NisiOisiN - Bakemonogatari, Part 2: Monster Tale (Bakemonogatari, #1, Part 2)

Bakemonogartari

Monster Tale

Part 2

NISIOISIN

Art by VOFAN

Translated by Ko Ransom

Vertical

The name Suruga Kanbaru belongs to a celebrity known the entire school over, which of course means that I too heard it my fair share of times. My classmates Tsubasa Hanekawa and Hitagi Senjogahara may be no less celebrated, but that's strictly among third-years. Yes, despite being a year below me, Tsubasa Hanekawa, and Hitagi Senjogahara and thus a second-year, Suruga Kanbaru's renown is so extraordinary that it reaches the ears of a senior like me who's fairly estranged from those kinds of rumors. That's not normally supposed to happen. You can act like a grandee and chortle that she's sure impressive for someone so young, but in her case, the statement would be uncomfortably close to the truth.

Maybe you'd get a better sense of who Suruga Kanbaru is if I said "star" rather than "celebrity." While Tsubasa Hanekawa and Hitagi Senjogahara are seen (despite the latter's true nature) as so-called model students, diligent pupils with good grades and excellent conduct, that's not the image here at allthough, being a "star," it's not as if she's known as a rough-and-tumble ringleader of a gang of bad girls. In contrast to Tsubasa Hanekawa and Hitagi Senjogahara and their primarily academic dominance, her mastery is in the realm of sports, Suruga Kanbaru is our school's ace basketball player, after she joined the club in her first year, she was on the main roster in no time at all, but if that were it, you could reason that an unknown, perennial first-round knockout of a girls' basketball team was a joke anyway. But it would be strange to her as anything but a star when she ended up building a monstrous end by leading the unknown, perennial first-round knockout of a girls' basketball team was a joke anyway. But it would be strange to treat her as anything but a star when she ended up building a monstrous end by leading the unknown, perennial first-round knockout of a girls' basketball team, which was a joke anyway, to the national tournament. There's no better way to put it than "ended up building" because you almost wanted to ask what she thought she was doing and scold her the legend was so abrupt. Our girls' basketball team blew up and was elevated into an honest-to-goodness crack squad that boys' teams from neighboring high schools requested, for real and not in a haw-haw way, to play against, for practiceall thanks to one girl.

She isn't unusually tall or anything.

She's built like the average high school girl, too.

If anything, she's a little on the small and slender side.

The term "dainty" would suit her well.

But Suruga Kanbarucan jump.

Just once, a year ago, for some reason or other, I had a chance to take a peek at a game Suruga Kanbaru was playing inand she was so quick and agile that she didn't just pass by the other team's defenders but threaded them, and like in the sports manga that once swept Japan, scored with a clean dunkone dunk after dunk, dozens of them, as if it were the most pleasant activity, with comfort, with ease, with the refreshing smile of an athletic girl never leaving her face. When girls' basketball teams make most of their shots using both hands, how many high schoolers can expect to witness a dunk of all things? From my position in the crowd, more than being overwhelmed by her, I felt awful for the players on the opposing team as they visibly lost their will to play, overwhelmed by her, and couldn't watch anymore, it was so painful, and had to leave, I remember it like it was yesterday.

In any case, while my high school is an academically oriented prep school, it's still a high school, full of sensitive mid-teen youths, so flashy sports heroes getting showered with more attention than evident model students who merely excel at their studies is a natural outcomeand Suruga Kanbaru doing this or that in response to whatever, every detail of her behavior that hardly seems to matter and hardly does, turns into gossip and courses through the school. I'd have enough for a book if I collected all of it. Even if I'm not interested and actively try to avoid it, information about Suruga Kanbaru reaches me anyway. If you go to our school, regardless of your year, whether she is ahead or behind you, anyone who cares to can find out, on a given day, what she ordered at the cafeteria. It's easy, you just ask someone nearby.

But rumors are rumors.

Half-serious.

They aren't necessarily true.

In fact, a lot of the rumors that make it all the way to me lack credibility and are difficult to take at face valueor rather, it's not rare for two perfectly opposed rumors to be making their rounds at the same time. She's irritable, no, she's gentle; she cares about her friends, no, she's cold; she's modest, no, she's arrogant; she goes from one wild romance to the next, no, she's never dated a boy beforeanyone who actually satisfied those conditions would be a broken person. Someone like me who has seen her but never spoken to her, who probably has never come within fifteen feet of her, has to leave it to the imagination on those points. But as a practical matter, there's altogether no need for me to exercise my imagination, altogether nonewere in different years, after all, and there's no way a sports star and ace basketball player (since club activities are only for first- and second-years at my school, I feel I can at least go ahead and trust the rumor that she's been made captain) is going to have anything to do with a washout third-year like me.

We don't have the first thing to do with each other.

Naturally, she must have no idea who I am.

There ought to be no reason for her to know.

That's how I saw it.

That was my assumption.

I learned that I was mistaken as May was drawing to a close, when we'd be changing to our summer uniforms come June. By then, my hair had grown out to where it nearly hid the two small holes gouged at the bottom of my neck, and I felt relieved that wearing a band-aid for a couple of weeks should do it... Ten or so days had passed since Hitagi Senjogahara and I started seeing each other, as they say, following a chance encounter.

Already at that point, when Suruga Kanbaru approached ringing footsteps and spoke to me, her left hand was wrapped tight in a white bandage

002

"Ah... Mister Ah-ah-ah-gi."

"It's Araragi."

"I'm sorry. A slip of the tongue."

As I biked down a slope getting home from school on a Friday, ahead of me I saw a little girl with pigtails carrying a backpack, namely Mayoi Hachikuji, so I hit my brakes, came to a stop to her left, and called out to her, at which she blinked and acted surprised and mispronounced my name like always.