Bakemonogatari Part 1

by Nisioisin

  But circumstances didn’t matter.

  Paltry, human circumstance didn’t matter.

  The very same moment─Senjogahara leapt backward.

  She flew.

  Like she had no weight to speak of, her feet not once touching or dragging across the floor, she sped to the very back of the classroom, opposite from the altar, and was slammed into the bulletin board.

  Slammed into it─

  She stayed there and didn’t drop.

  She didn’t drop.

  As if she’d been pinned up, she stayed there.

  As if it were a crucifixion.

  “S-Senjogahara!”

  “Oh boy,” Oshino said, dismayed. “I thought I told you to act as her wall, Araragi. Once again, you’re useless when it counts the most. Spacing out like a literal wall can’t be all you’re good for.”

  Dismaying or not, I couldn’t help it because her velocity had outpaced my eyes.

  As if gravity were functioning in that vector, Senjogahara seemed to be pressed, shoved against the bulletin board.

  Her body─began to burrow into the wall.

  It looked ready to crack and fall apart.

  Or Senjogahara was about to be crushed.

  “Uh… U-Ugh…”

  It wasn’t a scream─but a groan.

  She was in pain.

  Yet─I still didn’t see a thing.

  All I saw was Senjogahara pinning herself, seemingly, to the wall. However. However, though─she must have been seeing it.

  A crab.

  A large─crab.

  The Crab of Weight.

  “So much for that. Sheesh, what an impatient god, couldn’t even wait for us to start praying. How so game of it. Wonder if something good happened to it.”

  “H-Hey, Oshino─”

  “Yeah, I know. Change of plans. Too bad, but this is quite standard. Either way was fine for me from the beginning.”

  Saying so with a sigh, but with a sure gait, Oshino approached Senjogahara’s crucified body.

  Approached her without ado.

  Then, his hand reached out casually.

  It took hold slightly in front of Senjogahara’s face.

  Easily─peeled away.

  “Hup.”

  In one motion, as if he were performing a judo throw─Oshino took the thing he had in his hand and forcefully, with all his might─ slammed it against the floor. There was no sound, no swirl of dust. But he slammed it just as Senjogahara had been, only stronger. Then swiftly, in the very same breath, he stepped on this slammed it.

  He was stepping on a god.

  In a consummately violent manner.

  Irreverently, without an ounce of deference or piety.

  The pacifist made light of a god.

  “……gk.”

  To me, it only looked as if Oshino had mimed everything─performed an incredibly expert pantomime, as he still was now, seemingly balancing himself on one leg with aplomb. Meanwhile, for Senjogahara, who could see it very well─

  It was apparently the sort of sight that made her eyes grow wide.

  It’s apparently that sort of sight.

  But a second later, no doubt having lost her support, she went from being pinned to the wall to splatting onto the floor. Since she wasn’t too high up and had no weight, the impact of the fall couldn’t have been too severe, but she couldn’t brace for it, having dropped completely by surprise. It looked like she’d hit her leg hard.

  “You okay?” Oshino called to check up on Senjogahara before looking down at his own feet. Indeed─purely appraisingly.

  Evaluating, with narrowed eyes.

  “No matter how big a crab gets, in fact the bigger it is, turn it upside down, and there you go. Whatever the creature, if it has a flat body, I can’t help but think that it exists to be stepped on, looking at it sideways or any other way─that said, Araragi, what do you think?” Oshino abruptly addressed me. “We certainly could redo this from the beginning, but it’d be such a hassle. Personally, it’d be neatest for me to go on and squish and squash it.”

  “Neatest? A-And ‘squish and squash’ is awfully vivid… She only raised her head for a moment. Just that─”

  “I wouldn’t call it just that. Or rather, just that is enough. In the end, this stuff is about your frame of mind─if we can’t be nice and ask a favor, then we have to resort to dangerous ideas. Like when we dealt with the demon or the cat. If we can’t talk, then there’s only war─okay? In a sense it’s just like politics. Well, simply crushing it would solve missy’s problems on a surface level. It’d be only on the surface, a palliative treatment that doesn’t touch the root, just mowing the weeds, so to speak, a method I’m not eager to take, but maybe on this occasion I should just go for it.”

  “G-Go for it?”

  “You see, Araragi,” Oshino said with a disquieting grin, “I absolutely despise crabs.”

  They’re hard to eat, he explained.

  And with those words─

  With those words, his leg─flexed.

  “Wait.”

  The voice came from behind Oshino.

  Needless to say, it was Senjogahara.

  Rubbing her skinned knee, she sat up.

  “Wait─please. Mister Oshino.”

  “Wait for─” Oshino shifted his gaze from me to Senjogahara, the malicious smile still on his face. “Wait for what, missy?”

  “I was just─surprised earlier,” Senjogahara said. “I can do this. On my own.”

  “…Hunh.”

  Oshino wasn’t pulling back his leg.

  He kept stepping on it.

  But not squashing it either, he told Senjogahara, “Fine, give it a try.”

  Told this─

  Utterly unbelievably, from my point of view, Senjogahara knelt, righted her posture, placed her hands on the floor─towards it at Oshino’s feet, and slowly─properly bowed her head.

  She was─prostrating herself.

  Hitagi Senjogahara─was performing a dogeza of her own will.

  Assuming the pose freely, unbidden.

  “─I’m sorry.”

  She began with words of apology.

  “And─thank you very much.”

  She followed up with words of gratitude.

  “But─it’s all right now. They’re─my feelings, my thoughts─and my memories, so I will shoulder them. It wasn’t right of me to lose them.”

  And then, finally─

  “Please. I beg of you to grant me this favor. Please, give me back my weight.”

  Finally, words of supplication, as if she were praying.

  “Please give me back─my mother.”

  Wham.

  It was the sound of Oshino’s foot─hitting the floor.

  Not from squashing the thing, I presumed.

  No, it had vanished.

  Just as it simply was─it must have returned from being there as a matter of course back to not being there as a matter of course.

  Sent back.

  “Ah─”

  At Mèmè Oshino, who stood unspeaking, unmoving.

  At Hitagi Senjogahara, who maintained her posture despite knowing it was over and who began sobbing, wailing out loud.

  Standing apart and gazing at them, Koyomi Araragi vacantly, vacuously wondered: Ah, maybe Senjogahara is a tsundere through and through and through.

  007

  The timeline.

  I had misconstrued the timeline.

  I was sure that Senjogahara encountering the crab and losing her weight had eaten away at her mother, who then fell for the money-grubbing sect─but I was told that in reality, her mother had fallen for it long before Senjogahara ever encountered the crab and lost her weight.

  I should’ve been able to figure that out with some thought.

  Unlike stationery tools like box cutters and staplers, cleats aren’t something you just happen to reach out and find nearby. That word coming up should have tipped me off then and there that Senjogahara had been on the trac
k team at the time─that she’d been in middle school. There was no way she could have been in high school when even gym classes were off limits and she belonged to the no-extracurriculars club.

  Apparently, the exact point at which her mother fell for the religion─started to believe in it─was when Senjogahara was in fifth grade. Back in elementary school, before even Hanekawa knew her.

  And according to Senjogahara.

  In those days─she was a girl who was always ill.

  Not as her positioning, but as a matter of fact.

  Then, at a certain point, she was stricken with a terrible sickness that everyone has heard of. Her condition was such that she had only one chance out of ten of surviving and doctors indeed wanted to throw in the towel.

  That’s when─

  Senjogahara’s mother began looking for solace.

  Or should we say, was taken advantage of.

  Probably totally unrelated to that─though “No one can know for sure whether or not it was unrelated,” Oshino opined─Senjogahara underwent major surgery and managed to be that one out of ten. The faint surgery scar that supposedly remained on her back was another thing I might have noticed, had I observed her nude body in detail at her home, but demanding that of me would border on cruel.

  I do admit that accusing her of just trying to show off her body when she started dressing herself from the top down, facing me head-on, was indeed cruel.

  Some feedback at least, she’d said.

  In any case, thanks to Senjogahara’s recovery, her mother─only became more absorbed with the religion’s teachings.

  Because of her piety─her daughter had been saved.

  She’d fallen for a classic trap.

  It’s what you might call a symptomatic case.

  Still, the household itself─somehow persisted. I have no way of knowing what kind of creed of what group this was, but not bleeding its believers dry─had to be their basic policy at least. Senjogahara’s father’s ample income and their family starting out affluent certainly helped─but as the years went on, her mother’s piety, her absorption, only worsened in degree.

  The household was merely persisting.

  Senjogahara’s relationship with her mother began to sour.

  It was one thing up through the time she graduated from elementary school─but after she began middle school, they barely spoke. Looking back, with that in mind, at what I learned from Hanekawa about Senjogahara’s middle-school persona is to understand just how warped it was.

  Really, it was like─an attempt at vindication.

  Superhuman.

  In middle school, Senjogahara was almost superhuman.

  And─maybe it was to assure her mother: I can do this, we don’t need any religion.

  As much as their relationship had soured.

  She probably never was an active girl, at heart.

  If she was always ill in grade school, then even more so.

  She must have been forcing it.

  But it was, more likely than not, counterproductive.

  A vicious circle.

  The better she did, and the more exemplary she became─the more her mother must have thanked the religion’s teachings.

  The counterproductive, vicious circle wound on─

  Her third year of middle school.

  It happened when graduation was around the corner.

  Originally having joined for her daughter’s sake, somewhere along the way Senjogahara’s mother’s logic got flipped around to the point that she was offering her daughter to one of the cult’s executive members. No, maybe that, too, was for her daughter’s sake─the thought is too much to bear.

  Senjogahara resisted.

  With her cleats she wounded the leader badly enough that he bled from his forehead.

  As a result─

  Their family fell apart.

  It was in ruins.

  Robbed wholesale.

  Losing everything they owned, their home, their land─and even taking on debt.

  They were all but literally bled dry.

  Although the divorce was only finalized last year according to Senjogahara, and it must have been as a high school student that she started to live in the Tamikura Apartments, it was already all over when she was in middle school.

  All over.

  That’s why.

  That’s why Senjogahara─during that halfway period between being a middle schooler and a high schooler─came across it.

  A crab.

  “You see, Araragi. The omoshi-kani is an omoishi-gami,” Oshino said. “Do you understand? Omoishi as in ‘thinking upon,’ and omoi and shigami as in ‘thoughts’ and ‘clinging’─it has to do with inextricable bonds, shigarami. Doesn’t interpreting it that way explain why being deprived of weight also deprives people of their presences? People sealing away a memory when they’ve gone through too much is common fare in dramas and movies. If you want an analogy, that would be it. It’s a god that carries people’s thoughts in our place.”

  In other words, when she met the crab…

  Senjogahara─cut off her mother.

  She had offered Senjogahara to the leader like some sacrifice and not even tried to save her daughter, causing their family to fall apart, except maybe that wouldn’t have happened if the daughter hadn’t resisted at the time─Senjogahara had tormented herself. Then she quit.

  She stopped thinking about it.

  She rid herself of that weight.

  Freely, on her own.

  She had─cheated.

  She had sought─solace.

  “It’s a barter. A trade, equivalent exchange. Crabs are clad in armor and look durable, don’t they? That’s probably the idea here. Put a shell around your exterior. Preserve what’s dear, enveloping it with an exoskeleton. All the while bubbling foam that vanishes right away. I won’t have them.”

  He wasn’t kidding about not fancying crab.

  Although he seemed flippant, Oshino was actually─kind of gauche.

  “The character for ‘crab’ is made up of the ones for ‘solving’ and ‘insect,’ isn’t it? It’s a critter that breaks things down. Organisms that crisscross edges of water tend to fall under that rubric. What’s more, those guys are─equipped with scissors, two pairs at that.”

  As a result.

  Senjogahara was deprived of her weight─losing it, losing her thoughts, she was liberated from her suffering. Free of torment─she was able to give it all up.

  And when she did?

  She said things got─much easier.

  That was her honest feeling.

  In and of itself, being deprived of her weight wasn’t a big deal for Senjogahara. Yet─even so, like the lad who sold his shadow for ten pieces of gold, there wasn’t a day that it, things being easier, didn’t gnaw at her.

  But not because of any discord with others.

  Not because of any inconvenience in going about her life.

  Not because she can’t make any friends.

  Not because she lost everything.

  Simply because─she lost her thoughts, her burden.

  The five frauds.

  None of them seems to have anything to do with her mother’s religion─but even as Senjogahara only half-trusts the bunch, Oshino included, she lends them close to half of her trust─and you can say, that, there, is her expression of regret. Not to mention visiting the hospital out of sheer habit─

  There’s nothing to it.

  I got it all wrong, from the very start to the very end.

  All this time after being deprived of her weight, Senjogahara─

  Hasn’t resigned herself.

  Hasn’t given up on anything.

  “It’s not necessarily bad, you know,” Oshino argued. “Confronting a painful experience isn’t a must. It’s not like you’re great just ’cause you do. If you don’t feel like it, it’s totally fine to run away. Even if it’s ditching your daughter or taking refuge in religion, that’s your own choice. Especially in this ca
se, getting back your thought and burden at this late stage won’t do a thing, right? Missy, who stopped feeling tormented, will torment herself again, but that won’t bring back her mother or restore her wrecked family.”