Monogatari Series - Volume 19 - Chapter 5.02

002

“Ha-Hachikuji?”

“Yes.”

“Hachikuji.”

“The very same.”

“Mayoi Hachikuji?”

“Hi─Mayoi Hachikuji, that’s me.”

“High Mayoi Hachikuji… Like a high elf to an elf? Are you some superior form of Hachikuji to the one I know?”

“Nope, just the regular Hachikuji. The common Mayoi Hachikuji you know well… High elf, in this day and age?”

“Mayoi Hachikuji Z?”

“No, I’m the unbranded Mayoi Hachikuji, I’m telling you. Nothing fancy, no pretension. Z? Well, since this is the final volume, I won’t shy from being compared to Z-Ton of the trillion-degree fireballs.”

“The most powerful monster in Ultraman? Shy from it, that’s way too venerable a Z… Who wouldn’t feel ashamed? Mayoi Hachikuji R.”

“If it stands for Returns, then um, sure, absolutely.”

“…”

…

No, hold on a second.

Stay calm.

No amateur calls─or rushing this.

Was there a single time in my life where rushing things turned out well? Hasn’t it always ended horribly─premature celebrations followed by painful repercussions? Though I guess the painful repercussions came whether or not I rushed things (what kind of life is that?), you should always stay calm in the face of unexpected contingencies.

While it now seems like the distant past, spoken of only in legend, why not recall the time when Koyomi Araragi was called cool and handle this with steadfast composure?

You can do it.

That old self, bring him back.

Become me.

Yes, remember─what’s my situation here, again? Even if it’s going to be a sitcom, understand the situation before moving forward.

In other words, our usual the story thus far.

My name is Koyomi Araragi─not a nameless cat nor a weird bug who awoke in a futon, but a high school senior in a rural Japanese city.

Preparing to take entrance exams.

Yes, today, March thirteenth, was none other than exam day─hopefully a turning point in my life, after barely avoiding the cutoff score in the national admissions test and squeezing under the proverbial shutters as they fell.

Yet, considering who I was until not long ago, this itself is quite strange. Around this time last year, in March of my junior year, I never imagined I’d be trying to get into college. Actually, whether or not I’d be graduating at all was an earnest question.

Having entered Naoetsu High, a private prep school, thanks to a stroke of good or ill fortune, I fell behind and duly tumbled down what almost seemed like an established course, washing out and receiving one failing mark after the next─this was no mild slope but a double black diamond.

Or even a sheer drop.

A perfect instance of my not understanding a thing, as Sodachi Oikura might put it, but in any case, I thought that was where I’d made a wrong turn in life─how so careless. If I’d taken things as they came and moved on modestly, meekly, to a high school matching my academic level, you could say none of it would have ever happened.

What were my first and second years in high school like as these thoughts went through my head, you ask? I don’t want to discuss the details, crucial opening flashback or not─please consult the previous volumes if you’re curious.

I suppose what knocked me off my “washout” course, “the road to delinquency” according to a serious class president I know, were the events of precisely last March─I’m an accomplished lane weaver if I managed to drop out from dropping out.

Or maybe my car didn’t have a steering wheel to begin with.

Right.

I met Tsubasa Hanekawa─a cat.

I met Shinobu Oshino─a vampire.

I met Hitagi Senjogahara─a crab.

I met Mayoi Hachijuji─a snail.

I met Suruga Kanbaru─a monkey.

I met Nadeko Sengoku─a snake.

And thus I, this me, the present me, accepted the yoke of studying for college exams─became me. An ideal rehabilitation of a delinquent high schooler, come to think of it, and you might say a stunning success on the part of Hanekawa, who’d declared around the end of spring break or on the first day back: I’m gonna make sure you turn your life around.

Expect no less of a class president among class presidents.

The gods’ own elect.

Of course, if you said the achievement belonged to Tsubasa Hanekawa alone, she’d be madder than anyone─Senjogahara’s downright devoted ministrations dramatically improved my academics (ministration better describes her meticulous care, instruction falling short for at least the latter half of it), while Shinobu and my little sisters propped me up through those tough times.

I’m not so petty, nor is my vision so tunneled, that I’d overlook them─or so I’d claim. Okay, as far as Kanbaru goes, I feel like all she ever did was distract me…

Still, during Sengoku’s case.

When Sengoku’s second serpent case saw me fail─and make a disastrous blunder of massive proportions, I could fight on without my spirit breaking thanks entirely to the support of those around me. I can’t let myself forget that.

In the end, I may not have done any good.

But because they stood by me.

I was spared, if nothing else, the irreversible error of dying─making me who I am today.

I am here, now.

Heading out to my exams on March thirteenth.

…Hm?

Hold on, I’m forgetting something important─if I don’t recall this, it’s as if I didn’t remember anything. Yup, on the way to the campus of my first-choice school, which had accepted my girlfriend Hitagi Senjogahara via recommendation and sans exams, I took a detour.

Nothing out of the ordinary, just the commonplace one for me lately; I’d been climbing a mountain like it was part of my daily routine about every day since February.

I wasn’t trying to get into hiking─my physique had undergone a literally inhuman metamorphosis, and I didn’t need any exercise to keep my body in its already-healthy condition.

Putting that aside in an act of escapism, it wasn’t hiking that brought me day after day to an empty shrine at the summit of a small mountain in town.

A forgotten shrine that meant something to us.

I headed to Kita-Shirahebi Shrine─for a promised meeting. The wait was one-sided when I thought about it─I’d been stood up for nearly a month.

Right, that brings us to today.

March thirteenth─early in the morning.

While the person I waited for wasn’t there, I faced the boss of the experts, Miss Izuko Gaen, who awaited me─

“…”

So now.

So now, why Hachikuji?

Miss Mayoi Hachikuji.

Try as I might to remember, no connection whatsoever to my current situation came to mind─the plot of the story thus far had a hole. I was meeting with Miss Gaen, so why Hachikuji all of a sudden?

I looked once more at the young girl before me.

I stared her at length.

A girl with a well-balanced pair of pigtails and a mature height for a fifth grader─her backpack so large it still seemed out of place─gazed at me with wide eyes and an innocuous smile.

No mistaking it.

No way to mistake it.

Up, down, left, right, however I looked at her, it was Mayoi Hachikuji.

The lost girl I met in that park last year on May fourteenth─with the exception of Tsubasa Hanekawa, there was nobody I was less likely to mistake for someone else.

I’m not exaggerating, even if Hachikuji had an identical twin or were a clone, I was confident I’d know.

“Ha ha ha. In other words, Mister Araragi, you could even find me in the opening of the anime’s first season? Quite the Where’s Wally.”

“…”

Even this meta remark could only be Mayoi Hachikuji─but in that case, if so.

“Phew.”

Geez, what a predicament.

Given this twist, I’m sure everyone expects Koyomi Araragi, reunited with his beloved Hachikuji not just for the first time in a while but after what seemed like a final parting, to jump for joy, sob tears of gratitude, shake with emotion, blabber confusedly and bustle triumphantly, and most of all, move in to hug her.

I’m sure that’s what they expect.

Sigh, such weighty expectations.

My shoulders are gonna get dislodged.

Don’t get me wrong, I get it.

I get them.

I freely admit, I can see it their way.

I’m hardly new to this industry, and I’d like to think, as a midcareer guy, that I get the drift of things─understandings, codes, that stuff. Don’t get the wrong idea, but that said, I’m a high school senior now, who’s about to graduate too─I’m not going to be moved to my core over every little development, you know?

I accept it, just like that, a total stranger to the kind of emotional instability that makes excessive use of “!” or “?!” or dashes as in “──────!”

In light novels of yore, this might be a scene featuring a huge font or bold text or something, but this is the twenty-first century, okay, and being somewhat precocious, I feel like I’m already living the twenty-second, the era of Doraemon and not Astro Boy.

Emotions? I’ve tucked them away in a fourth-dimensional pocket.

So if I were to go ahead and express my mood…

“Oh, it’s Hachikuji.”

That’d be it.

That and only that.

Maybe I’m cold, but facts are facts─whatever people are going to think of me, I just can’t lie. Please, really, don’t get the wrong idea though, it’s not like I wasn’t happy.

I never suggested that, did I.

Of course I was happy.

Yes, happy.

We were friends after all. If nothing more.

Yup, we did share some pleasant memories.

Like, erm, the time we had soft drinks together?

Vague as my recollection is.

Did she use to mangle my name?

I heard about that somewhere.

Bland exchanges, I must say now that I’m an adult, but fine, I enjoyed them to some degree at the time.

Seriously, when friends and acquaintances you parted ways with thinking you’d never meet them again─former friends and acquaintances as far as you’re concerned─appear out of nowhere, how are you even supposed to react?

As a general, obvious rule.

Orthodoxly speaking, just orthodoxly.

I haven’t ever transferred schools so this isn’t firsthand, but don’t those kids talk about how awkward it felt, say, when their transfer got postponed after a farewell party? Maybe this was similar.

Like in the final chapter of a kids’ comic where the protagonist has to move and tells everyone, “So I guess this is it,” only to move just one house over, their wacky adventures will continue or something?

Comic books get away with it, but you’d be flummoxed if it happened in real life. Where do you put those feelings when you’ve packed them up?

Or maybe it’s like being left with an extra cardboard box after cleaning up a room─or putting a mechanical pencil back together and finding a piece still sitting there.

Where in your heart do you store it?

Those analogies capture how I felt.

Hachikuji, huh…

Wait, was that her name─Hachikuji?

I wasn’t so sure about the first syllable there, and I couldn’t trust my memory, not entirely─Mayoi, or Koyoi─on the issue of her given name. We’ll say Mayoi Hachikuji for now─still.

They say when you attend an elementary school reunion as an adult and meet old friends, their impression can be so different that you go, What the heck. This might be a little different, but I dunno, it’s more or less how I felt.

It was nobody’s fault. You simply grow up.

I’d matured.

I guess the extraordinary emotional growth I’d experienced since that summer and our parting made a new man out of me who’s nothing like my former self.

Right, that’s how it shook out.

This disconnect, or discomfort, my stiff and halting demeanor upon our reunion, was simply inevitable.

Unavoidable in a creature that grows─the human being. People change, cannot help but change.

Wouldn’t it be creepy, in fact, if they stayed the same?

That carefree me, who took off like a rocket to tackle Hachikuji whenever I saw her in town, was no more. That guileless me─no more… To be honest, I don’t understand why I did any of that, or what was so fun about it.

Spotting a girl, then dashing off to hug her?

A plain criminal!

Hard to believe I was once that person, but in a sense, that person just isn’t me anymore─not Koyomi Araragi.

If that was Koyomi Araragi, then he died. He, if not God, is dead. The Koyomi Araragi who was better off dead in fact is. Rightly dead.

As for the reborn Koyomi Araragi, who faced a ten-year-old Mayoi Hachikuji, who hadn’t grown the least bit since those days─a certain sense of disappointment visited me along with the joy of our reunion, I must admit.

Expecting an equal level of growth from her was absurd, certainly, but not maturing even a little in the half-year since our parting?

Demanding the same gusto of me despite this truth made no sense.

If I was supposed to engage in banter here as we used to, how could I hide my anxiety that we’d even hit it off, now that my vocabulary was inclined toward philosophy and ethics? I wasn’t sure I could stoop properly to her jejune sensibilities.

Because stoop as I might, my mind, or spirit, had proceeded to such a sophisticated stage that the most vulgar topic I could think of to discuss was politics.

What level should I be aiming for?

The tragedy of mastery, so to speak─I was stumped as to what passed for general knowledge and common sense in our times.

Well, having said that.

Right, having said that (thank you for your patience).

According to my few tenuous strands of memories, Hachikuji had indeed done much─without her, without having met her, I wouldn’t be me today, so I couldn’t be callous with her.

Humanity, justice, courtesy, wisdom, fidelity, devotion, obedience.

Debts of gratitude must be repaid, and it’s only natural to thank people who’ve aided you─it wouldn’t do to say I didn’t have a clue. Koyomi Araragi, now a mature individual, was obliged to match her level as best he could.

In that case, how felicitous.

As a rite.

As an initiation, as if I’ve returned to infancy, yes, like an uncle playing with his niece, I would repeat the act once more, one last time, with paternal generosity.

One last time, I mean it.

I had low expectations and desired nothing, but perhaps I’d discover something new in the process─um, how did this go again?

I only had a faint idea now, but no doubt I’d remember as I did it─not that it’d matter one bit if I didn’t.

Yeah, let’s just do it live.

Why practice?

On your marks. Phew, ready…

!! ?! !! ?! !! ?! !! ?! !! ?! !! ?! !! ?! !! ?! !! ?! !! ?!

“Hachikuji─────!”

!! ?! !! ?! !! ?! !! ?! !! ?! !! ?! !! ?! !! ?! !! ?! !! ?!

I leapt toward her.

Leapt with a big, bold font.

Scattering countless exclamation points and question marks and throwing in some dashes.

“Eeeek!”

“Hachikujiii! Hachikujiii! Hachikujiii!”

“Eeeek! Eeeek!”

“What’re you doing here, what’d I do to deserve this?! No, forget why, you being here is enough for me, I can’t even put it into words, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!”

“Eeeek! Eeeek! Eeeek!”

Hachikuji thrashed about.

I clung to her tight, moved to tears.

“Oh, the way you feel in my hands, the way you feel in my arms, the way you’re just the right size to hold tight, it’s the Hachikuji I know! Thank heaven! The more I rub my cheeks against yours, the more I know that it’s you, Hachikuji! The more I lick you from head to toe, the more I know that it’s you, Hachikuji! You can take a licking and keep on ticking, can’t you, Hachikuji! These eyeballs, these lips, this nape, these collarbones, these breasts, these upper arms, these ribs, these thighs, these knee pits, these ankles! The way they feel, the way they taste, so Mayoi Hachikuji! How smooth you are, as if your every nook and cranny has been waxed down! I’m never letting you go, you’re staying and won’t get away, I’ll keep on hugging you like this until I breathe my last! Imprisoned here, in my arms, for the rest of your days! Damn our bodies for getting in the way of our embrace! If we were both fluids, we could mix to our hearts’ content! It’s been so hard since we parted ways, I couldn’t take it anymore! Let me vent, let me vent, heal me! C’mon, lemme touch you more hold you more lick you more!!”

“Eeeek! Eeeek! Eeeek! Eeeek!”

“Hey, stay still! You’re making it harder for us to strip naked!”

“Eeeek! …Graaah!”

She bit me.

As hard as a child could.

“Eeeek!”

It was my turn to scream─my arms came undone from the pain, all too soon after I’d sworn never to let her go, but now it was Hachikuji’s teeth, lodged into my palm, that wouldn’t let go.

Wouldn’t let go? More like they were tearing through my skin!

Had she grown fangs or what?!

“Graaah! Graaah graaah graaah graaah graaah!”

“Ow ow ow ow ow! What’re you doing, you stupid brat?!”

Yeah─the ow.

The what’re you doing should have been her line.

In any case, leaving out all the details, for the first time in about six months─

My buddy Mayoi Hachikuji and I were impossibly reunited.