Monogatari Series - Volume 3 - Chapter 5.1

Chapter 5- Tsubasa Cat

001

Tsubasa Hanekawa is a very important person to me. No one, no thing could ever hope to replace her. I owe her a lot─no, I nearly owe her everything. I doubt I can ever repay this debt of gratitude, no matter what I do for her. When she reached her hand out to me as every part of my body and soul experienced what felt like the deepest and darkest of depths during spring break, it was as if I saw, and I am not exaggerating in the slightest, the hand of a goddess offering me salvation. Even now, when I recall what happened about two months ago, I feel something hot welling up in my chest. Talk about one person saving another might sound contrived on second thought, but I still believe that Tsubasa Hanekawa saved me that spring break. If there’s any belief or feeling I have that I would call steadfast, this is it. Which is why─which is why once my personal hell of a spring break came to an end and I started my third year of high school and was placed in the same class as her, I won’t lie, I was so happy I was almost grinning. Not to bring up a line Senjogahara used on me once, but I wondered if that was how it felt to be placed in the same class as your unrequited crush. Even when she forced me to take on the position of class vice president due to a little misunderstanding after she was voted class president, I accepted it without much protest, only because Hanekawa was that important a person to me.

Tsubasa Hanekawa.

The girl whose first name means “wing,” and whose last name starts with another character for the same, a pair of mismatched appendages.

Then again, it wasn’t as if I had never heard the name Tsubasa Hanekawa until my second-year spring break─I confess that I snuck over to get a peek at her class when I was a first-year, hoping to catch a glimpse of the most gifted young lady in the history of Naoetsu Private High School. Even at that time her appearance, glasses with her hair neatly braided, bangs in front, pegged her as a model student. I could tell at once that she took school seriously. People who look smart aren’t entirely rare, but that was the first time I ever saw someone who had to be smart. You hesitated to say a casual word to her, that’s how solemn and dignified a freshman she was. She wasn’t hard to approach as much as a thing apart that you weren’t permitted to stare at even from a distance. I’d pushed myself too hard to get into Naoetsu High, so I was already starting to understand my position at the school, but you know, maybe it was the moment when I saw Tsubasa Hanekawa that it really sank in. Not only had she never ceded the title of top of her class, she apparently hadn’t been left in the dust when it came to anything related to grades since her time in elementary school. It was hard to believe that she and I belonged to the same species.

That isn’t to say Tsubasa Hanekawa is stuck-up, she’s nothing of the kind. I wouldn’t want you to get that impression because I’ve never met a more decent human being, in fact. I’m afraid I actually misunderstood her until last spring break, but when I spoke to her up close and in person, she seemed to address everyone on almost excessively even ground, to the point that I felt she needed to be more self-aware of her skills and talent. The so-called model students at Naoetsu Private High School tend to consider smarts as something you use to differentiate yourself from others, but not Tsubasa Hanekawa. That sense of being a thing apart that I got when I first saw her was totally not her own view. It turns out she is fair, and open. A class president among class presidents, a class president elected by the gods themselves─the school seems to like her, plus she is popular in class. She has a serious personality, but more than that, she is caring. It can get out of hand and yield misbegotten assumptions like the one that made her appoint me vice president, but that’s about the only fault I can find with her. I’ll admit that working with her as class president and vice president has its fair share of annoyances, but more often I’m impressed by her character.

I realize it may not be the best way to put this, but it’s incredible considering her family situation, which I learned during Golden Week─the nine days from April 29th to Sunday, May 7th, which is where the vacation fell this year. If my spring break was like hell, those nine days were like a nightmare, the memories of which Tsubasa Hanekawa herself has already forgotten. To the extent that dreams are something that you usually don’t remember, “nightmare” seems quite appropriate.

For nine days.

She was bewitched by a cat.

Just like I was attacked by a demon, she was bewitched by a cat. There’s a fitting reason for every aberration─and in this case, the strained and warped family life that she was bearing was it. Yes, speaking of misunderstandings, it was a huge misunderstanding. Until then, maybe I saw the world in black and white and believed that good people are happy people and that bad people are unhappy people. That there might be people whose unhappiness gives them no choice but to be decent─I hadn’t been able to wrap my head around so simple a notion.

And yet.

Tsubasa Hanekawa reached her hand out to me.

That spring break, too, she couldn’t have been in a place to be helping me─yet she pulled me out of the deepest depths.

I won’t forget that.

No matter what may happen.