by Nisioisin
Everyone longs for an existence different from their own.
To become something other than what they are, to possess what they don’t have.
Different appearance, different character, different environment.
The righteous are jealous of villains, and villains are jealous of the righteous.
That’s humanity for you─we’ll even covet unhappiness, if it belongs to someone else.
Yes.
Now that Numachi was gone.
Having gathered up the collection she’d assembled, I finally realized.
Right. I hadn’t hated her.
“I─envied her.”
With that recognition, I felt like I’d graduated.
From something.
032
The epilogue, or maybe, the punch line of this story.
Or maybe I should call it the finish line instead.
That night, I had this dream.
“The motivation for justice is almost always its envy of evil. And the motivation for evil is an antipathy for justice. Old people are always lecturing the young because they’re jealous of youth, while children’s disobedience springs first and foremost from envying adults’ stock of experience. Underlings can’t wait to supplant their strutting superiors, while those superiors long for their days as an underling with no responsibilities. The poor dream of being wealthy, while the wealthy covet the freedom of the poor. Single people long to be married, but once they have a family they mourn their old life as a swinging bachelor. Wasn’t this story basically like that for you, Suruga?”
At this point I was thoroughly used to my mother’s high-handed manner of speaking, but something was different about that night’s dream. This time, I answered back.
“No, mother, it was not,” I said.
Recalling as I said it, Oh yeah, this is the stiff, formal tone I used when I spoke to her.
It wasn’t that I felt distant from her.
It’s just that I felt like I needed to adopt that attitude in dealing with her; that’s the kind of person she was─there was respect, but there was also fear.
Either way, it was no way to talk to your mother.
But I kept it up anyway.
It was too late to change.
“This was a story about having fun with an old acquaintance I happened to run into─”
My mother appeared to snort derisively at my words, and from the fact that she said nothing more, maybe she took them as nothing but bluster.
Well, so be it.
The Elektra Complex aside, mothers and daughters had to confront, and to face off against, each other─because I knew that occasion would present itself someday, there was no need to eschew conflict in these dreams and hallucinations.
Kaiki seemed to have some emotional attachment to my mother, but that didn’t mean I had to feel the same way─he said it himself: just because someone likes someone doesn’t mean I have to like them too.
And the idea that I should be grateful to her for leaving me with that insane object is messed up to begin with─though that’s probably not quite so black and white as it appears, either.
The time would surely come when I would be grateful to my mother.
The day would arrive when I could understand how she felt.
But that day was not today, and it wasn’t tomorrow.
Until I pulled ahead of my mother, or at the very least caught up with her─I would never understand how she felt.
“If you can’t be medicine, be poison. Otherwise you’re nothing but water─though that girl, who wasn’t medicine or poison, and was water, might have been muddy water. What about you, Suruga, what are you?”
“A flash flood? And water you?”
“Groan.”
Not even a smile.
Well, it was a terrible joke.
And that─is why I’m not interesting.
“’Kay, mother. See you.”
“Yeah, see you.”
And then I woke up.
Or rather, I was woken up.
And it wasn’t by my grandma or grandpa; I was woken up by my dear senior of all people.
“Huh? Wha? Why the hell are you at my bedside, Araragi-senpai?! I-It can’t be…”
“Don’t worry, that’s not it.”
Apparently he’d come to drop in on me, and my grandma had given him an all-access pass to my bedroom. You can go right on in. Go ahead and wake her up.
Such lax security.
“What do you know about security, sleeping buck naked like that… You know, seeing you naked doesn’t do a thing for me anymore.”
“That line deserves a lawsuit.”
“Even seeing my little sisters naked is more arousing.”
“A double trial.”
“I’ve got two sisters so make it a triple.”
“When do you see your sisters totally naked?”
“When I strip off their clothes, for starters.”
“How about we skip the trial and get straight to the sentence?”
“Guess I’d better hurry up and get tidying, then.”
And just like that he rousted me from bed.
It was Saturday, and by rights I should have been at school, but I’d slept until noon─so I couldn’t really complain about being woken up like that.
But my showdown with Numachi had, in a way, been more intense than my all-night run, so I probably needed the sleep.
My muscles were sore, yes… But there was psychic damage as well, which was no surprise seeing as I had just been through a paranormal experience.
I’d like to rest just a little bit longer, if you don’t mind─I thought, but I couldn’t give my senior the cold shoulder when he’d come all this way to clean my room, and for the first time in a while.
The appointment for today’s cleanup had been made during our previous encounter─and to tell the truth, I’d planned to ask him for advice if I hadn’t resolved things with Numachi by this point.
His visit was my insurance.
Maybe that was a sign of weakness on my part, but I’m not sure I would’ve had the courage to act without that policy in place.
“Damn, look at this mess! I’ve only been gone a little while.”
“That’s how I roll.”
“Why so proud… I’ll never catch up at this rate, even if I clean the place twice a month.”
“No, no, no. This is the last time I’m going to impose on your kindness.”
“Oh yeah?”
I got dressed, and together we started cleaning up my room─in the past, when he was nice enough to do this for me, I just waited in the hall so as not to get in the way, but this time he let me help him.
It was my room, after all, so helping was the least I could do.
As we worked, I told him about everything that had happened since the start of the new term─now I could tell him.
When all was said and done, and when I said everything that had been done, the whole thing didn’t seem like such a big deal─still, I wanted to tell him.
“Wow. You really stuck to your guns. And─sounds like it was rough.”
Those were his thoughts on the matter.
“No…it wasn’t so bad.”
“Sure it was. You’re always too hard on yourself, for better or for worse. If it was me, I would’ve thrown in the towel.”
“But it was you I was trying to emulate…”
“Haven’t I told you? You’re really overestimating me─you’re a way more amazing person than I am.”
He wasn’t just blowing smoke up my ass, and he wasn’t saying it just to make me feel better. He must have meant it.
But I still think that if it were him, the tale would have developed in a neater way.
“Oh, Araragi-senpai. I’ve got a favor to ask.”
“Mm?”
“It’s about the mummified devil parts I collected from Numachi. I’m having a pretty hard time disposing of them. Do you think you could take care of them for me?”
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“I don’t see why not, but what should I do?”
“I was thinking you could give them to Shinobu as a snack.”
“Ah…gotcha. That’ll certainly take care of the problem once and for all. But, uh, don’t they have some kind of cultural value?”
“The second I got my hands on them, they ran out of luck.”
They were fresh out of their infernal luck.
I could always sell them to Kaiki, but if I did, who knows what nefarious uses he might put them to.
It felt right somehow for them to provide nutrition to a little girl.
A fitting end for a devil.
“Other people’s misery is like sweet nectar, huh? Doesn’t make much sense to me. Listening to people’s pity-bragging would just bore the shit out of me.”
“I bet it would. There can’t be many people unhappier than you, my dear senior.”
“Dumbass. I’m the happiest person in the world.”
“Sure you are. But what would you do? If you could wish for anything, what would you wish for?”
“Tough call. I’ve got too many wishes, I don’t think I’d be able to decide.”
“Hm…I guess that’s true for most people.”
That’s the thing about wishes.
There are too many to choose from.
And you shouldn’t choose.
You really shouldn’t make that kind of pick.
Because the second you choose─your wish stops being a wish and becomes a strong will.
The kind of strong will that’s apt to wound you, and others.
You’ve got to be conscious of that.
You can’t just lightly, childishly pick a wish like you’re blowing out the candles on a birthday cake or sitting on Santa’s lap.
Even three wishes is narrowing it down too much.
You should be choosing, not from among wishes neatly lined up on a shelf─but something else entirely.
Like who you are.
Or how you live your life.
Or what path you’re going to take─that kind of thing.
I want it to be─that kind of thing.
“Only one, huh? I think I know what it would be. If only Karen weren’t my sister…”
“Anything but that.”
“No, you’re right, if she wasn’t my sister anymore that would defeat the whole purpose. Maybe if she was my stepsister… No, but the stepsister thing would be like exploiting a legal loophole, I’d feel guilty. I want her to be my real sister, all open and aboveboard. In which case, yeah, I’d want the law to be changed instead─”
“Is Karen…going to be okay?”
He took my casual question seriously and sank into thought, which made me seriously worried.
“What are you worried about? Karen’s going to be fine,” he assured me. “I’m going to take good care of her, for the rest of our lives.”
“…”
I was speechless.
Where was life going to take this guy?
I was more unsettled than worried.
But─as long as they’re mere wishes and nothing more, then no restrictions.
Never mind three, have however many you want.
“In any case,” my senior Araragi switched gears─he acted as though all of it had been idle chatter, which I don’t think was true, but in any event, he switched gears. “It doesn’t matter whether wishes come true or not. Wishes are something you grant yourself, which means they may not actually come true, but I think the act of wishing is already worthwhile in and of itself.”
“Wishing─in and of itself?”
“Yeah. Whether or not you can get what you wished for, knowing what it’d be is a good thing to learn about yourself. What do you desire, what do you want to be, what kind of person are you─if you don’t learn that about yourself, you’ll lose your way in a snap.”
“I wonder if that’s why that person left me the Monkey’s Paw…”
“That person? Oh, you mean your mother? Yeah… Actually, who knows. Children will never understand what the hell goes on in their parents’ heads.”
He sounded oddly emotional about the subject.
Maybe he was thinking about the car his parents bought for him─because he’d always said he didn’t get along with them.
I didn’t know what the deal was, and I wasn’t going to ask.
Hmm.
I see.
I always thought that person had never treated me like a child─but actually.
She may have treated me like a daughter all along.
As her dear and only daughter.
…Well, that’s what you call wishful thinking.
It took hours to remove all the strata of useless junk from my room, and when that was out of the way, my plans for the day were only half complete.
After enjoying a little tea with my grandparents, I spread out some newspaper on the floor of my now sparklingly clean room, put a towel around my shoulders, and turned my back towards my senior Araragi, who stood there with scissors at the ready.
“You sure this is what you want?”
“Yup. Go wild.”
I decided on this second half of the plan only the night before, so he hadn’t known─opening and closing the scissors with a snip-snip he said, “What a waste. This hairstyle really suits you.”
“Yeah, I like it too, but it’s no good for playing sports.”
“You know, this is the third time I’ve cut a girl’s hair.”
“What a life…”
“So I’m actually pretty used to it. But don’t you have a salon you go to?”
“I do,” I said, “but I wanted you to cut it.”
“How come?”
“Because this is a watershed moment.”
Huh, he nodded.
I don’t think he had any idea what I meant, and I truly appreciated that he didn’t ask.
“Oh. Araragi-senpai, do you mind driving me somewhere?”
“Sure, where?”
“I was thinking of visiting Numachi’s grave.”
“Ah… In that case, we can have Tsukihi find out where it is for you.”
“Yes… Part of me wants to carry on Numachi’s legacy and find the remaining pieces of the devil, but I don’t think I’ll actually do it.”
“That’s for the best. You can’t take the whole burden on yourself. With devils, it’s safer to have them scattered in pieces anyway─okay, ready? Here I go.”
He announced his intention to begin─and misted my hair with a spray bottle.
“…”
Roka Numachi.
She’d compared her own life not to a tale but to an afterword─I guess she thought of it like the reminiscences of a former thespian looking back over her career, in which case her collections (both unhappiness and devil) were like the hobbies of a retiree.
I don’t believe for a second that I saved her.
In no way is it true that I rescued her.
Sure, maybe I liberated her from an unproductive pastime, but who in the world could deny her that wasted time?
I’m certainly not her parents, so who am I to deny someone her right to waste her time?
So in the end I feel like I butted in─and what an ungrateful wretch that makes me, if Numachi was the one who returned my left arm to me.
But what else could I have done?
And now, what else can I do but pray?
Pray that our showdown─our first showdown ever, was fun for her.
Like putting faith in God, like importuning the Devil.
All I can do is pray.
Even if her end as a human was wretched, her end as an aberration wasn’t─I can only pray.
I like to think that what was keeping her was the regret that she’d never seriously pitted herself against me, Suruga Kanbaru.