Monogatari Series - Volume 17 - Chapter 1.09

009

“Haha. We started off looking for a hidden room from a blueprint, got ourselves into a locked room, and now we’re trying to identify the perp? It’s really getting to seem like we’re in a mystery novel. What an interesting story. Both exciting and eccentric.”

“There’s nothing interesting about it… I’m sure you can guess how things turned out when a bunch of amateurs got together to finger a culprit.” I shook my head at Ogi’s optimism. I’d barely started telling the story, and I already felt pretty depressed─why I was sharing all this with a girl I’d met for the first time?

I hadn’t even told Shinobu.

“Heh. Still, she sounds quite stern, this old Ikura─sorry, Oikura.”

“Old Ikura? Ha, funny mistake to make… Should’ve said that one to her face.”

Not that I had anything close to the courage to do so─back then, I’d been afraid of her for real. There’s something extra frightening about people who’re incomprehensibly hostile to you.

“Of course, I’d yet to learn that her brand of sternness was cute compared to Senjogahara─who had malice in her heart, not hostility.”

“Ah. I didn’t want to interrupt you, but you just reminded me. You referred to a Senjogahara in your story, but am I right to assume that’s the same Senjogahara who’s now your girlfriend? The witch with a poison tongue, the tsundere queen Senjogahara?”

“What kinds of stories have you heard about her? But yeah, you’re right.”

She’d had a change of heart and was reformed─but the fact that the girl then known as a flower in a bell jar (really a rose that was all thorns), the heroine in a piece of sanatorium literature (really the monster in a horror novel), and a cloistered princess (really an animal that needed to be caged) is my girlfriend two years later just goes to show that relationships work in the strangest ways.

That said…no other classmate from back then is still on good terms with me.

“I didn’t know her true identity at the time, so let’s just say she used to be the sickly, cloistered princess.”

“Well, then sure, let’s both say it,” Ogi egged me on happily─I guess she was a good listener, or at least she genuinely seemed to be relishing my story. There was nothing pleasant about telling it, but I couldn’t stop while she acted this way. It’s weird, but it felt like my mouth had a mind of its own─and spoke independent of me.

“Umm. Where was I again?”

“The part where Oikura declared no one would be leaving the classroom until the culprit was exposed. Hm? Was it to you that she ceded the position of chair? You said you presided over a class council meeting.”

“Oh, right─that’s where I took over.”

“I see. So basically she was the kari-oya, and you became the actual dealer once she rolled the dice.”

“A mahjong metaphor only makes things harder to understand…” Ogi apparently had some very mature hobbies. Maybe she knew how to play hanafuda, too?

“Fine, no one literally rolled dice. She decided of her own will to name you chair, didn’t she? And that’s why she left you standing instead of letting you sit.”

“Yup─that’s it.” Even if I didn’t see the need to keep me standing the whole time.

“I don’t get it in that case. Why pick you? Didn’t anyone protest?”

“It’s not like everyone was in favor of it, of course─like this one boy, Shinaniwa. Ayazute Shinaniwa, who was like elitism personified… He had a habit of looking down on people, and guys like me were as far down as he could look. He was pretty adamantly against it.”

“All kinds of people hate you, huh? An elitist… It does seem like there are a lot of those in this school. Maybe that’s where Oikura’s harshness was coming from? But don’t worry, Araragi-senpai, being hated is a virtue.”

“Put a little more thought into it when you praise people… I almost agreed with you for a second, but no, of course being hated isn’t a virtue. And it wasn’t like Shinaniwa hated me or anything, he just looked down on me.”

“Is there really a difference? Anyway, did this Shinaniwa take part in the study session, too?”

“No─he was the type to study alone. He wasn’t as exclusionary as Koma, though. The kid looked down on people he thought were beneath him and even cut them off at times, but he was really friendly with anyone he saw to be on his level or above.”

“Sounds like he’s the worst.”

“He wasn’t a bad guy.”

Wasn’t a bad guy─another line I could utter only because we weren’t close. What did I know about Ayazute Shinaniwa or Sodachi Oikura? Familiarity with a guy’s profile doesn’t make you his friend.

“But everyone in class, including this current third-year, Shinaniwa, accepted you as chair in the end,” Ogi said. “Why was that?”

“Well, someone from the study session running the meeting would be bad, right? Just like how Koma pointed out that Oikura was the most likely suspect. About half of the class lost any right to be chair─but that didn’t mean anyone from the remaining half would do. We were there because of a math test, after all. We’d be examining the questions asked on it, so you couldn’t leave it to someone with only so-so math grades.”

“Huh, well, I suppose.” Since we weren’t going through and verifying the answers, being poor at math wouldn’t have been an issue─Ogi seemed to want to say, but she simply nodded for the time being. “Still, the average score of the students who were absent─or who didn’t participate in the study session was twenty points lower than the average of the students who did. Did anyone in the non-participating group score high enough to rival the study-session students?”

“Sure─I mean, I want to say Hayamachi got a 92. The participants weren’t the only people who did well on the final, which did make things a little complicated. Only one student, though, got a higher score than everyone from the study session. Yours truly.”

“What…”

“Which is why─I was chosen to chair the meeting.”