I'd never lose it
It will always gnaw at my heart
Is there anything that you can offer me
in return for my admiration years ago?
A twisted light brings us back together
and suddenly my loneliness is lit up
On the waterside I see the summer haze
One day it will be gone like the flowers
I'm afflicted by incurable sadness
I made up an excuse to keep others at bay
I'd like to plant a faint kiss of goodbye on that
and be someone who turns around to face you in the crowd
Before everything grows faint and dim,
I want to find use for my pain
Suruga Devil Episode One
Font used in the video: HGP Mincho B
Scene no. 128
The way I put it made it sound like the two of them had died or something,
Back when I went to school, I thought it was way too impolite to address your homeroom teacher without honorifics.
Scene no. 2
So no matter how useless and unmotivated they seemed as teachers, I addressed them politely.
I thought that made me a polite, well-mannered kid.
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But now that I think back, I wonder if maybe the ones who called the teacher by their first name had the right idea.
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I had the right manners, but I wasn't right.
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It's been a long time since I went to school, so I find myself thinking those things,
Scene no. 6
ruminating on it...
Scene no. 8
Hey there, Kanbaru.
You stole my left arm, didn't you?
No, I just took it off your hands.
Or well, collected it from you.
When?
When did you do it?
When you were getting off to me fondling your chest.
That was only the setup, though.
It probably only took effect the next morning.
Kaiki didn't know you were the collector, huh?
Nah. That scamster knows exactly who I am.
He's a rather strange man.
You can't really call it fraud.
Scene no. 51
No matter when, no matter who he's up against,
he makes it a point not to reveal more than half of what he knows.
I don't think I really understand that principle.
Scene no. 53
He wants to be a well-meaning third party at all times—
not the deciding factor in a story.
He doesn't even want a supporting role, he wants to pull the strings from behind the scenes.
Scene no. 55
He knew exactly who I was,
and he probably figured out that you'd already had your arm stolen.
But he didn't tell me.
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I don't understand why.
Not so much his policy as his curse.
So Numachi really is the collector?
If so.
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Numachi, were you collecting more than the misfortune of others?
You were collecting parts of the devil too?
Why would you do this? I don't get it.
Hey, Kanbaru.
Are you free after school?
I am.
I'll be waiting for you in the gym, then.
Let's talk things out there.
Episode Strange
Suruga Devil Episode Three
Font used in the video: HGP Mincho B
Scene no. 75
Up for some one-on-one?
Sure.
Scene no. 84
One hour later
Scene no. 168
You should've dunked.
There's no way I could've stopped that one-on-one in my current state.
I don't really like dunking much.
That so?
It's against the rules, in my eyes.
Maybe that's a bit exaggerated.
Scene no. 170
You could call it a part of freestyle basketball.
It exists more as a crowd pleaser than a tool to win games.
To a midget like me, though, it's an awesome technique that turns me green with envy.
You say that like I'm a skyscraper.
If I could ask the devil to grant me one wish,
I'd probably wish to be taller.
But if I did that, I'd end up killing everyone taller than me, huh?
What about you? What did you ask for, Kanbaru?
I'd rather not say.
Don't be like that.
Didn't we just bare our souls to each other...
through this guy here?
What's there to hide at this point?
I guess that's true.
In that case, Numachi,
promise me you'll come clean too.
I don't mind, but what do you want to know?
What you've been doing these past three years.
Deal.
However, you go first.
Scene no. 201
You can't call it a very interesting story.
Scene no. 202
Just this and that about my left arm.
Monkey's Paw
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I told my story while omitting that Araragi is a vampire.
Scene no. 202
So you asked for speed and for the Valhalla Duo to make a comeback, eh?
As wishes go, they're quite plain.
So plain you could call them run of the mill.
That's a pretty acid reaction after you convinced someone to share their story.
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I knew you swung that way, Kanbaru.
What's that supposed to mean?
I always found it fishy the way you looked at your teammates and opponents.
I never gave any of those pure basketball players around me dirty looks.
Scene no. 211
I think.
I hope.
Sadly I can't say so with great confidence.
Say, wanna kiss?
I happen to like girls more than those crass boys too.
I could run away at any time.
I should be able to,
but I can't.
Pink
Unnumbered Scene
That means you don't want to.
Most problems can be solved by running away,
but a lot of people think that means admitting defeat.
In my eyes, they only look like they're willingly plunging themselves in misfortune.
Willingly?
Sprinting towards misfortune
Scene no. 231
Escape
Scene no. 231
Running away doesn't mean you lose,
and it won't always make you unhappy either.
Failing to escape merely helps you resign yourself to your fate.
Could it be that deep down, you want me to kiss you by force?
H-Hang on a sec!
Someone might see us!
They won't.
Smooch.
Disappointed?
She played me for a fool!
Let's keep things pure, shall we?
We've got our whole lives ahead of us,
so we shouldn't play with fire too much.
Don't you hate dunking
Scene no. 269
because it seems cheap to you?
What a wasted talent.
What the hell? I know for a fact that you couldn't dunk back in junior high.
And with your leg in that state...
Yep. This is the state my leg's in.
Anyway, I've taken on all of your suffering.
The devil will shoulder it all for you.
You don't have to worry about it anymore.
Forget about the devil's left arm and live your life with a happy smile on your face.
It's not that simple.
That arm's the symbol of the sins I bear.
It's my arm.
No, it's not. It's the devil's.
And from what that scumbag told me, this belonged to your mother.
It has never, ever been yours.
Not once.
It's gotten smaller!
Why?
Isn't that obvious, Kanbaru?
Your first wish was granted.
The devil's arm should've grown right then.
I think you said something like that earlier too.
Now that you mention it...
But...
I left the part of your soul that the devil took back then within you.
That's why this paw's back to its original size.
The price I paid the first time?
What? That's just absurd.
Scene no. 301
That was a contract with a devil and they're not so easily swayed,
and there's no way they'd just let me get my body back.
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More fundamentally, what exactly is meant by "collecting the parts of the devil"?
Scene no. 301
I kept my word and told you all about that arm.
It's your turn now.
What exactly have you been doing these past three years?
You know, promises aren't meant to be kept or broken.
They're meant to be ignored.
And how is that any different to breaking them, exactly?
Well, you don't break them.
You just put them off.
And in that time, promises cease to be promises.
Get it?
People can even run from fate itself.
That's the kinda thing I'll be telling you about now.
Just to be clear, this is not a story.
It's what comes after a basketball player loses her career—
after the period at the end of her sentence.
It's like an unnecessary epilogue of sorts.
Look at the shape my leg's in.
It's more like a devil's than a monkey's, right?
But know this, Kanbaru:
This is not the only devil I house within my body.
Scene no. 328
Now, then.
Where do I even begin?
I could start with the regional tournament three years ago where I lost my left leg.
That'd be the shortest and simplest route,
but it wouldn't be enough for you to get a glimpse into how I see the world.
I've always held an interest in the misfortune of others,
only it was the exact opposite to how I think now.
You could call that two different extremes.
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Back then, I would compare the misfortune of others to my own fortune
and then scratch my head in disbelief.
"Why was I blessed with a talent that nobody else has?"
Oh, and by talent, I'm referring to my athleticism here.
You could also take it to mean my ball control.
Actually...
If you were to whittle it down even further, it'd be my excellent footwork.
I played soccer in grade school, you see.
Thing is, I went too far.
I was a girl playing soccer with the boys,
and I was head and shoulders above them, to boot.
No wonder they hated me.
Here's what I thought in that situation:
"If only everyone was equally talented, nobody would come to hate me."
"So why does the world have to be divided into the talented and the untalented?"
I strove to hide my talents after that.
I tried not to do anything flashy and focused on defense.
That's probably what eventually became the quicksand defense you all know today.
Those who have talent
Scene no. 346
must, above all else, fear the long-standing societal tradition
of hammering in the nail that sticks out.
Scene no. 346
Why I quit soccer and switched to basketball?
No reason in particular.
It's just that I grew out of soccer the same time I graduated grade school.
As for why I picked basketball out of the many sports out there...
Scene no. 354
Well, soccer's a sport you play with your feet,
so I wanted to try one where I could handle the ball next.
Maybe you'd have joined the handball club if there'd been one in middle school.
Scene no. 356
I said I had nice footwork, remember?
So I tried raising the difficulty level.
From "easy" to "normal."
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Yeah, normal.
That's all basketball was to me.
Turn that frown upside down, Kanbaru.
If you don't like being called too serious, then you should learn to let these things slide.
Look at it this way. I lost my left leg as punishment for playing a sport with such flimsy motives.
I truly did get my "just deserts."
She doesn't seem to doubt herself,
Scene no. 364
but I understand her.
I was the one who destroyed my leg myself.
The doctors diagnosed it as a stress fracture.
Those who totally rely on their talent
Scene no. 366
often end like this.
Scene no. 366
I was like an empty shell after I got hospitalized.
After all, even I'm only human.
I'm as prone to feeling sad or depressed as anyone else.
It was only after I lost basketball, the sport I'd started playing simply to raise the bar for myself,
that I realized how much I loved it.
She realized the talent she'd been squandering was fragile and irreplaceable.
Scene no. 369
She realized how much emphasis she'd placed on it for herself.
Scene no. 369
And thus, I became unhappy.
I became this pitiful, unhappy little thing.
Funnily enough, the teammates I'd been at loggerheads with and the teachers that found me a pain in the neck
suddenly became all nice and even came to visit me in the hospital.
"Sorry for everything. We were pushing you too hard."
Man, that moved me to tears.
We held each other's hands and apologized for everything.
But as soon as they left the hospital, I scratched my head in disbelief.
What the hell am I doing, I wondered.
Sure, I was touched, but so fucking what?
That didn't change reality—the fact that my left leg couldn't handle sports anymore.
So I quit school.
I even hated being in the general vicinity of it, so I begged my parents and got them to move.
My mother blamed herself, so I didn't have to pressure them
Scene no. 377
to run away.
Scene no. 377
Now, here's what happened before I moved—
before I ran away.
It's what sparked my present hobby— my sickening hobby—of collecting misfortune.
One of my teammates came to visit me.
She was the one who showed me the path I was meant to walk.
I'll forever be indebted and grateful to her.
Needless to say, I wasn't close to her.
Scene no. 383
Not at all.
One day, she suddenly came to my hospital room by herself and,
after exchanging all the usual pleasantries,
said she wanted my advice on something.
The contents were typical of a middle school student's problems.
Scene no. 385
Some blahblah about the boy she liked and her classmates in school.
Nothing you can resolve in any way. Worst thing to seek advice for.
But that wasn't the point.
She didn't come to the wrong person.
From her point of view, she came to the perfect person.
Scene no. 385
She wanted the advice of someone clearly worse off than her.
Someone like me, who had nothing to live for.
Long story short, she did have her share of problems and worries,
but she didn't want to be pitied for it.
I understood her, because after I hurt my leg,
Scene no. 393
the friendliness of others made me gloomy.
Troubled as she was, she didn't want the advice of someone who'd look down on her.
Why I didn't get mad at her?
That's because she was under a grave misunderstanding.
The truth is,
listening to her served as great consolation to me.
There's nothing sweeter than schadenfreude.
And even with a broken leg, it tasted just as divine.
Knowing that I wasn't alone in having problems healed my broken heart.
I could feel warmth returning to it.
We licked each other's wounds
Scene no. 403
and weighed our respective unhappiness.
Scene no. 403
Once I realized that, the rest of it was all fun and games.
I tried all sorts of things to figure out the best way to extract
every last bit of sorrow and suffering from her.
Well, it was kinda like the devil's internship period.
Repeatedly thinking myself a horrible person, I feasted on all of her worries.
That made me feel like I'd been saved a little.
That said,
Scene no. 408
I did not listen to her stories until the end of time.
Then one day, I said to her while sending her off,
"I get all your problems."
I wasn't lying.
And I kept going.
"I'll solve them for you, so you don't have to worry about a thing."
Now that was a lie.
A giant fib.
A selfish lie I told because I didn't want her coming back the next day to talk to me again.
She gave me a funny look,
Scene no. 421
and although she seemed confused a little,
she said "Thanks" and went home.
Scene no. 421
But I didn't see what happened a while after that coming.
I think it was right when I was about to be discharged that she came by my hospital room again.
She looked like the world had been lifted off her shoulders.
And then she thanked me. With a thousand-watt smile on her face.
She was so excited I could make neither head nor tail of what she was saying,
but I could tell her problems had been solved without a hitch.
Basically, it was a simple example of time healing all wounds.
While she'd entrusted her problems to me and stopped worrying about them,
they ceased to be problems.
"C'mon, no need to thank me. I just did what I had to do."
Scene no. 429
So I said and hoped she'd just go and leave.
Her misfortune was like music to my ears.
It healed me.
Not only did she come to me, someone she saw as worse off than she was, meaning she could freely ask for advice,
but she was actually freed from her burden by entrusting me with her issues.
On top of that, time—and in her eyes, I—solved all of them for her.
That didn't hurt anyone, did it?
In fact, it actually saved everyone involved.
Pareto optimum.
Scene no. 433
Or Nash equilibrium?
Anyway.
I could help people and heal my own wounds at the same time.
Kill two birds with one stone.
Not to mention, it was minimal investment for maximum reward.
So I made my decision right away.
I was bereft of the kind of conscience and morals that would make me spend a sleepless night worrying about it.
Maybe they'd been a part of me in the past,
but such values broke down with my left leg.
I decided to make that my purpose in life.
On second thought, it wasn't such a positive feeling.
I felt more like I'd found my perfect resting place as an athlete.
So, yeah, I decided to make that my tombstone.
And thus, Numachi Rouka, collector of misfortune, was born.
Scene no. 439
That was an awfully long autobiography, but there's more to it, right?
I get what got you started with collecting misfortune.
I get your motive too.
It's admirable—suits your taste, benefits you, and even helps others.
It's making me go weak in the knees here.
How unlike you to be so sarcastic.
But that's only half of it.
You still haven't told me why you started collecting not only misfortune, but also parts of the devil.
Oh, I was just about to get to that.
But I figured I should signal halftime and give you a choice first.
A choice?
I wonder why Numachi irritates me so much.
Scene no. 451
What's that supposed to mean?
That easy, normal, and hard thing again?
Are you telling me to choose a method of communication?
Nah, it's nothing that fancy.
You simply have to choose between two options: whether you want to hear the rest or not.
From this point onward, this truly becomes the story of the devil.
If you can get by without knowing, then I think you're better off that way.
It'd be easier for you to go back to leading a normal life.
Like, you know...
Make friends, fall in love, read books, and tap away at your cell phone and all that.
Knock it off, Numachi.
You're the one who has to make a choice, not me.
Either tell me everything or give back the devil's arm.
You're the one who has a decision to make here!
Whoa, how scary.
I'll keep going, then.
I'll tell you how I met the devil.
But let me just say this: this sob story won't provide any consolation to anyone.
Bit too late for that.
Scene no. 1
What is this I have stuck inside my heart?
It grows so large I have to talk about it
In the prison that we call freedom
we live half in the past
I'm prisoner to your love-struck response
Immobile, spell-bound, sucked in
Thinking about all the right and wrong decisions now
I am petrified with hesitation
Now you are gone from this chaotic world
My feelings lie buried deep
I run alone to where my heart
commands me
I cut myself lose from the words that tied me down
Nobody will equal me
in my honesty to myself
when I decide
to find someone else now