Monogatari Series - Volume 17 - Chapter 2.15

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What I understood the least─as I had wondered time and time again─was how I’d forgotten about coming here every day for a whole summer five years ago. Childhood memories or not, could I really forget a summer that acted as such a major turning point in my life, a piece of it that important?

How?

I could understand forgetting it as a way to protect my psyche if it was some sort of awful, traumatic memory─but it led to me loving math. If anything, it was a positive memory.

A positive experience.

How had I forgotten it until now? Until this very moment?

Because of that, I hadn’t noticed that Oikura and I knew each other. I could only see our reunion as a first meeting.

If there was any one clear reason for this memory lapse that made sense to me─

If there was a reason, paradoxically.

It was that the memory hadn’t been positive at all─that if I really thought about it, it might in fact become traumatic…

A truth I wanted to forget.

A reality to be shunned.

If that’s what existed here…

“The home─Oikura lived in?”

“It used to have a nameplate, right? Not now, but I think you used to be able to find the characters ‘Oikura’ there. On what grounds? Well, you found it curious, too. Why hold a study session in an abandoned home─the answer is that this wasn’t an abandoned home.”

“No, that’s not what I mean─even if this place hadn’t been abandoned five years ago, there’s no guarantee it was Oikura’s home.”

“Then why did she always get here before you? Don’t you find it strange that she never failed to arrive at your meeting place before you, not even once?”

“…”

Was it─strange?

It was, to the point where I wondered why I hadn’t noticed. To the point where you could say that I really had noticed and only pretended I hadn’t─in which case, I’d have nothing to say for myself.

“Miss Oikura was always waiting here because it was her home─of course, you might have been the first to leave school because of how long each of you loitered around your homeroom, but then, most of your study sessions took place during summer break. She came out of this home on the first day because she lived here. And anyway, once we realize this place wasn’t abandoned five years ago, it only makes sense for it to be her home or yours, if you held your study sessions here. This isn’t your address, so we can determine it to be Miss Oikura’s home by process of elimination.”

“The process of elimination again…”

And not the process of eliminating one option out of three─eliminating the one wrong option of two. There was no debating this solution.

It was overwhelmingly─right.

“So Oikura invited me to her house… I guess that does feel more like a study session than if we met in an abandoned home─but still.”

It surprised me to learn that I’d managed to enter a girl’s room as a mere first-year middle-school boy─but no bittersweet sensation filled me.

After all, back then.

I didn’t think this home─was a home.

Right. I called it a haunted house, and─

“Okay then. I’m sorry to crack the whip just as you’re busy being shocked, but we’re getting to the most important part of my line of reasoning. Five years ago, did you think her home was abandoned? Did you think it was a haunted house?”

“Are you saying I’m misremembering?”

“No, misunderstanding. I’m pretty sure your memories are correct. You’ve given specific testimony, saying that the windows in this room were already as broken as they are now─so you’re not misremembering, you’re misunderstanding.”

“…”

The tape-reinforced windows.

The cracked, putty-filled walls.

The messy rooms and messy hallways.

It wasn’t an abandoned home─but it was wrecked to the point that you’d mistake it for one.

If this led to a conclusion─if there was a conclusion here you’d want to shun.

If it was a home that people lived in at the time.

And it was still that wrecked.

“…There was violence in the family.”

Violence in the family.

Domestic abuse.

I tried to say it plainly, without any emotion.

Like a TV reporter reading off a script.

But I couldn’t hold back the visceral revulsion─I now stood in that kind of a home, and it disgusted me.

And five years ago.

I had been hard at work studying here, at the site of a crime, and nothing could stop me from hating myself for it.

“That’s right.”

Meanwhile, Ogi was impressively unemotional. She grinned, then twirled around to take a look at the ruined room, as if the truth she’d arrived at made her feel nothing at all.

“You’d have to intentionally destroy a residence for it to be in such a disastrous state that you’d mistake it for an abandoned home─shatter the windows, beat the walls, demolish the furniture. Is the broken intercom broken for the same reason?”

A crumbling home.

A wrecked home─a broken home.

Wounded.

A home that could fall apart at any moment.

Now I understood. It wasn’t an abandoned home─but.

A right and proper first-year middle schooler, who was ignorant about the world and could only think of a home as a peaceful, warm, and comforting place, foolishly misunderstood it to be abandoned.

Haunted by ghosts?

What was I talking about? How ridiculous.

This place was as human as it got.

“Oikura…couldn’t have been the one.”

She wouldn’t have invited me to her home if she were perpetrating the violence.

“So her father? Or her mother…”

“Haha. Even my gray matter can’t figure out which of the two it was. But one or the other, no doubt. It takes a whole lot of work to destroy an entire home to this degree all alone, though. It just might have been both of them,” Ogi blithely offered a terrible thought.

The worst part about it was that it sounded completely plausible.

“It seems Miss Oikura was brought up in quite the tragic household environment. I guess we can’t blame you, snugly raised in your peaceful household, for shoving your memories of an entire summer spent here to the furthest corners and darkest depths of your psyche. If there’s any saving grace, it’s that the violence was never aimed at Miss Oikura’s body─or at least any exposed parts of her skin.”

“…”

At least, huh?

That was far too miniscule a saving grace.

“Transferring once second term started also makes sense in that case─her family, on the verge of crumbling, finally did. This is of course groundless speculation, but couldn’t Miss Oikura have changed her name then as well? That’d make the name once found on this home’s front plate uncertain, but…either way, is that why you thought you were meeting her for the first time when you were reunited in Year 1 Class 3 at Naoetsu High? If you’d been in the same middle school, you should have at least heard her name, interaction or no.”

You still ought to have recognized her face, though, Ogi said, spreading his arms─this seemed to be her idea of a joke.

I wished she wouldn’t weave jokes into her deduction.

Especially in situations like this.

“In any case, we can be sure that the Oikura family would have been at its limits back then─and she wanted to do something about it.”

“Something? Like what?”

“Something. Anything. That’s why she called you here. In other words, that’s what she wanted from you in exchange. Even if I’m wrong, it wasn’t snacks she was after. Creating a new fan of mathematics was her method, not her goal.”

“No, hold on a second. Fixing a family crumbling as a result of violence? That’s asking too much. What did she expect from a middle-school kid? I might’ve been acting in some Fire Sisterish ways back then, but at the end of the day, it was basically just child’s play─”

“You’ve got the order reversed. The Fire Sisters are acting in Koyomish ways─”

“W-Well, fine, that’s true.”

“She never expected that much out of you, of course. If she did, she’d probably just ask you for help instead of going such an indirect route─which is where your parents come in.”

“My parents…”

“They’re police officers, aren’t they?”

Your honorable parents, who showed you what was right. She expected you to report back to them about the state of the Oikuras.

“If you did─the police would intervene in her domestic situation. To be honest, I don’t see that solving anything, but it would be a last-ditch plan to save a family on the verge of collapse.”

“…”

Why be so roundabout, just report the situation yourself─an outsider might say. If only things were so easy─domestic violence is abuse that stays within a family, so those on the outside have to make moves from their outside position.

Still…

“Still, I’d been sworn to secrecy…by Oikura herself. She said I couldn’t tell anyone about our meetings here.”

My sisters and I even stopped getting along as a result.

Why would she say that?

“Yes─just like Snow Woman. I think Miss Oikura didn’t want to be the one to accuse her family, no matter what. She would feel guilty about exposing them, or perhaps she feared retribution─maybe it was another case of both?”

“So, she wanted me to tell my parents about the state of her family, but of my own accord? That’s what you’re saying her plan was?”

And it was with this plan that she taught me math─not that the idea even made me angry. I didn’t have any right to be mad in the first place. Honest to a fault─to the point I ruined my relationship with my little sisters─I never told anyone about my trips to this abandoned, or rather, Oikura’s home, just as promised.

I didn’t even think it was her home to begin with.

I simply learned math from her, without a care in the world.

I paid her nothing in return─and just exploited her.

I took from her.

When she said that no good could possibly come out of someone like me worrying about her, she wasn’t acting tough or exaggerating. She meant exactly what she said.

My life is a total mess thanks to you.

She’d said that as well.

It too was exactly right.

Her life was a total mess─and I’d walked away.

I’d─neglected her.

“That means they must’ve been somewhere in this house,” I said. “Right? They never showed themselves─but Oikura’s parents were here.”

“Well, yes. They probably were. Although they never came out to offer their guest tea and snacks, I guess they weren’t so deviant as to be violent toward another family’s child.”

“…”

But that also meant that I protected Oikura by coming to this home─because I was nothing more than a “guest” who’d leave after a few hours. Back to his own home. I didn’t want to think about the kind of storm that must have blown through this place after I did.

I didn’t want to think about it.

What she must have looked like under her school uniform.

“So I did nothing that Oikura wanted me to do─and yet I took just the knowledge that she’d given me and sucked it all up.”

Of course she’d hate me for that.

Who wouldn’t─hold a grudge.

Forget ungrateful, I was a thief.

No wonder she never bothered saying goodbye─how did she feel as she kept teaching me math every day?

Ogi called it indirect, but the route Oikura hit upon after summoning all of her knowledge and bravery turned out to be fruitless. How had she felt about that?

I may have only been the intermediary, but maybe she thought she was the fool for ever relying on me─Ogi was right, though. Compared to her, I was the far bigger fool.

The empty envelope Oikura stuck under the low table was a perfect expression of the kind of guy I was.

Empty. The wrong choice.

An unreliable guy.

“Heheh. Well, I guess that’s about it.” Ogi checked her watch once more─as if she’d been timing herself to see how fast she could solve this mystery. What kind of person speed-ran this? “If my memory serves me correctly, you began this investigation to look into the reason Miss Oikura hated you like you were some kind of homewrecker─and I feel we’ve more or less accomplished that goal now. As such, I do think it’s about time to pack up and go, but if you have any final remarks, please, go ahead.”

Some kind of homewrecker.

In reality, though, that wasn’t it. Oikura wanted me to be a homewrecker─did it get any more ironic than that?

I thought about mentioning this, but final remarks needed to be more comprehensive than that.

“I’ve been feeling very fortunate─I can’t deny that it’s been smooth sailing for me, and I’m happy. I have friends, I have a girlfriend, I have juniors─I’m very, very happy. But,” I said.

“I’ve started to hate my happy self just a little bit.”

Ogi grinned in reply. “Then I’ll love you enough to make up for that. And depending on how you look at it, it’s a good thing you haven’t gone so far as to start hating math.”

“You’re right about that.”

True.

No matter what I might start to hate, even if I’ve lost sight of justice, math is the one thing I’ll always love. You could even call it a kind of curse.