by Nisioisin
Loved him so much I became a monster.
I was never able to tell Araragi that I loved him─
“It was senseless. It was reckless. It was pointless─”
“That’s not true, Hanekawa.”
And then.
That moment─a lengthy sword came swooping down from the night sky.
It pierced straight through the Tyrannical Tiger’s neck to stitch it to the ground.
That great katana─I nyew it.
I knew what it was.
Its name─the enchanted blade Kokorowatari.
The aberration slayer, unparalleled in all history─
“……ck!”
“It might’ve been senseless. It might’ve been reckless. But─it wasn’t pointless. If you hadn’t risked your life and delayed this tiger from burning this place down by ten seconds, I wouldn’t have made it in time.”
His dark hair had grown so much longer since spring break.
His body was small and fit.
He was already in tatters, from his skin to his clothes, and he was missing a shoe.
How terrible the torment and trials he must have endured to be standing here now─his appearance was enough to tell the tale.
“And that would have made me cry.”
Then, with the hilt still in his hands.
Araragi─smiled.
065
“…Ah, ahh─”
Araragi.
Araragi, Araragi.
Araragi, Araragi, Araragi─
I felt a burning pain all along my skin.
The burns covering my body hurt now that my consciousness had thrust its way back to the surface─but it didn’t bother me one bit.
I burned far hotter in my chest.
Oh.
So Tsukihi was right after all.
Envy was nothing─compared to the flames of love.
Just look at how the mere sight of Araragi made this fire roar─and it had only been a few days.
It felt like we were meeting for the first time in a century.
“Araragi…why are you here?”
“Hey, what sort of stupid question is that, Hanekawa?”
That hurts, he added.
“You’re in trouble. How could I not come running to your side?”
“Ahaha… Listen to you.”
I couldn’t help but laugh.
Seriously, listen to you.
You were off on some grand adventure with Mayoi and Miss Kanbaru until just now.
Look at how battered you’ve gotten yourself again.
Hurt all over, covered in wounds.
No doubt having done many senseless things.
No doubt having done many reckless things.
But…
You didn’t do a thing that was pointless, did you.
“Well, actually,” he said, “I tossed everything aside and came running when I saw you in casual clothes in the pic you sent me!”
“Hold on, hold on, hold on.”
I really wanted that to be a joke.
And those clothes were his, too.
Plus, most of it had gone up in flames.
And there, under Araragi─growled the tiger.
The Tyrannical Tiger growled.
“Oops.”
Araragi saw this and pulled the blade from its throat in a single motion.
He seemed used to it.
How much hell had he been through over these few short days? Was his warrior level higher, or was I just imagining it?
“Um, Black Hanekawa…I guess? At the moment. Wait, you’d be Hanekawa either way… But you still have those ears and stuff, and your hair is white─”
“It’s all me.”
“I see.”
Nodding, he took the Tyrannical Tiger, on the verge of death─grabbed that mass of my emotions, still stubbornly smoldering, by the neck and dragged it in front of me.
He took that heavy, massive beast that seemed to weigh easily more than a thousand pounds.
And brought it to me.
“You’re not exorcizing it, are you?”
Sorry, but I went and read that whole letter, he said.
So he’d gone back to his room before running over here─no, that’s exactly why he knew where “here” was.
“I pierced its vitals with Kokorowatari, so it’s not gonna last long. If you want to absorb it, you’d better do it fast.”
“……”
If he read that…then he understood everything.
Including the fact that I would be gone.
Or at least─that I would no longer be the same me.
He knew that as he was saying this.
“Are you okay with that, Araragi?”
Even so.
Even though I knew he did, I asked him in words if he knew.
I clung on to his kindness.
Save me─
I, who refused to speak those words until the very end.
“Are you okay with me not being me anymore?”
“Like I said─what kind of a stupid question is that, Hanekawa?”
Yet he replied immediately.
“You just said it yourself. No matter what happens, it’s all you. You might change, but you’re still you. Don’t worry. I’m not going to make any special exception for you. If you become a bad person, I’ll hate you. If you do bad things, I’ll get angry at you. If people resent you, I’ll stick up for you. If you get stupid─well, I’ll even help you study.”
If you cry, I’ll comfort you.
Saying so, he─
Patted my head.
“………nkk!”
This one act.
Caused my heart─to be engulfed in flames.
I couldn’t even describe it as hot anymore.
Right.
I always─wanted someone to do that to me.
I wanted someone to stroke me gently like that.
I wanted someone to touch me, gently.
“Hey, Araragi?”
“Hm?”
“I love you, Araragi,” I said.
“Can we date with the intent to get married?”
I was finally able to say it.
Just that much─and it took me nearly half a year.
Araragi looked the tiniest bit startled by my sudden confession before his expression turned into a troubled smile.
“I see,” he said. “I’m super glad to hear it. But I’m sorry. I happen to have a girlfriend.”
“Yeah. I know.”
I raised my head and looked straight ahead of me.
Room 201, Tamikura Apartments.
She would be in there─sleeping, alongside her dad.
“Do you love her more than you love me?”
“Yeah.”
It was a mean question, but he gave an honest answer.
I was so happy that he did.
But of course, more than that, it hurt.
“Ahhh… I’ve been rejected.”
Right.
This was it.
Correct.
Confess, then get rejected.
I felt so sad.
I’d been talking about traveling the world and discovering myself─when I’d never experienced this sorrow?
What self-discovery, what self-creation?
Without heartbreak─how could I go on a trip to mend my broken heart?
I was never able to say, “Save me.”
But I did say, “I love you.”
I was able to say it.
Araragi noticed my feelings a long time ago, of course. He found out before the culture festival.
Actually, he found out all over again if he read the note in his room.
But it wasn’t enough that he knew it.
I needed to let him know.
I needed a reply from him.
He needed to let me know.
Ho
w he felt about me.
I finally got my reply─and.
I was rejected, and was able to feel hurt.
I reached out my hand and touched the Tyrannical Tiger’s forehead─
I patted the head of this third me.
I was doing to the still-burning flames of my emotions what I was so happy to have done to me.
I stroked my smoldering feelings.
An energy drain.
For the last time.
The burns across my body began to heal─and as they did, waves of feeling began to surge into me.
Dark emotions that had pooled and accumulated for eighteen years.
And stress.
Everything I had forced onto Black Hanekawa, onto the Tyrannical Tiger, was now, with interest─coming back into me.
“Unh… Uh-unnnh…”
Why was it?
By the time I realized.
“Unh… Wuuuh… W-Waaahh.”
By the time I realized, I was crying.
Maybe I couldn’t bear the overflowing emotions, maybe it was the pain of the stress they brought with them, or maybe, after all, it was my sadly broken heart─but right in front of Araragi.
Without a care if anyone saw me.
Like a child.
Like a newborn child, I wailed.
“Waaaaah, ah, ah, unh, uwaaaaahhh, hic, hic… Waaaaaaaaaahhhhh!”
Which is why I feel this was the day─
I could be born at last.
Just as he’d promised, Araragi comforted me until the tears stopped.
Not saying a word.
He spent the night gently stroking my head.
066
The epilogue.
Or maybe, let’s consider everything until now the prologue.
My tale begins today.
First is the question of what Araragi was up to these few days, skipping school, but he stubbornly kept his mouth shut and refused to tell me a thing. Well, Miss Kanbaru was present the next day like normal (and aside from the bandage on her left arm, she didn’t seem to be covered with injuries like Araragi); he also said I didn’t need to worry about Mayoi and that the temporarily severed pairing between him and Shinobu was now back, so it all worked out well in the end─or at least that’s the way it seemed.
I still had no idea how Miss Gaen and li’l Episode were involved, or how they had interacted, but this is Araragi we’re talking about.
I’m sure something incredibly painful happened.
And that he overcame it.
I want to be that way too.
I also had a chance to speak to Shinobu, her pairing with Araragi now restored. Hearing of my experiences during his absence, she said:
“What ye’ve there is a kasha. While it may have no base, it was surely modeled on it or something of its ilk. I’d say ’twas an aberration created with something of that nature in mind rather than a bake-no-hi.”
“A kasha?” I asked, while also thinking about how this was the first time I was ever talking to Shinobu this way despite exchanging words with her multiple times as Black Hanekawa. “What might you mean?”
“Really, class president? Thou art ignorant of the kasha?”
“Oh, no, I’m certainly aware of what it is, but…” I was trying to be polite speaking to this aberration who had been alive for five hundred years, but it felt odd because she looked like an eight-or-so-year-old little girl. “…As I’m sure you’re aware, it was a tiger.”
“And I’d heard as much from the Afflicting Cat, which is why I had trouble coming up with this then─yet if this aberration was one of fire, then it surely must have been a kasha.”
“Oh…”
The kasha, or the Burning Chariot, is an aberration said to drag dead bodies into hell─which, now that I thought about it, was something the Tyrannical Tiger had said, too─and it was described in many cases as a cat aberration.
A cat.
─That woman has seen me.
─That alone is essential.
More things she had said.
In other words, seeing the Tyrannical Tiger was directly linked to a trip to hell, no ifs, ands, or buts─
“It wasn’t a cat, though, it was a tiger.”
“Similar enough, are they not?”
“And it wasn’t a chariot, but a tiger.”
“Then what about a jaguar? Is that not a type of chariot nowadays?”
“……”
A Jaguar?
So she was trying to say─that a flaming chariot was just as likely to be a flaming tiger?
That seemed like a coincidence…but then the name came from Miss Gaen.
No, it came from me, after all.
In that case.
“After thy Afflicting Cat, that aberration drawn across the street by a vehicle, we have a flaming chariot that draws the dead to hell─what an elegant connection, eh? Haha, and ’tis just as that Hawaiian-shirted boy says, meet an aberration and you’ll be drawn by aberrations.”
“This feels like it’s just turning into a word association game… Hmm─so if I understand you correctly, you’re saying that while there may not have been a base aberration like with the Afflicting Cat, the Tyrannical Tiger still wasn’t entirely original?”
“Not a thing exists that could be called entirely original─’tis the wall that any creator throughout history has inevitably encountered. Even Sekizen, in fact. The flaming tiger ye conjured is undoubtedly the product of all thy gathered knowledge and relationships, not some changed flame or flaming chariot alone. One may have a great deal of freedom, but one is never truly free.”
“So it’s like the saying, all art begins with imitation.”
“Oh, but what a terribly timid and masochistic way of thinking.” Shinobu shrugged and laughed. It was a gruesome laugh. “We ought to think of ourselves as continuing on in the tradition of our great forebears, should we not? Every one of us continues in the footsteps of another, and every one of us will have others continuing on from the paths we’ve tread. We take the ball we’ve received from our predecessors and pass it on to the next generation. Someday, someone may shoot that ball and score, but the match will only go on. ’Tis what we mean by lineage, and what we mean by tradition, and perhaps someone may follow after the Black Hanekawa or Tyrannical Tiger ye thought of.”
“Hmm.”
I wouldn’t want that happening.
But maybe there was still meaning in my folly if it could go on to become a lesson for later generations.
Even this worthless tale of mine.
Maybe it could be of use, I thought.
Well, now that Araragi had returned, I of course needed to leave the Araragi residence, like dough being pushed through a pasta maker─but he said, “No, don’t worry about it. I’ll sleep on the floor, so you can keep using my bed. In fact, I’ll sleep under the bed. I’ll even be your bed. I promise to close my eyes when you change and stuff, of course.”
His kind objection, though, only served to make me feel like my chastity was in danger, so I respectfully declined.
I was happy that he still treated me the same as always, but it also seemed to be his way of showing how unshaken his feelings were, and I couldn’t help but feel pained, too.
If I let Araragi keep me there any longer, maybe it was his chastity that was going to be endangered.
Karen did say that “He should just leave so you can become one of the kids in our family, Tsubasa” (how mean!), but of course that wasn’t happening.
Their family.
