Monogatari Series - Volume 20 - Chapter 1.33

033

The epilogue, or maybe just a log in this case?

Either way, I was the one to rouse myself the next day, not my little sisters Karen and Tsukihi─I did have some help from an alarm clock if we’re splitting hairs, but I think it still counts.

I was alone in my room, of course, with no childhood friend sharing it with me. Getting ready to leave the house, I saw my tall little sister, and my other little sister who was the exact same; I flipped the skirt of an expressionless doll, then headed to the bathroom mirror to straighten out my hair, when the doorbell rang.

It was Hitagi Senjogahara.

Not a second off our agreed-upon time. Did she wear a stopwatch for a wristwatch, or what? Either way, I stepped outside with a see ya later─

“Good morning, Koyomi,” she waved at me from the other side of the gate, her hair in pigtails.

I nearly lost my balance.

To go into more detail before I regain my balance, Hitagi Senjogahara had on pigtails, a miniskirt, a smaller t-shirt that emphasized her figure ever so slightly, and a shawl draped over her.

She looked like a nymph who’d fallen from heaven.

Oh no. I froze, afraid this entire dimension had been twisted in some way again, but…

“Just trying to imitate Miss Hanekawa is only going to leave me depressed. I thought I’d go big and went for a makeover. What do you think? Am I on point?” she explained.

If I had to pick one or the other, she was off point. I couldn’t figure out why her style was regressing the moment she graduated, but when I asked her, she replied:

“Mature isn’t such a compliment now that I’m not a high school student anymore, so I thought I’d go for a youthful look.”

It seemed Hitagi had her own thoughts about graduating from high school. What in the world was she thinking, though? Maybe it was a serious problem for a girl.

“Still, Hitagi. Isn’t your skirt too short? Your legs are extra-long to begin with, so it’s a pretty overboard look. You’re going to make your boyfriend worry.”

“Overboard? How rude. It’s fine, it might look like a skirt, but these are actually shorts where the fabric around the outside is designed to look like a skirt. It’s a marvelous garment that fulfills a lady’s desire to wear a cute skirt without showing off her underwear.”

“They make clothes like that?” The world was full of things I didn’t know─I shouldn’t have been satisfied simply wearing Ogi’s skirt… “Is it like a running skirt? Anyway, this is a big makeover for you.”

“Heh. Well, I wouldn’t have minded showing off even more skin when I consider the peaks of excitement I’ll be feeling when we find out you got into college.”

“Doesn’t that mean it’ll be hell on earth if I got rejected?”

Anyway, warming up to each other from having this conversation right off the bat, we left─to visit none other than my first-choice school, which had already accepted Hitagi Senjogahara.

Actually, that description is the other way around. The college was Hitagi Senjogahara’s first-choice school, and I’d done my best to get in so I could attend the same school as my girlfriend… But it’s easy for the order of things to get flipped around, and if I found myself on the wrong side of the school’s gates, I’d be the one turned inside out.

“So,” Hitagi fished for info as we walked to the bus stop, “how did it go this time around? I’d be happy to hear all about it, if you want to tell me. I think you might feel better if you did.”

“…I wouldn’t say an envious position, but you’ve certainly settled into a delicious one.”

In terms of resourcefulness, she was on a different level from the likes of Oikura. I wished I could be like Hitagi someday and just get to listen to stories of other people’s adventures from a safe distance.

“Well, you know,” she said. “If this were Columbo, my goal is to be the missus.”

“That’s as delicious as it gets.” A hall-of-fame role as far as never being in danger─though even Mrs. Columbo was once targeted by a killer.

“In other words, I may have allowed Hachikuji to be this town’s lord, but there’s no way I’d let anyone else be your lady.”

“I’m happy to hear that, but are you really telling me there was a time you were angling to become a god?”

No fact could raise more hairs.

In any case, I gave Hitagi an outline of the last couple of days─naturally, she’d experienced them as well, but when I’d surveyed Karen, Tsukihi, and Ononoki about the topic, their recollection of what had happened seemed vague.

Light had flooded the entire town, creating enough confusion to make you think you were in another world, and yet no one found it strange. They just went along with their lives, facing today as another day─looking to the future just a little bit more than yesterday.

I guess I shouldn’t expect anything else from a logical world?

Consistency worked itself out when it came to this kind of thing, it seemed─maybe Ogi was right and it was all just an issue of mindset, but at the same time, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was all very slipshod.

This left me with some thoughts I hadn’t sorted through as a first party in the matter, but Hitagi turned out to be right. I did feel a little better telling her about it all.

“You did a good job,” she said with a smile, applauding after she’d finished hearing me out─well, she clapped twice above her head and a little to the left, so it seemed more like a flamenco move than applause.

Or maybe she’d summoned ninjas?

“That was quite the satisfying story. I would say its message comes off a little too strong, though. Were you too fired up over your first case since graduating high school?”

“There’s no message. I’d be happy if it earned the label of a slapstick comedy now that it’s over.”

“You know, Koyomi, I actually kind of like the way you’re so aggressive about toeing the line between cheating on me and not. Keep on keeping me on pins and needles, okay?”

“What kind of woman are you? Hearing you say that puts me on pins and needles, if anything. And that wasn’t the point… Were you even listening?”

“Of course. I’d never fail to, Koyomi. You really have grown over the last year. You might require support, and from so many women too, but it’s as if you solved everything on your own.”

“On my own, no…”

I wasn’t sure how to count Ogi. She was a partner, but she was me.

Either way, though, I had everyone to thank.

“Oh, you’re always so modest. Look at how you’ve matured. Can I start calling you Daddy?”

“That’s not even funny. Who matures that much in a couple of days?”

“You know how people wonder why mirrors reverse left and right, but not up and down?”

If we were talking about lines, she shifted lines of conversation as smoothly as ever. “Oh, yeah… That’s like a trick question, right? Where if you put a mirror on the floor and stand on top of it, it does reverse up and down.”

“Yes. In other words, up, down, left, and right are all about perspective─but aren’t there facets of it that you’re still missing? I doubt you’ve forgotten everything you learned about science already─so you know how when we see things through our eyes, the eyeball acts as a lens that reflects the image it receives from light on the retina, reversing it?”

“Oh, yeah…” That was something I learned in human anatomy class during elementary or middle school, not while studying for college entrance exams, but I did recall─that while mirrors were mirrors, there was also the question of the lens. “And?”

“Well, it was just such a mystery to me as a child. Why don’t we see the world in reverse, even though it looks that way on the retina?”

“Oh, umm.”

Umm, what was the answer to that?

I felt like I’d read about it in a trivia book, not any textbook… That because up and down are relative just like left and right, our brains adjust what we see even if it’s upside down─or something?

“It’s a matter of practice, in other words,” Hitagi said. “Just like how you were so in love with the idea of being left-handed that you wore your watch on your right wrist and practiced writing with your left hand.”

“You aren’t going to let that one go, are you…”

Personally, I wished that my actions then belonged to the twenty percent─though I did continue to wear my watch on my right wrist.

It was a habit by now.

But she’d said practice, not habit.

“How did it all start in the first place?” she asked me. “It was a little abstract and hard to understand, but why did your mirror image stop in the mirror, again?”

“Like I said─it was regret that lingered there. A symbol of it all. Now that I’ve graduated, lost my title as student, and am trying to move on, it was the part of Koyomi Araragi that I’m trying to leave behind.”

“…”

“In other words, those were the regrets I tried to put behind me yesterday, and leave there─but I missed it all so much that I ended up reaching out for them. The stuff about me rescuing the lost twenty percent was a consequence of that─nothing but a byproduct. All I tried to do when I saw myself in the mirror for the first time in so long was to remember something I was close to forgetting.”

Everything else had only gotten wrapped up in it.

Entangled in an act I performed for my own sake.

Ogi was right, I needed to think about what I’d done.

I’d forced the entire town to partake in my own sentimentality, in my meddling with a mirrored world…

“True, but it must’ve been fun for everyone, no? It’s not as if you put anyone’s life in danger,” Hitagi said offhandedly.

She hardly understood the gravity of it─that’s an irresponsible spectator for you.

“People influence the world around them just by passing someone on the street. You shouldn’t worry about it too much. I’ve caused a lot of folks trouble over the course of my life, but I believe they grew as people by overcoming those troubles.”

“That’s the most selfish excuse I’ve ever heard.”

“Someday, they’ll say they’re the individuals they are now thanks to the trouble I caused them.”

“They wouldn’t be complimenting you…”

“People are tougher than you’d expect. A world where everything is inside out─I have to admit, I’d be interested to know how I was in that world,” Hitagi brought up a topic that interested me very much as well, to be honest.

“Hmm, well, I never got a chance to meet you. I think it’s one of those things better left to the imagination.”

“Why? You should’ve gone and met me. I appreciate your consideration, but I wish you’d be a little rougher with me. But maybe that’s only the kind of thing a spoiled girl asks for. Still, what were they, anyway? These lingering regrets of yours, Koyomi─were you able to address them?”

“It was because I did, according to Ogi, that we managed to regain control. And that’s why she could create the black mirror, or something. I actually don’t know what they are myself.”

“What? Really?”

“Yeah…but that’s what makes it something I’ve forgotten and left behind. Of all my experiences in the virtual land of mirrors, I don’t know which was my own regret─maybe there was more than one.”

While they were the lingering regrets of all the girls─they were mine as well, according to Ogi. Their twenty percent, and my twenty percent too.

Feelings forgotten and left behind.

Maybe I wanted to apologize about the time I saw Karen in a skirt and laughed. Maybe Ononoki being a doll didn’t allay my remorse for making her attack Tadatsuru Teori. I couldn’t save Hachikuji and had her deified. I could never do anything about Kanbaru’s left arm as a student. I couldn’t come to Oikura’s aid sooner. As far as Sengoku, that one goes without saying─and I continued to bind Shinobu to my shadow.

Year 1, Class 3─and so much more.

I had a mountain of regrets.

I couldn’t claim that I’d graduated with a clear conscience─even if I did, I could never say for certain.

I merely remembered it and faced it.

That was probably enough.

I wouldn’t be able to shoulder it all, nor could I carry it with me.

I wasn’t Hanekawa or Oikura, but I still needed to pack as light as possible for my journey─I only had so much space in my suitcase.

Still, there was nothing wrong with thinking back on it every now and then, yes?

“Yes…you’re right. I suppose your regrets linger because you leave them behind. Leaving little bits of your heart along the path, à la Hansel and Gretel, might be kind of convenient─for fondly looking back on it.”

“I’m not sure that’s how it works, but yeah, that’d be neat.”

“If you don’t know, though, that makes me wonder. Which of those regrets were yours? I feel like everyone’s slightly skewed image of you might be a hint. The ideal Koyomi Araragi─and the mirrored Koyomi Araragi. I’m just being silly… I wouldn’t keep wearing my hair in these childish pigtails if your regret was not getting to bathe with Kanbaru’s mom, though.”

“Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure that wasn’t it… Also, there’s one thing I can say for certain.”

Then─putting my arm around Hitagi’s shoulder as she walked beside me, I tugged her close.

“I didn’t have any regrets when it comes to you. Because we’re always going to be together from now on.”

“Let’s wait until we see your exam results. We’re going to be far apart if you don’t get in.”

Her words were more ruthless than realistic, but she didn’t try to brush off my arm─a relief, given all the courage it took to put it there.

We’d managed to walk quite a distance while we chatted. One more pedestrian crossing and we’d be at our bus stop─not our final destination, of course, just a checkpoint. We needed to get on a train, keep on walking, climb some stairs, cross a pedestrian bridge, get on an elevator, get on an escalator, and walk some more.

“By the way,” Hitagi said as we stood side by side at a red light. “Remember what we said about sansukumi, the original form of rock-paper-scissors─one of the reasons Hachikuji became a god? I heard that the slug in that game used to be a centipede.”

“A centipede? Really?”

“Yes, I don’t remember why, but what started out as a game of frog, snake, and centipede turned into frog-snake-slug over the years… I guess if you think of which one a snake would hate more, the hundred-legged centipede makes more sense.”

Hm, no legs at all versus a hundred. That did make sense.

“Of course, I’d flinch if I saw any of them. Frog, snake, slug, or centipede.”

“Seriously? My impression was that you didn’t mind that sort of thing.”

“I’m a girl, okay,” teased Hitagi, grabbing both of her pigtails and flapping them around.

What? So cute…

Speaking of flinching, though. And centipedes.

“It only happens every once in a while,” I said, “but I’ve always had this problem. Waiting for a pedestrian light to change, I suddenly can’t figure out which foot I should start with when it turns green. Do I take the first step with my right foot, or with my left? I should probably just make a rule about it, like some kind of superstition.”

Thinking leads to hesitation.

Yes, you could call it overthinking and yell at me to hurry up and take that step, but if it were that easy, it wouldn’t be a problem in the first place. No conceptual leaps come from overthinking things, I’ve been told time and again, but it’s not as if humans can stop thinking.

My mind might know that I need to move forward, but my legs just won’t.

Like my body is flinching.

As if my feet are choking─I sit there, unable to take a single step, like the centipede who forgets how to walk.

Even if I know it’s nothing major that could define my fate, it leaves me not knowing which way to go.

My body, rather than my thoughts, gets left behind.

“That’s your problem?” asked Hitagi, guffawing. She never used to laugh with such hearty cheer─but she was a lively young woman now. “If you don’t know which foot to start with, you just have to do this.”

She made sure the light had turned green. Checking both ways to make sure it was safe─she crouched.

Hitagi Senjogahara lowered her center of gravity, and then…

“Hup!”

Jumped forward with both legs.

Teal, don’t mink.

With my arm still wrapped around the former track runner’s shoulder, her resilient legs pulled me along. I rushed to trail after her, not wanting to be left behind, moving forward─leaping towards the light, with an extra twenty percent.

Ending the tale that continued for so long.

Recalling my remembrances, leaving behind what lingered.

The margins open for notes, a note in the air.

We flew to our next tale.