Monogatari Series - Volume 17 - Chapter 1.13

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“So most of Year 1 Class 3 weren’t in any extracurriculars… Do you mind me asking about that, Araragi-senpai? How many others were in clubs or on teams?”

“Huh? Why do you wanna know?”

“When you’re laying the truth bare, you never know what might turn out to be a hint. After saying there weren’t many club members, you described three in a row who were toward the end. It made me wonder. I’d like to look into whatever sets I can.”

Laying the truth bare sounded a little extreme, but I answered her anyway. The study-session people who were in clubs were Kodo, on the volleyball team; Haga, on the track team; Hishigata, on the softball team; Fudo, on the swimming team; and Madomura, in the light music club. Those five─and Ogi was right, there did happen to be three in a row based on how I organized the list, but five out of nineteen still seemed on the low side.

“Yes. Which is why I want to know about the non-participants who were in clubs and on teams─didn’t you say at the beginning that Suisen Toishima was in the flower arrangement club? And that Tetsujo, the class mediator who led you guys alongside Sodachi Oikura, was a member of the softball team?”

“Oh…yeah, with Hishigata.”

“I see. The softball team─who else in your class was on it?”

“No one. Whatever you’re hoping to get from this…like every other extracurricular at our school, the softball team was plagued every year by a lack of members. I want to say that Tetsujo invited Hishigata to join? As far as other kids who skipped the session, Shinaniwa was on the track team, like Haga. And Fuyunami played volleyball.”

“Fuyunami. You mentioned him once before─right, childhood friends with Kodo. Huh. Childhood friends playing the same sport. Kind of romantic.”

“I’m pretty sure the boys’ team and the girls’ team are basically different clubs…”

Well, it was just a prediction, or preconception─as if I, who’d been going straight home ever since middle school, knew anything about how clubs operated.

“Fuyunami─Saka’atsu Fuyunami joined the volleyball team to get taller. Seriously, boys like him exist. They buy the urban legend that if you compete in sports where height matters, like volleyball or basketball, your body meets that demand and grows… I think it’s BS, though.”

“A-ha. Which is why you don’t bother with any extracurriculars.”

“Let’s not go into that. But yeah, Fuyunami is about my height…I don’t know if he thought we were buddies or what, but he approached me at the start of the school year─that’s when he told me Kodo was mentally immature. Maybe hanging around with other short boys gave him no comfort because he distanced himself from me pretty quickly. After that, he made friends with guys with more solid builds, like Higuma.”

“Ah. How do I put it… Seems like his childhood friend wasn’t the only mentally immature one─not terribly romantic.”

“Then there’s Mizaki, a member of the art club… Oh, right. I almost forgot, Yuba was on the baseball team.”

“Mizaki. Yuba. Both names I’m hearing for the first time.”

“Yeah─Mizaki’s full name is Meibi Mizaki. Everyone called him P’raps because of his first name.”

“P’raps… Year 1 Class 3 had a unique sensibility when it came to nicknames, I see. By the way, what was yours?”

“I didn’t have one.”

“Sorry that I asked,” Ogi muttered apologetically─I much preferred her smirking and calling me a fool to the look now on her face.

“Mizaki was a real artist and free spirit. He didn’t quite fit in. Maybe he, rather than Su’uchi, was the student whose position resembled mine. He didn’t take part in the study session, either.”

“But did have a nickname.”

“I guess. The girls would ask him to draw them during break, so they didn’t hate him, at least…”

Which reminded me─Oikura had modeled for him too. I realized, belatedly, that his artistic temperament was actually his way of socializing.

“And Yuba? You seem to have nearly forgotten some of these people─were they that non-notable?”

“Oh, the opposite. Yuba was extra-notable─it’s just that he was only on the baseball team on paper. A total ghost member, which is why his name slipped my mind─Shokunori Yuba.”

“A ghost member. He must have something to do with this ghostly classroom.”

“Um, I don’t think so?”

While we ought to be thinking of every possibility, tying an ever-absent sports team member to a supernatural phenomenon was a bit much.

“But he was very notable?”

“Have Kanbaru or Oshino or anyone told you that I tend to skip school a lot?”

“Oh, well, to an extent,” Ogi decided to play dumb for whatever reason. So she wasn’t always trying to be a know-it-all.

“Yuba was already skipping school more than me during the first term of our freshman year. He’d show up late, leave early, and not even attend classes he didn’t like. Kijikiri was absent a lot too, but it was a little different with her… Yeah, the only one who came to school less than Yuba was Senjogahara, who was in and out of the hospital.”

“So a true delinquent, unlike your delinquency-lite?”

“I wouldn’t say that… But there was something menacing about him. It made you think twice about bringing up his conduct with him… He had piercing eyes and a shaved head─”

Well, maybe his head was shaved because he was on the baseball team─ghost member or not.

“How scary. I’d better avoid him during my time here.”

“No need to worry. He already quit.”

“Oh my. Is that so?”

“Right after that class council meeting─maybe he lost hope, like me. Friends, classmates, unity─maybe he got bored of it all.”

What was he up to these days?

I wouldn’t have known how to ask him back then, but I felt like I did now.

“By the way, Yuba scored a zero on that final.”

“A zero? No, you don’t actually mean zero─it’s actually a feat to get a zero.”

“He turned in a blank test─I think he was trying to make a point. Maybe his act of rebellion makes him suspicious. Leaking the answers then getting a zero yourself would be one way to turn the entire idea of testing into a joke.”

“I doubt it─still, people believe in all sorts of things. Did someone who look so threatening have a route for leaking the answers, though?”

“Yeah. We were afraid of him, but somehow, he wasn’t isolated─by the way, everyone called him Chin Prop. Because even when he did show up to class, he’d take this defiant pose, propping up his chin─same goes for during the class council meeting.”

“So even he had a nickname, but not you. A powerful anecdote.”

“…That’s everyone in a club or team. All the others went straight home. Not that many, right? Oh, I should mention─a girl named Waritori. She wasn’t in any extracurricular but went to a serious-sounding dojo after school. Practical kendo, or something…”

Not that I knew what practical meant in that context, but it must’ve been like the karate school that my little sister Karen attends.

“Shitsue Waritori─at first I thought she was in the kendo club because she sometimes wore her gi to class. She was one of the harder girls to approach. Not like she swung a bamboo sword around, but she’d start beating on you with a broom if there was a problem. You could say she was violent, or maybe quick to put her hands on you─or her rod. Only Hishigata got into fights quicker than her.”

“Sounds like she lacked mental discipline. An awful lot of mentally immature students in that class.”

“Maybe, being practical, her dojo wasn’t into the whole discipline thing? Anyway, this was two years ago─during our first year of high school. Of course we were all immature─boys, girls, and not just Kodo, Fuyunami, or Waritori.”

Oikura, and me too.

Immature, inexperienced─not fully formed.

If only we’d been aware of that back then─things’d be different two years later.

“Then again,” Ogi reminded me, “thanks to that experience you met Miss Shinobu and Miss Hanekawa and are dating Miss Senjogahara. The night is always darkest just before dawn.”

“Well, I guess…” She’d wrapped my life up in a neat little package.

“In any case, that was very helpful. Thank you so much. Sorry for interrupting you, but I’ve closed in on the truth about most everything here. Please, continue. After you had the names of the nineteen most likely suspects written out on the blackboard, what happened?” prodded Ogi, so naturally that I didn’t notice─just how casually she’d said closed in on the truth.

“As soon as we wrote down the nineteen names, Arikure began to complain─about something we’ve brought up. The culprit wasn’t necessarily one of the nineteen…”