Monogatari Series - Volume 2 - Chapter 4.7

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The epilogue, or maybe, the punch line of this story.

I was roused awake the next day as usual by my little sisters Karen and Tsukihi and began getting ready to go to school. Tuesday, June thirteenth, a weekday. My right arm and my left leg seemed to have healed to the point where everyday tasks didn’t pose an issue. With Kanbaru and Sengoku supporting me on both sides, pathetically enough, I had gone to the abandoned cram school afterwards to have Shinobu drink a bit of my blood so as to bolster my body’s healing capabilities. However hands-off my parents, I couldn’t come home with a crushed arm and foot. As ever, Shinobu didn’t speak to me. Perhaps she was appalled, perhaps she wasn’t thinking anything at all. Either way, she couldn’t have minded a surprise opportunity to drink even more of my blood and must have been in one of her better moods. As a matter of proper procedure I did give a simple report of the events to Oshino, but he didn’t say much either. Perhaps he was appalled─perhaps he wasn’t thinking anything at all.

After that, I spent the night with everyone in one of the abandoned cram school’s rooms. Sengoku had lied to her parents and said she was at a friend’s sleepover party, so she had to be somewhere that night. With no other suitable locations available to us, we slept right there in the ruins. We were excited at first like kids on a school trip, but all three of us must have been tired and fell asleep in no time.

If it’s winter, then spring isn’t far behind.

Night is always followed by day.

Kanbaru and I walked Sengoku home, promised to meet again, then parted ways. After putting together some plans for Senjogahara’s birthday party for a bit, I split up with Kanbaru too at a crosswalk. Then, once I finally got home and got to work falling back asleep in my own bed, I was roused awake by my little sisters. For no real reason, I asked Tsukihi, “Do you remember Sengoku?”

She replied saying she did.

Oh, you mean Sen?

When I heard that, I remembered─just as she’d called me Big Brother Koyomi, I’d called her Sen.

Even so─

I couldn’t call her that now.

Changing into my school uniform, I began to think.

About why there had been two Jagirinawa.

Why two snakes─had possessed Sengoku.

There was that girl, her friend, with her misbegotten grudge─she resented how the boy she fancied confessed to Sengoku only to get turned down. The girl turned to occult charms, a fad at her school, and to a top-drawer curse at that. It was her way of venting steam, and she must not have thought that it would actually work…

That incident alone offered up one more person─another character who might have resented Sengoku. Yes, the boy whom Sengoku had given the cold shoulder. As with Sengoku’s friend, I didn’t know his name─but it wouldn’t be shocking if he, too, held a misbegotten grudge against her. You could even call it reasonable, psychologically speaking. A simple case─of romantic entanglements. Of being head over heels. The girls didn’t have an exclusive patent on those charms that were a fad at their school. It was entirely possible for someone to attempt a curse without informing the target like an honest fool. Placing a curse in earnest─also a possibility.

When one is cursed, two holes are dug.

Well, that’s all just my conjecture. I don’t have any firm evidence, and even if I’m right, who the Jagirinawa went back to, the girl or the boy, and how a returned curse works is something I can’t hope to figure out.

Sengoku doesn’t need to know, either.

However you look at it, that would be shoes on a snake.