It seems like Nadeko misunderstood Mister Serpent when he said there's no such thing as a victim—no, maybe i ought to say i just interpreted it in a way that was convenient.
i thought maybe he meant that every victim shares the responsibility for what happens to them in some way, or that harm comes to us by chance and anyone could be guilty if only the circumstances were a little different—you hear these kinds of things a lot, and i assumed it's what he meant.
i assumed so for Nadeko's own sake.
But i was wrong.
That isn't what he meant.
It was something more simple and plain and easy.
He meant exactly what he was saying.
Nadeko Sengoku—is guilty of a "massacur."
She's just another perpetrator.
There was no need to twist his words around.
It happened four months ago, in June—when those "charms" Popularized by Mister Deishu Kaiki had their poisonous fangs in lots of middle schoolers.
Right in the middle of that.
A boy confessed his feelings for Nadeko.
When i say confess, i don't mean it in the repentant way, like what Nadeko is now attempting, but about liking and loving and stuff.
He was on the baseball team.
i don't remember his name. i forgot it.
Actually, i feel like i never heard it from the start—i don't think he ever told Nadeko his name.
—it's hard to be-
Maybe he thought i had to know who he was believe, but a lot of popular students on sports teams are like that.
Kids who don't doubt that they're famous.
But Nadeko didn't have any interest in sports, and most of all, she didn't like stuff about dating and lovers and all—so she turned him down.
i wasn't going to date someone i didn't know.
Because Nadeko—had someone she loved.
But this led to trouble—the fact that Nadeko "rejected" the popular boy led to jealousy.
i know how you feel! i wanted to sympathize.
Because i knew exactly how those girls felt when they wondered why he'd ever confess to someone like Nadeko—no, i think that boy must have been mistaken somehow. He probably had the wrong person.
But the "verasity" of this was only clear to Nadeko—what hurt was that her best friend wouldn't understand.
She ended our friendship. It was sad.
To be completely honest, though, i wasn't surprised. i was always thinking that a girl as good as her would end our friendship one day.
Is that honesty?
Maybe you'd say i'm just acting tough.
But please, let Nadeko act tough.
According to what Nadeko's other classmates said later (maybe it's better to call it a feeling that was revealed to everyone because of Mister Kaiki's "charms"), that friend became friends with Nadeko hoping to go out with the boy from the baseball club—so it seems there was something else going on that doesn't fully make sense to Nadeko, but it's all a mystery now.
The truth is shrouded in darkness—no, in rumor.
No one knows what the truth is anymore.
It's in the past.
The game of love.
Well, i feel like no one involved was skilled enough to describe it as that—anyway, it only gets more confusing the more we talk about it. Skipping ahead.
When this friend ended our relationship, she said something—"l put a curse on you.”
In this case, the curse was one of the "charms" that Mister Deishu Kaiki was spreading around, and this girl had put a snake curse on Nadeko.
It seems like there were a lot of other variations, though.
Not just snakes, but bees, and frogs, and strangely enough, even shrimp—i wonder what a shrimp curse is.
Would it cause your spine to break?
In any case, Nadeko swallowed those malicious words hook, line, and sinker—even though their malice was only malicious.
The girl was hardly a villain, much less a demoness.
Nadeko went to the bookstore and looked for ways to undo the "charm"—in this case, normally the "right" thing to do would have been to go to Mister Kaiki, wherever he was in town, and pay him to undo it. Unfortunately, Nadeko wasn't familiar with these rumors (Nadeko only learned about Mister Kaiki's existence during summer break. i didn't know yet that the charms were an artificial fad), and even if she did know, asking a stranger for help would have been too difficult for Nadeko.
That's why Nadeko did her best to teach herself how to undo
her curse—it backfired, and the sham curse that wasn't supposed to activate ended up being invoked (which is why i asked Koyomi for help from the beginning this time, having learned from that), but well, let's put that aside for now.
The method of undoing the curse that Nadeko tried—was to split a wild snake into five equal pieces and follow certain steps to crucify it on the trunk of a tree.
Nadeko used a chisel.
To take a snake—and hack it to pieces.
And instead of a nail, i used the chisel to pin the snake's entire body to a tree.
i continued this massacur for about a week.
i was following the proper steps to undo a curse.
But the more i did it, the stronger the curse got and the more forcefully an invisible snake wrapped around Nadeko—if Koyomi hadn't found her, she'd probably be...
"You'd probably be what now—hmmmm? You would have massacred even more snakes, huh?"
Nadeko has no reply for the colossal white snake—for the Serpent's words.
That's right.
Nadeko wasn't a victim back then.
Because if Nadeko hadn't done curse would have
been harmless, and even if that wasn't true.
As far as all the snakes Nadeko killed are concerned.
For the victims Nadeko sacrificed to save herself—
For those dozen-or-more lives.
All Nadeko is, is guilty.