Chapter Eight- Koyomi Mountain
001
What would Ogi Oshino have to say about roads? I’ve yet to hear her, this niece of Mèmè Oshino’s, say much of anything on the subject. Intersections and traffic lights, sure, but she’s kept mum on the topic of roads themselves. Well, she may have made some offhand remark about them in the course of one of our idle chats, but if she did, I don’t recall it. Her words have a strange way of disappearing from my memory─and not just her words: her behavior, her appearance, they’re all difficult for me to retain.
Gone with the wind.
Just like a rumor after seventy-five days─everything pertaining to her vanishes as if it had never been there.
However.
We did have a conversation that I do remember, not about roads, not about roadways, but about road construction─it wasn’t even all that recently, and yet I remember it like it was yesterday.
“Araragi-senpai─sorry if I sound political, but in our society, roads mainly seem to be a means of creating jobs and stimulating the economy, don’t they…what with all the maintenance, repairs, and construction.”
That’s what she said.
She, Ogi Oshino─in an all-knowing tone that reminded me of her missing uncle.
A philosophical tone quite unlike what you’d expect from a high school student, and your junior to boot─though her resigned air did set it apart from Oshino’s brand of incisiveness.
The desire to balance good and evil, positive and negative, light and dark, on the other hand─her insistence on maintaining neutrality, that was Oshino to a tee.
“Not so much a space for walking or running─the engineering project itself is what makes a road a road. In the modern world, the goal of roadways lies in the very act of opening up the path.”
It’s like living for the sake of being alive─she went on.
“Even if it’s a road that not a single person will ever walk down. It doesn’t matter, the act of creating a road where there wasn’t one before is enough to give it meaning.”
Building a road that no one will ever walk down.
Building a road that no one will use.
And then rebuilding it when it goes to seed or falls apart, as many times as is necessary, repairing it ad infinitum. Filling in every crack that opens, washing away whatever filth collects─maintaining it as a road.
“What do you think, Araragi-senpai? Do you think it’s meaningless─to build a road that no one will walk down?”
To build a road that no one will walk down.
Such a road─do you think it’s meaningless?
“Maybe you do at that─Araragi-senpai. After all, my uncle tells me you’ve got a tendency to look for too much meaning in everything. But I’m not saying that it’s meaningless. I’m just saying that it’s wrong.”
Wrong.
Did she mean wrong as in different─or wrong as in mistaken? I couldn’t tell, so I didn’t answer her question and instead turned it around on her.
What.
Do you think?
Was it, or was it not, meaningless to build a road that no one will walk down? Grinning cheerfully, she─
Ogi Oshino was all too happy to answer my question.
Unfortunately, as to what that answer was─I have absolutely no recollection.
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