Monogatari Series - Volume 8 - Chapter 1.06

006

There were two things I didn’t know.

First, I didn’t know the house I lived in was visible from the window of the classroom where I spent my days studying. I’d had opportunities to stand by the window and gaze outside.

Why hadn’t I noticed?

Why wasn’t it visible?

I guess it had to be, and I just never consciously recognized it─in other words, according to the reverse of the logic of “Meet an aberration and you’ll be drawn by aberrations.”

I must have been pushing that house out of my consciousness.

And the other thing I didn’t know was how unexpectedly shocked I’d feel if that house burned down─it left me speechless.

It was enough to make my mind go blank.

It was a shock to my system.

Araragi seems to be mistaken about this point, but I’m not all that mature─I harbor the same kind of destructive impulses as everyone else. He placed an excessive level of trust in my character even after the nightmare of Golden Week─or no, maybe he was just pretending to overlook things─but I’d wished time and time again for that lousy house to disappear.

But I never thought it really would.

And I never thought I’d feel such a strong sense of loss.

It wasn’t as if I’d been attached to it.

I didn’t even feel like I’d thought of it as my house─I let words to that effect slip out of my mouth, but it must have been a momentary failing.

But the unwavering fact was that I felt strongly enough about it to have that moment.

Was that a good thing?

I felt strongly enough.

Yes, that was a fact.

Or was it a bad thing?

You could probably take it either way, but either way, it was too late.

It was gone now.

That home where I’d spent fifteen years of my life.

It was lost forever.

I asked my teacher if I could leave early despite having arrived late, and of course I immediately received permission. I’m not Miss Kanbaru, but I ran back to the house, and while the area was surrounded by fire engines and onlookers, it had already been put out.

Put out.

And nothing was left.

Though the fire hadn’t spread to any neighboring homes, the Hanekawa residence was what you’d call razed, without a single column remaining.

Extremely beneficial in making a fire insurance claim, that status was perhaps a saving grace. As vulgar as that sounds, it’s of paramount importance.

Oh, wait. No, no.

Of paramount importance, naturally, are human lives─but there was no need to worry about that. I’d been at school, and there was close to no chance that the “other two” who should be called my parents would ever return to the house in the morning.

None of the three inhabitants─considered it a home.

It was a place, not a home.

But Roomba must have gone up in flames, I mourned the passing of the automatic vacuum cleaner that tirelessly woke me up each morning.

Mourned more than the house.

A lot of other things in addition to Roomba, or rather, everything had gone up in flames, but I was a mere high schooler with no remarkable possessions. That wasn’t going to be a problem for me.

If you insist, losing all my clothes was a complication.

Actually, it might have been the same for the persons who should be called my father and my mother─neither could have been keeping anything important in the house.

They must have kept anything valuable at work.

That was how I saw it.

That house.

It wasn’t a place for keeping anything of value.

They’d get dirty.

In any case, this just meant I was full of things I didn’t know─you only ever notice some stuff after a house burns down.

I’ve never met the man in person, but was this one of those lessons to take home with me that the fraud, Mister Deishu Kaiki, likes to speak of?

I wasn’t sure.

I didn’t know.

But whether or not I knew─this definitely meant I was being put out on the street.

I had spots to go to for no particular reason on days off because I couldn’t stand being at home, but how fortunate I had been to have a place where I could go to bed─either way, the Hanekawas ended up having their first family discussion in a while as a result of this incident.

A discussion?

Well, even I can imagine that normal families wouldn’t call that a discussion.

It wasn’t anything close to a family meeting.

It was an exchange of opinions.

Not social interaction.

A house burning down naturally necessitated a lot of different complicated procedures─we didn’t even know the cause of the fire yet. It was frightening, there were even suspicions of arson─so it was going to be a long-term problem, not something that could be handled by me, who was still a child. What we discussed that day was our most pressing problem. In other words, where we would sleep that night.

With no nearby relatives the Hanekawas could rely on, there wasn’t a whole lot of room for debate. We ended up booking the nearest hotel─but even that was a problem for us.

The biggest problem, you could say, or maybe the single issue.

We hadn’t slept in the same room in a very long time.

There was me of course, who slept in the hallway, but even the married couple slept in different bedrooms. We couldn’t get two or three rooms at a hotel when it would only make this more expensive─

“I’m fine. I’ll get a friend to let me stay with them for a while.”

Before the discussion could get too deep, I said that.

I proclaimed it.

“Dad, Mom, this is a great chance for you two to spend some time alone together as husband and wife.”

I wasn’t saying this as an excuse, but as how I truly felt, and I knew that was part of what made me so frightening and inhuman─I’d learned over Golden Week that it was one of my flaws.

I didn’t want to go to bed in the same room as those two.

Those personal feelings were no doubt there, but I was putting them far, far aside─and it was very unnatural.

I knew that.

Seeing the fire as a great chance didn’t exactly make me human.

Araragi and Mister Oshino had taught me that.

A lesson.

Here I was, not having put it to use─but I just couldn’t help thinking those two might go back to being the way they ought to be.

I was able to think it.

Namely, that this could be the last chance for those two, who planned on getting divorced as soon as I ceased to be a minor.

I thought so.

It would take several months to rebuild the house when you factored everything in, and if they spent a few weeks alone together for the first time in fifteen years before we found a place to rent─then just maybe something could happen.

I did think so.

I was able to think so.

I wanted to think so.

The two agreed right away.

They didn’t even try to stop me when I conveyed my intention to stay at various friends’ houses. In fact, they were visibly happy that I’d suggested it myself.

Well, of course they were.

It was easier for the two of them to be alone than for the three of us to be alone. The fire might have been a reasonably welcome thing for them, too, in that it let them drive off a source of annoyance in their lives.

They were delighted.

And I was happy that they were delighted, so I had to be pretty insane.