005
When I say it like that, it’s as if those two are dead or something, but that’s not the case at all. They just graduated.
They graduated, and I became a third-year.
That’s all.
That’s all there is to it.
With Araragi-senpai’s grades, being held back had been a real possibility, but in the end the teachers granted a pardon and fudged his attendance record.
Strictly speaking, such misconduct flew in the face of due process, but after he prostrated himself in the faculty room, even Hanekawa-senpai, that paragon of impartial justice, couldn’t bring herself to say anything.
The Fire Sisters are the same way; those siblings just love to perform a dogeza. I heard that his beauteous prostration took the teachers’ breath away, but it was Hanekawa-senpai who told me that, so who knows if it’s true.
She has a tendency to mythologize his behavior, and though it’s not lost on me that I do the same thing, her words are best taken with a grain of salt.
Well, even so, she might not want to hear that from me… Of course, she and Senjogahara-senpai graduated no problem (I held a little going away party for them just last month), so as it stands I’ve been left behind at Naoetsu High.
No, I have plenty of friends in my year and in the grades below me, but all three of the people who got it when it came to “aberrations”─you might call them accomplices─were gone, and I was beset with a kind of bewilderment distinct from sadness.
It was over?
Just like that?
It felt way more “I guess that’s it, then” than I’d expected─not a dramatic parting, not a devastating one, just “I guess that’s it.” I had no choice but to keep harboring the secret of my left arm, but it’s also true that a secret is something too heavy to keep harboring alone.
The three of them knew about my arm, knew what I’d done, and still stood by me. That alone was enough to ease my heart─but that was no reason.
Even as you found reasons.
“Change goes hand in hand with growing up. There’s no such thing as ‘unchanging everyday life,’ Suruga. If there were, it wouldn’t be everyday, it’d be hell.”
Another one of that person’s lines.
It wasn’t anything to utter, even by mistake, to a child, who had a ton of growing-up to do. But she didn’t treat me like a child, so what can I say.
By the way, it’s been a while now since the ruins of that cram school, so full of memories, burned to the ground─before I knew it, I’d become accustomed to seeing the post-conflagration landscape in place of that abandoned building.
What comes to mind now is a scorched field.
That, too, is change and the everyday.
Anyhow, today.
April ninth.
I─Suruga Kanbaru became a third-year.
And alone.
Just like in middle school─but at that time, I had the unshakable goal of “taking Naoetsu High’s exams and chasing after Senjogahara-senpai who graduated ahead of me.” This time I had no such goal, no aim.
Without fixing my gaze on her, not even in some far-flung future, I attended high school─all alone.
“Ah, Suruga-senpai, wassup.”
…As I ran to school, a little drunk on my thoughts, a bicycle came up beside me.
Huh.
I said all alone─but what about this kid?
Even if he’d completely slipped my mind.
Even if I’d totally forgotten.
Somehow.
“Morning, Ogi.”
Without slackening my pace, I greeted the first-year beside me─no, the second-year now, at any rate the boy on the bike.
Since he was riding one, he had no problem keeping pace with me─though I was confident that if I gave it everything I had, I could leave any granny bike in the dust.
Still, as a third-year, it was about time that I settled down a bit. I wasn’t about to run full speed on the way to school.
Here was a junior who’d taken to me, and I was never going to treat him with disdain.
“You run fast,” he said.
“Oh, I think I’ll make the first bell.”
“No no no no, I meant you’re a fast runner.”
“Ah.”
Nodding, I looked at the boy beside me.
He’d transferred to Naoetsu High sometime around the end of last year…I’ve forgotten exactly when. And his name was Ogi Oshino.
Oshino.
He said he was related to Mister Oshino, but the veracity of that was uncertain─while Araragi-senpai, being who he is, swallowed the story whole, Hanekawa-senpai was openly dubious.
It’s rare for their opinions to diverge that starkly─but, well, given Ogi’s, how do I put it…his ambiguous presence, it’s not surprising.
His…
His?
“Wait, Ogi… Didn’t you use to be a girl?”
“What are you talking about? I’ve been a boy all along. Ever since I came crying into this world, I’ve been a boy, without even a moment’s deviation.”
“…Right?”
“Uh huh. And I’m not one of those tomgirls that are all the rage right now.”
“Well, I don’t know about ‘all the rage.’”
It’s very much a niche trend.
But I suppose it’s just human nature to imagine that your little playground is the entire world. While the internet and whatever do seem to have opened things up, if you don’t bear in mind that it’s just a deepening, not a broadening, you end up in a world of pain.
I did.
Or rather, I became a painful character.
I don’t know…
I get really fed up thinking that I might live out the rest of my life mired in this kind of remorse.
“Hmm… Anyway, of course you were a boy. My apologies, somehow I had it wrong.”
“Ahaha. Getting it wrong once in a while is fine, I think? A life where we aren’t forgiven even a single mistake would be stifling.”
“Mistake, huh? Mistake,” I repeated Ogi’s word absently, glancing at my bandaged arm as it pumped back and forth with every stride. “Life is just a series of mistakes, though.”
“Whoa, what’s this? I get treated to a negative remark that’s so unlike you, and on the first day of the new term.”
Ogi tilted his head atop his bicycle.
That was dangerous.
Just as I thought so, he started pedaling faster to pull ahead of me, and with a spin-move U-turn, he was staring me straight in the face.
He was set up like a roadblock in front of me, but pedaling in reverse, he began moving backwards and didn’t actually impede my progress.
…No, hang on.
I don’t ride them so I’m not a hundred-percent sure, but were bicycles the kind of vehicle equipped with a mechanism that let you move backwards if you pedaled in reverse?
It’s not a Segway, for chrissakes.
Even Araragi-senpai, who loved his bicycle above all else (I was the one who destroyed his beloved ride, by the way) never pulled such an oddball move…
“That’s not at all like Suruga Kanbaru, the star of Naoetsu High who led a no-name basketball team all the way to the nationals. You should be saying, ‘Life is just a series of successes.’”
“Why would I ever say something so arrogant? Who could? Get him over here so I can teach him a lesson.”
“Get him? It’s you yourself.”
“Wrong.”
“But it’s a fact.”
“That’s all in the past. Oh so long ago.”
No one remembers last year’s glories─no, of the year before last. The names of athletes who get injured and retire are fated to fade from memory.
One of the students in my year officially retired just the other day.
A new generation comes in, and you’re forgotten.
“All in the past,” Ogi echoed. “In the past, huh? Hearing that is a real buzz-kill. For a student like me, at least, who entered Naoetsu High in the hopes of becoming a star like you.”
“Liar. How can you tell such appalling lies with a straight face? Aren’t you a member of the No Extracurriculars Club?”
“Yes. But I’m their ace.”
“What do you mean, ace?”
“I leave school early every three days.”
“You’re an ace, all right.”
Ogi is exhausting to talk to.
Always keeping me off balance…which reminds me, Araragi-senpai often said the same thing about me.
In which case I really was a pain in his ass, though it was a little late for remorse. Being put in the same position now, I understood for the first time how senpais felt.
I’d text him an apology later.
I learned how to send one quite some time ago.
Even I learn.
If you think I can’t learn just because I’m stupid, you’re very much mistaken.
Anyway, that said, I think Ogi and I aren’t much alike.
I don’t really remember how we ended up on speaking terms in the first place when we’re in different years and he doesn’t play any sports─before I knew it he was just there as though he always had been.
Suddenly on good terms with my dear seniors Araragi, Senjogahara, and Hanekawa.
It seemed very natural.
Which itself seemed totally unnatural.
…But anyway, I guess with the three of them gone, it’s just me and him.
That’s rough.
Maybe rougher than being alone.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“It’s nothing…” I wasn’t going to say Life’s going to suck with only you around for company to his face.
“While we’re at it, ‘past’ is written with the characters for ‘mistake’ and ‘gone.’ Does that mean the past is a mistake as such, sui generis?”
“…”
I considered telling him that he wasn’t using the phrase “sui generis” correctly, but decided not to. I’d hate to be thought of as the kind of senior who puffs herself up by nitpicking a younger schoolmate’s usage.
Still, it was a magnificent self-contradiction for a conversation about a word’s meaning to include a misused phrase.
“Come to think of it,” Ogi continued, “the word ‘future’ is written with a negative prefix and ‘come.’ Is human life one big cock-up then, past and future?”
He kept pedaling backwards as he said this─kept riding in reverse. There was no rearview mirror unlike on a motorbike, so it really was quite dangerous.
It looked precarious.
I started to get this uneasy, probably unjustified feeling that he’d keep riding backwards for as long as I kept on running, so I slowly came to a stop.
“Oops. What’s wrong? Is your side splitting from running too much?” Ogi asked, and just as I’d hoped, he put on the brakes─not by squeezing either hand, but via the friction generated by letting the soles of his shoes scrape against the ground.
Every single thing he did was precarious.
I was on pins and needles.
“No part of my body would start hurting from running just a couple of miles,” I shut down Ogi’s question and strode off just like that. It seemed (the mechanism was still unclear to me) he couldn’t ride backwards at a slow pace, and so, turning around his bike─reluctantly, I imagine─he resumed accompanying me in a normal fashion.
Seemingly rebellious, an obedient kid.
Seemingly twisted, straight as an arrow.
As far as juniors these days went, he was surprisingly easy to handle─if I may be allowed to make such an evaluation as someone who coaxed on my middle- and high-school athletics clubs.
“Won’t you be late if you walk?”
“It’s fine, I’ll dash when I get to the final climb.”
“Yikes, gimme a break. In that case it’ll only be me who’s late. I’m weak on climbs.”
“Then go on ahead.”
“Please. Why would I throw away the honor of arriving at school beside the universally admired Suruga Kanbaru over something as insignificant as being marked tardy?”
“Why are you kissing up to me? It’s not like I’m a star or anything.”
“But you are a star. No, maybe mastar is more like it.”
“Mastar… In any case, that was a long time ago.”
“Well, sure, you may have lost some of your former charisma… But even now you have rabid fans who’re rooting for you.”
“That’s nice to know, if true… But what in the world are they rooting for? I don’t play basketball anymore.”
And words like “rabid” scare me.
They remind me of when I was scared of myself.
Of when I was like a rabid animal.
“A star is a star no matter what. Existing is all that matters. Existing, and shining.”
“But I’m not shining, not anymore. I’ve gone dark.”
“We’re going around in circles, aren’t we─sure, you may not be nationally famous at the moment, but you’re still quite the local celebrity.”
“I don’t remember being so tied to the area… Ogi, is there something you need to tell me? Because I don’t think we’d be having this conversation otherwise.”
“Huh.”
Ogi blinked in surprise.
He had something of a tendency to ham it up.
Even his being alive seemed deliberate.
To put it simply, it was like he was playing a “character”─which upset me.
I felt as though I was slowly being shown what I disliked about myself.
Slowly.
But steadily.
“What a cold thing to say. I might get frostbite. Can’t I talk to you without a specific reason?”
“Well, actually, I guess it’d be worse if you did have a reason.”
“Hahaha, now we’re getting warm.”
Laughing, Ogi cut to the chase. It was his peculiar conversational technique to do so with abnormal suddenness after having beaten around the bush forever, which certainly reminded me of our friend in the Hawaiian shirt.
“Have you heard the rumors about Lord Devil?”
Lord Devil?
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