Monogatari Series - Volume 31 - Chapter 32

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Sodachi Mirror

Chapter 000

I hate mirrors. Every time I see one, I want to take a hammer and mercilessly smash it to pieces. Three-sided mirrors, mirrors on compact cases, full-length mirrors, houses of mirrors, endoscopes—my heart strains with my desires to break them. I’d like to disassemble a single-lens camera, smash the optical mirror, and reconstruct it as a mirrorless camera. But the reason I don’t act on these desires is not because I don’t carry a hammer around (well… I do, in a manner of speaking); it’s because if you smash a mirror, all you do is multiply it into so many little mirrors. Just like hatred. A while ago, I actually set about testing how much I could hate a mirror; I used the pieces of a mirror I really did smash up to make a kaleidoscope. Looking into it was just awful. Like the worst kind of hatred. The broken mirrors reflected each other in a timeless, infinite hellscape. That’s why, if you want to destroy a mirror, you don’t smash it—you tear it off. You need to peel it away from the other side of the glass, scratching it off, scratching, scratching. Scratching, scratching, scratching. If you do that, it will become beautifully transparent and clear. The other side is the important side, and the other side is what I despise. I hate mirrors. I hate other sides.

However, as a young mathematical genius, it’s my duty to prove why I hate mirrors so much, right down to their other sides. Of course, the reason is immediately apparent: it’s because mirrors reflect me. Because when I look at one, I see myself. Because my eyes fix on my eyes. When I look inside a kaleidoscope, an infinite number of my own selves look back at me. Staring at my wounds—even in those miraculous moments when I think my reflection looks cute. The more I look, the more my mind is eroded, scratched off from the other side, scratching, scratching, scratching. They say people’s reflections look good to themselves, but conversely, that means that from the other side’s perspective I look bad. I look like a hideous monster that ought to be eliminated. So I’ve got to kill my reflection before it kills me. If I don’t smash it before I get smashed, it will kill me from inside the mirror. From the other side of the mirror. I’ll be shown for what I really am. Therefore, I hate mirrors—proof complete.