Monogatari Series - Volume 20 - Chapter 1.30

030

I couldn’t believe how casually she sat there.

“Hey, you’re late─I’ve been waiting for ages, my dear senior,” I was greeted by a line her uncle might use.

Ogi Oshino.

Ogi. My junior, a first-year at Naoetsu High.

Her impression of her uncle, Mèmè Oshino, may have been her way of getting back at me for the other day. She’d done a pretty good job of it, too.

Yeah, you could tell they were related.

“But wait, what’s with that getup? Are you seriously cosplaying me?”

“You say that, but aren’t you cosplaying me right back?” I asked in return. Ogi wore a Naoetsu High uniform, which is to say a high-collared jacket, there where she sat on one of the classroom’s desks.

A Year 1, Class 3 desk.

But not the current Year 1, Class 3, nor an extant Year 1, Class 3. It wasn’t the classroom once used by me, or later by any of my juniors─no.

The ghost of a classroom that never should have existed, that Ogi and I wandered into and got trapped in not long after she transferred to my school, a room that shouldn’t exist at Naoetsu High going by its blueprint─the apparitional Year 1, Class 3.

The place where it all began for Koyomi Araragi and Ogi Oshino, as it were.

“Well, this is just a joke. Though that was just a joke, too,” Ogi said, bemused, her cheeks puffed out like she was trying not to laugh─I guess I looked that funny cosplaying her. “No one told you? Or was everyone just playing along? You absolutely didn’t need to wear my uniform just because yours had been swapped out for it.”

“Oh.”

“Is that all you have to say? ‘Oh’? You really are such a fool─but I suppose that’s also one of your virtues. Don’t worry, nothing too terrible is happening here.”

Was that meant to be reassuring?

I had to wonder as I took my seat, finding the chair I’d used at the time. I looked at the clock, and while it was flipped around, its hands were moving, unlike before. After time had started to move back then, it hadn’t stopped.

I was all alone with Ogi like before, though─or no, maybe I should say I was by myself?

She was my double, after all. My shadow, my copy, myself as reflected in a mirror.

Ogi Oshino, therefore─was none other than my partner.

“Wait, hm? Isn’t that weird?”

“Huh? What is it, Araragi-senpai? There’s nothing weird going on here.” Ogi tilted her head─the way she always did to play dumb.

“Well…aren’t you this world’s Koyomi Araragi? Since you weren’t in it, I was going to turn into you from the pressure this world exerted on me… But if you’re here, why was my uniform replaced by a girl’s?”

I had the vague notion that this world’s Ogi─or this world’s Araragi─had gone over to my original world and switched places with me, but if she was here, then maybe not?

Well, as rude as it might sound, she was even more anything-goes than this world, so maybe it was fine for there to be two, or even three of her… Did one go to my world, while another didn’t?

“You’ve thought of all kinds of things, haven’t you─you think too much. I’m pretty sure I told Black Hanekawa.”

“Huh? You told her? Black Hanekawa? What do you mean…”

But there was only one thing it could mean.

Ogi had been the one to ask that cat to rescue me─she was me, after all, so it made perfect sense once I had the thought. I’d never considered it because Hanekawa and Ogi were on worse than bad terms, but maybe a partnership between them was possible in an inside-out world.

“Thinking too much… Maybe you’re right. But I can’t be thoughtless here, can I? Without an adequate amount of thinking, and adequate understanding─”

“Is that Ms. Toé’s view of things? In the end, though, reason can only get you so far. As strange as that is for me to say.” Ogi smirked─a bottomless smile. “No, don’t worry, Araragi-senpai. You’ve reached your goal. You have no further destination after this. You know something?”

“What now?” I replied warily.

If she wanted to start comparing answers with me, how could I not be wary─how, when finding my partner, as everyone had urged me to do, actually meant finding the culprit?

I wasn’t ruling out the chance that this was Ogi’s all-too-speedy revenge. What she was about to deliver might not be her solution to the puzzle, but a confession.

“Did it never occur to you that this might all be a dream?” she asked me.

“Huh? Oh, uh…” The changeup of a question caught me off guard and took the wind out of my sails─what, was she going to hold out here? “I did think about that. More than once… I mean, who wouldn’t in this situation? An illogical world full of contradictions where causes don’t cause… A lucid dream, is that what you call it? I still think that this might be nothing more than a dream.”

“Yes, you’re right. It really is like a perfect dream, whether you’re getting in a bath with Kanbaru’s mom or putting on my school uniform.”

“Um, could you not phrase it like I wanted to do those things?”

“Oikura, that hell-sent girl, is here leading such a joyful life. Didn’t you want to see that, at least?”

“Oikura? Hell-sent…” I’d never met someone who used that phrase before. Well, I guess it was technically me using it, but it suited that girl to a t. “How do I put it, though. It wouldn’t quite make sense if this was a dream. Things that I don’t wish for happen here, and the place is teeming with things I don’t know.”

“Heheheh, I wonder. This idea that what you don’t know can’t appear in a dream is actually baseless. And nightmares are a thing, aren’t they?”

“I considered that, but…are you saying this world is something that I dreamed up? Am I sleeping at home in my bed, still unable to wake up? Do I have this much trouble waking up if my sisters don’t do it for me?”

“That, or you got in a traffic accident like Hachikuji or Ms. Toé as you headed back from graduation, riding happily along on my BMX, and you’re in a hospital, wandering the border between life and death─it’s a vision you’re having on the brink of death.”

“…”

“No, Shinobu would surely save you in that situation. That’s what I’d call overthinking.”

It’s an illustration, Ogi said. She was as mysterious as ever, with her clear words and murky intent─hard to accept in a partner and double.

“Then what about this?” she went on. “I personally would call it a pretty convincing hypothesis.”

“What is it this time? Give it to me, at this point I’m ready to hear whatever you’ve got.”

“Relax, this is my last hypothesis─no need to brace yourself. Everything broke down between you and Sodachi Oikura two years ago in this classroom, right?”

“…Yeah.” Sure, things had broken down between me and my former childhood friend long before then─but that day, that time, was decisive.

“Right, right. And you met Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade during spring break a year ago─so much has happened since then. You got to know Tsubasa Hanekawa, you fell in love with Hitagi Senjogahara, you became pals with Mayoi Hachikuji, you played around with Suruga Kanbaru, you were reacquainted with Nadeko Sengoku─you came across many names in many places, whether it was my uncle, Yozuru Kagenui, Deishu Kaiki, Yotsugi Ononoki, Tadatsuru Teori, or Seishiro Shishirui.”

“So? A recap, like now? Are you trying to get your yearbook signed when graduation is already over?”

“Say,” Ogi ignored my awkward attempt at a dismissal to continue─to present me with her final hypothesis. “Say it was all a dream─then what?”

Not just this tale.

Every tale until now─what if it was all just a dream.