Monogatari Series - Volume 27 - Chapter 1.26

026

“I’d like for him to apologize a little.

“It sounds like a trivial demand, but it’s also a request that’s hard to respond to—if anything, it would be easier to react if someone were to say, ‘You don’t need to apologize, so just shut up and drop dead.’

“If it’s a demand made by force, it’s easier to reject, after all.

“Against a person who considers bowing their head and apologizing to be worse than dying, it’s unfair to demand that they apologize.

“It’s not just a difference in enthusiasm.

“Have you ever had something that everyone else does as a matter of course, but you just don’t like it, even though you don’t know why?

“Like you just can’t handle wearing a skirt, or you hate the sound of noodles slurping, or you can’t stand being in groups of four or more, or you hate having your picture taken, or you refuse to get on planes. Everyone has their dislikes that they refuse to compromise on, and when people prod at it, they fall into the trap of thinking, ‘Why can’t you do such a normal thing?’ and treating that dislike as insincerity.

“On the other hand, a demand for an apology can sometimes sound like a pretense—it’ll have the ring of, ‘You’re not going to apologize, anyway,’ and rather than an instigation, it’ll sound more like an expectation.

“Even as they say, I’d like for you to apologize.

“They don’t expect you to apologize, and if you do, they’ll end up thinking of it as an anticlimax—they’ll think that they were getting angry at some nobody who’ll apologize when told to apologize, and they’ll start to worry about their own self-evaluation falling.

“In that sense, wasn’t I quite like a formidable enemy to be vanquished?

“It may be easier to be forgiven if you say you didn’t do it on purpose, but that also means that it was harder for the other side to get angry.

“If it wasn’t intentional, if it was like an accident, and if no one was at fault, then there would be no one to resent in the end—then, what should they do with the stress and frustration that has piled up?

“It wouldn’t just vanish.

“Perhaps that was the reason why stories needed villains—and there were probably cases where the villain didn’t end up apologizing so easily, as a means to make amends to the victim.

“Rehabilitation without rehabilitating.

“Reform without reforming.

“Growth without growing.

“Apologies without apologizing.

“But for that behavior, which neither Araragi Koyomi nor Senjougahara Hitagi, nor Hanekawa Tsubasa nor Oikura Sodachi, was able to carry out, was ‘that man’ able to hypocritically carry it out?”