Monogatari Series - Volume 20 - Chapter 1.10

010

Her impression was so different that I had no clue─but once I realized the truth, it seemed obvious. Of course she was that Oikura.

Sodachi Oikura.

Her hairstyle was different, and the Oikura I knew never exposed her limbs this much─most of all, the look in her eyes was just so different.

Once, they were so clouded that you worried she was afflicted with some kind of curse and was casting it on you with her gaze. Now, she was nothing but jovial.

“Hey! Hey! Isn’t this puzzle amazing? This puzzle is amazing, and I’m amazing for figuring it out, don’t you think?! It seems really hard, but look, the answer’s obvious once you diagram it out! Don’t you love this feeling? It’s like a haze of mystery over the whole thing clearing up all at once!”

Oikura, who used to never come within three feet of me, as if she were dealing with some sort of waste product, now sat by my side on the sofa, her shoulder jostling against mine, not just dealing with me but sounding giddy. How was I supposed to recognize her?

She was a different individual, plain and simple.

This different, shorts-wearing Oikura, as far as I could tell from the fragments of information I gleaned from her words, had been in the Araragis’ custody for eight years now─and we’d grown up on friendly terms, like brother and sister, though I’m not sure who was the older sibling in this case.

“Y-Yeah, sure, Sodachi…” Although nothing about it felt right, I called her by her first name. It was unnatural to use her family name if we weren’t just childhood friends but living under the same roof─though it was going to be awkward whatever I called her given how weird the situation was. “You never fail to impress me. I’ve got to take my hat off to you for solving such a difficult problem.”

The trauma carved into me during my first year of high school was so deep that I was trying to stay on her good side and pacify her with words even though her personality had been flipped. Of course, the Oikura I knew would have snapped at my obvious fawning, but this version was different.

“Hahaa! Koyomi praised me! Hooray!” she rejoiced like a good girl.

If the Oikura I knew, the difficult girl who wanted to be called Euler, saw herself acting this bright, cheerful, and merry, she might go on a rampage…

In fact, to be honest, I almost felt like running around and breaking things myself─it didn’t make sense for me to be embarrassed, but I’d never imagined I’d be able to communicate with her like this. It felt like an impossible delusion, which made me blush.

“Hm? What’s the matter, Koyomi? Your face is red. Could you be sick or something?”

Plop.

Oikura touched her forehead, already so close, to mine─like it was the most natural thing in the world. Stop! I wasn’t the least bit happy, but she was going to make me start grinning!

“Hmm. Less hot than I thought,” she said, her hand already working to solve the puzzle. She was writing down numbers with her left hand, but this didn’t help me since I couldn’t recall her dominant hand.

Then I had an idea.

“Hey, Sodachi… I forget, who’s that mathematician you worship again? Euler?”

“Huh? What’re you talking about? Euler is great, of course, but the mathematician I respect the most is Gauss. You know that!”

“…”

The difference was so minor that I didn’t know what it signified. Did that count as being flipped around? Or rather, she was so fundamentally different that it was like being introduced to someone for the first time. Seriously, it made zero sense.

What was with this world? How did you flip that Oikura around to get this character?

Enjoying a placid, familial relationship with someone who was once on bad terms with me, or who hated me unilaterally with a vengeance, I should say, was yet another lukewarm, laidback twist. Even so, I was too unaccustomed to all of this to know how to react.

I just couldn’t accept the lack of tension.

I’d never met a female lead like this one.

“Okay, Koyomi, let’s solve this problem together. I’ve gotten pretty far on it myself, or actually I do have an answer, but it feels like such a brute-force solution. There’s nothing beautiful about trying every possibility, you know? There must be a cleaner way to solve it.”

“Y-Yeah, sure, Sodachi…”

Even the numbers she wrote were mirrored, making the problem pointlessly hard, but I couldn’t ignore her if I was her friendly older (younger?) brother─my plan of going to the second floor and asking Ononoki for help had been thwarted.

In fact, I was painting the perfect target on my back if the shikigami saw me like this─with that dashing look you couldn’t even draw. But no, maybe not if this was the norm in this world? If this was Koyomi Araragi’s usual behavior…

“Hm?”

Huh? Something gave me pause there.

It felt odd for a moment…like the closest I’d gotten to putting my finger on a hint for a clean solution─

“Lemme have some of your tea, Koyomi.”

Oikura, who seemed to have finished off hers, took the teacup in front of me and elegantly sipped its contents. Not a problem on its own…

“Heheh! Second-hand kiss with Koyomi!”

When she didn’t think twice about saying stuff like that, though, I didn’t have any idea how to respond. This intimate, jokey Oikura sent my mind into the clouds, and I couldn’t gather my thoughts.

I guess I was a noob at flirting because every relationship I’d managed to build involved arguing.

And so, I lost my train of thought.

“Phew,” I sighed─well, maybe it was fine.

Why not just one Oikura like this, even if this wasn’t an all-out parallel world but an inconsistent world full of contradictions─it might not lend a helping hand to the Oikura I knew, but family time with a girl who wasn’t blessed in that department wasn’t so terrible.

It resembled resignation, but I did at last reach such a state─could feel that way about a childhood friend who was still striving to find happiness.

“Hey…Sodachi. I have a question about Tsukihi.”

That notion must have provided me with solid ground because I put my concerns behind and launched into the matter at hand. Well, I ought to have been bringing it to Ononoki, but if this girl was saying we’d lived together for nearly a decade, she’d have to know my littler little sister better than the shikigami, who when it came down to it had started living with us only recently.

“Hmm? Tsukihi? She went shopping with Karen. They invited me too, but I wanted to tell you about this puzzle asap.”

The point of my question didn’t get across to her, and I should’ve known. She simply informed me of Tsukihi’s current location─so I continued, “Has anything about her changed lately?”

No, that wouldn’t work, either. Even if there’d been a change─some kind of reversal that I didn’t notice, it’d be her natural state in this mirrored land.

“What kind of person was she, again?” I rephrased my question.

“Kind of person? What a weird thing to ask, Koyomi. Well, I see why you’re worried about her. I am too. How’s she going to make it in the world with that personality of hers?”

Forcing a smile, Oikura began conveying her impressions of Tsukihi Araragi as she understood her. As a girl talking about another girl, she went easier on her in some ways and harder in others, but on the whole none of it gainsaid my own impression of Tsukihi.

In which case, she really hadn’t changed… Did some people change but not others, or was Tsukihi the sole exception?

If she was, I supposed I understood… If the formidable Oikura was this much of a mess (sorry), I ought to assume that most people were reversed in some way.

The existence of one such Oikura did no harm, but on the flip side, I couldn’t deny also feeling that I didn’t want to see her like this.

“…”

The flip side.

Right?

“Wow. Amazing, Koyomi, you figured it out. I know I get better grades than you, but I’m no match for you when it comes to this sort of thing. I don’t mind, though, somehow it doesn’t annoy me… Phew.”

And then.

Once I finished solving the math puzzles she’d prepared, she plopped her head down on my shoulder─and something about it felt like a slight departure from the sisterly, familial vibe she’d been setting off.

“Hey, Sodachi─”

“I wonder what it is. It’s strange,” she interrupted me before I could chide her, not moving. “It’s been like this since forever, right? But I find myself wanting it to be. Isn’t that weird?”

“…”

“Is something wrong with me? You’re here, Karen’s here, Tsukihi’s here… Uncle and Auntie are here, and you’re all so nice to me, and we get along so well, like a real family, and I’m so happy, but─”

Suddenly, Sodachi Oikura…

Spoke like Sodachi Oikura: I wonder why─

“This all seems like a lie.”