Monogatari Series

Monogatari Series:Bakemonogatari Volume1/Hitagi Crab 007

The time line.

I'd got the time line confused.

I'd assumed Senjougahara met the crab, lost her weight, and that led to her mother being crazy enough to join a cult. But it was the other way around; Senjougahara's mother had joined the cult long before Senjougahara encountered the crab, and it took her weight away.

I should have guessed.

While staplers and utility knives were things you might have lying around the house, cleats were definitely not. The moment she mentioned them, I should have realized that this had happened when she was still on the track team -- in junior high. By the time she started high school, and did not participate in PE, let alone track team, she would never have owned a pair of cleats.

Apparently her mother had first joined the cult when Senjougahara was in the fifth grade. Well before even Hanekawa knew her.

At the time, she'd been a frail kid.

Actually sick, not just believed to be.

She had something bad -- you'd know the name if I mentioned it. Her odds of surviving it were less than ten percent, and the doctors were ready to give up.

Things were so bad...

Senjougahara's mother needed some respite.

They took advantage of it.

Senjougahara's operation defied the odds -- a fact that most likely had nothing to do with the cult, although Oshino pointed out that we had no way of being sure. When I was at Senjougahara's house, if I had chosen to inspect her naked body closely, I might have noticed the faint operation scars on her back...but obviously, I had done no such thing.

And the way she'd faced me, and put her shirt on first...well, I guess I'd been wrong to suggest she was showing off her body.

She'd asked for my opinion.

At any rate, when Senjougahara's life was saved, her mother...sank even deeper into the cult's clutches.

Believing they had saved her daughter's life.

They had her hooked.

A classic pattern.

But the family stuck together. I knew nothing about the cult's actual practices or beliefs, but for the most part, they did not seem to upend their follower's lives. Her father earned enough, and they'd been rich to begin with, which helped; but as the years passed, her mother's beliefs deepened, and their hold on her increased.

They were a family in name only.

Senjougahara was no longer speaking to her mother.

When she was still in elementary school, they'd remained close, but things had grown increasingly strained after she entered junior high. From the way Hanekawa described her then, it was hard to imagine something like that eating at her.

Perhaps it created her.

Made her great.

Forced her to try and be as perfect as she could be.

To show her mother how perfect she could be, to prove she could be great without help from any cult.

Despite not talking to her.

She had not naturally been inclined towards sports.

Certainly not when she'd been sick.

She must have forced herself.

But her efforts had backfired.

Made things worse.

The better Senjougahara did, the more perfect she managed to be, the more convinced her mother was it was all the cult's influence.