Monogatari Series - Volume 23 - Chapter 1.09

009

According to Higasa-chan, saying that they’d “gone missing” was a bit of an exaggerated take from my rash junior, but to sum it up, among the first- and second-years, there were five members who couldn’t be contacted.

Surprisingly enough, I was already familiar with three out of the five names they gave—although it wasn’t that surprising.

Harimaze Kie. Honnou Aburi. Kuchimoto Kyoumi.

I could understand up to that point.

Thanks to Gaen-san’s deft manipulation of information, and perhaps even an embargo of information, the various mummified girls were being treated as having a “strange disease”, so their matters weren’t publicized—as such, the three of them were seen from the outside as absent for some vague reason, the actual circumstances imperceptible.

“Gone missing”.

Up to that point, it had all been pre-established, so it wasn’t worth getting shocked or taken aback—the problem would be the fact that two more names were included in the group of “missing” girls.

It was a fact that I didn’t want to face.

It was a bit premature to assume that both of them had already fallen victim to a vampire, but even if that wasn’t the case, five students going “missing” was more than enough to be a huge incident, wasn’t it?-although, that was just what I thought as someone who’d already graduated, but, thinking back to when I’d still been enrolled, I had to conclude that that wasn’t necessarily true.

I’d already mentioned that I’d skipped class in high school a lot, but it wouldn’t exactly be right to say that, at this university-focused school where people “going missing” was rare, everyone but me was an honors student.

If you wondered what happened to the students that couldn’t keep up in class, that weren’t suited to the school tradition of having the top standard score, that ended up falling behind… Well, in short, you’d say they—“went away”.

They’d transfer, or they’d drop out.

Or, like Oikura Sodachi, they’d shut themselves in their own home—they “went away”.

What Higasa-chan had said was certainly right, and a “delinquent that graduated from Naoetsu High” like me was certainly rare.

It had to be an exaggeration to say that I was the “only” one, but most of them didn’t make it to graduation.

They’d go away—they’d disappear.

As if they’d never been there in the first place—so, at Naoetsu High, becoming “unable to see” a student was not an especially unusual affair.

What the school was turning a blind eye to was not the students that fell behind themselves, but the idea that the school even had students that fell behind to begin with. That was the reality—the real problem.

Well, it wasn’t just Naoetsu High. All private schools probably wanted to avoid scandals like that…

But, in terms of the trouble occurring in the girls’ basketball team this time, what was different about it was that it wasn’t trouble that stemmed from the intensity of class or exams, but trouble that stemmed from training and teamwork.

“Ruga herself will probably deny this, but to be perfectly clear, Naoetsu High’s girlsbas was a club made around Kanbaru Suruga, because of Kanbaru Suruga, for Kanbaru Suruga, after all… Even from when I joined, I proactively worked to lead the club in direction, as well,” said Higasa-chan. “I don’t think doing that in itself was wrong, and it was because of that that we could make it to Nationals, after all. The problem was that, even after Ruga hurt her left arm and had to retire, that arrangement ended up being passed down as is… At least when I was captain, I did my best to fool the club to somehow keep things going, but after retiring in April, it fell apart all in one go.”

A goal that was too far, training that was too hard, peer pressure that couldn’t be escaped…

Not a sense of solidarity, but a sense of collective responsibility.

“Sports isn’t something people should be suffering through, so if it’s that harsh, then I feel like they’d be better off resigning, though.”

Since the club was formed around her existence, it was hard to deny it completely, but Kanbaru, who was usually a straightforward person, spoke instead with a weak tone of voice.

“Even if they did want to resign, they probably don’t want to be the first to do so.”

“That’s something I can’t understand.”

“Well, of course you can’t, Ruga.” And, as if exasperated, or maybe to sidestep the subject, Higasa-chan said, “There were kids that did resign, of course. Not that they sent in with an official notification of their resignation, since they resigned after getting hurt during practice.”

Higasa-chan made it sound like they got hurt on purpose to resign… And I couldn’t say that I didn’t understand how they felt.

Although I couldn’t say it was exactly the same, when I’d been studying for exams, I’d been tempted by the idea of hurting myself in order to avoid tackling a problem set for hours on end—of course, because of my vampire constitution, it didn’t actually go well, but I could only say that there had been something wrong with me at the time.

In other words, there was something wrong here.

With the girls’ basketball team right now.

Because they’d lost the support of the Kanbaru era—or rather, they’d lost the core.

“So, we knew we needed to do something about it, so we had a meeting of the OG third-years and debated over what to do, and, well, it’s not like we didn’t try to put some of our countermeasures in action, but it was like they backfired, since over the past few days, more and more members have stopped coming to school—and because it looks like there are no problems on the surface, it feels even worse than it should be. Even the ones that are having a hard time feel a sense of fulfillment or get filled with euphoria when they reach a stopping point, so they get stuck in place. And if someone carelessly complains about something, everyone else gets together and enjoys criticizing that person.”

“It’s hard for us to change that structure from where we are, Araragi-senpai. Or rather, it’s because our generation is the one that made that structure in the first place, so what they’re doing is almost exactly the same as what we’re doing.”

“Yeah. The difference is just how they feel about it. …Um, it’s possible that maybe we were wrong to set that up in the first place. Our advisor, who’d lived in an age of corporal punishment and a prevalent pecking order, had given us the opinion that ‘it might not fit the current generation, but it was still good in its own way’, and we didn’t want to ignore that. Well, from the day I joined to the day I retired, I’m pretty sure I had fun every day, right?”

Well, who knows.

It was true that it was hard to deny a process before seeing the results, but the undeniable reality was that, even if they said and did the same things, if the people doing those things changed, then the impression would also change—however, in that case, I could understand how Kanbaru and Higasa-chan felt, about how it would be hard to guide their juniors that were just imitating them.

“The school itself is keeping us from saying anything, so we were basically at our wits’ end when you approached us, Araragi-senpai. I almost thought this was a godsend.”

They must have really been at their wits’ end if they thought being approached by a pervert was a godsend, but anyway.

It was true that the timing was good.

Considering the current era, if it weren’t for this timing, I doubted Higasa-chan would’ve even told me about the register’s existence—however, I still couldn’t say if this was inevitable or just a coincidence.

If the trouble in the girls’ basketball team had a direct connection to the vampire turmoil occurring in this town—for Higasa-chan, she probably would never have guessed that I was already busy trying to resolve that trouble.

“…Hmm.”

However, I still stopped to think.

I stopped to compare things with my experiences from last year… or not. What I was actually remembering were the words of my classmate, Hanekawa.

At the time, she had certainly been having some trouble, even though she didn’t show it. And Hanekawa Tsubasa, whose worries had driven her up to the wall, had thought, during her spring break as a 17-year-old, that she “wanted to meet a vampire”.

It was an earnest desire.

It was despair.1

To meet an incomprehensible monster that could burst through the immovable walls of reality, of real problems, in a single blow—even after graduating from high school, the Hanekawa that had spread her wings overseas was like that.

In that case, was it really so farfetched to infer that the students troubled over their club and worried about their school life thought, in the same way, that “it would be so much easier if a vampire came and attacked me”…?

And if that strong, earnest desire—or perhaps, that strong despair—was the missing link that connected the victims.

I couldn’t afford to not determine the whereabouts of the remaining two names that had gone missing—especially if they hadn’t been mummified yet, but no, even if they did already have their blood sucked.

“I got it, Higasa-chan. I don’t really think a blockhead like me can do anything about the delicate problems that girls face—but if you can lend me that register, I promise I’ll do my best to make sure that no more members go missing among your juniors, at the very least.”

“Just you promising that is enough for me.”

And though I knew that my words wouldn’t give any peace of mind, Higasa-chan still said that and lowered her arms that had been raised all this time, handing over the register to me.

“By the way, Araragi-senpai, do you have a girlfriend?”