Ogi had said it herself, too. She wanted to put an end to it before I graduated, the point, her read, being: before my youth ended.
While still in high school.
As much as Ogi needed an opening in my schedule, she also needed Tsukihi to show an opening…but my littler little sister is full of them. Surviving without doing a thing really makes her a phoenix.
As I headed to my classroom alongside Hanekawa─we ran into Hitagi Senjogahara by the building entrance. Catching sight of the two of us together, she grimaced for a second─no doubt because Hanekawa had managed to ambush me first.
Please, no odd battle between friends…so damn uncomfortable.
Sure, Hitagi had a stubborn complex when it came to her, but given how Hanekawa had soared to a height that neither of us could reach, curbing those feelings little by little would only be wise…
Not that I was one to talk─in spite of singing her praises, somewhere inside of me I too saw her as a rival in that I’d given birth to Ogi Oshino, who couldn’t stand her.
“Good morning, Araragi.”
“Oh? You don’t call him Koyomi?” Hanekawa asked before I could reply. She’d gotten a little meaner after being knocked around by the world.
Maybe Hitagi thought resistance was futile. “Good morning, Koyomi,” she corrected herself, cheeks mildly aflush. “And welcome back, Tsubasa.”
While she was at it, she also first-named Hanekawa─who looked surprised but returned, like the genius she was, “Glad to be home, Hitagi-chan.”
Hitagi-chan…sounded so cute.
Probably because they’d be talking taking girl-to-girl in due course, Hanekawa didn’t get into how she’d be leaving soon after the ceremony, and the three of us walked to our classroom.
The school’s atmosphere felt different too─but that just had to be me.
“Koyomi. It seems like Kanbaru got us a graduation present.”
“Oh, yeah? A present from Kanbaru? I’m worried.”
“She wouldn’t prepare a weird surprise for something like this, not even her. I did ask in so many words, and it seems to be a regular bouquet of flowers.”
“Flowers, huh.”
Hitagi was worried too if she bothered to ask─meanwhile, not putting any questions to me, as we conversed, was very much like her. No attempts to ferret out whatever happened last night or how we cleaned things up.
She waited for me to tell her.
It wouldn’t put me in a flattering light, it wasn’t anything I was eager to volunteer─but she needed to hear about everything.
I hoped it would come across as a funny story.
I hoped I could tell it to her with a smile.
“By the way, Araragi,” Hanekawa said. “How many points short of a perfect score were you on your exams?”
“…”
Who asked such a question?
She meant it as a joke, of course.
I told her I seemed to have filled in the wrong bubbles by one question for math─and Hanekawa was pensive for a moment.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I contacted Miss…someone who took the same college’s math exam and already asked about the kinds of test questions you had. This wasn’t the kind of answer sheet where you could lose your place.”
She was way too proactive. Just how concerned was she about me, anyway?
But…not that kind of answer sheet?
True, I’d wondered how I could be off by one question when there hadn’t been that many, but why would Ogi…
I’d assumed it was true since she said it.
“That is so Ogi’s way of being mean,” commented Hitagi. “I could never imagine you pranking anyone like that.”
Was that right? No, she said it precisely because I never would─I’d burdened her with doing what I couldn’t and wouldn’t do.
All this time until now, and probably going forward.
I was reminded of Kanbaru, who’d gotten us flowers─Suruga Kanbaru, a distant, underlying cause of Ogi Oshino’s birth, who had no direct knowledge of the Darkness but, compared to me, had far more of what it took to exert self-control.
Above all, a direct descendant of Toé Gaen─in some form, a disposition that gave birth to aberrations must have been passed down their lineage.
Which meant Kanbaru, too, might experience being in the throes of her youth.
Her own Ogi Oshino could appear before her─would I be able to support her when that happened?
Just as Hanekawa had done for me?
…Well, I’d just have to do my best.
I’m only me, after all.
Not just as Oshino, nor just as Hanekawa, but just as me, I’d lend my support.
So that someone could go and get saved on her own.
I thought these things like I’d come to a great understanding as I finished climbing the stairs, and just then, it happened.
I crossed paths with a girl─a student who descended the stairs without looking our way. A first-year, judging by the color of her scarf. She had to be here for our graduation ceremony, but why was a first-year in the third-year area?
The girl looked so pale, however, that it quashed any such questions─and her wobbling, unsteady gait got me worried about her mental state as much as her physical condition.
She looked drained.
Possessed.
At that notion─I stopped.
Hitagi and Hanekawa turned back to look at me and shrugged in resignation. Their movements synchronized, the best of friends.
“Go ahead.”
They spoke in unison as well.
“Yeah. Could you pick up my diploma for me?”
See you, I said, handing my bag to Hitagi and leaping down the whole set of stairs I’d just climbed─in pursuit of the first-year student. With the eyes of the two girls watching me off at my back, I hit the landing, pivoted, and rushed down another set of stairs.
Searching where the girl might have gone, I ran through the first-year halls, past another student─who had pitch-black eyes.
Like darkness itself, she sneered.
And said, “You never change, do you, Araragi-senpai.”
No.
I do.
But no matter how much I change, I’m going to be me.
“Long, long ago, in a distant land, was an odd fellow named Koyomi Araragi─aye, and is still.”
Happily ever after, my shadow recited, running alongside me.
If the story continued, I couldn’t wait to hear what happened next.
✦ ✦ ✦
So, people talk about mistakes you can’t live down, but when you really think about it, what sort of fail can you live down? If you lose something or suffer a defeat, it’s not as if some later accomplishment cancels it out─still, while a fail might never go away no matter how much regret or remorse you feel, it certainly seems possible to forget about it. In other words, a mistake you can live down implies a win big enough that lets you forget that earlier mistake, doesn’t it? In success stories where a miserable past serves as a springboard, misery is by no means fueling happiness, but rather, perhaps, accumulating enough of a future lets the past be forgotten; conversely, you can accumulate enough misery to ruin a happy present, so actually I don’t see much of a causal relationship between happiness and misery. Like, they aren’t antonyms or anything. This is getting complicated, so to lay it out─or just to split hairs about success and failure, happiness and misery, as I see fit─it’s not all a matter of mindset but instead simply a question of memory. That’s to say, the most powerful ability we have as humans might be forgetting. Of course, as Koyomi Araragi, Hitagi Senjogahara, and Tsubasa Hanekawa proved over the course of a year in this story, or ten years in my reckoning, I think the ability shouldn’t be spammed.
And so, this has been End Tale part three, the de facto final installment of the Final Season of the MONOGATARI series. Looking back, “Hitagi Crab” was published in the Shosetsu Gendai supplement Mephisto’s September 2005 issue─supposedly as a self-contained short story, but it’s 2014 now and I’m still writing, so more than incredible, it’s a plain shock. I imagine some folks have been reading along for ten years, while others read them all just yesterday, but it’s thanks to all of you that I’ve been able to pen the Monster, Wound, Fake, Cat Black/White, Dandy, Flower, Decoy, Demon, Love, Possession, Calendar, and End Tales to finish the series. After this, we’ll cutely publish End Tale (Cont.), an encore final installment of the Final Season, and wrap it up for real. Yes, cutely. And so, this has been OWARIMONOGATARI Part 03, “Chapter Five: Mayoi Hell,” “Chapter Six: Hitagi Rendezvous,” and “Chapter Seven: Ogi Dark.”
The cover depicts Senjogahara with braids inside a planetarium.* It’s fantastic. My thanks go out to VOFAN. Whatever I may forget, I’d never forget my gratitude as I continue to work my hardest.
Thank you very much for reading.
* Editor’s Note: The art that has been included as an insert for this translation. In the previous paragraph, references to the original “seventeen volume” partitioning were omitted to reflect the larger count of the North American release─which also kicked off with Wound rather than Monster and rolled out over half the time.
NISIOISIN
✦ ✦ ✦
