Toé Gaen.
A name that has come up many times─but not someone I ever imagined popping up, which is why I hadn’t introduced her properly.
Suruga Kanbaru’s mother.
Izuko Gaen’s older sister.
The individual who left Kanbaru the Monkey’s Paw, the only person in this world for whom Izuko Gaen, the woman who knows everything, feels any awe and fear.
And─she’s deceased.
Deceased… Right, she ought to have died in a traffic accident along with her husband, Kanbaru’s grandparents’ eldest son… So why was she here?
Why was she here now, bathing with me?
“Ah, sorry about that, sorry about threatening you. I never thought you’d be Suruga’s senior, is all. You should’ve just told me in that case,” Ms. Toé said in a laidback tone, with a hearty laugh─was laidback even the right word? She still wasn’t making any attempt to hide her body…
She knew her breasts were hanging out in the open, didn’t she?
Unable to leave due to this turn of events, I sat back down in the bath─sinking down to my shoulders, hiding as much of my body as I could, in contrast to Ms. Toé.
Call it unmanly, but I can’t say I’m positive about my body.
“Araragi, was it? So, how’s Suruga at school? I bet that idiot’s getting into nothing but a bunch of stupid trouble.”
“U-Um…”
Forget school, she was fighting an idiotically savage battle out on the front lawn─did Ms. Toé not know?
Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that people in this world acted in inconsistent ways, but then I was a confused mess─not having prepared myself emotionally for a hot-tub experience with my junior’s mom.
And wait, wasn’t she way too young?
I couldn’t be sure because she lacked the surprisingly important factor in determining someone’s age, namely, clothes…but how old was she, again? Was I told at some point that she was several years older than Miss Gaen?
Hard to say when she was fully au naturel, both in attire and makeup, but Miss Gaen had such a babyface she didn’t look above thirty, and maybe the same went for her older sister? Either way, I suck at guessing women’s ages even when they aren’t naked. Or perhaps─
Perhaps I was seeing her as she was when she passed away in the accident. Like with Hachikuji in my world… Possible if this lady was a ghost.
Damn, I couldn’t think straight.
My thoughts were all jumbled up─you couldn’t blame me, with a naked lady right in front of me, but I needed to get ahold of myself.
“…”
I decided to approach the situation like a test and begin with the questions I did know the answers to. With the easiest bits─first off, was this person really Toé Gaen, Kanbaru’s mother?
Given the illogic and inconsistency of this world, trusting her self-reported info seemed to be my only choice, really.
But well, if you asked…I guess she looked similar?
To Miss Gaen, and to Kanbaru.
Personality-wise, she was definitively bolder, or less sensitive, but her build was similar: short and slim. She looked closer to Miss Gaen, if I had to pick one─didn’t that make genetic sense for sisters? At the same time, Kanbaru had inherited her intense, driven eyes, her eyebrows, and more…
“Wow. You’ve got some nerve, ogling me like that. Just how thirsty are you?”
“Huh? N-No, I wasn’t. Your face…” She’d misinterpreted my gaze (really, it was a misinterpretation), but her understandable reaction made me stammer. “I was looking at your face. I-I was just thinking how much you and Kanbaru look alike.”
“Oh, she looks like me? Keheheh. I see, so her breasts have gotten this big.”
“Er, no, like I said, your face…”
Come on, I’ve never seen Kanbaru’s boobs. Just barely, but I haven’t.
Hm? Hold on, something was off about this last exchange─she didn’t know about Kanbaru’s breasts getting bigger?
“…”
“Mm. Ha. Does it really matter if I didn’t know?” Ms. Toé seemed to intuit my doubts. I suppose she and her little sister, Miss Gaen, had different values.
Well, maybe values overstated her lackadaisical attitude, but the big sis of a little sis who knew everything laughing that what you knew didn’t really matter was…unfortunate.
Actually, I was remembering some stuff now, and this lady seemed pretty different from the image Miss Gaen had given me of her older sister…an extremely self-critical, austere person if I recalled correctly. I didn’t see a hint of that.
She was an approachable mom─well, okay, even an approachable mom didn’t normally bathe with her daughter’s senior from school. Of course, I couldn’t fault her or say there was anything wrong with her since I was a trespasser who could easily be handed over to the cops otherwise.
Family members don’t always see one another as others do─and come to think of it, Miss Gaen’s characterization of me was off the mark too. She thought I was stoic and no different from her big sister.
Maybe knowing everything didn’t necessarily make you a good judge of character.
“Oh, no, I only calmed down after I got married─after I found myself a man, in other words,” Ms. Toé answered before I could speak, seeming to anticipate my queries again.
No, hold on. Wasn’t she a little too good at it? I wasn’t planning on asking her anything that personal… If she’d seen it in my expression, then my face was far too eloquent.
“While I say I calmed down, I never got as lukewarm as this setup, so give a girl a pass─things happen once you become an adult, okay? Being told that I haven’t changed one bit since the old days might make me happy, but it isn’t true.”
“Okay… Hm?”
A lukewarm setup─a silly line I’d used with Miss Hachikuji. Why would Ms. Toé know it? Hello…
It felt like she was seeing straight into my mind.
Yes, we were quite literally baring all, but did it really include my thoughts and feelings? I mean, I couldn’t begin to read her intentions, for my part.
What was she, the mind-reading yokai satori?
“Wh-What─do you know?”
“Like. I. Said. Knowing, not knowing, none of it matters. What’s important is understanding. You can know something, but it’ll only go to waste if you can’t use that knowledge, and half-assed knowledge can keep you from understanding by way of intuition.” Ms. Toé smirked, running her fingers through her wet hair. “I’m telling you, even if you don’t know something, you begin to get it just from seeing it.”
“…”
The brilliant type.
I’d thought she might be like Oshino, or maybe her sister Miss Gaen, but these remarks made her seem completely different… In other words, did she not know anything when she stepped into the bath but manage to put together a rough guess as to my predicament? Just from my demeanor, speech, and behavior, even though I hadn’t told her anything in particular?
Hard to say.
Maybe I was overestimating her. Maybe she’d only meant to describe our bathing together as a lukewarm setup. As far as hot-spring travelogues went, this was pretty tepid, after all…
“Of course, back in my day, suspense dramas always had a steamy little bath scene right in the middle. Keheheh. Are there restrictions on that kind of thing nowadays? You don’t see too many tops on television lately.”
“Tops? Er, no, um…”
Our conversation risked getting dangerously off-track, so I did my best to correct its course─or rather, the question here was how to get myself out of this.
I needed to escape this suspense drama.
No, hold on a second.
As Miss Gaen’s sister, and having bequeathed the Monkey’s Paw to Kanbaru, she was, if not an expert on aberrations, at least a pro…or I guess a wild card.
I didn’t know if it applied in this one, but in my original world, I often came across her influence─the responsibility for Ogi’s birth lay squarely on my shoulders, but it was also a fact that this lady was involved.
In which case… I had no idea why she was here now, but Kanbaru’s mom or not, she was on bad terms with the Kanbarus and shouldn’t be allowed on these premises─didn’t I need to welcome this encounter? My idea of trying to communicate via the water’s surface had been a bust, but if that failure meant getting to meet Ms. Toé, it turned my moonshot into an all’s well that ends well scenario…