Koyomimonogatari Part 1

by Nisioisin

  001

  You want to know how I was feeling about going to school back around the beginning of April, when I had just met Tsubasa Hanekawa, and we’d just been put in the same class? You want to know what I was feeling on the way to school, as I trod that path? Well, I wasn’t feeling much of anything at all.

  My feelings as I traveled that road.

  Even the road itself, didn’t seem concrete to me.

  I couldn’t find any concrete reason for going to school.

  Get woken up by my little sisters, change into my school uniform, get on my bike, head to the out-of-my-league private prep school Naoetsu High─I’d been busy repeating that routine, that homework-like routine of busy work, for two years already, but I’d never once considered what that repetition meant, or didn’t mean.

  Or no, maybe I should say that I’d given up considering the question ages ago, because no matter how hard I thought about it, I was never going to find an answer.

  But the same could be said of almost all the young men and women who have the honor of calling themselves high school students in this great nation of Japan, or I expect it could, so I wasn’t actually the least bit special in that regard─the truth of the matter is that virtually all the young men and women who, despite having completed their compulsory education, continue to live the life of the high school student, who at least superficially “attend school of their own volition,” can’t even discern an abstract meaning in doing so, let alone a concrete one.

  So it’s perfectly understandable that the extremely small number of well-grounded students who do find a sense of fulfillment in their schooling would be left scratching their heads, dumbfounded by the fact that an outsider like me, who must seem to them like some kind of monstrous apparition, would still come to school every day.

  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I’m dissatisfied.

  When these sorts of thoughts pop into my head I do find it the tiniest bit disquieting, but no, I’m not dissatisfied─it’s not like there’s anything else I’d rather be doing, or even anything else I could be doing.

  Me, I’m nothing─but precisely because I’m nothing.

  The fact that I’m a high school student.

  High school itself.

  Provides me with the assurance that I’m me.

  Especially, particularly, because over the spring break before the first term of my senior year─I went through hell.

  I saw into the depths of a hell that could very well have made me forget I was a mere high school student, and put an end to my school career altogether.

  It was a spring break that made me unpleasantly aware of the verity, the venerability, of banal aphorisms like ordinary is happy and nothing beats an uneventful life─and that assurance should’ve been a real lifesaver for me. Nevertheless, as I rode along the road that April, I thought about how strange it was that I still blithely went to school as if bound by some hard-and-fast rule, as if it was normal─and that after class, I went home again the same way.

  It’s funny.

  Having been through that kind of hell, you’d think I’d feel truly grateful for an ordinary life, that I would live each day as if it were my last─but the me that had returned from hell was still just regular old me. They say danger past and god forgotten, but I guess you forget hell, too, once it’s past.

  I asked Hanekawa about it once.

  Asked her if the fact that I couldn’t bring myself to feel grateful for the grace of everyday life meant that I was made of stone─and this is what she said.

  What she told me, her face lit up by a wonderfully reassuring smile that, as always, made me wonder if she really did know everything.

  “Of course you can’t, Araragi. Because everyday life is something we take for granted. How can you take to heart something you take for granted? There’s a road, and you walk down it, that’s all. Take it from me.”

  002

  “What? A rock?”

  “Yup. A rock,” she said.

  “Do you mean…the kind you find by the side of the road? Or more like a precious stone?”

  “Come on, I obviously don’t mean a precious stone.”

  Sure, maybe it was obvious to her, but I had yet to learn what it was all about, so how was I supposed to know what was obvious and what wasn’t?

  The only thing that was obvious to me was that I had no idea what was going on.

  But I wasn’t about to let it stay that way─I have a low tolerance for confusion. I decided to try and piece together what was going on, piece by piece, step by step, from the beginning. Starting at the beginning is the basic principle of organization.

  It was the eleventh of April, after school let out─no one else was in the classroom, and Hanekawa and I were having a meeting about the class get-together planned for the following week. The reason we were the ones holding it was that she was the class president, and I the vice president; you might expect the leader of each clique or their representatives to show their faces, but like clockwork, they all seemed to have found some other important business from which they simply couldn’t tear themselves away.

  Well, it may not have been an out-and-out lie that they had other things to do, but there was no question that the poor turnout was exacerbated by their faith in the fact that “everything will basically turn out fine if we just leave it all up to Hanekawa,” which made her brilliance seem like something of a sin. And a grave sin at that.

  Her brilliance, unhindered even by a burden as great as myself, unconsciously spoiled everyone around her─though I wasn’t exactly upset about having a chance to be alone with Hanekawa.

  Not that I had some kind of ulterior motive, it’s just that since Naoetsu High is a prep school, pretty much all the third-years were studying for their college entrance exams; everyone was on edge. The mood was extremely volatile, like, Is this any time to be throwing a party? So it was a particularly uncomfortable atmosphere for a washout like myself.

  In other words, it’s less that I was happy to be alone with her and more that I was happy not to be around all those other anxious students─needless to say, since Hanekawa could’ve aced the entrance exam for any institution of higher learning anywhere in the world even if it were held the following day, she didn’t share our classmates’ bristling anxiety.

  And also needless to say, given my total lack of inclination to prepare for exams, not to mention the fact that I wasn’t even sure I was going to graduate, neither did I. So in that sense, you could say that the two people participating in that meeting were the two best candidates for the honor.

  Given my general lack of enthusiasm for such things, though, if I’d had anything else important to do, I might very well have gone home too. Unfortunately, however, I was free. Terminally free. And sitting across from Hanekawa seemed slightly more likely to prolong my life than going home to fight with my sisters.

  Anyway, during that meeting.

  Or once it was basically wrapped up, really, while we were chatting about one thing and another, Hanekawa brought it up.

  “A rock.”

  “…Okay, a rock. What about it?”

  A rock.

  Or was she saying “Iraq”?

  Was she implying that I didn’t know enough about international relations or something? We hadn’t really been talking about anything that would flow naturally into a critique of my knowledge base. Our meeting had been perfectly genial up to that point.

  “A rock, or…yeah,” Hanekawa said.

  It was rare, odd, for her to be so vague─or rather, it seemed as if she couldn’t decide how to describe it.

  She was unsure.

  Not─unsure of her judgment.

  We weren’t yet at the stage to define it
, or able to refer to it, so she just wasn’t making a decision.

  Which is why she vaguely said─a rock.

  That was how it seemed to me, anyway.

  “I guess if I had to call it something─then a stone statue.”

  “A stone statue?”

  “Though it isn’t really a statue.”

  “…”

  “That’s why I said if I had to─lemme think.”

  Heheh, giggled Hanekawa.

  It was really cute, but in terms of a command, it was a laugh laughed to misdirect. I would’ve been perfectly willing to go along with her misdirection, but my interest in this “rock (or stone statue)” won out.

  “C’mon, Hanekawa. What’s the deal?”

  “Oh, forget about it. I shouldn’t ask other people about something I don’t understand myself.”

  “Wise words. A little too wise.”

  That’s exactly what you should ask other people about, that’s the whole point.

  Doesn’t she know the saying To ask is a moment’s shame, not to ask, a lifetime’s? Okay, I doubt I know any sayings Hanekawa doesn’t.

  “But, well, I was thinking─wasn’t collecting this kind of story Mister Oshino’s line of work?”

  “This kind of story?”

  “Urban legends. The word on the street. Secondhand gossip,” Hanekawa said, counting on her fingers. “In which case, I thought he might also be interested in the Seven Wonders of the School.”

  “Seven Wonders? Huh?”

  “No, no, there aren’t really seven wonders, of course. But listen, isn’t a school like a treasury of ghost stories? It was built over a cemetery, or it was hit with an air raid during the war, that kind of─”

  “Wait, does Naoetsu High have that much history?”

  “No, but…”

  But what?

  I mean, I don’t know the pedigree of our school either─and upon reflection, it might be risky not to know the origins of your own school. Going every day to a place you don’t really understand without really understanding your feelings about going there?

  As if it were the most natural thing in the world?

  That’s─a little bit too little understanding.

  “Phew, seems like the disgrace I bring to this school might be wonder number one…”

  “Um, that doesn’t sound cool at all,” Hanekawa retorted.

  And no, it didn’t make me happy that she did.

  Maybe she hadn’t gotten the joke─but her serious bent didn’t mean that she didn’t have a sense of humor, in which case I guess it just wasn’t funny. Forget about not being happy, it was kind of a shock.

  Besides, would any guy on earth be happy to hear a girl say he wasn’t cool?

  “I wouldn’t go so far as to call it disgrace, and anyway, putting it at number one seems weird.”

  Drop it already.

  She was being more like a guidance counselor than a straight man.

  Her position that everything in need of correction should be thoroughly corrected was, indeed, laudable, but I didn’t particularly welcome being on the receiving end of it.

  Didn’t particularly welcome, or particularly unwelcomed, or just felt restless.

  You might even say hopeless.

  “The buildings themselves seem relatively new, so I don’t think the school’s been around since before the war or anything.”

  Was there a pamphlet or something that touted the year the school was founded? Seems like there would be, but if I ever saw one I don’t remember… I would’ve just ignored a number like that anyway.

  “There was another educational institution here before,” Hanekawa enlightened me, “but it’s been Naoetsu High School for eighteen years. It turns eighteen this year. About the same age as us.”

  “Wow, I would’ve expected it to be…”

  Younger, I was going to say, but if it was the same age as me and Hanekawa, I guess it wasn’t all that old.

  But that’s Hanekawa for you.

  Unlike me, she had a firm handle on the history, the origins, of her school─I bet when she was in her last year of middle school and studying for the entrance exams, she looked into it because she wanted to know what kind of high school she’d be attending.

  Then again, maybe she’d found out about it long before that, just a piece of common knowledge she’d picked up along the way─in either case, no one likes that kind of middle schooler.

  “Hmm? What? Expected it to be…”

  “Nothing. It’s just such a half-assed number.”

  “Hahaha. Maybe. But you’re right, I guess this school doesn’t have quite enough history for there to be seven wonders─there don’t seem to be any stories about students who died here or anything.”

  “Don’t seem to be…”

  That’s.

  Well, I wondered─something like a death. Not the kind of info you’d look for while you were studying for the entrance exam, let alone just a piece of common knowledge.

  It wasn’t anything you’d find out unless you really dug deep into the eighteen years of the school’s history─

  “In other words, how can I put this? Naoetsu High─doesn’t have anything like a real ghost story.”

  “Hmm…yeah, I suppose I’ve never really heard one.”

  Then again, I was always decisively disconnected from the student circles in which such rumors circulated.

  Partially because I was never interested in knowing any of the hot gossip about who was dating who, or who was getting into fights with who.

  It wasn’t my intention to be the standard bearer for some revolution against our information overload society, but it’s true that I never wanted to play the town gossip or the town crier. That much is certainly true. I’ve wanted to live in isolation from anything that could be called news.

  At the same time, I idolize Hanekawa for “knowing everything,” so my attitude towards life is vaguely, you know, vague.

  “Um, what were we talking about? Sorry, Hanekawa. My mind’s been wandering a little too far, and I lost the thread…”

  “Huh? C’mon, Araragi, I told you. It’s this stone─”

  “This stone that I have no clue about. Please, just start at the beginning.”

  “Aren’t I?” asked Hanekawa, flabbergasted.

  Well, sure, I bet she thought so─she thought she was explaining it clearly, from the beginning, and in fact it might’ve been perfectly clear to a good listener.

  Unfortunately, I was the listener, and it was all Greek to me. You’ve got to adjust your conversation to the level of your interlocutor. As in crank it all the way down for me.

  At the bare minimum, I wanted her to clarify whether we were talking about a stone or a ghost story.

  “Mmm. Um, I guess it’s…” Hanekawa responded in mild consternation in response to my demand, “a ghost story about a stone, yeah.”

  “?”

  A ghost story about Estonia?

  003

  It wasn’t a ghost story about Estonia. Or Iraq, for that matter.

  If it were, then instead of being roundabout or giving me the runaround, she’d have gotten to the point right away.

  A ghost story about a stone.

  Yes.

  But telling me it was a ghost story about a stone, being told that it was a ghost story about a stone, didn’t advance the conversation─I remained, as ever, baffled.

  However.

  “Oh─”

  After we had finished locking up the room and I had trailed Hanekawa out into the quad, however, we made some progress.

  I say progress, but things only progressed in my own head─nothing actually moved.

  The situation itself stood immobile, like a rock.

  Since Hanekawa hadn’t made her intentions clear to me, as I trailed after her I had to wonder if she was taking me to the garbage area on the other side of the quad, but our destination was in fact a flowerbed.

  No.

  A stone─in a flowerbed.

/>   And that stone, too.

  Stood immobile, like a rock.

  “─I’m starting to get the picture. But…it’s not really a ‘rock’ or a ‘stone statue,’ is it? I mean…”

  I saw why her description had been so ambiguous─in the quad’s flowerbed, maintained by god knows who, a flowerbed that mystified me, was the thing.