Editing Hyouka:Volume 6 5 (section)

=== 4. ===
 
 
 
"Huh?"
 
Chitanda paused. Impressive. She didn't even twitch.
 
She continued to stand frozen in place, possibly trying to go through the story once more in her head. She'd probably fall right over if I nudged her, but I went back to work instead. I made quite a lot of progress during that long story. All that was left was to pick up the fallen leaves with the dustpan and stuff them in the trash bags. That final step proved to be a little more annoying that I'd initially thought.
 
The dustpan was still in the bucket that Chitanda brought. As I took a step, about to go get it, she finally spoke up.
 
"Huh?"
 
"There's nothing 'huh' about it."
 
"I heard the entire story, right?"
 
"I hope so."
 
"Wasn't that ending a little weird?"
 
Well, I guess it was a little.
 
"Oreki-san, you helped Tanaka-san search for her backpack, right? You then managed to find it, and her precious mechanical pencil was safe inside, and then after that, goods with character designs were banned from your elementary school, right?"
 
Exactly. I picked up the dustpan.
 
I heard a loud clap.
 
"Ah, I got it!"
 
"Oh yeah?"
 
"You must've had a lot of character goods yourself, Oreki-san. When they were all banned, it came as a huge shock to you. Wait... But what does that have to do with 'If I don't have to do it, I won't'?"
 
She started to tilt her head left and right once more.  She moved the broom as if deep in thought, and then finally timidly followed her theory up.
 
"Maybe...because the character goods ended up being banned, you regretted ever helping her from the start? Was that what you were thinking?"
 
Not bad. If I tried hard at anything, I would only be making more trouble for myself in the end. That's where she was going with this, huh?
 
Unfortunately...
 
"That's wrong."
 
"But—!"
 
"Don't stop cleaning."
 
"O-okay."
 
Chitanda was also more-or-less finished with her side of the shrine. Though there weren't many leaves left, the pile was pretty huge.
 
I started to use the dustpan first. As I was collecting the leaves, I started to speak.
 
"You always start talking from the conclusion first. I just wanted to give you a taste of your own medicine."
 
"You're terrible! You really did leave out parts of the story, Oreki-san!"
 
"Yeah."
 
Hearing that was music to my ears.
 
I really wasn't feeling well today. Even though there was clearly a better way to tell that story, for some reason, I just didn't feel like doing it. Seeing the distressed Chitanda, well, it made me feel once more that doing this kind of thing every now and then might not seem that bad. It was a completely faultless way to kill time. Thanks to it, even the cleaning itself felt brief.
 
"Let's see..." Chitanda mused, placing a finger on her lips. Staying silent would probably be a bit too cruel, so I gave her a little help.
 
"The whole thing with the banned goods with character designs was kind of just an afterthought. It doesn't really have anything to do with the rest of the story."
 
She stared at me with huge, upturned eyes. "Wait... were you teasing me?"
 
"Something like that."
 
"O-Oreki-san!"
 
I put the leaves I collected into the bag. Although I'd supposedly cleaned up such a large area, after I stuffed it all inside, the resulting amount looked pitifully small. It felt like I was only cleaning up dirt.
 
"Don't get so angry. My elementary school self immediately realized it was strange. You shouldn't have a difficult time figuring it out, either."
 
"That doesn't help me..." she said as she hung her head. "You and I are different, Oreki-san. I just can't do that kind of reasoning. I don't know why."
 
I guess she was aware of it as well...
 
I didn't mean for this to turn into some kind of harassment. Besides, maybe I didn't tell the story well enough.
 
"Okay, first, Tanaka and I were doing our shifting job. I explained that thoroughly, right?"
 
"Right."
 
Chitanda started to lean forward and nodded. Her expression was dead serious. I kind of had the feeling I did something terrible to her.
 
"Halfway through, Tanaka couldn't stick around after school anymore. Because of that, I had to take care of the plants every day for a week when it was our class's turn to do it."
 
"Right." As if trying to hammer in the fact that she had properly listened, she added, "She was living in a much farther place because her house was being rebuilt. It took an hour."
 
"That's the part I'm talking about."
 
Chitanda had a great memory. Although I didn't mention that detail, I definitely hadn't forgotten about it either.
 
"I believe I said something about exactly what took an hour and from where."
 
"Right. It took one hour from the station by bus."
 
"Good. Specifically..."
 
"You said the city bus."
 
"How was she planning on getting on it?"
 
It looked like Chitanda finally realized it for herself.  Her expression took on a surprised look, and she covered her mouth with both her hands. Her broom rested under her arm. She was pretty good at doing that.
 
"Oh, I figured it out. Tanaka-san couldn't return home. The clothes she wore that day didn't have pockets, after all."
 
"That's right."
 
"In order to ride the bus, you'd need money or a ticket. If you couldn't carry either of those on your person, you'd have to put it in your backpack."
 
I nodded emphatically.
 
"That's right. I thought it was a bit strange from the start. At first, I thought that the teacher had asked me to help find it so she could get on the bus, but why was she playing when she lost it after school in the first place? I figured that she was having fun while giving herself enough time to catch the bus, so I was really desperate to find it for her in time.
 
"When she got it back, however, the only thing important to her in it was the mechanical pencil with the little character on top. I even asked her if she was sure that that was the only important thing she needed to check for, but she couldn't think of anything else."
 
"What does that mean?"
 
We'd gotten this far and she still couldn't figure it out?
 
Well, I guess I couldn't blame her. Even I didn't want to believe it at the time.
 
"The only conclusion I could draw was that Tanaka didn't actually need to take the bus."
 
"How could..."
 
Speechless, Chitanda's eyes opened wide.
 
"I don’t think that was actually the case at the start. When she initially asked me to take care of the watering duty, she might've actually had to take the hour-long bus ride. At the very least, however, her situation was different that day. A simple mechanical pencil took precedence over her means to get home. The reason being: Tanaka no longer needed to take the bus."
 
"The construction work on her house had already finished? Then why didn't she..."
 
"Isn't it obvious?"
 
I sighed.
 
"She pushed all the job onto me so she could skip out on work."
 
 
 
Chitanda spoke as she gathered the leaves with the dustpan.
 
"So that's what happened. You hated being lied to, so you started to say 'If I don't have to do it, I won't.'"
 
That wasn't really it.
 
I guess my storytelling really wasn't good, after all. That wasn't the case at all.
 
What happened from that point on wasn't a very pretty story. I knew, as well, that it wasn't the kind of thing you could just tell anyone.
 
Chitanda had gone a little too far with her assumptions, though. Could I remain silent after the last part of the story being misunderstood like that?
 
"No," I interjected. "That day, I realized that Tanaka didn't have any money or tickets for the bus. My first reaction was to immediately look at our teacher. In the first place, he was the one who told me to do all of that hard work by myself because Tanaka's house was being rebuilt, after all. He'd notice if there was something strange about that situation. If he found out, he'd immediately start scolding her, right...? But he didn't."
 
Chitanda looked at my reasoning with eyes tinged with suspicion.
 
"Doesn't that just mean he hadn't figured it out?"
 
That'd be much more preferable.
 
"No, he had a crazy expression on. You could see the 'Shit, I messed up' written all over it. Because of that, I was able to confirm that her house's construction had indeed already been finished at that point."
 
"..."
 
"So then why didn't he tell me? Why didn't everything go back to how it was on the first day of our switching duty?
 
"It could've just been that I had some sort or persecution complex. He could've just forgotten for all I knew. But on that day, when I saw that expression of his, one thing went through my head... It was because I always did everything that was asked of me without a word of complaint. It was because I was so convenient in that sense that he didn't bother to do anything about someone else pushing their work onto me."
 
I propped myself up with the broom, as if it were a cane, and continued.
 
"I then thought a little more about it. You know, the construction on Tanaka's house didn't even have anything to do with me in the first place, right? Maybe it was through some kind of mistake of mine that I ended up with the responsibility to do Tanaka's share of the work for her? That's not right. Tanaka's business was hers alone. I had nothing to do with any of it.
 
"Though, I guess we were technically classmates and job partners. Maybe it was good for us to help each other out. I mean, just watering the flower garden wasn't really that much work. It's true that my house was close by, so it was probably fine to help someone in need...
 
"...These kinds of thoughts, I realized, were the reason I was taken advantage of."
 
All Tanaka did was seize the opportunity.
 
After that incident, I started to realize there were two kinds of people: those who knew how the world worked and pushed everything they didn't want to do on others and those who happily accepted being on the receiving end of the former’s actions. When I entered 6th grade—no, when I grew old enough to understand my surroundings, I started to realize that I was one of the latter. As I did, all my memories started to flood back, one-by-one. That time, that time, and that time too... so that's what was happening.
 
How about when I was told to bring the heavy, one-liter container of salad dressing on our class daytrip? When the school was on the verse of stopping classes temporarily due to an influenza outbreak, was there anyone else besides me who had to visit countless houses to deliver all of the sick students' classwork? When we accidently broke a window during a game of kickball, was the reason I went to the principal's office alone to apologize on everyone's behalf and instead got chewed out by our teacher because I was the leader? No. It was because I never talked back.
 
That in itself was fine, really. None of the things I did were unmanageable. It wasn't like I considered me doing those kind of stuff some sort of loss, and I didn't hate them for constantly taking it easy.
 
It's just that imagining myself being used like a convenient tool made me sad.
 
 
 
I thought back.
 
At that time, my discovery made me so sad, and it was getting too painful to keep silent about it, so I told my older sister.
 
<i>Even if you think that fellow human beings should help each other, others won't necessarily think of you as being worth it. It's not like I wanted anyone to appreciate me. I just never imagined that people thought of me as such an idiot. I won't stay after school anymore. As long as I'm around others, they'll ask me to do something. They probably think I'm an idiot because I always did what they asked without resisting. I don't care about what they think. I just hate being used. Of course, if I have to do it I will. I won't complain at all. But, if it's not necessary... If it turns out it's someone else's responsibility... If I don't have to do it, I won't. I absolutely won't.</i>
 
My sister listened to this unspecific story of mine, and placed her hand atop my head as she spoke.
 
<i>Yeah. Even though you're so awkward, you always want to be useful. Even though you're such an idiot, some strange part of you is so smart you've picked up such a nasty outlook. That's fine then. I won't stop you. There shouldn't be anything wrong with that, right? I don't think anything you're saying is incorrect.</i>
 
I wonder what she said after that. I felt like she said a little more. That's right. If I remember correctly...
 
<i>From now on, you should go on a long holiday. It'll be for the best. Take it nice and easy. It's okay. Even if, while you're resting, you can't change yourself fundamentally—</i>
 
"—ki-san."
 
I must've ended up getting lost in thought. I hadn't realized Chitanda was calling out to me.
 
"Uh, sorry. What were you saying?"
 
Chitanda's face was right before me. Her massive eyes stared into mine.
 
"You were sad, weren't you, Oreki-san?"
 
I turned away and smiled.
 
"It wasn't that bad. All it was, was a case of a sulking boy who ended up with nowhere to turn."
 
It was such an ingrained habit of mine, that I imagined it was difficult to adopt a new motto like that. If I don't have to do it, I won't.
 
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Chitanda gripping her broom with both hands. Without so much as looking away, she said something completely out of the blue.
 
"I've been thinking, though, Oreki-san... About the 'you' in your story and the 'you' standing here right now... I was thinking they might actually not be that different after all."
 
I wanted to laugh off her statement.
 
But nothing came out.
 
Chitanda took a step away. She bent over and picked up the trash bag stuffed with fallen leaves.
 
"Thank you very much. Thanks to you, this place looks really nice now."
 
"Yeah."
 
"Kaho-san will probably bring out some tea and snacks for us. Would you like relax with us for a little while longer?"
 
I smiled softly and waved my hand to decline. Please spare me from another moment of sitting between those two.
 
"Nah. Hand me that broom. I'll take it back with me."
 
I took it from her and rested each one on a different shoulder. I turned around as to not hit her with the end and then started talking with my back turned.
 
"Give Juumonji my regards. I'll be going now."
 
I started to descend down the stairs, assaulted by the shadows of the foliage above. The sound of the leaves rustling in the wind softly reached my ears. It looked like this rare, beautiful day hasn't given up on me yet. The laundry will probably be already dry by the time I get back.
 
As I was leaving, I heard Chitanda's voice.
 
"Oreki-san! Thank you for telling me your story! I'm really happy that you did!"
 
It'd be too much of a hassle to turn around with the heavy brooms on my person, so I just pretended I didn't hear her in the first place. If I don't have to do it, I won't. Oh, would you look at that. Even though today was such a strange day, coming here was all it took to return me back to normal. I scratched my head.
 
I then suddenly remembered. I remembered the rest of what my sister said at that moment, as she violently ruffled around my hair.
 
<i>—I'm sure someone will end your holiday for you.</i>

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