by Nisioisin
“Hm.” She pulled away. “So it looks like there was no love scene between you two.”
“…Excuse me? Were you checking if Hanekawa and I were in each other’s arms? So you can even detect exactly how strong her scent is… You’re incredible, you know that?”
“That wasn’t all. Now I know what you smell like, too. I’ll at least give you prior warning that from now on, you should act under the assumption that I’m observing your every move.”
“I don’t know what to say to that, other than I wish you wouldn’t…”
But still, what Senjogahara had done was no trivial feat for the average person, so her sense of smell must have been excellent. But hold on, I thought… I’d fought with Hachikuji not once but twice while Senjogahara was gone. Could her scent really have not rubbed off on me? Maybe Senjogahara wasn’t bothering to mention it. Maybe the first fight the two of us had in full view of her was throwing her off. Or Hachikuji could have been using an unscented shampoo. Whatever. It didn’t seem to matter.
“So, Oshino told you what was going on, right? Hurry up and tell me, Senjogahara. What do we need to do to get her to where she’s trying to go?”
To be honest, Oshino’s words had stuck with me all this time─I mean the bit about whether or not I’d be lucky enough for missy tsundere (a.k.a. Senjogahara) to come out and tell me.
That is─he’d prefaced.
Which is why I found myself coaxing Senjogahara to give me the full story─Hachikuji was looking up at Senjogahara worriedly, too.
“It’s apparently the other way around,” Senjogahara divulged. “Araragi. It seems I need to apologize to you─that’s what Mister Oshino told me.”
“Huh? Oh, wait, have you changed the subject? You really are good at getting off one and onto another. The other way around? You need to apologize to me?”
“To borrow Mister Oshino’s words,” Senjogahara continued, ignoring my questions. “Say we take a certain fact─and two people observe it according to their points of view and reach different conclusions. In such a case, there’s no true way to determine which point of view is the right one─there is no way to prove yourself right in this world.”
“……”
“But it’s equally wrong to determine that you must be mistaken in that case─according to him. He really does talk like he sees through everything, doesn’t he?”
I hate it, she said.
“Wait… What are you talking about, Senjogahara? Well, not you, but Oshino? How does that apply to our situation here─”
“He says it’s very simple to be freed of the snail─the Lost Cow. Explaining it in words would be very simple. This is what Mister Oshino told me─you’ll be lost as long as you follow the snail, and you won’t be lost if you distance yourself from it.”
“You follow it─and that’s why you get lost?”
What was that supposed to mean? It was so simple it didn’t make sense. Like he had left some words out. In fact, they seemed somewhat off the mark for him. I looked at Hachikuji, but she wasn’t reacting. Senjogahara’s words did seem to be having some sort of effect on her, though─her lips were shut.
She said nothing.
“In other words, there’s no need for an exorcism or for prayer. No one’s been possessed, and no one’s being harmed─apparently. That much is the same as what happened with me and that crab. And what’s more─with the snail, the targeted person is actually approaching the aberration. Not unconsciously or subconsciously, either. Entirely of their own volition. They’re just going along with the snail. They’re choosing to follow after it because that’s what they want. And that’s why they get lost. Which is why you need to distance yourself from the snail, Araragi─that’s all that needs to happen.”
“Hold on, we’re not talking about me here. We’re talking about Hachikuji. Anyway, in that case─how does that make any sense? It’s not like Hachikuji wants to follow this snail around─how could that possibly be what she’s trying to do?”
“That’s what I’m trying to say. Apparently─it’s the other way around.”
The tone of Senjogahara’s voice was no different from usual, her same old flat one. You couldn’t read any emotions at all from it.
She was no actor.
But─she seemed to be in a bad mood.
A very bad mood.
“Apparently,” she continued, “the aberration known as the Lost Cow doesn’t make you lose your way to your destination. You lose it on the way back.”
“O-On the way back?”
“It doesn’t keep you from getting there, it keeps you from returning─according to him.”
It wasn’t about going─but about coming back?
Coming back… Come back where?
To your own home?
Visiting and─arriving?
“Okay, fine,” I said. “But─so what? I get what you’re trying to say. S-Still─Hachikuji’s home… It’s not as if she’s trying to return there, is it? She’s clearly trying to get to her destination, Miss Tsunade’s home─”
“That’s why─I need to apologize to you, Araragi. I do, I know I do, but please, let me explain. I wasn’t doing it out of malice…or even intentionally. I was sure that I was the one who was mistaken.”
“……”
I didn’t understand what she was trying to say─but.
I could tell─it felt pregnant with meaning.
“How could I not be? There was something strange about me for more than two years. It was only last week that I finally became normal again. So if something happened─I couldn’t help but think that I was the one who was mistaken.”
“Hey…Senjogahara.”
“It was like me and the crab─the Lost Cow can only be seen by someone who has a reason to. Which is why it presented itself to you, Araragi.”
“…No, like I’ve been saying, the snail didn’t present itself to me, but Hachikuji─”
“Yes. Hachikuji.”
“……”
“Araragi, this is what I’m trying to say. You felt awkward because it was Mother’s Day, you fought with your little sisters, and you don’t want to go home. So that girl over there, Hachikuji?”
Senjogahara pointed at Hachikuji.
Or at least, she must have meant to─
Her direction was totally off.
“I can’t see her.”
I was startled─and my eyes hurried over to get a look at Hachikuji.
The little girl with intelligent features.
With bangs so short her eyebrows were showing, with her hair in pigtails.
Seeing her, carrying that large backpack─
She somehow resembled a snail.
007
Once upon a time, long long ago─would take you too far into the past, this was about ten years back. There was once a married couple whose relationship reached an end. A husband and a wife. Together they were a pair. A pair that was the envy of all around them, a pair that everyone was sure would be happy, but in the end, their matrimonial relation was a short-lived thing lasting less than ten years.
I don’t think it’s a question of right or wrong.
That was normal, too.
It was even normal for that couple to have had an only daughter─and after a dismal little back and forth, it was decided that the girl’s father would be the one to look after her.
The marriage was a quagmire by its last days. It didn’t end so much as it collapsed, to the point that you were afraid it might have turned bloody had the couple lived under the same roof for even one more year─and the father made the mother vow never to see their only daughter again.
The agreement had nothing to do with the law.
She was half-forced into the vow.
But their only daughter wondered.
Was her mother really forced into it?
The daughter, whose father made her vow likewise that she would never see her mother again, wondered─did her mother, who had loved her father so much, b
ut who now hated him so much, hate her too? How could her mother make such a vow otherwise─if she was half-forced into it, what about the other half? But the daughter could say the same of herself.
She had made a similar vow to never see her mother again.
Right.
Just because it was her mother.
Just because it was her only daughter.
Eternity was not a quality of any relationship.
Whether forced or not, a vow can’t be taken back once made. Only the shameless spoke of the fruits of their own decisions in the passive, and not active, voice─the daughter had been raised in this manner by none other than her mother.
Her father took custody of her.
She was made to abandon her mother’s surname.
But─even such thoughts fade.
With time, even such sorrows fade.
Because time is a thing that is kind to us all alike.
So kind it can be cruel.
Time passed, and the nine-year-old only daughter was eleven.
She was stunned.
She couldn’t remember her mother’s face─no, it wouldn’t be accurate to say that. The girl could picture it vividly. But─she was no longer sure whether the face she remembered was her mother’s.
It was the same even with photographs.
The pictures of her mother that her father secretly kept with him─she could no longer tell if the woman in them was her mother.
Time.
All thoughts fade.
All thoughts deteriorate.
Which is why─
The daughter decided to go meet her mother.
On the second Sunday of that May.
On Mother’s Day.
There was no way she could tell her father, of course not, nor could she tell her mother about it in advance. The daughter had no idea how her mother was faring─and also.
If she hated her?
If she saw her as a nuisance?
Or─if she’d forgotten her?
It would be such a shock.
So that she could turn back and go home at any time, so that the option to abort her plan would be available to her until the very end, the daughter kept the trip a secret from everyone, even her closest friends, to be honest─and visited her mother.
Tried to visit her mother.
She fixed her hair herself and stuffed her favorite backpack full of old memories, ones that would surely delight her mother. To avoid getting lost, gripped in the daughter’s hand was a note with her mother’s address written on it.
But.
The only daughter never made it there.
She never made it to her mother’s home.
But why?
But why?
But really, why?
She was so sure the light was green─
“─And that only daughter was me.”
So acknowledged─Mayoi Hachikuji.
No, maybe it was more like a confession.
It was hard for me to see it as anything else when I saw her repentant face, teetering on the verge of tears.
I looked at Senjogahara.
Her expression was unchanged.
She really─never showed how she felt.
She couldn’t possibly not be having thoughts of her own, though, in this situation.
“And so…” I asked, “you’ve been lost ever since?”
Hachikuji didn’t reply.
She didn’t even try to look in my direction.
Senjogahara spoke up. “That which couldn’t reach its destination keeping others from returning home─Mister Oshino wouldn’t confirm it, but for our amateur understanding, it might be like a residual haunting. The way there, and the way home─the journey and the return. A pilgrim’s path from point to point. In other words, Hachikuji, the eighty-nine temples─that’s what he said.”
The Lost Cow.
That’s why it was lost itself─and not the misleading cow.
The reason why it had to be that way.
Right, the aberration itself─was lost.
“But─a snail?”
“Come on,” Senjogahara chided. Coolly. “The metamorphosis into a snail─must be posthumous. Mister Oshino didn’t call it a residual haunting, but he did use the word ‘ghost.’ Couldn’t that be what he meant?”
“But─that…”
“But that’s exactly why─this isn’t like a regular ghost. It doesn’t follow the pattern of ghosts as we generally think and conceive of them. It must be different from the crab too…”
“That…”
That was true, though… Just as it didn’t have to be a cow despite having that name, it didn’t necessarily take the form of a snail simply because it was called a snail. I’d misapprehended─the essence of what an aberration is.
Names give shape to nature.
The body of it.
Seeing shouldn’t necessarily be believing─and on the flip side, not seeing isn’t necessarily counterfactual, Araragi─
Mayoi Hachikuji.
Lost Hachikuji.
Mayoi─a word originally used to describe the warp and weft fraying and tangling. That’s why, in addition to meaning “lost,” it refers to attachments that keep dead spirits from resting in peace. Moreover, while the character “yoi” on its own means the time around dusk, that is to say twilight, the hour when you encounter the weird, the character “ma,” which usually means “true,” acts as a negative prefix in this instance, so that the archaic term “mayoi” signifies the middle of the night, two in the morning to be precise─yes, the so-called dead of night. Sometimes a cow, sometimes a snail, sometimes humanoid─but, come on, really, just as Oshino said─
That would be too obvious─wouldn’t it.
“Umm…are you actually telling me that you can’t see Hachikuji? Look, she’s right here─”
I wrapped an arm around Hachikuji’s shoulders as the girl hung her head and, practically lifting her, pointed her toward Senjogahara. Mayoi Hachikuji. She was right there─I was touching her. I could feel her warmth, her softness. I could even see her shadow on the ground. It hurt when she bit me, and─
It was fun when we chatted.
“I can’t see her,” Senjogahara insisted. “I can’t hear her, either.”
“But you were acting like you─”
Wait─no.
I was wrong.
Senjogahara had told me from the start.
─I can’t even see it.
“All I saw was you mumbling to yourself in front of that sign before miming out a crazed fight─I had no clue what you were doing. But according to you─”
According to me.
That was it. I’d conveyed all of it to Senjogahara─in every instance. Ah, of course─that’s why, that’s why Senjogahara─never took the note with the address on it.
Forget taking it, she saw nothing.
There was nothing.
“But─” I objected, “if you’d just told me that to begin with─”
“Like I said, how could I? I couldn’t. When something like that happens─if I can’t see what you see, it’s only normal for me to assume that I’m the funny one for not seeing it.”
“………”
For more than two years.
Hitagi Senjogahara had to live with an aberration.
─I’m the funny one, the abnormal one.
The mentality was hammered into her with a scale-busting ferocity. After you come across an aberration, even once, you carry that burden with you for the rest of your life. To a greater or lesser degree─if I had to say which, then greater. Once you learn that these things exist in the world, no matter how powerless, you can’t feign ignorance.
That was why.
Yet Senjogahara, who’d been freed from her problem at last, didn’t want to think that something had gone wrong with her again, and not wanting to think that something was wrong with her, nor wanting me to think so─she acted like she could see Hachikuji when she couldn’t.
&n
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