Monogatari Series - Volume 17 - Chapter 3.10

010

“That’s right. I made dinner and took it to her room. When I unlocked the door and went in, it was deserted─with not even a letter left behind. I say she disappeared suddenly and without any notice, but could there have been some kind of sign? Maybe not a sign, but a feeling… I felt like my mother was going to leave me behind and go off somewhere. Just like the way my male parent went off somewhere.”

My parents.

I don’t know where either of them is now.

Oikura spoke the words─killing any emotions in her voice.

Just as she’d killed her self.

Just as she’d butchered her own heart.

“She seemed to reminisce about the old days, so at first I thought she went off to wherever he was… The thought made me not want to look for her, but that might be the case when I think about it now. She didn’t want to try all over again, she was only grieving over her misfortune that was the divorce─in any case, it freed me from having to take care of my mother. I caught back up on my studies. I found a relative who could technically be my guardian and returned to this town thanks to assistance from the state. I didn’t really want to come back since I didn’t want to have to meet you…but this was the only open spot.”

By open spot, she must have meant a place to live. Yet another correct read by Hanekawa─she needed to consider a career in fortune-telling or something.

Hanekawa, however, had a troubled expression on her face.

Hm? What was it? Was something in Oikura’s story giving her pause? True, it was difficult to listen to, but her expression didn’t exactly match the situation…

I didn’t understand, but if Hanekawa was deep in thought, I needed to be on even higher alert.

“So why did you decide to live alone?” I asked. “A relative who’s only technically your guardian is still a relative. And why bother moving when you could have kept on living in the home you shared with your mother? You said yourself you didn’t want to come back to this town.”

“Because it was a dump. Taking care of my mother kept me so busy that I didn’t have the time to do anything like clean. It was too big for one person to manage, anyway… I thought it’d be better to ditch the whole house rather than get to work cleaning it.”

Ditch the whole house.

Ditch.

Could she have hesitated? No, I doubted it. If she’d been pushed to that point, it must not have been something worth protecting or caring for.

With no home and no household─why keep protecting a plain house?

“I put the lessons I learned to use and decided to go light on the furniture here. Nice and tidy, isn’t it?”

In an unusual move (maybe just a blunder from her perspective), she looked to me for agreement. I might have obliged her, but couldn’t─not in this room.

Yes, it was nice and tidy, but not because it was light on the furniture. It was devoid of furniture─the room lacked balance because she was putting whatever lessons she’d learned to use.

Learned them?

If anything, those lessons were dead.

This wasn’t what you called ordered or tidy.

Also, she’d ignored my first question, surely on purpose. Why choose to live alone when she had a nominal guardian─was it such a stupid question that she couldn’t bother to answer it? Well, maybe it was.

It answered itself.

She’d spent two years straight caring for her caretaker─being placed under anyone’s care must sound like an absurd joke to her. I didn’t know how it all worked legally─but it seemed that Oikura had taken care of the problem now that she’d managed to receive public assistance and live alone here in public housing.

In any case, Sodachi Oikura returned to her hometown─the town where she spent her days as a young child.

I already knew what came after that.

She and I were reunited at Naoetsu High, but I’d forgotten about her in every conceivable way, and just as she thought she’d built a place for herself as the class leader, her homeroom teacher and classmates brought her low─or rather, she fell in a pit of her own digging. Then, she spent two years in this room.

Shutting herself in, just like her mother.

Regardless of any differences in the gravity of their circumstances, she’d spent just about the same amount of time shutting herself in a room as her mother─and then the day before yesterday, having learned somehow that Tetsujo had gone on maternity leave, she finally decided to return to school. Of course, this return, too, hit a snag…

“Do you understand? I’m not that misfortunate,” Oikura concluded.

Rather proudly, in fact.

With a tense grin.

“Could happen to anyone, right? Happens all the time to people, to one extent or another… You could barely call it a story of struggle. Okay, I might’ve had a little harder time than the average person, but how can anyone survive in this world if you’re going to say that? Sure, it’s unusual that I had a shut-in for a parent, but I should be grateful for the precious and rare experience. I’m not the only misfortunate person in the world, so I need to keep working on things. I think I’m on the fortunate side, seeing as I’m alive.”

“…”

I couldn’t call this an argument she placed before me, given how flimsy it was─she probably believed her own words less than anyone.

“So again, I don’t need your sympathy… You don’t need to apologize or atone, Araragi. Forget about any kind of penance. Just talking about this kind of feels like a load’s been taken off my back, anyway…”

You’ll feel better once you talk about it.

Those words─who had said them to me?

“And all of that is in the past─whatever old stories you’re looking for are ancient history. They’re all tales that have come to an end. I know I picked fights with you because you annoyed me…but I don’t want you to do anything for me after all this time. If I had to make a request, then─”

Could you leave?

That’s what she said.

She seemed to have grown smaller over the course of the hour─one or maybe two times over. It went without saying that her situation wasn’t any better just because she finished talking about it all, but it did look like she’d been exorcised of something, all the pride she’d expended to face me dissipating─was that it?

Was Oikura picking fights with me ever since my first year in high school not because of anything that had to do with math, or because I hadn’t given her the help she’d wanted─but because I’d forgotten everything about my two interactions with her? Was that the key? And now that it was all clear, now that she’d made me remember, now that she made me know and thrown it all in my face, did she no longer feel possessed?

I’m sure Ogi would laugh if I said that. Oh, how she’d laugh─Miss Oikura hates you because she resents you, isn’t that obvious, she’d say.

“…”

This was her residence, so we had no choice or room to fight if she was telling us to leave. We’d have to─but we hadn’t completed our goal of getting her to come to class. We might as well have not come at all if we were going to leave now─and so I thought I’d say something to Oikura for the time being, but just as I began calling her name, O─I was interrupted.

“Miss Oikura,” Hanekawa finally spoke up─but with an odd question, one that seemed out of place and off topic. “Did you say─you unlocked the door?”

“Huh? What?”

Oikura looked confused for a moment, as if she didn’t understand the words─but she’d used them herself, and quickly realized that Hanekawa was referring to the time she discovered her mother was missing.

“Yes─that’s right.” Oikura nodded. “I unlocked the door and went inside, and my mother had disappeared…”

“But the windows were boarded up, right? And if the door was locked,” Hanekawa repeated─“how did your mother leave?”