Ghostory bakemonogatari

Part One

By Nisio Isin Translated by Seiyou

Chapter 1

Hitagi Crab
001
t could be very well said that Hitagi Senjogahara was an embodiment of the ill girl trope it seemed only a matter of course that she never participated in physical education, and even during morning assembly or other gatherings she would always sit by herself under the shade as a result of her anemia. We were in the same class in our rst, second, and now third years but I had yet to see her try to even run. She was a regular at the nurses oce, and because of her frequent visits to the family doctor, she would unvaryingly either come

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to class late, leave school early, or not appear at all. The frequency of her absences reached the point where people teased that the hospital was her house and she was simply playing truant. Nonetheless, even if she was sickly, the impression she left one with was not insubstantial. Slender in the likeness of ne thread, as if she would break just with the slightest touch, ephemeral possibly for that reason some of the boys would murmur, half in seriousness, half in jest, that she was a sheltered heiress of a wealthy family. To be fair, it was plausible. Even I thought that type of role suited her well. Senjogahara was always sitting in a corner of the room, by herself, reading a book. There were times when she would be reading an impenetrable looking hardcover tome; and there were times when she would be reading a comic book with a cover designed in such a way that seemed like reading the contents of said comic book would lower ones intelligence. It appeared she had a take-it-as-they-come approach in her choice of reading material. Perhaps she would read anything as long as it contained words, or perhaps she did pick her books with some distinct criteria... All the same, it would seem that she was decidedly intelligent for she was near the top of our class. After every test on the rankings board, the name Hitagi Senjogahara would without question appear in the top ten ranks. And that is to say, for every, single subject. To compare her with me, who failed every subject besides mathematics, would be presumptuous to say the

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least. Undoubtedly, our brains were constructed dierently at birth. From what I saw, she did not have friends. Not one. Up until now, I had also yet to see her converse with anybody. If one were to be keen on details, it might have been that Senjogahara who was always reading some book and from that very act of reading had erected a wall around herself that forbade anyone to start conversation with her. I, myself, had sat next to her for a little over two years, but I could say with conviction that we had never exchanged a single set of words. Not one. Whenever she was called on by the teacher, she would always mechanically reply with a faint I do not know, and in this regard, she was the same as me. (But, whether she did in fact know the answer or not, she would only reply with I do not know.) This thing called school is a curious institution, where it would be the norm for people without friends to gather with other people without friends to form together a kind of community (or perhaps one could call it a colony of sorts), (and also, truth be told, I was like this up until last year), but it seemed that Senjogahara was also an exception to this rule. Of course, hav ing now said that, it was not as if she was being bullied. As far as I could see, she was neither persecuted nor shunned in any sense of those two words. Only, it had since become a matter of course that Senjogahara would be in the corner of the classroom, reading her books, with the wall she had built surrounding her. Her presence in that little corner became natural. And for her to be anywhere else was not. Like that.

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But, whatever the case was, it hardly mattered. Because, if I were to look at my three years of high school life on the whole, counting two hundred people per school year and starting from my rst year until graduation, including all my juniors, seniors, classmates, and teachers added up to around a thousand people with whom I shared the same space; and if I were to start thinking about just how many of those one thousand people could be considered to have had any signicance in my life, for anyone, the answer would be despairing. Only by some strange fortune I ended up in the same class as a certain other for three years consecutively, and although not a single word had been exchanged between the us, I did not think that it was the least bit lonely. That is, in other words, it was something that just was, and later it would become nothing but another memory. In one more year, after I graduated, what I would be doing I do not know, but that is besides the point I certainly would not be thinking of Senjogahara, and I probably could not remember what she looked like if I tried. That would be ne by me. And it should be ne with Senjogahara as well. And not just Senjogahara, but everyone at school should be the same. It would be fundamentally erroneous to think such a thing deserved any melancholy. That was what I thought. And yet. It happened to happen on a certain day. It was the eighth of May, when my spring break of hell ended and I became a senior,

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right after the nightmarish pipe dream that was Golden Week. Having a propensity for tardiness, I was running up the stairs late for class as usual, and exactly when I reached the landing, right above me, a girl fell from heaven. It was Hitagi Senjogahara. If one were to be accurate, it was not that she exactly fell from heaven she simply missed her footing and plummeted from the top of the stairs face up. I likely could have avoided her, but in that instant, I caught her. Probably, it was the correct decision. Or, perhaps not. Why? Because, the girls body that I held my arms was extremely preposterously light. Because Senjogahara was so light, so oddly, eerily light, it would not even have made a good prank. It was almost as if she was not there. Yes. One could almost say that Senjogahara did not possess the force called weight at all.

002
Senjogahara?

CHAPTER 1. HITAGI CRAB Hanekawa tilted her head in response to my question. What about Senjogahara? Well, not about her per se... I went about my words circuitously. I was just wondering... Hmmm.

You know, look at her name. Hitagi Senjogahara. Isnt it kind of weird? Interesting? Senjogahara. Isnt that a toponym? Umm... Thats not what I meant. Im talking more about her rst name. Her rst name? Then Hitagi? Is it really that weird?If I remember correctly, isnt hitagi a civil engineering term? Jeez, you really do know everything. I dont everything. Only just this much. Hanekawa did not seem entirely satised with my answer. But instead of pressing me further, she simply said, Im surprised. You taking an interest in someone else. I told her that she was reading too much into it. Tsubasa Hanekawa. She was the class representative.

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003