"Senjougahara-san?" Hanekawa tilted her head to the side, puzzlement in her eyes. "What about Senjougahara-san?"
"You know - " I hesitated. "I'm just, curious."
"You don’t say."
"You know, like, she has a weird name, doesn't she?"
"Senjougahara is the name of a place."[1]
"Well, it's not that, I'm talking about her first name."
"If I’m not wrong, her first name is Hitagi, isn’t it? It's not really weird. If I remember correctly, it's a term related to public works.” [2]”
"You really know everything..."
"I don't know everything. I just know what I know." Although Hanekawa did not seem satisfied with my answer, she did not persist, but only commented offhandedly. "It's quite rare for Araragi-kun to take notice of other people."
I told her it was none of her business.
Hanekawa Tsubasa.
She's the class representative.
She is a girl with the air of a class representative, with proper glasses, rule-abiding, awfully serious and popular with teachers, one of the rare breeds that only exist in anime and manga these days.
She has been the class representative all her life, and has an air about her that suggests she will continue to be a class representative all her life, and is the representative of all representatives. There are rumours that she might have been chosen by a god to be a class representative (just me, actually.)
We were in different classes for the first and second year of school and only ended up in the same class for third year. Even before we were in the same class, I had heard about Hanekawa's existence. It was a given; if Senjougahara was in the top of the class every year, Hanekawa was the top student. She attains full marks for all five or six subjects as if it was a walk in the park, and even now, I can remember her inhuman feat. In the term tests of the first semester of our second year, including Physical Education and Fine Arts, the only mistake she made was on a trick question in History. She was so famous, even if I didn't want to, I would have ended up hearing about her.
And.
Unfortunately, no, it might be a good thing, but it doesn't discount the fact that it's irritating. Hanekawa is a kind human being, good at taking care of people. And it is honestly unfortunate that she is a determined person as well. She is such a serious person that she doesn't budge once she has made up her mind. During the spring break, just because of a little incident that should have been over by now, even though she didn't know whether we would end up in the same class or not, she had declared: "I will definitely change you for the better."
For someone like me who was neither a delinquent nor a problem child, more of an ornament in class than anything, her declaration came as a shock. No matter how hard I tried to dissuade her, she forced me to become the assistant class representative.
That was why today, the 8th of May, the both of us stayed back after school to plan the Cultural Festival that was to be held in the middle of June.
"Though it's the Cultural Festival, we're third year students. We can't afford to do anything big, because we'll be having examinations soon." said Hanekawa.
As expected of the representative of all class representatives, she places more importance on examinations than cultural festivals.
"Instead of wasting time on gathering opinions with surveys, how about we think of some ideas and let the class take a vote on them?"
YOU ARE READING
Monogatari Series
RomantizmThe story centers on Koyomi Araragi, a third year high school student who has recently survived a vampire attack, and finds himself mixed up with all kinds of apparitions: gods, ghosts, myths, and spirits.
