Monogatari Series - Volume 15 - Chapter 3.01

Chapter Three- Koyomi Sand

001

I first became aware of Mayoi Hachikuji─we first became aware of each other─in a park with an unreadable name, but thereafter our encounters always took place out on the road.

She’d gotten lost on the way to visit her mother, which was also how she ended up in that park, so I thought she might have her own take on the subject of roads, and at some point I asked her about it.

How.

How do you view the roads you walk down─which is the same as asking, How do you view your own life?

Just to be clear, I didn’t necessarily think I was in much of a position to be asking such a question─and I was well aware as I asked it that whatever thoughts and feelings lay behind the way she chose to live her life were inconsequential to me.

If calling them inconsequential sounds inconsiderate, all I really mean is that it’s Hachikuji’s business how she lives her life─and if that sounds like I’m giving you the business, then let me rephrase: I just think she’s free to do as she pleases.

Even a friend.

Even a selfless, peerless friend like Hanekawa─has no right to meddle in how a person lives.

Though maybe in how a person dies…

“Roads,” replied Hachikuji, “are just someplace to walk, as far as I’m concerned.”

Uh-uh.

That’s just the literal meaning of a road─I don’t mean that, or I mean that too, but I was thinking about roads in a more conceptual sense.

“No, no, Mister Araragi. It’s still the same. Roads are for walking.” Hachikuji didn’t budge in the face of my amended question. She just continued on with an amiable grin, as always. “A road, whatever road it might be, is a space that connects one place to another─wherever it begins, wherever it ends, that never changes. You wouldn’t normally call a dead end a road, would you?”

In other words, continued Hachikuji.

“You can think, What kind of road is this, anyway, or Where does this road lead to, or This road is unstable, it seems like it might collapse at any moment, or I’d like to be on a different road─but there is one thing you mustn’t do. The moment you break that taboo, the road ceases to be a road.”

I asked Hachikuji, seasoned veteran of wandering lost, what this taboo act might be, and here’s what she told me: “To stop walking.”

Once you come to a stop, that place ceases to be a road.