Well, I wasn’t going toe-to-toe with anyone if I ran, but anyway, I had the presence of mind to spring back. I’d have sprained my right index finger otherwise.
If I were lucky, actually. My finger could’ve broken─into multiple pieces.
Because what pushed back wasn’t strictly speaking the button, but rather the gatepost behind it─no, not even the gatepost. The doorphone and the gatepost were simply destroyed by the pressure applied to the other side.
And sure enough, what came sticking out of the pulverized post─was a fist.
“Ah…”
It flew too fast for the human eye to perceive it as such, and I must have recognized it only because I was familiar with it.
A fist─a paw. Because I knew about that Monkey’s Paw…
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
I’d like you to know that the scream wasn’t mine.
Honestly, I was so dumbstruck I couldn’t even scream─in other words, the cry belonged to the girl who appeared from the other side of the gate along with the Monkey’s Paw.
A cry─be it a girl’s, or a beast’s.
“R…”
I finally began to speak.
It wasn’t raining, or the least bit cloudy─but a figure in a hooded raincoat and rubber boots came crashing through where the gate once stood, and I spoke her name.
“Rainy Devil!”
No. Should I still have called her Suruga Kanbaru?
“A…aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” roared the Rainy Devil─or Suruga Kanbaru.
Before saying, just as before:
“I─I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you─”
“…!”
Baths were the least of my worries.
If anything, I needed to avoid a bloodbath, but too stunned even to mumble that quip, I straddled the BMX─I couldn’t believe it.
A lukewarm setup? Give me a break.
A highly hazardous aberration had shown up in the middle of the day─how much of a beatdown had I received at the hands of this demon monkey last May?
I also lost one of my favorite rides back then─I began to pedal, swearing I wouldn’t lose the borrowed BMX and let history repeat itself to that degree.
Pedaling for dear life, dammit!
What kind of a world was this?!
Of all the things to happen, for the Rainy Devil to reappear because Kanbaru got mirrored…
“I─”
At my back, a voice that should’ve been distant…
“I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you!”
Grew closer.
I knew I shouldn’t look back. I needed to focus only on moving forward, but my fear got the better of me and I turned my head─I really shouldn’t have.
Wall-running.
The Rainy Devil ran perpendicular to the wall surrounding the Kanbaru residence as she chased after me. Each step she took crushed and demolished the white surface, turning it into flour-like dust.
What a terrifying musclehead.
If there was any saving grace, she wore boots─and couldn’t gather the kind of speed she could in running shoes.
Still, she seemed faster than the flipped BMX’s top speed, and the distance between us continued to shrink─this was bad. Since my link to Shinobu had been cut and nothing about me was vampiric, I hadn’t the durability to withstand a blow from the Monkey’s Paw.
At this rate, I’d die in this nonsensical world before ever finding out if I’d gotten into college─come on, this inconsistency went too far! How could she have lived until now as the Rainy Devil? This was who Miss Hachikuji chummily called “Suruga”?!
I cursed and complained as I turned the handlebars─steering at this velocity was all but impossible, but I might earn myself some time if I veered away from the wall-running Kanbaru.
Fortunately, BMX bikes were made for acrobatic tricks, and I needed to resort to stunts if she beat me on speed.
But no, I soon learned how shortsighted my idea was.
A misconception.
I should’ve known that her legs’ true power lay not in their speed, but in their jumping skills. The Rainy Devil kicked off the Kanbaru residence to leap parallel to the ground─thereby following my turn and still chasing straight after me.
Depending on how you looked at it, it was a vertical jump.
She caught up to me─passed me.
“I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate─!”
Her hatred only grew.
Packing it into her balled left fist, she descended in front of me and, still midair, swung it in my direction─wait, her left fist?
Huh? I forgot to hit the brakes, or even to take my hands off the handlebars to guard my vitals─her left hand?
No, that was how it went.
The paw Kanbaru once wished upon was a left hand. The original and authentic item had been a right hand, but the memento bequeathed to her by Toé Gaen, her mother, was a southpaw.
Kanbaru had kept her left arm wrapped up in bandages every day at all hours─because underneath was the furry limb of a beast, the price she’d paid for wishing upon an aberration.
As the Rainy Devil too─it was her left arm, as she wore a raincoat and tall rubber boots, that wrecked my body and my mountain bike.
The impression had been so strong that I hadn’t noticed, but…it didn’t make sense, did it? Even if you accepted that she’d become the Rainy Devil in this mirrored land─wouldn’t her paw be her right hand?
Right hand, left hand.
Because mirrors─flip left and right.
If the original was a left hand.
Then it needed to be a right hand.
“─I! Hate! Youuuu! Ihateyouihateyouihateyouihateyouihateyouihateyou─!”
That was as far as my thoughts got.
As Kanbaru’s howls gradually collapsed in on themselves, perhaps due to the Doppler effect, I rode right into the incomprehensible left hand─its destructive power had smashed a gate into dust and would surely reduce my body to putty.
“Heh…” I had to laugh.
I couldn’t believe it. Despite Ogi’s lectures, I was still hopeless─after all this time.
Suruga Kanbaru.
I don’t want to die, but maybe it’s not so bad if it’s you, I found myself thinking─Koyomi Araragi is such a lost cause that it made me want to laugh, and to weep.
You were right, Ogi. But you know, even this late in the game, even in another world, my junior Kanbaru─is someone I just can’t bring myself to hate.
“ihateyouihateyouihateyouihateyouihateyouihateyouihateyouihateyouihateyouihateyouihateyouihateyouihateyouihateyouihateyouihate─” “─myaaaahahahahahaha!”
Then.
The monkey’s cry was joined by a cat’s.
And I─was scooped up, bicycle and all.