Bakemonogatari, Part 1 (Bakemonogatari, #1, Part 1)

by NisiOisiN

I guess I could admit that I just have fun talking with you, Araragi.” “…But it’s not as if─we’ve talked that much.” That was an understatement. It was easy to overlook the fact because of just how much concentrated time we’d spent together last Monday, Tuesday, and today, but the only times she and I had ever spoken to each other this much─were that Monday, that Tuesday, and today. Three days, no more. We might’ve been in the same class for three years, but─ We were practically strangers. “Right,” Senjogahara nodded in full agreement. “Which is why I want us to talk more.” To spend more time together. To get to know. To get to love. “I don’t think it’s anything as cheap as love at first sight,” she said. “But I’m not so patient a person as to want to spend time lining everything up. How do I put it─yes, maybe it’s that I want to make the effort and get to love you.” “…I see.” When she put it that way─it sounded right. There was nothing I could say in reply. You had to work hard to stay in love─because the feeling we call love is a very conscious thing. In that case─maybe what Senjogahara was saying was fine.

Senjogahara still stood there. She stood still and grabbed my wrist. Hitagi Senjogahara, who had denied herself physical contact for so long─naturally, it was the first time she’d ever touched me like that. Touching. Seeing. It meant that we’re here. To each other. “Do you think you could say it out loud for me?” “Out loud?” “I don’t like silent partnerships.” “Ah─got it.” I gave it some thought. It seemed unrefined to reply in kind with English, not to this woman who wanted nothing but extremes. Then again, I had only a surface knowledge of other languages, which in any case wouldn’t be any more original. Which left─ “I hope it catches on.” “Excuse me?” “My heart smelts for you, Senjogahara.” So by the by, and all in all. Hanekawa’s single-minded delusion had come true to a tee. She really did know everything after all.

Like, hold on, that’s what he was thinking? It’s the so-called difficulty of communicating, but it’s also an absolute fact that those misunderstandings spice things up in a good way. For example, when I suggest a book I love to people, I try to give an immersive account of a scene that moved me, but sometimes, upon rereading the book, I find out that the scene isn’t there. At the end of the day, humans are unreliable creatures, so when we feel something, more than half of it is a misunderstanding, but maybe you shouldn’t interpret it in a pessimistic way and instead look at it as the author or the story having the power to make you misunderstand. If you are a reader, I’m sure you’ve experienced looking back at a book that had an impact on you and realizing that it actually wasn’t that big of a deal after all; and recommending a book that moved you in your teens to current teens, promising them that they’ll love it, and not getting a great reaction, is something we all get a taste of. That’s thanks to audience misunderstanding, or mental images if you want to put a better spin on it, and maybe instead of feeling let down, you ought to be giving thanks for the dreams the work allowed you to see. To add to that, there are those cases where whatever scene that wasn’t there upon rereading crops up in a different book, but that’s just my own sucky memory, for which no author or story is to be held responsible.