Stained purple─and I was there in the bathroom.
There in the usual Araragi residence bathroom─having fallen on my butt.
“…Huh?”
Huh?
I stood right up and looked at the mirror, only to find a plain mirror, nothing particularly strange about it─reflecting nothing unusual as it reflected my usual self. I was properly mirrored, and it traced my movements.
An undeniable mirror.
I tried darting around, but it kept up with me─and naturally wasn’t stained purple, either. What kind of mirror took on such a color? No matter how I much gazed at it or rubbed it, it was just a plain old mirror.
Wasn’t there some phenomenon where if you keep on projecting the same photo onto a screen with an overhead projector, the kind you’d find in a school’s AV room, the emitted light gets burned on and doesn’t vanish even after you turn the power off? Could what just took place be similar?
Maybe I was just seeing things.
A waking dream? I might hallucinate Hanekawa, but would I really hallucinate me?
Who knew, contrary to my belief that I’d woken myself up by washing my face, maybe I was still half asleep─thinking so, I decided to finish the job and washed my face again, carefully.
Yes, with some refreshing cold water─but no.
That’s what I tried to do, but I must’ve turned the wrong handle on the faucet because I ended up washing my face with scalding water. I accidentally put myself in a variety-show scenario, but it did even more to wake me up than if I’d used cold water, so it was an acceptable outcome.
Hm.
Looking up again, I still found nothing but a plain mirror─the mirror was a mirror, and just a mirror. I’d panicked like I’d encountered yet another aberrational phenomenon, but I suppose such dramatic occurrences aren’t common.
I had to admit it felt somehow anticlimactic, or even the slightest bit disappointing, but now that I’d brought an end to my involvement with Ogi, I did want to live in peace for at least a short while.
I’d called out for Shinobu for no good reason, but it looked like I hadn’t woken up the nocturnal girl, fortunately. No reaction came from my shadow.
Well, that was good to know. There was no telling how many donuts I’d have to treat the spoilt little girl to if I’d summoned her for no good reason. She was a reliable little girl but came at a high price.
Yes, I’d only seen a shadow and mistaken it for a ghost.
Actually, forget about shadows. How hopeless was I to let my own reflection scare me? While Koyomi Araragi may have spent a year fighting tooth and nail against countless aberrations, he was indeed but a shadow of his former self.
Appalled and disgusted, I picked up a towel and began drying down my hair─my self in the mirror moved in the exact same way, of course, and as he reached out for the hairdryer in the drawer with his left hand, me with my right…
“ ”
A voice came from the bath─followed by the sound of the door opening.
It was Karen, the older of my two little sisters.
Huh?
I thought I’d checked before washing my face, but I guess she’d been bathing─where had she hidden that big body of hers? Our bath is of a very standard size, unlike in the anime─had she dived underwater or what?
I take back my earlier statement, she’s always going to be a child. I turned to face her, but then…
“Hm?”
I was left at a loss for words─no, maybe it all made sense now. Maybe you could say in that case, of course she could’ve hidden, not just in the tub but anywhere in the room. Karen Araragi, my little sister who’d long outgrown her big brother in height, approaching six feet and still growing.
Karen Araragi’s head─was far below mine.
“ ”
While I was speechless, Karen simply had nothing special to say as she pointed at a bath towel atop a shelf─her finger hardly making it up to my face.
She could’ve reached it if she stood on her tiptoes, but she always knew how to make work for my idle hands─okay, it’s an exaggeration that her head was far below mine, but still.
Was she even five foot tall?
She was shorter than Tsukihi… Maybe about Sengoku’s height?
“ ”
Suspicious at last about the way I was sizing her up, she twisted her fresh-from-the-bath body.
“Uh, no,” I said, not sure how to reply. I handed her the towel for the time being.
“”
Karen took it and began wiping herself down but finished in no time given how little surface area she had.
“ ”
“S-Sure,” her big brother obeyed like some kind of servant.
I might have continued to if she asked me to dress her next, but I couldn’t stay confused forever.
“Um, Karen…right?” I asked as I handed the girl her underwear.
“ ” she answered as if I was making no sense─Karen Araragi.
Yes. Of course.
I could never mistake a member of my family even after a height or size change, but fully acknowledging that fact─if I may, while teenagers get taller, it’s highly uncommon for them to get shorter.
Overnight too.
“…”
Not even Karen ordered me to put the bra on her, and as I watched her do it herself, I came upon an awful possibility. Wasn’t she about this height back in elementary?
An elementary-aged Karen had─no, no.
Ridiculous. Impossible.
Where was the demand for a lolita Karen?
A child forever, literally? That role belonged to someone, but not her.
As that thought went through my head, I asked, my voice nonchalant: “Karen, how old are you turning next birthday again?”
She fastened the hook of her bra and looked at me, her eyes expecting a birthday present (my aching heart).
“” she replied.