Monogatari Series - Volume 10 - Chapter 1.26

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We come to hate the manga we loved as children, while later in life we find great pleasure in the novels we couldn’t understand when we were young.

We begin to hate the people we once loved, and love those we once hated, we become indifferent to things we valued, and regret getting rid of things we didn’t value─if the repetition of this adds up to a life, adds up to living, then it would be dishonest to say that it never seems empty.

Which is exactly why we should cherish every moment? What an overblown, insincere way to put it.

What we thought were precious memories fade away, we suddenly need the things we discarded as worthless─doesn’t life become nothing but regrets if you start thinking that way?

What in the world should I have said to Numachi? Should I have put on an act and demanded that she return the arm after all? Pretended to be a resolute woman of conviction who could take on losses?

I hadn’t been able to.

Nor could I thank her.

In the end I just let it be, I just let it go, I couldn’t do a thing. I’d finally seen her again after searching high and low─she came to see me for crying out loud─but I still couldn’t do a thing.

I listened to her story.

And I got depressed─it put me in a gloomy mood. That was it.

I was convinced that, in my own way, I’d gotten a raw deal─but my life had been a cakewalk compared to Numachi’s. Though of course such comparisons are pointless.

Even after I got home, I didn’t feel like doing a damn thing, and I just flopped face down on the futon I’d left out on the floor of the disaster I called a bedroom.

I didn’t even bother to take off my school uniform.

But apparently the common sense not to let your uniform get wrinkled works subconsciously and is even more basic than routine; laying face down where I’d fallen, I lazily began to undo my uniform.

Partway through, it seemed like I might never get untangled from it.

If I used both hands, I was up to the task of getting my clothes off, even in that position─if I used both hands.

“Right…that’s right. Now there’s nothing I can’t do. With this left hand…I can take my clothes off, I can play basketball,” I mumbled, hoping to just go to sleep.

And I thought─how wonderful if I’ve forgotten everything when I wake up, like it was all just a dream.

But that wish didn’t come true.

Maybe no more of my wishes would come true, now that the devil was gone. Just as I was beginning to drift off, I heard the ringtone of my cell coming from the pocket of my discarded skirt.

“…”

When I reached out for it and took a look, Karen’s number was displayed on the LCD screen.

“Ah, Miss Suruga? Sorry, were you sleeping?”

“No, it’s fine… I was just lying down for a minute.”

“Sorry, I’ll be brief then,” Karen said in a solemn tone. “I’m calling because I have info on that Roka Numachi person you asked me about yesterday.”

“Oh…I see.” Feeling bad that I couldn’t manage to keep the listlessness out of my voice, I said, “Sorry, when you went to all that trouble on my behalf, but I actually ended up running into her today.”

“Running into her?”

“Yeah.” I thought maybe Karen was hung up on the implication that I hadn’t wanted to see Numachi if I could avoid it─but that wasn’t the issue.

“Weird. That can’t be true.”

“Huh? Can’t be true? But I was with her today, up until─”

“You can’t have been,” Karen said. Still solemnly, as if minding my feelings. “Roka Numachi killed herself three years ago.”