Monogatari Series - Volume 25 - Chapter 3.10

010 

The epilogue, or maybe, the punch line of this story. 

The day stretched over quite a lot while we were trapped in there. But now that I could check the answer, it was a bit of a letdown, one without anything special. It’s not like mistaking withered silver grass for the apparition of a ghost, but when you learn the answer, it’s a damper akin to what comes out of ghost stories or urban legends. 

Well, whatever I say, I’ll sound like a sore loser since I wasn’t able to figure it out, so let’s get on with the solving without any unnecessary preface. That said, the number I wrote in,  , was good enough reasoning. 

Gathering the 15 hiragana from the classroom, arranging them in attendance order and deducting it was the password of an old game— then, associating the main character’s name “Pai” with “π” and connecting it to pi, up to there was correct. 

However, I can’t give 80 points to  . It doesn’t deserve to fail, but 50 points is the most I could give it. 

Because. 

Pi was, ultimately, “3.141592” and not “3141592”. 

In my reasoning—I ignored the decimal point’s existence. 

In other words, the code I inputted wasn’t “3.141” but “3141”— three thousand one hundred and forty-one. 

About 1000 times bigger. 

You can’t possibly call that an error in approximation. 

It’d be even more irrational than irrational numbers. 

What was that about “being a mathematician”? I’m so embarrassed of my claim. 

But what makes me even more embarrassed is that I let Chinouchan patch up my input error. 

By patching up, I’m not talking about the revival magic she used after it. Naturally, that was part of it, but I’m more talking about the development which came next. 

The abrupt undressing. 

    And the       which came after. 

It wasn’t even pi, a lineup of numbers—at least for me, who’s somewhat confident with numbers, the number 3101 doesn’t ring any bell. But once you realize it, the intent behind it was evident. 

Chinou-chan took into account the decimal point. 

3.14’s “.”… Point… Ten. 

It was “10 (ten)”.  

In other words, she included the 10 (ten) between pi’s basic form, 3.14’s “3” and “14”. With that, the “π” from the 15 hiragana finally made sense. 

In short, the code to escape the 1-3 classroom this time was 31014. However there were only 4 blocks to write numbers in. 

Then do you only need to input  ? Still, if 3141 isn’t pi then 3.1 isn’t quite it either. Even if it works mathematically, no one would think of pi when confronted with “3.1”. Thinking of it that way, that deduction renders you hesitant to write it. 

But Chinou-chan did it. Without any wavering. 

And she died. 

That wasn’t akin to when the same thing happened to me, because of my error driven by inertia—it was calculated. 

Dying was included in the calculation. 

If the play-on-words interpretation of the decimal point as 10 (ten) was allowed, then there existed simpler puns in the world of numbers, ever since ancient times. That is death (4).  

That’s the most famous wordplay, even. 

    —and     . 

By failing the input and dying, the code was completed. That mechanism goes over being ill-natured and lands in the vicious territory. 

A 4-digit password. 

The rule of 4. 

The rule of death—huh. 

If that’s commonplace in Shikoku, then Chinou-chan and I will stay incompatible for the rest of our lives. 

The sane people die first. 

If that’s the Shikoku, in which she lives—no. 

Then, if you asked me whether she, who died, was sane, then I’d have to answer no—you can’t call her sane, not just in Shikoku but in this town either. 

She wasn’t sane. 

But I can’t simply call her a mean girl. 

If you look closely at the two times where I lost my life due to getting the answer wrong, from a bystander’s viewpoint, it must have looked like reaching the right answer in itself was possible. For the girl whose specialty was to confront a retort with another retort, she must have been highly capable in that area. 

But. 

Despite being skillful at sabotaging, being clever, and doing her best to not be cooperative for all the tasks, when it came to inputting the code—not the code where you die if you get it wrong but the code where you die for sure—that talkative girl moved without a single word. 

Had she let me do it, even if I died, she could have revived me with her magic. Even though dying two or three times didn’t make much of a difference. 

… It wasn’t the same. 

She might have thought that way. 

Thinking about it, both my first and second death came from my hastiness—from the hastiness of a lowly commoner. The girl who made me work so much, when it came to writing the code with a risk of death, she didn’t try to make me do it even once. 

Maybe she thought that it was natural for her to do it, since she realized the solution—maybe she just didn’t want a lowly commoner to steal her spotlight. I can’t imagine what passed through her head. 

Although I shouldn’t be trying to imagine her rules. 

At this point, the theory of her organization dispatching her here to get rid of her wasn’t completely outside the realm of possibility. 

Escaping from a locked room where the solution for escaping was to die isn’t a feat you can accomplish alone. It’s like ordering her to go die. In the first place, even with the Multi-Stick Living Dead, if the person in question dies, that intrinsic magic is no longer of any use— but, perhaps that was the luck of the magical girl Giant Impact. 

A former vampire who possessed a special sight witnessed her flying. 

Moreover, through a strange coincidence, that witness was an ancient member of class 1-3, where the mission took place. 

Wasn’t that one of those one-in-a-trillion draws? Furthermore, she threw that probability to the wind. 

Originally, I should have inputted the   and 4’d  as a result. If the magical girl Giant Impact then revived me, we would have gone full circle—talk about pi. 

But with no regards for that, she took the role of writing it down. 

Ignoring the loss and gain, an action completely going against reason. 

Forget about personal gain, it didn’t make sense. 

Irrational behavior outside the realm of comprehension. 

That was, by all means, the behavior of a magical girl. 

… However, I must also bring up that Chinou-chan’s unexpected action at the very end wasn’t the self-sacrifice of a devoted and noble mind. 

Chinou-chan merely took up the role of inputting and dying for the mission; it’s not like she didn’t intend to come back to life after that. As per usual, I feel far from grateful, but rather, fiercely angry; it’s not like she didn’t prepare a means to work things out. 

That’s why, before Chinou-chan wrote down the code, she fluently took her costume off—and laid her tool to use the intrinsic magic, the Multi-Stick Living Dead, on the teacher’s desk, where it was hard to miss. 

The costume and the stick, coming together. 

By putting it on, anyone can become a magical girl. 

By swinging it, anyone can use magic. 

If I remember correctly, that’s what she said. 

I’m leaving the rest to you—she said. 

“……………………………………………………………” 

I didn’t even have to decipher what to do. That too was unconditional and certain. 

It looks like the punch line was that I wouldn’t have to punch Chinou-chan’s cheek, but her heart. Although there wasn’t the slightest chance I would feel relieved from that.