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Koyomi Araragi is no longer here— is what Oikura desperately wishes would just come true already.
Moving out, however, is not as simple task as it should be. Not with the advent of the ‘novel’ coronavirus, as he’s so lovingly come to call the damn thing. There’s nothing ‘novel’ about a deadly virus that’s killed millions and will kill millions more. The connotation he’s attributing to it makes it seem like a feature item at a museum, not an airborne menace! Maybe the word ‘novel’ would finally leave his vocabulary if the virus forced it out of his system— No. No, that wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t do at all. If Koyomi Araragi gets infected by the deadly coronavirus, then there’s an astronomically high chance that he dies from it. Oikura can’t have that. If Sodachi Oikura loses Koyomi Araragi, then who is Sodachi Oikura? What sort of person is she without the man that made her who she is?
A question better left unanswered.
Besides, if she keeps letting him call it ‘novel’, she can hate him for calling it ‘novel’. A new and ‘novel’ way to despise every fiber of his being. How ‘novel’, albeit less novel and more neverending.
However, to get back on track: Koyomi Araragi is still here.
He is in the process of moving out (a very special thanks to Karen and Tsukihi for setting a dangerous precedent), but he is very much still here. Living next to her. During lockdown. Where she cannot and will not move unless she absolutely has to.
She can hear the specific sound of his gait, the specific way he unlocks his door, and the specific way he enters his apartment. It’s all so Koyomi Araragi and it makes her want to puke her guts out or at least tear her ears off. It also gets her up in the morning when she would have overslept, makes her tea and breakfast when she would have gone hungry, and tunes her computer into her online lectures for the day when she would have skipped out of self-loathing.
In being so loathsome, she has come to rely on him. Spite, after all, is the greatest motivator she has— and perhaps the only one. She certainly has dreams, but they cannot be fuel for her fire. There is an empty husk of a person lying in wait beneath her skin and muscle and bones. A cracked soul with no reprieve waiting for it at the end. The only thing keeping it alight is Koyomi Araragi, that shoe-stomping, door-creaking, careless fool that lives next door.
Her enemy.
Her everything.
And later today, he will be gone.
Thanks to that deadly coronavirus, novel thing it is not, the last online lecture for the day has ended with the sun still up. Oikura leans back in her chair, mildly irritated at how there’s only half the amount of notes she would usually take in a real classroom. It can’t be helped, though; she’d rather die than go out like a chump getting infected. There’s this vomit-inducing instinct of self-preservation that refuses to go away even on her worse days, and it’s been running full-steam-ahead style since the curfew was put into place.
This is because of Koyomi Araragi, of course. His presence is an insufferable constant in her life. Before the deadly coronavirus decided to seize the world by its throat and enforce the subsequent lockdown, she could rest easy knowing that, for the most part, she and Koyomi Araragi had different sets of classes (obvious as it was that he tried to match her schedule, that creep), which meant that at certain intervals of the day, there was a 99% assurance rate that when she entered her apartment, there would be neither hint nor hair of Koyomi Araragi’s presence— not in the walls, not on her couch, and certainly not in the entire complex. Manase University would be doing its job of keeping its students within its walls and learning its material.
A lockdown, however, also locks down Manase University, and if Manase University is locked down, that means it cannot do its job, and if it cannot do its job, that means that Koyomi Araragi will be in his apartment, loitering and leering just out of her reach where she can’t strangle him for existing. He will become a now-consistent constant in her life when before, he was an inconsistent constant. A tolerable constant. A bearable constant.
Which makes it all the more important to note that, at the end of the day, Koyomi Araragi will not be here. He will be gone, out of her hair, and they will have cut ties once more.
Good.
Great, even.
Giddy and gleeful, especially. Specifically.
So, when she hears that heel-clacking, knob-turning, reckless buffoon ring her doorbell, she gets a whole speech ready to say goodbye. Forever this time, hopefully. Not that Sodachi Oikura is one to rely on something as unreliable and fickle as hope, because hope is little more than a performative candle that barely lights the way in front of you, so you’d be better off freeing your hands and carrying something more practical, like a book or even a large rock. At least those can be shields for if you ran into a wall. Hope is just clasping your hands together and praying without actually doing.
She opens the door, masked up so that she doesn’t directly breathe the same air as him (a small boon from the new culture brought on by that deadly coronavirus) and so that she doesn’t infect him with anything, because if he got sick even a little bit thanks to her inadequate existence as a human being, she would have no choice but to pull out all the stops to nurse him back to health. Koyomi Araragi, after all, is a half-baked thing that Sodachi Oikura needs to make sure is the picture of health, because if he isn’t, she can’t leech off his happiness for her own. She can’t surpass him if it’s easy. She can’t live if he’s dead.
Her words amount to something like ‘goodbye’, though it’s definitely delivered as ‘good riddance’ more than anything, so there was no point in writing it out in its entirety. It’s especially pointless because he says some words of his own: ignorant and empty words that would only poison the reader or listener unfortunate enough to lay eyes upon or hear, so she won’t contribute to the spread of such poison. This was lockdown, after all; becoming patient zero for the disease of idiocy on top of the spread of the deadly coronavirus (novel, it is not) would be such a stain on her record that she’d certainly hate herself so much to the point that she’d want to die and certainly would die. Idiocy had caused many people to die already. There was no need to spread it further.
So. Goodbye, Koyomi Araragi. May he never ever cross paths with Sodachi Oikura ever again.
May the two of them find happiness— apart from each other. Because there is no world where they are happy because of each other. That ship has long since sailed, and that ship had certainly sank on its voyage to nowhere.
“Goodbye.”
“Goodbye.”
…
…………… She should have pushed him off the balcony; he was completely defenseless, after all, and it’s not like he weighs that much more than her that she can’t do it. A shove or tackle with all her strength, and he’d go toppling off and break his arm at worst. An enticing and entertaining prospect that she might have indulged were there a few more screws loose in her head than usual, but they are wound tight, and so she doesn’t. Even though she should have compared to what she actually did. What she actually did was unequivocally, undoubtedly, unarguably worse than that imbecilic, intrusive, and insane idea.
First off, she pulled down her mask, exposing her face in its entirety. The death wish was rather pleased with this development. The deadly coronavirus might have been in the condensation in the air and found a new home now that she was directly breathing in the mid-spring air and the same air as Koyomi Araragi, albeit indirectly.
Second off, she yanked back Koyomi Araragi’s mask. This had the secondary effect of pulling his face down and toward her. The shortsighted side of her was satisfied, as if he was similarly infected by the deranged method just mentioned, then he would finally exit her life and she would prove herself the better half. Sodachi Oikura would finally become more than a half-baked half, a quarter of a person dominated by the presence of Koyomi Araragi. Maybe. She didn’t really know, but it was worth a shot.
Third and finally off, these backhanded, backwards are all so she can kiss him.
It lasts maybe three or four seconds, because that’s all she can tolerate. He tastes awful; if they’d both eaten, that’d be one thing, but he’s clearly stuffed himself silly before coming here when all she’s had recently is a cup of tea and the first layer of her stomach lining. The mismatch is what disgusts her. The opposite of the phenomenon called gap moe. Gap no-e, more like.
(She should die. Die die die die die die die die die. What sort of big sister to Nadeko is she if she’s making stupid jokes like that? Stupid, stupid, stupid! Nadeko would hate her. Hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate her.)
When it’s done, she releases his mask, snapping it back into place, shuts the door, and immediately bangs her forehead on it.
Stupid.
Stupid!!