Monogatari Series - Volume 3 - Chapter 5.8

008

The epilogue, or maybe, the punch line of this story.

The next day, I was roused from bed as usual by my little sisters Karen and Tsukihi. Hm? I thought, tilting my head─which is when it came back to me. Right, I ended up not spending the night there on the side of the road. While that was dangerously close to happening (“dangerously” feels like the wrong word when I think about Hanekawa in her pajamas─maybe I should use a word that better celebrates my fortune instead), Suruga Kanbaru came storming in at an incredible speed using takkyudo or a flash step, while holding B to dash, or whatever it was she did, after a bit of time passed. After doing everything in my power to stop Kanbaru’s throbbing heart─so this is Hanekawa, that senior I’ve heard so much about─I asked her to take Hanekawa back home. With how complicated her family situation is, it would be easier to come up with an excuse if a second-year girl took her home instead of me, a boy─saying it had something to do with the culture festival should be enough of a reason. No…even if that weren’t the case, I didn’t have the strength yet to walk her home. So I asked Kanbaru, Could you call my two sisters? I’ll give you their number. I also asked her to look for Sengoku, but Kanbaru had met her a little earlier and had her go home because it was getting late. So, she was pretty sharp herself. When I asked to make sure she hadn’t seduced Sengoku, Kanbaru showed me an embarrassed smile─hold on, that kind of smile wasn’t the right answer.

And so, just as Kanbaru and Sengoku had done for me on Monday, my two little sisters supported me from both sides as we headed home, and then I slept─you’ve been getting into too much trouble lately, Koyomi, the older of the two reprimanded me. There was nothing I could say in my defense. Though at the same time, those two are the last people I’d want to hear that from…

Anyway, the next morning.

I headed toward the abandoned cram school before going to school─to deliver Shinobu, who’d been hiding in my shadow ever since, back to Oshino. I never did figure out why she absconded in the first place. I could ask her but she wouldn’t reply, and she of course wasn’t saying anything on her own. I could come up with a whole list of guesses, but it also felt like all of them were wrong. It could have even been that she wanted to make me sweat for troubling her too often lately─but that might be another wrong guess.

Oshino wasn’t at the abandoned cram school.

He seemed to be out.

Come to think of it, I didn’t know what Oshino’s intentions were, either─why did he let the Hindering Cat get away? Maybe she really did slip away when he wasn’t looking, but he also could have turned a blind eye. Either way─it was the one time I found it impossible to believe he could have seen every single twist coming. He might have predicted that I’d act as a mousetrap by going out to find Shinobu and that she’d hide in my shadow, but why would he want the Hindering Cat to bite me? Black Hanekawa had the intelligence of a cat, so what was the probability that she’d arrive at the truth of the situation?

However.

I had to say there was one thing he must have known─the root of Hanekawa’s stress. He already knew by the time he asked his first question.

It wasn’t that Oshino was special─it was just that I was so dense.

I was obtuse.

Less acute than anything I’d come across all day.

But if he wasn’t around, he wasn’t around.

If you can’t help it, you can’t help it.

And so I headed toward school, with Shinobu still hiding in my shadow. I did feel hesitant about bringing her to school, but I hesitated even more to leave a vampire who now had a record of absconding alone by herself.

I met Hanekawa in class.

“Oh. You’re later than usual,” she said.

“Well, I took a detour on the way.”

“Feeling well?”

“Feeling great.”

“Good morning.”

“Good morning.

That was it.

I still don’t know how much of her memory she lost as Hanekawa, nor what she retains. I would have to ask her some time, but that time wasn’t now. She needed some space to put her mind back in order.

As always, Senjogahara arrived at school moments before classes started as if she’d calculated it so as not to waste a single moment.

“Welcome home.”

“Thanks.”

“When’s our next date?” she asked abruptly.

With the same flat and expressionless face as always.

“You plan it out, Araragi.”

“……”

“I’ll skin you if you take me anywhere lame.”

“…Roger that.”

In fact, I wanted to.

I’d show Senjogahara my treasure this time.

And crab, too─we had to go eat some eventually.

After classes, we prepared for the culture festival─the last one of my high school life. It was getting so close I could taste it, and today was the last day of preparations. Even Senjogahara didn’t skip today and helped us strive toward our goal. It sounded like everyone stayed at school until some ridiculously late hour the day before, but now that Hanekawa, the class president, was back, the work proceeded at a completely different level of efficiency, and all of our classmates were free to go just before school officially closed for the day.

From there, I decided to give the abandoned cram school another visit and took along with me Senjogahara, Hanekawa, and also Kanbaru, who’d been waiting for us. I was the only one with a bike, so I pushed it and we all walked together.

Oshino wasn’t there.

Yet again.

That’s strange, Senjogahara said. That man acts like he sees it all coming, and he isn’t around for two of your visits in a row. It made me realize that if anything was strange, it was that Senjogahara had come with me to meet Oshino, even if I had invited her. Maybe she already sensed this would happen. Maybe she’d figured it out by the time I explained it to her.

The four of us split up and searched every nook and cranny of the cram school, but Oshino was nowhere to be found. When we looked closely, very closely, however, it seemed that a few things were missing from inside the building─and they were all Oshino’s belongings.

It was clear now.

Mèmè Oshino was gone.

Without leaving behind a single note─he’d left our town.

Now it made sense─when I’d biked to the cram school with Hanekawa the day before, it hadn’t been to find Shinobu that he’d been outside. He’d been in the middle of packing up. He must have been undoing that spiritual boundary he’d set around the place.

On that occasion.

I hadn’t been waited for.

The ruined shrine on top of the mountain─Oshino’s interest in this town must have reached its endpoint when that case was settled. It was one of his biggest goals─that’s how he described it.

His collecting and researching would some day come to an end─

He would leave this town some day─

And that turned out to be now.

I’m not going to disappear all of a sudden one day without even saying goodbye─I’m an adult─I do know my manners─

Why didn’t I notice?

He was already saying goodbye with those words. How could you understand them any other way? He was a man who never said goodbye, who couldn’t deal with parting ways, an awkward, tactless man, and it was the most earnest show of affection he could manage─

Honestly.

I really was dull.

I should have been able to figure that out.

There’s no time, he’d told me.

So that was about Shinobu.

He looked the other way when Shinobu left, too─he knew, and he let her get away. He probably hadn’t actively encouraged her, but he must have seen it as a fine opportunity. The Hindering Cat joined the fray at a good moment─which is to say, a bad one─and so he just retroactively added her to the story. In other words, he saw Shinobu’s disappearance as a test for me─or rather, as a sort of parting gift.

He became sure of something or another when I ran off to find Shinobu─and after he let the Hindering Cat escape, he must have gathered his things and left. He was sure─that I’d manage to do something about both Shinobu and Hanekawa on my own.

That Hawaiian-shirted bastard.

Trying to act so suave.

He wasn’t making me think he was cool.

A day had already passed, so Oshino must have already wandered into another town where he was busy with his collecting and researching─who knew, maybe he was saving someone from an attacking aberration as he happened to pass by.

Yes.

He was probably saving someone.

“Whatta…” I said.

“Yeah,” Senjogahara said too.

“Totally,” Hanekawa added.

“No mistake,” Kanbaru agreed.

And then, all four of us in unison.

“Chump.”

Mèmè Oshino─

A frivolous, cynical, vulgar, mean, arrogant, superficial, malicious, insincere, dramatic, jesting, capricious, selfish, lying, dishonest─and endlessly good and kind person.

And so, we each returned to our homes. Kanbaru left first, then Hanekawa split off, and then I walked Senjogahara home. There, for the first time, which is to say at last, Senjogahara treated me to her cooking. As far as my thoughts on the taste and her skills, well, let’s say it was a smart move for her to leave it up to my imagination for so long.

I will probably encounter more aberrations in my life.

I can’t pretend they never happened, and I can’t forget them.

But─that’s fine.

I know.

That there’s darkness in the world, and that things live in the darkness.

For example, in my own shadow.

A blond kid, who seems very cozy there.

It was getting late by the time I got home, so I ate dinner, took a bath, and went straight to sleep. My two sisters would surely wake me up the next morning, just like they always do.

Tomorrow was finally the culture festival.

Our class was putting on: a haunted house.