Monogatari Series - Volume 10 - Chapter 1.01

Chapter Change- Suruga Devil

001

I want to tell you about how stupid Suruga Kanbaru is. Do you mind listening? The story is so inconsequential that I feel bad making anybody listen to it, so don’t go out of your way or anything, but if it’s really no bother, I would honestly be grateful.

Still, it’s probably pointless.

Utterly pointless.

She would disagree, and simply talking about your feelings or having someone listen to your problems making you feel better is a notion that I don’t buy either. Even if you think you feel better, you probably only think so.

It’s the thinking so, that very illusion, that people desire deep down─I’ll bet she’d say. Yet even though those words resonate with me on some profound level, there’s something about it that I just can’t accept.

No.

I’m sure I can’t accept it just because she’s the one saying it─I’m not weighing the view itself but deciding based on the kind of person she is.

Awful, right?

When it’s not a matter of what was said but who said it, you might even call it discrimination─then again, if that’s the kind of person I am, it’d be disingenuous of me to dismiss that way of thinking.

How wonderful it’d be to live without coming to dislike anyone, how blissful to live without hating.

I get that.

I get it, you don’t have to tell me twice.

But it’s easier said than done.

There are plenty of people I’ve disliked in my life thus far, plenty of people I’ve hated─in fact, does any such person exist? Someone who could stand up in front of the world and say “I’ve never disliked anyone in my life”?

At any rate, I─Suruga Kanbaru─know tons of people that I can’t stand.

And.

I don’t think much of myself, either.

I’ve seen enough of my dark side to die from it.

To kill for it.

…I’m not much good at thinking about things, or to put it plainly, I’m stupid, so I don’t really know, but how does everybody else cope with all of that?

It can’t be that most people living in this world love themselves and find themselves impeccable─everyone’s got to have something they’re dissatisfied with, something about themselves that they dislike, whether it’s their personality or their life itself or whatever. Everyone’s got to descend into self-loathing sometimes.

Make that all the time.

And yet they have to wake up every morning and keep at it, right?

Coming to terms with it, finding the sense in it─if possible, I’d love someone to teach me how.

I couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t, so I turned to a devil for help.

I cut loose my dark side as though it were separate from me─but what I did there, actually, was to remake myself into a devil.

Finding the devil in me, I went and nurtured it─that’s all. But precisely because that’s all it was, I think everyone does the same thing to some extent.

Not that it mitigates my sins by any means─nor do I have the slightest intention of running away from them.

But I can’t help wondering.

How does everybody else do it?

…It’s because I want to know that I’m telling a story about how stupid I am. After all, it’s only polite to go first if you want someone to share something with you.

Nope.

I don’t actually believe that.

I was taught that point of etiquette─it’s her again.

So the story I’m going to tell you now is hers too─it’s my story, and her story.

I’d be grateful if you listened.

And if possible, when you’re done listening, I’d be very happy if I could hear your story in return.

I live my life stupidly─

How do you live yours?