Monogatari Series - Volume 27 - Chapter 1.15

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“Oh! If it isn’t Araragi-paisen! Whoa, long time no see! You’re as handsome a man as ever, and I almost thought you were a bird of paradise! Didja come all the way here just to see me? C’mon in, make yourself at home, and let’s have a chat!”

Before anything else, I would like to say that those were absolutely not the words of my cute junior, Kanbaru Suruga, nor were they the words of my cute alter ego, Oshino Ougi.

After parking my New Beetle at my parents’ home and fooling around with my sisters for a bit, I had made my way on foot to the Kanbaru residence, but when I approached the entrance of that huge Japanese-style mansion (incidentally, Shinobu had returned to my shadow—she hated dealing with Kanbaru), who could there be to greet me but Higasa Hoshiame?

No, but, really, who are you?

You’ve kept showing up since Monster Season started, but it’s not like you’ve become popular or anything. You have zero influence right now.

“Now, now, being less popular lets me do whatever I want, right? Sheesh, I agreed to watch the house for Ruga way too easily, and I thought I would die from boredom, so I’m totes excited that I suddenly got to see Araragi-paisen.”

In the short time since I’d last seen her, she’d become a gyaru.

She never said stuff like “totes” before.47

She should’ve been pretty sporty, as a basketball club member… Ah, but she’d retired a while ago, and she was only poking her nose into their affairs because of various complications, wasn’t she.

Maybe once all that came to an end, she’d lost heart… Or rather than losing heart, she’d let loose.48

But she’s taking college entrance exams, isn’t she?

It’s already the new year, so wouldn’t it be getting into full swing soon?

“Ah, wait, were you one of those characters that are surprisingly smart? Higasa-chan.”

“Uh, no? Not at all. If anything, I’m an idiot.”

That actually made her seem more reliable, weirdly enough.

As if she’d somehow prove the abc conjecture using completely unexpected reasoning.

“Weeelll, y’see, it was time for the final push, but I pushed a little too hard. It’s like my heart broke with a snap. I totes skipped out on all the open campus tours. I closed off my heart to those open campuses.”

That was a pretty clever thing to say, but was this really the time?

An open campus… My university had one of those too.

“Um, so where’s Kanbaru? If you’re left watching the house… Is she on a family vacation or something? Is high school still on winter break?”

“Nah, Ruga is out somewhere with Ougi-kun like always. Something about mummies and memorializing the dead? And then there was something about her grandparents needing to stay at the main house during the New Year’s period?”

“The main house?”

With this being such an impressive mansion, it gave off the impression of being the main house, but to think there was another house at the root… As for why their grandchild, Kanbaru, didn’t join them on that “family vacation”, it would be because she was born after the elopement of their would-be successor, Kanbaru’s father… The family matters of others could be pretty complex.

It made me think mine were simple.

“Anyway, I figured Ruga would be lonely on her own, so I stuck around and had her lend me a study room. Well, I’m the type to think that I can always study once I become an adult, so I’m really just lounging around watching TV.”

She was really feeling at home, as though this was actually her own home.

What an open-minded junior.

She might even feel at home at my parents’ place, this girl… This is something I thought about during my university life, too, but the world really is full of many kinds of people. If only I’d realized that when I was in high school. It felt like I’d lost out for over two of those three years.

“Now then, I dunno what you want from Ruga, but c’mon in, Araragi-paisen. That superstar should be back soon, but in the meantime, why not spend some time with this asteroid? There should still be some of my homemade blueberry-banana-peach-melon muffins left!”

“Isn’t there more fruit than dough in those muffins?”

If that was supposed to be some sort of MacGuffin, then it was a very unpleasant foreshadowing… But anyway, I really needed to get into the habit of making appointments.

It was because I kept relying on chance meetings and inevitable meetings that I got stuck in an encounter with this semi-regular—but oh well. Right now, Ougi-chan’s priority was Kanbaru, not me.

While sensing the end of an era where Ougi-chan meddled solely in my affairs, Araragi Koyomi, invited by a high-school-girl-turned-gyaru, stepped into the familiar sight of someone else’s home.

Just from that description, what I was doing made me seem like a criminal—but let me just say that I wasn’t just letting this all happen without serious thought.

They say, “Once you part with a gentleman for three days, you should view him with new eyes,”49 but for the few months I’d been away from my hometown, Higasa-chan had (from the stress of entrance exams?) turned into a gyaru—but even so, she didn’t extend any apologies to me.

In the first place, Higasa-chan had never done anything to me worth apologizing for, but in that sense, both Hitagi and Oikura hadn’t done anything either—it seemed that the evil clutches of this weird apology fad had not, at the very least, reached my hometown.

However, it might be premature to judge just from a short talk at the entrance. I needed to investigate a bit more… It’s what specialists would call fieldwork.

You could also call it survey sampling.

Something that could only be done through random encounters—in fact, I’d already been conducting this analysis when I dropped by my parents’ place and talked to my sisters.

I hadn’t just fooled around.

I’d had a proper reason for fooling around with my sisters. It was necessary.

I’d cross-examined my two sisters, Karen and Tsukihi, asking, “Don’t you have anything to apologize for?” But they showed no resistance, much like pushing aside a curtain or putting a nail into rice bran,50 and it seemed neither of them could think of anything.

If anything, putting rusty nails into a bed of rice bran is apparently a correct way to do things, so likening that expression to “pushing aside a curtain” might be a bit strange semantically, or so Meniko might point out… But anyway, it ended with just fooling around.

I fooled around to make up for all the time I’d been away from my parents’ house.

“You should be the one to apologize, my master. For fooling around with your sisters even after becoming a university student.”

“I won’t apologize. In fact, I should be praised for this. If this were my golden age, I could have filled a hundred pages by just fooling around with my sisters.”

“What a disgusting golden age. ‘Tis more like a mating period.”

Well, it was less that I restrained myself and more that it felt like it would get cut due to the social standards of the Reiwa era, but anyway, there may or may not have been that sort of conversation with Shinobu.

At any rate, Karen was one thing, but if Tsukihi were to do something like apologize to me, I’d probably die from shock in spite of my vampiric immortality and finally welcome the end of the Monogatari series which you have all been such avid readers of (she was someone that would never apologize, even more so than Oikura or Shinobu—she could easily fly into a rage if she were ordered to apologize… I had faith in that), but now that I’d confirmed that there was nothing wrong with Higasa-chan, it was approximately fine to approximately conclude that my hometown could approximately be considered a safe zone.

Three layers of approximation.

Turning that around, it meant that Manase University was in dangerous waters.

For now, the oddity phenomenon was restricted to the university campus—Boyfie-kun and Hitagi and Oikura were all Manase University’s students. Although, since there were also students that weren’t affected, like me and Meniko, it was just a hypothesis… Were we just exceptions?

Conferring with Higasa-chan was really just an unexpected survey sampling, but it ended up being an extremely important line of inquiry. If my hometown was considered a safe zone, then the suspicion on Ougi-chan was almost certainly cleared.

It would almost certainly be ostentatious.51

It might be being overly self-conscious to assume that Ougi-chan, who was currently clinging to Kanbaru, would want to bother with me, who’d been so far apart from her… Thinking about that gave way to apprehensions that she might not even cooperate with me.

Well, I could think about that later.

First off, Higasa-chan. Time to demonstrate my investigation techniques to expose every nook and cranny of the mentality of this girl, whose course had shifted from athlete to gyaru.

I’ll strip you down and lay you bare.

…In terms of the social standards of the Reiwa era, I’m guessing that phrase is no good?

“Now, make yourself at home. I’ll make some space for you to sit down. Sorry about that, our Ruga has made such a mess of her room.”

“...Isn’t about half of this mess yours, Higasa-chan? I can see the pieces of a brand new reference book and a newly-purchased dictionary that were mercilessly torn apart.”

The reference book was one thing, but could a dictionary even be torn apart?

Even without a monkey’s paw?

“Heheheh. I’ve made good use of the strength I’ve trained up playing basketball.”

“Train your mind instead, missy.”

Regardless of who caused the mess, in the few months since I’d last visited, Kanbaru’s room had become a near-indescribable chaos.

It could be fine to say that the amount of trash you would find in a hoarder’s house was instead crammed into a single room, or was that not fine at all? Though it was a Japanese-style room, not a single tatami mat could be seen, and even the sliding screen and the pillars were only just barely visible near the ceiling. Even though I’d told her time and time again, throw out the trash, get rid of things you don’t need, and put things back in their proper places—I’d even given her a broom and a dustpan as a present when I left for university, but it seemed my sentiment as her senior hadn’t reached her at all. That broom and dustpan must have become buried in this room somewhere.

“Out of Doraemon’s secret gadgets, I used to want the Take-copter the most, but nowadays, I want the Memory Bread.”

“Ever since I was a child, I’ve always wanted the Devil Passport.”

“You’re exuding nothing but evil, Araragi-paisen. Even a child that says they want the Earth Destruction Bomb would seem more wholesome.”

This Araragi-paisen who exuded nothing but evil had begun to clean up as if it was natural, but that was just something I was doing on the side—I needed to finish up my interview with Higasa-chan before Kanbaru and Ougi-chan returned.

“Y’want anything to drink with those muffins, Araragi-paisen? There might be a half-drunk water bottle somewhere around here. Whew, Ruga’s room is a real gold mine!”

“At least Kanbaru still recognizes this garbage as garbage… Your degradation knows no bounds. It’s hard to see your athletic discipline become so ruined—”

It was meant to be just an honest and sad thought, but it wasn’t a bad starting point for this interview, so I continued by asking this.

“—Don’t you feel sorry or anything? For this mess. Towards me.”

“Why would I feel sorry for the mess that my little girl caused?”

Higasa-chan made a puzzled expression as she threw herself on top of the bed of trash—here, “bed of trash” was not a metaphor, as the bed had been propped up at an angle as though it were trash itself.

“But Mommy feels a little bad about it. I guess.”

Aah, that reminded me of when Karen once went off the rails—or rather, she’d stirred up some trouble when entering middle school.

But then, after getting scolded by our mother, Karen-chan was rehabilitated.

Rather than being scolded, she really just got a good smack… If Karen were to go and apologize now for back then, well, it might be heartwarming.

She probably did feel sorry about it.

But if our mother were to apologize for her violence against her daughter, would it be as heartwarming? Karen probably didn’t even care about that, and if anything, she might even be grateful for being hit—if she were to suddenly be told that it was a mistake to hit her, how would that single-minded sister of mine feel?

For the generation of people raised in a spartan manner, undergoing harsh discipline and even corporal punishment, it would be hard for them to simply accept the claim that “It was all just tough love—if it weren’t for that strictness, you wouldn’t be what you are now”... Naoetsu High’s girls’ basketball club had been carrying that sort of bomb (a Club Destruction Bomb), and once they’d left the superstar’s era, it blew up on them.

“...How’s the girlsbas been since then? Has any of the trouble that’s died down come back up again?”

“Ruga and I have been keeping our eyes on them, but things’ve been fine so far. It’s more like our juniors are worrying about us now. Hm, I guess I feel bad about that, too. Like, sorry I’m showing you this side of me at the very end.”

Hmm.

Well, for now it seemed like a normal level of regretfulness. This wasn’t the same as the retorts I would often get from Shinobu, but I did want to tell her to formally apologize…

“Right now, my juniors have become super scared of entrance exams. They’re trembling in fear, wondering how awful these cram sessions could be to drive their former captain this far.”

“If you want, I can help you study. If it’s math and science, I can tutor you a little bit.”

“Ooh, what an attractive study plan. To be attended to by Araragi-paisen himself. Ruga will be jealous.”

“And how’s Ruga herself doing?”

We’d digressed a little from the main topic, but I was concerned about her roaming around with Ougi-chan at such a crucial stage. Considering I’d been playing around with a snake god around this time last year, it was pretty precarious for her to be receiving concern from me.

“She’s the kind of girl that can pull her weight when it counts. A friend I can take pride in. She got into Naoetsu High with hard work and determination, after all, so she’s really on another level from us normal people.”

Higasa-chan was being pretty apathetic…

Had I been like this when I was at my low point in life?

She’d even included me in her “us normal people” as if it were natural, so that may be true… But I suppose this could be one of the cute things about my hometown. Her knowledge of gyaru was just based on stereotypes, so, like me, there was a limit of sorts to how far she could act like she’d gone bad.

It was a town where middle school students tried being heroes of justice… Though they were then preyed upon by con men.

“There are a bunch of people like me in the dropout class. We’re not rare at all. Besiiides, they’re just some dumb entrance exams, right? I’m gonna go and play some street basketball with some rascally elementary school kids soon.”

“Hold on, a third-year in high school shouldn’t be playing with elementary school kids…”

Wait, that’s just me, isn’t it.

I guess we really weren’t that rare.

But to get back on track, while Higasa-chan may have made various changes to her appearance, she wasn’t really showing the sort of change seen in Boyfie-kun or Hitagi or Oikura. After running into a series of cases with no symptoms, it did make me wonder if maybe I was mistaken about all this after all.

My confidence wavered. What I’d heard regarding Boyfie-kun was ultimately just hearsay, and when it came to Hitagi and Oikura’s eccentricity, couldn't it be said that they were as eccentric as always?

“But y’know, Araragi-paisen. Is apologizing, like, a fad these days?”

“A fad… Well, It’s not a fad for me.”

Perhaps she’d caught onto my attempt at information gathering, as the pseudo-gyaru countered with a question of her own. Uh-oh, I had to come up with a good excuse… I couldn’t involve an innocent citizen in my battles.

Though the audience was already getting plenty involved, I said,

“I’m writing a report on this subject in university. In my course in criminal psychology, we’re learning about apologies made by perpetrators to their victims,”

throwing out what I thought was a pretty clever excuse.

“Huh. Is that so. They do some pretty difficult things in university, don’t they? Gives me a headache just thinking about it. I’m glad I gave up on exams.”

“It’s too early to give up, Higasa-chan!”

“I thought for sure, Araragi-paisen, that you’d suddenly received apologies in quick succession from two people close to you who you thought would never apologize, and you were so confused that you started to look for a wide range of opinions.”

That’s way too sharp of you.

You should take those entrance exams seriously.

What a waste.

Considering I set my sights on going to university for a reason like “Because I want to take the same path as my girlfriend,” it was hard to just ignore this junior of mine, who was missing out on her chance for education.

But, as sharp as she was, even Higasa-chan couldn’t intuit the case of Meniko’s Boyfie-kun, seeing as I had never mentioned Meniko, let alone introduced her.

If she’d been capable of doing that, she’d be Gaen-san. The “onee-san that knew everything”, Gaen-paisen.

“Yep yep, but I totes get it. If an apology goes too far, it’s like violence.”

“Huh? Apologizing is violence?”

I felt like I heard that somewhere.

That’s right, Meniko had said something like that.

“Right? Even if you’re completely in the right, if the other person bows their head and kneels in front of you, you can’t help but feel like you’re the bad guy. It’s not unreasonable, but it is uncomfortable.”

Ah, I see.

It was like the front and back of causing and receiving harm were further overturned. Or, through the harm of “making someone apologize excessively”, the victim was made into a perpetrator—a complex arrangement.

It was similar to how you could invent a victim by apologizing.

Perhaps if you’re getting harshly reprimanded, a skillful way to get them to stop might be to start excessively apologizing to them—like how the best defense is a good offense.

“But if you ask me, winning like that just sounds like a Cadmean victory.”

“A make-or-break victory?52 Well, maybe. Speaking of which, when my sister prostrated herself to me, I thought the same thing. That this kneeling was violence.”

“Araragi-paisen, you made your sister prostrate herself to you…?”

“Ah! See that? It’s just like we talked about, now I look like the bad guy!”

I wanted to assert that I didn’t make her do it, it was her that did it to me… Incidentally, after she prostrated herself, the most famous scene in the Monogatari series unfolds in the following passage, so please refer to it… If anything, she was prostrating herself not as an apology but as an entreaty.

An entreaty to introduce her to the superstar she admired… Since I was currently in the house of that Kanbaru-sensei, I found myself remembering it all.

“Speaking of which, when I prostrated myself to that golden-haired young girl, that was also an entreaty… That was something I did proactively.”

“Rather than apologies, is prostrating yourself a fad for you, Araragi-paisen?”

The gyaru was recoiling in disgust, but I had nothing I could say in response. I felt like I was being censured for my past wrongdoings—maybe I’ll prostrate myself and apologize.

That probably wouldn’t make for a funny joke right now.

Because that would just make what she said true.

“But, if apologizing is violence, then the act of forgiving—like, ‘You should be glad that I’m forgiving you’—that’s almost like asserting dominance, too, isn’t it?”

“In the past, when I got a lot of complaints from the girlsbas, I did my fair share of lecturing the juniors and giving ‘em a good smack—ah, those were good times. But there were plenty of girls that readily apologized without particularly reflecting on their actions. And I thought that was fine, too.”

“You thought it was fine? Even if they didn’t reflect on their actions?”

“An apology is a ritual, y’see. The idea is that if you can keep up formality, you can also keep up appearances. Even if you’re not sincere, if you can at least appear sincere, then I can understand. I can sheathe the sword.”53

It’s similar to how, when you’ve lost a basketball game, no matter how much your blood may be boiling, you’ll still say “TY” to the other team in the center of the court—said Higasa-chan.

“That’s an abbreviation for ‘thank you’.54 Ahaha, you sometimes see that idea in movies of ‘Instead of saying sorry, you should say thank you,’ but in real life, it’s more like, ‘Whatever, just give them a proper apology.’”

Mhm… Realistically speaking, the idea that apologizing was violence was a bit irrational, but the idea that apologizing was a ritual made for a good point that I could include in my fictional report. Like how establishing a peace treaty after a war marked the end of the conflict.

While Boyfie-kun’s, Hitagi’s, and Oikura’s aggressive apologizing seemed like they were admitting a kind of defeat, they weren’t trying to establish a treaty… It was more like they were prepared to fight to the end. The end of others, and the end of themselves… It might be a bit too grandiose to actually describe apologies as rituals, but at the very least, they were ignoring the etiquette that came with apologizing.

They were completely self-obsessed.

No matter how stereotypical it may seem, bringing a box of sweets in apology held that sort of meaning. And even in those apology press conferences, despite it not being clear whom the apology was meant for, it still held a societal significance, like a purification ceremony of sorts. Even if they didn’t actually feel sorry, as long as they put on the pretense of feeling sorry, it would certainly not be abnormal if the apology relieved some pent-up anger.

“There’s prostrating yourself and there’s shaving your head, but it really would be abnormal if someone went and committed seppuku in apology. Maybe it’s like, the more irrational something is, the more likely it is to be judged as sincere? I guess there were actually cases where the people demanding the apology were actually calling for it, so Japan can be pretty scary. Teehee.”

“‘Teehee’? That ain’t funny.”

No, I really couldn’t laugh at that.

If the final destination of apologizing was committing seppuku, or some other form of suicidal act, then that could actually be where the current problem led to… Like the tale of “Princess Beauty”.

Even though committing seppuku had its own form of etiquette…

“If you can’t observe the proper etiquette of an apology, then you’ll just end up as some obnoxious person. Of course, you could say that because there are people that actually demand excessive apologies like seppuku or putting your severed head on display, there are people that actually perform those excessive apologies.”

“Is putting your severed head on display an apology…?”

I suppose, for the sake of atoning for your sins, that was the only thing you could do after killing yourself… Speaking of which, the story behind seppuku was that it was for the sake of protecting a samurai’s honor.

“If you were to see a chicken running with its head cut off, your anger would cool down, wouldn’t it?”

“It wouldn’t just be a matter of my anger cooling down…”

Rather, it would make my blood run cold.

“The mechanism of being made into the bad guy, or the mechanism of making it seem as though you demanded that excessive apology from them… Rather than mending your relationship, it’ll just make things worse. I had to mediate those sorts of problems pretty often, but I usually told them to just keep things light.”

“That’s right. Between me and that golden-haired young girl, we keep things light.”

“Isn’t that actually a bit heavy? Araragi-paisen, you always try to turn me off every now and then, but I’m not gonna be turned off. I’ve been talking about episodes with my juniors up until now, but whenever I have a fight with Ruga, who’s on equal footing with me, then we’ll always settle things gently. Or at least, I will.”

“What about Ruga?”

“Well, being the kind of person she is, she’ll always straight-up apologize without reservation. She’s sure that her worth won’t decrease by apologizing, so she’s pretty strong, huh? She’s someone that grows every time she apologizes.”

The truth was that, like when she made a wish to that monkey, and like the way she’s being haunted by Ougi-chan right now, Kanbaru’s mentality could be subject to wide fluctuations, but there was no doubt that she was much more refreshing about these things than I was—even if she did something wrong, she wasn’t the type to keep brooding over it after apologizing once.

Though she could be kind of a clingy stalker.

“Of course, when I apologize, I’ll also give a clean apology. Don’t get me wrong on that. When I was always borrowing Ruga’s basketball shoes, I immediately got on my knees to apologize when she came to me about it.”

“Sounds like you just didn’t want to return them…”

“But, I still haven’t apologized for taking Ruga’s things and selling them off to her unofficial fan club, ‘Kanbaru Soeurs’, for some cash.”

“That’s awful! If you don’t apologize for that, it’ll definitely form cracks in your friendship.”

“It’s a bit complex, so cracks might form if I did apologize. Since apologizing means admitting to my wrongdoing. On the other hand, if I don’t apologize, then I never did anything wrong.”

What a crazy paradox. Or maybe it was just contrarianism.

But, putting ethics aside, pretending the quarrel never happened, or pretending the wrongdoing was never committed, without ever actually reaching an agreement—that might be valid in its own way, or so I thought. “You haven’t done anything to apologize for” and “You haven’t done anything for me to forgive you for” may be broad-minded statements, but really, they might just be gentle ways to avert one’s eyes from the problem at hand.

Like, “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.”

Shinobu and I were like that, although I didn’t want to admit it…

“I’ve known Ruga for so long that I’m afraid that, if I apologize poorly, she might relate it to some other things I’ve been responsible for and get mad at me for those, too. She’ll say something like, ‘I may as well bring this up while we’re at it,’ but it’s like, that has nothing to do with anything right now! There’s the risk that she’ll take the chance to unleash all of her pent-up frustrations that I can’t just settle with an apology, so it’s dangerous to apologize carelessly.”

I see.

And it wasn’t easy to say that you only admitted fault for that one thing, either… It could just create an opportunity for all the other complaints to spout out. It could be the beginning of a war.

“In that sense, there’s balance to apologizing. Asymmetry… There are cases where, even if the perpetrator wants to apologize, the victim won’t let them apologize, too… It’s like how I always hear, ‘You don’t have to apologize, just do better next time.’ From my sister.”

“From your sister, huh?”

Obviously, it was from Tsukihi.

Since I was an idiot, I simply rejoiced by thinking, “All right! I don’t have to apologize!” But thinking about it, by not giving the perpetrator the chance to apologize, it was like not giving them the chance to be rehabilitated, or like telling them to continue being aware of their wrongdoing. In that way, it was like a punishment.

If Hitagi had always been bothered by me letting her off lightly when she apologized for stapling my cheek, then I wouldn’t know what to say…

“Now then, Higasa-chan.”

As we continued, I’d been able to ascertain that I’d need to put some real effort in order to get this room cleaned up, so I started to wrap up my investigation—I wouldn’t be able to finish this cleanup in my spare time.55

“For the sake of argument, just like you said, if someone who I thought would never apologize suddenly came and apologized to me…”

“That doesn’t really have to be for the sake of argument, though… But anyway, eat these muffins already. I’d love it if you could sink your teeth into our homemade sweets.”

“Eh? These lumps were supposed to be muffins?”

Oops. I’d nearly cleaned them up.

I thought they were just lumps of some foreign matter that had been forgotten, so I’d been about to throw them out… Well, I suppose you could say they were decorated in a gyaru-like way… But anyway.

“As a breather from your studies, I want you to think about this. Consider it a breather for the sake of survival.”56

“Sounds like you’re nonchalantly trying to get me back on track to studying. Araragi-paisen, massive respect. As thanks, y’want me to help solve that problem you’re working on? As Higasa Christie.”

“If the same thing happened to you, what would you do? What would you think? If there was someone you knew that was so arrogant that they’d never once lowered their head to anyone in their lifetime, but they suddenly came and apologized, would you think they were being sincere? Or would you consider it violence?”

“Well, hmm. If they’re throwing away their pride for the sake of that apology, then in other words, it could mean that they believe that apology is as valuable as their pride. Like I said, I personally think that an apology is like posing for appearances, so forgiving them or not forgiving them depends on your previous relationship with them and how close you’ve really been. There are times where two people might harm you in the same way, but you might forgive one but not the other depending on who they are, right? From what I said earlier, it’s because the other person was my junior that I could forgive them as part of the ritual. If they were my advisor, then I definitely wouldn’t forgive them just because they lowered their head to me.”

“Your relationship with your advisor…”

Even if the bully doesn’t consider it bullying, if the bullied person considers it bullying, then it counts as bullying—in that case, if the bullied person doesn’t consider it bullying, does it still count as bullying? However, in the case where an abused child covers for their parents, it’s certainly not the case that it shouldn’t be considered abuse.

“I’d be happy if my boyfriend kissed me, but if a stranger did it, that would be a crime. Not that I can say for sure, since I don’t have a boyfriend…”

“Well, that’s for sure.”

I was about to lose my girlfriend, but still, I had to agree.

It lined up with what Meniko had told me about, too.

However, in Meniko’s case, the peculiarity was that the boyfriend’s action, which had been performed with mutual consent, was being turned into a crime after the fact.

The relationship, huh… Well, that could be it.

When Hitagi had apologized to me about things that had long since passed, it hurt my feelings. Of course, that was partly because it felt like she had ruined the “good memories I could look back on fondly”. But not only that—it could also be because it made me feel as though she were completely denying our current relationship, and not just the start of our romance.

A complete denial.

Not just ruining what happened a year and eight months ago.

But ruining the entirety of that year and eight months.

When she’d flown into a rage during our first breakup, I hadn’t felt that way—because that had just been an extension of the relationship we had built up.

Of course, Oikura went without saying.

In her case, rather than hurting my feelings, it felt like I’d been betrayed. It made me wonder, “Is that what you’d been thinking of our relationship all this time?”

There was nothing sadder.

“Shall we test it out, Araragi-paisen? If you were to kiss me right here, would that be a crime or not? Teehee.”

“Again, stop with that ‘teehee’!”

It wasn’t a laughing matter.

“When someone is taking on the stance of an apology, wouldn’t it be fine to just tell them, ‘Nice pose!’? Instead of saying, “I’m mad!” Let’s praise them and straighten out their backs, which have bent over in apology.”

Higasa Christie’s answer, which only sounded like her trying to fan the flames, was certainly not the answer I was hoping to hear from this interview, but it was a useful bit of information, or perhaps a useful clinical trial.57 And, from anyone’s perspective, this was clearly the end of the discussion—though the room cleanup was only half-done, from the direction of the porch, on the other side of the wall that encircled the Kanbaru estate, I could hear the sound of thunderous footsteps that seemed like they could erode the asphalt, together with the braking of a bicycle.

The braking of a BMX.

It was the much-awaited return of the title role.