Monogatari Series - Volume 27 - Chapter 1.31

031

“So how was it, Araragi-senpai? In regards to the epilogue, or perhaps, the punch line. If you’re okay with me, I’d like to inquire into what you have to say.”

The next day, after having stayed the second night in a row at my parents’ place, I’d begun driving my car since early in the morning to get to school, and it was then that a slippery-sounding voice came from behind—when I checked the rear-view mirror, in the exact same place that Ochiba-chan had sat last night, naturally with his seatbelt fastened, was the gakuran-clad young man, Oshino Ougi.

If Ougi-chan was appearing in the final chapter, it made it feel like a normal bad end—even though it was the break of dawn, my way forward seemed bleak with no signs of light, making me want to use my high-beams.

Even if you asked me about the punch line, I couldn’t even indulge myself in remaining calm.101

When and how did you even get on?

Don’t tell me you loaded your BMX on the roof of this car. That’s only meant for surfboards.

“It was an easy victory, right? For Araragi-senpai, who has grown as a person after entering university, a high school girl in general should be a cakewalk. A high school girl taking the general entrance exams, that is.”

“...This is no time for jokes.”

He was trying to provoke me, but I had no desire to jump on board—even with one night having passed, I hadn’t recovered from my fatigue. In terms of growth, it felt like I’d gained three hundred years of experience in that one night.

“I hadn’t meant to look down on her, but I’d actually been pretty anxious. From what I heard afterwards, it was apparently a grudge so large that even the big eater, Shinobu, almost got tired of eating it.”

Even if there had been a gap since she last worked.

In the end, oddities that I was bad with were in the realm that Shinobu was bad with, too… Well, no, it’s not that simple of a problem.

I was just fed up with myself for only ever being able to bring these things to the same conclusion—I couldn’t help but keep wondering if a different punch line was possible.

“Ha ha. It may not have been the best, but it was one of the better ways to resolve it.”

“If anything, it feels more like I avoided the worst and only came up with one of the worse ones. It’s so bad it’s not even a joke—I can’t say I was able to save anyone, but I suppose I was able to avoid the worst-case scenario.”

I’d confirmed as much last night.

When I got in touch with them from my parents’ home, neither Hitagi nor Oikura appeared to have remembered the turmoil of the past few days—no, that made it sound like it was like Black Hanekawa, as if they’d sealed away their memories. But it wasn’t like that. They roughly remembered that some (fruitless) exchange had taken place, but they were acting like it had been a matter of little importance. Like, it’s amazing you still remember our trivial little chat.

And so, in a way.

It was like they were saying—why are you dragging back up something that’s already been resolved, after all this time?

It’s fine, already. That’s not important.

“I’m planning to check on Meniko and Boyfie-kun once I arrive at the university… But from what I can sense, all the Naoetsu High graduates that had been under the influence of the ayamarei should be in the same state.”

“How wonderful. Isn’t that what the original role of an apology is supposed to be? To say that everything’s fine.”

“...That’s a beneficial way to put it.”

Or a destructive way.102

When it came to Oikura, I’d been worried that she might resort to self-harm when she came to her senses about having lowered her head to me, but she hadn’t been like that at all—in fact, she’d even snapped back at me for calling her for something so unimportant.

Even the breakup talks with Hitagi had been left uncertain.

“Every last one of them seems to lack self-awareness, as if saying, ‘That was just me solemnly following the law.’ The law from back then. The more we talk, the less our words match up. Well, that was the same with Ochiba-chan—”

It wasn’t like Ochiba-chan, the enforcer of the law, was filled with malicious intent to drive the seniors she’d met at the open campus into madness. She was filled with hatred, she was filled with an inferiority complex, she was filled with rage, but she wasn’t filled with malice.

If anything, she was hollow.

Unknowingly, unconsciously, and irresponsibly.

She’d prayed… She’d harbored a grudge.

Or, an idea.103

“In legal terms, she’d be a bona fide third party—honestly, even now, it’s frightening. It makes me tremble. To think that a ‘normal-seeming girl’ like her could have that much of an influence on people like Senjougahara Hitagi or Oikura Sodachi, who I would consider ‘special people’ in their own class in my life—the world sure is vast.”

Though that wasn’t really something to say after returning to my hometown.

I’d brought up her name without really thinking about it, but in terms of the amount of “harm” caused, I guess it would be on the level of Black Hanekawa during Golden Week? Also due to the fact that we’d dealt with it in almost the exact same way…

“I guess I didn’t realize since I’m not all that discerning, but Ochiba-chan was a Hanekawa-class high school girl, wasn’t she? With a talent that would never be discovered under the modern examination system—”

“I’m a fan of the idea that someone can be a special person to someone else, but I think it’s the opposite, Araragi-senpai.”

Or, rather than the opposite, should it be the flip side?

Ougi-chan said so with a grin.

“Namely, special people are dragged down by normal people—any great man will be helpless before public opinion and pressure, wouldn’t you say? Popular people are enslaved by their popularity, and dictators will be mocked with the winds of time. Aren’t even the Six Codes full of such traps? Trying to trick you into making mistakes, to force you into apologizing. Even Oikura-senpai, who you regard as special, was dragged down from the position of class representative and forced into truancy by the normal classmates of Class 1-3, right?”

“......”

“Even if Jouraku Ochiba was ‘a high school girl that could be found anywhere’, isn’t that even more frightening than an assassin? ‘Could be found anywhere’—it’s almost like some monstrous apparition.”

Certainly, a person like her could be found anywhere… At high school, at university, in society, at home, in private practices, in the roots of grass, beneath the grass, anywhere.

A person that could express that level of resentment to someone completely unrelated to them—I was speaking as if it was someone else’s business, but even I, who was “a high school boy that could be found anywhere”, contained such elements.

After becoming a dropout, I’d dismissed all those honors students as disgusting elitists that were only capable of studying… Of course, there was also the trauma I’d experienced from Class 1-3, but even so, why had I glared so thornily at those students?

I had thought I was being ostracized, but in fact, I was failing to turn my eyes towards students like Jouraku Ochiba, students that there must have been more of in my grade, students that should have been my comrades. And instead, I’d let my complex grow, all on my own.

I’d assumed that I was “alone”, and everyone else was “together”.

If I hadn’t experienced that hell or nightmare—perhaps I would have continued to complain about those high school elitists, with an ideology more monstrous than a vampire.

Jouraku Ochiba was nothing more than a representative.

Just one person, among the angry masses.

“Not even a vampire could contend against it, huh… That’s exactly it. I’d realized it when I got involved with Higasa-chan and the members of the girls’ basketball team, but there really are tons of different types of people at school that I just wasn’t aware of.”

“And there are tons of different types of oddities, too—school ghost stories don’t just end at the seven wonders. There are as many wonders as there are people. The 7.7 billion wonders of the world.”

People were being tested, said Ougi-chan.

I didn’t want him to summarize the thrilling events of last night so easily—but it was #5. Pushing boundaries, huh.

“I was able to hear the fifth possibility from Hachikuji, but in the end, the correct answer was #4. Chain of command, wasn’t it?”

“I wonder about that. Aren’t you satisfied with that, Araragi-senpai?”

What the heck. Don’t suddenly start being suggestive.

“In the first place, Ougi-chan, you didn’t really support #4 all that strongly.”

“No, no. If I truly didn’t support it, then I wouldn’t have even mentioned it. It was just that the other possibilities were just as likely, using my specialty of relativization. Though I say specialty, I suppose it was out of thirteen104—you may have decided, Araragi-senpai, that Senjougahara-senpai and Oikura-senpai were people that would never apologize, but don’t forget that those people special to you are people that you can find anywhere. If anything, you should consider yourself lucky that this experience was the fault of an oddity.”

He seemed to be implying that this level of trouble, that was neither hellish nor nightmarish, was something that could happen any number of times from now on—speaking as though he was testing me.

“Ha ha. If you ask me, Araragi-senpai, then what you did was in fact #5. Pushing boundaries. To someone that was apologizing to you, you were practically saying stuff like, ‘But you don’t actually feel bad, right?’ ‘You’re thinking that it’s something everyone else does, so why are you the only one getting scolded?’ ‘Do you even know why I’m mad? Can you tell me what you’ve done wrong?’ Trying to draw out any foolish verbal slips from them.”

When he was saying that much, I had no words to say in response.

Nor did I have any words of apology.

“I’m not mad because you made a mistake, I’m mad because you tried to cover it up… That’s something people often say, but regarding the cases of Senjougahara-senpai and Oikura-senpai, it was more like you succeeded in their cover-up operation, Araragi-senpai… I won’t say you took responsibility for their wrongdoings, but you shifted the blame and turned a blind eye to it. And perhaps even in the case of your friend, too. You took the trouble that formed in a male-female relationship and made it the fault of an oddity, with great success. In the sense that you were able to succeed in finding the culprit, it was a finale befitting of a mystery novel.”

“......”

“Perhaps I’m being a bit malicious. If so, I’ll apologize from the bottom of my heart. But no worries. If it’s you, Araragi-senpai, you’ll probably lament Jouraku Ochiba’s future and try to keep returning to your hometown to check up on her, but if a university student keeps treating a high school girl like that without any sort of intermediary, that would practically be a crime. So from now on, just leave the rest to me.”

“Mm…”

I felt like, with that dismissive offer he gave me, I was being pressured to give up—it was true that I hadn’t planned on being done with Ochiba-chan just yet.

Even though I’d managed to revise and repeal that evil law, it was possible that she’d proclaim a similar law once her depression reaccumulated—just as how Black Hanekawa didn’t fully disappear just because her stress had been deliciously consumed. Perhaps the next targets wouldn’t be Naoetsu High graduates that went to Manase University, but even so, I couldn’t just ignore another calamity on that level.

But no matter how much I considered it, I was unfit to be her private tutor, and probably completely useless in that respect, but as her upperclassman, and as a human being, there had to be something I could do—even if I couldn’t empathize, I could still be there for her.

“But I’m saying that you can’t. If you do, it would be a crime—it even made me tremble with fear. When I heard that Araragi-senpai had confined Jouraku-senpai in his car.”

“That was something that was done to me just before graduation, though. I was confined in a car, restrained with a seatbelt, and taken here and there.”

Though even her apology for that had been left uncertain.

But, since we had both been high schoolers at the time, it was fine to leave it uncertain.

“It’s been a tradition of mine to have girls ride on the back seat… But you want me to entrust this tradition of riding double to you, Ougi-chan? So when you had me ride behind you, was that meant to be a ritual to pass down the tradition? Even though you were pretending to be so busy. What are you scheming?”

“My, my, don’t say that. Seeing as we’re two sides of the same coin, it’s always been my role to do the things that you couldn’t do, Araragi-senpai.”

“...I don’t remember ever asking you to do that, though.”

“Please rely on me anyway, and don’t say that. After all, even Kanbaru-senpai, whom I admire so much, is about to reach the finish line of graduation, so it’s about time for me to think about what I’m going to do next—I’ll need to decide on my future. However, though you say that you don’t remember asking me, didn’t you mention the other day how you wanted me to start haunting Higasa-senpai next?”

“I did say that… But you sure are quick to pounce on what I say.”

“But this will be the last time I follow you around and clean up after your mess.105 Now that I’m entering my senior year, I needed to have that level of awareness… I can’t remain unaware forever. I’ll follow Araragi-senpai’s example, and go beyond Araragi-senpai, and become aware of not just Higasa-senpai… But all students of Naoetsu High.”

“All students?”

“Including the students that you weren’t able to pay attention to, Araragi-senpai. Dear me, thinking about it now, I suppose I’ve been quite the cause for concern, haven’t I? I truly am sorry for how impertinent I’ve been up until now.”

It was more like he’d been quite the nuisance, but Ougi-chan bowed his head in a bit of a forced manner. It was rare to receive an apology without any apologetic feelings—but on top of that, it didn’t even feel like a performance.

“People can only be saved on their own—certainly, just as my uncle has said, it won’t be possible to help those dropouts. But I think I’ll be able to scoop106 up the students that have spilled out107. Don’t you think that snuggling up close to the shadows, in the heart of a high school girl that can be found anywhere, is a fitting job for the darkness that can be found anywhere?”

While snickering about how that sounded less like a job and more like a hobby, I wanted to see with my own two eyes what kind of face he'd been making as he said that line, so I waited for a red light before turning around—but, with the seatbelt still in place, his dark form had vanished.

I turned back to look into the rear-view mirror in surprise, but it was the same.

As though he had never been there from the beginning, like he was some sort of taxi-related ghost story, Oshino Ougi disappeared from right in front of me—or from right behind me. Or did I just think that I was having a conversation, and he really hadn’t been there from the beginning?

He wouldn’t be reflected in the mirror if he got serious—was that it?

When I remembered to check the navigation, the current location was right around where I would be entering the neighboring town—not that Ougi-chan was some sort of god that governed the town. Perhaps, like how Oshino Shinobu chose to be bound to my shadow—Oshino Ougi chose to be bound to Naoetsu High.

In place of me, who was incapable of doing so.

He chose to snuggle up close to those boys and girls.

To become a darkness that could shine a light on the shadows in their hearts—and if so.

“Even though I always considered the two of us to be two sides of the same coin—what a lonely betrayal.”108

As if to shake off those sad thoughts, I turned to the juniors from my alma mater and recited, “I’m so sorry for you,” without anyone asking me to… But it was fine, there was no need to worry.

Even though it may feel like being shadowed by harassment.

That darkness is but the flip side of love.