Monogatari Series - Volume 17 - Chapter 2.04

004

I entered the classroom─the “empty seat” kept open for Oikura all this time was pretty far from mine, giving me some degree of comfort.

Given what Hanekawa had just told me─and even if that wasn’t the case─I couldn’t ignore Oikura. Still, I assumed I could at least place my bag down at my seat, sit down, and breathe for a moment. The plan was to inspect Oikura while doing this, then come up with a plan based on her attitude and mood. I’d be jumping the gun in a sense, kind of like how people who’re quick at doing calculations start thinking about how to solve a problem before they’re even done hearing it. Unfortunately, someone called me on my foul. No, that’s not accurate─because I didn’t even get a chance to execute my so-called plan.

Oikura had taken my seat.

It didn’t matter if Hanekawa told her or not, because really, she could ask anyone where I sat and they’d tell her─it wasn’t as if no other former Year 1 Class 3 students were in our class. Well, actually, even if she did ask someone, I doubted she’d ask someone from 1-3. She’d probably avoid them.

Oikura would.

In any case, I tried to pull off a feint, but she’d gotten the jump on me─or rather, it felt like she’d jumped me, and I had to admit, it did feel strange. Yes, Oikura hated me since long ago, but was it to the point that she’d try to pick a fight with me this openly? You could almost call it an attack. How was it any different from physical violence? She seemed to be challenging me to battle─I considered answering this declaration of war by going over to her seat (the one that had always been empty) and sitting in it, but allowing myself to be provoked would only drag me into a quagmire. On second thought, it was times like these that called on me to be a cool and collected gentleman. I calmly walked with the most graceful of steps toward my seat and Oikura like a movie star on the red carpet, or perhaps a bride down the wedding aisle.

You can tell by my nonsense metaphors that I was in fact quite shaken, but in any case─

“Hey, you know that’s my seat,” I said.

Calmly.

As calmly as possible.

“Hm? Hold on. Aren’t you Oikura? That’s right, you’re Oikura! Whoa, what a surprise! Oikura, my old classmate from when I was a first-year, two whole years in the past! I wonder if you remember me. You’ve probably forgotten me, but you know, number two, Araragi! Number two!”

My entire profile consisted of my roll-call number.

And, while I meant for this self-introduction to cleverly imply that yes, How Much, I know that’s how little I’m worth to you, she only replied, in a low voice:

“…I remember. Of course I do.”

Not just a low voice, the lowest.

The kind of voice that might arise from the lowest depths of hell─over the past six months, I’d faced countless crises, squared off against no shortage of dangerous characters, and could say without exaggeration that I’d been pushed to the brink of death again and again, but this voice made me want to flinch.

All my experience meant nothing─what exactly had she gone through?

“How could I ever forget you─Araragi.”

Oikura let out my name with so much hatred that I bet she’d speak the devil’s name with more cheer in comparison. She more spit it out than let it out, leaving no room whatsoever for compromise. This wasn’t scorched earth, this was like a barrier.

Or maybe just─a deep ravine?

“I’m glad you remember me… Yes. That makes me, Araragi, roll-call number two, happy,” I said as I observed Oikura, whom I was seeing for the first time in two years. She seemed to have grown, though that seems obvious enough─she’d gone from being a first-year high school student to a third-year high school student. Her details were a little more childish in my memories, but that seemed to have disappeared entirely. As far as changes, though, the most prominent of all was her gaze─the gaze she summoned to glare at me.

Her gaze.

Now even sharper than two years ago─it seemed to have a keener edge to it. Unless her eyesight had gotten worse from spending the past two years playing too many video games, her hatred and revulsion for me must have grown the entire time─negative growth, as they say.

More than her body had grown─which was fine, but why would her hatred toward me grow?

It’s not like we’d been meeting or anything.

“So. You’re sitting in my seat,” I repeated patiently.

Don’t ever get impatient when you’re dealing with wild beasts─fall into agitation or panic and you doom yourself to be eaten. Most important of all, remain unshaken and unperturbed before a predator.

“You seem to be doing well, unlike me,” the predator said, ignoring my words.

She offered a meager smile─kindly teaching me that smiling isn’t always a sign of good intentions.

“Of course, my life is a total mess thanks to you.”

“Thanks to me?”

I didn’t know what she meant─was she talking about the class council meeting? No, how did that make sense? Sure, Oikura stopped coming to school, and that might have made a total mess of her life, but the unanimous opinion was that she’d caused her own downfall. She’d reaped what she sowed, and shouldn’t be holding a grudge against anyone. Don’t tell me she believed the theory that I’d intentionally brought her low? Did she even think that I was the true culprit?

How ridiculous─I thought, but it belonged to the realm of possibility. This was, after all, about what someone believed, and anyone is free to believe anything.

A solo majority vote always ends in a unanimous decision.

If Oikura thought I was the culprit, I was the culprit.

If Oikura thought I caused her downfall, I had to accept that fact─

“Looks like you’re leading a happy life,” she continued.

I noticed there was something unnatural about the way she spoke─a weak vibrato, like she wasn’t too used to talking, as if she didn’t have full control over the volume of her voice.

She hadn’t come to school for two years, and perhaps hadn’t talked to anyone in a while. In that case, saying anything too stimulating was unwise─though it was hard to say at this point what would constitute a wise move.

I guess neither wisdom nor moves had been a big part of her life for some time…

I began to regret not going to the teachers’ room with Hanekawa, but as it always is with regret, I was too late.

“I’m so jealous. You were studying, trying to get into college, and finding a girlfriend while I shut myself in at home. It’s all been smooth sailing for you, hasn’t it?”

“Yeah. Thanks,” I said, the most I could muster in reply.

It seemed she’d asked more than just Hanekawa about me─studying was one thing, but Hanekawa wouldn’t babble about me wanting to go to college and other private stuff. She told me she’d left out Senjogahara, but it wasn’t as if our relationship was a secret. Someone else must have brought it up. It didn’t take a masterful investigation.

But there was something unhealthy about Oikura.

Something extremely sick.

She’d come back to school after two years, and the first thing she did was ask everyone about me─didn’t she worry about the kind of impression it gave? Going around and asking about Koyomi Araragi? In fact, her eccentric behavior bothered Hanekawa to the point that she decided to caution me in advance. Not that I didn’t seem to be making an active mockery of her advice.

Oikura was a pretty harsh person two years ago, not easy to get along with, but I didn’t recall her being this poor of a communicator, this incapable of managing her relationships with others.

Had that incident changed her, after all?

Or perhaps set her down a rather distorted path─twisted and turning.

“Thanks? Thanks? Hah… What did I do for you? It’s not like I was here at school.”

“No, I meant…”

Now she wanted to nitpick my empty platitudes?

Not to mention, it felt more like her nails digging into me than her picking nits.

“Hmph,” she snorted. “I’m sure you could get into any college you want, if you felt like it.”

“I-I wouldn’t say that, I’m in a real rough spot,” I shrugged and replied jokingly to her words soaked in─no, dripping with sarcasm. The real rough spot I found myself in was keeping the mood from growing dark, not that my efforts were paying off.

It went beyond me. The air in the entire room felt suffocating─I almost wondered if the oxygen around us had been replaced with precious metals. Not one student in class chatted away. They all seemed to be focused on us.

My reputation was going to take yet another hit.

I was doing all the right things, and yet my reputation was going down the drain? How unfair.

“No need to be modest. You’re still good at math, aren’t you?”

Oikura said this sneeringly. The snide remark seemed to be no motive and all malice.

“You must think ‘Euler’ suits you better than it does me.”

“…”

There was something laughable about the way she fixated on this point, and it seemed even dumber when that piercing glare accompanied it─if you want to know what the object of that piercing glare thought.

“Well, I guess you could say I’m good at math, or more that it’s my one lifeline.”

“Still getting perfect score after perfect score?”

“No, as far as my scores─”

I couldn’t say it. That of all subjects, I’d never gotten a perfect score in math since that day─I had the experience lately in other subjects, math was the only one where I couldn’t make it happen.

Or shouldn’t.

A compulsion coming from somewhere.

From somewhere? No, I knew where.

It came from right here.

“And you have a girlfriend now? That must be thanks to math, too.”

“No, that’s a bit…”

Of a stretch.

At the same time, I realized that while Oikura’s questioning may have turned up the fact that I had a girlfriend, she didn’t seem to have learned it was Senjogahara.

Because Oikura wouldn’t have let that go if she’d known─how could she ignore the news that Koyomi Araragi had captured the heart of Hitagi Senjogahara, the cloistered princess, the flower in a bell jar?

What a stroke of luck. Perhaps whoever told Oikura that I had a girlfriend sensed something disquieting, either from the start or as they spoke─disquieting, or some sort of unusual vibe.

In that case, I resolved anew, I at least needed to get her out of my seat before Senjogahara got to school─but ultimately, it’s not as if my mere resolve meant anything.

“It’s all thanks to math,” Oikura repeated nonsensically. “Punks like you really grind my gears─I could have all the resentment in the world and it still wouldn’t be enough. My hatred for you just keeps on bubbling up whether I want it to or not. A bottomless spring of disgust.”

“Punks like me… Gosh, that’s a little extreme,” I attempted to mollify the now openly hostile Oikura. To keep us on a peaceful, or at least conciliatory path─yet she only kept her sights trained on me. In fact, her expression grew even harsher.

“I hate you,” she stated.

The same words I’d heard in that classroom two years ago.

“I hate that attitude of yours─wrapping everything up in a nice, noncommittal way. You try to compromise, to smooth everything over, just like back then, when─” she said before gulping her words.

No, it seemed more like she’d lost them when they got stuck in her throat. This girl who hadn’t done much speaking in a while had apparently messed her throat up by suddenly taking a furious tone.

In fact, she had a mild coughing fit.

I approached her, concerned, but─

“Don’t touch me,” she rejected me.

This is what it meant for someone to be brusque.

“I don’t want someone like you worrying about me─what good could possibly come out of that?”

“Is that so.”

I stepped away. As requested.

I got to thinking.

Just like back then, when─Oikura had said. Back then naturally meant when I was a first-year. Did she mean the way I tried to bring the meeting to an inconclusive end?

Speaking of, she reached the decision to take a majority vote after learning of my stance. A decision, or maybe a boiling point─maybe she felt some kind of unjustified resentment over it? Unjustified from my point of view, of course, while she surely saw it as a legitimate grudge. Spending two whole years keenly aware of her grudge would explain the way she glared at me now.

It was unreasonable─but not unjustified.

“I-I hate you. I hate you. I hate you, okay?” she went on, like some firebrand trying to win over a crowd─like a dam had burst, spilling out words.

Her own words lit a flame in her, drove her into a frenzy.

“I don’t even want to see your face. The fact that you exist in this world at all is disgusting.”

“That bad…”

You have no choice but to go on the defensive when someone attacks you to that degree─I felt my emotions cooling off. Faced with a wild beast, I effortlessly fell into a state of calm serenity. Settled into, more like. Her rant was appalling and left me cold─but it was also fear, a cold sensation in my guts over not knowing what to do, or what she might do.

She was comical in a way, hating me to this extent, so it was possible to see her as foolish, but I couldn’t laugh at her so easily. Even if I did, it’d surely be forced.

Just like Oikura’s agitation.

My laugh would be peculiar.

“Seems like you really hate happy people.”

I wanted to ask her why she bothered coming to school if she didn’t want to see my face, but that was like telling her to go home after she’d finally decided otherwise after her long absence. Instead, I tried to evade her attacks by generalizing.

But no, she shook her head as if I said the stupidest things.

“I like happy people.”

Right, she’d refute anything I said at this point. She’d say left if I said right, down if I said up─but she seemed to mean it.

“Seeing them makes me happy─what I hate are people who don’t know why they’re happy. People who don’t even try to consider why they’re happy.”

“…”

“I hate water that thinks it made itself boil. I hate seasons that think they came about naturally. I hate the Sun for thinking it rises all on its own─I hate it, I hate it, I ha-ha-hate it─I hate it. I hate you.”

Oikura’s eyes glowed.

Like they were aflame─like they were inflamed.

I had no idea anything could glow in such a disgusting way.

“I hate it hate it hate it hate it hate it. I ha-ha─hate it. I hate everything. I hate it, no exceptions. I hate it, no takebacks. I hate it, I hate it─I hate the hate of hate that hates hate because hating hate hates hate.”

“Oikura…”

Oh crap─I thought. I was wrong, totally wrong.

It was the kind of mistake you make when you’re being attacked─you’re the underdog being viciously harassed by someone with an advantage over you. If you don’t strike back, if you don’t stand strong, you’re going to let yourself be mauled─no, maybe mistake is an overstatement. I’d be beaten into submission if I didn’t strike back and stand strong.

Oikura was certainly being hostile toward me.

Her attitude was threatening and aggressive─but even if it meant getting beaten into submission, it should’ve been unthinkable for me to strike back at her.

It’d be a different story if this was the Oikura from two years ago.

But I couldn’t now.

I mean, now she was─fragile.

Almost like a piece of glass. If I tried to strike back and defend myself in the wrong way, the slightest nudge from my hand could shatter her into a thousand pieces. Who knows what would have happened if I dared tell her to go home? What could I do or say to someone coming after me in such a perilous emotional state?

Even the way she took my seat for starters─might have been more defensive than offensive, a way to protect herself and her mind.

She lacked any and all equilibrium.

I felt, well, awful.

She’d been so cool and commanding, but now appeared this weak and frail─I’d have preferred the return of a more aggressive Oikura.

A former foe returns, but weakened─who wants to watch a drama like that?

She was no wild beast.

She was like a scared little animal.

If anything, it was Oikura who saw me as a ferocious, wild beast.

The predator.

Touching her would leave me hurt, but shatter her.

This difference in power forced me to go easy on her.

“Why aren’t you talking? Don’t tell me you’re feeling sympathetic, Araragi. You, feel sympathy for me? Your suh-sympathy isn’t worth a cent to─”

“Hold on, Oikura. Ho-o-o-ld on. Calm down. I’ll leave for a bit, okay? Cool your head while I’m gone. You can keep on sitting in that seat…”

My attitude only seemed to irritate Oikura─she stood up indignantly. The way she stood the moment I said it was okay to sit was, in a sense, consistent, but this was no time to be impressed.

“Araragi. You-you, don’t know anything─you act like you do as you live your comfortable little life, not even considering why you’re happy. You don’t know─you’ve forgotten. College exams? Girlfriends? Duh-d-d-d-don’t give me that crap.”

“A-Again─Oikura.”

I didn’t think I was giving her crap, but nothing would come out of arguing here. Perhaps the biggest load of crap to her was when I tried to act serious. Not to mention, it’s a terrible idea to contradict someone who’s emotionally off-balance─I had to affirm everything coming out of her mouth, just as she denied everything coming from mine.

Or so I thought, but she wasn’t even letting me affirm her. Or speak in the first place. She interrupted me as I tried, endlessly unfurling her pet theories and personal opinions before I could so much as nod.

“It’s because people like you are in power─that I’m never going to be saved. I hate people who think they’re the only ones responsible for the way they live─who think they can live all on their own. I hate people who flatter themselves by thinking they can make it on their own if it really came down to it─people with the nerve to say they don’t need anyone’s help.”

“…”

“You can never be happy unless someone saves you─I hate idiots who don’t even realize that, I hate them so much it’s killing me.”

What had driven her to this point?

That class council meeting?

The two years of depression that followed?

Or something else I wasn’t aware of…

“I-I agree, it’s important for people to help each other out. Yeah, Oikura, you’re right, people never go and get saved on their own, definitely not. I’m always thinking the same thing, those ungrateful people who think they’re on their own are unforgivable─”

I’m probably not cut out for flattery. To think that going along with someone’s opinion could be this hard… But permit me to make the bare minimum of an excuse─no one could stay on the same page as Oikura here.

“You’re the unforgivable one, Araragi. No one is more ungrateful than you. You’re complacent─I mean, what about your idea of justice?”

“Justice?”

“Or are you telling me you don’t remember? What was inside that shoe cupboard during our first year of middle school?”

What was inside the shoe cupboard.

The words came from nowhere.

It felt like the flow of our conversation had been interrupted─what was inside that shoe cupboard during our first year of middle school? What was that supposed to mean? I couldn’t figure out what the words meant beyond a literal level─at all. Oikura looked almost triumphant when she noticed my bewilderment.

“See? I knew it. You don’t remember a thing. You don’t know what you’re made up of.”

What I’m made up of.

I didn’t know.

Why did the words strike so hard─pierce my heart, even. And come out the other side.

“Oikura, what do you mean by─”

“Nothing. Because I hate meaning. I hate everything. I hate hate and hate and I hate the hate of hate of hate at the hate in hate─I hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate!”

Now this was going too far.

Though I’d unfortunately seen people in her state multiple times─and while I knew it was better to just let it all come out, we were in a classroom with all these pairs of eyes surrounding us.

I could end a little quarrel or argument by saying I was in the wrong, no matter how it unfolded─my reputation be damned.

But this kind of fierce, almost panicked paroxysm would ruin Oikura’s reputation. How could it not? Our class already had preconceived notions of her, the way she’d come to school out of nowhere after being absent for all this time.

Sodachi Oikura.

I needed to find some way to calm her down.

The thought drove me to hold her shoulders as if I were supporting her. I tried to shake her and speak to her with whatever words came to mind. But before I could say anything─not that I knew what to say, and the only correct course of action might have been to sprint away at full speed─Oikura screamed.

“I told you─don’t touch me!”

She sounded like a child.

And acted in the thoughtless manner of a child─atop the desk Oikura occupied, my desk, sat a ballpoint pen. An extra-fine ballpoint pen─I didn’t know why it was there. The only explanation seemed to be that someone just so happened to place it there, and true, it was the kind of ballpoint pen you might find sitting around anywhere in a school. Oikura grabbed it and swung it at my hand, which was on her shoulder.

“Mgh!”

Well.

I wasn’t trying to act tough or anything (why do that in front of Oikura now?), but if I’m being honest, I think I could have dodged it.

It was a ballpoint pen swung by a high school girl, and a diminished one at that, after the fierce battles I’d experienced over the past six months─and yet, its tip pierced the back of my hand.

It didn’t make it out the other side, stopping when it hit the knuckle of my middle finger─which gave me some comfort. Had the tip fully penetrated my hand and stabbed into Oikura’s shoulder, there’d have been no point in choosing not to avoid it.

I can say this with confidence.

Had I let go of Oikura’s shoulder and evaded the pen, she’d have stabbed her own shoulder with it─so thoughtless, spontaneous, and reflexive was her act.

It actually helped her regain some degree of her senses.

“Oh…” she said, betraying a glimpse of regret.

Still, I wasn’t in a place where I could attend to her. I had to hide the wound as soon as possible for two reasons.

The first, of course, concerned Oikura’s future─she’d performed the brutal act out in the open, but our classmates had been watching our argument from a distance. They should buy that she never stabbed me, that she stopped just short if I hid the wound… Well, could buy it. The other reason was extremely self-serving─the wound would heal in no time at all due to the vampiric aftereffects lingering in my body.

It’d be a problem if they saw it healing.

I never imagined I’d sustain this kind of damage in a place of learning, but whatever the case, I really needed to get away from here, now, while Oikura sat dumbstruck. Then─

Hiding the back of my hand, I spun, but had to stop my feet from moving. I had to stop them, or they just stopped. Not just my legs, every one of my actions.

My escape and thought processes.

Because her form came into sight─the form of Hitagi Senjogahara as she opened the door and entered the classroom.

From there.

With the flat affect she once carried herself with─with a flatter affect than ever before, Senjogahara looked at my hand, pierced by the pen, as well as Oikura.

“…”

What now?