by Nisioisin
She didn’t want to play with a devil.
She wanted to play with me.
Thus those three years of hers.
It would tie things up nicely if I close with some pretty line like, From now on I’ll play for the both of us. But I’d never be so shameless.
I’m not that kind of person.
Still, I want to learn from her tenacity. Because the tenacity to cling to your pursuits even beyond the grave is something I lack.
Which reminds me, I haven’t checked the newspaper yet today. Oh well, one day’s probably okay. Or two days, or three.
And maybe I can sleep soundly?
Blaming yourself isn’t the same as remorse.
Nor is beating yourself up.
That kind of self-flagellation isn’t punishment.
Having immersed yourself in an unproductive pastime, constantly looking back over your shoulder, reviewing the past─you need to turn around and face up to the rest of your life at some point.
Meetings and partings.
Seat assignments and class assignments.
By learning, and graduating, and then doing it all again, I’ll become an adult.
Obtaining something, losing something, experiencing, forgetting─that’s how I’ll shape my future self.
I will almost definitely forget this feeling.
That’s why I have to live out my current, and not past or future, self.
No.
I want to live it out.
The blades Araragi-senpai held began their work on my hair.
Shhhk.
It pained me, like it was my flesh and not my hair he was cutting, but that pain was a rare gift.
The experience I couldn’t have wished for.
“Kanbaru. I’m sure all kinds of people will think all kinds of things about what you did when they find out. There’ll be people who think you did the right thing, and people who think you did the wrong thing. But that’s not what this is about. Don’t pay any mind to what anybody else might say. Because you didn’t do the right thing, and you didn’t do the wrong thing,” my dear senior told me, evening out the tips of my hair. I couldn’t think of another time when he’d spoken so kindly to me. “What you did was your youth.”
Afterword
There probably isn’t a single person on Earth whose self-image matches up perfectly with how other people see them. I suppose it’s like the feeling most people get when they listen to a recording of their own voice: “That’s not how I sound.” Though in that case, the feeling of “that’s not how I sound” is not so much a disconnect as a rejection; nobody hears a recording of their own voice and thinks, “Whoa, that’s what my voice sounds like? Awesome!” The comparison is apt in that regard as well: I have a feeling there aren’t many people who, when they discover how other people see them (their image), think, “Whoa, that’s how people think of me? Awesome!” Obviously this is true when someone is being maligned, but even when they receive unexpectedly good reviews, they just end up thinking, “No way, you must have the wrong person,” or something… They say no one dislikes praise, but that isn’t really true, is it? All too often a compliment makes someone feel bad, and it’s not because they didn’t want a pat on the back, they just wanted one for something else. But even if our view of ourselves doesn’t totally jibe with the way other people see us, that doesn’t mean that one or the other is correct. If a false assumption goes unchallenged, does that make it true? If a misapprehension goes unchallenged, does it become reality? There are various schools of thought─that there is only one truth, or that there are as many truths as there are people─but the fact is that there’s no such thing as truth to begin with. There are just as many misapprehensions as there are people. That’s my feeling, anyway. The logical extension of that is that there is no such thing as the self, no such thing as being like oneself, but maybe that’s going too far? My apologies if I’ve invited any misunderstanding.
As it happens, NISIOISIN is quite fond of the phrase, “At the risk of being misunderstood,” and he uses it just as much in everyday conversation as he does in his work. In that sense, you could call this a novel that happily risks being misunderstood. Or no, that’s not true. Better to call it a novel that very much fears being misunderstood. People have already got the wrong idea simply because it’s narrated by Suruga Kanbaru, and frankly I’m shaking in my boots. Then again, maybe it’s impossible for people not to fear being misunderstood, even if all this truth doesn’t exist and there are as many misapprehensions as there are people stuff isn’t just fancy rhetoric. With that in mind, then, this has been HANAMONOGATARI “Suruga Devil,” a novel written Lucifercent as a hobby. Which is what, 666 percent? Search me.
Miss Kanbaru’s first cover* has been eloquently rendered for us by VOFAN. There was talk of putting Miss Numachi on the cover, but she’s scary. She also hates being in the spotlight, apparently. Though someday I’d really like to try my hand at writing “Roka God”─is the kind of remark that got me into this mess in the first place. It’s not that I want to be misunderstood! That’s about the size of things.
* Editor’s Note: BAKEMONOGATARI was originally published in two halves in Japan, and Kanbaru did not appear on the cover of either volume.
NISIOISIN