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As you are all aware, Koyomi Araragi’s tale has come to an end. There’s nothing in particular to add. Much was resolved, and much wasn’t. Some matters were put off, but that doesn’t change the fact that a stopping point was reached. Just as every beam of light casts a shadow, every beginning has an end. And because there’s an end, there’s also a new beginning─though a shadow doesn’t necessarily mean the presence of light. Or should we say darkness, rather than shadow? Either way, if it’s dark beyond the tip of your nose, then that’s already darkness.
Still, the way of the world is that endings are far harder than beginnings, and what was begun with ease calls for no small amount of effort to end. For example, as I wrestled to end the many tales that began when I casually saved a vampire on the verge of death, I thought I might die too─in fact, did die a number of times. I couldn’t say I acted wisely by any means, nor that I brought it all to a tidy conclusion, but yeah, I can say with certainty that a period in Koyomi Araragi’s life came to a close.
I made many mistakes, but that alone is no mistake.
I made no mistake.
And so, what’ll begin here is a continuation of the end.
A worldview that wasn’t supposed to be. An impossible future.
Shinobu Oshino, the husk of a vampire.
Tsubasa Hanekawa, the class president bewitched by a cat.
Hitagi Senjogahara, the girl caught in a crab’s claws.
Mayoi Hachikuji, the ghost led astray by a snail.
Suruga Kanbaru, the junior who wished upon a monkey.
Nadeko Sengoku, the snake enwrapped by a snake, who swallowed a snake.
Karen Araragi, the little sister stung by a bee.
Tsukihi Araragi, the literal phoenix.
Yotsugi Ononoki, the corpse doll.
Sodachi Oikura, the returned childhood friend.
All the experts: Mèmè Oshino, the wandering older dude; Deishu Kaiki, the conman; Yozuru Kagenui, the violent onmyoji; Izuko Gaen, the big boss; Tadatsuru Teori, the doll-user.
And Ogi Oshino.
This is their tale─continued.
Call it a free gift if you want, but let’s not make light of it─people learn more from defeat than from victory, don’t they.
So.
I’ll try and take it─as a teachable moment.
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The next day, I was roused from bed─but not by my little sisters Karen and Tsukihi.
My lovable siblings had warned me:
“You’re not in high school anymore. You need to wake up on your own starting tomorrow, okay?”
“Uh huh, Karen’s exactly right!”
These were pronouncements that should’ve been made before I moved on to middle school, at the latest. I found it rather mysterious that Tsukihi was behaving like Karen’s lackey, but whatever the case, the next day.
In other words this morning, I woke up on my own─I’d been up late the previous night, and I didn’t need to wake up early anymore, so I’d slept in for the first time in a while.
Now, this felt strange.
Not so much because my little sisters didn’t come wake me up─but that was part of it, and I knew the exact reason for my odd feeling.
“Oh…right,” I muttered absentmindedly.
The words pregnant with emotion─oh, right.
Starting today, I was no longer a senior at Naoetsu High─an evident, or self-evident fact that still felt more bizarre than any of the mysterious and unfathomable tales of aberrations I’d experienced.
So strange I almost had trouble accepting it.
Speaking of moving on to middle school, or even the time I moved on from it─from Public MS #701 to Naoetsu Private High School─I’d felt no such discomfort whatsoever. Had my time as a student at Naoetsu left that deep of an impression on me?
Especially my final year. The very last one.
It began with a hellish spring break and ended all the way in actual hell. What’s more, I survived it all, came out alive, and miraculously graduated, and was ruminating on it now─no, wait, it wasn’t such a pretty and emotive reaction.
If we’re going to say that a lot happened, a lot happened to me during middle school too. Even elementary was no walk in the park─after recalling my past shenanigans with Oikura, so many connected traumas had come back to me that it felt like I was drowning in a sea of regret every night.
Splashing and gasping for air. Like I was going to suffocate underwater.
If I was going to feel moved about being alive today, I ought to feel moved about being alive yesterday, too─not that anyone, teens included, can live every day moved to their core.
That much sentiment would kill even a vampire.
First off, I hadn’t attended the graduation ceremony held at Naoetsu High’s gymnasium the day before. Boycotting a commemorative ceremony that marked the end of my high school days makes me sound like quite an anarchist, with my juniors looking up to me, but pair it with the graceful groveling I performed on all fours in the teachers’ room later, and it’d be enough to throw water on the flames of a century-long love.
I don’t know if I should be sharing this, but at the last moment my alma mater became a forbidden place I never wanted to visit again.
What kind of legend was I leaving behind?
Could I have wound things up in any worse of a way?
I felt like winding a rope around my neck, if anything.
It’d be odd to say that’s why─it’d sound like sour grapes, but I’m still saying it─frankly that’s why graduating and not being a high schooler anymore was leaving me cold. The most I felt was relief that my little sisters wouldn’t be reviving me each morning.
You’ve served your purpose, my little sisters!
I generally tried my hardest to act cool and wasn’t going to let some commencement ceremony make me tear up or gird up─I’d rather get on all fours and grovel. The one clear difference between this graduation and all the graduations before it, though, was not knowing what followed.
A total mystery.
When I graduated elementary, I knew I’d be proceeding normally to #701, and when I graduated at #701, I’d already been accepted by my (then-)dream school, Naoetsu High─in other words, my graduations so far had meant a simple change in title.
A transposition if you want, a mere transfer.
But not this time.
I’d graduated from Naoetsu High but had no idea what would become of me─honestly, at that moment, on March sixteenth, I didn’t know if I’d been accepted by my first-choice college.
What came next wasn’t settled. My future was uncertain.
True, the same goes for everyone, of course, but having taken these titles for granted, as naturally appearing alongside or together with my name, I was flummoxed when it vanished just as naturally.
Something was off. Stripped of my title, I was nothing. My plain self.
Not a high school student. Not someone preparing for exams.
Not a college student, not a rejected applicant.
Not a member of the labor force.
Plain, unbranded Koyomi Araragi─they say you only appreciate how valuable something is after it’s gone, but I never imagined losing your guaranteed status in a highly developed modern society would be so disorienting.
To be blunt, I didn’t even like Naoetsu High while I was enrolled there. I’d been ready to drop out. Looking back on it, I still couldn’t say I led a fulfilling life as a high schooler, not even out of insincere politeness─finally losing the title was so strangely liberating.
Liberating and disorienting.
To make a Kanbaru-like comparison, I was walking down the street butt naked─like oh, I’m nothing but me now.
I should be me no matter how much I dress up, change, or grow─Koyomi Araragi should be just Koyomi Araragi, but part of you seems to be shaped by your surroundings and environment, whether you like it or not.
If a policeman stopped me now for questioning, how should I answer─nah.
My own thoughts made me snicker.
It was funny how funny I felt.
Yeah, maybe I was just getting emotional about graduating from high school─embarrassed and ashamed, loath to admit this bit of childishness, I’d begun splitting a whole head’s worth of hairs, that’s all. That, or the stress of waiting for my college results was too much, and I was escaping reality by focusing on something other than what was really on my mind─I guess I was able to look at myself pretty objectively these days.
It’d be so presumptuous of me to agonize over a loss of identity, anyway─consider the goddess, scratch that, Hanekawa, who gallantly ventured out into the world as her very own self the day we graduated.
Forget about police questioning, she’d be traveling where militaries might want to have a word with her (why, Hanekawa?). In the end I clung onto her and tried to stop her with tears in my eyes (not exaggerating for effect, I seriously cried) instead of seeing her off with a smile; she was the one with a beaming face as she left on her journey.
She deflected me with ease. Dodged me like it was nothing.
No point going out of my way to feel even lonelier, but eventually, the time she spent in high school with me and Hitagi would become insignificant to her.
That’s how I feel. Keenly.
Meanwhile, we’ll probably never meet someone as talented as Hanekawa again. Miss Hanekawa is the real deal. She’s made from different stuff than us, Hitagi once told me, I forget when, and I was beginning to understand what she meant.