Monogatari Series - Volume 16 - Chapter 10.05

005

The epilogue, or maybe, the punch line of this story.

Though forget about a punch line, on this particular occasion nothing happened at all, I just went on a wild goose chase, standing on the finger of a tween girl. That’s the whole story. Not even a run-of-the-mill mystery, let alone any tale of an aberration.

And though we wandered around town until night fell, we never found anything, our labors were fruitless, so there wasn’t even a smile to be had─you could say that all that happened was that I went for a stroll with Ononoki.

“No luck, huh? Oh well. Bye-bye. Bye-byaaay.”

And with that sideways peace sign, Ononoki headed off. She didn’t seem particularly broken up about not finding what she was looking for─in fact, though she remained expressionless, she even had a vague air of satisfaction at having done a good day’s work.

I wonder if she gets paid by the hour.

Gets paid the same whether she gets results or not… As far as I could tell, if nothing else, she didn’t seem inclined in the slightest to put in any unpaid overtime.

Well, I guess a fee-for-service shikigami wouldn’t really cut it.

Which is why, after being suddenly left in the lurch like that, I just headed home and went back to my exam prep as if nothing had happened─though having been mentally exhausted by the exam that afternoon and physically exhausted by helping Ononoki with her search, I got sleepy pretty early.

Headed home, messed around with a tween girl, got back to my house, went to bed?

Hey, wait a sec.

Don’t you need an episode before you get to an epilogue? Isn’t that kind of like playing Name That Tune, where you never get past the intro to the song? No surprise that I felt that way, but the person who gave me the answer to this answerless quiz was, if you can believe it, or you guessed it, or yet again, Tsubasa Hanekawa.

Really, I feel like Hanekawa’s sleuthing percentage is a little too high, but I’d prefer if you chalked that up purely to her outstanding scholarly ability and intelligence. It’s not just because I constantly rely on her to help me out or anything.

Though she didn’t actually explain anything to me directly after my story was done─“Hmmm. You don’t say. Is this really the time?” was all she said.

I didn’t think that response was particularly unnatural─I just thought, This isn’t the time for that kind of thing, yeah, since it wasn’t the time for that kind of thing, and it wasn’t unnatural.

In other words, I didn’t notice.

Ononoki’s thoughtfulness, and Hanekawa’s thoughtfulness, and how they created a situation where it wasn’t unnatural.

“What do you think is the hardest thing to find?”

It was some time later─

All the stuff with the snake god was over, but the next stuff had started, somewhere around then─Hanekawa asked me that question.

I mean, since she asked me out of the blue like that, at first I had no idea what she was trying to say.

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about Ononoki, dummy─you’ve ended up cohabitating, right? So I thought maybe I should ask you. What do you think is the hardest thing to find?”

“The hardest thing to find…”

Rings a bell.

Reminds me of when Shinobu and I were playing hide the donut in my room─umm, should I answer based on that?

“Let’s see, seems to me the hardest thing to find would be…”

“No, that question is just the warm up, how it seems to you and how you answer are irrelevant, Araragi.”

“Irrelevant? Huh? Then what’s the real question?”

“It’s ‘What do you think is the easiest thing to find?’”

“Now, that would have to be something ‘instantly recognizable’…”

But what does that actually mean? When you think about it, pretty much anything becomes “instantly recognizable” as soon as you find it.

As long as the answer isn’t “a smile,” of course…

“No, no, Araragi, you can’t let yourself get hung up on the ‘instantly recognizable’ part. I mean, it was a lie, after all.”

“A lie?”

“Well, lie might be going too far. But Ononoki wasn’t actually looking for anything. The hardest thing to find is, well, just that─you can’t find something that doesn’t exist.”

“…”

What?

Hang on a sec, I don’t disagree…but why did she lie to me like that?

“Did she tell me a little white lie just so she could hang out with me?”

“Nope,” Hanekawa flatly contradicted me.

A little too flatly.

“The answer to why she did it is ‘the easiest thing to find’─of course, things that stand out are easy to find, but what stands out? Nothing does more than someone who’s looking for something,” she said. “Constantly stopping to peer at things, squatting down, standing on tiptoe─it all adds up to some pretty suspicious behavior. Getting out of control and yelling weird things or whatever is another story, sure─but standing on the finger of a girl who looks like a doll as you search for something is pretty much just as conspicuous.”

“…”

Conspicuous─or even.

Ostentatious?

“In other words, Araragi, I imagine her intention was to make you conspicuous. So she ran you up the flagpole.”

“Like a flag…”

I─set an event flag, or rather, I was an event flag?

What kind of a guy am I?

“B-But why would Ononoki want to make me conspicuous? Did she want to parade a moron who flubbed the national exam?”

“It’s possible.”

It’s possible?

Come on, flatly contradict me already.

Now of all times.

“But not only that─you already know, don’t you, Araragi? That there was someone in town back in January that you absolutely had to avoid running into?”

“…”

“That you absolutely couldn’t run into─and who definitely didn’t want to run into you.”

Though ultimately you did run into each other, continued Hanekawa.

“He was coming to town on a daily basis, so it wouldn’t have been too surprising if you did cross paths─probably, Ononoki kept that from happening for you. By making you conspicuous, she made it easier for him to avoid you.”

“Made me easy to find─by making me hunt for something un-findable…”

So that I wouldn’t have a chance encounter─with him.

With that swindler.

“…”

“Of course, there’s no guarantee that he spotted you just because you were so conspicuous─so towering, but if he did, then he certainly would’ve avoided encountering you. Yotsugi probably just didn’t want you to have to deal with any more anxiety than you already had on your plate. A situation where nothing happens, where there’s no incident, nothing tale-worthy, is probably only going to happen thanks to someone’s consideration for you.”

Yotsugi Ononoki’s consideration.

A consideration I hadn’t even considered.

“Going on about how I’ll take care of things and not even noticing that my peaceful life is being propped up by something─what a clown. No wonder that bastard always makes fun of me.”

“Maybe so. It’s true that people have to go and get saved on their own─but in reality, it’s impossible to live life all on your own,” Hanekawa riffed on Oshino’s catchphrase. Perhaps it was an observation based on her experiences living overseas, even if she was still just location scouting. “You can’t live all on your own, and even if you wanted to─everyone ends up benefitting from someone’s good graces somehow. Eating, traveling, a change of clothes─even sleeping, probably. All of it’s possible thanks to someone else.”

“Well…yeah, totally. Though we go through our daily lives without ever being aware of it.”

“We sure do. That inconspicuous consideration is probably the hardest thing to find,” summed up Hanekawa.

Who knows how unpleasant that summary would’ve sounded in Ononoki’s monotone, but coming from Hanekawa, it somehow wasn’t grating─no.

Maybe it wouldn’t have sounded unpleasant even coming from Ononoki.

It was that kind of feeling.