“I see… But you know─”
“No ifs or bts.”
“What the hell is a ‘bts’?”
You couldn’t even guess the word she’d maybe misspoken.
Naturally, I had no idea what she was trying to say, but even as I thought so, Senjogahara changed the subject.
“Hey, Araragi. Can I ask you something? Not that it really matters.”
“Yeah.”
“What did you mean by ‘like the face of the Moon’?”
“Huh? What’re you talking about?”
“You said it earlier, to Mister Oshino.”
“Umm…”
Ah.
Right, I remembered.
“About the crab,” I explained, “that guy Oshino said it can also be a rabbit or a beautiful woman. That’s what I was talking about. People in Japan see rabbits in the moon, while in other countries they say it’s a crab or a person’s face.”
Well, it’s not that I see anything of the sort, but that’s how the story goes.
“Got it.” Senjogahara nodded along, perking up. “I’m surprised you know such a lame fact. You’ve managed to impress me for the first time ever.”
She said lame.
She said the first time ever.
So I decided to double down.
“Well, I know a thing or two when it comes to astronomy and cosmology. I was really into it for a while.”
“It’s okay, you don’t need to try to act smart with me. I already have you figured out. That’s about the only thing you know, right?”
“You must think ‘verbal abuse’ is just a cute expression.”
“Fine then, go ahead and call the verbal police.”
“……”
I had a feeling that the real police wouldn’t know what to do with her.
“Look,” I insisted, “I’m not that clueless. Um, for example, in Japan it’s a rabbit on the face of the Moon, but do you know why?”
“There aren’t any rabbits on the Moon, Araragi. You’re in high school and you still believe that?”
“Hypothetically speaking.”
Wait. Hypothetically?
Did I mean figuratively?
This wasn’t going so well…
“Once upon a time there was a god, or maybe it was the Buddha, but forget which, let’s just say there was a god. For this god’s sake, a rabbit chose to hop into a fire and to cook itself as a divine offering. Moved by its self-sacrifice, the god pinned its form up on the Moon in the sky so people would never forget the rabbit.”
I was going off of some shaky knowledge salvaged from vague memories of a TV show I’d seen as a child, but I was sure those were the details.
“That was a cruel thing for the god to do,” remarked Senjogahara. “It’s like the rabbit got pilloried.”
“No, it’s not that kind of story.”
“I don’t know about that rabbit, either. Its transparent calculation that a display of self-sacrifice would win the god’s recognition is almost grasping.”
“It absolutely isn’t that kind of story.”
“In any case, it’s not for the likes of me.”
Having said this.
She started taking her top off again, her new one.
“…Are you just proud of your body and trying to show off or what?”
“I’m not so conceited as to be proud of my body. It was just inside out, and backwards, too.”
“That’s almost skilled.”
“I will admit, wearing clothes isn’t my forte.”
“So you’re like a kid.”
“No, they’re heavy.”
“Ack.”
That was thoughtless.
Right, if a bag felt heavy, clothes would too.
If everything had ten times the weight, your clothes were nothing to sneeze at.
I regretted it.
It was an insensitive─a careless thing to say.
“This,” she said, “I might get tired of but never get used to─but you’re actually quite erudite, Araragi. You’ve surprised me. There just might be some brain in that head of yours.”
“Of course there is.”
“Don’t take things for granted… The cranium of an organism like you containing brain matter would be an event bordering on a miracle, all right?”
“Wow, that’s a really mean thing to say.”
“Don’t let it bother you. I’m only stating facts here.”
“I’d say someone in this room deserves to die…”
“What? Hoshina isn’t here, though.”
“Could you possibly have just claimed that a mentor to be respected, our homeroom teacher, deserves to die?!”
“Did the crab, too?”
“Huh?”
“Did it choose to hop into a fire, like the rabbit?”
“O-Oh… Well, I haven’t come across anything about the crab. I wonder if there’s a backstory. I never thought about it… Probably because the Moon has seas on it?”
“There aren’t any seas on the Moon. How could you say that so smugly?”
“What? There aren’t? Weren’t there…”
“So much for your astronomy. They’re not real seas, they’re only called that.”
“Oh…”
Hmmm.
I certainly couldn’t hope to keep up with an actual smart person.
“Oh dear, Araragi, it seems you’ve shown your true colors. How rash of me to posit even for a moment that you possess any knowledge.”
“You must think I’m really stupid.”
“How did you figure that out?!”
“You look genuinely shocked!”
So she thought she was hiding it.
Really?
She lamented, “Because of me, Araragi, you’ve noticed how pitiful your mind is… I feel responsible.”
“Hey, hold on, am I really that severely stupid?”
“Relax. Discriminating against people on account of their grades is something I’d never do.”
“The way you phrased that is already setting off alarm bells!”
“Could you not spray your spittle? I might catch your truncated schooling.”
“We go to the same high school!”
“Yes, but what about after that?”
“Urk…” She had me there.
“A graduate degree for me, while you’re going to drop out of high school.”
“I’ve made it to my senior year and I’m not quitting now!”
“Soon enough, you’ll be crying and begging to be let off.”
“A villain’s line that I only ever hear in comics just rolls off your tongue?!”
“Let’s compare test percentiles. Ninety-ninth for me.”
“Guh…” She beat me to the punch. “Th-Thirty-fifth for me…”
“So zero, if you round.”
“What?! Liar, a five gets… Wait, are you rounding by the tens?! How dare you do that to my percentile!”
She had more than sixty percentage points on me, she was beating a dead horse!
“I don’t feel victorious until I’m up by a hundred points.”
“You’d round yours by the tens, too…”
Merciless.
“So from now on, I don’t want you coming within a 20,000-kilometer radius of me.”
“Did you just order me off the face of the Earth?!”
“By the way, did the god do the rabbit the favor and actually feast on it?”
“Huh? Oh, you’re back to that. Did he feast on it… If you pursued it that far, it would become a tale of the bizarre, okay?”
“It already is, pursued or not.”
“Oh yeah? Why would I know, I’m stupid.”
“Don’t pout. You’re gonna wreck my mood.”
“Are you ever going to start feeling bad for me?”
“Pitying you alone won’t rid the world of war.”
“Don’t be theorizing about the world when you can’t even save a single human being! Start by helping the sad little life in front of you! I know you’re up to it!”
“Hmph. All right, I’ve made up my mind,” Senjogahara said, having dressed herself at last in a white tank top, a white jacket, and a white flared skirt. “If this all goes well, it’s going to be crabs in Hokkaido.”
“I’m pretty sure you can eat crabs without going all the way up to Hokkaido, and I don’t think they’re in season now, but sure, if that’s what you want to do, be my guest.”
“You’re coming with me.”
“Why?!”
“Oh, you didn’t know?” Senjogahara smiled. “Crabs, Araragi, are delicious.”