Monogatari Series - Volume 8 - Chapter 1.61

061

─Dear Miss Black Hanekawa,

It’s nice to meet you.

Well, I guess that’s a strange thing to say. But this is Tsubasa Hanekawa.

Allow me to start by thanking you.

Thank you for all of the backbreaking work you did in my place, both during Golden Week and before the culture festival. I imagine that I’ve been forcing a lot of hardship on you this time, too.

I’m truly sorry for causing you nothing but trouble.

It’s now finally begun to strike me how it may have been my ego that I buried you when you were there on the street that day, run over. My actions that day saddled me with a responsibility toward you that I doubt I am able to fully repay.

Maybe that’s the kind of thing that Mister Oshino really meant by that line he used so much, “people just go and get saved on their own.” Because if you’re not thinking about whether you’re ready to take on the connections, or honestly, the responsibilities that arise, you’re going to have to get through the rest of your life relying on nothing more than one stopgap measure after the next.

Just as Shinobu was bound to Araragi because he saved her, I’ve shackled you, as Black Hanekawa, to me.

And on top of that, I barely let the fact bother me, unlike Araragi. I was living a carefree, peaceful life.

How sinful can one be?

And so I’m really not in a position where I can ask this of you, but I fear that I might end up hurting a very important friend if I don’t do something.

I have no choice but to rely on you.

I have no one else I can rely on.

So I’m going to say it to someone for the first time in my life─save me.

Please save me.

I’ll never bother you again, and I’ll make sure you’re never alone.

Please, I beg of you.

I know that you probably have to do as I say in order to protect me, and that saying this may not change a thing, but it is a sincere request.

I’m going to write down a few things I know about this situation, in case they can be of help. I know that you share my memories, but it seems that you have been completely severed from me this time (I have an idea why for that too, which I’ll explain later), so I think it would be easier for you to understand if you read this in a letter. Unlike your memory, mine is full of holes, so while I can’t be sure of anything, this is probably the truth.

I don’t know everything, I only know what I know.

I’ve used those words with Araragi as a kind of excuse, but allow me to say them to you, too. I’m going to tell you everything I know.

So first, and while I think this goes without saying because it’s something you, as an aberration, know quite well without being told, the true identity of that gigantic tiger, the Tyrannical Tiger, is that it is a new breed of aberration born from my heart, just like you.

Or to be even more precise, a new kind of aberration that my heart cut loose.

This I can state as a fact.

But one major point of difference between the two of you is that while you’re based on an old aberration known as the Afflicting Cat, the Tyrannical Tiger has no base, nothing to which its spirit is bound.

If I had to say it was based on anything, it’s you.

The Tyrannical Tiger is a tiger because you are a cat.

A more primordial creature.

A more primordial organism, a fiercer beast, and that is why after you, a cat, I came up with a tiger.

I guess you could call it a successor?

I should have realized it earlier, but I think that in these past few months, I’d gotten too used to aberrations, including you.

Knowing of aberrations draws one to aberrations.

That’s something Mister Oshino said.

Just as Araragi became familiar with how to use his own immortality ever since spring break, I must have become used to prying loose pieces of my own heart as aberrations ever since Golden Week.

Like someone first starting to put in contact lenses or something─we can get accustomed to anything.

And the result of all my proficiency.

Is the Tyrannical Tiger.

I think the differences between you during Golden Week, you before the culture festival, and you this time aren’t individual traits so much as a manifestation of this proficiency.

The fact that you appear only when I go to sleep, reduce my level of stress while I’m asleep, then turn back into me when I wake up without any need for Mister Oshino, Araragi, or Shinobu to “deal with you” makes you far too convenient an aberration, far too much of a blessing.

Then again, of course that’s how it is.

Because you’re an aberration brought forth by me for my own sake.

You’re going to be convenient.

Naturally, and while you may have already noticed this too, though I had it wrong at first, I think you’re here, I think I refused to learn my lesson and summoned you again so that I could do more than just relieve the stress of that house burning down. Yes, it had to be thanks to you that Miss Kanbaru saw me and thought that I wasn’t feeling down the way she thought I’d be─but that’s all incidental.

The fire itself had nothing to do with it─the cause of the fire was the cause.

I’m sorry that I have to say this like it doesn’t involve me, but this is something that happened unconsciously, or actually I don’t have any memory of it at all, but I think I must have relied on you as a way to fight against the Tyrannical Tiger I saw that day.

Just like I’d always been relying on you, even long before my life was ever affected by the Afflicting Cat.

And I relied on you again.

I know that modern medicine has a negative view on the condition popularly known as a split personality, more technically known as dissociative identity disorder, and I’m not a proponent of it either. But while the expression may not be correct, it would have to be the most understandable way to express who I am.

Araragi once told me that I was scary.

Mister Oshino once told me that it was creepy the way I acted like a saint.

But to tell you how I honestly felt when I heard them say those things, I had no clue what they meant.

I felt like there was never a time I was being anything less than my natural self.

Araragi would say that I was forcing myself to be a regular girl, that I was trying to be too ethical. And yes, that line of reasoning must have been pretty close to the truth, but it didn’t serve as a reason why I was able to do something so outrageous.

It’s not something you could simply will yourself to do.

So then why was I able to do it?

It’s simple.

Because I’d looked away from any inconvenient reality ever since I was a child, constantly setting loose pieces of my heart.

Miss Senjogahara described this as being “dull when it comes to darkness” the day before yesterday, and she was exactly right. In fact, I don’t look at the darkness at all.

I’ve averted my eyes from malice and misfortune.

Not as any kind of self-defense. If anything, I think it was self-sacrifice─I’d sever the parts of myself that were inconvenient to me in order to keep being me.

Like how I wasn’t able to see that house from the classroom.

If there was ever anything I didn’t like, I would say it had nothing to do with me and cut it off. No matter what horrible things happened to me, I would say they had nothing to do with me and cut them off.

So there was no way for my personality to become twisted.

There was no way for me to get bent over.

I couldn’t even stop being naïve about the world.

Twistedness of that sort is something that any human needs in order to live, and I just skipped all of that.

Of course you’d feel scared, of course you’d be creeped out.

I know I’d rebutted Araragi by saying that he was going too far when he talked about miracles─but the way I am is the result of something more atrocious and blood-drenched than any miracle.

I understand that the most difficult step of the counseling process for children who were never loved by their parents, which is to say children who grew up abused, is getting them to recognize that they’ve suffered abuse.

How terribly they’ve been tyrannized.

It’s no small feat to accept that you aren’t loved by your parents.

In most cases, children act like the abuse itself “never happened.” This shows itself in many ways, whether it’s a twisted interpretation of the facts or pretending that it didn’t happen at all, but one thing that all of these methods share in common is that they look away from reality.

So let me admit it now.

I grew up abused by my parents.

Every single parent I ever had treated me abusively.

I have never once been loved.

I have never for a moment been loved.

But I never recognized that.

I ignored my pain, saying that this kind of thing must happen in every home to some degree or another. I could be struck in the face, but I never thought that was abuse. I couldn’t think it was. I set that stress loose before I knew it in the form of a cat and pretended that it never happened.

Of course, if you want to talk about what abuse really is, it’s a very easy thing to understand and also a very hard thing.

Abuse can assume forms other than violence. As an extreme example─no, even this is still within the bounds of general opinion─abuse can exist in the form of spoiling a child.

Abuse that’s called education. Abuse that’s called discipline.

Abuse that’s called an upbringing. Abuse that’s called a parent-child relationship.

One can ultimately make a case for the view that abuse is anything a parent does to a child, and maybe we should listen to that case instead of rejecting it out of hand. Parts of it may bear merit depending on the way it’s made. You wouldn’t argue that it isn’t abuse if the person in question is all right with what’s happening to them─so while it’s a vague conclusion, you simply have to judge every case as a whole.

Which is why I can make this assertion.

I can look away and say all day long that I wasn’t abused.

I wasn’t tyrannized.

I wasn’t neglected.

I have no such recollection.

They did the bare minimum as parents─

No, you couldn’t even argue that in bad faith.

They only ever did the minimum as parents.

They only ever did the worst they could do.

That’s how I should have thought about it.

They’d abused me in the most heinous way, by not loving me─I’m sure they had their excuses.

But what did those kinds of excuses have to do with their child?

A parent’s love for a child isn’t a duty to be fulfilled, it’s a feeling, and you shouldn’t get married or have children if you aren’t capable of feeling it.

If you never had to feel pain or know sadness, then you’d be free of stress and always perform well, whether in school or in athletics, whether it’s ethics or morals.

If you never had to feel the pressure of failing or anxiety over meeting a terrible fate, if you could ignore all pain whether physical or mental, you could be perfect all-around.

That is the truth of Tsubasa Hanekawa, model student.

The boring answer to why I have been me.

I could ignore the taste of blandness.

How unfair could it get, right? I was tossing the darkness and suffering that every person is burdened with onto someone else’s shoulders.

I bet Miss Senjogahara would be furious if she heard that.

When I think of her two years of suffering─when I think of her two-year fight to in fact acquire her pain, and then look at myself and the way I put it all on you, never having to know suffering, never having to feel pain, never having to fight.

“Frustrating” doesn’t begin to cover it.

And while it’s very interesting that the form known as Black Hanekawa would be created by a person like myself getting involved with an aberration called the Afflicting Cat, aberrations are nothing more than triggers as I said earlier.

You are you.

Of course, this third edition of you is more powerful than the last two, and you seem to be severed from me. As I said earlier, I’m getting “better” at this the more I do it.

When I asked Tsukihi what the trick was to making a house of cards, she told me, “This kind of thing is just about practice. It’s not about technique, it’s how many times you’ve tried. I’m sure you’d be good at it if you did it twenty times,” and the same goes for everything. So I must have uncoupled you from my heart better than I did my first and second times.

I made you into your own personality.

Call it nonsense if you want, it’s a terrible story.

No, it’s more terrible than a terrible story.

After all, like I’ve been saying, you’re not the only thing I cut loose from my heart as an independent aberration this time.

Should I call it another one?

Or should I call it another breed?

I unleashed the Tyrannical Tiger before I let you loose.

If you are an avatar of my stress─then the Tyrannical Tiger is an avatar of my envy.

Just as I wouldn’t have come upon the idea of a new breed of aberration if I hadn’t talked to that library employee, I never would have come upon that keyword had I not talked to Karen and Tsukihi. But now that I have, it seems so fitting it feels like the only possible word for it.

Envy.

To be honest, though, I really had no association with this word, envy, until just two days ago.

I didn’t even need to cut it loose.

I’d never envied anyone.

Because I was a disgustingly good model student able to ambitiously tackle any problem without feeling any stress at all.

I never felt like I begrudged others.

If anything, what I did feel was something like dissatisfaction: “Why doesn’t everyone try harder?” or “They should all just do more.”

The feeling had been enough to make Araragi mad at me, and now I realize just how self-absorbed I was. Unlike me, everyone else had to battle their stress as they lived their lives. He didn’t need that from a cheater like me.

“You can do anything if you try hard enough.”

I’d been able to do anything without trying, precisely because I wasn’t trying, and I must have been looking away from even Araragi’s feelings as I uttered those words to him.

Which is why I never needed to have anything to do with envy.

No, I wouldn’t say that envy and I were completely unacquainted, but the amount of envy I had felt, that had built up in me must have been far less than any regular person’s.

The total envy I had cut loose from my heart was a minimal amount.

But it crossed a threshold all at once three days ago.

I remember now.

That day, the first day of the new term.

Just like any other day, I was awakened by an automatic vacuum cleaner, I washed my face, I made myself presentable, I headed to the dining room for breakfast, and what I saw there were the persons who should be called my father and my mother already having breakfast.

The sight struck me as a normal one, and I began to make my own meal. But that only means that I immediately severed it from my memory, that I rewrote my memory, because I saw it, clear as day.

He and she were having the same thing for breakfast.

The three of us lived in the same house, but separately─that’s how it was supposed to be, but for whatever reason, one of the two had made breakfast for the both of them and they were eating together.

When I recall it now─yes.

I selected my own cookware to make breakfast that morning─which was a strange thing to be doing.

After all, there should have been no need for me to select any cookware because I was the last person to enter the kitchen─the other two would have used the other two sets.

In other words.

It meant that one of them had made food for two for the other’s sake─it could only mean that they were having breakfast together.

And leaving me out.

That’s what made me jealous.

I felt a clear sense of envy.

I realize this is a ridiculous thing to say… These were two parents who abused me, two persons who lived in the same house as me but could never be called my family, and you’d wonder why I should ever care what they did, whether that meant eating together or anything else.

But it’s not about logic.

And this illogic also explains why I began to feel so averse to the idea of us staying the night at a hotel as an emergency measure after the Hanekawa residence burned down.

I didn’t want to be isolated in a cramped room.

Maybe if we were one and one and one.

But I didn’t want it to be two and one.

It’s not that I wanted us to be three─I didn’t want it to be two and one.

I didn’t want to see that, even if it meant sleeping outdoors.

I wanted to look away.

My oh-so-kind hope that those two would use the fire as an opportunity to begin reconciling was basically nothing but the flip side of these emotions.

There was practically something wrong with me? No.

There was absolutely something wrong with me.

I was scary, creepy─and foolish.

I was unable to notice my own feelings, and when I did I let them loose, only wishing that the two would get even closer and reconcile, in fact─you couldn’t call my heart a human’s.

You’d have to call it an aberration’s.

My true, honest feelings were the result of looking away toward the flip side.

I was the reason that their relationship had cooled off, of course, and since I would be leaving Japan in half a year, it wouldn’t be odd if they began treating each other differently. This was a couple who had become husband and wife because of a connection they felt existed between them. Or maybe another non-aberrational trigger for the change was the time they had spent in the hospital together during Golden Week.

In that case, I was envious of their relationship despite all of this evidence pointing to me being the cause. It didn’t stand to reason.

So like I said, it wasn’t logical.

I was thinking about how much they should just separate.

Yet I was also hoping that the embers between them would reignite.

But I didn’t want to see the two of them getting along.

Whatever the case, I was jealous of their reconciliation.

I was envious to the bottom of my heart that they were now trying to become a family again after all this time.

I was burning with envy.

That was enough for my envy to cross a threshold and give birth to the Tyrannical Tiger.

I gave birth to a tiger at the beginning of the new term, just as I gave birth to you during Golden Week.

If I was able to create a completely original, new breed of aberration this time without relying on a base like an Afflicting Cat, this must be another talent I’ll only hone with practice. You could say that I was attached to the saying “Tyranny is fiercer than any tiger,” but I also feel that Miss Senjogahara was somewhat right, and I was led to the name by Miss Gaen.

And one more thing on that subject. My guess is that the Tyrannical Tiger never would have been born if I hadn’t met Mayoi on the way to school that day.

The tiger was born because my conversation with Mayoi let me know that Araragi’s whereabouts were unknown, which is to say that she let me know that he wouldn’t be able to exorcize the Tyrannical Tiger the way he’d done to you during your last two appearances.

Araragi must have been acting as the brakes on my heart. I’d been more excited to meet him in class that first day than I knew.

It was a case of terrible timing.

But I know for a fact this is why that tiger appeared right after I met Mayoi.

The responsibility is all mine in the end.

The Tyrannical Tiger is a monstrous animal that took form because of how fragile my heart is.

The all-consuming flames of envy.

It was of course envy toward my parents that caused the Hanekawa residence to be engulfed in flames, and it was envy that caused the abandoned cram school to burn, too.

My feelings toward Miss Kanbaru, the only person Araragi had asked for help.

I was angry at Araragi then─at least, I thought I was, but in reality I think I was intensely envious of Miss Kanbaru, the way I was of Miss Senjogahara.

That’s how it should be.

I had learned of the emotion that was envy─and it suited me very well.

But it must not have been long before I cut that envy loose from myself and transferred it to the Tyrannical Tiger. My envy already had a convenient escape route.

Earlier I described the Tyrannical Tiger as an aberration that is independent, just like you, but autonomy might be a better word. Because unlike you who are bound to my flesh, the Tyrannical Tiger is able to move and act freely.

And as a result.

The abandoned cram school, which had a place in all our hearts, burned down.

Miss Senjogahara’s line of reasoning that said any building I slept in would immediately catch on fire was wrong in the end, but the Tyrannical Tiger has what you might call a unique trait that makes her theory look like an attractive alternative.

Because, you see, that tiger burns down everything I envy.

Both Miss Senjogahara’s apartment and Araragi’s home could easily go up in flames at any moment. Not because I stayed the night, but because I was envious of them. I saw the unshakable bond between father and daughter at the Senjogaharas’ and got that rare inside view of the Araragi family, built on its solid foundation of trust. I’ve forgotten it by now, but how could I not feel envy as someone who’s never known home or family?

I wish I could curse myself to death for the way I’d looked away from that envy and forced it onto the Tyrannical Tiger and so optimistically thought about how great it was to feel included in a family. But it seems my curses are only pointed outwards.

If I can say there’s any saving grace here, I suppose it would be that the Tyrannical Tiger’s fires are limited to buildings and that it isn’t an aberration that burns humans, similar to the way you acted during Golden Week. It seems that one of my firm values is that you should not kill humans.

I say that because I think I know just how much Araragi suffered over spring break caught between human lives and saving lives.

No, that’s not it.

I’m whitewashing it when I say that.

No part of me during Golden Week was bothering to look at others, at victims including my parents. I did nothing but look away and was desperately working to do nothing but dispel my stress. Life was secondary (in fact, I tried to kill Araragi at the end), I was self-centered and nothing more.

That goes for this time, too.

What I’m truly jealous of, truly envious of, must be places, not people.

Places to live.

Which is why you can say it’s dwellings that I’ve been targeting and not just any building.

Places where people live with others.

I burned down the Hanekawa residence and the abandoned cram school because I was someone who didn’t even have a room and slept in the hallway.

I created that tiger.

I want a place where I belong, and I’m jealous of people who act like it’s natural for them to have those kinds of places.

That’s why I burn homes over humans.

It took all of it on, my destructive impulses of wanting that house to just disappear, my envy that transcended jealousy─and set it all ablaze.

Feelings ablaze.

Yes, I offhandedly asserted that I have the same kind of destructive impulses as everyone else, that I wished for that house to just disappear.

But the same kind of feelings as everyone else?

I hadn’t even known what it feels like─how painful it is to feel like everyone else.

I’d taken that insipid destructive impulse that had already been cut loose and detached from myself to be the way I felt─and convinced myself that I was normal.

It was like I was overprotective of myself.

It was like I was abusing myself.

Yes, that’s right.

I was abused most of all by myself.

I’ve been killing my self all this time.

While I think this self-analysis is correct, that isn’t to say there’s no risk at all of anyone getting burned, like it went during Golden Week.

Both the Hanekawa residence and the abandoned cram school just so happened to be empty when they went up in flames. If anyone was inside, I’m sure they would have suffered the same fate.

If Araragi or Miss Kanbaru happened to be in the building when the Tyrannical Tiger was invoked…

The thought sends a chill down my spine.

And this thought could still become a reality with Miss Senjogahara’s apartment or Araragi’s home.

The relationship between Miss Senjogahara and her dad?

The relationship between the Araragi sisters and Araragi?

I can’t say I’m not jealous.

I bet it’s a lie that I’ve never known envy. I’ve begrudged every person I’ve ever been jealous of.

I wanted a dad like that.

I wanted little sisters like them to wake me up every morning.

Those feelings─turn into flames.

I think we can say it was a very good move on my part to have never slept over at friends’ homes until now. Well, maybe we should call that another thing I was unconsciously avoiding.

No.

If the Tyrannical Tiger got “better” at what it did─if it set fire after fire and grew proficient, then forget sleeping over at one home after the next, every house in the world could very well burst into flames.

Schools.

Libraries.

Parks.

I could see them all burning too.

That’s how it was for me.

That’s how jealous I was of warm homes.

Jealous enough to want to take that warmth and burn it to a crisp.

To be honest with you, I don’t know what kind of values you, which is to say the aberration known as Black Hanekawa, have. We may share memories and knowledge, you may be able to face even the things I once looked away from, but it seems like we have completely different personalities. (What would be the point in having a split personality otherwise?)

So I’m also unsure of how you feel about this Tyrannical Tiger’s presence or about my line of reasoning. Maybe you think things are fine the way they are, and I think that would be correct from an aberration’s point of view.

Maybe you would tell me that there’s nothing to be worried about because while arson may be a grave crime, this isn’t the kind of thing that can be judged by the law.

Yes, that’s one opinion.

And I won’t lie, part of me wants to be comforted by those words.

But I just want to put an end to this.

I’d be cutting loose a piece of my heart every time something happens, endlessly creating one aberration after another, offloading any responsibility to elsewhere, and forcing others to meet terrible fates while being completely unaware of any of it, living a happy and carefree life. Could there be any worse nightmare?

I’ve torn so many people to shreds since Golden Week, spread so much damage, and been ignorant of it all.

Like I was pinching my cheeks but they didn’t hurt.

Can’t you say that’s the life I’ve been living?

It’s not as if I want to be a good person or a virtuous person. Being moral or ethical doesn’t mean anything if you have to use something else to get you there.

You.

Or the Tyrannical Tiger.

I don’t want to live if it means stepping on others.

Even if we resolve this issue with the Tyrannical Tiger, I’m just going to give birth to a lion or something next time, and then maybe a leopard after that, over and over, right?

I can imagine all of you saying that you don’t mind, it’s what you were created for, and that’s why I’ve made my decision.

I’ve made a decision in my heart, this thing so whittled down that nothing is left, even its core.

I’m putting an end to all of this.

No. I’m going to begin at last.

I’m going to stop looking away and point my eyes straight forward.

Not only at the Tyrannical Tiger, but at you too.

I’m opening the eyes I’ve kept closed.

Sleeping Beauty has slept for eighteen years now, and she needs to wake up.

So please, Miss Black Hanekawa.

I want you to return.

I want you to go back inside my heart.

I want you and the Tyrannical Tiger to come home.

Please, I’m begging you.

My heart is your home.

I won’t leave you to be on your own, so please, don’t leave me on my own.

If Mister Oshino is right, when I turn twenty─or maybe even before that─you, and the Tyrannical Tiger too, might disappear.

My girlish, adolescent fantasies might die off and disappear once I become an adult.

Even now, you must be something like an echo.

So eventually.

I’m sure you’ll vanish and disappear.

I’m sure that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

But please. That’s why I’m asking you.

Please don’t vanish. Please don’t disappear.

Please. Come home.

Let’s stop living apart.

I know there’s not much space in my heart, but let’s live as a family, colliding and crashing into one another inside of it.

I won’t ever tell you again to just go to sleep if you’re feeling sleepy.

I swear to you now that I’ll love it all, my stress and my envy, my anxiety and my suffering, the bad possibilities and the deep darkness.

I know it’s a shameless request.

But I’ve decided to live shamelessly.

I’m sure Araragi is going to be disappointed.

What he values in me is what Miss Senjogahara would call my pure whiteness, my deficiencies as a creature.

To be honest, that’s the one thing that I can’t do.

I don’t want to disappoint Araragi.

In the end, I never once told him that I love him.

I was the only party to our love, from beginning to end.

It was frankly strange to me that I was so attracted to him when we’d never even spoken until spring break, that I still pine for him like this and refuse to let him go. But now I finally understand.

No one that I know confronts his own weakness as much as he does, and I find him dazzling.

Almost blindingly dazzling.

I can think back with fondness to that night when Miss Senjogahara and I excitedly badmouthed Araragi─and while I think Miss Senjogahara feels the same way, every insult I uttered about Araragi somehow became praise.

Like calling him a chump.

Everything I said came out sounding like that.

All of my anger for him was nothing more than fondness, and at face value too.

My feelings for him were the one thing I couldn’t cut loose.

I’ve always loved Araragi, always, even when I become you.

He says he saved the dying Shinobu even as he cried about not wanting to die.

I bet I would have been smiling as I saved her.

Yes, I think that if you were to pinpoint the moment when I fell in love with him, it would have to be when he was crying in that battle to the death with Shinobu.

After all, I’ve never cried before, not a single time.

I doubt I even cried when I was born.

That’s why I fell in love with Araragi, the crybaby.

Episode said that I had become normal, but the bigger question is what if I stopped being me?

If I became me, would Araragi cry yet again?

I wouldn’t be able to stand it.

But I’m not going to look away anymore from whatever it is that I can’t stand.

I want to become one with the two of you, never looking away from the reality that doing so would disappoint Araragi.

So that I can keep loving Araragi, too.

That’s what I want to do.

Miss Black Hanekawa.

No, that’s such a formal thing to call you now that I think about it.

The me inside of me.

Or maybe I should call you another me?

No, that somehow seems wrong, too.

I have a feeling that you’re something like a little sister to me. I started to feel that way when I saw Karen and Tsukihi.

I’m sorry for being such an awful big sister.

I’m sorry for making you worry all this time.

This really is my final request.

This is the last time I’ll force you to play such a difficult role.

Please save our other sister.

I know she’s a troublesome girl, a pyromaniacal runaway, but I’ll wait for as long as it takes for her to come home.

I love you both, and myself.

Yours in haste.

─

…And then.

That was it for the letter my myaster wrote before going to sleep.

It was hard to nyoh what to say.

I’d always thought my myaster was a smart anyimal, nyot an idiot like me─but nyow it looked like she myight’ve been just as stupid, or maybe even stupider.

I’d nyeed to be stupid in order to make my myaster smart if you went by the logic in her letter, but even that seemed fishy to me.

Since the way I work as a character is that I only ever do as my myaster wants in order to protect my myaster’s intentions, she didn’t have to write such a letter─all she had to do was go to sleep like nyormal and I would’ve gone out there to beat that tiger down.

I share my myaster’s memories, so if she realized what the tiger, the Tyrannical Tiger, really was, I would absolutely nyoh about it too.

Nyo, my myaster was fully aware of that─she said so in the letter.

So that meant she nyew but still nyeeded to ask me?

In the end, my myaster nyever realized that that’s exactly what people call her fastidiousness and nyot being like everyone else.

Nyow that is the biggest tragedy of all.

“Meow.”

I placed the nyotebook on top of the desk.

Really, I had her memories of writing the letter, too. That meant there was nyo real reason for me to read it, but I took the time to anyway. I guess I’m in nyo place to say anything about my myaster.

Whatever the case, I nyow had a general idea of what was happening.

The Tyrannical Tiger.

And the source of my myaster’s illness.

I had all the details nyow.

But even my myaster seemed to be mistaken about a few things─nyot that she could have avoided those mistakes since she was building a case without having everything she needed to come to a conclusion.

Both the style and context of my myaster’s letter were out of joint─there was nyo way she wrote it in a collected state of mind.

It’d be impawssible for her to get a purrfect score in this situation, but she still myanaged to get decent marks, an eighty out of a hundred. Nyot bad.

“How does she nyot see it? You’d think she would. You’d think she’d question why nyo jealousy ever sprouted about Hitagi Senjogahara and Koyomi Araragi going out even though she burned with envy about her home and family.”

The strongest emotion in my myaster was romantic love.

I don’t think I nyeed to explain. Just think back to the transformation before the culture festival.

Basically, that annyoying little human’s little sister was right when the first thing she associated with fire was feelings of love.

So the very furst thing my myaster should have burned wasn’t the Hanekawa residence or the abandoned cram school, it was Hitagi Senjogahara the purrson─

Did my myaster really nyot nyotice?

Nyo.

I guess that meant she was looking away from the fact.

Then I suppose my myaster would eventually run into that reason once she’s able to stop looking away from the truth and look straight at it instead.

I wonder if she’ll be able to take it, though.

It’s a cruel truth─and my myaster wouldn’t be able to cut her heart loose anymore.

“Loving me and the Tyrannical Tiger─loving herself. I doubt my myaster knows just how hard that is. She’s an extreme case, but doesn’t any human look away from their stress and envy to one degree or anyother?”

Nyot many people are able to look at the world head-on. Why did my myaster have to be the one to wear such heavy shackles?

Me and the Tyrannical Tiger nyeeded to carry that weight.

Just because she cut her pain loose.

That didn’t mean her pain never hurt.

In fact, just imagine how painful it is to sever a piece of your heart.

“And her biggest mistake was calling someone like me her family─mya-haha. I’m nyothing more than her pet.”

Nyo, I was a stray.

And it was weird to call me her sister to begin with, I was a male when I was run over on that street─but then again, I was made from a cut-off piece of my myaster’s heart even if I’m based on an Afflicting Cat, so I guess my gender is a little fuzzy. Little sister, little brother─being called either doesn’t feel wrong.

Why ask what an aberration’s gender is to begin with?

Actually, the most impurressive thing was that she could call that gigantic tiger her little sister. She nyew the females are fiercest when it comes to wild animals, right? Wanting me to attack it and exorcize it was one thing, but asking me to bring the tiger back to her heart as family was a ridiculous request.

Nyot dead or alive, but alive and well?

She was asking for too much.

I was planning on beating it down even if my myaster didn’t ask me to. But then she went and asked for even myore.

But if that Hawaiian-shirted jerk expert heard me, I’m sure he’d say, “What violent thoughts. Aberrations and humans need to figure out how to coexist” or something. Isn’t that the kind of thing that little human said?

Sure, we were both nyew breeds of aberrations, both aberrations born from my myaster, but unlike me, that thing wasn’t based on any aberration─its spirit didn’t possess anything. My nyon-aberrational myaster didn’t seem to nyoh what exactly that meant.

She didn’t nyoh how freeing it was to a nyaberration to nyot be written about, to have nyo records, to nyever have been spoken of.

Honestly, I didn’t even want to imagine it.

One thing I could say─is that the tiger had nyo blind spots, nyo weaknesses.

Furget bringing it back, just opposing it was difficult.

I’d have to face it head-on.

And destroy its strengths.

“Ah…” I sighed.

Nyow what a heavy burden.

Right on my shoulders, too.

“It doesn’t really myatter to me. I’m just a nyaberration that works for my myaster’s sake. Whether my myaster’s parents’ home burns, or some myemyorable building burns, or her friend’s home burns, or even this home burns, it doesn’t myatter to me at all. If anything, those rising flames look refreshing to me.”

Because there wasn’t much of a fundamental difference between the Tyrannical Tiger, the avatar of her envy, and me, the avatar of her stress. It called us similar aberrations, too─so if anything, I understood the Tyrannical Tiger’s feelings better.

The only real difference between the two of us is whether we were independent of our myaster or if we couldn’t separate ourselves from her. It didn’t seem to mean anything to me.

Just like my myaster understood, I was just a nyaberration who was going to disappear sooner or later─so maybe there was nyo nyeed for her to take me back inside and burden herself with me.

Myaybe it was also true for the Tyrannical Tiger.

If she did nyothing, the flames of emotion might all just get expelled and vanish─so there might be nyo need for my myaster to take it all into herself.

Nyot just nyo nyeed.

Doing so myight even backfire.

Me coming out had to be its own kind of burden for her─so instead of accepting me, she nyeeded to erase me.

She needed to extinguish me.

It wouldn’t be hard to do. In fact, it’d be very easy to make me disappear, my myaster only had to wish for it to happen.

But that wasn’t what my myaster chose to do.

She’d set us loose, but nyow she was trying to get us back.

What a funny thing.

Me. The Tyrannical Tiger.

We were just nyewsances to my myaster.

Instead of stubbornly trying to accept us─if she really was smart, my myaster should be able to─

“So─it’s pointless.”

Hitagi Senjoghara must have changed.

That annyoying little human must have changed, too.

And my myaster also changed.

But nyo matter how much you change, there’s something that doesn’t change. The world.

Hitagi Senjogahara changing doesn’t mean her past nyever happened. That little human changing doesn’t mean his past nyever happened.

It doesn’t change. It’s not replaced. It doesn’t become something else.

Humans are themselves for as long as they live.

We, who were created by my myaster who wandered around town during spring break wanting to meet that vampire, didn’t change anything. So─it really would be right and good for us to just disappear.

That annyoying little human and that Hawaiian-shirted jerk would agree.

I was just in the way.

And so was the Tyrannical Tiger.

“But, well. She asked.”

I didn’t nyoh what this feeling was.

I nyew I should be doing the same thing whether she asked me to or not─so why did I feel so inspired?

The burden on my shoulders should have only weighed me down.

So why did it feel so comforting?

All that happened was that for the first time, I had a place waiting for me─I had somewhere to go home to. That was it, but why did I nyow feel like I could accomplish anything? What had she done?

It made me happy.

It made me want to cry.

“Nyot that I’m gonna cry─I’m a cat. I don’t cry, I meow.”

Meow, I meowed─and unlocked the window.

My myaster figured out that I’d come out the night before because I’d forgotten to lock it (she probably would have figured it out anyway, there was a lot of other evidence), but I didn’t think I nyeeded to be careful about that now. I wouldn’t be coming back to this room as me.

It seemed like my myaster had chosen my current appearance because she thought these clothes would be easy to mewve around in, but really, I mewved around best wearing nyothing at all. I felt bad doing that to my myaster, though (I even felt sorry nyow for going around in just her underwear during Golden Week), so I’d accept her act of kindness.

She was gonna have to let me go barefoot, at least.

And just as the bottom of my paw hit the windowsill, I remembered something.

Just a cat’s passing fancy, really.

Nyo matter what ended up happening, my myaster wasn’t going to be my myaster anymore, and I wasn’t going to be me either.

This wasn’t about individual differences between Black Hanekawas─it really would be the last time I surfaced.

After being put off in May and June, the aberration nyown as me really was going to be resolved this time.

So I’d write something down for her, too.

Would these count as final words in my case?

Nyo, probably nyot.

I wasn’t going to die or disappear, I was just going home.

But what a long way back it was.

“Nyalright, time for my final service to my myaster.”

It’s nyot like I can write long sentences.

I added one little line to the end of my myaster’s letter before flying out of the wide-open window into the mewnlit nyight.

“I’ll be off.”