Hanamonogatari: Flower Tale by Nisioisin

Author:Nisioisin [NisiOisiN]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Fiction, Occult & Supernatural
ISBN: 9781947194069
Google: nMlwswEACAAJ
Amazon: 1947194062
Publisher: Vertical
Published: 2018-06-20T04:00:00+00:00

021

It really isn't an interesting story.

And I, myself, don't fully grasp the particulars of everything surrounding the arm—the Monkey's Paw or the Devil's Hand or whatever you want to call it. Like Kaiki said, it's just something I inherited from my mother.

My mother.

If we're going to talk about Toé Gaen's legacy, that tattered, desiccated left hand in its paulownia box is it as far as I'm concerned.

Because it's the one and only thing—my mother left to me.

It makes me a little sad to think about.

I think I would have preferred if she just didn't leave me anything at all.

It was probably my mother who inducted Kaiki-the-swindler into the world of aberrations, but for all that, she didn't teach me a thing.

She didn't tell me anything about how to use the Monkey's Paw.

If I'd known what kind of item it was, I doubt I would have used it—no, now I'm just making excuses.

I would have used it, even if I'd known.

That's the kind of person I am. A weak one.

And I'm probably just trying to pass the buck by saying that she didn't teach me anything.

It's true that the only object she left me was that sketchy-ass hand, but she also left me her words.

She taught me all kinds of things about how to live my life.

“If you can't be medicine, be poison. Otherwise you're nothing but water.”

I learned that from her—it's just that I haven't been able to make use of that particular nugget of wisdom.

I let it get swept away on the tides of time.

Simply forgetting it.

“Huh. 'I want to be able to run faster' and 'I want to be by my beloved senpai's side again'—those are pretty simple-hearted wishes. I might even go so far as to call them mediocre.”

Those were Numachi's thoughts on the story I'd just finished telling her. Kind of harsh, when she'd made me do so—but leaving out the part about Araragi-senpai being a vampire might have diminished the overall impact of my arm's backstory.

But it'd have taken all night to give a full account of his relationship to Shinobu, and I didn't think it was anything that I, as an outsider, should be telling people.

He was the only one who had the right. For Numachi, who subsisted on the unhappiness of others, his story might have been a real feast. I had to wonder…

How would Araragi-senpai deal with this baffling brown-haired girl?

“I'd heard a thing or two about Senjogahara. She and Hanekawa were making waves even beyond Kiyokaze Middle,” Numachi said.

“So Senjogahara was ill, huh? That's tough. I'd have loved to hear her story. Well, she's better now, that's all that matters.”

Yup, I lied about that as well.

Of course, there was no way I could tell Numachi that Senjogahara-senpai had met a crab aberration. But the relaxed look on her face as she relished my “pity-bragging,” even while venting all sorts of horrible thoughts and whatnot, made me feel guilty, as though I'd spat out lies for my own selfish reasons.

I'm not against lying per se, but it felt like I was conning her.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.