Monogatari Series - Volume 17 - Chapter 1.07

007

“Huh. Everyone─so the full class,” Ogi said. “It’s abandoned now, but every seat was filled back then. I see, I see. Time waits for no man, a decade can pass in the blink of an eye.”

“Yeah… Wait, it’s only been two years, not ten, and technically, the seats belonging to the trio who’d come for me were empty. Also, the class vice president Shui was sitting, but Oikura was standing at the teacher’s desk.”

“On top of it?”

“She wasn’t that eccentric a class president, okay? Anyway, standing at the desk, she declared, ‘Now that we’ve secured our deserter, I’d like to begin this special session of our class council.’”

“Deserter? How harsh─Miss Oikura must’ve been pretty scary. I’d never poke fun at her. She’s still here as a third-year, right?”

“Yeah. I guess…”

I tried to keep it vague because I really didn’t want to discuss it. I put us right back on track─taking us back to the past.

“A special session of the class council isn’t normally something you’d do after school, but Oikura was charismatic enough to make it happen.”

“Huh… Still, it’s weird. You didn’t know about this meeting until just before it happened? That must be why they sent someone to get you, and why they called you a deserter. Why didn’t you know about it?”

“A simple lapse in communication…apparently. The message reached the rest of the class, whether by folded notes or text message or whatever, but it never made it to me.”

“What? Sounds like…” For the first time, the smile receded from Ogi’s ever-snickering face, to give way to a look of shock and disgust. When people as fair-skinned as her turn pale, they seriously look light blue, like some color sample. “…you were what we might call─an outcast?”

“Excuse me? Could you not be so quick to call people wannabe radio shows?”

“Don’t mishear people in ways that expose your dated ideas about tech. Anyway, you didn’t have any friends even before you started saying stupid things like ‘making friends would lower my intensity as a human’!”

“You’re somewhat mistaken.” Though not completely mistaken… “This is a tale about how someone who had no friends came to need no friends.”

“Exactly what an outcast’d say,” commented Ogi, still straight-faced. The pale one showed no interest in sympathizing. If anything, she disdained me─the reverence I was owed as her senior gone. “It’s a sad thing to have no friends…”

“I don’t need you to preach at me.”

“Then stop acting so pious… All right, now sit up straight and tell me what happened. This so-called special session of the class council. What was its business─for today?”