Monogatari Series - Volume 27 - Chapter 1.05

005

What I held in my hand was not a stylus pen but my favorite ballpoint pen (I only favored ballpoint pens), and incidentally, I was too clumsy to be able to spin a pen, so I had simply been holding it, but that pen had fallen out of my hand before I realized—night-crawling?

By night-crawling, did she mean that night-crawling?

“That’s riiight. That term you see often in classical literatuuure.

“Um, I’m willing to highly appraise your effort to deliberately weaken the nuance of the term by associating it with classical literature, but—”

Eh? Wasn’t that kind of a big deal?

Because she’d brought it up so flippantly and casually in the middle of studying for exams in the cafeteria, I’d nearly been swept up by that mood and treated it as something casual myself, but the matter at hand turned out to be an ancient cultural practice beyond the level of a mere urban legend. In terms of concepts that did not fit into the modern era, it rivaled the concept of droit du seigneur.16

Her choice of words was befitting of the most humanities-oriented person in the mathematics department, and you could even say it was the peak of literary expression… It was true that there was a time when the entertainment world amused themselves with that word, and it may have been seen in the eighties, but these days, it was a power word—no, a taboo word—that you would never see in any hit manga.

“I-isn’t this a matter you should discuss with the proper authorities, not me…? If you want me to accompany you, then of course—have I already told you that my parents are police officers?”

“First time I’m hearing about iiit.”

Whoops. I’d revealed it so easily.

It was bothersome in various ways, so I liked to keep my parents’ occupations a secret—but whatever. Meniko was aiming to join the Metropolitan Police Department in the future, so I would have needed to tell her about it, anyway. There was no reason it couldn’t be now.

Or rather, there was no better time than now.

I’d come into this expecting something on the level of, “I’m not sure if I should change my old smartphone now, or wait for the newest model to come out,” and ended up stepping onto dreadfully private territory, but I couldn’t pull back now.

Should I be hugging her? No, if I, a boy, went to hug a girl that had been night-crawled upon, that probably wouldn’t serve as encouragement.

Even so, night-crawling?

The last volume was about child abuse, and the volume before that involved a kidnapping. I’d vaguely sensed it ever since we entered the university student arcs, but now that the anime has ended, have tastes reverted back to the early days?

How shameless.

“Meniko, you have a boyfriend, right? Have you talked with that guy from the light music club, yet?”

“I broke up with the light music club guy a whiiile agooo. My boyfriend right now is in the club research club.”

“The club research club?”

“Yeeep. I’m sure you already know him, but he’s super cooool. He’s one year older than me, and I broke up with the light music club guy to go out with hiiim.”

“......”

I didn’t know at all, though.

I got the impression that it was just a drinking club that didn’t really research anything at all, and as expected, her romantic relationships didn’t seem to last very long, but that didn’t matter. In any case, it would normally be reassuring to hear that she had someone that could support her, but Meniko’s thoughtless expression clouded over ever-so-slightly.

“But you seeee. I couldn’t talk to him at aaall.”

“Hmm… Well, I get that it’s a hard topic to bring up, so that’s why you came to me, your trusted friend, for advice instead.”

“Weeelll, it’s true I came to you for adviiice, but that’s not iiit. The reason I couldn’t talk to that boyfriend is, he’s the culprit of that night-crawling.”

“Your boyfriend was the one who night-crawled?”

The one from the club research club?

Did that mean it was something like domestic violence within a couple? In the past—that is, in the recent past, not far back enough to be called ancient—cases like that were treated without legal intervention. Like how child abuse was passed off as discipline, this sort of domestic violence was passed off as a lovers’ quarrel… Needless to say, nowadays such cases were unmistakably considered criminal acts.

Whether it was a boyfriend, girlfriend, or even a spouse, night-crawling was wrong.

It would change the meaning of companionship.

Strictly speaking, in the dictionary, the definition of “night-crawling” did not contain any criminal elements, but if that boyfriend from the club research club thought that he would be forgiven simply because he was her boyfriend, that was also a problem and something to focus on. A kabedon was only acceptable in manga, and if not there, then in movies. There was no reason to think otherwise.

“A kabedooon?”

Meniko tilted her head in doubt, as if a word like that was already considered obsolete to a language expert like her.

“Aaah. That’s what’s so complex about iiit. The asymmetry of causing and receiving haaarm, it’s right theeere,”

said Meniko with a clouded expression.

“Althooough, it’s Koyomi-chan’s eyes that look like they’re more clouded over.”

“Don’t say that to a friend you’re relying on.”

Far from just being cloudy, it seemed like rain might fall from them.

It was my mistake for using a metaphor that could be taken by a language expert and thrown back at me, but anyway, Meniko continued.

“The reason iiis, I’ve been trying to forgive that night-crawling, thooough.”

“...Huh?”

“I wonder if it’s misleading to say I’m trying to forgive hiiim? Weeell?”

I wonder if I seem like a peeervert, said Meniko, sticking out her tongue. But speaking as someone who associated with a particularly perverted underclassman, it was tough to analyze. Er, not that I was some specialist of perverts. But if she’d come to me for advice for that sort of evaluation, then it really was Meniko who was clouded over. Her eyes, that is.

However, her gaze remained clear and cloudless.

“In the first plaaace, I had no intention of being night-crawled upon,”

she said.

No intention of being night-crawled upon?

“That night, we were just supposed to be making love, you seeee.”

“Um…”

I glanced around at my surroundings, with my clouded eyes.

My flitting eyes.

You could even say I’d averted my eyes, as if a sex scene had suddenly come on while watching TV together with my family.

Since it wasn’t lunchtime, the cafeteria was fairly empty… That was the main reason we’d chosen this place to study for our exams, but that didn’t mean it was completely uninhabited.

In a way, compared to a term as old-fashioned as “night-crawling” whose meaning might only come across vaguely, the expression “making love” might be more extreme coming from the mouth of a serious university student, so I’d looked around by reflex. But fortunately, Meniko’s leisurely voice did not carry throughout this open space, so we were not met with disapproving stares.

It depended on what terminology might come up next, but for now, it seemed that it wasn’t necessary to change our location, so I looked back at Meniko, leaned in closer, and continued in a whisper.

“Speaking of which, you did say, ‘before I realized it’... So that didn’t mean that it happened while you were asleep?”

“That’s riiight. It wasn’t, liiike, sleep sex.”

“Oookay, why don’t we go somewhere else, Meniko-san?”

“Aaah, sorry. I guess that was crossing the line for naive little Koyomi-chan.”

As I looked away and made to leave my seat, Meniko grabbed the sleeve of my jacket to stop me. The way she stopped me was kind of cute. It was upsetting to be treated as naive by a friend of equal status, but I concluded that perhaps I’d misheard her saying “drunkard”17, so I sat back down. I was giving her a second chance. Although, if she had been night-crawled upon by a drunkard, then that in itself was a deep-rooted problem…

“I was just worrying about when this story gets included in the Aoitori Bunko collection in the future.”18

Well, if it was for Aoitori Bunko, then no matter how we tried to dress this up as literature, “night-crawling” was already an unacceptable word, but after making that explanation, I revisited my question.

“So, what does this mean, exactly? To sum up what you’ve said up until now, then by mutual consent… The two of you meant to ‘make love’ that night, but afterwards, the other person is insisting that he ‘night-crawled’ upon you?”

“That’s riiight. I wasn’t meaning to be a victiiim, but Boyfie-kun19 keeps meaning to be a perpetrator.”

So she calls him Boyfie-kun…

That was something I didn’t want to know.

If I were to cut her off there, then far from it being a lovers’ quarrel, it sounded more like she was just boasting about her love life… But I see, so that was the discrepancy between causing and receiving harm.

Aha, I was finally starting to follow along.

The front side and the back side.

There’s even an expression that goes, “Even if the person responsible were to forget, the person who went through it won’t forget,” but even outside of that—even if the person responsible had no ill will and acted with good intentions, as long as the victim considers themselves a victim, the person responsible would be said to have caused harm. To a certain degree, or maybe even to a considerable degree, I would say that reasoning held true, as I myself had experienced such a predicament many times over.

From both perspectives.

However, this time around, the pattern was distinctly the reverse.

In a case where the victim did not consider herself to be the victim, then could we really conclude that the perpetrator actually caused harm?

Even if he had ill will.

Even if he acted with evil intentions.

If the victim did not consider herself harmed, and instead thought of it as a favor to her, then was it really that bad?

A perpetrator with no wrongdoing, and a victim who hasn’t been harmed?

There are those that say that you can judge a person by whether or not they apologize even when the other party is not angry… But although I’d gone through hell and nightmares, this was a complete paradoxical theory that I’d never experienced before… No, perhaps that wasn’t quite right.

If anything, this was…

In terms of theories—it was secondhand rumors.20

“If we were to consider criminal law… There are crimes that require a formal complaint from the victim to prosecute, and crimes that don’t… I think recently, these sorts of sex crimes were made into the latter, right?”

“That’s riiight. As far as the law goooes. We learned it in claaass. I wonder if it’ll come up in our exaaams. There’s still the possible interpretation that, if there’s no resistance, it’s still considered consensual even if it’s forceful. But I wonder what they’ll do about that imbalance from now ooon.”

It was a bit of a course correction, but just for a moment, Meniko returned to being my tutor for the exams.

“No matter what, sex crimes are treated as a sensitive topic, but they just let them slide mildlyyy. But what iiif, it was actually marriage fraaaud?”

“Even if you ask, ‘what iiif’...”

Or rather, even if you aaask.

Personally, fraud was also a sensitive topic… It definitely put me on edge. However, even if it was hard for me to react, I got what she was trying to say. Basically, it was the problem of, “If a fraudulent marriage actually goes through, is that really considered fraud?”

Can a lie that has been told and then pushed through become the truth?

With a reason like “my mother is sick” or “business isn’t doing well”, they’d rip someone off of their money and cling to their private life, but if that person were to remain deceived to the very end… If the target never caught onto that despicable deception, then could the victim still be considered a victim?

I’ve also heard that there were a surprising number of victims that tried to defend the marriage fraudsters that got caught… It was probably a little shallow to simply dismiss that as simple Stockholm syndrome.

Love was complex and mysterious.

Like apparitions.

“Exaaactly. This is reversing the sexes, but after mating, the female mantis eats the male mantis… But opinions might be diviiided on whether or not the male mantis is pitifuuul.”

“I’ve also heard that mantises will eat each other even when nothing goes on between them…”

“That goes for both male and female mantises… And it might go for men and women, toooo.”

It was a line of thought that sounded profound but was actually an example of profound meaninglessness. However, against that unchanging tone of voice, that eloquence of hers—if I lowered my guard here, I might give some crude, careless advice like, “If it doesn’t bother you, then why don’t you just leave it alone?” But that would be a regrettably poor level of awareness from me.

I wasn’t a high schooler anymore.

I had to hold my own opinions.

If it really didn’t bother Meniko, then she wouldn’t have come to me for advice, and I couldn’t deny the possibility that she was seeking help while concealing her true intentions, like how one would discuss their episodes as though they were about “a friend of a friend”... For example, even while saying that they were “making love”, perhaps their relationship had been gradually falling apart… Or maybe, even if he wasn’t a drunkard, they’d become drunk off the atmosphere… But, still.

Before, my childhood friend Oikura Sodachi had once set me up as a specialist of child abuse (what sort of grudge did she hold against me?), but when it came to romantic experiences, my knowledge was about as thin as wax paper, so I wasn’t sure how to tread into this relationship between university students.

Looking at it like this, I could understand just a little bit why police officers liked to bring up non-intervention in civil cases. If handled poorly, it could only make things worse, and even draw counter-resentment… However, I was, after all, the son of those parents who stealthily intervened in the homes of others and sometimes even harbored abused children in their own home, all the while working as police officers.

Why don’t the two of you just talk it over?

That sort of detached advice was something I would never say, no matter what.

“All right. I’ll go and reason with him. You’re free to come along if you want, or I can go alone. Just leave it to me. In any case, I’ll go and tell that Boyfie-kun of yours, ‘If you really love Meniko, then there’s no need to feel any guilt.’”

“Bringing up ‘love’ might be a bit heavy, thooough.”

Koyomi-chan’s friendship is also heavy, thooough, it’s in the heavyweight class, said Meniko, forcing a smile as though she were troubled.

She probably was troubled.

“I didn’t bring this up with you for you to go that faaar. That’ll just make things wooorse. Besiiides, since it ended up this way, I was ready to break up with him, anywaaay.”

“Really?”

Weren’t you all lovey-dovey?

You were making love, but you weren’t in love?

“Yeeep. Don’t try to reignite a flame that’s already burnt ooout. Rather, don’t add fuel to the fiiire. If I have to say it, it was the perfect timing, anywaaay. There’s a guy that caught my interest, you see. In the lacrosse club.”

How flighty. From the light music club to the club research club to the lacrosse club… It almost seemed like she joined twenty-five clubs just to pursue the guys she was interested in.

It really was changing the meaning of companionship.

Was she trying to update the dictionary definition?

“Rather than an update, I just want to go on a date, I gueeess. I’m the type of person that modestly wants to date all the guys I liiike.”

“...Then, what exactly is bothering you about the unevenness of receiving and causing harm?”

Was the problem not that things were getting awkward because of the difference of opinions with Boyfie-kun?

“Everything’s my fault,” “I’m just a bother to others,” “bad things happen to people around me,” “I’m like a curse”—you could say those sorts of guilt-ridden delusions were on the back side of feelings of omnipotence. Following that logic, it wasn’t much different from just claiming, “Oh, I’m just a jinx for everyone.”

The back side.

The reverse.

Embarrassing as it was, I myself had the tendency to say stuff like that in the past, but if that is something you want to say, you should just be positive and declare, “I’m a lucky charm for everyone!” instead. Even just saying that can bring cheer to those around you.

So if Meniko wanted to wash her hands of a guy that was hanging his head over the act of making love, then I would respect that decision.

It was their problem, and it was their relationship.

A decision like that, well… It wasn’t something I could completely dismiss as “not my problem”... Hm? No, wait… Was it just my imagination? Was it just a fluke? No, it had to be a fluke. I wasn’t a jinx.

It was just a coincidence.

Like how I just happened to encounter a vampire on her deathbed on that spring break, it was just by chance—just a fluke.

“Mm… It would’ve at least been a little endearing if he was hanging his heeead, since there was no actual harm dooone.”

“Huh? What exactly are you suggesting?”

“What’s bothersome is my bodyyy, and what’s suggestive are my pheromones, I gueeess.”

That evasive statement was, I suppose, a demonstration of the characteristics of Meniko’s youth of “never-ending boyfriends” (yes, in this world, there were people who did experience that sort of youth). But, Boyfie-kun wasn’t hanging his head?

She hadn’t mentioned as much, but was Boyfie-kun spreading around the fact that he “night-crawled upon” Meniko like some sort of tale of romance? If that were true, then as her friend, it seemed Araragi Koyomi would have to stain his hands with murder—

“Don’t stain your hands with murdeeer. Don’t paint them reeed.”

“That’ll depend on how this discussion goes. With life in my right hand, and death in my left.”

“What’s that, some hitman’s catchphraaase? Hmm? If he really were spreading that around like some tale of romance, then I would’ve been able to laugh it off, saying, ‘Guess I fell for a dumb one.’ Even if it wasn’t something I could laugh off, I’d be able to take legal action, riiight? But actually, it’s the exact opposite. Well, I guess it’s not the opposite, but the ‘back side’.”

The back side.

Within the back side, the front side is contained.

“He just keeps apologizing,”

said Meniko. As though she were fed up with it.

It was an expression I hadn’t seen on her before.

“First, he knelt down in front of me and apologiiized, and then he apologized to my frieeends, and then he went to the club members that didn’t even know me and started an apology press conference, apologizing in all directions. Telling everyone what a sinful person he is, just constantly repenting without stopping.”

“Repenting—”

An apology press conference.

It was a sight that was pretty familiar in this country, and whether on television and on the Internet, there was always someone apologizing to someone else on a daily basis. The “back side” being, in other words, the tough reality that someone was getting angry at someone else on a daily basis—but even in today’s society, where such sights had become an everyday occurrence, Boyfie-kun’s apology tour stood out a lot.

Maybe if it really had been a tale of romance… But normally, people did not go around publicizing their guilt-ridden delusions—and for apology press conferences, it was common to hear the criticism of, “I don’t know who you’re apologizing to, but if you’re apologizing you should apologize to the victim”, but this didn’t seem to even be on that level.

He was apologizing to everyone and anyone.

In this case, the victim did not even consider herself a victim—there wasn’t exactly a term that could describe this scenario exactly, but if I had to say it, it was a victimless crime.

To ignore the victim’s wishes and apologize out in the open… How should I put it… Depending on how you looked at it, you could almost say it was honorable, the way he judged himself based on his sense of ethics. However—yes, when it came to the person involved.

“When it came to the victim… It could cause actual harm.”

They could actually be harmed.

“Exaaactly. It made me not want to show up at the club research club anymooore. Everyone just sees me as a ‘victim’ of that disgusting night-crawling, and their looks of pity and words of comfort make it really hard for me to staaay, and trying to deny everything one-by-one just seems like an excuuuse…”

The harm done was just as bad as a hooligan publicizing his tale of romance, but that public apology tour really was nasty. You can sue someone for slander even if they’re telling the truth, to say nothing of if they’re making a false accusation—but this wasn’t a false accusation, but a false victimization.

It was tough to be attacked for something you didn’t do, but it was probably intolerable to be comforted for harm you didn’t even receive.

There would be nothing you could say.

And to that, there was nothing I could say.

“Because I’m like thiiis, I’m kind of used to being slandered, but this is pretty tough, even for meee. If I were being attacked, I could launch a counterattack, so to speeeak, or at least get mad. But how am I supposed to respond to someone who’s apologizing?”

It’s like violence in the form of an apologyyy.

That was what Meniko said.

“It’s not a false confession of a false crime, eitheeer. Everyone seems to respectfully believe that he’s not just pretending to admit to his wrongdoing. How respectful of theeem. Even when I tell him to stop, he just won’t stooop. Whenever I say something, it’s almost like he thinks that he has to apologize even mooore. Apologizing, apologizing, apologizing. Even saying he’ll turn himself into the poliiice. Although he’ll probably just be turned away at the door. At this rate, it’s only a matter of time before he puts up a handwritten letter of apology on the Internet.”

“......”

If it went that far, it almost sounded like apology harassment… It was indeed nasty, but it was also kind of frightening.

The fact that Boyfie-kun’s true intentions couldn’t be understood was especially frightening… Unlike a false confession, it wasn’t like he was under duress. He was voluntarily taking on a false charge and going around apologizing, and it was causing actual harm to his own life, as well. It was truly a puzzling act of self-harm that even got his partner involved.

I’d heard that there was a surprising number of people that turned themselves in for crimes they didn’t commit… But this example was something I was hearing for the first time.

“Sorryyy. I used asking you for advice as a pretext to complaaain. Honestly, Koyomi-chan, I was never thinking that I wanted you to do something for me. Buuut, when I thought that there was a chance that Boyfie-kun’s apology’s sphere of influence could reach you, toooo… I decided just now that it would be better if I could tell you about it myseeelf.”

After having heard such a bizarre story, I couldn’t say her fears were groundless or that she was overreacting… I couldn’t say it was a flight of fancy, either. If I hadn’t heard from her in advance and some upperclassmen I didn’t know apologized for night-crawling upon Meniko, I’d have no idea how to react to that.

In the first place, I had no intention of meeting my friend’s boyfriend, but now that things had become like this, he had become an extremely dangerous character that I didn’t even want to get near. Imagine being set up as a victim without knowing anything about it…

Was it something like being told, “Sorry for bullying you in the past,” when you had no memory of being bullied by that person? In that case… I understood.

I understood completely. Because.

“Weeell. There’s also the fact that I came up with a clever quiz to give youuu. And I guess the words just slipped out from theeere.”

That was what she was saying, but if you wanted to avoid a future in which you received misdirected pity from me, then my sincere apologies for having you make such a lame excuse instead of being able to give proper advice.

My apologies… But was that feeling of guilt just another misdirected, guilt-ridden delusion? Was it a twisted, back side of omnipotence?

“I hesitated, thooough. Did I really want to drag naive little Koyomi-chan, who’s been steadily dating his girlfriend from high school, into this messy soap operaaa? It might have been too stimulating for youuu.”

“True, instead of Aoitori Bunko, it’s more fitting for the Kodansha Novels label…”

During their ero guro romance era, before they entered the shinhonkaku era.21

Even though the two-row format is in a precarious position.22

“But Meniko, it upsets me that you’re treating me like some kid that doesn’t understand the subtleties between men and women. So, I don’t hold any pity, but for what you just told me… For that story of yours, there was something I could empathize with.”

“Empathiiize?”

“Not on the level of telepathy, but yes, empathy. In other words, it’s not something completely unrelated to me.”

I was putting on airs here, or essentially, weakly pretending to be tough.

“Incidentally, you know that girlfriend I’ve been steadily dating since high school? Just the other day, we were talking about breaking up.”

That was what I said.