Monogatari Series - Volume 3 - Chapter 5.6

006

It feels like there’s no need to go into a flashback after Black Hanekawa gave such a beginner-friendly explanation of herself, but allow me to invite you to the first day of Golden Week anyway, April twenty-ninth, one morning about a month and a half earlier, in part to help set the stage. Back in the days when my hair was still at a vague and uneasy length as I grew it out to hide the bite marks on my neck.

April twenty-ninth.

Morning.

As someone who hates any day that isn’t a regular weekday, I left the house and was wandering around as usual on this holiday, riding around town on my mountain bike, still going strong in those days before Kanbaru destroyed it. Unlike Mother’s Day, it felt as if I had a clear destination, but I don’t remember very well. And even if I did, the fact that I’ve forgotten it means it couldn’t have been that important.

No.

It meant that what ended up happening while I was on the road─was just too big.

Personally speaking.

So big that everything else ceased to matter.

I just so happened─to come across Hanekawa.

I first got to know Hanekawa over spring break─as I’ve said many times up until now, it was then she’d saved me.

Both physically and mentally.

I was more grateful for the latter at the time, as I was immortal─but in any case, she was my savior.

She’d saved my life, and she’d saved my mind.

She’d been there when I needed her to be.

That’s what I think.

I really do.

About as much as I’m glad that I happened to be standing on the landing that day Senjogahara slipped on the stairs─I’m really, truly glad that it was her, Tsubasa Hanekawa, there at that moment, and not anyone else.

Anyone else and I’d never have been saved.

I’d have never been released from hell.

Hanekawa and I ended up in the same class after spring break. She forced me into the position of class vice president. She put me under her management because of her mistaken assumption that I was a delinquent, and that was her way of rehabilitating me. There isn’t any way she was planning to help me with my studies at the time─and normally I’d have shoved her away and told her to get her nose out of my business. There’s nothing I dislike more than people who seem to impose on me because of a big, fat misunderstanding.

But I accepted it.

Because she was Hanekawa.

So after that─over the month of April─Hanekawa and I, as class president, as class vice president, and as class president and vice president, began to get along to some degree as we made arrangements for school events and class matters. I hadn’t done anything that felt like it in a while, and I found myself getting uncharacteristically into it─so, of course.

If I saw Hanekawa walking around in her uniform on a holiday, I’d say hello to her at least.

It was the normal thing to do.

But I flinched for a moment.

A large white piece of gauze concealed what felt like half of Tsubasa Hanekawa’s face as she walked there on the street.

An injury.

Everyone gets injured.

But an injury to the face, as well as an injury of that scale─that was a rare sight. There was also the fact that the gauze was over the left side of her face─there seemed to be a story behind it.

Maybe I was overthinking things.

It could have been that my violent spring break was driving me to brutal thoughts. Most people are right-handed, and if they were to hit someone else in the face, their fist would land on the left side of that face─those kinds of thoughts. But even if I didn’t think of it like that─how could you manage to hurt just that part of your body and nowhere else? Hanekawa, a third-year, couldn’t have decided to throw herself into some after-school sport the day before─

But as I was thinking.

Hanekawa noticed me back.

“Oh,” she said, approaching me. Her attitude was as friendly as ever. “Howdy, Araragi.”

“…Howdy.”

“Hm? Oh.”

And then.

Hanekawa looked as though she’d failed at something.

Now that I look back at it, it seems unbelievable─for any regular person, maybe it couldn’t be helped, but you could call it a major blunder from Hanekawa, the master tactician.

Or no, maybe you could call it a success.

And if you did, a major success.

After all, Hanekawa would have been trying, trying so hard, trying so desperately hard not to think of the gauze on her face─and so.

Calling out to me like nothing was amiss, without worrying about the gauze, like it was another day, was a major success worthy of the “real” Hanekawa.

But, of course.

It was a failure when you looked at the big picture.

I tried to gloss over this─I pretended not to notice Hanekawa’s failure and want to say I asked her about something stupid. The same kind of stupid that I treated her to every time we’d met over the past month. Hanekawa always went along with it.

But.

She just couldn’t that day.

“You’re so kind, Araragi,” she said. “You’re such a good and kind person.”

That’s right.

I was told this─back on that day, too.

Hanekawa had.

“Let’s walk. Just for a little,” she invited me.

I had no reason to say no.

Well, I wouldn’t have ever said no. Hanekawa had never invited me to do something like that before─I’d say she must have wanted company.

She couldn’t bear being alone.

She didn’t invite me because it was me, it could have been anyone.

It just so happened to be me there at that moment.

I probably wasn’t the best person for the situation from Hanekawa’s point of view─I doubt she’d have chosen me had she been the slightest bit calm. Unlike Mayoi Hachikuji, whom I’d come to meet later, I wasn’t what anyone would describe as a good listener. I’m too quick to become emotionally involved, I can’t keep my mouth shut when I’m being talked to, and I interrupt other people’s stories all the time.

But Hanekawa was a good enough talker to make up for all of that and more, and was able to take it without much issue. Pushing my bike, I walked alongside her and listened to her talk.

First off.

Tsubasa Hanekawa doesn’t have a father.

Yes, biologically speaking she’d have to have a father, but socially speaking she was born to a mother who was entirely on her own. Hanekawa still didn’t know her father’s whereabouts. She had no interest in trying to find out more, but even if she did, she most likely would have arrived at a guess at best, nothing with any degree of certainty.

Tsubasa.

The name she’d been given─“wing.”

The character “Tsubasa” has connotations of covering and aiding, as in a bird using its wing to protect its eggs or chicks─

Taking under one’s wing.

That thought didn’t come to me at the time, though.

But─shouldn’t the person who named her have been the one aiding her at that moment? What could her mother have possibly been thinking when she gave her that name?

What kind of task had she given her daughter?

She apparently had a different last name at the time.

I didn’t ask what it was.

Well, it was more like I couldn’t ask.

Hanekawa tried to tell me, but I stopped her. Yes, she understood right away and continued her story.

Hanekawa’s mother had her, then married right afterwards.

She was getting married for the first time.

In any case─it sounds like she needed the money. Raising Hanekawa on her own must have been tough. This all happened nearly twenty years ago, so the social welfare system must not have been as robust then, either. Even I could imagine how tough it would have been for a single mother and a single child to live on their own without anyone’s help.

A mother.

A father.

But, right after the marriage─her mother committed suicide.

She’d married for money, and the marriage had failed in no time at all. It sounds like she was in a delicate emotional state from the beginning. Like she was the kind of person who found living with others to be agonizing─turning Hanekawa into a single child with a single mother into a single child with a single father.

A father she wasn’t related to by blood.

But still, her father.

This father’s last name─wasn’t Hanekawa, either.

And I couldn’t ask for that name, either.

Not much time after her mother’s suicide, this father, unrelated by blood, decided to remarry. Hanekawa wasn’t yet at the age where she felt any particular way about this─but as a result she was in a three-person family once again. She now found herself unrelated by blood to both of her parents.

I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel about that.

Was it that unfortunate of a situation?

Was I supposed to pity Hanekawa?

It didn’t do to declare her unfortunate simply because her life hadn’t followed a more conventional path─true, her birth mother had ended her life in an unfortunate way, but that unhappiness didn’t necessarily latch itself onto Hanekawa. Indeed, you could say she was fortunate to have a father who took her in and to have found herself with a new mother.

A lot of things had happened to her─

That didn’t mean on its own that her life was unfortunate.

So even if her father died from overwork after that, and she became a single child with a single mother again, only to find herself with another new father a year later, at last making her name “Hanekawa”─my opinion on the matter ought to stay the same.

It didn’t make sense to pity her.

We might feel bad for her first mother and the first father who died, but only those two. No one else.

Still, what a tumultuous life.

At that point, Hanekawa had yet to turn three─she was at an age where she didn’t understand anything yet. Yes, all she could do was go with the flow, no matter how ludicrous that flow may have been.

I’d misunderstood.

Good people like Hanekawa must have been blessed, I thought.

They must be loved by the gods, I thought.

I’d had the impression until then that good people were fortunate, and that bad people were unfortunate─but that’s not how it is.

Spending time with my family on holidays felt suffocating, so I’d leave the house. I lived the kind of life where worries as lukewarm as that counted as worries. But when it came to complicated family situations─

Hers was worlds apart.

It sounded so fake it was almost comical. I wouldn’t have believed it if anyone other than Hanekawa had told me─I’d have laughed them off. But I was at a loss for words because it was Hanekawa, someone who I knew would never tell such a crass joke. And so, after all the back and forth, she came to have two parents with no relation whatsoever to her.

A single mother and a single child.

A step, step, step─child.

“Sorry,” Hanekawa finished. She was apologizing to me. “That was mean of me, wasn’t it.”

How did I reply then?

Was I able to say─“Not really”?

Nope.

I asked her, Why? What are you talking about?

It was like I was forcing a confession out of her. How dense could I be? For someone as earnest as Hanekawa, it must have sounded like an accusation.

“Well, I’m just venting at you,” she said. “What are you supposed to say in this situation, right? You’d wonder, ‘Okay, so what,’ it’s not like it has anything to do with you in the first place─but then you start to feel a little pity for me until you feel guilty for pitying me when it doesn’t make sense to, right? You…felt bad just now, like you did something wrong, didn’t you?”

She’d nailed it.

It was mean of me, she said.

“I used you to cheer myself up.”

“……”

“I tried to feel better about myself by making you feel bad─I can’t even call it griping.”

It was the first time I’d ever seen Hanekawa so despondent.

The gauze on her face might have been adding to it.

My image of Tsubasa Hanekawa was of someone who stood firm and upright, who was strong, who was earnest─who was reliable, wise, fair─who was perfect.

But.

There’s no such thing as a perfect person.

“Still─I’m surprised you know all that,” I said. “Don’t they usually not tell kids about that kind of thing? Like, they’ll keep it a secret until your twentieth birthday or something.”

“Well, I had some very open parents. I knew about it from before I started elementary school,” Hanekawa said, still walking at the same pace. “I really do feel like I’m in their way.”

“……”

“But at the same time, they do have to consider how society sees them. You can’t toss your child away because your partner dies, and you can’t toss your child away because you’re getting remarried, either. I hear she tried to put me in a home─in the end, though, she didn’t feel like she could take people criticizing her because she let go of a tiny little child for her own selfish reasons.”

“………”

What was I supposed to say to that? But.

It happened, even in families related by blood. In fact, you could say it’s rare to find a family where everything is smooth sailing─all families hide some kind of discord and strain.

“That’s why I tried to become a good girl,” Hanekawa said. “I tried to become a serious class president ever since I was in elementary school─and I guess I have. What a well-behaved child I am, ha ha.”

Those words─remind me of what I’d hear later about Hitagi Senjogahara’s life. Hitagi Senjogahara in middle school, and Hitagi Senjogahara in high school─

Is that what it meant? That they shared more than a hairstyle?

But the differences between them were just as clear.

Because parents might be responsible for what their children do─but children don’t bear any responsibility at all for what their parents do.

“Maybe not a good girl. A normal girl.” Hanekawa continued as I kept silent. “People see it as some kind of trauma when you have a complicated family situation and assume all these things about you because of that, you know? I didn’t want people to think of me that way. That’s why─I decided I wasn’t going to let something like that change me.”

I don’t ever change.

No matter what.

“I was being a normal high school student, yes?”

“No…I’m not so sure about that one.”

Normal high school students don’t get the highest scores on national mock exams.

They can’t live such impeccable, irreproachable lives.

I’d meant it half-jokingly, as a way to clear the air, but─

“Maybe you’re right,” Hanekawa said with disappointment in her voice. “Maybe it does seep out in the end─maybe you can tell when people who aren’t normal force themselves to act like they are. Maybe they overdo it.”

“That’s not a bad thing─is it? It only means you’re living a better life.”

“No, it doesn’t. I mean, how typical. Because of her birth, because of her upbringing─she’s now such a good and well-behaved girl.”

Bouncing back from your misfortune to work hard.

Bouncing back from adversity to work hard.

Yes, that kind of stereotype did exist, but─

“Mm, well,” she said, “maybe that’s really it in my case.”

“But then…”

Maybe that really was it.

Ironically enough.

There was no other way to put it.

But then, that wasn’t a bad thing.

“What are you up to, Araragi?”

Suddenly.

Hanekawa changed the subject.

Her expression had completely shifted, too─back to her normal sociable smile.

Her usual expression─which was what made it so creepy.

Think of the conversation we were in the middle of.

“It’s Golden Week right now, you’re not using it to study?”

“Yes, it’s Golden Week… Why should I spend it studying?”

“Haha!” Hanekawa let out a cheerful laugh. “I use my holidays─to go on walks.”

“……”

“I don’t want to be at home. Just the thought of spending all day together with those two parents of mine─makes me shudder.”

“Do you…have a bad relationship with them?”

“It’s a bigger problem than that,” Hanekawa said. “We don’t have a relationship. Me and my parents─and my dad and my mom, too. We’re a family, but we don’t talk.”

“Your dad and your mom, too?”

“Yeah. Maybe it’s because of me, but at some point, it was like neither of them had any affection for the other. I think it’d be better if they split up, but again, society─you do have to worry about how society sees you. They’re waiting until I’m an adult, is what they say. Even though they don’t have any relation to me whatsoever, ha ha.”

Don’t laugh.

You shouldn’t be talking about that kind of thing─while you laugh.

It wasn’t like her.

But what would be like her?

If the normal Hanekawa was the respectable, honorable Tsubasa Hanekawa─was this Hanekawa not those things?

Either way, I realized something then.

I figured it out.

Why I’d met Hanekawa during spring break.

If she used her holidays to go on walks, it didn’t mean just Golden Week. She’d walk during spring break, summer break, and more─meeting her there that day was of course a coincidence, but there was also a reason behind the coincidence.

“So that’s why I use my holidays to go on walks.”

“…I do think you’re being too sensitive,” I said, offering a harmless opinion.

It was the only thing I could bring myself to say.

I hated how shallow I was.

A family that didn’t relate to one another wasn’t a rare occurrence, either.

What was rare was that a girl like Hanekawa had grown up in that kind of family─though I was sure she’d hate that kind of rose-colored view, too.

I felt like I now had a decent understanding of why Hanekawa hated being treated like a celebrity. And why she insisted on thinking of herself as an average girl whose only notable quality is being a little on the serious side. That could’ve been my imagination talking again, a mistaken feeling of understanding, or something like sympathy─

“………”

But.

That’s when I realized all of a sudden.

The unimaginable and complicated family situation that Tsubasa Hanekawa, model student and class president among class presidents, had to deal with─I understood that. It had been a little too complicated for me to fathom at first, but I now had a clear grasp thanks to her cogent explanation. The idea that her background might have acted as the backbone of her personality, her excessively serious nature (and how she didn’t want people thinking that)─I’d been persuaded of that, too. But.

But.

That didn’t explain why half of her face was covered in gauze.

It didn’t begin to explain that.

Wasn’t that what we were supposed to be talking about?

“…Right,” she said.

And again─Hanekawa looked as though she’d failed.

This time it seemed like she’d failed plain and simple.

“What am I saying…” she muttered. “I actually am just venting at you.”

“I mean, it’s fine with me─”

“Promise you won’t tell anyone?”

She didn’t have to tell me.

She’d only happened across me and didn’t need to go that far─it was fine if all she’d done was vent.

But no matter who she was with, she tried to be irreproachable, to be right, to be sincere, so now she had to tell me why the gauze was on her face.

Even though there was no need.

Even though I had no right to hear it.

“I…promise.”

“My dad hit me this morning,” she let the words out with a smile.

A bashful, almost embarrassed smile.

That, too─was the same as ever.

I only seem to be able to notice these things in hindsight, but I think this might have been the last straw that triggered Tsubasa Hanekawa. Not that her father hit her─but her telling me about it.

That I learned about it.

If that wasn’t stressful─then what was?

“He hit you? That’s─”

But I didn’t realize then.

I was just surprised.

No, you could go so far as to say I was scared.

A father hitting his own daughter? It seemed─impossible to me. No, I’d never even considered the possibility. I thought it was something they made up in dramas and movies. Regardless of blood relations or family situations─it was something that should never happen.

I looked at Hanekawa’s face.

The concealed left side.

It wasn’t an injury from too much loving, playful contact─

“That’s not all right!”

She had to deal with discord and strain at home.

That in itself wasn’t tragic.

Everyone carries some kind of baggage─just as you shouldn’t discriminate against someone for their birth or upbringing, you shouldn’t pity or envy them, either. Even if they’re obvious, noticeable issues, it isn’t necessarily tragic or anything─that much is true.

But not if they get hit. That wasn’t all right.

Hanekawa explained why.

Why she got hit.

It didn’t begin to placate me, a third party to it─but I knew quite well that you shouldn’t interject yourself into someone else’s family life. Whether I was placated or not, my feelings didn’t have anything to do with it.

Basically, the same thing sometimes happened at school, too.

Hanekawa always wanted to be in the right, so it wasn’t rare for her to clash head-on with others─she just so happened to clash with her father this time around.

And he just so happened to answer her with violence.

“I thought you said─you didn’t have a relationship with anyone in your family?”

“Maybe too much so─or maybe I thought I could start one. Despite everything having balanced itself out. I guess that puts me in the wrong. I mean, just think about it, Araragi. If you were about forty─and some seventeen-year-old complete stranger starts mouthing off to you like she knows it all? You wouldn’t blame yourself if you got a little upset, if you lost your temper, don’t you think?”

“But still!”

A seventeen-year-old complete stranger?

What was that supposed to mean?

Why would she put it that way?

They may not have been related by blood, but she lived in the same house with him since she was three─weren’t they family?

“You’re saying you can’t blame someone for getting violent? Are you sure you should be saying that? Isn’t it the most unforgivable thing you─”

“Wh-Why not? It was just once.”

I’d flown straight off the handle.

I didn’t know why─I was probably mad at the way someone had treated Hanekawa, my personal savior. But all my anger did was chase her into a corner. She was trying to come up with some kind of compromise─while I was just brandishing the pure, unrefined truth at her.

The truth hurts.

It always does.

It was just once─she said.

If anything, I shouldn’t have made her say that.

What’s bad is bad, what’s inexcusable is inexcusable─it was Tsubasa Hanekawa’s style to be blunt about such things whether it was a friend or a teacher. So if she bluntly told one of her parents that what’s bad is bad, what’s inexcusable is inexcusable─then, even if she got hit for it, she’d have been able to stand tall and remain Tsubasa Hanekawa, if that were all.

And yet.

I made her say it.

Why not, it was just once─

The words─were a rejection of her whole life.

They were a rejection of her self.

“You promised, Araragi. You won’t tell anyone─you promised, okay?”

Never bring it up again.

Not to the school.

Not to the police.

No, more than anyone─not to Hanekawa.

“B-But─how am I supposed to promise something like─”

“…Please, Araragi,” she said. Then, maybe because she thought a promise wasn’t enough─she bowed her head. “Don’t tell anyone about this, please. I’ll do anything if you stay quiet.”

“……”

“Please.”

“Yeah. I get it…”

The way she was pressuring me─it was the only way I could answer.

I couldn’t bring myself to press her any further. Not after being asked something as absurd as that─not after making her ask me something as absurd as that.

She’d rejected me.

And if I’d been rejected─I couldn’t help her.

People went and got saved on their own, that’s all─

“But at least go to the hospital. You put that gauze there yourself, didn’t you? I’ll admit that you’re good with your hands, but even so, that looks a little on the unnatural side.”

“Yeah…okay. I guess I’m not doing anything over Golden Week, anyway, so maybe I’ll have a doctor look at it. I should get some use out of my insurance now and then.”

“And also─if anything happens, call me. I’ll come and help you, no matter where I am or what I’m doing.”

“Haha,” Hanekawa laughed, “where’d that come from? Look at you, sounding cool.” The same smile as ever. “What do you mean by ‘anything’?”

“Well, you know─”

“Yeah, I get it, Araragi.”

Then she added:

“I’ll call you right away if anything ever happens. Would a text be okay, too?”

That’s what she said, but─

In the end, I didn’t get a single call or text message from Hanekawa all Golden Week.

I said I’d be there when she needed me─however.

Hanekawa, the woman I owed my life to, never once needed me at that point─she wanted company, but only to vent, to help her feel better─she didn’t need me, but I was there being useless anyway.

What she needed was a cat.

That cat.

There’s a reason for an aberration.

After that, we steered clear of our earlier conversation and instead discussed our future plans for the class. We mostly talked about the culture festival. As we did, we came across a cat that had been hit by a car. It seemed to be a stray since it had no collar. A tailless white cat. We didn’t know whether it was a breed born with no tail, or if its tail had been torn off during its life on the street. A white cat─it might have even seemed silver depending on how you looked at it, but the color of its fur had been ruined either way, stained with its own blood. It was in terrible shape, probably run over again and again after being hit for the first time─and Hanekawa walked out into the street from the sidewalk and picked the cat up like it was a completely natural thing to do.

“Could you help me?”

No one ever turned down such a request from Hanekawa.

We buried the cat on a nearby mountain─and that brought an end to our prologue, the first of our nine nightmarish days, April twenty-ninth.

I don’t know how much of this first day, or of the conversation, Hanekawa remembers─she was still herself so maybe she remembered burying the cat, but it’s likely she forgot all of the details when she lost her memories. There’s no way for me to be sure, sadly─her mind is as sharp as a steel trap, so she’d figure it out as soon as I try to check.

Now that the introduction is out of the way, the rest of the story is simple.

The next day, though I didn’t have any particular business there, I was so bored that I headed to the abandoned cram school where Oshino lived, checked up on Shinobu (though her name wasn’t yet Shinobu Oshino), and chatted about whatever with Oshino.

At some point, I brought up the cat we’d buried the day before.

Not because it was something else to talk about.

Because I had a bad feeling about it.

A sense of similarity─to the hell I experienced over spring break.

“Araragi. Don’t tell me…” Oshino’s eyes narrowed as he asked to make sure, “this was a silver cat ?”

The chat was productive in the end.

It let us capture the aberration─the Hindering Cat that transformed into the white-haired, white-cat-eared Black Hanekawa, named such by Mèmè Oshino─on May seventh, the last day of Golden Week, after it had spent night after night wreaking havoc in town to its heart’s content.

Nine days.

It would have been dangerous had the tenth day come.

Apparently.

A speedy resolution, depending on how you looked at it─but we’d just made it in time.

With Shinobu’s help (her service then was what earned her the name of Shinobu Oshino), we were able to seal away the Hindering Cat that had bewitched Hanekawa─

Solving the problem.

With unexpected ease, you could even say.

The more complex the problem, the more likely it is to be solved with unexpected ease─because solving the problem doesn’t mean it disappears.

A trance.

Hanekawa had no memories of the time she was Black Hanekawa.

That meant she didn’t know the first people to be attacked by Black Hanekawa were her own parents─

Had those memories returned to her, too?

That’s what I was worried about.

“Oh, the issue of her memory?”

When Black Hanekawa showed herself a week and a month since Golden Week, we managed to tie her up immediately (making use of lessons learned the last time), heard what she had to say (it barely meant a thing to us with the incessant mews, meows, nyarls, and purrs she used when she talked), and left her bound body behind in the classroom (ignoring all the curses “she” hurled at us). Then Oshino and I moved to one of the other two classrooms on the fourth floor─where the man immediately stuck an unlit cigarette in his mouth and began to speak.

We were now face to face. It was me and Oshino talking now.

“I don’t think it’s fatal─her memories while she’s Black Hanekawa aren’t compatible with her as missy class president. Her memories as miss class prez, though, could be an issue. I doubt they’ll disappear this time around, because unlike last time─she’s completely self-aware right now.”

“Is it bad if she’s aware of what’s happening?”

“Not that bad, in and of itself. The problem is that this is our class president we’re talking about, Araragi. As you’re aware─she’s a little too bright. Her brain works about a hundred times faster than the average person’s. Give her the materials and it’ll be easy for her to connect all the dots and construct the memories herself.”

“Construct the memories?”

“We were able to wipe out all the memories from last time. Both Black Hanekawa’s and our class president’s─we left her without a clue. We managed to seal that whole aberration away, which naturally meant any memories related to it disappeared, too. In other words, when we got rid of the effect, we managed to get rid of the cause, too. So it’s fine if her memories are incoherent because she doesn’t even realize there’s anything that needs to be coherent. This time around, though, you could say it’ll become a fill-in-the-blank problem. Like some important words are missing here and there from a sentence─it’d be impossible to give a perfect answer, but you could figure out the general kind of words that should go in if you’re perceptive enough, right?”

“Oh, so like─a language arts test.”

I didn’t do well in that subject.

But─Hanekawa did well in every subject.

“There’s nothing we can do about it─but we ought to think of it as a silver lining that her memories from last time won’t be returning. Though it’ll seem more like a dark cloud to her.”

We could call last time a lucky break.

But this time it was a silver lining.

“From my point of view, though, it might be a good thing for her─drawing an aberration toward yourself makes it easier for aberrations to become drawn toward you in the future. It’s what you’re experiencing right now, Araragi─so if it’s going to happen to her, too, then it’s important for her to know about aberrations.”

You have to be aware, Oshino said.

And─maybe he was right about that.

There are some things you can’t handle without knowing about them first. While other things are unmanageable even if you do, knowing means you can at least run away from them.

In other words─that’s how you maintain a balance.

“But─Oshino,” I said as I thought─about Black Hanekawa, still tied up two classrooms down. “Why did─that thing─appear again? I thought we sealed it away during Golden Week. Wasn’t it never supposed to appear again?”

“I didn’t say that.” Oshino tilted his head. “A Hindering Cat, you see─is a bit different from the other aberrations you know about. If I had to compare it to one, it might be close to miss sapphy’s monkey.”

“Oh…I guess they are both beasts.”

“Yes. Only─didn’t I tell you last time? To describe it in a way that’s in line with reality, the Sawarineko is a multiple personality disorder─Black Hanekawa is the flip side of miss class prez, so to speak. Aberrations are here, there, and everywhere─but ultimately, the Hindering Cat exists only inside of our president. It’s only a trigger, a medium─the problem is the stress she bears.”

Stress.

According to scholars, it is the body’s response as it tries to respond to every demand─apparently.

“By the time Black Hanekawa faced off against me last time, she’d already gone wild for so long that you could say she’d gotten rid of most of her stress─so sealing her away was easy. But seal her away is all we did. It’s not as if she disappeared. We may have made the aberration go away, but it’s not as if we made the stressor go away. So that thing will rise to the surface again once enough stress builds up─like a bubble.”

“Stress…”

“The question is what the stressor is this time.”

The cause of the stress.

In Hanekawa’s case, it was of course her family.

At least, that’s what I thought.

“Oh, I thought the same thing at first, too─but what do you think, Araragi? She just got rid of the stress she finally unleashed after holding herself together for seventeen years─would it really build back up to the same level in a month?”

“Well─I guess not.”

“And fortunately, she hasn’t been on the receiving end of any violence from either of her parents, has she?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

The first people she attacked.

Her dad and her mom─her parents.

Things had reverted back to normal─back to a family with no relationships that didn’t communicate, a bunch of humans who just live together. That had to be stressful for Hanekawa.

But Oshino was right─one month was too soon.

Maybe if she had been hit yet again.

“We did put a bell around her neck─and I think that paid off,” Oshino said. “It let us detect the Hindering Cat in its early stage. See? You can never be too careful. To be honest, though, I never thought we’d actually need to use it. I was careless. I thought that even in the worst case, it would wait until she turned twenty. The story I heard made it sound like her parents were going to get divorced once she became an adult, and I’m sure her plan is to leave home by then─and that’s why I didn’t bother to say anything to either of you.”

“Twenty, huh… So the opposite of Kanbaru.”

“The age of majority is an easy measure to understand,” Oshino remarked with a bitter smile. “Yes, and she’d have become strong enough to keep from being bewitched by an aberration by then.”

“Oh… Anyway, Oshino. What’s this bell you’re talking about?”

“The headaches. She was also complaining about a headache during Golden Week, remember? So I set a little trap─though I should have shared that with you at least. So, tell me again, when did missy class president’s headaches start?”

“I want to say─about a month ago?”

“Huh… And they weren’t so bad at first, but then… I wonder what it could have been─but it doesn’t seem like we have the time to pin down this stressor. It could very well be a mix of multiple causes, and I still understand barely a word that lust-besotted cat purrs.”

“Even you don’t understand her?”

Wasn’t he the one saying it’d be quicker to ask her directly?

“No, I don’t. We had a lot of hints, but when it comes to the exact details… It’s a delicate matter, not something I can make haphazard guesses about. Heh, I guess we’re dealing with a cat’s brain at the end of the day. But I do also think she might just be playing dumb─we can’t let our guards down, because beneath it all, she’s miss class prez.”

“You don’t want to get on that woman’s bad side.”

“We haven’t gotten on her bad side.”

Black Hanekawa.

Another Tsubasa Hanekawa, created by her own heart and mind.

A contrasting personality─or rather, one that served as a counterpart.

In addition to aiding, “Tsubasa” also connoted pairing─mismatched wings, indeed.

“But even if we did pin down the cause, would that mean much, Oshino? Whether it’s her family or something else─removing the stressor is the best way to solve this, sure, but it’s not like either of us could do that.”

It had been the same way last time.

Hanekawa’s family problems? How could we solve something like that? I couldn’t even imagine what would have to happen to her family to solve the problem. Someone on the outside couldn’t step into your personal issues.

That would be true arrogance.

“And unlike the times with Senjogahara and Sengoku,” I pointed out, “this aberration harms others… While it might be similar to Kanbaru’s, it’s different from that, too. Like before, I think our only choice is to treat the symptoms with a palliative measure─”

“Yes. You’re absolutely right, but. Yeah.”

Oshino was being obviously evasive.

It wasn’t like him.

Did he still have something to say about the Hindering Cat? No, it felt like he’d been acting off all day, even before I brought this up to him. Something was strange from the moment we saw him outdoors on a sunny morning─

“What’s the matter, Oshino? You’re being vague. Are you about to come up with some new fault you’ve found with me? I mean, I understand you can’t help me out with this as much as you did with Sengoku, given the circumstances─”

He’d had to deal with her for a while now, and I knew Hanekawa wasn’t a plain victim like Sengoku─I knew Hanekawa was relying on this aberration. Mèmè Oshino was someone who hated that.

Relying on others as long as you need them─

Then treating them like a burden once you don’t.

You need to have more respect than that─he’d say.

“But aren’t you obligated to help out this time around?” I pressed nonetheless. “You took her hundred thousand yen, and yet we’re facing what looks like the same condition─she could practically sue you for breach of contract since you’re supposed to be a professional at this. You needed to give her more aftercare. If you’d told me about that bell you said you put on her, then─”

“Well, I suppose you can say that.”

Surprisingly enough, Oshino didn’t argue with me.

It was an unthinkable reaction.

“Though I have to say, Araragi, cat ears do look good on her. Ha hah, you know what manga she reminds me of? Neko Neko Fantasia. You know, with the girl with the cat ears by, um, Neko Nekobe─”

“Neko Nekobe wrote Goldfish Warning! Don’t confuse the two just because they both include the word for ‘cat’… Hold on, Oshino, are you trying to dodge something right now?”

“What are you talking about, dodge something? I’d never do something that deceitful. Oh, that’s right, speaking of cat ears. Arale from Dr. Slump used to wear them all the time too, didn’t she? That manga was really ahead of its time now that I think about it. A little girl with purple hair and a weird speech tic who’s also a robot and a little sister, wearing cat ears and glasses, all in one!”

“I never thought of that, but yeah, you’re right… I want to tell you good job for noticing, but does it have anything at all to do with Hanekawa’s case?”

“Ah, uh, mmm…”

He was trying to dodge the subject…

He definitely was…

“Hey, Oshino. Cut it out and─”

“Kupipo!”

“Is that any way for a grown, experienced adult to dodge the subject?!”

“Ehh, that’s most grownups for you.”

“I don’t ever want to grow up!”

But putting aside resorting to another Dr. Slump allusion, what exactly was he trying to distract me from?

I couldn’t figure it out. And if I couldn’t, there was no point in continuing to think about it. I had no choice but to keep the conversation going, even if I was half dragging it along.

“Anyway, Oshino─hurry up and bring Shinobu in. If we’re up against a cat monster, our only option is to have her deal with it, right? I’m sure Shinobu is going to be reluctant, but if I offer to trade my blood for her help─”

“Hmmm. Yes, maybe. But don’t you know it, disasters always strike at the worst times─misery always travels with company.”

“………”

He was getting to be too evasive for me. I wished he would take this seriously. I was panicking.

This was about Hanekawa.

I wasn’t needed last time, but she specifically asked for me this time around─so I had to be there for her.

I’d be there when she needed me.

“…Huh?”

And then.

That’s when I remembered again─right, I’d been meaning to ask Oshino. About what Hachikuji had told me about Shinobu in the morning─though I now had a sinking feeling about it.

Not that I ever had a soaring feeling about any of this!

“Hey, Oshino… There’s something I wanted to ask you.”

“What a coincidence. There’s something I wanted you to ask me.”

“What’s going on with Shinobu?”

“Yep, that’s the one,” Oshino answered, a refreshed smile on his face, like he’d gotten something off of his chest at last, as if he were a criminal finally allowed to confess to his crimes.

“Our Shinobu has gone off on a journey of self-discovery.”