by Nisioisin
And I couldn’t ask for that name, either.
Not much time after her mother’s suicide, this father, unrelated by blood, decided to remarry. Hanekawa wasn’t yet at the age where she felt any particular way about this─but as a result she was in a three-person family once again. She now found herself unrelated by blood to both of her parents.
I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel about that.
Was it that unfortunate of a situation?
Was I supposed to pity Hanekawa?
It didn’t do to declare her unfortunate simply because her life hadn’t followed a more conventional path─true, her birth mother had ended her life in an unfortunate way, but that unhappiness didn’t necessarily latch itself onto Hanekawa. Indeed, you could say she was fortunate to have a father who took her in and to have found herself with a new mother.
A lot of things had happened to her─
That didn’t mean on its own that her life was unfortunate.
So even if her father died from overwork after that, and she became a single child with a single mother again, only to find herself with another new father a year later, at last making her name “Hanekawa”─my opinion on the matter ought to stay the same.
It didn’t make sense to pity her.
We might feel bad for her first mother and the first father who died, but only those two. No one else.
Still, what a tumultuous life.
At that point, Hanekawa had yet to turn three─she was at an age where she didn’t understand anything yet. Yes, all she could do was go with the flow, no matter how ludicrous that flow may have been.
I’d misunderstood.
Good people like Hanekawa must have been blessed, I thought.
They must be loved by the gods, I thought.
I’d had the impression until then that good people were fortunate, and that bad people were unfortunate─but that’s not how it is.
Spending time with my family on holidays felt suffocating, so I’d leave the house. I lived the kind of life where worries as lukewarm as that counted as worries. But when it came to complicated family situations─
Hers was worlds apart.
It sounded so fake it was almost comical. I wouldn’t have believed it if anyone other than Hanekawa had told me─I’d have laughed them off. But I was at a loss for words because it was Hanekawa, someone who I knew would never tell such a crass joke. And so, after all the back and forth, she came to have two parents with no relation whatsoever to her.
A single mother and a single child.
A step, step, step─child.
“Sorry,” Hanekawa finished. She was apologizing to me. “That was mean of me, wasn’t it.”
How did I reply then?
Was I able to say─“Not really”?
Nope.
I asked her, Why? What are you talking about?
It was like I was forcing a confession out of her. How dense could I be? For someone as earnest as Hanekawa, it must have sounded like an accusation.
“Well, I’m just venting at you,” she said. “What are you supposed to say in this situation, right? You’d wonder, ‘Okay, so what,’ it’s not like it has anything to do with you in the first place─but then you start to feel a little pity for me until you feel guilty for pitying me when it doesn’t make sense to, right? You…felt bad just now, like you did something wrong, didn’t you?”
She’d nailed it.
It was mean of me, she said.
“I used you to cheer myself up.”
“……”
“I tried to feel better about myself by making you feel bad─I can’t even call it griping.”
It was the first time I’d ever seen Hanekawa so despondent.
The gauze on her face might have been adding to it.
My image of Tsubasa Hanekawa was of someone who stood firm and upright, who was strong, who was earnest─who was reliable, wise, fair─who was perfect.
But.
There’s no such thing as a perfect person.
“Still─I’m surprised you know all that,” I said. “Don’t they usually not tell kids about that kind of thing? Like, they’ll keep it a secret until your twentieth birthday or something.”
“Well, I had some very open parents. I knew about it from before I started elementary school,” Hanekawa said, still walking at the same pace. “I really do feel like I’m in their way.”
“……”
“But at the same time, they do have to consider how society sees them. You can’t toss your child away because your partner dies, and you can’t toss your child away because you’re getting remarried, either. I hear she tried to put me in a home─in the end, though, she didn’t feel like she could take people criticizing her because she let go of a tiny little child for her own selfish reasons.”
“………”
What was I supposed to say to that? But.
It happened, even in families related by blood. In fact, you could say it’s rare to find a family where everything is smooth sailing─all families hide some kind of discord and strain.
“That’s why I tried to become a good girl,” Hanekawa said. “I tried to become a serious class president ever since I was in elementary school─and I guess I have. What a well-behaved child I am, ha ha.”
Those words─remind me of what I’d hear later about Hitagi Senjogahara’s life. Hitagi Senjogahara in middle school, and Hitagi Senjogahara in high school─
Is that what it meant? That they shared more than a hairstyle?
But the differences between them were just as clear.
Because parents might be responsible for what their children do─but children don’t bear any responsibility at all for what their parents do.
“Maybe not a good girl. A normal girl.” Hanekawa continued as I kept silent. “People see it as some kind of trauma when you have a complicated family situation and assume all these things about you because of that, you know? I didn’t want people to think of me that way. That’s why─I decided I wasn’t going to let something like that change me.”
I don’t ever change.
No matter what.
“I was being a normal high school student, yes?”
“No…I’m not so sure about that one.”
Normal high school students don’t get the highest scores on national mock exams.
They can’t live such impeccable, irreproachable lives.
I’d meant it half-jokingly, as a way to clear the air, but─
“Maybe you’re right,” Hanekawa said with disappointment in her voice. “Maybe it does seep out in the end─maybe you can tell when people who aren’t normal force themselves to act like they are. Maybe they overdo it.”
“That’s not a bad thing─is it? It only means you’re living a better life.”
“No, it doesn’t. I mean, how typical. Because of her birth, because of her upbringing─she’s now such a good and well-behaved girl.”
Bouncing back from your misfortune to work hard.
Bouncing back from adversity to work hard.
Yes, that kind of stereotype did exist, but─
“Mm, well,” she said, “maybe that’s really it in my case.”
“But then…”
Maybe that really was it.
Ironically enough.
There was no other way to put it.
But then, that wasn’t a bad thing.
“What are you up to, Araragi?”
Suddenly.
Hanekawa changed the subject.
Her expression had completely shifted, too─back to her normal sociable smile.
Her usual expression─which was what made it so creepy.
Think of the conversation we were in the middle of.
“It’s Golden Week right now, you’re not using it to study?”
“Yes, it’s Golden Week… Why should I spend it studying?”
“Haha!” Hanekawa let out a cheerful laugh. “I use my holidays─to go on walks.”
&
nbsp; “……”
“I don’t want to be at home. Just the thought of spending all day together with those two parents of mine─makes me shudder.”
“Do you…have a bad relationship with them?”
“It’s a bigger problem than that,” Hanekawa said. “We don’t have a relationship. Me and my parents─and my dad and my mom, too. We’re a family, but we don’t talk.”
“Your dad and your mom, too?”
“Yeah. Maybe it’s because of me, but at some point, it was like neither of them had any affection for the other. I think it’d be better if they split up, but again, society─you do have to worry about how society sees you. They’re waiting until I’m an adult, is what they say. Even though they don’t have any relation to me whatsoever, ha ha.”
Don’t laugh.
You shouldn’t be talking about that kind of thing─while you laugh.
It wasn’t like her.
But what would be like her?
If the normal Hanekawa was the respectable, honorable Tsubasa Hanekawa─was this Hanekawa not those things?
Either way, I realized something then.
I figured it out.
Why I’d met Hanekawa during spring break.
If she used her holidays to go on walks, it didn’t mean just Golden Week. She’d walk during spring break, summer break, and more─meeting her there that day was of course a coincidence, but there was also a reason behind the coincidence.
“So that’s why I use my holidays to go on walks.”
“…I do think you’re being too sensitive,” I said, offering a harmless opinion.
It was the only thing I could bring myself to say.
I hated how shallow I was.
A family that didn’t relate to one another wasn’t a rare occurrence, either.
What was rare was that a girl like Hanekawa had grown up in that kind of family─though I was sure she’d hate that kind of rose-colored view, too.
I felt like I now had a decent understanding of why Hanekawa hated being treated like a celebrity. And why she insisted on thinking of herself as an average girl whose only notable quality is being a little on the serious side. That could’ve been my imagination talking again, a mistaken feeling of understanding, or something like sympathy─
“………”
But.
That’s when I realized all of a sudden.
The unimaginable and complicated family situation that Tsubasa Hanekawa, model student and class president among class presidents, had to deal with─I understood that. It had been a little too complicated for me to fathom at first, but I now had a clear grasp thanks to her cogent explanation. The idea that her background might have acted as the backbone of her personality, her excessively serious nature (and how she didn’t want people thinking that)─I’d been persuaded of that, too. But.
But.
That didn’t explain why half of her face was covered in gauze.
It didn’t begin to explain that.
Wasn’t that what we were supposed to be talking about?
“…Right,” she said.
And again─Hanekawa looked as though she’d failed.
This time it seemed like she’d failed plain and simple.
“What am I saying…” she muttered. “I actually am just venting at you.”
“I mean, it’s fine with me─”
“Promise you won’t tell anyone?”
She didn’t have to tell me.
She’d only happened across me and didn’t need to go that far─it was fine if all she’d done was vent.
But no matter who she was with, she tried to be irreproachable, to be right, to be sincere, so now she had to tell me why the gauze was on her face.
Even though there was no need.
Even though I had no right to hear it.
“I…promise.”
“My dad hit me this morning,” she let the words out with a smile.
A bashful, almost embarrassed smile.
That, too─was the same as ever.
I only seem to be able to notice these things in hindsight, but I think this might have been the last straw that triggered Tsubasa Hanekawa. Not that her father hit her─but her telling me about it.
That I learned about it.
If that wasn’t stressful─then what was?
“He hit you? That’s─”
But I didn’t realize then.
I was just surprised.
No, you could go so far as to say I was scared.
A father hitting his own daughter? It seemed─impossible to me. No, I’d never even considered the possibility. I thought it was something they made up in dramas and movies. Regardless of blood relations or family situations─it was something that should never happen.
I looked at Hanekawa’s face.
The concealed left side.
It wasn’t an injury from too much loving, playful contact─
“That’s not all right!”
She had to deal with discord and strain at home.
That in itself wasn’t tragic.
Everyone carries some kind of baggage─just as you shouldn’t discriminate against someone for their birth or upbringing, you shouldn’t pity or envy them, either. Even if they’re obvious, noticeable issues, it isn’t necessarily tragic or anything─that much is true.
But not if they get hit. That wasn’t all right.
Hanekawa explained why.
Why she got hit.
It didn’t begin to placate me, a third party to it─but I knew quite well that you shouldn’t interject yourself into someone else’s family life. Whether I was placated or not, my feelings didn’t have anything to do with it.
Basically, the same thing sometimes happened at school, too.
Hanekawa always wanted to be in the right, so it wasn’t rare for her to clash head-on with others─she just so happened to clash with her father this time around.
And he just so happened to answer her with violence.
“I thought you said─you didn’t have a relationship with anyone in your family?”
“Maybe too much so─or maybe I thought I could start one. Despite everything having balanced itself out. I guess that puts me in the wrong. I mean, just think about it, Araragi. If you were about forty─and some seventeen-year-old complete stranger starts mouthing off to you like she knows it all? You wouldn’t blame yourself if you got a little upset, if you lost your temper, don’t you think?”
“But still!”
A seventeen-year-old complete stranger?
What was that supposed to mean?
Why would she put it that way?
They may not have been related by blood, but she lived in the same house with him since she was three─weren’t they family?
“You’re saying you can’t blame someone for getting violent? Are you sure you should be saying that? Isn’t it the most unforgivable thing you─”
“Wh-Why not? It was just once.”
I’d flown straight off the handle.
I didn’t know why─I was probably mad at the way someone had treated Hanekawa, my personal savior. But all my anger did was chase her into a corner. She was trying to come up with some kind of compromise─while I was just brandishing the pure, unrefined truth at her.
The truth hurts.
It always does.
It was just once─she said.
If anything, I shouldn’t have made her say that.
What’s bad is bad, what’s inexcusable is inexcusable─it was Tsubasa Hanekawa’s style to be blunt about such things whether it was a friend or a teacher. So if she bluntly told one of her parents that what’s bad is bad, what’s inexcusable is inexcusable─then, even if she got hit for it, she’d have been able to stand tall and remain Tsubasa Hanekawa, if that were all.
And yet.
I made her say it.
Why not, it was just once─
The words─were a rejection of her whole life.
