Turn right here,
then take the next left
nothing's working out. I'm so troubled!
Right, left, reft, light,
Don't let your limbs outside the bus window!
Left there, then immediately take the right,
It doesn't matter which you take, the result will be the same.
Sunny but cloudy later in the day,
Partly rainy in some places, it's like this, right?
After I keep taking detours, before I knew it,
it's already the end of the day, with the end of the year coming.
I'm all out of options to take!
Since my stomach is empty I'm going back,
going back straight to my home.
When my heart wanders,
that smile is the guide.
Take hand in hand and go home.
Let's go home together.
Always being there,
you always find me.
Even though it's a roundabout route,
it isn't a roundabout route!
Koyomi
Sand
Calendar
Story
M
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n
t
h
o
f
W
a
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Hello, Mr Tirey Tirey
Mr Tirey Tirey
Wait a minute, Hachikuji.
Don’t call out to me with such weariness
that makes it seem like you're fed up with talking to me.
My name is Araragi.
Sorry I bit my tongue.
No, it was on purpose.
I fumble-stumbled!
It wasn’t on purpose?!
Araragi, where are you headed to today?
As you can see, I’m off to school now.
Didn't I tell you the other day?
I’ve changed jobs from a stupid delinquent into a student sincere about his work.
And so, I’m going to school.
Although even insincere students go to school.
Hey, Hachikuji.
There’s something that I need to tell you.
What is it?
Oshino, Oshino Meme...
That old specialist guy that helped you out,
he left town.
Well, that was quite sudden, wasn’t it?
Since you’ve never met him directly, this might not be of any concern to you...
though you aren't indifferent to it, I thought I should tell you just in case.
But, Araragi. What happens with that case, then?
That case? What case?
Like I said, it's this, you see, this.
Then perhaps it might be better if I said this, Araragi,
your failure to pay the 5 million yen was very well done.
I didn’t fail to pay it!
Look, Hachikuji. I’m the kind of guy that returns money he borrows.
I’ve properly repaid my debt to Oshino.
With that over with, I’m completely debt-free and clean.
Is that so?
I'm a little disappointed by that.
Why?
Didn’t I tell you the other day?
The other day?
When you were being stalked by that very fast junior of yours.
You were asking me, 'I owe a huge amount of money to Oshino
and what should I do?' or something like that.
Didn’t you say something like, even if you didn’t have any hard cash,
if there was an unusual story about an oddity, you’d be able to turn it into cash, right?
Did I say all that?
So anyway, Araragi.
Since then, I was wondering if I could be of any help to Araragi
so during my walks, I’ve been looking for stories
like those 'Oddity stories’ and even 'Ghost stories’.
Were you really doing that for me?
Now my scheme to sell the story I managed to find to Araragi for a high price is ruined.
Scheme?! High price?!
Eh, you weren’t going to give it to me?!
I wasn’t.
Araragi. Now that it’s gone this way, I won’t go as high as five million yen. So please buy it.
It’ll be a bargain.
Incidentally, how much were you aiming to sell it for, Hachikuji?
Around fifty yen is fine.
That’s cheap!
Well, you see, this story was worth only that much from the beginning.
Were you planning on selling a story worth only fifty yen
to your friend for five million yen?!
So, what kind of a story is it? Tell me.
Yes, well. So it’s a story about sand.
Sand?
How should I put it?
It looked like the expression of a demon.
A bloodcurdling drawing.
As if the sand itself was almost like an oddity.
Because Hachikuji was going around looking
for some strange or suspicious phenomenon to try and sell to me
it's possible she might have seen the originally normal sandbox
as something more mysterious.
So was it possible to see the same 'demon expression’ on different days?
In other words, no matter how it was changed or mixed around, the sand in this sandbox
always returned to a demon’s shape.
Recurring bizarreness.
As if the sand had a will of its own.
Well, thinking about it normally, it has to be just somebody playing around.
This is just regular sand.
Maybe if I played in the same way a kid would play in this sandbox,
there would be some kind of response.
Whether it’s a prank, it might not be something as impressive.
Either way, it doesn’t seem like there’s any need for me to get involved.
If it’s an oddity, it’s not going to show itself so easily.
But it could also be the work of a human.
Hanekawa Tsubasa
Hands Free
Araragi?
There's something I am curious about. Is now a good time?
It’s all right.
Hanekawa Tsubasa
Hands Free
A little while ago, Senjougahara
gave me her periodical report.
Periodical report!? What do you mean!?
So during that time, I just happened to hear about it.
Araragi, I heard that after Senjougahara's study session,
you were going to investigate some sand in a park.
Are you done with that already?
I thought I’d try and time it so I'd call you once you were done.
Bad!
Isn’t this a bit hopeless, Araragi?
I had hoped that you would have resolved everything neatly.
I was planning more of a follow-up report.
Investigative
report
Follow-up
A follow-up report...
Araragi, you’ve forgotten something important.
You’re just looking at it too rigidly.
Rigidly?
Saying whether the sandbox is either the work of an oddity, or an artificial phenomenon
and that it has to be one of the two is too rigid. Isn’t it?
Well, I suppose it is.
Are there other possibilities?
Hanekawa Tsubasa
Hands Free
There are other possibilities. A third possibility.
Huh, so there is something like that?
You really know everything, don’t you?
I don’t know everything.
I just know what I know.
The third option.
If it’s neither the work of an oddity nor a human act, then it would be...
Oddity
Human
Well, thinking about it properly, using the process of elimination,
then the only thing I can think of is it being a natural phenomenon.
Hanekawa Tsubasa
Hands Free
That’s right, so you do understand, Araragi!
But, a natural phenomenon?
There's no way that's -
Listen Araragi. 'Natural phenomena' isn't limited to wind and rain, you know?
And now for the epilogue, or rather, the punch line.
Hey, Araragi.
When you investigated the sandbox, you only looked at the sand, didn’t you?
A sandbox is only a sandbox when you include the container.
That’s why, if you’re going to investigate the 'sandbox’, Araragi,
you have to investigate the container as well, or you won’t have investigated it properly.
When you think of sand, it’s usually weighty, As long as there’s nothing unusual, that is.
There was no need to think anymore
since the bottom of the sandbox container had fissured likely due to deterioration,
and since it had fissured together with the weight of the sand, as Hanekawa mentioned,
the answer was the sand settling to form a shape like that.
The fact that it was the form of a demon was, as expected, a coincidence.
Right now, it was only a natural phenomenon that would cause a strange design.
But if the fissures of the container continued to get bigger,
the floor would soon break into pieces and the dirt would mix with the sand,
which could make it possible for quicksand or liquefaction to occur.
That was the worst possible circumstance,
and playing inside a fissured container was plenty dangerous,
like a race against time.
That’s why Hanekawa got angry with me.
For the time being I should call the company that manages the park.
The scarier one, and the one that wasn’t peaceful at all,
was neither an oddity nor a human,
but nature.
As scary as a demon, and as scary as a person.
I kick a stone away to get rid of my worries,
I'm downplaying the flutter I feel this April.
We were happy children full of curiosity,
I was the one who pushed you forward,
from that day onward.
Let's escape our confines
and take our time along the way
Let's ride our bikes to far away
carrying our hopes and dreams in the basket
Is the future we heard so many rumors about,
A nice place to be?
Even if we ask our extending shadows about it,
we'll still be none the wiser