In essence, you could call it a magic charm.
A trifling one that an elementary school girl might use─Kanbaru’s home clearly has a lot of history to it, so it’d be odd for there not to be a tradition or two of the sort.
A year had already passed since I first heard of it, so I couldn’t describe the specifics. I want to say it went something like this, though: the surface of the water in her home’s cypress-wood bath reflected, on occasion, the image of the person you’d marry one day.
The legend is so cute even I hesitate to make any uncouth jokes or jabs about it, and I had to wonder if I should really be looking to it for help─but it was a different story when I considered that Toé Gaen, mother to Suruga Kanbaru, and older sister to Izuko Gaen, was tied to this legend.
It took on a very different complexion.
Though she’d passed away, her involvement in our storyline would utterly change the course of the tale─in fact, it’s not an overstatement to say that she had something to do with the majority of the aberrations I’d experienced as a high school student.
Even if the legend came straight from the Kanbarus, to hear that Kanbaru’s father once saw a vision of Toé Gaen in that water’s surface assured there was something about the wood bath.
Something.
It was worth a try, at least.
This was like Nobita and the Steel Troops, where he uses the bath in Shizuka’s home to travel to another world. Hoping that it connected back to my world was expecting too much─but couldn’t it work as a communication tool?
If I looked at the surface and saw someone other than me, wouldn’t I be able to leave a message?
If you saw whoever you were going to marry in the future, I absolutely wanted it to be Hitagi there in the water, but if it just meant a lifelong partner, maybe I’d rather it be Shinobu─it’d be quicker that way.
I might not see anyone, of course.
I might just see my own stupid face reflected─but it did seem far more productive than staring into the bathroom mirror at my own home.
“Okay, then you go visit Suruga’s─I’ll go searching for other possibilities, just in case. I don’t have any ideas left, but maybe other gods will have other ideas,” Miss Hachikuji said, approving my plan. I had to admit, she might have matured, and we may have been in another world, but she was still such a good person, offering even to use her divine network.
Though…it did give me pause that Hachikuji simply called her “Suruga” in this mirrored land. Given their respective ages, it was appropriate─I really shouldn’t be worrying myself over consistency.
In any case, I climbed down the mountain alone and began pedaling the BMX to Kanbaru’s─and arrived in no time, as it wasn’t far.
Once I knew that left and right were reversed, I had an easy enough time riding the bike. I’d also grown accustomed to seeing the flipped-around world. Humans can adapt to anything.
If I got too used to this world, though, it’d be a hassle once I returned─I’d end up only being able to write backwards, and soon my nickname would be Leonardo da Vinci.
People might start touting me as a universal genius.
I’d feel so self-conscious.
The Kanbaru residence─or rather, estate was so grand I almost felt like calling it the Kanbaru mansion. Some said it contained eleven TV sets.
I entered the “residence” about twice a month to clean up Kanbaru’s room (and borrowed their cypress tub a number of times─the reason I was just barely able to recall it) but still shrink every time I stand in front of its gates.
Perhaps there were some things humans don’t adapt to─and the gate had been flipped around as well, with even the doorphone on the opposite side.
Opposite.
The world fully mirrored.
It’d be hard to explain, but you can’t just barge into someone else’s bath (no matter how well you know the person). I needed to get Kanbaru’s permission first…but was having trouble summoning the nerve to hit the call button.
I needed her permission, but come to think of it, in this mirrored world Kanbaru might be a completely different character from the junior I knew…
Going by the stats I’d compiled, cases like Tsukihi’s, where someone hadn’t changed, were in the minority. In the past I hadn’t felt too reserved about relying on my close friend Kanbaru (what kind of a senior was I?), but nothing guaranteed she’d be the candid, gallant person who never failed to lend a helping hand.
I may respect you as a senior, Araragi-senpai, but letting you use my bath is out of the question, she might say, without any feeling even.
I’d never recover if I heard that from Kanbaru, in a different world or not. I’d carry the baggage for the rest of my life.
It kept my finger from hitting the button, but then…
“Pfft,” I laughed─why was I worried?
Aside from Tsukihi, all the girls─whether it was Karen or Ononoki or Hachikuji─differed from the versions I knew but hadn’t changed fundamentally as people.
Grownup Hachikuji was still helping me out. Ononoki’s expressiveness exposed her nasty personality to the world, but you could say she was the same as ever.
Flipped around or reversed, they were still them─and Kanbaru would be too.
We had a relationship of trust, didn’t we?
Why be so negative, anyway? In fact, the trait that always gave me pause might be turned around and canceled out.
A Kanbaru who isn’t sex-obsessed.
A Kanbaru who isn’t a masochist.
A Kanbaru who isn’t shameless.
A Suruga Kanbaru who fancies just literature, always has her underwear on, and quietly walks along the sidewalk; considerate to the untalented, not prying when speaking to the timid, and ever-prudent─okay, she’d be unrecognizable at that point.
While I loved her boyish ways, I’d have no other chance of seeing her act gracefully. I felt excited when I thought about it that way.
Just what kind of Kanbaru would she be─yeah, why overthink this?
Maybe I’d find that I guessed exactly right. I’m not bad at reasoning.
After all the serious battles I’d recently faced, it didn’t hurt to have the emotional wherewithal to enjoy laidback twists.
True, being transported to another world was unbelievably huge, but why not be a big man who welcomed such a crisis? The kind who quipped as bullets flew by.
I’d be like Space Pirate Cobra.
I made up my mind and used my Psychogun, or actually just my plain finger, to press the button─I think I pressed it.
But.
Something pressed back.
“…?!”
A fleeting moment.
I had no idea what had happened─of course not. Who, in modern-day Japan, ever pressed a button that pressed back? In any age or world, as a matter of fact, but I hadn’t survived so many battles for nothing.
I’d been to hell and back, I played with fire without getting burned.
Even with what you might call zero fighting abilities, I could go toe-to-toe with anyone thanks to my first-rate danger avoidance─which is to say, skill at running away.