Sodachi laid under the covers in her bed.
Math is organized. Math has rules. Math has a clear delineation from point A to point B with no distractions, no tangents, and no dysfunction. It is precise. Euler's number. e. The mathematical constant that is the base of the natural logarithm. The ratio of one, plus one divided by a number, all to the power of that number extended to infinity. (1 + 1/n)^n. From 1 to e, the integral of the function y = 1^x will equal 1. The derivative of e^x is always e^x. e^i + 1 = 0. The simplistic perfection of Euler's Identity. But e is also irrational. It extends infinitely and never ever repeats. It is both perfect and inherently unknowable.
Sodachi left Naoetsu with hardly a sound. She was sure most students never even realized she hadn't dropped out two years prior. Her apartment was smaller here, with hardly any room to which she could appreciate how spotlessly clean she kept it. Even sparsely decorated it was cramped, just barely enough for one girl to sustain herself on the government's dime.
She sat at the table in her pajamas.
Every minute outside of her apartment was hell. Even in a new town, where no one knew about her family history, class trial, or shameful disappearance. Even still, she could see all their smug faces, unaware of all of the luck they had born with. How they had been blessed their entire lives.
She was cursed. Cursed to time and time again suffer for no other reason than trying to live her life. A family who hated her. A botched cry for help. A framing. Abandonment. And Araragi. She hated him. She hated him so much she wanted to die. She wanted to take her pen and stab his eyes out, staple his mouth shut, burn him alive, strangle him rip his guts out stomp on him watch him bleed out onto the concrete pull his arms and le-
But she wouldn't. She couldn't actually do anything. Especially after he had helped her. Was help even the right word? All he really did was make her relive her trauma, then gawk at her as if she were some kind of helpless exotic animal in need of a savior. She cut him off instead. She didn't want him involved again. He was arguably the root in the first place.
Trauma is normal for human beings. Everyone has trauma, even Araragi. Everyone feels hatred and abandonment and fear and hopelessness and emptiness, right? Lives are short and horrible and she was weak. Her curse trapped her in her trauma forever, even when she escaped the external, continuing to haunt her. There was a Monster inside of her and all she could do was thrust it onto other people. It wasn't Araragi's fault, nor was it his parents' or Hanekawa's or Senjougahara's or anyone else's. If it wasn't their fault, was it her parents' fault? If she could absolve the others for merely living their lives, how could she damn her parents for the exact same?
She looked around the empty room.
That left her. Sodachi Oikura. 老倉育. O-ikura. "How much?". Appraisal. At school, she would desperately search for those lowlier than her. She never found any. She wasn't trying to prove that she was better than everyone else, rather a frantic attempt to appraise herself. She couldn't be the worst. She was certain that she could find someone even lowlier than herself; the most ungrateful, spoiled, smug, bratty, stupid, cruel, holier-than-thou child. A waste of human space on Earth with no one else to blame. It was her survival mechanism, a natural result of evolution that allowed her to continue on. When the anger subsided, when it was just her and her "mother" alone, she only had her self. She couldn't rely on her self. Her self was a liar, corrupted and poisoned by the Monster.
Her self did not behave by rules, instead opting to sow disorder and dysfunction inside her wherever it could. She didn't… want to die exactly, it was more like she just didn't want to live. She wished she would just vanish as if she had never existed at all. No parents to hate her, no boys to ignore and forget her, no teachers. Dying was messy. People would look for her and try to understand what she did her and she'd have to leave a suicide note, her dad would have to deal with her remains and someone would have to find the body. The closest she could get to vanishing was to stay locked up in her home. Worry about small things like "What should I watch on TV?" or "I guess I should make some food" or "I won't hurt myself right now". Here, no one could notice she wasn't there if she never appeared in the first place.
She sat in the bath.
The hot water enveloped her as she remained motionless. She didn't know how long she'd been in there. The white tile of the bathroom made her feel as though it were simultaneously incredibly small and impossibly large. It was as spotless as it had ever been, scrubbed regularly along with her kitchen and the majority of her home. Not that it was hard. It was practically sterile to begin with.
She did something she had not done in a long time. She thought about her mother. Her two years living with a corpse. A corpse, not her mother. She thought about it a lot since moving, as a place to put her feelings when she didn't know what to with them. She had always had trouble recalling memories in detail, but she didn't have to. For her, it was everyday life hardly different from what she did now. She woke up, she ate breakfast, she would do the shopping. For two years, her delusion rarely broke.
Sometimes after her mother vanished and she was desperate, looking for any kind of explanation, she would ask God or anyone who would listen, what she had done to deserve her life. She never received a reply.
The bathwater started to cool around her.
Nothing. She had done nothing. Her father ran away because he was afraid of responsibility. Her mother had given up, not on her but on the everything. She didn't fail when Araragi couldn't rescue her from her home. He was so caught up with his own life, he would have never noticed the signs. He could never see a mysterious girl teaching him mathematics as anything but. She didn't create her monster, it was thrust upon her. A dead weight she had no choice but to carry. She hadn't done anything.
It came to her gradually. If she had done nothing, and no one else had done anything… what was left? Was she nothing more than a victim of pure random circumstance? If laws exist in mathematics, they must exist in the universe. Maybe not. Maybe the universe, fate, God, destiny, whatever it was called, was chaotic. Water does not come to boil on its own, but by an infinite number of factors, causes and effects, that lead to the combination of heat and water at that moment. If she wanted to rage, and hate, and fight and scratch and snarl and beat and scream she could only blame the stars.
Chaos. The world is chaotic. Nothing matters, no one can change anything, and everything is random. For her, it was a comforting thought. Being lost in the infinity of static like snow on a television. Every person is a dot, rapidly blinking in and out of existence. Why should she care about her father when in 45 years, he will die. She'll die 30 after that and 5 billion years after that the Earth will melt away inside the Sun. Her story is and will be similar to that of millions or billions of others, yet still is unique. Her own tragedy, leading to her self. Miserable and broken but living, if only by a thread. If she can't change her life and her past, why not just continue on?
She got out of the bath.
She sat at her desk after school.
Her welfare program required her to continue her schooling, at least through graduation. After her years alone, it was uncomfortable being out of the apartment, especially after her disastrous return to Naoetsu that ended with her unconscious on the floor. Not her finest moment, it took her several days just to be willing to talk to Hanekawa.
She knew nihilism was only slapping a bandage on her curse. A temporary reprieve where she could enjoy her complete meaninglessness, but it was enough. It made the anger and rage and hatred and pain subside. The new school was hardly different from the last. Water, boil, etc. There was comfort here, where she could seamlessly blend into the noise of the crowd, her silver hair the only thing betraying her identity.
And Araragi was not there. For the first time, she had no one. No friends, no family. No past, no reputation no teachers no connections no Araragi no mom no dad no hurt and no Araragi!
She stood up.
That left her. Sodachi Oikura. 老倉育. Sodachi. "Growth".