Monogatari Series - Volume 13 - Chapter 1.01

Chapter Romance- Hitagi End

001

Ladies and gentlemen, dear readers, all of you who picked up this book expecting Hitagi Senjogahara to be the narrator have been duped. The lesson you should take home from this is that every sentence ever written down in a book is bogus.

This is by no means limited to novels.

Every word ever set down on paper is a lie.

Even if the cover of a book touts it as nonfiction or labels it documentary reportage, it’s all lies.

What the hell else would it be?

It’s just a sales pitch, don’t buy it.

In fact, trusting the written word is what’s actually strange, if you ask me─the “me” in question ostensibly being Deishu Kaiki, swindler, though even that might not be true.

Then again, I’m not completely insensible to the very human impulse to believe the unbelievable─after all, my livelihood depends on taking advantage of that very impulse.

People want to know the truth.

Or, they want to believe that what they already know is the truth─what’s actually true is secondary. Recently, the rather overwhelming “truth” vouchsafed by Einstein’s theory of relativity, that “matter with mass cannot exceed the speed of light,” has come crashing down around our ears.

The “fact” was announced that the neutrino, a particle likely unknown to the majority of law-abiding citizens, moves just a few nanoseconds faster than the speed of light─and that shocking, terrifying “fact” sent people into a panic.

But, if you ask me, it’s a mystery why those people put so much faith in Einstein’s theory in the first place. I find it endlessly fascinating─naturally, it’s not like I, inept and poorly educated as I am, understand a single word of the theory of relativity, but I expect that the majority of law-abiding citizens, too, are as ignorant of it as they are of neutrinos.

So why were they so invested in the “truth” of this principle that “matter with mass cannot exceed the speed of light”? Probably because it was easier than doubting its veracity.

Doubting.

Is stressful.

Living with even the trivial suspicion that “there may in fact be matter that moves faster than the speed of light” eventually takes its toll─and human beings have a low tolerance for stress.

The point is that it’s less about not doubting than about “not wanting to doubt”─people want to believe that they can trust in their surroundings, the world they live in, and want to feel secure.

They want security.

So they reject the hobgoblins of doubt, and believe.

Moronically, and mystifyingly, most people would rather have the wool pulled over their eyes than face their doubts.

Our society could not be more comfortable to live in, for someone like me. Or maybe it’s not a question of society or the system, maybe it’s just about people.

A question of human nature.

It’s human nature to believe in people, to believe in theories, and also to believe in apparitions─in aberrations.

However much society or the world may change, people never will.

People are people.

Humans are human.

They won’t change, and what’s more, they can’t.

Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, for those of you who readily believed that this tale would begin with a soliloquy from Senjogahara, I encourage you to do some serious soul-searching.

And I do so shamelessly.

If you don’t want to spend your life making a mess of things, be skeptical. You’ve got to spend money to make money? Be skeptical of that too.

If you want to know the truth, first you’ve got to know falsehood.

So what if your heart and mind grew sick from it.

Naturally, you should be thoroughly skeptical of the existence of faster-than-light neutrinos, and you really should be skeptical about whether I’m even the swindler Deishu Kaiki.

I might even be Hitagi Senjogahara pretending to be Deishu Kaiki─after all, there’s precedent, isn’t there? Eleven hundred years ago, a man started off his poetic journal with the words, “I intend to see whether a woman can produce one of those diaries men are said to write.”

And that might be a lie too, for all we know.

So if there are any patient readers out there who didn’t slam this book shut in a huff the second they realized they’d been tricked, much respect. In place of the usual introduction, let me give you some advice.

Some solemn advice.

Prepare yourself.

Get ready.

Unlike some fainthearted and morose nonsense user, or devious, cross-dressing middle schooler (even if they are liars and swindlers, same as me), I have no intention of upholding even a minimal level of fair play in narrating this tale.

I swear to narrate unfairly in the spirit of a lowdown, dirty Liar-man.

I will lie to my heart’s content, I will make things up wherever it’s convenient, and I will pointlessly hide the truth and falsify events.

If lying is like breathing for those guys, it’s like cutaneous respiration for me.

I advise you to pay careful attention to what is true and what is false as you read on, in other words to doubt everything, to jump at shadows─then again, I hasten to add that at that point you may have already fallen into my trap.

Now then.

Interweaving truth and fiction, and throwing in a dash of half-truth just for fun, I will now relate to you the love story of Hitagi Senjogahara and Koyomi Araragi.

I’ve never been interested in high-school puppy love, even when I was in high school, but those kids did so much to hinder my business dealings that I feel it’s only fair to have a little fun at their expense.

Urban legends.

The word on the street.

Secondhand gossip.

And slanderous talk─all of these fall within my area of expertise.

They’re my bread and butter. The proof that I am me.

I can’t guarantee honesty, but I can guarantee quality─and I hope that when we reach the conclusion of their tale, every one of you reading at home thinks, “Serves them right.” From the bottom of my heart.

If I have a heart, that is.

If there is an “I,” that is.

So let the games begin.

As we begin what will be the final tale─though obviously that may not be true either.