Monogatari Series - Volume 17 - Chapter 2.13

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“Huh? Wait, but to cut to the chase, that mysterious girl is Miss Oikura, right?”

Ogi’s casual comment summarized so much that she had all but ruined my story. She checked her watch as she spoke─as a girl she might have a curfew, but as a proud mystery fan, you’d think she’d be a little more proper in presenting the solution.

“Hold on, you can’t call it the solution,” she objected. “If anything, I’d call it excessive misdirection if the girl is anyone but Miss Oikura. It’d be labelled unfair. Though it’d be fun in its own way if it turned out to be me. I said not to tell anyone, you broke our promise to keep those study sessions a secret─you know, like the Snow Woman.”

Not that I had any reason to keep upholding the conditions, now that the study sessions had come to a unilateral end, but it did feel a little weird that I’d told her all of this─which meant her remark didn’t sound all that funny to me.

Of course, it goes without saying that the girl wasn’t Ogi.

Her smile looked nothing like the girl’s.

“Well, you wouldn’t tell me when I asked about her looks, so I did think she had to be an established character. You’d be giving it away if you described her outward appearance.”

“I see.” She got to engage in something resembling deduction─still, you’d be hard-pressed to call it mystery-solving.

“Though it’d be so interesting if the girl was Miss Senjogahara.”

“Nope, it wouldn’t be.”

Unfortunately, Senjogahara was busy being a track athlete back then and didn’t have the spare time to teach me, a student at another school. All she could say about that summer was how much she ran.

“In that case, Ogi. How do you explain the girl─young Oikura not being at Public Middle School #701 after summer break? How do you prove she wasn’t the math fairy?”

“While it’d be pretty tough work proving the nonexistence of fairies, you don’t have to use a theory as fantastic as that to explain why she was nowhere to be found at your middle school once second term started. She transferred,” Ogi replied briskly.

As a transfer student herself, she didn’t find it special or rare.

“And it’s because she transferred that no matter how hard you searched, peeking even into the classrooms of your upperclassmen, you couldn’t find her. It also explains why she never showed up again for your study sessions. It’s far more likely than the possibility that a student from another school had been wearing your school’s uniform─though that’d be the case with the Senjogahara theory─or a student from another school sneaking in and dropping letters into random shoe cupboards. But there’s one hole in this line of inference, isn’t there?”

Ogi put the point on the table herself before I could point it out.

“Miss Oikura and you had already been classmates─the way you’ve described things until now, you only met her for the first time after entering Naoetsu High.”

“…”

“You said she hated you from the day you first met in Year 1 Class 3. Was that some kind of narrative trick, where you meant the first time you met in that classroom, but not the first time in general?” asked Ogi with a grin─but she was still showing quite a lot of consideration to her senior by interpreting it that way.

The truth was different.

Simpler by much, and easy to understand.

You couldn’t even begin to call it a trick.

“I only thought it was our first meeting─in other words, I had totally forgotten about young Oikura. Forgotten who I had to thank for being good at math, forgotten how indebted I was to her. And I treated her as a regular classmate.”

So of course─she hated me.

Calling me ungrateful here would be generous.

She had to have remembered me─and then my ungrateful self went and snatched a perfect score from under her, making her hate me all the more.

I hate water that thinks it made itself boil.

Yes, indeed.

I was water─terrible, conceited water.

I thought I was somehow good at math─when I wouldn’t be the person I am now if I never spent that summer with Oikura.

“She was saying that everything I am today is thanks to math─even the fact I’m dating Senjogahara. But maybe she wanted to say it’s thanks to her─”

Thanks. To her.

The empty compliment I’d given her.

I really did have her to thank.

“She likes happy people,” Ogi said, “but she hates people who don’t know why they’re happy─was that it? Oh, and what else, she hates people who don’t know what they’re made up of? Heh, what profound words now that you’ve remembered all these things.”

“In any case…”

I had a lot to think about, and a lot to reflect on─I felt a lot of regret, but at the same time, part of me felt like it was all in the past.

And it was.

More than two years ago─add three more years.

Memories are nothing but that, memories. Remembering them now wasn’t going to change the present─however.

However.

“I need to apologize to Oikura tomorrow. I’m sure that won’t make her stop hating and start liking me, and it probably won’t make her feel better─but I need to apologize, so I will.”

“Oh? You seem a little reluctant.”

“Sure,” I nodded, “it’s not like I don’t have some complaints of my own. Even if she had to transfer schools or whatever, she could have at least said something before she left.”

How could she not even say goodbye?

It’s not like she was Mèmè Oshino.

“How am I supposed to figure anything out from an empty envelope? And if she’d said something when we met again in Year 1 Class 3, I’d have remembered everything on the spot. Telling me now, after all this time…”

Too late.

I couldn’t help but feel that way.

While I knew it was cruel to attack Oikura, I found it hard to overlook all of my festering discontent─not when I thought about the high school life we could have enjoyed.

We’d lost out, I couldn’t help but feel.

Had I known, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking, even that class council meeting might not have ended the way it did.

“Heh. When you met again?” Ogi said with a mischievous grin. “I was the girl from back then, Araragi, it’s so nice to see you, oh, did you really forget about me, come on, you’re the worst, oh you, talk about coldhearted! But that’s just what I l-o-v-e☆ about you! If she said something like that?”

“I’ve never met any character on that sublime a level in the world of this story…”

“Well, in that case.”

And then.

Ogi’s expression suddenly turned from cheeky to solemn.

“Maybe you should think about why she didn’t say that.”

“Huh?”

“And why she left without saying a thing─you need to think about that, too. If you don’t and you apologize tomorrow, you might only make the situation worse.”

Ogi’s tone seemed oddly certain despite her use of the word might.

“If you can’t figure it out, then you need to keep thinking. You need to think until you figure out the reason. You need to solve anything that seems ambiguous. Nothing angers a victim more than an empty apology, after all.”

“Victim? Come on, Ogi. Give me a break─don’t you think that’s going a little far? Sure, I committed an unthinkable social faux pas in forgetting about someone who did a lot for me, but I wouldn’t say I victimized her─”

“You’re right. You didn’t do anything wrong, you’re just a fool. A hopelessly hopeless fool.”

“…?”

Ogi sneered at my confusion.

If that was the sort of smile you bestowed on a fool─perhaps it was far too kind.

“Ogi, what exactly─are you saying you know?”

“I don’t know anything. You’re the one who knows─Araragi-senpai.”

“Me…”

Something I knew?

Something─I was forgetting.

“I think we ought to borrow a page from Miss Oikura’s younger days and treat ourselves to a quiz. Here’s your problem.”

Ogi put up a finger like she was some kind of TV host. No─maybe like she was some famous detective? As a proud mystery fan, she did have that much down.

“Sodachi Oikura hates Koyomi Araragi as if he was a homewrecker. This is because Koyomi Araragi failed to meet Sodachi Oikura’s expectations─and so she transferred schools without saying a word to him. Now, what exactly did Sodachi Oikura hope to get from Koyomi Araragi?”

“What did she─hope to get from me?”

“A hint. It involves your parents’ profession─you have 120 seconds.”

Two minutes, in other words.

Way too short a time.

Then again, I could be given two years, the same amount of time Oikura spent depressed, and still not come up with an answer.