Monogatari Series - Volume 22 - Chapter 2.08

008

And now for the epilogue; or rather, the punch line for this case.

It was truly foolish. It had certainly been a blind spot; nevertheless, even if I ended up solving a puzzle for the first time in my life, I couldn’t celebrate just yet.

In the end, the school road was not the site of the incident, only the site where the incident was discovered—it wasn’t where the victims received damage, but where they noticed it.

By looking in the mirror.

By looking in those mirrors that faced one another.

By looking at their own backs. —All they did was notice.

Knowing that, the rest of the puzzle fell right into place.

If this wasn’t actually the site of the incident, then where exactly did the victims’ uniforms get cut? If students on their way to school had become victims as well, then it would’ve been hard to pin down, but if the victims were only limited to students coming back from school, then the answer was obvious—the site of the incident was the school.

It was Naoetsu High.

Yes, a “phantom slasher” had appeared in that insular environment—which made it even easier to narrow down the possible suspects. If the scene of the crime was a place that couldn’t easily be entered, not even by the police unless they followed the proper procedures, then the culprit had to be among those that were inside.

They weren’t even trying to make it seem like the work of an oddity.

It would be easy to slash at someone’s uniform without them noticing or even getting hurt, if that person wasn’t necessarily walking home from school—because in school, students had gym class.

And, though I’d never taken part in any, there were also club activities.

If the uniform wasn’t being worn, then even without a demon sword, anyone could easily cut it with a box cutter, scissors, or, with some difficulty, even nail clippers.

“In other words, is it just a prank among students? One that just ended up getting blown up into this big issue? When I was in high school, there were pranks like sticking a piece of paper with ‘KICK ME’ written on it on someone’s back, but is it like that?”

“…Kizashima-senpai, did you go to an American high school or something?”

“I went to Naoetsu High.”

“Ah, that’s right.”

Well, “KICK ME” signs could be the same, but cutting up uniforms wasn’t something that ended as just a prank—even if it didn’t involve any “phantom slasher”, it was already a big issue. And, if you included the fact that all the victims were the type that would walk home alone, it ended up coming together into something very unpleasant.

Not just a prank, but harassment. And it wasn’t just harassment, it was almost bullying.

From the impressions I got of the victims when Kizashima-senpai had talked to them, it didn’t seem that they particularly thought that something that terrible had been done to them, so it barely fell one step short of bullying, maybe…

Ougi-chan had said she was “currently meddling with” some of them.

Which meant that they were those kinds of kids.

Kids that seemed like they would be swallowed up by the darkness—it was possible that Ougi-chan was “meddling” with not just “some” of them, but all of them.

Perhaps she, like some sort of guardian deity for the school—or perhaps like some sort of guardian angel for students that had lost their way—had stopped the crimes before they could succeed.

And yes, it only turned into this “phantom slasher” rumor because of the cases that came to light, but realistically, there were probably victims that didn’t notice the damage until they got home and just meekly accepted it.

It wasn’t a matter of escalating the problem. The problem had already escalated.

The situation was already critical—there was really no more room to aggravate it further.

Knitting her eyebrows together and twisting her childish face into a frown, Kizashima-senpai said, “In that case, we’ll have to pick that nit out without letting any of the victims know the truth… If we give an official notice to the teachers, we should be able to prevent any more damage from occurring.”

Yes, I agreed.

A cover-up like this was right up my alley. We’d wrap this up by rounding up the perpetrator without letting the victims know—though I didn’t think that was the best way to do things, we’d have to be fine with doing so if we wanted to settle things before the situation went from “one step short of bullying” to actual bullying. Depending on how you saw it, it was a little unfair to protect the victims by pretending that there was no perpetrator, but that was the job of the Rumors Squad.

A nonexistent perpetrator.

To pretend that there was no ghost story, and that there was no incident.

Not shaking off the problem—but letting the wind blow it away.

But, even so…

“For a school with such a strained atmosphere, it’s a rather serious rumor. It seems I was the one that got caught up in the nostalgia, Assistant Inspector Araragi. My apologies.”

After finally drying up and shaping her hair back in place, Kizashima-senpai bowed deeply towards me. Rather than an apology, it seemed more like a confession.

“Because of my school pride, I ended up remembering only the good parts. But that’s right, school is a very stressful place. Even if I passed off ‘KICK ME’ signs as a joke, my high school life hadn’t always been good—my memories of school aren’t all good.”

“…But I’m sure you definitely did have good memories, and a fun youth, as well.”

I was sure she did.

It surely shined brightly, no matter how muddied it got.