Monogatari Series - Volume 17 - Chapter 1.17

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I still wonder─just what kind of result was Oikura hoping for, anyway? What kind of conclusion did she think her proposal would bring us to? Was a conclusion all that mattered to her, even if it wasn’t the truth?

You can decide even if you don’t know.

Finger, even if things are unclear.

Then again, she said it from the start. The meeting would continue until we found the culprit, or the culprit came forward─she never said it’d go on “until we know who the culprit is.”

“…I always tended to be the class loner. One time in middle school, we even had a council meeting about it. Like, to acculturate me, which does sound absurd in retrospect, and as the discussion unfolded, it started to make less and less sense. At some point it devolved into a session where everyone criticized me and my uncooperativeness. I guess meetings easily lose direction that way. I didn’t think much of it because by preferring to be alone, I was partly to blame. I had no complaints about the conclusion, either: Araragi should work to get along with everyone. But choosing a culprit based on a majority vote?”

“I see what you mean─but can’t wholly dismiss the idea. Jury systems are common in the West, and a lay judge system is taking root even in Japan. Of course, juries require a unanimous decision, and even lay decisions aren’t made by simple majority… But if you did discuss everything, maybe Oikura made the right decision,” Ogi whispered by my ear, as if to console me. If I wasn’t careful, I might let her─but no. That’s not how it was. She was just going over the theory─what happened was that we made the wrong decision. I ought to have stopped Oikura, even if it meant slugging her.

Yet the majority vote proceeded.

Not even with a secret ballot, but with a show of hands. Year 1 Class 3 was asked to raise our hand for one of the names she called out in order of roll-call number.

Who thinks no. 2, Koyomi Araragi, is the culprit.

Please raise your hand.

“Huh, really, is that what happened… And the majority spoke and framed you as the culprit─now I see why it wasn’t the discussion but the conclusion that made you despair. Yes, it makes sense for someone to lose faith in humanity in that case. Please accept my sincerest sympathies.”

“No. Oikura was the only one who voted for me.”

“Wha?”

“The majority raised their hand when she called no. 6─Sodachi Oikura.”

It brought everything to an end.

No need to call out the remaining students’ names and ask for a show of hands─even if she’d tried, I doubt Oikura could even speak.

I’ll never forget the look of despair on her face. That despair─must have snagged me as well.

No one ever saw Oikura at Naoetsu High again. Not because she dropped out like Yuba─she was still registered. But she stopped coming to school entirely, for classes or for tests. Despite her absence, she received some sort of special treatment thanks to her smarts and wasn’t held back, and apparently was matriculated in one of the third-year classes─though no one knew which one.

Some said she reaped what she sowed, while others more bluntly called it digging her own grave─and yes, in hindsight, what else did she expect from a majority vote? She’d confined everyone after school, trapping them in a space high on the discomfort index, and grilled us mercilessly. Something was very wrong with you if you thought it wouldn’t result in malice─but realizing that people hate you isn’t easy. Just as I hadn’t grasped, in any true sense, her violent contempt for me.

I could only watch as she walked into the jaws of death─I couldn’t save her. I doubt she wanted me to, but still─shouldn’t I have known? How else could it have turned out? Was I hoping to witness the fall of a girl who’d been hostile to me forever? Wasn’t I just wishing for that look of despair on her face, which’d be so vindicating for me? No─I was fully convinced I’d be the culprit in a majority vote, and that might have been Oikura’s plan. It didn’t seem too terrible, actually. Someone who obviously wasn’t the culprit being named as the culprit offered a clean conclusion that left the least behind to fester─so much the better since the heinous election would end at no. 2…

My naive read on the situation made me turn a blind eye. In that sense, no. 1 being Ashine also led me astray─no way they’d treat a polite, handsome guy, the peacemaker from start to finish, as a criminal.

But more importantly─the responsibility for her ruin did lie with me if I was the reason why she grew intransigent and ran amok.

I don’t mean to say that was why.

I don’t─but I started taking even more days off, played hooky more often. Because not seeing Oikura at school left me with this viscous sensation that was a little like guilt.

Also, since that day.

I never once got a perfect score in math.

“Do you really need to feel so responsible? You said from the beginning─Oikura was a prime suspect. Maybe all those votes for her were fair and impartial.”

“I’m sure some hands went up for that reason… It was an excellent excuse, but at least a few must’ve believed it for real─I tried telling myself that, but remember what I said? She decided on her own to hold the meeting, not because anyone asked her. It was meant to clear her of suspicion because she was a prime suspect… Ironically, it ratified those doubts, but why call for a meeting if she was the culprit? That one fact is enough for me to declare that it wasn’t her.”

“Heh. I see. Declare, huh?”

“…Anyway, the class council ended up giving birth to a false charge─which, at the end of the day, was karmic retribution. Still─”

“It’s more like being hoist by your own petard. Blowing yourself up with a bomb that you set. Hah, what a clown, when I put it that way.”

Ogi laughed. It was laughable─Oikura, along with the rest of us, had been in a farce.

Even so, I said.

“Seeing a false truth get forged─witnessing such a stupid decision made everything feel so messed up. It messed me up. The majority, most of the students, raised their hands as one, without any prior arrangement or agreement, not even through glances. That moment when they decided on the truth, and justice was settled─is the scariest thing I ever saw. Speaking of losing sight, that was when.”

Losing sight?

No, I lost so much more.

“Until then, I believed in something like the idea of rightness─that there are things in the world that are right, and that it’s a question of if you can do them or not. But that’s when I learned that no matter how wrong or cruel or stupid, as long as enough people agree, it becomes right.”

If a million people approve, even an obvious mistake, a foolish failure, becomes right─the heavens revolved around the Earth so long as everyone in the world believed it.

Majority vote, the ugliest formula ever invented by humanity. The most unjust, unequal formula.

But that was justice.

Everyone said it was right─so it was right.

“Ahaha. What an extreme argument─madly rushing from one extreme to the other. That’s no different from saying everything that sells well is trash.”

“Maybe. Maybe I’m being dumb. But if a million people showed up to agree, even my dumb opinion becomes right. I learned that you can mass-produce all the justice you could ever want─that justice arises from numbers. It’s about establishing a majority. That’s why I chose solitude over establishment.”

I don’t need friends─they’ll only lower my intensity as a human.

That’s─what I ended up saying.

“It was the only way I could protect my own sense of things. My only choice was not belonging to any faction or gang. Of course, it all came tumbling down during spring break two years later… I know it ended up going long, but this has been the tale of Koyomi Araragi. Thank you for listening, Ogi. You know, you said it. It was nothing, now that I’ve talked about it. I feel all better now.”

“Well that’s no good.”

“Hm?”

“I’m saying you shouldn’t be feeling all better quite yet.”

Stepping away from my neck area at last, she quietly appeared in front of me. It’d been a while since I last got a head-on view of her smile─so cute, it was almost uncanny.

“We can’t leave if the tale ends with Oikura not being the culprit─have you forgotten? We need to identify the culprit to exit this classroom. The culprit you couldn’t identify that day─through majority vote.”

We’ll have to decide instead.

Or so said Ogi.

Now that she mentioned it, yes. Wait, no, that was only her hypothesis… “You mean Oikura’s deep-seated grudge from that day created this classroom? That does make me getting trapped in here seem like fate.”

Oikura.

Had she still not forgiven me?

Was she the same as that day?

Did she hate me as much as ever?

I hate you.

“Nah, she’s probably forgotten about you. That’s how things go.”

“Then what about this classroom?”

“Didn’t I tell you? I think your mind gave birth to it. That’s my definition─a classroom created by your mind, by your regret. If you’d pinned down the culprit that day, Sodachi Oikura wouldn’t have met her downfall. And─”

You wouldn’t have lost your sense of justice.

It’s your regret that created this classroom.

If the school’s closing time had never come that day─5:58.

That’s where the clock was stopped. Stopped time─suspended.

Time continued to stagnate, for over two years.

“You’ve been after that sense of justice ever since you lost it that day─and created this classroom to retrieve it.”

“I did?”

Was that possible? It’s not as if I had Shinobu’s power to generate matter, so for me to create a room would be─but then again, every aberration has its reasons. In that case, me being the reason─was enough.

“Okay, but justice?”

We were talking about two years ago. How could we figure out the culprit now, when our whole discussion came up empty back then? Were Ogi and I going to be trapped here forever, unable to leave school for eternity?

No, forget about me, but Ogi didn’t deserve this. Even if our misadventure started with her, it was too much for me to bear. In that case, there was only one course of action. No matter how impossible, we had to do what had to be done.

“Okay, we’ll redo that meeting,” I said. “This time we can’t just find someone guilty, we have to find the true culprit─”

“Er, no? If it’s the true culprit you want, I already know.”

Ogi blithely thwarted─my determination.

“And I think you know, too─who really should have been condemned at the class council. The one who ruined your, as Oikura might put it, sacred math final. That much was clear─from hearing you speak. You feel awful about what happened to Oikura because unconsciously, you know who the culprit is. Otherwise you wouldn’t have told it that way.”

“Told it─what way?”

“You deliberately hid one piece of info in your account to avoid casting doubt on a certain individual. In that sense, you’re covering for the true culprit, whether you mean to or not. You’re covering up the truth. That’s why you feel so guilty about Oikura, who had to take the blame.”

“…?”

Deliberately? Covering up? Don’t be ridiculous, what was I hiding? I’ll never forget what happened in that meeting. Whatever I might try to hide, I couldn’t.

“Right, you couldn’t. It tells me your unconscious knew the identity of the culprit─you’ve been averting your gaze from it the whole time. Just like Tsubasa Hanekawa used to.”

“…”

I didn’t get it.

What was this girl saying?

What did this girl know?

“I don’t know anything─you’re the one who does, my dear senior. Koyomi Araragi.”

“I─”

“And with a clearing of the throat, the great detective gathered them all and began─but there’s no great detective here, so I guess I’ll do it instead. Ahem! Why don’t we begin the solemn business of figuring out whodunnit, in part to mourn the idiot, dunce, and fool brought to ruin by the weight of her own sins, Sodachi Oikura, as it is what she too wanted. Oh, I nearly forgot, something does need to be said if this is a whodunnit. Convention is important, you see, whether you’re banishing aberrations or solving mysteries.”

Ogi snickered at my puzzled look.

Ogi Oshino, Mèmè Oshino’s niece and transfer student, turned around─then struck a pose like a kabuki actor, facing no one but the blackboard. I couldn’t catch her expression because of the angle, but I could almost see it.

“I challenge the reader.”