Monogatari Series - Volume 27 - Chapter 1.12

012

“Shall I talk about ill will?

“You can also call it malice—basically, it’s a question of whether or not you can apologize with, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do it’.

“An apology that you, Araragi Koyomi, might frequently make, perhaps?

“Hehehe.

“I like that you aren’t denying it.

“If the question is if a crime becomes less serious if you didn’t perform it on purpose, then yes, it does become less serious—it’s inevitable for the judge’s sentence to change based on whether it was intentional or an accident.

“The victim’s pain can change, too.

“Even if it’s the same traffic accident, the feelings of the person who was hit can change based on if the other party was abiding by the speed limit, if they were following the traffic lights, or if they had a child seat placed in the proper spot—in the case of traffic lights, if the other party was following them, that means the person themselves had ignored them, so it would be difficult for them to blame the other party.

“If you didn’t mean to do it, then what did you mean to do?—before she stopped apologizing, one of my mother’s stock phrases was, ‘I did it for your sake,’ and I did think that that wasn’t a lie, but I had to recognize that there’s room for reconsideration depending on the motive.

“I needed to recognize it.

“I had to forgive.

“‘I know I did something wrong, but I had no other choice.’ Because that sort of acrobatic way of apologizing exists, I can’t say this is a hard and fast rule, but when someone punches you maliciously, then of course the punch hurts, but the malicious intent can hurt as well.

“When you become a victim of fraud, the financial damages are bad enough, but the fact that you were ‘considered a sitting duck that was easy to deceive’ is especially painful—of course, that doesn’t mean it’s okay to hurt others as long as you don’t hold ill will. On the contrary, there are good men and women that hurt others without any malicious intent, but in terms of how easy it is to forgive them, there’s a world of difference.

“However, there are those that think, ‘It wasn’t on purpose, so I won’t apologize. Because if I apologize, then it will look like I did it on purpose’—they probably don’t do it on purpose, but the shadow of death that looms over that way of thinking40 really is a bit hard to forgive.”