Monogatari Series - Volume 22 - Chapter 3.09

009

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

Because my sisters came out of the bath at the same time we finished the dishes, we had to leave our not-so-meaningless conversation unfinished, and after returning to a child’s mindset and holding a pajama party for an hour (even I’d been forced to change), Hanekawa left the Araragi household behind—no.

She wasn’t Hanekawa Tsubasa.

She wasn’t the Hanekawa Tsubasa I knew, and she wasn’t the Hanekawa Tsubasa that I didn’t know.

After that, I met up with Mitome-san who had finished up her escort duties and confirmed with her—whether or not Hanekawa had tried at all to slip away from the hotel that she had been confined to.

Whether or not the hotel suite had turned into a skin she had shed.

The symbol of peace and the worldwide person of importance known as “TSUBASA HANEKAWA” had continuously been in her room working to erase her personal history—signing her name, stamping her seal, and disposing of various documents. She’d been absorbed in putting her entire self through the shredder. She hadn’t taken a step outside her room, and Japan’s perfect escort was something to be proud of—they’d fully protected the person of importance, and they’d fully protected others from the person of importance.

But then, what did that mean?

If Mitome-san had not been a part of the escort, then I would have allowed for the possibility that “there was a gap that at least a single cat could crawl through”, but in this case, even a wolf was involved. A wolf had encircled her. For Hanekawa who only knew “what she knew”, it was hard to believe that she’d inferred the existence of werewolves in advance and set up countermeasures… If Hanekawa had truly slipped away from her hotel, met up with Tsukihi, and visited the Araragi household, then there was no way that Mitome-san would not have caught on.

Even if she didn’t know her scent, she would’ve pursued her.

If you told me that “Hanekawa” had “slipped away to come here”, then I would end up thinking she did “slip away to come here” in some way or another, but if Mitome-san said that she was “there”, then the symbol of peace must have been “there” at the hotel this whole time—she would not have made even a hint of attempting to escape.

And, finishing up the length of her stay while under strict protection, she left Japan behind, exceedingly safely and exceedingly peacefully.

The destination of her plane had been kept secret.

She’d erased all her traces—she’d erased her past, as well as her present.

And disappeared from the world.

“I don’t get it at all. How’d she do it? I’m glad you’re trustin’ me, but it doesn’t change the fact that Hanekawa Tsubasa appeared at your house, right?”

“Yes. Like Schrodinger’s cat. Like it was dead and alive at the same time—she was both here and there at the same time, in some quantum sort of way. But something like a physics-based superposition explanation would be a really stupid conclusion in a mystery novel.”

There was a body double playing her role.

That was how I explained it to Mitome-san—as an apology for my careless declaration that there was “zero possibility”, it was the only truth that I could think of.

“She’d sent in a perfect lookalike over to my house, while she herself stayed at the hotel busy doing paperwork.”

“A perfect lookalike… There’s no way. Those things only happen in mystery novels, right? If anything, I’d rather figure out how the escape room trick works.”

“It’s the simplest escape room trick. While she herself stays within the box, a different person pretends to escape—that’s the most logical solution. If she had actually escaped and had been noticed, it would’ve caused an uproar too terrible to look at, after all—for the sake of maintaining the public order, Hanekawa staying at the hotel and pretending to escape was the best choice.”

And it wasn’t as easy as just slipping out.

She’d need to do something about the escape after a few hours, too—but in this case, while it was obvious that going back to the hotel was harder, she herself was already at the hotel without needing to go back.

“A lookalike—or I suppose we could call this a copycat. She even successfully deceived me. With cat food.”8

“You really didn’t need to go for that pun.”

After starting with the minor flaw, she pointed out the real flaw, saying, “That’s a little weird, isn’t it?”

“Whether she did it successfully or with cat food, you yourself gettin’ deceived is weird, Koyomi-kun. Even though you said all that before, because she’s a celebrity of sorts, Hanekawa Tsubasa’s treated as a taboo in being covered by the media, and there are no photos of her out there, so I’d get it if we were the ones getting deceived—but Koyomi-kun, you’re someone who knows the reality of her teenage years that she’s erased, so there’s no way you’d be deceived by a body double.”

“Yes. I don’t think that it’s possible for me to mistake someone else for Hanekawa, either—no matter what form she completely changed to, no matter how different her hairstyle was, no matter how slightly her chest shrunk, no matter if she’d lost five kilograms, I’m confident that I’ll absolutely be able to identify her.”

“Yeah. I don’t need all that about her chest. But keep going.”

“But the preconditions have gone global. At best, my ‘absolutely’ is limited to within Japan—but Hanekawa Tsubasa has gone all over the world. There’s no country she hasn’t been in. The parameters are different. Even if she didn’t have any friends—she knows seven billion people.”

“……”

“They say that there are three other people in the world that look exactly like you.”

That was also a kind of rumor, and thus our specialty.

And so it wasn’t just folklore we could laugh about—realistically, there probably weren’t any more than three people who’d have such a wide area of activities that they’d run into one of their lookalikes.

But Hanekawa Tsubasa was one of those three people.

And if there were plenty of people that were like Araragi Koyomi—then there were probably at least three people that were like Hanekawa Tsubasa.

“…If the one that visited your house was a copycat, Koyomi-kun, then what was their objective? Whether it was ‘number one’, or ‘number two’, regardless of the reason, didn’t she just want to see you? But if the one you ‘reunited’ with was a body double, then that just flips over the whole premise.

“She didn’t flip over at all. Because she’s a cat. Because Hanekawa’s objective was not to see me, but to gain entry into the Araragi household—it was just another thing on her agenda towards erasing all traces of her past.”

“Erasing her past… And what does that mean?”

“Before I say any more, please let me apologize. I’m extremely sorry. I couldn’t say anything because I was too embarrassed, but Mitome-san, I did have a present that I had gotten from Hanekawa that I took great care of all this time.”

The truth was that it wasn’t because I was “embarrassed” but because “I didn’t want to be seen as a pervert”, but the particulars didn’t matter.

“And that was a present where, while I don’t know about the scent, DNA analysis was possible…”

“Wait. What kind of a present is that? The heck? Tell me about that!”

“Hanekawa’s objective was to dispose of all of those. And she succeeded.”

On that day, when I came back from work, “Hanekawa Tsubasa” had been on the second floor—she’d been searching my room. She’d mercilessly disposed of the “presents” that I hadn’t been sure what to do with.

Although, she probably recovered them to dispose of later.

She probably would’ve preferred to burn them on the spot, but since the objects were underwear and hair, I’m sure it would’ve been simple to just take them with her on her body—she could just put on the brassiere and shorts, and use the braids as extensions.

That was probably why she had had more black hair than usual in her striped hair—and if she could even fool my eyes, then it wouldn’t be that difficult to slip through Karen’s and Tsukihi’s eyes as well.

Regardless, those precious keepsakes had disappeared from my room.

My memories had been lost.

“That was the ‘number three’ objective that she came to see me for. In the end, even though she’d declared that she was erasing her personal history as her official stance, that itself was the truth as well. That was her true intention, and chatting with me was just out of courtesy. She just said something appropriate for a reunion with her former classmate, making up something believable, while steadily accomplishing her ‘number three’ mission. Well, she could’ve accomplished it without coming to see me, but—”

“…Even if you’re right, Araragi-kun. That doesn’t necessarily mean the one who came to see you was the body double, does it?”

“Eh?”

“It’s equally possible that the Hanekawa Tsubasa we were escorting was the body double, and the Hanekawa Tsubasa who came to see you was the real thing—and to go further, maybe her ‘number three’ objective was the pretense, and the ‘number one’ and ‘number two’ that you decided were fake were actually her true thoughts? No, no, I don’t actually have any reasons for sayin’ that. I just think that Hanekawa Tsubasa, for no real reason at all, just wanted to see her first love again.”

“…That’s surprisingly romantic of you, Mitome-san.”

“I’m the Last Wolf, after all. That’s obviously romantic.”

“But the possibility of that is zero,” I declared without any lingering aftertaste.

For such a gray-area question with no black or white, I gave an immediate response.

It probably could be better to leave this riddle unsolved, leaving the main points vague, but let’s make the answer not wilting flowers but flapping wings.

“Or rather, it’s even possible that both of them were body doubles. If there are three people that look like you, then that leaves another lookalike on this Earth. It’s possible that Hanekawa Tsubasa didn’t even return to Japan.”

When I opened the box, it was empty.

For the problem of whether the cat in the box was alive or dead, that would mean the cat hadn’t been in the box in the first place—but I preferred that the most.

“Whaddya mean you prefer that? Doesn’t it make you angry? If the person you were talkin’ to was a body double, that just means Hanekawa Tsubasa was makin’ a fool out of you! Isn’t that why you tried testin’ her?”

“That was something I wanted to let Hanekawa know. No matter how much I’d regret it afterwards.”

“Being happy even if you met a copycat… That’s kinda pitiful of you. Koyomi-kun, aren’t you the romantic one here?”

“I won’t deny it, but I’m not happy that I met a copycat. What I’m happy about is that Hanekawa even sent me a copycat… That she sent me an empty box.”

Really, truly, and honestly, I was happy from the bottom of my heart—whether it was peace or saving people or her beliefs or the world, whatever she valued the most, whatever she strove to protect.

Because the person I was now had become just an inconsequential guy to the person that Hanekawa was now. And that made me the happiest of all.