The timeline.
I had misconstrued the timeline.
I was sure that Senjogahara encountering the crab and losing her weight had eaten away at her mother, who then fell for the money-grubbing sect─but I was told that in reality, her mother had fallen for it long before Senjogahara ever encountered the crab and lost her weight.
I should've been able to figure that out with some thought.
Unlike stationery tools like box cutters and staplers, cleats aren't something you just happen to reach out and find nearby. That word coming up should have tipped me off then and there that Senjogahara had been on the track team at the time─that she'd been in middle school. There was no way she could have been in high school when even gym classes were off limits and she belonged to the no-extracurriculars club.
Apparently, the exact point at which her mother fell for the religion─started to believe in it─was when Senjogahara was in fifth grade. Back in elementary school, before even Hanekawa knew her.
And according to Senjogahara.
In those days─she was a girl who was always ill.
Not as her positioning, but as a matter of fact.
Then, at a certain point, she was stricken with a terrible sickness that everyone has heard of. Her condition was such that she had only one chance out of ten of surviving and doctors indeed wanted to throw in the towel.
That's when─
Senjogahara's mother began looking for solace.
Or should we say, was taken advantage of.
Probably totally unrelated to that─though "No one can know for sure whether or not it was unrelated," Oshino opined─Senjogahara underwent major surgery and managed to be that one out of ten. The faint surgery scar that supposedly remained on her back was another thing I might have noticed, had I observed her nude body in detail at her home, but demanding that of me would border on cruel.
I do admit that accusing her of just trying to show off her body when she started dressing herself from the top down, facing me head-on, was indeed cruel.
Some feedback at least, she'd said.
In any case, thanks to Senjogahara's recovery, her mother─only became more absorbed with the religion's teachings.
Because of her piety─her daughter had been saved.
She'd fallen for a classic trap.
It's what you might call a symptomatic case.
Still, the household itself─somehow persisted. I have no way of knowing what kind of creed of what group this was, but not bleeding its believers dry─had to be their basic policy at least. Senjogahara's father's ample income and their family starting out affluent certainly helped─but as the years went on, her mother's piety, her absorption, only worsened in degree.
The household was merely persisting.
Senjogahara's relationship with her mother began to sour.
It was one thing up through the time she graduated from elementary school─but after she began middle school, they barely spoke. Looking back, with that in mind, at what I learned from Hanekawa about Senjogahara's middle-school persona is to understand just how warped it was.
Really, it was like─an attempt at vindication.
Superhuman.
In middle school, Senjogahara was almost superhuman.
And─maybe it was to assure her mother: I can do this, we don't need any religion.
As much as their relationship had soured.
She probably never was an active girl, at heart.
If she was always ill in grade school, then even more so.
She must have been forcing it.
But it was, more likely than not, counterproductive.
A vicious circle.
The better she did, and the more exemplary she became─the more her mother must have thanked the religion's teachings.
The counterproductive, vicious circle wound on─
Her third year of middle school.
It happened when graduation was around the corner.
Originally having joined for her daughter's sake, somewhere along the way Senjogahara's mother's logic got flipped around to the point that she was offering her daughter to one of the cult's executive members. No, maybe that, too, was for her daughter's sake─the thought is too much to bear.
Senjogahara resisted.
With her cleats she wounded the leader badly enough that he bled from his forehead.
As a result─
Their family fell apart.
It was in ruins.
Robbed wholesale.
Losing everything they owned, their home, their land─and even taking on debt.
They were all but literally bled dry.
Although the divorce was only finalized last year according to Senjogahara, and it must have been as a high school student that she started to live in the Tamikura Apartments, it was already all over when she was in middle school.
All over.
That's why.
That's why Senjogahara─during that halfway period between being a middle schooler and a high schooler─came across it.
A crab.
"You see, Araragi. The omoshi-kani is an omoishi-gami," Oshino said. "Do you understand? Omoishi as in 'thinking upon,' and omoi and shigami as in 'thoughts' and 'clinging'─it has to do with inextricable bonds, shigarami. Doesn't interpreting it that way explain why being deprived of weight also deprives people of their presences? People sealing away a memory when they've gone through too much is common fare in dramas and movies. If you want an analogy, that would be it. It's a god that carries people's thoughts in our place."
In other words, when she met the crab…
Senjogahara─cut off her mother.
She had offered Senjogahara to the leader like some sacrifice and not even tried to save her daughter, causing their family to fall apart, except maybe that wouldn't have happened if the daughter hadn't resisted at the time─Senjogahara had tormented herself. Then she quit.
She stopped thinking about it.
She rid herself of that weight.
Freely, on her own.
She had─cheated.
She had sought─solace.
"It's a barter. A trade, equivalent exchange. Crabs are clad in armor and look durable, don't they? That's probably the idea here. Put a shell around your exterior. Preserve what's dear, enveloping it with an exoskeleton. All the while bubbling foam that vanishes right away. I won't have them."
He wasn't kidding about not fancying crab.
Although he seemed flippant, Oshino was actually─kind of gauche.
"The character for 'crab' is made up of the ones for 'solving' and 'insect,' isn't it? It's a critter that breaks things down. Organisms that crisscross edges of water tend to fall under that rubric. What's more, those guys are─equipped with scissors, two pairs at that."
As a result.
Senjogahara was deprived of her weight─losing it, losing her thoughts, she was liberated from her suffering. Free of torment─she was able to give it all up.
And when she did?
She said things got─much easier.
That was her honest feeling.
In and of itself, being deprived of her weight wasn't a big deal for Senjogahara. Yet─even so, like the lad who sold his shadow for ten pieces of gold, there wasn't a day that it, things being easier, didn't gnaw at her.
But not because of any discord with others.
Not because of any inconvenience in going about her life.
Not because she can't make any friends.
Not because she lost everything.
Simply because─she lost her thoughts, her burden.
The five frauds.
None of them seems to have anything to do with her mother's religion─but even as Senjogahara only half-trusts the bunch, Oshino included, she lends them close to half of her trust─and you can say, that, there, is her expression of regret. Not to mention visiting the hospital out of sheer habit─
There's nothing to it.
I got it all wrong, from the very start to the very end.
All this time after being deprived of her weight, Senjogahara─
Hasn't resigned herself.
Hasn't given up on anything.
"It's not necessarily bad, you know," Oshino argued. "Confronting a painful experience isn't a must. It's not like you're great just 'cause you do. If you don't feel like it, it's totally fine to run away. Even if it's ditching your daughter or taking refuge in religion, that's your own choice. Especially in this case, getting back your thought and burden at this late stage won't do a thing, right? Missy, who stopped feeling tormented, will torment herself again, but that won't bring back her mother or restore her wrecked family."
Won't do a thing.
Oshino seemed to intend that as neither ridicule nor sarcasm.
"The omoshi-kani robs you of your weight, your thinking, your presence. But it's not like our little vampire Shinobu or that lust-besotted cat. Missy hoped for it, so it in fact dispensed. A barter─the god was always there. Missy actually hadn't lost a thing. In spite of that…"
In spite of that.
Regardless of that.
Because of that.
Hitagi Senjogahara─wanted it returned.
She wanted it returned.
Her thinking of her mother, after the fact.
The memory and the torment.
I don't know what that means, and I doubt I ever will, and just as Oshino pointed out, it's neither here nor there and won't bring her mother or her family back, and it will only steep Senjogahara in tormented thoughts, but─
It's not like anything is going to change, but.
"It's not like nothing is going to change," Senjogahara said at the end.
To me, her eyes red and swollen from crying.
"And this definitely wasn't pointless. Because I've made a very dear friend, at least."
"Who would that be?"
"I'm talking about you."
I'd reflexively played dumb, but Senjogahara's response was neither bashful nor roundabout, but forward─and proud.
"Thank you, Araragi. I'm very grateful for what you've done. I apologize for everything until now. I hope you don't find this brazen of me, but I'd be very happy if we could continue to be friends."
How careless of me─
This surprise attack by Senjogahara seeped deep into my heart, deep.
Our promise to go eat crabs, though?
It's going to have to wait until winter.