Monogatari Series - Volume 17 - Chapter 1.10

010

100 points.

100 points out of 100─was my score on the math final. Sodachi Oikura had the next highest, a 99 (the highest score out of anyone from the study session).

I was all but unable to keep up with Naoetsu High’s curriculum, math being the one exception─it sounds like I’m bragging to say it was my best subject, but math was easier for me because you didn’t have to think. Still, a perfect score was a little too good─which is why I felt more anxiety than joy when I got my test back. Wouldn’t there be some sort of blowback, I wondered, and my prediction had been spot-on.

I couldn’t believe it─had I picked that short of a straw? I stood at the teacher’s desk, but actually wanted to hide underneath it. So that was how my teachers (or Oikura) saw the classroom─I couldn’t bear all the eyes on me. I was grateful for students like Kijikiri and Senjogahara who were looking away, uninterested.

“All right, Araragi. Think you could start speeding us along? Prove our innocence for us,” urged Oikura, her words full of hostility and sarcasm─her seat may have been in the back, but the five chairs’ worth of distance between us did nothing to damper the pressure coming from her.

I assume you’ve figured this out already, but her pathological hatred for me stemmed from my being good at math. She was convinced it was thanks to me and my higher math scores that no one called her Euler. Her resentment went beyond unjustified, it was indiscriminate. Naturally, I couldn’t accept this and even tried (recklessly) arguing with her─come on, your scores are so much higher than mine in every subject that we’re not even in competition─but that was in fact the very reason for her fury, according to her. She said it was like monkeys typing out Shakespeare in front of someone who wanted to become a novelist. What an awful thing to say…

I wasn’t going to go out of my way to do poorly in math, my island of hope in the sea of Naoetsu High’s curriculum… I wished she’d work to surpass me of her own accord, but that chance vanished once I got a perfect score.

“Of course, since you were the only one to get a perfect score, Araragi, we can’t count out the possibility that you stole the answers,” Oikura said combatively. What? Hadn’t she appointed me? Was it my duty as chair to counter this spiteful jab of an opinion?

“That seems like kind of a stretch,” a voice said in my place. Well, maybe not in my place, but the words were spoken to Oikura by a student sitting directly in front of her, Keiri Ashine─Year 1 Class 3’s student no. 1. He was student no. 1, and I was no. 2─our consecutive roll-call numbers meant we were somewhat friendly. Okay, maybe not friendly, but we’d at least spoken before, and that trivial little link might have moved him to defend me. Like Mebe, he was one of the few students on good terms with Oikura─but in his case, he had some degree of influence over nearly every girl in class, not just her. His nickname was straight-up Handsome, after all. He wasn’t the kind of guy you could describe in superficial, flashy terms like “hunky”─plus, he was good-natured if he had no reservations about interacting with someone as bothersome as me. Handsome and a good guy. No faults to find with him, and he continued his faultless argument.

“Since Araragi didn’t even know that the study session existed, he wasn’t in touch with anyone in it. How could he have had an impact on their average score? And didn’t you pick him as chair partly because he has no conflicts of interest with anyone in class?”

“W-Well, true…”

Oikura faltered in a rare display for her─so even our class appraiser had a weakness for handsome boys. How disappointing, but even more disappointing was his remark that I had no conflicts of interest with anyone in class. He’d stood up for me just to cut me down where I stood.

It was true, though… At any kind of class council event, whether it involved being in groups of two or three or four, I, Koyomi Araragi, was always the one student left over at the end─and perhaps my lack of connections actually qualified me for the independent position of chair.

As depressing a job as it was…

“Okay, then,” I said, “let’s start by having everyone in the study session raise their hands, please.”

I considered wording it as more of an arrogant command but didn’t want to make any unnecessary waves. I’d act humble and proceed in a businesslike manner. To be honest, I didn’t see how any amount of talk could reveal the culprit…but either way, I had to take care of this. The students whose arms had shot up for Oikura raised them slowly this time as if they were eyeing one another.

“I want you to keep your hands raised. I’m going to write your names on the blackboard.”

“Oh, I can do that,” Gekizaka volunteered, standing up. She was assuming the position of court clerk, an assertive move that was very much like her. Well, she had her hand raised until just a moment ago, which made her one of the suspects… But no, what was the harm in letting her be a simple clerk, even if she’d been in the study session? Gekizaka threaded her way through the seats to the front before I could accept her offer, and started by writing her own name on the blackboard. Some students looked at her as they would a traitor─they had their hands raised, naturally.

Or maybe they just found her pushiness suspicious─and Nageki Gekizaka’s candid personality always made the girl an easy target for doubt. She never seemed to pay enough attention to the wall or fence between boys and girls and casually touched students of the opposite sex, which often resulted in trouble… You know, the kind of girl who made guys wonder, Is she actually into me? On that occasion too, I couldn’t deny harboring some level of groundless suspicion simply because she’d volunteered. Maybe boys are just stupid, but in any case, her name wasn’t solely responsible for her nickname Nagekiss. She returned to her seat─two rows in front of Senjogahara─after writing the names of every student with a raised hand, in addition to her own, on the blackboard.

Now I knew the names of the nineteen students who’d participated in the study session. Gekizaka had written only their last names, in whatever haphazard order she noticed them, but let me give their full names here, ordered by the Japanese syllabary:

1: Keiri Ashine 2: Michisada Igami 3: Sodachi Oikura 4: Enji Kikigoe 5: Hoka Kijikiri 6: Aizu Kube 7: Nageki Gekizaka 8: Sosho Kodo 9: Tsuma Shui 10: Judo Shuzawa 11: Kokushi Su’uchi 12: Ki’ichigo Daino 13: Choka Nagagutsu 14: Roka Haga 15: Sekiro Higuma 16: Joro Hishigata 17: Shijima Fudo 18: Kabe Madomura 19: Shokei Yoki