The epilogue.
The following day, March fifteenth. The morning of my graduation ceremony.
Roused from bed by my little sisters Karen and Tsukihi as usual, I began walking to school for the last time─or rode my bike. Turning the pedals, yes sir, this feeling. It was the BMX Ogi had lent Tsukihi. Of course, I had to return the bike and could only use it today, but the comfort of riding one after so long was like a rich, ripe reward for making it to the future called today, to graduation.
If you’re curious, when I saw Tsukihi in the morning, she’d forgotten about the reappearance of a cram school that should’ve burned down. Are you serious, I wondered, just how bad is your memory, but to be more precise, she seemed to have filed it away as “one of those mysterious things that happen in life.”
I guess my littler little sister’s days were more colored by trouble than I thought─maybe she couldn’t be bothered about every low-risk event, and I was genuinely worried that starting next school year, she and Karen would be split between middle and high schools.
Despite my sweet dreams of finding my own lodgings in college, even of cohabiting with Hitagi, I couldn’t leave home right away when I thought about my little sister.
What’s more, her case, the phoenix, wasn’t really solved.
And I doubted Hitagi would want to leave her father anyway─not to mention, all of this needed to wait until my exam results were out. In fact, if Ogi’s talk about my answer sheet being a question off was true, leaving for college was a pipe dream. I could even see myself diving straight into a job hunt.
Then again, my parents might just kick me out of the house if I’d failed.
“By the way, Tsukihi, what was your wish? You know, with that hair?”
She’d started growing it out at some point, not that I was one to talk, so I brought it up as I was heading out.
A loose end that hadn’t been tied up.
I’d heard a while back that she was growing it out as part of some kind of wish but realized she never told me what the wish was. If she was still growing it out, it must not have come true yet.
“Oh, right. I guess I can cut it already─I forgot I’d been making a wish to begin with.”
“Now I really want to know just how bad your memory is.”
“I actually made wishes about you getting into college, and about Nadeko─call it a pray-hair to the gods.”
If they exist, I mean, qualified Tsukihi.
What? I had a sneaking suspicion it had to do with me, but Sengoku, too? As her older brother, I seriously needed to learn from her example when it came to friendship.
“Your exams are over one way or another, and Nadeko’s doing better─yeah. Maybe there is a god.”
“Yeah. Since yesterday.”
“Hm?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Okay,” Tsukihi said, easily convinced.
I was dropping a hint, did she just not care? How grand for a petite girl.
“Maybe I’ll get a matching haircut with Nadeko once you find out you passed. Since the Fire Sisters are disbanding, maybe I’ll team up with her next… And you, aren’t you going to cut your hair?”
“Well, you know,” I answered vaguely─touching the fang marks etched deep into the back of my neck, around my nape.
So the fate of her long grown-out hair depended on my test results─but I wasn’t going to think about that today. Today was graduation.
I’d honestly considered dropping out at one point, but I’d made it. Right now, that alone was enough to fill my bosom.
…Oh, and I’d talked to Karen in the morning too.
Siblings talking a lot is a good thing.
“Big Brother, Big Brother. I can’t canoodle with you after next month since I’ll be a high schooler, so let’s feed each other mouth-to-mouth one last time!”
“…”
I worried about this little sister too. Was she punch-drunk from her hundred-person sparring?
I’d never asked her if she beat all of them. I didn’t want to be any more scared of her than I already was.
“Then afterwards, we can brush each other’s teeth!”
“No, brush up on how people with brains act… Um, listen, Karen. Are you planning on fighting for justice even in high school─even after Tsuganoki Second’s Fire Sisters disband?”
“Say no more!” she assured me, sticking out her noticeably larger breasts─I guess her chest was just as full as mine? Though I believe the expression she wanted was needless to say, not say no more…
If she cared, that is.
“Karen. In that case, pause to reflect here and try to sum up your three middle-school years. What did righteousness mean to you in the end?”
“Hrrm?”
“Righteousness. Justice. What is it?”
Doing the right thing? Righting wrongs? Perhaps deciding which side is right?
I tossed a question thrown my way by Ogi straight over to my little sister─cast it to the next generation.
I saw the Fire Sisters’ justice as poetic justice, the defeating of bad guys, but wondered what they saw themselves as performing─and how she planned to proceed.
“Helping people.”
Making no attempt to understand my question, Karen responded reflexively─a straightforward and easy-to-understand answer, hard to argue with, but just as hard to carry out. That was her answer.
“Oh,” I said.
I climbed on a nearby chair, reached out my hand, and patted her head (can’t reach without climbing one).
A submissive gesture for vampires, all it signified here was affection for my awful little sister.
“Well, why don’t you start by helping yourself?”
You better.
That’s how our conversation went─but whatever happened, my bigger little sister’s high school life probably wouldn’t suck like mine.
May Karen Araragi continue to be unbroken by righteousness…
So I happily creaked along, pedaling an unfamiliar bicycle, when a figure stood before me that I recognized at once─a pigtailed fifth grader wearing a large backpack.
Had I come up on her from behind, I might have spent another five pages pretending to hesitate, like a true virtuoso, before going to embrace her, but sadly she was facing me and walking in my direction.
Even I couldn’t tackle that.
“Hey, Hachikuji,” I called out to her like a normal person.