I arrived at school.
I passed through the gates decorated for graduation and headed toward the bike racks─to find Tsubasa Hanekawa waiting there.
Maybe model students were exemplary in terms of stamina too. Outwardly, at least, she’d made a complete recovery from last night’s state of exhaustion─even the bags under her eyes had vanished. I was impressed.
“Good morning, Araragi.”
“Good morning, Hanekawa─so you made it to graduation. I thought you’d be dead all of today.” Was tough even the right word? Who knew, maybe she was the most immortal of us all. “And you’re in the bike lot because…”
“I was waiting for you, of course─there’s a lot I want to talk to you about.”
“Yeah?”
“I need to leave as soon as the ceremony is over, so I thought this would be the only time we could really talk.”
“…”
What an active girl. If she was going to say that, I needed to talk to her too─about a mountain of things. Or rather, I wanted to compare answers with her.
“Do you have a plane to catch? Is that why you’re leaving so soon?”
“Mm. Mmm. Well,” Hanekawa demurred somewhat. She ran her fingers through her hair, now significantly longer since she cut it during first term─it wasn’t speckled, of course, because she dyed it black for school. “In bringing Mister Oshino back from Antarctica, I kind of sold off my brain.”
“You sold your brain…”
What the heck─that didn’t sound safe, at all.
“Jet-setting, I guess you’d say?” she went on. “That’s about the only way I could charter a fighter plane─don’t worry. I sold it to a relatively scrupulous agency.”
“…”
What kind of international adventure had she gone on, exactly?
But no surprise that she was outsized in the real world too.
It felt quite strange in the first place for her to be at school in a uniform─though this would be my last time seeing her in her school uniform.
I felt like I should ogle her when I thought about it that way.
Ogle, ogle.
“Don’t make me knock you down.”
“Yikes.”
Was it overseas, too, where she acquired this level of defense?
If she’d learned how to fight, she was perfect at this point.
“Speaking of fighting,” I said, “Miss Kagenui seems to be at the North Pole. It took Miss Gaen all of five minutes to find out after she learned Oshino’s location.”
“Oh─I decided to go with the continental choice out of a vague hunch, but I guess I wouldn’t have been wrong if I’d chosen the North Pole,” remarked Hanekawa, the tension seeming to leave her shoulders─that part really must have been a gamble.
If you were separating Oshino and Miss Kagenui, though, she had to be the one at the North Pole─she couldn’t walk on the ground, after all. Ogi had no choice but to send her there where it was all icebergs and no ground.
“Ononoki wanted to go get her, but apparently Miss Kagenui is having a blast fighting polar bears, a training method I’ve heard of somewhere, and is fine for now,” I told Hanekawa.
“What an incredible lady… I’m glad I didn’t end up going there. Wait, then what about Ononoki? What’s she doing now? Has she left our town, like Miss Gaen and Mister Oshino?”
I shook my head at the question. “She’s still at my house.”
“That’s…”
Hanekawa had a subtle look on her face.
And I couldn’t blame her.
I did realize that Ononoki’s prediction that Miss Kagenui had gone off on a journey to better herself, while still wrong, wasn’t too far off the mark. Maybe she’d come closest to the truth.
I hate admitting that.
“I guess it’s more like Miss Gaen and Oshino left too suddenly─adults are always so busy,” I said.
All too soon.
The way Miss Gaen took off with an “Alrighty, bye-bye” after installing Hachikuji as the god of Kita-Shirahebi and sealing Shinobu back into my shadow was one thing, but before I knew, Oshino had left without a word yet again─as if to disappear along with the ruins Ogi had created.
Truly like some mirage, he flat-out, flatly vanished.
Without the time to so much as reminisce before parting anew─but we’d been reunited after he’d gone all the way out to the South Pole, so I knew we’d meet again in the not-too-distant future.
Still, scramming before I could even thank him for everything, including the Tadatsuru business, was pretty unforgivable.
And in this way─whatever way this is─I gained custody of Ononoki for the time being, pending the conclusion of Miss Kagenui’s training. Assuming Miss Gaen hadn’t just forgotten the familiar, maybe it meant continued surveillance.
I’m not complaining. I did mess up.
Personally, I felt like I’d cleaned things up, but not everyone out there would agree.
Least of all, her─myself.
“Adults… Aren’t we also going to be adults starting tomorrow?” asked Hanekawa.
“Hitagi and I will still be students. You’re the only one becoming an adult.”
“Hitagi?” I thought I’d dished out a snappy line but had only slipped up, and Hanekawa latched onto my misstep gleefully. “Huh, I see. I see─while I was gone.”
“Wait, wait, wait. Don’t jump to any conclusions. It hasn’t gone as far as you might be imagining.”
“Good, good─I can leave with my mind at ease,” Hanekawa said and started walking.
She’d wanted to talk to me before she left Japan again─was that it? She really cared about her friends…or just worried too much.
You could say she’d singlehandedly solved everything this time─indeed, everything since August. Forget about due credit, maybe it was all hers.
Exactly a year ago.
If I hadn’t met Hanekawa then, what would my last year of high school have been like? I couldn’t help but get sentimental.
Not making friends.
Because it’d lower my intensity as a human─leaving those words behind, I might’ve graduated alone, in silence (or failed to).
It might’ve been fine in its own way. But now, I could only picture this way.
“Oh…right.”
“Hm? What’s the matter, Araragi?”
“Well, I know it’s a little late to bring it up, but I noticed something… The reason Miss Gaen was so sure Ogi would make a move on Tsukihi on March fourteenth.”