Archive of Our Own ^beta

In the six months I have been of this world, I believe, in my albeit meaningless opinion, that I have cemented myself as a rather inscrutable conversationalist.

Of course, I ascribe here the word 'inscrutable' where others might instead opt for words of greater colour: 'difficult', 'obtuse', even 'aggravating'. I take great pride in these words I'm showered in, for they provide indication I am properly fulfilling my duty.

Humans are dishonest creatures. Of course, the rate of lies pouring from their mouths is so egregious as to drown all of human society, soaking it to its bedrock and warping it such that no two humans can ever again converse without some taste of falsehood. More egregious and even more reprehensible, however, are the lies that seep into the mind. Lies that people tell to themselves, lies that bounce around and echo ceaselessly in their empty skulls.

To that end, Araragi Koyomi is the greatest liar I have ever met. Nay, I would go so far as to say he is the greatest liar to have ever lived. He is the maxima of the function of deceit.

From spring break, he'd lied that his life had worth, tangling himself to some broken shadow of a vampire in a fruitless effort to give his life meaning. During his escapades in building his little gaggle of friends and greater-than-friends, he lied that a fool like him did enough to earn their company, or even more preposterous, that their company didn't need to be earned in the first place. And through this all he lied and lied that he didn't do anything unjust, that there were no charges to be prosecuted against him, that he was pure of heart in saving those girls while knowing full well from my boorish uncle that people can only save themselves—

Point is, liars ought to be punished. I know this, for it was the sole axiom upon which my existence stood. Araragi knows this, for he entrusted me with this solemn duty from the moment he birthed me. And what better way to punish liars than to pry open their hearts and expose the truth so desperately hidden within?

This, by design, is a deeply intrusive and uncomfortable procedure — as it should be, for a liar. It is only expected that the clients of my conversations feel perturbed by my every word. Although I am wary of correlation, causation, and the mistaking of one for the other, I can't help but treat those contorted expressions and strained replies as a sort of haptic feedback, like a little chime sounding to tell me 'Good job!' every time I do well.

Which makes it all the more off-putting when I hear silence in its stead.

There exist two people with whom I cannot best in conversation.

The first is Araragi Tsuhiki. I have conversed with her once, during that bike ride to my seeming execution one silent night. I knew she wasn't human, and that she knew this not, so I spent the entire ride doing as I do: a sharp comment here, a strange choice of verbiage there, attempting as always to expose to her the lie of her own existence. I found, however, that this oddity masquerading as a human was more forthright in her life than any genuine human could ever hope to be. It was useless to pry open her heart; it was already worn on her sleeve, laid bare for the world to see.

I conceded defeat then, right after I arrived at the cram school and right before that disastrous event whose contents I shall not recount here — because, to break from my usual hypocrisy and be completely honest for a moment, I am still reeling from that experience and am yet unsure what it all means.

Certainly not helping matters was a conversation a certain senior of mine had with me, on the day of Naoetsu High's graduation ceremony. This senior, the second person I could not best, is Senjougahara Hitagi.

I will, once again, be honest. Senjougahara unnerves me. In that first — and likely last — conversation I had with her, I felt foreign in my own body. I felt, for the first time, as if my own heart was torn from its cage, ripped open and scrutinised under an unblinking gaze, only to be shoved back into my chest.

If I am to be likened to darkness, Senjougahara is light. Harsh, unrelenting, indiscriminate.

Let me tell you the story of being seared by that light for the first time.

The graduation ceremony had finished twenty minutes prior, but most of the attendees hovered around for a while longer. I watched from an empty balcony the minglings of students both former and current. Seniors seeing off their underclassmen, loudly chatting the day away as if the newly-departed burden of school wouldn't be replaced by some heavier burden within the year.

Rather careless, don't you think? To leap face-first from the pan into the fire; to leap heedless into oncoming traffic. I thought back to the first conversation I shared with Araragi, and I pondered how many of those people down there would benefit from their own personal red light.

Lost in thought as I was, my body leaning over the railing like a corpse perched over the edge, I failed to hear the approaching footfalls from behind me until the owner of those footfalls called out.

'Oshino Ougi.'

I had never met Senjougahara before this point, yet as I spun myself around to address her I found her voice settling comfortably in the recesses of my memory, like a key to a lock. Too comfortably, in hindsight.

'Senjougahara Hitagi,' I replied, mimicking that overly blunt and forward tone that she seemed so fond of using regardless of context.

Senjougahara just smiled, or smirked — it was hard to tell which — and gave a satisfied hum. 'I like that voice,' she decreed. 'It's candid, like Koyomi's, but with none of the weightiness and baggage. It's like you took your voice, distilled it down to its constituent parts, and only let the absolute necessities exit your mouth.'

I found myself shoved into the role of the straight man before I knew it. 'Constituent parts? I was unaware a human voice had such things, nor the fact that you were so well-versed in alchemy, Senjougahara.'

'Please. I can recite the contents of the human body by heart. Water, 35 kilograms; carbon, 20 kilograms—'

I swung my arms around and motioned for her to stop. 'That won't be necessary, Senjougahara. I too have watched Fullmetal Alchemist.' I haven't, but she didn't need to know that.

'Ah, my mistake then.' Senjougahara's eyes turned predatory. 'In your case, 50 kilograms of deceit would've been more accurate.'

If I didn't have a remarkable measure of self-restraint, I would've clicked my tongue there. It wasn't at all surprising that Araragi spilled the contents of that night to his girlfriend, but that made it no less frustrating. While the truth of my nature could no longer unravel my existence with a single word, that knowledge was still inextricably mine . I felt no comfort in being forced to entrust it to others.

I didn't know which expression I made, but Senjougahara seemed to take amusement from it, judging from her satisfied grin. 'My, I see that's still a sore spot for you. Don't you worry just yet. I came to speak with you, nothing more.' She then spun on her heel and made for the stairwell. After a few steps, she craned her head backwards and fixed me with a warm glare and a cold smile.

'Walk with me,' she said.

So I did. Why? I honestly couldn't tell you. It might've had something to do with that key still settled comfortably in the lock of my mind.

As I stole beside her, Senjougahara wasted no time. 'Do you know, Ougi, why night-vision goggles show the world in green?'

So this was the game we were playing. I knew here that to answer something to the effect of 'I don't know, why?' would be akin to forfeiting, so I racked my brain for a blink before giving my reply. 'Production issues? There's a shortage of red and blue pigment, so the manufacturers are saddled with no choice.'

'Bzzzt.' I creased my brow in confusion before Senjougahara made an X with her fingers. 'Two more tries.'

'You sure seem to be having fun with this.' Three steps later, I volunteered another guess. 'There's no shortage, but it's still an issue of production; that is, green pigment is simpler to synthesise into glass.'

'Bzzzt.' I suppressed another click of the tongue as Senjougahara gave me a mollifying smile. 'Third time's the charm.'

'Then it's a matter of bureaucracy,' I huffed. 'Some missive from a Minister of Defense who read something to the effect of "green is the most soothing colour" and handed down an official mandate without doing any of his own research beforehand. Sillier laws have been passed for less.'

Senjougahara stopped dead in her tracks just as we entered the school's inordinately large stairwell. Did I get it right?

No, said the bewildered look on her face as she spun on her heel to face me. 'Ougi, has it not occurred to you that green is simply the best colour to use?'

I furrowed my brow. 'How so? Red, blue, green; what does it matter? Those colours only differ in whatever arbitrary values we assign them.'

'That,' and here, Senjougahara allowed a smirk to peek out from her otherwise flat expression, 'is where you are wrong. Green is the ideal colour for a very concrete reason: the human eye can discern more distinct shades of green than any other colour.'

This time, I couldn't stop myself from clicking my tongue. The exact flavour of annoyance I felt at that explanation was hard to articulate. If I had to put it in a sentence, it was akin to the annoyance felt from seeing a criminal judged innocent at a trial — the blade of karma missing its mark.

It annoyed me, some may say to an unreasonable extent, that human error was not involved in this explanation. It annoyed me that I would have nothing to punish.

That annoyance must've once again marred my expression, for Senjougahara's smirk widened like the cat that caught the canary. She twisted the knife. 'It's curious. When the world is dark, green is the colour that allows us to see with the most clarity. What a pretty colour. In fact, I think I'll switch out my entire wardrobe to incorporate this wonderful colour as soon as I get home. I might even dye my hair green to celebrate this momentous revelation.'

My eye twitched, and I felt words rush past my mouth before I could vet them. 'You're trying to get a rise out of me.'

'Not trying, my dear Ougi.' She stalked over to me, holding her unblinking gaze and satisfied smirk both. 'Succeeding.'

I'm sure I made a wonderful expression indeed, as I felt my facial muscles contort in ways I thought were only possible via rigor mortis. 'What's this about, Senjougahara? What's the point of backing me into a corner like this? Payback for all the harm that befell your precious Araragi?'

'Hardly.' She was within the space of a breath now, looming over me. 'I'm not backing you into any corners. If you were to look behind you, you'd only see a hallway stretching out with no end in sight. You're the one who refuses to move.'

Refuse to move? Of course I refuse to move when the only way I can move is backwards. To move would be cowardice. To move would be to concede, to run away from my purpose here. 'Walk with me,' she said back then, and I did, so I will. To move would be to admit myself a liar, and I did not wish to indulge in hypocrisy today — not when my very existence now stood on such uneven ground.

I could not sublimate those thoughts into words, nor would I dare to if the option was open, so I opted for a pragmatic response. I said only what she needed to hear.

'I can't do that, I'm afraid.' I met Senjougahara's glare with a stare and a smirk of my own. 'I can't move.'

I saw, in a few slow tenths of a second, the tensing of Senjougahara's shoulders and the settling of her face into an expression of total, lethal focus, as if she resolved then and there to ram herself through a wall. Perhaps that was exactly it: presented with an immovable object, her first instinct was to become an unstoppable force. Nevermind that the axioms of logic would dictate they pass through each other, changing nothing in the end.

I braced myself nonetheless.

Suddenly, slowly, she loosened in the same manner as a spring being unwound, or a held breath being released. Her brow uncreased, her gaze turned from razor sharp to just sharp, and the world found itself able to breathe again. Without a word, she broke away from me and walked down the stairwell, with just a nudge of the head to indicate that I should follow.

I'll walk with her still, I decided a little too easily.

Neither of us spoke a word for the first twenty steps or so. The only questions and replies filling the stairwell were our footsteps and their echoes. If I didn't know better, I'd think that Senjougahara was lost on how to serve now that the ball was in her conversational court.

'Did you know,' she finally broke the silence, 'that hardness and toughness are not synonyms, but have totally distinct meanings? Hardness measures how difficult a material is to deform, while toughness measures how difficult it is to tear. I'd say, Ougi, that you're being a little too hard on yourself.'

'So you suggest I be tough on myself instead?' I allowed myself a smirk of my own. 'I'd say, Senjougahara, that you're splitting hairs. There's little practical difference between those terms, is there? Are hard materials not usually tough, and tough materials hard?'

A shake of the head. 'Correlation, not causation. Diamond is touted as the hardest material in existence, but there's a reason we don't make our buildings out of it.'

'Because it's hideously expensive and hard to work with?'

'Because,' she continued unperturbed, 'it's not very tough at all. One solid impact in the wrong place at the wrong angle, and it will shatter. Even mere wood can shoulder heavier burdens, for wood is smart enough to swallow its pride and allow itself to bend.'

'Wood isn't smart enough to do anything,' I had to retort. 'Wood doesn't choose to bend. Wood simply is. Diamond simply is.'

A bitter thought sliced through my mind then, and I gave a moment to decide whether to voice it. With a silent sigh, my decision already made with more ease than should be reasonable, I opened my mouth.

'I simply am.'

Senjougahara's response was immediate and, dare I say, vehement. 'You are not a construction material.'

I could only laugh at this, though I doubt any humour managed to seep into the sound. 'I might as well be. "50 kilograms of deceit," you said.'

'Is that still true?'

I halted. Breath failed me.

Is that still true?

Am I still Oshino Ougi, the oddity who wishes misfortune on those deserving? Am I still Oshino Ougi, the counterbalance of Araragi Koyomi who ensures no misdeed of his goes unpunished? Am I still any of those things after what happened that night?

I slumped my body over the railing and found myself staring listlessly at the stairwell's bottom. Six months ago, in this stairwell, I held my first conversation with Araragi and made my role in his life clear to him. How much simpler those times were. How many things have happened in these past six months? How many things changed? How many stayed the same?

Does Araragi still need his red light? Does he still want it around? If he doesn't, why save me?

All questions I couldn't answer, equations I couldn't solve. Dimly, I noticed Senjougahara had stopped by my side, her eyes expectant and her arms folded over the railing.

I don't think I could answer her. Not when it became abundantly clear how little I knew about myself, at the end of the day.

I don't know.

I don't know anything.

I don't know anything, but…

'…Maybe you're the one who knows, Senjougahara.'

Foolish, I know; to entrust these matters of the heart with someone who was by all accounts a perfect stranger. This crisis of mine was mine alone to suffer, and mine alone to solve. I'm the only one who can save myself, after all. Yet the act of baring my heart to her didn't carry nearly as much gravitas and uncertainty as it should have. Despite every strand of logic within me screaming against the mere thought, my heart felt it was confiding in an old friend, or even a trusted partner.

In hindsight, I'm a little horrified how easily I let slip the contents of my mind, if but a sliver. I'll have to be more cautious around her in the future, just as I'm sure Araragi had to be more cautious around me.

I awaited her reply. When none came, I turned to get a look at her face.

I saw a pair of unblinking eyes staring back. This felt different from her usual barbed glares and flatly amused expressions; it's the first time I saw her eyes so distant. To my own eyes that prided themselves on picking faces apart with surgical ease, Senjougahara's expression was utterly, unfathomably, unnervingly inscrutable; it looked as if it were being pulled in a great many directions at once, unsure of which expression to settle on. It was like watching an unobserved particle in the process of collapsing to a single observable state.

Collapse it did, though. Senjougahara gave a familiar satisfied smirk, like something finally clicked together in her mind. 'You're afraid,' she declared.

I wrinkled my brow. I didn't feel a single anxious bone in my body, I told myself. 'Really now?'

'I'm beyond certain. Koyomi's expression was almost the same as yours when he was debating whether to cross the road with his left or right foot this morning. But you're right, there are some differences. He, at least, resolved to cross the road in the first place.'

I huffed. 'Knowing him, he probably didn't even pay attention to the traffic light.'

'He did, believe it or not. He waited when the crossing indicator was red, and walked when it was green. What a good boy. I'm proud of him.' Senjougahara afforded herself an uncharacteristically dainty giggle before her expression sobered all of a sudden.

'This may be hard to believe, but I really am proud of Koyomi. He still second-guesses himself, judges himself, and wishes ill upon himself. He told me that he'll likely continue this behaviour for a long while yet. Because that's the kind of person he is.'

It took longer than it should've for the implication of those words to hit me with the force of a freight train. 'So you're saying—'

'Yes. He told you himself that night, no? "I'm only saving myself." He took his obtuse, judgemental, inscrutable shadow and he accepted it all as part of himself.' Senjougahara leaned in, pinning me under her gaze.

'He doesn't need you anymore. So you're afraid.'

Right.

I couldn't hide from the truth anymore, not after she shoved it so bluntly in my face. That simple fact had been lodged deep within my mind ever since that night. I was just too afraid to dredge it up, for that would only force myself to acknowledge just how lost I was.

Was that why Senjougahara approached me out of the blue? To stop me from running away? To force me to confront the very axioms of my existence? To impose upon me as I have imposed upon so many others, in some sick facsimile of karma?

Do I not deserve this, by my own twisted logic?

'Well? Are you ready to celebrate?'

The sheer incredulity of those words managed to snap me out of my reverie. 'I'm sorry?'

'You're no longer needed. You've been absolved of your one role in life.'

A hollow laugh bubbled up from my throat, bitter and acrid. 'Right, right. You may as well say my life is over.'

'Really? I'd say it's only just begun, six months late.'

Incredulous. I was a traveller without a compass, and this woman expected me to navigate the worst storm of my life. 'And how would I go about doing that? I have no more goals. I have no more desires. Are you asking me to build a life from a foundation of nothing, Senjougahara?'

Senjougahara didn't waver. 'I'm asking you to build the foundation yourself. A life not wholly enjoyed and suffered by yourself is not a life at all. I mean it when I say your life began six months late; you spent those months in Koyomi's shadow, doing the things that he himself was too weak to do.

'You weren't Oshino Ougi then. You are now.'

'That means nothing!' My frustrations and anxieties leaked out of my heart and into my words. 'So what if I'm living a proper life now? What am I to do with it? Do you have any advice that will point me in some direction, or are you just here to—'

Senjougahara clasped my hand.

My next words shrivelled up and died in my throat.

'I'm not going to live your life for you,' she declared, her face settled into a by-now familiar expression of single-minded focus. 'I don't have Koyomi's foolish, unrestrained kindness to do that. But I do have one thing to tell you.'

Senjougahara turned her heel and continued her path down the stairwell, tugging me along. It took a few stumbling steps for me to recentre my gait and regain my bearings.

I found it hard to keep my lingering annoyance out of my voice. 'Well? What's this piece of advice, and how does it involve dragging me along like a ragdoll?'

'You're doing it right now.' As if it were a leash, she gave my arm a tug to bring me to her side. 'Move. It doesn't matter which direction. As long as you're moving, and not standing still.'

I blinked. 'That's all?'

'Easy, right?'

'I thought I told you already,' I scoffed. 'I can't do that. Now especially, when I'm so completely lost and without my bearings. You're asking me to cross an intersection with no traffic lights. I'll just be run over.'

Senjougahara started walking faster, heedless of how I nearly tripped over at the increased pace. 'Would you rather stand still and let the wheel of time grind you into paste?'

A chuckle escaped from my mouth. 'It sure is tempting.'

'No.' Her grip tightened to a painful extent, and her voice suddenly rang cold. 'You will not die. I forbid it. If you dare decide to stand still after everything I've said, I'll kill you myself.'

I could only sigh at this. Again, I was being saved against my will, having the burden of life forcefully thrust upon my shoulders. It seemed Senjougahara shared more similarities with Araragi than I thought. They flocked together, those birds of a feather.

'You will live,' she pressed on. 'Someone like you will find it hard. You won't have any of your precious lights to guide you. You will trip. You will fall. You will break your nose and scream bloody murder in the middle of the night, and ideally, no-one will come to save you.'

I tripped over my feet at that very moment. I was about to start tumbling down the stairs when Senjougahara caught me by my sleeve and tugged me back.

'So you must save yourself. Pick your body off the ground, snap your bones back into place, and move. Repeat ad infinitum, and that's life. If you can't follow even these basic instructions, I'll have no choice but to well and truly call you a fool.'

Finally, we reached the bottom of the stairwell. Only then did we come to a stop, and only then did Senjougahara release my hand from hers.

She smiled. 'To be honest, I don't have high hopes for you. There's a good chance your life will take a turn for the worse because you wandered off in the wrong direction. But that's a stupid reason to not wander at all.'

Senjougahara stopped in the doorway and stared at me. Light flooded around her figure. I found it impossible to stare back.

'For your sake,' she said, 'I hope you choose to bend rather than shatter.'

With that, she walked away and dissolved into the light outside.

I was left in the stairwell, alone, my mind shaken and filled with more tumultuous thoughts than I could ever have bargained for.

Those tumultuous thoughts carried with me all the way to this present moment.

There wasn't a soul awake at this ungodly hour. Not a soul awake to bear witness to my half-dazed meandering across the still and empty roads. These midnight walks were once therapeutic, if you could believe it. I found the darkness relaxing, soothing to the eye.

It's laughable, really, how a single botched conversation could have shaken me so. I saw these streets shrouded in black and felt nothing but hesitance. What lies in the darkness? Do I venture forward and find out? Should I? I felt ashamed having to ask myself these questions. I always have.

Perhaps I changed long ago. Perhaps Senjougahara, like a key to a lock, only unravelled this simple truth and forced me to stare it in the eye. To acknowledge that things have changed, that nothing is the same, that nothing will ever be the same again. That I have to change too. Bend, not shatter.

My feet suddenly brought me to a stop; I looked ahead. An intersection. Look before you cross, I thought without thinking. My gaze lifted itself, following the rusted beams upwards to the faithful lights they held high above.

Nothing. No red, no green, no yellow to ease green into red. The traffic lights were off.

Distantly, I recalled some article or newspaper column detailing this town's plans to transition from intersections to roundabouts. Supposedly, roundabouts were safer than intersections because of, not in spite of, their lack of traffic lights. They nudged the flow of cars in lieu of halting them altogether.

I thought it nonsense then, and brushed it off as such. Now? I suppose I'll have to see for myself.

No lights. Cross nevertheless. I took a step forward, then another, then another. With how dark it was, a car could come barreling by and I would find out by the time my legs shattered like porcelain. I forced myself not to care. A few steps later, I found myself square in the centre of these two wayward roads.

There were no signs to indicate where they led. There were no landmarks near or far I could see. 'It doesn't matter which direction,' she said; only now did I understand what she meant. In the absence of light, all choices were equal.

One last time, I stopped myself. Was this really a good idea?

No. No it wasn't, screamed my deepest instincts. Such an unplanned, unordered way of life went against every axiom of my existence. Cause and effect. Action and consequence. 

Correlation, not causation.

I was no longer bound by axioms. I forced myself not to fall further into the lie of my own existence. 'Humans are dishonest creatures,' indeed. I too needed to stop lying to myself that I had any better alternative. This idea wasn't good, but it was an idea. I was in short supply of those.

I raised one foot atop another, flung my arms wide, and pulled myself into a pirouette. I closed my eyes, the world spinning around me. One, two, three, four; that's about how far I got before I stopped myself from counting further.

I was scared. I was lost.

I was free.

I came to a stop and opened my eyes.

Facing me was a road. I didn't know which one. That mattered not.

Randomly, arbitrarily, I had picked a direction.

And I walked.