Monogatari Series - Volume 27 - Chapter 1.27

027

However, it seemed this would be the last stop for Araragi Koyomi’s appointment-less journey—it wasn’t exactly the last sentence I desired, and I had a lot of personal feelings about it, but even so, all stories must come to an end. No matter how unintentionally or unwillingly it may be. Laundry must be folded away, even if it was still dirty. It might be a bad end for me, but I’ll pray that it was a happy end for someone else.

Though, despite not having made an appointment, I’d at least conducted a preliminary investigation and made preliminary arrangements—I was showing a bit of growth. Among other things, it was necessary to confirm if Hitagi and Oikura had also participated in hosting the open campus, or what Meniko called the alumni visit.

Of course, with the current state of my relationships, it was hard to confirm with them directly, but even if I didn’t have any contact with any alumni, that didn’t mean there was no one else from Naoetsu High that I could talk to. After exhausting the most delicate of my connections, asking friends of friends of former classmates like some sort of urban legend, I determined that they had indeed participated in the event as the first-year representatives of their departments (Hitagi for the international economy department, Oikura for the mathematics department).

As you may have guessed, it was an event that I hadn’t been invited to, but I wasn’t complaining. No one would say that Araragi Koyomi was an ideal choice to represent those about to take entrance exams… That guy’s exam experience was pointless to hear about. Meanwhile, Hitagi had gotten in on a recommendation, and while Oikura hadn’t even graduated from Naoetsu High, having been truant and then transferring schools in quick succession, she had managed to make it to university on a scholarship, so perhaps she was a model case for self-supporting students.

In the first place, with there being a quota for recommendations to national universities, it was safe to say that there was a large pipeline going from Naoetsu High to Manase University—in terms of a missing link that connected those from different years and departments, I probably could have hypothesized from the start that such an event had been held.

But as someone who’d ignored those sorts of factional relationships, I was pretty boneheaded… But with that, I’d found the point in common between those three “apologizers”.

Not only that, the few Naoetsu High graduates that were willing to speak to me revealed that things were not in a particularly pleasant state.

According to some charitable sources of information, among the graduates of Naoetsu High, there were several students that were exhibiting similar symptoms, and the topic had begun to quietly spread through campus—the missing link was connecting more than just Boyfie-kun and Hitagi and Oikura.

The chain was longer than I thought. Like a chain letter.

I didn’t do any follow-up surveys, but it seemed that practically every former Naoetsu High student that had participated as hosts in the alumni visit had been spotted launching themselves into apologies—of course, each of them had their individual differences, but it was more than apparent that this was a condition affecting them as a group.

Something had happened at that seminar.

They had encountered something—the former Naoetsu High students.

I didn’t want to sound like I was sulking when I said this, but as someone who hadn’t participated in the event, hadn’t been invited, and in fact hadn’t even known of the event until this very moment, it wasn’t exactly easy to guess what might have happened at the end of the year—but to that, what Boyfie-kun said ended up being a hint.

I’d like for him to apologize a little.

Perhaps if there was some “proclaimer” that felt such a way after seeing the alumni go into an explanation of campus life after being accepted into university—of course, someone from the side of the exam-taking students that had come to visit.

And among them.

Someone who had lost hope that they would be accepted.

That was the preliminary investigation I’d conducted for my appointment-less journey, and in terms of preliminary arrangements, I placed a call to the semi-regular Higasa-chan—if I was the biggest dropout in the history of Naoetsu High, then she would be the second generation, so if Manase University were her school of choice, then she was in danger of being the prime suspect.

In fact, I’d actually suspected her a little, but Higasa-chan’s first-choice school was not Manase University. And in the first place, she’d experienced her setback much earlier, so she hadn’t even participated in her first-choice school’s open campus towards the end of the year, which was still worrying in its own way.

I’d faced the semi-regular, but she wasn’t even the culprit, huh?

“Ah, but, I think I’ll be able to find that out pretty quickly. We have a group chat of Naoetsu High dropouts on LINE.”

“What an unpleasant alliance…”

“We’re licking each other’s wounds.”

That in itself could make for a decent wound tale, but the fact that he couldn’t make it into that kind of alliance would be what made Araragi Koyomi into Araragi Koyomi. In both high school and university.

But… She’d really said that, huh.

That there were lots of dropouts to be found in Naoetsu High.

Even more so because Naoetsu High was such a university-focused school… I’d thought that I was the only one.

“A third-year that wanted to get into Manase University—a third-year that wanted to get into Manase University, right?”

“Right. Also… It’s only a guess, but she might’ve wanted to enroll in the law department.”

“Gotcha. Just leave it to me! I’ll look into it and text you the details.”

She was securing a position as an informant.

In fact, she was quite the talented informant, and had already sent the following message as I was driving my New Beetle back to my hometown.

“Class 3-1, Jouraku Ochiba.”

“A former member of the track team.”

“She wanted to enroll in Manase University’s history department.”

“She has a bob cut and is on the cute side. She recently made her skirt shorter. Her foot size is 24 cm. She wears Nike Zoom Flys.”

“Her birthday is February 1st. Her blood type is O.”

“Her home address is…”

“Her height is 153 cm, and her weight is 50 kg.”

“Her three sizes are…”

“Her pet name is…”

“The first movie she watched is…”

“Her childhood nickname was…”

She was way too talented as an informant.

I wasn’t trying to answer her security questions.

Skipping over all the information that was too private, I looked over the most important parts—of course, while I was stopped at traffic lights, in order to comply with the law.

Even at red lights, I was taking steps forward.

And finally.

“She’s the type to let grades fall after retiring from club activities (same as me, the burnout-type).”

“She apparently participated in the end-of-year open campus you mentioned, but she’d already changed her first-choice school. (Did she also give up on entrance exams? If so, that’s also the same as me. Teehee!)”

“Recently, she’s been dropping by busy places before going home. She’s lost her club friends, so it looks like she’s playing by herself until she goes home late by herself, being lonely all by herself.”

“So, for this girl with an unstable state of mind, if you would like to ambush her on her way home, please use the attached map as reference…”

Was this junior trying to be some sort of pimp?

I couldn’t help but think that Higasa-chan needed a different kind of education (but in another sense, I probably didn’t need to worry, because of that talent of hers), but right now, she was more urgent—Jouraku Ochiba.

Jouraku Ochiba-chan.

Seeing as I didn’t know an upperclassman a year above me, there was no way I would know an underclassman a year below me, but she would be a classmate of Kanbaru and Higasa-chan… Although we may not have had direct contact, the title of “former member of the track team” was worth special mention.

In her eyes.

How would she have seen Senjougahara Hitagi, who was once an ace of the track team in middle school?—whether it was Hitagi or Oikura or Boyfie-kun, after seeing students, who attended the same Naoetsu High that she did, sing praises of their campus life “without a care in the world”, what would she have thought?

She surely understood that the open campus was not just a place to boast about the wonders of university life, but even so, she might have ended up thinking that way anyway—if she was a dropout like me.

She might have thought—“I’d like for them to apologize.”

“To people like ‘me’, who have fallen short.”

She might have demanded an apology.

…Of course, at this point, it was all just my assumption. There could be tons of other suspects, and there might be a delinquent that didn’t, or couldn’t, participate in such a mutual-aid-society-like group, like me—but, if so, then I still needed to reach out to Ochiba-chan, if only to lift the suspicion on her.

The problem was no longer something limited to my surroundings… It wasn’t just Hitagi and Oikura and Boyfie-kun, but the other graduates of Naoetsu High—when “perpetrators” were being mass-produced for every year and every department, the “ayamarei” was going beyond the scope of what could be handled privately among family and friends.

Right now, perhaps things could be resolved as each person’s “eccentricities”, but if the phenomenon of the Naoetsu High graduates fervently apologizing on Manase University’s campus were to be found out by some third-party organization, then in the worst case, the large high-school-to-university pipeline might be broken.

The recommendation quota for next year could be extinguished.

Therefore, unwilling as I was, I had no choice but to follow the recommendation of the pimp, or rather, the informant, and wait in ambush—perhaps I should consider the promotion of Higasa-chan to regular, but who would’ve thought that a dropout like me would end up contributing to my alma mater in such a way?

Should I consider this as something appealing?

Or should I apologize a little for this?