Onimonogatari
Page 27
“Is that not out of thy lingering affections?” asked Shinobu. “Perhaps ye simply do not wish to admit that the girl has disappeared? Art thou certain this is not a wish to pretend that she continues to exist, the way one might count the age of a dead child?”
“…”
I didn’t say anything, so Shinobu continued.
“Tell those kinds of lies─and the Darkness will swallow thee right up.”
I snickered.
“Nah─”
Okay.
There was no reason for me to be sitting in the classroom forever─I needed to go back home already and study for my entrance exams. I had a laundry list of things to do, but that was at the top for now.
I wore my shoes and headed home.
I headed back home.
My way home, along which I would no longer be meeting anyone.
Oh, right, I thought.
Right, I never said that word to Hachikuji that day four months ago. What an idiot I was to notice only now.
It might be too late, but that wasn’t a good reason. I needed to settle it in my heart.
I conjured the image of a young, pigtailed girl wearing a backpack, of that ever-energetic girl─of my little friend that I could still recall as if she were right there─and spoke the word.
“Goodbye.”
Mayoi Hachikuji.
I was fortunate to have encountered you.
Afterword
Come to think of it, I’ve written quite a number of afterwords, so many that I might even be able to make an entire book out of them, though I doubt I could get away with it (’course not). That being said, when I look back on everything that’s led me to have this many pages written in afterwords alone, I see a lot that has and hasn’t happened, but I also feel like those memories are pretty slapdash. Slapdash, or like a rush job on my memory’s part. While this might come off the wrong way, “often never” might be more accurate than “has and hasn’t” happened… It’s not even a case of only remembering what’s convenient for me and forgetting what isn’t, I’ll be depressed because something annoying happened to me when in reality that annoying thing never happened. It was all a dream I had the night before. If my memory serves me, I wrote this series to fight off an evil syndicate from outer space, but even memory, which should be serving me, can be rather unreliable. Beliefs and personalities, talents and abilities shift and change and end and begin, in which case I wonder what’s certain at all in this world, only to realize, not a thing. As long as the world is held together by human perception, nothing is certain. On the other hand, if we recognize everything to be certain, the world will be filled with certainty, but does that seem deceptive to you? Just don’t recognize the deception. I don’t know.
Anyway, so many books in the series have come out that I’m not even sure which installment we’re on, but this has been ONIMONOGATARI, probably the twelfth or so. The humanity’s gone at this stage.* You could more or less say the same for the story, too. I feel like it was all about a half-vampire, Araragi, and some little girls… What kinda novel’s that? As for the storyteller angle, the ones narrated by girls seem a little more serious, making Araragi seem somehow frivolous, which is a pretty big problem. I think he’s being serious in his own way… Incidentally, I recall promising in a previous afterword that the truth behind the abandoned cram school burning down would come out, but it didn’t have much to do with that case once I wrote it, huh? I do pray the memory is false. Anyway, this has been “Chapter Sneak: Shinobu Time,” ONIMONOGATARI.
This is the second cover where we’ve gotten visuals of Shinobu Oshino, the last occasion being KIZUMONOGATARI. She really is gorgeous with her golden hair and golden eyes, isn’t she? Thank you very much, VOFAN. I’m looking forward to you keeping this up for the last volume, KOIMONOGATARI.
I’d love to dedicate this tale to the beloved character who is Mayoi Hachikuji, but I know her. She wouldn’t accept it.
* Prior to ONIMONOGATARI (with the exception of NEKOMONOGATARI) the Japanese title of every entry used a character with the radical for “person,” 亻 (傷,化,偽,傾,花,囮).
NISIOISIN