Monogatari Series - Volume 10 - Chapter 1.23

023

Listening to Numachi’s story put me in a heavy funk. She kept talking about the relief she got from hearing other people’s tales of misery, but listening to hers didn’t give me even an iota of relief.

I felt instead like I’d suddenly been loaded down─with a profoundly heavy burden.

However she might phrase it, deriving enjoyment from hearing about other people’s unhappiness was in poor taste, a perverse predilection, I thought.

I mean, sure, pity-bragging plus schadenfreude is symbiotic, mutually beneficial, more than it’s killing two birds with one stone, but life is never that obliging.

Or maybe it is?

Didn’t she keep on collecting─precisely because it had gone so well?

Sometimes life is unexpectedly obliging.

Hadn’t she collected my arm as well─

Precisely because her way of thinking was correct?

While I was choked with tears of joy when my beastly left arm returned to normal─I also felt like that was a totally different story.

Just because I want them to be different, though, doesn’t mean they actually are…

The girl in question really did seem to have been saved thanks to Numachi. She said she didn’t actually do anything, but just by listening she gave that girl peace of mind─salvation enough for anyone, you might say.

But I just couldn’t let it go.

Even if Numachi wasn’t doing anything wrong, I simply couldn’t accept that the way she went about things was right.

And─

“That was quite the autobiography, but…the story’s not over, is it, Numachi?”

“Hm?”

She cocked her head in mock puzzlement, which really irritated me, but I suppressed that feeling and continued with all the patience I could muster.

“Now I know how you began collecting unhappiness. And I understand your motivation, which is a hell of a motivation, by the way. Benefitting directly from your interests, and helping other people in the bargain. I’d even call it admirable.”

“Sarcasm doesn’t suit you.”

“But it’s only half the story,” I ignored her heckling. “I understand why you collect unhappiness, but you still haven’t told me how you came to be collecting the pieces of a devil.”

“I was just about to get to that. But first, let’s take a halftime break. I was thinking maybe I should give you a choice.”

“A choice?”

Something about the way she said it, the way she talked, really got on my nerves.

But that itself was kind of mysterious─why did I find Numachi so vexing?

And why, when I found her so vexing.

Did I want to keep interacting with her?

What the hell was she─to me? It wasn’t as if I wanted her to return the monkey’s paw my mother had left me.

I didn’t need Kaiki to tell me that I should be pleased to get rid of the thing, to pass it off to the junk collector who’d come for that purpose. I was having a hard time accepting the sudden happiness that had fallen into my lap, but did that give me permission to get inside Numachi’s head?

“What do you mean, a choice? Are we talking about Easy, Normal, and Hard again? You telling me I need to choose how you’re going to talk about this?”

“No, no, nothing so fancy this time. Just the simple choice: do you want to hear what comes next, or not.”

Numachi completely ignored my mounting irritation and continued the conversation very much at her own pace.

Lackadaisically.

But listening to her talk─really was a test of my forbearance.

Or maybe of simple fortitude.

Conversing with her was exhausting.

I felt my energy draining away─though that wasn’t why she offered me that choice, of course.

This is what she said:

“What comes next is a truly devilish tale. I think it’s probably best for you not to hear it, if you can stand that. You can still just return to a normal life. And I think you should─just go back to making friends and falling in love, reading books and playing with your cell phone.”

“Give me a break, Numachi. I’m not the one who has to choose, you are. You’re the one with a simple choice to make: are you going to tell me the whole story, or are you going to give me back that devil’s hand?”

“Ooh, I’m so scared.”

My words had ended up tinged with a threatening tone, and Numachi trembled in mock fright.

She didn’t miss a beat, huh?

“I’ll tell you, then. About the beginning of my affair with a devil─I warn you, though, that hearing this particular tale of unhappiness is not going to make anyone feel better.”

I muttered, “Too late now.”