Monogatari Series - Volume 10 - Chapter 1.10

010

After relating the above events at great length, this might seem like a chabudai-gaeshi, or flipping over a set table, but the fact is that this kind of thing wasn’t all that uncommon in my life. In fact, it happened all the time.

I catch the ghost of a whisper about something and go check it out, full of anxiety, only for my delusions of culpability to come to nothing─as I said, I was doing this over and over again since the previous year.

Repeat, repeat, repeat. Endlessly.

Well, it’s just that it got worse last year, when I started acting on it, while the thoughts themselves were a fixture ever since elementary school─ever since I made my deal with a devil.

Like when I thought it was my fault that the cram school went out of business.

I’d stalked Araragi-senpai for more or less the same reason, and I’ll be the first to admit that the whole thing bordered on the pathological, but on the other hand we can say, though we’d be stretching things a little, that such abnormal behavior was routine work to which Suruga Kanbaru became accustomed.

We can.

Once you get used to it, the abnormal can be normal, is normal.

Eccentricities inevitably go into fashioning the everyday.

So while my reunion with Roka Numachi in the middle of that burnt field was of course unexpected─while being suddenly confronted by an old acquaintance whom I’d never expected to see again, my middle school arch-nemesis no less, was in its own way something of a shock─I was surprised, and that was all.

Retired players are forgotten. I’d forgotten about her until I saw her again, and she must have forgotten about me.

The passage of time is a strange thing, our ties to others are funny things─those banal thoughts ran through my head, but they’re available to anyone who picks up an old novel; as the fruits of personal experience, they’re not even worth mentioning.

Life is overflowing with surprises of that caliber.

If I sound cold, that’s probably because I am, but I can’t hide my true feelings about it─it’s like Numachi said, I’ve never been able to approach things any way but straight on. If I got emotionally invested at every turn like my seniors Araragi and Senjogahara, my body would give out. Or rather, my mind would.

I might come across as a reckless and foolhardy hothead to Araragi-senpai, but some people see me as cool and dispassionate.

As for how I see myself─no, we’ll leave that alone for now.

Taking it in that direction would open up a real can of worms.

Anyway, that’s all my reunion with Roka Numachi was for me. Even if I belonged to this new Twitter thing I’ve been hearing about, it wasn’t an event that would have made me tweet.

I wouldn’t have tweeted anything.

Normally.

Since I say normally, you know that’s not how things actually turned out. In reality, the name of my middle school arch-nemesis, Roka Numachi, would soon become impossible for me to forget.

Impossible to forget?

Judging from my unconscious use of that phrase, I guess that somewhere deep inside I intensely want to forget about her─but let’s move on to the following day.

My second day as a third-year high school student.

On the morning of the second day of my new life that new term─I woke up at the same time as always.

“A brooding frown makes people think you’re wise, but they’re dead wrong. Thinking about things isn’t always good. It’s the ones who don’t think about anything and just blithely float through life who tend to hold the world in the palms of their hands. Worrying is just a waste of time. If you have the time to think, then act. Forget your worries. No use crying over spilt milk.”

That was what my mother said to me in my dream that morning─she appeared in my dreams often enough, but as I got out of bed I thought to myself that it had been quite a while since she’d shown up two days running.

That is, I tried to get out of bed, but my left arm, still fixed to a post with duct tape, held me back.

“…Nnng.”

Absently, I stripped away the tape─and as I was stripping it away, I came fully awake. The work of freeing myself from this wrapping was like my version of morning calisthenics.

Same wake-up routine as always.

Same as always. That’s what I thought.

As my vision came into focus, I spotted my nail clippers─the ones I’d searched for so thoroughly the day before but had never found.

On second thought, I hadn’t searched all that thoroughly─but, that’s always how it goes: you can’t find what you’re looking for no matter how hard you search, but as soon as you give up, there it is.

I finished removing the duct tape, and kept on going, unwrapping the bandage from my left arm. If I didn’t cut my nails right when I found the clippers, I’d lose sight of them again. And yesterday’s plan to stop and buy new ones at the convenience store had been derailed by Ogi’s intrusion.

I felt like I’d come out a little bit ahead, finding the old ones like this. I might treat Ogi to a can of juice with the money I’d saved, but it might not be a good idea to spoil such a cheeky junior─with trivial thoughts running through my head, I cut the nails on my left hand.

Thumb, pointer finger, middle finger.

I got that far─and only when I had just the ring finger and pinky left to go did I belatedly notice.

Very fucking belatedly.

But there was no helping it.

Because it was the way it was supposed to be─in fact, the way it was up until the day before was what was unnatural, however accustomed to it I may have become. So there was no helping the fact that it’d taken me some time to notice.

Yes.

The left arm I had exposed and aired by unwrapping my bandage─wasn’t a monkey’s.

Nor was it a devil’s.

It was the human left arm it was supposed to be again.