by Nisioisin
Next up is the objection that people need to know the cruelty of pushing on others, and the atrocity of forcing on oneself, the isolation of being the only one, the solitude of being unique.
If you think about it for a second, telling someone to be “singular” is a repulsive command─true, the more friends you make, the lower, perhaps, your intensity as a human. But I’ve started thinking lately─isn’t the whole point of friends that you make them despite the fact that it lowers your human intensity?
I’ve been able to start thinking that way.
It was, of course, Tsubasa Hanekawa who opened my eyes on that score, but─there was definitely someone else, too.
Mayoi Hachikuji.
She, who wandered lost and alone for over ten years, and for that entire time was an “only one”─helped to open my eyes.
So.
“Let’s save Hachikuji.”
The idea came to me quite naturally, if suddenly. Right after Shinobu told me that a time paradox would absolutely not occur, could not occur.
There was nothing, no trigger.
It came to me there in the middle of that sidewalk.
If anything─I’d say it came to me when I saw the “Pedestrians Only” sign.
“Huh? Didst thou say something?”
“You heard me─let’s save Hachikuji,” I repeated with something approaching deep determination, like I was trying to convince myself in response to Shinobu’s dubious tone. “I’ve been thinking about it─why eleven years ago? And why May thirteenth, why the second Saturday in May? Even if we deviated from our target time coordinates, it seems strange to me─we tried to go back one day, and it’d make sense if we ended up going back one hour, or one year, or I would even concede ten years, but to go back eleven years, or more precisely eleven years and three months─there must be a reason for such pinpoint accuracy. Of course, there’s the fact that it was your first attempt at time travel, but I have a feeling there’s more to it.”
“More to it─why dost thou think so?”
“Just my intuition.”
“Intuition.”
“Maybe I should call it a premonition─a premonition that it wasn’t a deviation, but an adjustment. That it didn’t end up this way because it went wrong─it ended up this way because it went right. Since it’s a feeling about the past, though, I guess it might be more precise to call it a regret.”
“…”
Shinobu started to say something─then fell silent.
Knowing her, she was likely going to start up the usual banter and poke fun at me, but─she no doubt thought better of it upon seeing my face. A testament.
To the desperation written on it.
It wasn’t the kind of expression that said I’ve got a great idea.
“I’m pretty sure tomorrow is the day Hachikuji dies.”
“…The day that lost lass dies?”
“I’ll tell you upfront that I’m not a hundred percent sure. Hachikuji only said that it was a little over ten years ago─not precisely eleven years. Maybe she thought there was no point in getting into the specifics, maybe she herself didn’t remember anymore. Your 600-year memory makes for an extreme example, but it’s perfectly normal to be fuzzy about something that happened over ten years ago. However─the one thing I do know for sure is that tomorrow is Mother’s Day.”
Mother’s Day.
Mayoi Hachikuji died─on Mother’s Day.
In a traffic accident.
“So if I’m right, Hachikuji will lose her life tomorrow on the bumper of a car─on her way to see her mother, from whom she’d been separated.”
“Aye, ’twas something along those lines…”
“So.”
So, I said. Staring at that street sign again.
“So─let’s save her.”
“…”
“I’ve been thinking─given that we’re here in the past anyway, what might we accomplish? Acquiring out-of-print books or buying stock is all very well, but…isn’t there something more meaningful, something more significant─”
I couldn’t express it well, but if I had to:
Something fateful.
“─that we can accomplish?”
“…Did we not discuss the fact we can accomplish naught but moments ago?”
For a time paradox not to occur means just this─we may not do anything dire, Shinobu remarked, sounding just a little appalled.
Distantly, as though she couldn’t keep up with my earnestness.
“Yup,” I nodded. It wasn’t like I’d forgotten. “Well, please hear me out. First, I thought of Senjogahara. Isn’t there anything I could do for Hitagi Senjogahara, my girlfriend?”
“Boasting about thy love life, art thou?”
“Nah. Boasting… If you want to look at it that way, what can I do? At this point in the time stream, Senjogahara must be living in a so-called mansion that I’ve only heard about, not in Tamikura Apartments like she does now.”
“Hmm. And that ‘mansion’ has been replaced by a road in the present?”
“Yeah. So I thought maybe I could take a cell-phone pic of this ‘mansion’ in all its glory as a souvenir.”
“Something so modest should be possible. The data within thy cellular telephone might vanish thanks to a mystery power when we return to the present, but ’tis worth taking on the challenge. There seems to be no risk.”
“Yeah.” I decided against discussing the term mystery power, which didn’t sound nearly as fishy as it should have. “Even if I can’t use the phone part of my cell, I should still be able to use the camera function─some historical impediment might intervene just at the moment I try to take the pic so that I can’t after all, but like you say: it’s worth taking on the challenge… But then I started to think, what’s the point?”
“Wherefore? Would that simple woman not be delighted?”
“Simple woman…”
I was sensing hostility. Was it just my imagination?
“I mean, think about it, she probably already has pictures of her old house. It’s not like they were burned out of their home or anything.”
“Hahaha. Aye, I don’t expect anything so comical as a home fire occurred. ’Twould be just too unfortunate.”
“I’m pretty sure I saw some books on Senjogahara’s shelf that looked like photo albums…in which case, a photo wouldn’t make much of a souvenir at all.”
“’Tis exactly why it couldst, too. But in essence thy words ring true.”
“So then I thought, might I not solve Senjogahara’s problems now, eleven years ago?”
“Mm? By that girl’s problems, dost thou mean the Crab of Weight…no, ’twas something else. Not the crab, but in truth her family─”
“Yes. Her family problems,” I said, finishing the sentence for Shinobu. “Senjogahara’s mother being taken in by a nefarious cult, the divorce settlement─all of it. I thought maybe I could nip those problems in the bud before they happened.”
“Thou canst not. For ’twould alter the fate of a person…no, of many.”
“Probably, yeah.”
I didn’t try to counter Shinobu’s negativity. I couldn’t. I didn’t need her to tell me; there was no way one guy, yours truly, could pull off such an extravagant feat.
No way.
“The challenge might be worth taking on,” I noted, “but there’s the possibility that it’ll just make things worse─I know all too well the dangers of sticking your nose into other families’ business.”
And if I might add.
“I have no inkling of what I could even do to put the Senjogahara family on a better trajectory. Especially at this point eleven years in the past.”
As far as I’d heard, Senjogahara’s awful family problems had yet to arise─in fact, you could say they were in their honeymoon phase.
Father, and mother, and daughter.
The three of them, going to the observatory together to gaze at the stars─that’s what it was like at this time.
<
br /> “If we’d gone back two years instead, maybe I’d find that bastard Kaiki and royally kick his ass, but at eleven years ago, the lying swindler’s probably still in college. Even if I kicked his ass now, I’ll bet the deviation would be corrected for in the intervening nine years.”
“Methinks thou couldst not match Kaiki even in his college days. ’Twould make quite a punch line when he turned the tables and took thee for everything thou hadst.”
For all those counterfeit bills, Shinobu appended acidly.
Yeah, well, not much I could say to that. Honestly, I didn’t think I could beat him even if he was in elementary school.
“I really wish I could do something about it─for her part, Senjogahara looks on the bright side and says how it was precisely because she experienced that miserable period that she now has the good fortune to be dating young mister Araragi here, but even so, the two years that she spent with the Crab of Weight were, despite her weightlessness, too heavy to bear. That probably falls under the heading of ‘something I can’t do,’ though.”
“Probably.”
“By the same token, I don’t think there’s anything I could do for Hanekawa’s situation at home. Well, if we’re just talking hypothetically here, there might not be nothing I could do for the Hanekawas─”
She’d be about six at this time─which is to say, her problems had already “arisen.” Solving problems that have yet to arise, as in Senjogahara’s case, has an extraordinarily high difficulty rating, but if the problems have already arisen, then surely I could find some way to deal with them.
But.
“─but it must be absolutely impossible. Whatever has infected the Hanekawa family goes beyond the level of anything that one high school student or one vampire could fix.”
“Aye,” Shinobu agreed with me for once. Without hesitation. “The Afflicting Cat and Black Hanekawa are one thing, but most wretchedly was I outdone by that former class president herself─if possible, I want naught to do with it.”
“Yeah… Making the wrong move would just make it worse… Never mind Kaiki, I don’t think I could beat even six-year-old Hanekawa. If I tried something, I’m sure she’d just talk me out of it.”
“Aye.”
“Much as I’d like to meet Loli Hanekawa, I’m not sure how I feel about becoming a criminal.”
“Need we consider such a possibility?”
Well, that last was a joke.
Senjogahara’s family was one thing, but I couldn’t conjure a concrete image of what an “improved situation” would look like for the Hanekawas. Of course, there must have been a time when things were better in that house, but…I didn’t imagine it was now, eleven years ago.
Hanekawa no doubt didn’t share Senjogahara’s value system─where a happy present is possible precisely because of an unhappy past.
Not sharing it at all.
She in fact abhorred it.
To the point of self-denial─ultimately, Hanekawa hated more than anyone else her own brilliant self, her happy self.
That disgust, that hate.
Gave birth to the white cat. The black cat.
“If there’s anything I can do, I want to try─but I’ll bet that’s also ‘something I can’t do.’”
“Aye. I believe thou art thinking rightly. And there is naught thou canst do for Monkey Girl or Miss Bangs, either. ’Tis exactly as that detestable Aloha brat said.”
People just go and get saved on their own.
Nobody can save anybody else─
“Mm-hmm. And yet.”
It seemed like Shinobu was trying to wrap things up─but everything up until now had been nothing more than a preamble. I was utterly worthless, unable to do anything for Senjogahara or Hanekawa, and yet.
And yet.
“I think we can save Hachikuji.”
“Why dost thou think so? Despite thy peculiar confidence, ’tis by no means assured.”
“Well─it was an accident that she got hit by a car, right? It’s not like someone’s family life, where things keep piling up, and by the time you notice it’s too late. If a momentary, chance event can be avoided, can’t the whole thing be averted?”
“Well…I am sorry to throw cold water on thy hopes, considering thy feelings, and thy relationship with the lass… But much as I do not wish to say it, I must tell thee that ’tis futile. ’Tis not so different from the cases of Miss Tsundere or the former class president as ye imagine.”
Shinobu was in fact mumbling evasively. Because our connection went beyond words, because my feelings, my excitement itself got transmitted to her through my shadow, it must have been that much harder for her to say.
“For instance, tomorrow? I know not how ye might do it, but let us imagine that tomorrow, ye manage to guard against the harm that is to come to that lost lass. Let us say that tomorrow will not be her last day. Truly, ye might be able to do that much─and yet. If ye should succeed, the accident will happen the next day, or the next, merely put off for a time.”
“…”
“Or perhaps ’twould not be a traffic accident at all. It matters not. Within a few days that lost lass would lose her life in one way or another. Like as not, that established fact cannot be altered. Whatever thou art thinking of doing, ’twill simply delay the inevitable─simply postpone it.”
Shinobu’s words weighed heavily on me─but I, too, could foresee that. Even I wasn’t asking for so much.
Hachikuji would die.
Tomorrow, the next day, I didn’t know─but there was no way around it. It was fate.
Even so.
Even. So.
“That’s okay.”
“?”
“What I’m saying is, even so, as long as she doesn’t die tomorrow─as long as it’s not on Mother’s Day, Hachikuji won’t become an aberration.”
That young lady, Mayoi Hachikuji─it was on Mother’s Day that she became lost because she died without seeing her mother.
So if nothing happened tomorrow, if she didn’t meet with an accident or anything and got to see her mother─then that kid.
Would be satisfied, whatever else happened.
She might die but would never be lost.
After dying─
She wouldn’t linger in death.
“…”
Hearing this, Shinobu said─nothing.
I assumed she’d laugh in my face or give me the works for being inane, but─at least that didn’t happen.
I hadn’t missed the mark.
Not badly enough to speak of, anyway.
“Interesting.” That was Shinobu’s comment after some time had passed. “Interesting. Frankly, I think ’tis worth a try.”
“You do?”
“Aye. Success is not assured, of course. In fact, I expect that we will fail. We must work from the presumption that ’tis fundamentally hopeless. But there is value in assaying that which is presumed to be hopeless…mayhap.” While the final note wasn’t particularly inspiring, Shinobu assented to my plan in so many words, was kind enough to assent to it. “After all, aberrations like myself exist outside the framework of fate─by virtue of which such barbarisms as time travel are possible. Therefore, if she can but avoid the crucial moment─her transformation into an aberration, and only that, might yet be averted.”
If she can.
Yes.
Mayoi Hachikuji wouldn’t have to wander, lost─for over ten years, all alone, with no one to rely on, rejecting any and all who approached her, her solitude more profound than that of anyone else in this town.
I wouldn’t be able to rescue her.
But I could save her.
“From a risk management perspective,” Shinobu continued, “if fate dictates her turning, ’twill all be for naught in the end. If Mother’s Day be the day it must happen, then rather than a day or two’s deviation, perchance ’twill be delayed until next year. And─”
“And she’ll be waylaid by a Lost Cow? Sure, the probability of that is
likely very high. But if fate were really that obstinate, I very much doubt the time warp would have brought you and me back so precisely to the day before Mother’s Day eleven years ago,” I declared, with fierce resolution. “The reason you and I are here. The reason we came here. It’s not to do my summer homework, or to get my hands on out-of-print books, or to buy stock─it’s to save Hachikuji.”